/ . / ff y BY THE SAME AUTHOR. A HISTOEICAL AND CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON THE OLD TESTAMENT, WITH A NEW TEANSLATION: VOL. I. GENESIS. Hebrew and English. 18s. Abridged Edition. 12s. VOL. H. EXODUS. Hebrew and English. 15s. Abridged Edition. 12s. VOL. III. LEVITICUS, PART I. Hebrew and English. 15s. Abridged Edition. 8s. -VOL. IV. LEVITICUS, PART II. Hebrew and English. 15s. Abridged Edition. 8s. A HEBKEW GEAMMAE, WITH EXEECISES: PAET I. The Outlines of the Language, with Exercises; being A Practical Introduction to the Study of Hebrew. 12s. Qd. PAET II. The Exceptional Forms and Constructions, preceded by an Essay on the History of Hebrew Grammar. 12s. Qd. A KEY to the Exercises of the First Part. 5s. BIBLE STUDIES: PAET I. The Prophecies of Balaam (Numbers xxii. to xxiv.), or The Hebrew and the Heathen. 10s. Qd. PAET H. The Book of Jonah, preceded by a Treatise on 'The Hebrew and the Stranger'. 10s. 6d. LONDON: LONGMANS, GEEEN AND CO. PATH AND GOAL, A DISCUSSION. Haec, sis, pernoscas, parva perdoctus opella. Namque alid ex alio clarescet, nee tibi caeca Nox iter eripiet, quin ultima naturai Pervideas : ita res accendent lumina rebus. Lucret. I. 11061109. PA AND GOAL. A DISCUSSION ON THE ELEMENTS OF CIVILISATION AND THE CONDITIONS OF HAPPINESS. M. M. KALISCH, PH. D., M. A. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 1880. PRINTED BY W. DBUGULIN, LEIPZIG. CONTENTS. PAGE I. THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS ....... 1 Gabriel de Mondoza, p. 1. Hubert Gregovius, p. 4. Arthur Berghom, p. 6. Noel Abington, p. 8. Percy Humphrey, p. 10. Dr. Keginald Mortimer, p. 12. Raphael Gideon, p. 13. Emanuel Panini, p. 16. Arvada-Kalama, p. 18. Subbhuti, p. 20. Asho-raoco, p. 24. Movayyid-eddin, p. 27. Erasmus Hermes, p. 28. Walther Attinghausen, p. 29. Clement Melville, p. 31. Andreas Wolfram, p. 32. II. THE BOOK . . ., . . . . .. ., .. . '. 84 III. THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC . . . . . . . 61 IV. THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN . . . . . .121 V. EPICURUS AND DARWINISM . . . . . . .188 VI. THE DIGNITY OP MAN 247 VII. GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY 293 VIII. IMMORTALITY . . . . 331 IX. PANTHEISM 377 X. PESSIMISM .','.'. .418 XI. IDEALISM AND THE GOAL ...... . 473 < I I. THE HOST AND HIS. -GUESTS, IN the summer evenings during the year of the last International Exhibition held in London, native and foreign guests habitually met at the house of Gabriel de Mondoza for a friendly exchange of ideas. Cordova Lodge, situated in one of the northern suburbs, was an unpretending structure of moderate dimensions, but adorned with consummate taste and judgment. Nothing betrayed an affected reproduction of a peculiar style or a particular century; yet, whether owing to the statues, busts and pictures of Greek deities and philosophers, which, besides some original masterpieces of the Italian school, studded the well-designed hall and principal apart- ments, or whether owing to the refined simplicity and arrangement of furniture abundant but not crowded, elegant yet comfortable, the, whole made an impression such as perhaps an ancient Athenian might have experienced when entering the Propylaea or the Parthenon. It was an atmosphere of calm cheerfulness inviting the mind at once to concentration and intercommunion. But the principal charm of the Lodge was its situation. The host, an ardent lover of nature, had transformed it into a veritable rus in urbe. The limited grounds which surrounded the house, he had, with the utmost discrimina- tion in economising space, laid out partly in shady walks and gay flower beds, and partly in a well-stocked and carefully cultivated kitchen garden. He had not only found room for modest conservatories and hothouses, but also for a diminutive farm that deserved to be admired as a true model of neatness and utility. As, for his sole recreation, he was often himself engaged in this 2 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. little domain with weeding and pruning, tying up and transplanting, it was his special pleasure and pride to send to his friends presents of the freshest roses and ; sweetest grapes, of cream the richest and finest eggs. When- ever he desired to pursue some deeper train of thought, he was wont to retire into one of the small bowers or summer houses, where, having encircled his small plot with a close belt of high poplars and spreading plane- trees, he was not liable to be disturbed by intrusive sights or sounds. When, on the other hand, he fell into one of those poetic moods which often powerfully swayed him, he surveyed from an upper room of his house the elevated and picturesque landscape that extended westward before his view, or, in the evening, repaired to the ob- servatory which he had constructed with most judicious discernment, and where he had, before this time, made more than one discovery of importance. For, relieved from worldly care by a sufficient patrimony, he was determined to use his powers in the service both of practical life and of science. Work was to him not only a pleasure but an indispensable necessity; he had indeed for many years carried on his labours with such incessant eagerness that his health, originally robust and elastic, began to show monitory symptoms of decline. As he thus was less enabled to seek in society that intercourse with congenial minds, which was his greatest enjoyment, he gradually gathered round himself the ablest men whose conversation promised him improvement and assistance. / For he had already passed through a remarkable inner development. He was descended from a distinguished family of Spanish Jews, which, emigrating from Holland, had settled in England even during Cromwell's Protectorate. His father, like his ancestors for many generations, was a no less learned than zealous Talmudist. His mother, of German birth, was of an essentially artistic nature, of such delicate taste and tact, and, in spite of feelings deep and strong, of such sweet gentleness and patient forbearance, THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 3 that all who came under her influence revered and loved her as a perfect type of womanhood. While the father's fire kindled Mondoza's religious sentiments, the mother's self-possessed composure engendered an aesthetic frame of mind, which seemed to calm the restless agitation of the soul by holding all powers equally balanced. Thus he naturally turned with like ardour to the study of the Bible and of the classics, and ever hesitating which of the two he should choose for special cultivation, he clung the more firmly to both, and, soon freeing himself from untenable tradi- tions, he earnestly laboured to weld the conceptions of the Scriptures and of Hellenism into one homogeneous design. Yet his mind remained unsatisfied. He felt that elevation and beauty are unavailing without clearness in general principles. For such principles he searched philosophy, but in vain. He studied its chief systems eagerly: in all he discovered uncertainty, conjecture, often self-contra- diction. Then, without abandoning his old predilections, he gave his full attention to the natural sciences which, in the last two or three decades, had been so marvel- lously advanced. Here at last, he thought, he had found what he had so long yearned for. First, in conformity with his natural bent towards the sublime, he was fascinated by the wonders of astronomy and strove to form distinct notions of the genesis and government of the universe. But then, following his ethical instincts, he entered with increa- sing delight into the problems of the origin of life upon the earth into all that could throw light on the mutual connection of all creatures up to man himself, who, what- ever his pursuits, remained his supreme object and interest. Thus, after long and laborious investigations, he succeeded in devising a general view which combined and kept in equipoise Hebrew, Greek and modern thought, and which, he was confident, did justice both to the varied aspirations of human nature and the complex course of universal history. Did he deceive himself? Will the conflict and friction with other opinions decide in his favour or compel 4 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. him to seek different paths? The following conversations will help to settle the alternative. It remains in this place only to be remarked that Mondoza had long since lost his tenderly beloved wife it was perhaps this bereavement which had stamped a pensive melancholy upon features ennobled by the constant pre- sence of great thoughts , and that now the whole wealth of his affections was centred in an only promising son centred but not absorbed; for he was charitable almost beyond his means, as open to the suffering of individuals as to the progress of society, self-denying, generous alike to friend and opponent for his decided views did not remain unchallenged : and many not un- fittingly applied to him the words used by the great German poet in describing an immortal friend: HJnd hinter ihm, in wesenlosem Scheme, 'Lag, was uns Alle bandigt, das Gremeine'. 1 The company which assembled in Cordova Lodge during the year of the International Exhibition, was more than ordinarily numerous and varied; for even those literary celebrities with whom Mondoza had not before been in correspondence, found easy access and a hearty welcome. To avoid interrupting, by personal explanations, the dia- logues we shall have to record, we may here at once mention and briefly sketch the principal guests. One of Mondoza's most valued friends was HUBERT GREGOVIUS, Professor of Biblical literature at a renowned seat of learning in Germany. Though now advanced in years, both his vigour and his zeal were unimpaired. He had at first established himself as Lecturer in one of the smaller Prussian universities, but had from the beginning taught the Scriptures with such breadth and unbiassed freedom, that in those days of despotic reaction, he soon 1 Tar from his soul, like airy phantoms, fled 'Mean thoughts, by which we all are curbed and led.' (Goethe, Epilog zu Schiller's Glocke; Werke, 1840, vol. VI, p. 424). THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. became an object of suspicion to the government, and a harm- less public utterance was eagerly seized upon as a pretext for dismissing him from his post. He was willingly received in Switzerland, where he remained as an ornament to one of the federal Colleges, until the political regeneration of his country caused him to be recalled by a popular ad- ministration proud of his learning and his fame ; and he has since then, for nearly a generation, become the guide of a large number of younger scholars happy in calling themselves his pupils. It was the merit of Gregovius to have been among the first to apply to the Scriptures a treatment at once minutely philological and largely historical. In the former respect, he drew into the scope of his examination not only all Shemitic idioms, but, soon recognising the para- mount importance of Sanscrit, the Arian languages also; while in the latter respect, he exhibited, in rare perfection, that most invaluable of all gifts, a keen historical instinct, the want of which can be replaced by no other faculty, and which, almost equivalent to divination, is indispensable in fields of enquiry, where the materials at our disposal are mostly scanty and fragmentary. Indeed, common sense was Gregovius' principal characteristic to such a degree that the results of the ripest scholarship and the highest linguistic acumen, when stated by him, appeared like simple axioms claiming acceptance from every sound mind. Being thus able at any moment to free himself from the ballast of antiquarian learning, he was a most cheerful companion, versatile in conversation, and evincing so lively an interest in every pursuit and occurrence, that strangers hardly knew, or cared to know, his particular avocation. And yet, impartially consulting the labours of all his more important predecessors, whether of the traditional or the critical schools, and cautious in his researches, though uncompromising in his conclusions, he had made the most unwearied efforts, by means of a strictly scientific method, to reconstruct on a rational basis the language and 6 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. literature of the Hebrews as well as their religion and history; and he did this with such consistency and success that future enquiries might render modifications or additions necessary, but will not easily show the necessity of altering the plan of the edifice in its main outlines. In not a few points different from Gregovius, though on the whole working in the same fields of knowledge, was ARTHUR BERGHORN, who for some weeks was Mondoza's constant guest. His appearance instantly arrested atten- tion, not so much by his unusually tall, slender and sinewy frame, but by a certain defiant aggressiveness stamped upon his physiognomy, and by a proud superciliousness that was mirrored in dark eyes half hidden under bushy eye- brows. He likewise was a German doctor of Divinity and had, with brief interruptions, held a chair at a university which, in the course of the present century, has repeatedly made itself conspicuous by very determined political demonstrations. This spirit of public agitation, which was stronger in Berghorn than in any of his restless colleagues, incited him, even when his long-cherished dream of German unity was at last realised, to oppose an almost frantic hostility to the Emperor and the Empire, merely because that unity had not been effected in the precise manner which, from his peculiar theories of history, he had declared to be the only possible one. He had been among the most gifted and most unweariedly diligent pupils of Gregovius, but he had scarcely been withdrawn from this healthful influence when his polemical vehemence delighted in setting forth, with regard to the Hebrew language and the composition of the Scriptures, many views which indeed displayed extraordinary penetration and scholarship, but which were in reality hardly more than bold conjectures, and, though eagerly read and much admired as feats of ingenuity, were adopted or approved by few. "While Gregovius was endowed with the power of simplifying the recondite problems of Biblical lore and bringing them home to the comprehension of THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 7 all, Berghorn's intellectual idiosyncrasy could hardly avoid converting the simplest facts and truths into recondite problems. Proud of an originality almost inexhaustible in its resources, he dictatorially judged and rejected the efforts of nearly all his predecessors; but he constantly mistook assertion for argument, and dazzling hypothesis for an established result. The master's criticism was by the disciple perverted into a hypercriticism which not seldom compelled him to retract or essentially to alter views put forth as infallible and defended with categorical obstinacy. Nevertheless, his suggestions and surmises, however startling, seldom failed to promote Biblical studies most effectually, since even the errors of a man of genius are instructive. His somewhat vain endeavour to make the researches of the past a tabula rasa, permitted his brilliant abilities unrestricted scope, and produced a large number of surprising combinations which, if the pictures they exhibit of Hebrew politics and literature were essen- tially kaleidoscopic, attracted to the subject many whom a more sober treatment would have left indifferent. He evinced, moreover, in the elucidation of historical and religious ideas, a depth and force as if inspired by prophetic ardour, and, in spite of a style rather quaint and hard, his earnestness often succeeded in producing truly poetical effects. Yet even these merits were not without strong shades. In unconsciously idealising his theme, he strayed into a twilight hardly less confusing than the 'mists of dogma' which he was never tired to assail as 'irreligious'. Although to a certain point unfettered by prejudice and tradition, yet he clung to the old terms, which he had neither the insincerity to take in their old sense, nor the courage to abandon. But it was just these enigmatical contradictions that made him one of the most interesting personages to some a psychological study, to others an object of admiration not unmixed with mysterious awe, though all were careful not to tempt his irascibility or to provoke his recklessly abusive antagonism. 8 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. While the two men just characterised were essentially Biblical scholars, their friend NOEL ABINGTON was a most prominent type of the Christian theologian. Although entirely dissimilar to both in their salient traits, since he possessed neither the simple clearness of the one nor the critical subtlety of the other, he was regarded by both with equal reverence. Who, indeed, could approach that extraordinary man without experiencing an influence almost akin to sanctification? Though living in an age commonly described as worldly, he appeared almost like an immediate apostle of his Master. Being the son of a zealous minister of one of the stricter English sects, he was brought up in a rigorous practice of religious forms and exercises bordering on ascetism. But the boy had a glowing heart and an exuberant ima- gination, which found little nourishment in the cold and bare ceremonialism that surrounded him. At an age earlier than is usual even with strong and independent intellects, he found himself engaged in a vehement struggle for inward deliverance; and after a brilliant College career, during which he endeavoured in vain to suppress his tumultuous conflicts by an almost breathless industry, he joined the national Church to the intense grief of his father, from whom he was thenceforth greatly estranged. Many years of toiling thought and research followed; but then he was at last able to frame a system which satisfied him, and which he has since then elucidated from the pulpit and the academical chair with an eloquence and holy fire that gained over all deeper and purer minds for the centre of his doctrine, even if they were unable to follow him in his deductions and arguments. 'The essence of religion,' which he had made it his task to fathom, he declared, like Schleiermacher, to consist, not so much in belief and worship, as in the feeling of the absolute dependence of man and the whole world upon an all-pervading Creator in that feeling of unspeak- able wonder which penetrates the human soul in con- THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 9 templating the marvellous mechanism of the universe, in scanning the stirring events of history, and in unravelling the changeful experiences of individual lives ; since all alike are felt to proclaim a boundless wisdom, power, and justice. To him religion was, in fact, the ever present consciousness of the ideas of truth and eternity, of goodness and Divine judgment working within us with such irresistible force and unfailing certainty that the soul neither demands nor requires any other proof of the existence of God and His Providence. But as the imperishable exemplar of human perfection, through whom alone a full atonement, or a union with God, is possible or can ever be truly beneficent, he regarded the Christ of history, whom he first strove to make a rea- lity in his own heart, and then endeavoured, with assiduous and passionate fervour, to render intelligible to others. In thus interpreting religion not only as a natural phe- nomenon in man's mental constitution, but as the very foundation and indispensable necessity of his exis- tence, and constantly feeling himself in a loving inter- communion with his Redeemer, he led a life truly blissful, as it was scarcely touched by the world and its anxieties. A conception which regards as the pith of religion neither knowledge of the truth nor charitable action, but an all- governing sentiment, could not, it is evident, be free from a certain enthusiastic mysticism, which precluded calmer enquirers from accepting his views without reserve. And yet, when he poured forth his tenets from the depths of his conviction in speaking, he bent his chin upon his breast, as if he were listening to the voice within ; or when he gave free scope to that torrent of speech, which seemed to flow from his lips as if under the spell of a mighty inspiration ; few could hardly imagine how warm a heart he had even for the smallest concerns of his fellow- men, and how clearly and practically his eye surveyed all the relations of life, so that complicated disputes were not seldom referred to his arbitration. 1 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. Considering his principal aims, it is not surprising that he scarcely bestowed an independent interest on the Old Testament, to which his two friends devoted themselves even with predilection: his care was not Biblical but Ecclesiastical history; not the literature but the moral and dogmatic teaching of the Scriptures ; and on all these subjects he has written works which are acknowledged to be mines of learning, classical in form and elevating in tone, but which, nevertheless, because he sacrificed the dogmatism of a past revelation to his idea of a perpetual intercourse of the human heart with its Divine source, have caused him to be described as a heretic from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. Among his opponents the ablest and the most influential was PERCY HUMPHREY, who occupied a chair of Divinity at the same university as Noel Abington, and was no less popular with a large number of students. He also was a Christian theologian in the stricter sense ; and yet how great was the difference in the work and character of both men! Humphrey was the son of an eminent English physician, studied theology and the Oriental languages with diligence, and at first decidedly inclined towards German rationa- lism; but suddenly a change took place, the causes of which it was difficult to ascertain, and he became thence- forth one of the staunchest champions of the Protestant creed. He fought with all the arms of an extensive erudition and a penetrating shrewdness, of a searching analysis and an effective satire. The subjects he treated engaged his attention but partially; for they shared it with the refutation, or at least the unsparing criticism, of his antagonists. He took a delight in multiplying, with inventive ingenuity, the possible objections to his own opinions, in order to attack and, as he believed, to demolish them by his adroit and often surprising dialectics. "While speaking, he moved his small, twinkling, clever eyes restlessly; and when arguing, he usually placed the fore- finger of his right hand upon that of his left hand in regular THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 1 1 intervals, as if lie were beating time; unless he put it for a moment upon the extremity of his hooked and sharply cut nose, which well harmonised with his thin face and rigidly regular features. He performed his dialectic tasks, as a rule, with such specious success, that many honestly believed his arguments to be unassailable, and orthodoxy established for all times. Clinging to St. Augustin's maxim, "The New Testament is concealed in the Old, the Old Testament is revealed in the New' a , he made, of course, the utmost efforts to represent the whole of the Old Testament history simply as a prophecy pointing to Christ, the New Testament history as a prophecy pointing to the latter days, and the Scriptures in their totality as disclosing the gradual progress in the revelation of Christian dogmas and the scheme of salvation. Unlike Abington, who appealed to the innate wants and aspirations of the human soul, he attempted to prove his doctrines by means of a dexterous exegesis and the supposition of a continuous Manifestation from without. The work he had proposed to himself was not easy and, in view of the constant progress of Biblical and historical research, became more and more difficult as he advanced ; yet his vindications of the Divine and Mosaic origin and the absolute infallibility of the Pen- tateuch, his spiritual interpretations of the Psalms and other Books, and his comprehensive Christological de- ductions and applications, called forth the admiration and gratitude even of those who by no means shared his prin- ciples, but were glad to find together, in such masterly completeness and precision, everything that could well be urged in defence of tradition. Humphrey's authority extended far beyond the limits of his own country; in all Protestant communities of the Old and the New World he was honoured as a strong pillar of the Christian Church, as a powerful bulwark against the inroads of neologian subversiveness ; and his numerous works have become the 12 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. text-books in all the learned schools of Evangelical theology. It was natural that Mondoza felt pleasure in the personal acquaintance of the famous controversialist, and his in- terest was enhanced by seeing him in the company of no less distinguished colleagues, with whom he had long carried on a literary feud of more than ordinary animation and severity. A divine of a very different mould was Dr. REGINALD MORTIMER, whose accomplishments and amiability made him a welcome guest in all circles of society. He was small of stature, and it cannot be said that he looked venerable or imposing; but his fine head and a certain aristocratic cast of his features, could not fail to strike even the most casual observer as remarkable; his mouth especially, even when he was silent, showed a variety and changefulness of play indicating an unusual readiness of speech and humour. Although a dignitary of the Church he was Canon in a northern diocese he could scarcely be designated otherwise than a nominal Christian; for a very thin and transparent veil of Christian phraseology barely concealed that classical humanitarianism which formed the kernel of his creed. Yet for this very reason many who stood aloof from the Church were glad to see him in a position that enabled him to serve as a useful link between the faiths of the Bible and the conclusions of philosophy. And for such a mission, if mission it could be called, few men were better fitted. For, imbued with the spirit of Greek and Roman poetry and therefore ac- customed to convey abstract ideas in a plastic form, he most skilfully transformed the peculiar notions of the Scriptures into general emblems, and abandoning one essential tenet of Christianity after another as if it were part of its husk, he moved in a region of thought, in which every specific stamp was effaced. He hardly recognised a difference between various creeds, as he saw only the simple and iden- tical truths which are the foundations of all, and he often THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 13 pointed to the Christianity of a Shakespeare or Bacon in order to prove, or rather allow it to be inferred, that dogmas and articles of faith are unnecessary for moral and intellectual greatness. And these views he advocated with an eloquence which, if not powerfully impressive, was wondrously pleasing and insinuating, ever fresh and pic- turesque, ever elastic and buoyant. His lips and his pen imparted even to the tritest thought a new life and an unexpected charm, and the most perfect form of expression seemed to offer itself to him spontaneously. Yet in spite of his remarkable abilities, in spite of a noble and most active zeal, and a wide popularity, the effects of his work were comparatively slight. Not even his warmest friends succeeded in entirely silencing those who described his toleration in the office he occupied as laxity, and they had little to reply when his assailants failed to discover in him that strength of intellect and character which leads to strict principles of thought, or that open candour which distinguishes between beautiful play and manly conviction. Free at least from Canon Mortimer's faults was RAPHAEL GIDEON, Chief Rabbi in one of the principal towns of the Grand Duchy of Posen, who had come to England to collect among his opulent co-religionists con- tributions towards a new Synagogue and the extension of local charities. Born in a small town of that province, he became, when still a child, familiar with the Hebrew Bible and the Rabbinical commentaries. The boy soon displayed an extraordinary talent, and when he, according to custom, on the Sabbath after his thirteenth birthday delivered in the Synagogue a Talmudical disputation to signalise his religious majority, he so strongly impressed the congregation with his gifts that it was decided that he should be educated, at the expense of the commu- nity, in a Rabbinical College in Prussia, renowned for the ability and learning of its masters. After due preparation, he entered that institution, but attended at the same time the classical High School and 14 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. afterwards the university. His memory, acuteness, and perseverance were alike astonishing, and his enormous power of work, supported by a vigorous health which either knew no illness or disregarded it, was an object of wonder even to those of his teachers who were themselves quoted as prodigies of industry. Thus he acquired an accumulative knowledge not only in the Jewish and Oriental branches of learning but also in the language and literature of the Greeks sand Romans. But the latter he studied only as auxiliaries to the former, and most noteworthy was his ab- solute incapacity of understanding the spirit of Hellenic culture. In the mythology of the Greeks he saw nothing but a repulsive mixture of caprice, baseness and immora- lity; in their history nothing but the vain contests of light- headed youths who never attained the maturity of men; and in their art hardly more than the trifling levity of Sybarites who ? utterly unfit for the earnestness of life, had no other aim than sensual frivolity. To enter seriously into their philosophy, ethics, or science, he did not even deem worth his while; and if in their writings he was occasionally startled by some sentiment or principle recalling the power, dignity or elevation of the Bible, he quickly passed over the analogy by assuming an appropriation from the Hebrews or by sagaciously pointing out some heathen alloy. To him 'Mosaism' was the emanation and the sum total of all Divine wisdom, confirmed and enjoined, on the one hand, by the teaching of the prophets, expanded and 'hedged in', on the other hand, by the traditions of Rab- binism. Thus, although apparently placed amidst the currents of western civilisation and familiar with its chief productions, his thoughts rooted in the Eastern principle of absolute supernaturalism. He used indeed the modern terminology, but he lived in the notions of his ancestors. New ideas touched the old, but did not mingle with them; between both there was neither enmity nor a tendency of amalgamation; it was a state of quiet indifferentism. THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 15 For the Rabbi was convinced that no earthly intelligence could ever overthrow or even modify, however slightly, God's primeval revelations. He was in his innermost heart certain of the ultimate and universal victory of Judaism, which, by a strange illusion, was to him nothing else but a pure monotheism ; and scrupulously strict in the obser- vance of its rituals and ceremonials, he expected that Messianic time with a confidence which no adverse ex- perience was able to shake. He could indeed not fail to notice everywhere among his co-religionists great and rapid changes, and he con- stantly argued about this decay of the old faith in dis- courses and writings which all, more or less, bore the character of bitter philippics or tragically mournful laments ; and though these efforts seldom convinced or produced a practical effect, the sincerity of their ardour inspired esteem for the man, while the happy illustrations from his vast treasury of Rabbinical lore, with which they abounded, awakened admiration for the scholar and interest in his studies. But with respect to Christianity he maintained a position not only of toleration but of a certain friendliness. For he considered its doctrine of the Incarnation as a Divinely appointed instrument for gradually training heathendom to the imageless monotheism of the Old Testament. He called himself an orthodox Rabbi and he was one; he made to his age no concessions beyond those demanded by the duties of a good citizen and faithful patriot, which he exercised conscientiously and to the ready practice of which he impressively exhorted his congregations. He loved his German country and prayed for its welfare, but he prayed with equal fervour for the restoration of his people to the Holy Land and the renewal of the service of sacrifices in the Temple on Moriah. He did not, and needed not, concern himself about this contradiction, as his holy Books enjoined attachment to his adopted and his ancestral country with equal solemnity, though the 16 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. latter was perhaps the intenser feeling of his heart. If ever a fleeting doubt troubled him on this or any other perplexity, he fought it down by main force; and fearlessly indifferent to personal consequences, he never hesitated to expound his strong opinions about the Divine inspiration of the Hebrew Scriptures and Tradition, or about the holiness of Moses, the prophets and the Jewish sages ; and to expound them with the utmost determination, without the least compromise, not even shrinking from paradox and fanaticism: he was Fortis, et in se ipso totus, teres atque rotundus. \ It was men of this unbending temper who, in the first half of the present century, called forth among the educated Jews of Europe a reaction which, in nearly all countries, led to a schism, though this has hitherto proved neither wide nor deep. One of the ablest ministers of these new communities who like to call themselves 'Re- formers', was EMANUEL PANINI who, on account of the urbanity of his manners and the refined ease of his con- versation, was in Mondoza's house always greeted with pleasure. Born and educated in Italy, he gradually deve- loped that fiery eloquence which seems natural to the land of Rienzi and Savonarola, and to which he imparted an additional charm by apt citations from the great Italian poets. Although trained in a famous Rabbinical school and thoroughly competent to perform the functions of a Rabbi, he declined this title and styled himself Preacher of the 'Reform Congregation' over which he presided for many years with sustained popularity. For he desired to avoid even the remotest appearance of recognising the validity of tradition or 'the oral Law,' the repudiation of which is the main characteristic of his sect. But in this point he was as little consistent as other 'Reformers.' Although acknowledging the Mosaic ordinances as their only canon, they found it impossible to abolish, even par- tially, those customs which, like those connected with the dietary precepts and the festival rites, had by the practice * X & THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS.**^ 17 of many centuries taken deep roots in Jewish life. They could, therefore, in a limited sense only, be termed Karaites, especially as they, on the other hand, happily refrained from the unintelligent literalness of Karaitic interpretations. Thus they might certainly claim the merit of having materially simplified their religion, and of having Drought it into closer harmony with the age. Yet in the most essential question, their difference from the older schools was only one of degree, not of principle. For they ad- hered to the verbal inspiration of the Pentateuch with a stubborn tenacity unsurpassed by the most rigorous Rab- banites. Indeed they concentrated on that narrower field all the dogmatic energy distributed by their brethren over multifarious codes; and some of them could not be re- strained from occasional ebullitions of that bigotry from which they had themselves suffered so greatly for many years after their secession. Like the Protestants and the 'Old Catholics', they held themselves entitled to the name of 'Reformers', because they declared Divine inspiration or tradition to have ceased at an arbitrarily chosen point of their religious history. In reference to the adherents of other creeds they insisted upon a strict separation, which they believed proper for the oldest race and the exclusive depositaries of truth. And yet, with a curious inconsistency, they were proud of their prophets who constantly proclaimed God's paternal love towards all nations alike, and Emanuel Panini especially unfolded and inculcated the lessons of an Isaiah and Micah with an enthusiasm, in which the holy flame of those exalted teachers seemed to be rekindled. Being a great lover of music he seldom missed the performance of a good Oratorio, nor did he scruple to hear the master- pieces of the lyrical stage he introduced in his synagogue the organ, which his orthodox co-religionists abhor in Divine service as 'an institution of Gentiles.' While the stirring strains of some old Jewish melody were still vibrating through the hearts of the worshippers, 18 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. he would speak with a poet's fervour and imagery of the glorious age when all mankind should be gathered under the banner of Israel, and one law of love and knowledge and peace should unite all the lands of the earth ; and then it was difficult, under the thrilling sway of that influence, to re- member those barriers between nation and nation, which, from irresolution of thought and action, he himself un- fortunately helped to strengthen ; while it was impossible not to look hopefully forward to the diffusion of that ideal of spotless honour and tender charity, which he almost realized in his own life. A new and uncommon attraction was imparted to Mon- doza's assemblies by the presence of four Eastern guests, who contributed in no small degree to a fuller and broader discussion of some of the weightiest topics. The young- est, but by no means the least remarkable among them was the Brahman AEVADA-KALAMA, who had adopted this name of Buddha's first Brahmanic teacher to intimate that, like Buddha, he considered himself a regenerator of Brahmanism. Born in Calcutta of an old family which, belonging to the caste of physicians, had for several generations been familiar with English society and cul- ture, he lost no opportunity of mastering the chief Eu- ropean works on science and literature, and above all on theology. Sanguine in temperament, endowed with a glowing imagination, and enthusiastic to such a degree that he believed he beheld supernatural visions, he felt from an early age strongly impelled to a deeper inves- tigation into the nature of religious truth. The soil had for some time been effectually prepared. A Reform Association had in 1830 been originated by R,am-Mohun-K,oy, and another, nine years later, by De- bendra-Nath Tagore*. The latter maintained indeed the * The older Association bore the name of Brahmo-Subha or Brahmo Somadsh, the later one that of Tatt- vabadhing-Subha, the meaning of the one being 'God-seeking Society', of the other, 'Truth-seeking Society'. THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 19 authority of the Vedas in all points properly religious, but denied their divine inspiration on account of the palpable errors they teach with respect to the Deity; and he de- manded as the sole condition of membership the renounce- ment of idolatry, the acknowledgment of one God, and a life of probity. Arvada-Kalama studied most zealously everything connected with these reforms, to which he ac- corded his lively sympathy. But he was still more pow- erfully moved by the ardent activity of Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen. At first, he followed him implicity; for he admired the purity and strictness of his unitarianism. But soon he found it difficult to overcome various points of difference. He was reluctant to abandon some of the harmless rites of his fathers, which he deemed useful on account of their significance. Thus he declined to give up 'the holy cord', the Brahman's distinctive badge, in- tended always to remind him of his God and his duties,> of his ancestors and his posterity. He was, in fact, averse to all sudden and violent changes in the old customs of the people. He did not, like Chunder Sen, sanction marriages between members of different castes; nor would he, in public worship, read and explain, besides the Yedas, theistic passages from the holy books of other nations. He belonged, in a word, to that division of the Reform which, in 1865, under the name of 'Adi Brahmo Somadsh', separated from the bold innovators of the 'Brahmo Somadsh of India'. Penetrated with this spirit of conservatism, which alone, he believed, promised great practical -results among the bulk of his countrymen, "Ke~~tfiea to acquire a thorough knowledge of the sac- red literature of the Hindoos and their abundant tra- ditions. In due time, he was consecrated a minister of his sect. However, urged by a thirst of further en- lightenment, he so far defied Hindoo habits and notions as to venture on a journey to the chief centres of Eu- ropean learning and to make in each a shorter or longer stay. 20 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. Almist simultaneous with his arrival in London was that of the Buddhist SUBBHUTI. He was a native of Kandy in Ceylon, but descended from a Japanese family that had settled in the island forty or fifty years ago. The traces of this origin were manifest throughout Suhbhuti's life. For in spite of a most severe self-training, he never succeeded in conquering a certain sprightly vivaciousness which a censorious observer might easily interpret as worldliness; and although wholly free from personal ambition, he was agitated by an irresistible desire to see and to know every phase of life and society. Destined by his parents for the clerical order, he entered in his tenth year, as a novice, the famous and splendid viliara of his native town, and there he soon became con- spicuous no less for his remarkable capacity in compre- hending the subtleties of Gautama's doctrines, than for the difficulty he experienced in submitting to the monastic dis- cipline, more rigorous in Ceylon than in other Buddhistic communities. Yet he remained in the institution from deference to the wishes of his parents, and when he had completed his twentieth year, he received the upasampada, or ordination, amidst an exhibition of public interest such as is only accorded to the most promising associates con- fidently expected to rise, in due order, to the highest wisdom of the Qravakas. He had not only mastered the various canonical Books of the 'Triple Basket' (Tripitdka)* together with their even more voluminous Commentaries (Attliakaiha), but had eagerly studied many of the very nu- merous works considered as the secondary sources of his creed, b whether written in Cingalese, Pali, or Sanscrit. But in spite of all honours, in spite of all advantages, he could not be reconciled to the life of a recluse; he tried hard to forget his uneasiness in the zealous instruc- tion of a large number of devoted disciples, but in vain; and when, ten years after his consecration, his parents died, he renounced his vows and, laying aside the yellow robe, abandoned the priestly vocation. Such a step, permitted THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 21 in his congregations, could by him be taken without the least discredit, as not only his eminent learning but also his piety and earnest ardour for the maintenance of the faith were beyond suspicion. Partly his love of the holy sciences, the knowledge of which he was anxious to revive in Ceylon, a partly the desire of visiting his relatives in the land of his ancestors, and, not least, an unconquerable propensity for travel, induced him to undertake a journey to Japan, yet not by the direct or shortest way, but touching all the countries likely to yield new and useful information about the tenets of his religion. To such an enterprise he was especially stimulated by the illustrious example of some great Chinese travellers of earlier times, as Fa-hien and the renowned Hiouen- Thsang b , with whose works, abounding in interesting facts bearing on the origin and early development of Buddhism, he had recently had an opportunity of becoming more fully acquainted. Like those pious pilgrims, he longed 'to go and seek the Law that it might serve as a guide to men and secure their salvation'. For he saw with grief that a large portion of his countrymen had been ensnared by Brahrnanic superstitions and heresies; that they invoked and wor- shipped Hindoo gods ; nay that, permitting ordination to certain classes only and refusing to teach the holy Book of Discipline to laymen, they had even, in some measure, relapsed into the abhorred distinction of castes, which it was their master's greatest glory to have demolished. In support of these sad errors, they adduced the confused and contradictory ordinances of doubtful authorities. The increasing animosity between the two chief sects the faithful 'Amarapuras' and the more pagan 'Siamese', who taunted each other as 'religious outcasts' occasionally rose to such a violence that it threatened seriously to endanger the well-merited credit enjoyed by the Buddhists for absolute toleration towards other creeds. For these reasons, and in view of the advances Christianity had made in the island since the English occupation, it appeared to be the 22 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. duty of all good patriots to uproot those fatal corruptions by returning to the spirit of primitive Buddhism, a and for this purpose to study its first sources in those earliest Pali and Sanscrit works that command an undisputed allegiance. To this chief end Subbhuti made his jour- ney subservient with all his peculiar energy and intel- ligence. First turning to Siam, where, however, he did not remain long, he made a protracted stay in Burmah, where he entered into earnest discussions with the learned Bananas, since, by a singular turn in the course of history, the Cingalese receive at present their religious instruc- tion and their chief priests from Burmah, whereas in former ages they had themselves spread and taught Buddha's faith in many neighbouring lands. Then our traveller passed through those north-eastern provinces of India, where Buddhism, about the beginning of the Christian era, had found a last refuge from the persecutions of the Brahmans ; went on northward into Tibet where, by command of the aged Dalai Lamai, the august head of his religion, the rich treasures of an old and varied literature were opened to him; and, though reluctant to depart, he continued his journey to China, where he was rejoiced to find Fo, his beloved Buddha, in undiminished authority at least equal to that accorded to his two great rivals Confucius and Lao-tse b , and where the pious zeal of former rulers had amassed a vast number of sacred books systematically arranged and carefully translated from the original tongues . While residing in China, he entered more fully than he had done before into the wise and simple teaching of Confucius, for which he conceived a growing sympathy, as on account of its complete freedom from mysticism, it seemed to him eminently fitted to engender a life at once pure and useful. He acquired a competent knowledge of the four 'holy scriptures' (kings), but turned his special attention to the 'book of books (the sJiu-king), which, by the manifold information it offers in history, metaphysics THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 23 and ethics, extended both the range and depth of his mind. Resuming his travels, he could not resist the temptation to advance even into Mongolia, whither he was attracted by the fame of distinguished Lamas; and he at last made his way to Miako, the ecclesiastical capital of Japan and the home of his race, where, in congenial intercourse with learned bonzes, partially belonging to his own family, he passed his time no less agreeably than profitably. Eight years had thus been spent since his departure from Ceylon, when he received intelligence of new sectarian dissensions raging in the island, and he determined to return by sea without delay. During his long voyage he had leisure to survey the results of his experience, and he was confirmed in the conviction he had always cherished, that in spite of later modifications and additions, the doctrines of his great Master were most staunchly upheld in territories so wide and so densely populated that Buddhism is still one of the most farspreading creeds of the earth, a and that it has but little to fear from the exertions of Christian missionaries, however able and zealous, pro- vided that, in its present revival, it resolutely adhered to that original simplicity and grandeur, which he had made it his special task to point out and to enforced Arrived in Ceylon, he exerted himself most strenuously to conciliate the antagonists, and in the course of a few years he had the satisfaction of seeing the party of the Amarapuras strengthened by the accession of many influential de- votees, the priesthood cleansed of those who disgraced it by adding field to field and lending out money on usury , c and the community in general awakened to a sense of their grave defects in manly honesty and truthfulness. But his irrepressible love of change and thirst for new information allowed him no rest. He had from time to time read in English journals longer or shorter accounts of certain philosophical systems which had recently caused unusual sensation in Europe, and which, as appeared to 24 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. him, possessed not merely incidental analogies but an essential affinity with the teaching of Buddha; and most anxious to study these views also at their source, he joined some English officials who were returning to their country on leave. Animated by an equal desire of knowledge was the Parsee dastoor, or Bishop, whom his co-religionists honoured with the epithet of ASHO-RAOCO, i. e. pure splendour.* He was a native of Surat, and a descendant of those Parsees who, in the seventh Christian century, after the destruction of the Sassanid dominion, had sought a refuge in India from the proselytising violence of the conquering Mussulmans. Although, like his whole sect, strongly and gratefully attached to the British rule, the liberality and equity of which he never wearied in extolling, he was pene- trated by a more than ordinary love for the faith of his ancestors and by no means shared the strange eagerness, evinced by many of his brethren, of being 'Europeanised'. He appeared, therefore, always in the exact costume of his nation the sudra or long linen tunic, 'the garment of the good and beneficent way ? , held together by the Jcusti or thin woollen cord of seventy-two threads, passed three times round the waist and scrupulously tied with the four knots that are to remind the Parsee of the main import of his religion. The angrdkha or loose ungirdled tunic, which was thrown over the sudra, he usually laid off when he paid longer visits, and sometimes also the turban of folded white cloth which he wore over his topee or silk skull-cap. b He had from his early youth shown great taste for a more general culture than the hereditary priesthood hereditary against the commands of the lawgiver could offer, and he availed himself of every possible opportunity of be- coming familiar with the religious and philosophical re- searches of the West. He was filled with shame and indignation at the disgraceful ignorance of the greater part of his order, and was convinced that the mdbeds, THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 25 who had lost all authority and even respect, could only regain an honourable position by setting to the laity an example of earnest zeal in the pursuit of intellectual improvement. It was, morever, his ambition that the Parsee community, though utterly insignificant in point of numbers, should maintain and strengthen that social prominence which they had acquired in so remarkable a degree by their superior intelligence, enterprise and industry; and that their worldly prosperity and their proverbial success in commerce, should be the foundation of yet more eminent distinction*. With these objects in view, he utilised old institutions and founded new ones in Bombay, Nowsaree and elsewhere, for the systematic and comprehensive training of ecclesiastics, obtaining for these Colleges the services of the most accomplished scholars. In the course of his own studies, he could not fail to perceive that the tenets of Zoroaster had, during the twelve centuries that had elapsed since the first Parsee settlement in India, been largely intermixed with the conceptions and usages of the Hindoos: this had been inevitable; for the Parsees had come to the Indian shores as suppliants, and could conciliate the suspicions of the native princes only by adapting themselves, as far as they conscientiously could, to Hindoo practices and customs 5 . But Asho-raoco was of opinion that, under the enlightened and tolerant sovereignty of Great Britain, the opportunity had arrived for restoring the purity of his ancient faith by eliminating from its precepts and ceremonials all that could not be traced to the authority of Zoroaster or his recognised disciples and interpreters. The Society established for this purpose soon spread and gained influence, and it now bids fair to yield the most desirable results. It will, therefore, be understood how strongly the Dastoor repelled the title of 'magus' with which he was commonly addressed in his western travels; for he knew that it was borne by the superstitious sorcerers and soothsayers among the old Chaldeans, 26 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. Medes and Persians, and that it ill befits the wis- dom-loving followers of the 'Goldstar' Zarathustra, who stigmatised the arts of magic as the evil suggestions of the devas, while the 'magi', on their part, de- tested his doctrine and persecuted it with unrelenting bitterness. He insisted that those who aspired to the priesthood should be thoroughly and intelligently acquainted with all that is left of the original twenty-one divisions or noosk of their sacred literature ; not only with the three parts of the Vendidad-Sade viz. the Tagna or Jzaslme, the Vispered and Vendidad embodying the most current prayers, litanies and statutes, but also with the elaborate and difficult hymns of the Yesht, forming the chief portions of the 'little' or KJiorda-Avesta. 10 Stimulated by the erudite researches of European scholars, such as Burnouf and Bopp, Windischmann and Spiegel, he eagerly pursued the linguistic and historical investigation of those holy books. But this did not satisfy him ; he applied himself with untiring zeal to the metaphysical analysis of the Parsee creed, and was determined to ascertain whether the dualistic opposition of a good and evil force in Zoroaster's system, which was the great stumblingblock of all profounder minds of his sect, might not be removed by merging both in the abstract principle of Eternal Time or the Zervdne-Akarana. In his search for a creed of unalloyed monotheism, he hoped to be assisted by the great Christian theologians of Europe, who, he believed, had, like himself, to battle with the difficulty of reconciling unity and plurality in the nature of the deity; and impelled by this yearning for peace of mind, he had, after much hesitation, undertaken the distant journey. The acquaintance of Mondoza, which soon deepened into friendship, was procured to him by a Parsee merchant who, leaving to his sons in Bombay the management of the Indian branches of his house, had for several years been settled in London. THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 27 Perhaps the greatest sensation, owing to his personal appearance, was produced in Mondoza's circle by an Imam of Teheran, who when a child, received on account of his un- common beauty the name ofBedr el-Dsliemal (moon of come- liness), but afterwards, at his installation as religious teacher, was on account of his ardent zeal honoured with the ap- pellation of Movayyid-eddin (strengthener of religion, or defender of faith). It was, indeed, impossible not to be impressed by a stature majestic yet singularly graceful; an address dignified without coldness or apparent reserve; an eye which, habitually soft and contemplative, at times darted forth a concentrated fire like a sudden flash of lightning ; and manly features that combined an almost rock-like solidity capable of concealing the emotions of the mind, with a wonderful suppleness no less capable of reflecting them. He belonged to the most fervid and most scrupulous division of the dissenting Shiites, viz. the Sheikis, who arose, about fifty years ago, in Persia and Arabia through the teaching of Hadji Sheik-Ahmed, and who, although vehemently opposed to the orthodox Sunnites, still adopted many of their traditional beliefs and legends. With a certain complacent pride peculiar to his sect, he claimed credit for investigating these points learnedly and, as he considered, critically; but not only were his decisions questionable, but, like nearly all Mohammedans, he included in his creed many views that lie entirely beyond the horizon of Islamism an inevitable consequence of the character of a religion almost too plain and simple for imaginative Orientals, as it is virtually exhausted in the one well- known sentence, 'There is no other God but Allah and Mohammed is His prophet'. Movayyid had come to Europe in the retinue of his King and had received permission to remain for some time in order, if possible, to discover in the great national libraries new materials for a full history of the numerous sects of Islam, which work he had proposed to himself as the task of his life. 28 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. In addition to the guests who have hitherto heen described and may be taken to represent the principal shades of religious conviction, the host's large sympathies drew to his house a number of celebrities who cultivated with success the chief branches of art and science, and among whom four especially took a lively part in the following conversations. Not dissimilar to the Mohammedan in dignity and grace, though with a preponderance of the latter element, was ERASMUS HERMES, an uncompromising admirer of Greek culture. This he deemed so entirely self-sufficient that it did not require to be complemented by Christianity, which, he thought, it had actually anticipated. Friends and strangers, therefore, commonly called him the last great heathen. Nor was this designation unsuitable to his ap- pearance. His full and handsome face was a type of manly beauty and elastic strength; and he derived a certain additional grace from the habit of leaning his head slightly towards the left shoulder and looking upwards his colleagues said, as if he were holding converse with his patron saint Phoibos Apollon. He was, perhaps more thoroughly than any of his contemporaries, impregnated not only with the genius of the Greek language but with the spirit of Greek thought, and although philologists admired him especially for a remarkable instinct or saga- city in verbal criticism, he himself attached greater weight to the historical reconstruction of Hellenic life and art, on which task he brought to bear, besides an almost exhaustive erudition, such a freedom and serenity of mind, such a symmetry of mental powers, that listeners and readers received the impression of a humanity calm, complete, and happy. Moreover, his writings as well as his conversations were seasoned with the true 'Attic salt' of an easy and refined humour. Following no particular school of philosophy, he had formed eclectic conceptions from the systems of Plato, Zeno, and Epicurus. Among the ancient poets, Lucretius and Horace were his guides; THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 29 among prose writers, his inclination fluctuated between Plato and Aristotle ; but in Aristotle also he admired more the moralist and metaphysician than the man of science. The course of modern progress engaged indeed his lively attention; but its chief attraction to him was the comparison it suggested with classical antiquity, which he not rarely found to deserve the palm of superiority. As regards theology, he neither expressed adherence nor opposition to any of the common doctrines; he simply ignored them. It will readily be understood that the young students who attended his lectures at the great Dutch university whose fame he had greatly increased, were attached to him with enthusiastic affection. Not only was he an amiable com- panion and a warm friend, but above all a most patriotic citizen, since the state was in his eyes, as it had been of old, the supreme end, in which all individual interests should be unconditionally merged. It was remarkable how little animosity he provoked in spite of a turn of thought so strongly marked and apparently so anachronistic, and how great a favourite he was in all social and learned gatherings. Very different from him in temper, method and aims was WALTHEB ATTINGHAUSEN, one of the boldest champions of the most advanced school of naturalists. He missed no occasion for declaring the current forms of religion as antiquated and therefore obnoxious. True enlightenment and happiness, he maintained, were only possible by an absolute abandonment of the dualistic ideas of Creator and Creation in favour of a consistent monism simply recognising the one principle of the identity of 'force and matter'. From the movement of the primary 'cell' up to the consciousness of man, he demonstrated an unbroken connection and continuous development. The doctrines of Devolution' and 'natural selection' he proclaimed as incon- trovertibTe^certainties, which should be taught in the schools instead of the Bible; and he revered Lamarck and 30 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. Darwin not only as the originators of a new science, but also as the founders of a new, religion. This realistic zeal went hand in hand with a pretended pessimism, which he took a particular pleasure of picturing in the gloomiest colours. And yet he propounded a natural religion which, resting on man's noblest qualities, enjoined a 'charity' requiring the subdual, or at least the restriction, of our inborn selfishness for the benefit of our fellow-men. He was even convinced that morality can never be firmly established unless it be founded upon the doctrine of evolution, since it is only by a clear perception of his place in nature that man obtainsboth the right knowledge of his obligations and the due energy for fulfilling them. Against his opponents he acted with the utmost severity, though never with ill-nature. He disdained no weapon of invective or satire; and, radically consistent in his own opinions, he never hesitated to draw from the views of others inferences often exaggerated to absurdity and then more for- cibly ridiculed. In conversation, his clear grey eyes, which brightened up an open and extremely flexible countenance, looked his opponents full into the face; and in excitement, to which he was easily provoked, he was in the habit of stamping his right foot more or less gently on the ground. Yet in spite of his impulsiveness, he was a most patient and laborious enquirer; and as his sole object was truth, he was at any moment willing to sacrifice his most cherished theories to riper researches. His earnestness and courage would alone have secured him respect, even if he had not won it, far beyond his native Switzerland, by many successful investigations and not a few popular works, in which he unfolded modern systems and results with a vigorous clearness appreciated and enjoyed by a wide circle of readers. He was, moreover, a ready and effective speaker at public meetings, which he was fond of attending, especially when their object was the promotion of scientific and technical education which circumstance accounted perhaps for his constant temptation to rise even when THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. 31 speaking in private company. His decision, large knowledge, and prompt, though sometimes indiscreet sarcasm never failed to render a discussion more animated and more instructive. Following Attinghausen up to a certain point and then separating from him with a somewhat unjustified and unintelligible antipathy, CLEMENT MELVILLE entered into the problems of human existence with an almost holy zeal and seriousness. Like Attinghausen he regarded the natural sciences as indispensable to all genuine and solid advancement; but he treated science merely as the basis and starting point for ascending to ideas. He clung to philosophy in a strictly logical method; yet he did not allow it to lapse into barren speculation, but caused it, on all sides, to bloom forth in lessons of practical morality, the loftiness and purity of which seemed to surpass all previous systems of ethics. For his doctrines permitted no other motives than love and the dictates of man's dignity; and they knew no other aim than tranquillity of mind through self-denying devotion to the common weal. They rejected entirely the stimulus of hope and fear, of reward and punishment. Melville used indeed the words 'God' and 'Immortality,' but, in spite of a complex and cautious phraseology, it was evident that 'God' was to him virtually identical with 'Nature,' and 'Immortality' virtually identical with the indestructibility of the eternal 'Substance;' neither the one nor the other was endowed with personality. Thus he also, like Attinghausen, taught a monism] yet, although not going so far as to assume, like his predecessor Leibnitz, a 'pre-established harmony' in the world, since he rejected the principle even of teleology, he insisted with an enthu- siasm truly sublime upon the necessary and possible harmony in the thoughts of man, and through the thoughts, in his feelings and his life. Melville's monism was, therefore, on the one hand, en- nobled by idealism, and, on the other hand, brightened 32 THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. by optimism; he was thus in a strong and twofold oppo- sition to Attinghausen's desponding materialism; and it is intelligible why he investigated with particular zest the questions of state and society, and why he often felt a keen desire for political activity, to which he would no doubt have yielded, had he not still more strongly inclined to quiet research and speculation. Yet such occasional wavering both in his theories and his actions, con- tributed, it was curious to observe, even to enhance that marvellous repose which he diffused by his personal inter- course and his writings, and which many have described as 'a foretaste of heavenly peace'. The force of his con- victions might sometimes urge him to utterances of un- disguised indignation; yet even in such rarle moments, his agitation was no more than superficial, and never touched the imperturbable depths of his soul. Unquestionably one of Mondoza's most distinguished visitors was ANDREAS WOLFRAM, the last whom we beg leave briefly to introduce to the reader. In him the spirit of classical Greece was wonderfully amalgamated with the spirit of the modern world. His easy and beau- tiful conception of life did not prevent him from the minutest enquiries into the innermost principles of creation ; and his penetrating scrutiny of the mysteries of nature seemed only to impart to his artistic conceptions additional fulness and reality. Hence he was often called 'a double man' he might, like his great German fellow countryman, justly liave been called 'legion'. For his knowledge was indeed prodigious, and in conversation it welled forth as from a hundred invisible springs. But no less remarkable than his knowledge was his clearness; he reduced everything to systematic order, shaped all details into an organic whole his mind suffered no rudis indigestaque moles, no disjecta membra. Not only had he in his long life he was a true Nestor and had passed through much more than two generations made momentous investigations and intuitive discoveries / THE HOST AND HIS GUESTS. in nearly every division of natural science; nor had he only the merit of having by long expeditions to the remotest parts of the Old and New World uncommonly extended the fields of observation and experience; but he possessed a mastery and an elegance of language, which stamped his works as models of classical German composition; for even his descriptions of ethnography, nay of metereology, were invested with the charm and value of artistic creations. But the Bible and its teaching were entirely foreign to him, the Old Testament no less than the New; and this was no secret even to those who had never heard the remark he often made to his familiar friends for all public participation in theology he scrupulously avoided that he would gladly help to deliver his age 'from here- ditary Judaism.' Many pointed to this peculiarity as the cause why, in spite of an almost boundless admiration lavished upon him by the more highly educated classes, he was hardly able to gain the ear, much less the heart, of the people. Whether they were right or wrong in such a conjecture, will perhaps become clear from some of the conversations we are about to report. It is scarcely necessary to observe, in conclusion, that seldom if ever all these friends were present together on the same evening: each came to the hospitable Lodge during the customary hours as time favoured or inclination prompted. II. THE BOOK. ON a warm and clear evening in the beginning of July, the guests assembled in Cordova Lodge earlier and more numerously than usual. They were not deceived in their expectation of finding, after the oppressive heat of the day, refreshing coolness in the shady walks and the in- viting arbours. A gentle breeze which had arisen from the south-east wafted through the pure air the fragrance of splendid roses and delicate heliotropes, mingled with the sweet scent of linden blossoms; and it was not before they had witnessed a most beautiful sunset long lingering in the crimson skies, that the friends retired to the spa- cious drawing-room which opened on the tastefully designed and partially covered terrace, and overlooked the smooth and richly skirted lawn. After having partaken of re- freshments which, in their cosmopolitan variety, were con- siderately adapted to the habits of the Oriental guests also, they had scarcely seated themselves at the open windows, when the Buddhist Subbhuti took some papers carefully wrapped up from the ample folds of his blue robe and, presenting them to the host, said with his characteristic vivacity, which made him plunge in medias res: 'I am greatly indebted to you, yet I am disappointed. True, I understand the remarkable Book better through your translation than I did in that which the worthy English missionary read and explained to me in Kandy; but I cannot find in it what you led me to expect'. *What book'? naturally asked several of the guests at once. 'The Book of Ecclesiastes', replied Mondoza, 'But did you not, in reflecting on its speculations', he continued turning THE BOOK. 35 to Subbhuti, 'discover in them something of the spirit of your own sutras, if not of the "Perfect Wisdom" of some of your metaphysical works'?* 'How could I', cried the Buddhist with great animation, 'when I find in the Biblical shaster the -most contradictory views and directions? On the one hand, the writer de- clare~vas the result of his long experience, "Then I praised mirth, because there is nothing better for man under the sun than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry ". b On the other hand, he maintains, in a very different strain, "The day of death is better than the day of one's birth; it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting; sorrow is better than laughter; the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth". c Yet these startling inconsistencies extend to points of even greater importance. In one part of the Book, the far-famed King Solomon, whose wisdom is still proverbial in the East'. . . . 'Ecclesiastes is hardly the production of King Solomon', said Gregovius quietly; 'it may be desirable to keep this result of criticism in mind. I beg you to pardon my interruption'. 'Not the work of King Solomon' ? exclaimed Subbhuti. 'By whom, pray, and when was it composed'? 'By whom it was written', answered Gregovius, 'it is impossible to say, but certainly not before the time of Alexander, the famous king of Macedon, who, as you know, invaded India about three hundred years after the birth of your Buddha, d and nearly seven hundred years after the beginning of Solomon's reign'. 'There is intrinsic and irrefragable evidence', said Humphrey with decision, 'that Ecclesiastes is the pro- duction of Solomon himself, despite the idle guesses of an infidel scholarship'. 'And despite the audacity of unblushing heresy', added Eabbi Kaphael Gideon. 36 THE BOOK. 'Surely it could not have been written before the period of the Ptolemies or even the Maccabees', suggested Panini with some hesitation. 'It cannot have been compiled before the age of Herod from the fifteen fragments and interpolations which all who have eyes may discern', protested Berghorn vigorously, with a dark frown in his contracted eyebrows. a 'By Gautama's holy tooth! What am I to believe?' ex- claimed the Cingalese Buddhist in bewildered agitation. 'The matter is perhaps not of such great moment as you seem to imagine', explained Canon Mortimer persua- sively. 'Every nation accustoms itself to regard certain great men as the embodiment of all wisdom or worldly shrewdness, and to attribute to them any conspicuous work on practical ethics, the author of which is unknown or doubtful; nay later writers have not seldom issued books under the authority of those great names, in order to obtain for their lessons a surer effect; and as they are indeed per- vaded by the spirit and nourished by the instructions of their renowned ancestors, might they not, with some justice, assign to them the ideal authorship of their works ? Whether the revered code of your Vinaya or moral 'Discipline' was penned by your Master Sakyamuni, or four or five centuries after him by one of his learned and pious dis- ciplesand you are aware that some of our greatest scholars regard Sakyamuni himself as an "unreal being" who never existed at all, and as much a fiction as his numberless preceding migrations 11 ^whether our Gospels were written down by Christ's immediate Apostles or, much later, by men thoroughly imbued with their teaching: is there really any material difference? And if there be, it is to the world's advantage; for thus we possess the doctrines of the Masters and Founders, enriched by the experience and enlightenment of more advanced generations. Whether, therefore, Ecclesiastes be traceable to King Solomon or some later thinker, the Book represents the highest spe- culative wisdom attained by the Hebrews.' THE BOOK. 37 'Well, well 7 , said Mondoza, smiling, 'be it so. I would not too anxiously enquire into the authorship of the Iliad, and am content to enjoy the wonderful creation as re- flecting throughout the spirit of Greece in the period of her epic youthfulness. But', he added, addressing Subbhuti, 'we have interrupted you while engaged in pointing out those divergencies in Ecclesiastes, which seem to you to diminish the value of its teaching. Pray, continue.' 'When you gave me your manuscript,' said Subbhuti with increasing warmth, 'you made me anticipate that I should find in the Book much that was almost identical with the Meditations of Buddha; and you requested me carefully to consider whether, if that were the case, I ought not to accept those Hebrew doctrines also which my creed rejects or at least ignores, especially the belief in a God and the Immortality of the soul. But I confess, I find nowhere a solid ground, nowhere a settled conviction only here a fata morgana in the desert, there an ignis fatuus in a treacherous morass ; the desert and the morass are painful realities, the tempting visions are the mockery of phantoms. I do not know whether the author is in earnest when he contends, "As the beasts die, so die men; they have all one breath of life . . . All go to one place ; all are of the dust, and all return to the dust: who knows whether the spirit of the sons of man goes upward, and the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth?"* or when he surmises, "The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it". b Shall I follow him when he affirms that all is accident that ( the same chance befalls man and beast, the good and the bad, the righteous perishing in his righteousness to be for ever forgotten, the wicked flourishing in his wicked- ness to be buried with honour as if a God were conceivable without the attribute of justice, that is, without a Pro- vidence ; or shall I be guided by him when he proclaims the strict doctrine of retribution with a confidence un- 38 THE BOOK. shaken by his daily experience to the contrary: "Though a sinner do evil a hundred times and prolong his life, yet surely I know that it shall be well with those that fear God" ; or "God will bring every deed into judgment, even every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil"? a How can I, from this confusion, derive a clear conception of the nature of the human soul, or the ruling power of a God, such as you assume? Again, the author admits indeed, "I saw that wisdom excels folly as far as light excels darkness", and he offers some good remarks besides in praise of wisdom b . Yet, on the other hand, he ventures strange utterances like this, "In much wisdom is much grief, and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow" ; c nay he goes so far as to assert that the same destiny and the same death are allotted to the fool and the sage, and that it is therefore idle and futile to strive after wisdom. d Have I really seized his meaning? "Science" djndna the Sublime, the Unerring, should be vain and bootless, and nothing more than "weariness of the flesh"? "Science", such as the rishis or rahats command, and is gained by one of the supreme degrees of contemplation, so teaches our revered Buddha, is omnipotent". 'Worthless is the apostate Buddhist's "knowledge"', said Arvada-Kalama bitterly and contemptuously. 'Science', continued Subbhuti firmly, 'could never have suggested the frivolous lines of the Hindoo poet: "I sang of friendship, wine and love, "In early years of giddy youth. "Now I am old, and know that all "Is vanity of vanities. "Yea, song and friendship, wine and love, "The golden times of joyous youth, "And oh! this late begotten wisdom, "Are vanity of vanities". 6 'For true Science, according to Buddha as well as the best of Hindoo sages, exercises dominion over the forces of nature and all created beings ; it is endowed with the THE BOOK. 39 powers of miracle and enchantment; for it enables its possessor to assume any form, to see and to hear at any distance, to fix the length of his life and to know the thoughts of others, to make himself visible and invisible at will, to fly through the air, to walk on water as others walk on dry land, to tell how many drops and how many living creatures there are in the ocean, to dry up the sea, though in one part it is eight hundred and forty thousand miles deep, to grasp the sun and moon, to hide the earth with the tip of his finger, and to shake to their foundations earth and heaven ; a nay more, it is "Science" alone which leads to true and imperishable happiness, since it is the last stage before the soul enters into the bliss and salvation of the Nirvana?. 'Well said, well said', murmured Movayyid-eddin ap- provingly; 'for has not our Prophet declared, "The ink of sages is more precious than the blood of martyrs" '? b 'How is it possible', continued Subbhuti, after a slight nod of acknowledgment to the Mohammedan, 'to discover in Wisdom any particle allied to pain or grief in her who is man's sole joy and felicity, and the bond that unites him with Eternity ? And this leads me to the prin- cipal x$oint which shows still more strikingly, how little community there is between the Hebrew philosopher and my exalted Guide. Without referring to the more ri- gorous precepts applicable to novices, consecrated priests and holy hermits, we have been taught by our royal Master's noble example no less than by his thrilling ex- hortations, to reduce our wants both in raiment and food, shelter and rest, to the utmost degree allowed by nature's law of self-preservation, and in fact to look upon worldly pleasures as the chief obstacle to the attainment of that transcendent knowledge which opens the portals of the Nirvana. But how does the Israelitish "Preacher" ex- press himself? He declares and it seems most strange to my ears and my mind , "God has made everything beau- tiful in its time; He has also set worldliness in tlieir 40 THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (l. 1 6). heart, without which man cannot understand the works that God does, from beginning to end"'.* The listeners looked at each other with surprise, and after a short pause Gregovius said: 'I am afraid we shall be unable to understand each other or to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion unless we are permitted to examine the translation on which our excellent Eastern friend has formed his opinions with regard to the ''Preacher's" philosophy. I confess, the last quotation he has introduced can scarcely sound more strange to him than it sounds to me. May I, therefore, propose to ask our host that he will kindly read to us the version of the Book, with which he has favoured the learned Subbhuti'? 'This will certainly be most desirable', cried Berghorn with an energy that was not unlike a challenge. Mondoza readily assented, and having placed Hebrew Bibles of various editions at the disposal of those who wished to follow in the original, he read, with two or three short intervals, as follows: THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES. CHAPTER I. 1. The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! Ally's vanity. 3. "What profit has a man of all his labour in which he toils under the sun? 4. A generation passes away and a generation comes; but the earth abides for ever. 5. And the sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to its place, and there it rises again. 6. The wind goes to the south, and turns round to the north, it turns THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (l. 7 18). 41 and turns continually ; and so the wind repeats its turning. 7. All the rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full ; to the place whither the rivers flow, thither they go again and again. 8. All the words are wearisome, man cannot utter them; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9. That which has been is that which shall be; and that which has been done is that which shall be done; and nothing whatsoever is new under the sun. 10. There are things of which it is said, See, this is new: it has been long since in the ages that were before us. 11. There is no remem- brance of the earlier generations; nor shall the later generations be in the remembrance of those that shall come after. 12. I the Preacher was king over Israel in Je- rusalem. 13. And I gave my mind to enquire and to search by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven: this is an evil business which God has given to the sons of men to busy themselves therewith. 14. I have seen all the deeds that are done under the sun ; and, behold, all is vanity and empty trouble. 15. That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and the deficiencies cannot be numbered. 16. I said to myself, Behold, I have acquired greater and fuller wisdom than all who before me have been rulers over Jerusalem, and my mind has understood much wisdom and knowledge. 17. Yet when I gave up my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly, I perceived that this also is empty trouble. 18. For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow. 42 THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (n. 1 11). CHAPTER n. 1. I said in my heart, Come now, I will try thee with mirth, and enjoy pleasure! But, behold, this also was vanity. 2. I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What does it? 3. I thought within myself to indulge my body with wine, while my mind was guiding with wisdom, and to cling to folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under the heaven in the numbered days of their lives. 4. I made me great works : I built me houses ; I planted me vineyards ; 5. 1 made me gardens and parks, and planted in them trees of all kinds of fruit; 6. I made me lakes, to water therewith the woods that bring forth trees ; 7. I acquired men servants and maid servants, and had slaves born in my house ; I had also larger possessions of herds and flocks than all that had been in Jerusalem be- fore me ; 8. 1 gathered me also silver and gold and the treasures of kings and provinces; I procured me men singers and women singers, and the delight of the sons of men, wife and wives. 9. So I was great and increased more than all that had been before me in Jerusalem ; also my wisdom remained with me ; 10. And whatever my eyes desired I did not deny them, I did not withhold my heart from any joy ; for my heart was rejoiced through all my labour, and this was my portion of all my labour. 11. Then I turned my mind to all my works that my hands had wrought, and to the labour that I had toiled to effect; and, behold, all was vanity and empty trouble, and there was no profit under the sun. THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (ll. 12 23). 43 12. And I turned my mind to behold wisdom and madness and folly; for what will the man do that comes after the king? even that which has long since been done: 13. And I saw that wisdom excels folly, as far as light excels darkness; 14. The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. Yet I perceived also that one event happens to them all, 15. And I said in my heart, As it happens to the fool, so it will happen even to me, and why was I then more wise? And I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. 16. For the wise man, like the fool, is unremembered for ever, since in days to come everything is long forgotten, and alas! the wise man dies like the fool. 17. And I hated life, be- cause the works that are wrought under the sun appeared to me evil; for all is vanity and empty trouble. 18. And I hated all my labour in which I toiled under the sun, since I should leave it to the man who shall be after me. 19. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he be master over all my labour for which I have toiled and acted wisely under the sun. This is also vanity. 20. Then I turned round to let my heart despair of all the labour in which I had toiled under the sun. 21. For there is a man who labours with wis- dom and knowledge and success; yet to a man that has not laboured for it must he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22. For what has man of all his labour and of the trouble of his heart, in which he labours under the sun? 23. For all his days are sorrow, and his work is 44 THE BOOK OP ECCLESIASTES (ll. 24 in. 10). grief; even in the night his heart has no rest. This is also vanity. 24. There is nothing better for a man than that he shonld eat and drink and enjoy himself in his la- bour. This also I saw that it was from the hand of God. 25. For who can eat and who can indulge in pleasures more than I? 26. For God gives to a man who is good in His sight wisdom and know- ledge and joy; but to the sinner He gives the task to gather and to pile up, in order to give it to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and empty trouble. CHAPTER in. 1. To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven: 2. A time for being born, and a time for dying ; a time for planting, and a time for plucking up that which 25 planted; 3. A time for slaying, and a time for healing; a time for breaking down, and a time for building up ; 4. A time for weeping, and a time for laughing; a time for mourning, and a time for dancing; 5. A time for casting away stones, and a time for gathering stones together; a time for embracing, and a time for keeping aloof from embracing; 6. A time for seeking, and a time for losing; a time for guarding, and a time for casting away; 7. A time for rending, and a time for sewing; a time for keeping silence, and a time for speaking ; 8. A time for loving, and a time for hating; a time for war, and a time for peace. 9. What profit has he that works in that wherein he labours? 10. I have seen the business which God THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (ill. 11 21). 45 has given to the sons of men to busy themselves therewith. 11. He has made everything beautiful in its time ; He has also set worldliness in their heart, without which man cannot understand the works that God does, from beginning to end. 12. I found that nothing is good for them but to be merry and to enjoy themselves in their lives; 13. And also that, if any man eats and drinks and is happy in all his labour, this is the gift of God. 14. 1 found that, what- soever God does, that shall be for ever ; nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be taken from it ; and God works so that men should be in fear of Him. 15. That which has been is now again long since, and that which is to be has been long since ; for God puts forward anew that which has been laid aside. 16. And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment there was wickedness; and the place of justice there was iniquity. 17. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked; for a time shall then come for every purpose and in regard of every deed. 18. 1 said in my heart, This is on account of the sons of men, that God might prove them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. 19. For that which befalls the sons of men befalls the beasts ; indeed the same thing befalls them; as the one dies, so dies the other, and they have all one breath of life, and a pre- eminence above the beast man has not; for all is vanity. 20. All go to one place ; all are of the dust and all return to the dust. 21. "Who knows whether the spirit of the sons of men goes upward, and the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth? 46 THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (ill. 22 IV. 11). 22. Therefore I perceived that there is nothing better than that a man should be joyful in his works; for that is his portion : for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him? CHAPTER IV. 1. And I saw again all the oppressions that are done under the sun; and, behold, there were the tears of the oppressed, who had no comforter ; and from the hand of their oppressors came violence, and they had no comforter. 2. Wherefore I praised the dead who have long since died more than the living who are still alive. 3. But happier than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. 4. And I saw all the labour and all the success of work, that for this a man is envied by his neighbour. This is also vanity and empty trouble. 5. The fool folds his hands together, and consumes himself. 6. Better is a handful of quietness than both hands full of labour and empty trouble. 7. Then I saw again vanity under the sun. 8. There is one alone without a second, and he has neither child nor brother; yet is there no end of all his labour, nor is his eye satisfied with riches. But for whom do I labour and deprive myself of pleasures ? This is also vanity and an evil business. 9. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labour. 10. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to the single one who falls, for he has not another to help him up. 11. Again, if two lie together, then they get warm; but how can THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (iy. 12 V. 5). 47 one get warm alone? 12. And if anybody attacks the one, the two will stand up against him ; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. 13. Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king who knows no longer how to take warnings. 14. For out of the prison he goes forth to reign ; for in his kingdom he was also born poor. 15. I saw all the living who walk under the sun, with. the second child that stood up in his place. 16. There was no end of all the people, of all that have been before them : those also that come after do not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and empty trouble. 17. Guard thy foot when thou goest to the house of God; and approaching to listen is better than the offering of sacrifices by fools ; for they mind not doing evil. CHAPTER v. 1. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thy heart be hasty to utter a word before God; for God is in heaven, and thou art upon earth, therefore let thy words be few. 2. For as a dream comes through a multitude of business, so a fool's voice is known by a multitude of words. 3. When thou vowest a vow to God, delay not to pay it ; for He has no pleasure in fools : pay that which thou hast vowed. 4. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. 5. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; nor say thou before the messenger [priest] that it was an error : why should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of 48 THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (v. 6 17). thy hands ? 6. For as vanities are in a multitude of dreams, so also in many words: but fear thou God. 7. If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perversion of judgment and justice in a pro- vince, marvel not at the matter; for a high one watches over a high one, and a highest one over these. 8. Yet an advantage to a country in every way is a king of a well cultivated land. 9. He that loves silver is not satisfied with silver, nor he that loves wealth with gain: this is also vanity. 10. When property increases, they that eat it are increased ; and what benefit has the owner thereof except that he beholds it with his eyes? 11. The sleep of the labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much; but the surfeit of the rich does not suffer him to sleep. 12. There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely riches kept for their owner to his harm. 13. For those riches are lost through evil business ; and if he begets a son, then there is nothing whatever in his hand. 14. As he came forth from his mother's womb, naked does he go back again as he came, and he takes nothing whatever of his la- bour, which he may carry away in his hand. 1 5. And this also is a sore evil: in every way as he came, so does he go; and what profit has he that labours for the wind? 16. Moreover, all his days he eats in darkness and he is full of sorrow and has his suffering and vexation. 17. Behold that which I have seen: it is good and fair for man to eat and to drink and to enjoy himself in all his labour in which he toils under the sun the numbered days of his life which God gives him : foi THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (v. 18 VI. 9). 49 this is his portion. 18. ^to any man also God has given riches and wealth, and has given him the power to eat thereof, and to take his portion and to be merry in his labour, this is the gift of God. 1 9. For he will not much think of the days of his life, because God engages him with the joy of his heart. CHAPTEB VI. 1. There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it befalls men frequently : 2. A man to whom God gives riches and wealth and honour, so that he wants nothing for his soul of all that he desires, yet God gives him not the power to eat thereof, but a stranger eats it. This is vanity, and it is an evil disease. 3. If a man beget a hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul do not fully enjoy happiness, and if he also have no burial; I say that an abortion is better than he. 4. For though it comes in vanity, aftd departs in darkness, and its name is covered with darkness, 5. And moreover it does not see nor know the sun; yet this has more rest than the other [the longlived man]. 6. Even though he live a thousand years twice told, but have seen no happi- ness: do not all go to one place? 7. All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the desire is not satisfied. 8. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? what the poor that knows how to walk before the living? 9. Better is that which is in the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire: this is also vanity 50 THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (VI. 10 VII. 11). and empty trouble. 10. That which exists has been named long since ; and it is known that he is but a man, who cannot contend with Him who is mightier than he. 1 1. For there are many things that increase vanity: what advantage has man? 12. For who knows what is good for man in life, in the numbered days of his vain life, which he spends as a shadow? For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun? CHAPTER vn. 1. As a good name is better than precious oint- ment, so is the day of death better than the day of one's birth. 2. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting; for that is the end of all men, and the living takes it to heart. 3. Sorrow is better than laughter ; for in the sadness of the countenance the heart remains good. 4. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. 5. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools. 6. For as the crackling of thorns unter a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity. 7. Surely oppression makes a wise man silly, and a gift corrupts the heart. 8. Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. 9. Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry; for anger is harboured in the bosom of fools. 10. Say not, How is it that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this. 11. Wisdom is THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (vil. 12 25). 51 as good as an inheritance, indeed better to those that see the sun. 12. For wisdom is a protection and money is a protection ; but the superiority of knowledge is, that wisdom preserves the life of those that possess it. 13. Consider the work of God; for who can make that straight, which He has made crooked? 14. In the day of happines be happy, and in the day of adversity consider that God has also ordained the one just like the other to the end that man should find nothing after him. 15. All this have I seen in the days of my vanity. There is a righteous man that perishes in his right- eousness, and there is a bad man that prolongs his life in his wickedness. 16. Be not righteous over much, nor show thyself over wise; why shouldest thou destroy thyself? 17. Be not over much wicked, nor be thou foolish; why shouldest thou die before thy time? 18. It is good that thou shouldest cling to this, and yet from that also not withdraw thy hand. For he that fears Grod comes forth safe of all that. 19. Wisdom strengthens the wise more than ten mighty men who are in the city. 20. Surely there is not a just man upon earth that does what is good and sins not. 21. Also take no heed of all words that are spoke"n, lest thou hear thy servant curse thee; 22. For oftentimes also thy own heart knows that thou likewise hast cursed others. 23. All this have I tried by wisdom: I said, I will be wise ; but it was far from me. 24. That which is far off and exceedingly deep, who can find it out? 25. I turned my mind to know and to search and seek out wisdom and intelligence, and to know 52 THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (VII. 26 Vm. 8). wickedness, folly and foolishness and madness: 26. And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is nets and pitfalls, and whose hands are chains: he who pleases God escapes from her, but the sinner is ensnared by her. 27. Behold, these things have I found, says the Preacher, one by one, to find a result. 28. That which my soul is still seeking, and I have not found, is this: one man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I not found. 29. This only, behold, have I found, that God has made man upright, but they seek out many devices. CHAPTER vin. 1. Who is as the wise man? and who knows the meaning of things ? A man's wisdom causes his face to shine, and the boldness of his face is changed. 2. 1 say, Keep the king's charge, and that on account of the oath of God. 3. Be not hasty to go away from him; stand not in an evil thing; for he does what- soever he pleases; 4. Since the word of a king is pow- erful, and who can say to him, what doest thou? 5. He who keeps the commandment knows of no evil, and a wise man's heart knows both time and judg- ment. 6. For to every purpose there is a time and judgment, for great is the misery of man that is upon him. 7. For he knows not that which shall be; for who can tell him how it shall be? 8. As there is no man that has power over the wind to check the wind, so there is no power in the day of death, and then is no release in the war; nor does wickedness deliver those that are given to it. THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (vm. 9 17). 53 9. All this have I seen, and applied my heart to every deed that is done under the sun. There is a time when a man rules over his fellow-man to his own harm. 10. And so also I saw the wicked buried, and they came to their rest, while those that had acted uprightly went away from the holy place and were forgotten in the city. This is also vanity. 1 1 . Because sentence upon an evil deed is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is bold in them to do evil. 12. But, though a sinner do evil a hundred times and prolong his life, yet surely I know that it shall be well with those that fear Grod, who are in fear of Him; 13. But it shall not be well with the wicked, nor shall he prolong his days as a shadow; because he does not fear Grod. 14. There is a vanity which is done upon the earth, that there are righteous men, to whom it happens according to the work of the wicked ; and that there are wicked men, to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous: I said, that this also is vanity. 15. Then I praised mirth, because there is nothing better for man under the sun than to eat and to drink and to be merry; and that will abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God gives him under the sun. 16. When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth for neither day nor night man sees sleep with his eyes : 17. Then I beheld all the work of Grod, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: for though a man labour to seek it out, yet he will not find it', and even if a wise man desires to know it, he is not able to find it. 54 THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (iX. 1 9). CHAPTEE IX. 1. For all this I considered in my heart, and tried to explore all this, that the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of G-od; no man knows either love or hatred; all that lies before them. 2. All things come alike to all: the same chance befalls the righteous and the wicked, the good and the clean and the unclean, him that sacrifices and him that sacrifices not; as is the good, so is the sinner, and he that swears as he that fears an oath. 3. This is an evil in all things that are done under the sun, that the same chance befalls all; therefore also is the heart of the sons of man full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live; and after that they go to the dead. 4. For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5. For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, nor have they any more a reward; for their memory is forgotten. 6. Both their love and their hatred and their envy have passed away long since, nor have they for ever any more a portion in any thing that is done under the sun. 7. Gro thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart ; for God has long since declared these thy deeds acceptable. 8. At all times let thy garments be white, and let not thy head lack ointment. 9. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of thy life of vanity, which He has given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity; for that is thy portion in life and in thy THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (iX. 10 X. 2). 55 labour in which thou toilest under the sun. 10. What- soever thy hand finds to do with thy strength, do; for there is no work nor intelligence nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Sheol whither thou goest. 11. Again I saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to the intelli- gent, nor yet favour to the shrewd; but time and chance happen to them all. 12. For man also knows not his time: as the fishes that are caught in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, so are the sons of men entrapped in the time of misfortune, when it falls suddenly upon them. 1 3. This also have I seen that there is wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me: 14. There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: 15. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city ; yet no man remembered that poor man. 16. Then said I, Wisdom is better then strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not listened to. 17. The words of the wise are listened to in quiet more than the cry of the ruler among fools. 18. Wisdom is better than weapons of war; but one sinner destrpys much good. CHAPTEE X. 1. Asde&d flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to stink and putrefy, so is a little folly more powerful than wisdom and honour. 2. A wise man's heart is at his right hand, but a fool's heart at his left. 56 THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (x. 319). 3. Also when the fool goes anywhere, his mind fails him, and he says to every one that he is a fool. 4. If the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy place; for yielding pacifies great offences. 5. There is an evil which I have seen under the sun on account of an error which proceeds from the ruler: 6. Folly is placed in great dignity, and the rich sit in lowliness. 7. I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants on foot. 8. He that digs a pit falls into it, and he that breaks a hedge is bitten by a serpent. 9. He that hews stones hurts himself therewith, and he that cleaves wood endan- gers himself thereby. 10. If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he use greater force; but wisdom is more profitable for success. 1 1. If the serpent bites for lack of enchantment, then there is no profit in a master of the tongue. 12. The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious, but the lips of a fool will destroy him. 13. The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness; and the end of his talk is mischievous madness. 14. And the fool is full of words; yet man does not know what shall be ; and what shall be after him, who can tell him? 15. The labour of the foolish wearies him out, who does not know how to go to the town. 16. Woe to thee, land, whose king is a child, and whose princes feast in the morning. 17. Happy art thou, land, whose king is the son of nobles, and whose princes eat in due season, for strength and not for revelry. 18. By slothfulness the beam decays, and through idleness of the hands the house drops through. 19. A feast is made for THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (x. 20 XI. 9). 57 merriment, and wine gladdens life; and money pro- cures everything. 20. Not even in thy thought curse the king, nor curse the rich in thy bedchamber; for the bird of the air carries the voice, and the winged creature tells the matter. CHAPTER XI. 1. Cast thy bread upon the waters; for thou shalt find it again after many days. 2. Give a portion to seven and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil may be upon the earth. 3. When the clouds are full of rain, they empty it out upon the earth; and when a tree falls towards the south or towards the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it lies. 4. He that observes the wind does not sow; and he that regards the clouds does not reap. 5. As thou knowest not what is the way of the wind, nor how the bones grow in the womb of her that is with child ; so thou knowest not the works of Grod who makes everything. 6. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening let not thy hand rest ; for thou knowest not which shall prosper, whether this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good. 7. And light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun. 8. Indeed, if a man live many years, let him rejoice in them all, and remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many. All that comes into existence is vanity. 9. Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy young strength, and walk in the ways of thy heart and in the sight of thy eyes! But know thou, that for 58 THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (xi. 10. XH. 10). all this Grod will bring thee into judgment. 10. And remove sorrow from thy heart, and keep thy body free from evil; for youth, as the morning dawn, is vanity. CHAPTER XII. 1. And remember thy Creator in the days of thy youthful strength, ere the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, of which thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; 2. Ere the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain; 3. In the time when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders are at rest because they are few, and those that look out of the windows are darkened, 4. And the doors in the street are shut because the sound of the mill is faint, and when one rises at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of song are low, 5. And when they are afraid of heights, and terrors are on the road, and the almond is despised, and the locust becomes distasteful, and the caperberry fails because man goes to his eternal house, and the mourners go about the streets ,6. Ere the silver cord is severed and the golden lamp shattered, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain and the wheel shattered at the cistern, 7. And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God, who gave it. 8. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, all is vanity. 9. And the Preacher, besides being wise, also taught the people knowledge; and he examined and searched, and set forth many proverbs. 10. The THE BOOK. 59 Preacher sought to find out pleasing words and, written in uprightness, words of truth. 11. The words of the wise are as goads, and the men of the assemblies as fastened nails; they are appointed by one shepherd. 12. And further, by these, my son, be warned: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. 13. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole man; 14. For God will bring every deed into judgment, even every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. When Mondoza had finished reading, a desultory dis- cussion arose on the rendering of the most disputed verses and terms, in the course of which Rabbi Gideon emphatically declared that a natural and correct interpretation of the Scriptures was only to be found in Talmud, Midrash, and Sohar; a but a most pertinacious controversy was carried on with regard to the passage which Subbhuti had cited last, till finally a virtual agreement was attained, though not without various modifications and strong provisos on the part of Berghorn and Humphrey. Then the host observed : 'However desirable it is accurately to understand every single phrase, it cannot be our object to enter into philo- logical niceties which, I am well aware, have an interest only to few of us; but, faithful to the course we have always followed in these conversations, we should try to discover and to debate those general ideas which are important to all alike as forming essential elements in our actual modes of thought, and involving the motives of our daily conduct. We do not search for that which appertains to one time or one nation, but for those truths which flow ,from the constitution and wants of human nature, and are /on that account universal and unchanging. Let no one 60 . THE BOOK. presume to disparage or to deride learning ; yet it is only the toilsome, and often steep and thorny road that leads to the goal of serenity and freedom. It should, in the poet's words, be "like the heaven's glorious sun" ; and it is indeed mere "weariness of the flesh" and "continual plodding", if it does not unchain and wing the mind in rising to the first causes and their irrevocable operation.* Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas'.* 'What else can be our aim', observed Wolfram, 'than to learn "By what pow'r "The world is to its centre held"'?* 'True', said Humphrey with a slightly satirical curve of his lips, 'but without reaching the despair of Faust'. 'Or the apostasy of Elisha ben Abujah', added Rabbi Gideon. 'And as it appears to me', continued Mondoza, not heeding the interruptions, 'that the Book of Ecclesiastes mainly relates to the Enjoyment of Life, which very closely concerns us all, may I suggest, that this question form the subject of our discussion at our next meetings, and that we, accordingly, enquire by what system of religion or philosophy true enjoyment is best attained and secured' ? '"The words of the wise are as goads,"' said Canon Mortimer with a genial smile, '"and" 'was not this your translation' ? "the men of the assemblies are as fastened nails" : it is a pleasure to be led by so gentle a shepherd, and although, in argument, we know that "one nail drives out another", we shall each be found at our post like a flag nailed to the mast.' After conversing for some time in different groups on the political and literary events of the day, the guests separated for the night, having expressed to the host their ready assent to his proposal. iWas die Welt "Im Innersten zusammenhalt" (Goethe 1 s Faust, I. 1). III. THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. THE next evening many of the Mends were already assembled in the drawing-room, when the young and eager minister of the Adi Brahmo Somadsh entered and, after respectful salutations, turned to Erasmus Hermes, saying : 'Let me once more assure you how deeply I feel the pleasure and advantage I derived this morning from your company and explanations. Without so experienced a guide my visit at the grand Institution would have been perplexing and humiliating, rather than instructive. For, surely, in order to appreciate and fully to relish the trea- sures of antiquity in the British Museum, we need that freedom of mind and that extensive erudition, of which your kindness allowed me to enjoy the fullest benefit'. 'Whatever may be your satisfaction, which you so generously express', replied Hermes politely, 'it can hardly be equal to my own ; for your society has confirmed me in the conviction that the masterpieces of Greek sculpture exercise their irresistible power upon every susceptible mind, no less in our utilitarian time than in the golden era of Phidias and Praxiteles; not less in our northern skies than in the sunny clime of Athens or Corinth; nor less strongly upon an enthusiastic son of the East than upon a tranquil sage of the Academy or the Porch. The relics of Greek art are indeed among those precious possessions which our host yesterday described as not appertaining to one age and one people, but, being the emanations of the highest gifts of our common nature, belong to mankind for ever. And as Art essentially contributes to cheerful enjoyment and cloudless serenity, it is religious in its 62 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. influences and effects; nay it is itself the noblest, as it is the most attractive, form of religion'. 'Indeed', assented Wolfram, 'if we desire to attain to a humanity both sweet and perfect, we must discard the chilling austerities of our Eastern creeds, those bitter fruits of a luxuriant soil, and be Greeks again in temperament and conceptions. How cold and blank does our world appear to those who vividly recall that of a Homer or Pericles, and have made this their haven and refuge ! Has it vanished, that beautiful earth where the celestials, affec- tionately associating with mortals, led happy generations by the bands of joy, and demanded no other worship than the mirthful songs of flower-wreathed maidens in radiant temples, and the inspiriting games of emulating heroes in lovely groves? Where are the days, when sombre reality beamed in the roseate hues of poetry, grave truth smiled in the dazzling garb of blithe fancy, and labour had no other end than to add a keener zest to pleasure; when breathing Nature revealed in every rivulet, in every tree and rock, the loving trace of a god; when the sun and the myriads of stars moved in tender harmony with men's lives and hopes, and men themselves could expect, as a reward for high deeds, to shine as immortals among the hosts of heaven; when the heart, glowing in delight, knew neither fear nor hatred, and even death, coming gently as a beautiful youth, had no terrors, since it opened the portals of an Elysium bright with a new existence of bliss ; when the joyous mind matured all its innate blossoms and graces, and Hellas at last gave birth to the divine Plato who, to purify and exalt mankind, brought down from Olym- pus the undying ideals of all that is great and beautiful and noble' ? a 'I can hardly believe', said Humphrey with a marked tinge of irony, 'that even a man whose eye, "in a fine frenzy rolling", contemplates the past and the present through the magic veil of poetry, should cling in sincerity to such airy phantoms and unsubstantial shadows. The much vaunted THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 63 happiness of the ancient Greeks must, I am convinced, be reckoned among the most unaccountable of popular fallacies. There is scarcely a writer from Homer down to the latest philosophers of the Roman Empire, who does not draw human life in colours awfully dismal and gloomy. From the almost endless array of proofs, it will suffice to cite a few as they happen to occur to my memory. 'Homer, who represents his gods as "ever free from care", "lightly living", and feasting in heaven, while they sit on golden thrones and indulge in inextinguishable laughter* Homer himself leads the melancholy chorus. He not only applies to men the constant epithet of "wretched", b but he lets Zeus declare: "Of all the creatures that breathe and move on earth, none is more miserable than man", and though he fancies that he will never suffer ill, as long as he feels his strength unimpaired, he must, however reluctantly, submit to the gods who constantly send him misfortunes. 'Does Hesiod, who reaches back into antiquity far enough to be considered as intermediary between the epochs of legend and history, content himself with describing a golden time ? He sketches so terrible a picture of his own "iron age", that hardly a single feature of human misery and crime seems wanting. "Oh", he exclaims bitterly, "that I were not linked with the fifth generation of men, but had either died before, or been born later! For the present race is of iron, and neither have they by day rest of toil and woe, nor by night of consuming sorrow ; since the gods dispense grievous troubles . . . The father is not true to his child, nor the child to his father, not the guest to the host, nor friend to friend; not even a brother is loving and faithful as of old . . . Violence prevails ; town destroys town; and honour, withheld from the pious and righteous, is lavished upon the haughty evil-doer. Justice and shame have disappeared, and wickedness tyranises over virtue." And summing up his doleful experience, the poet concludes: "Sad griefs alone are left to mortal men, and from those ills there is no rescue". d How is it possible to express 64 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. more forcibly anguish and despair? Not one ray is left from the glory of Paradise to cheer a degenerate and mournful race'. 'I must beg you', said Attinghausen 'not to introduce myths. Science proclaims an invariable progress from the less to the more perfect, never the reverse. Man has not fallen, but risen. He struggled, successively, from the rude epoch of stone to that of bronze, thence onward to the period of iron, and a golden age, if it be possible at all, lies not in the past, but in the distant future'. 'If, as some modern sages have proved to their own satis- faction', replied Humphrey, 'the notion of Paradise is not even a psychological possibility, how do they account for the hard fact that it was actually conceived by nearly all nations'? 'Indeed', said Subbhuti, 'we firmly believe that the earliest inhabitants of the earth, being produced by "appari- tional birth" , started at once in full maturity of existence ; and as they retained many of the attributes of the better world from whence they had come, they lived all together in innocence and peace without requiring food, could soar through the air at will, and their bodies shone forth in such a glory that there was no need for a sun or moon ; till they unfortunately lost all this happiness by eating of the fatal substance which, having the appearance of boiled milk, grew temptingly on the surface of the earth/* 'Pray, let me return to the pretended joyousness of heathendom', resumed Humphrey, who did not seem pleased with Subbhuti's analogy. 'The thoughtful poet Theognis declares: "Of all things the most desirable would be not to exist and not to behold the beams of the piercing sun; but, having been born, it is best quickly to pass through the gates of Hades and to lie buried under a high mound of earth". b Would one not fancy to hear the heart- rending laments extorted from Jeremiah or Job in times of exceptional tribulation, or the fretful complaints indulged in by our Ecclesiastes during his brief moods of unhappy '.i V THE CYNIC AND THK S $& 65 scepticism? 3 nay are we not reminded of the custom reported to have prevailed among some savage tribes of Thrace and the Caucasus, who wept over new-born infants for having entered this world of trouble, but buried the dead with songs of rejoicing at their fortunate release? 5 'It may not appear surprising that the same desolate sentiment is expressed with equal force by Euripides ; c but who would expect it to pervade the productions of all the other tragic writers likewise, so as to throw a veil of the deepest despondency over their pages? Yet no one perhaps, whether in ancient or modern times, has depicted the ill-fated darkness of human existence with such over- whelming power and thrilling pathos as Aeschylus in his Prometheus, who, blessing men with the priceless and heavenly boon of fire and for this act of beneficence doomed to horrible agonies, is made to exemplify the woeful experience that "he who achieves must suifer; so sounds the primeval decree." d Nor is this the only harrowing elegy poured forth by the recondite poet. Impregnated with a weary melancholy must have been a mind that exclaimed, "Alas for human life ! if happy, a shadow may overthrow it; but, more grievous still, if sorrowful, a moistened sponge wipes out the picture" 6 ; or that glorified Death as the supreme deliverer ardently to be loved. f 'Where should a calm serenity be more surely looked for than in the works of Sophocles who, in thought and language, represents to us the perfection of Greek harmony ? Yet he also joins in the general dirge: "Not to be born, is man's highest felicity; the next, having seen the light, swiftly to return from whence he came" ;& or: "Oh, mortal and care-laden race of men! how, in our nothingness, do we resemble shadows creatures chased about as a valueless burden of the earth" ! h "If I die before my time", exclaims Antigone, "I call it gain"; and Ajax: "I see that we all who live are nothing but phantoms or empty shadows". 1 'Is it necessary to cite additional instances from Euripides? They are at hand in abundance, all dilating on the same 66 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. sad theme that "the fate of mortals is toil". a Not unlike the curse fastened upon Eve is man's clinging to life in spite of its dire wretchedness: "Oh ye life-loving mortals, who ever yearn to see the morrow, though laden with the weight of unnumbered ills" ! b And yet man grasps so convulsively this existence of sorrow only from the tormenting uncer- tainty of his lot after death, which he dreads as a riddle obscure and fearful; and in vain does his anxious soul languish for deliverance from this agony of doubt. d 'Let me pass over the touching regrets of Pindar, the magnificent, at man's frailty, "the dream of a shadow" 6 , bound to purchase every joy by consuming torture f , and merely allude to the famous line of Menander, "He whom the gods love dies young ;" but let me proceed to Herodotus, the placid, who embodied this maxim in the charming story of the pious youths Cleobis and Biton, concluding with the words: "In these the gods have clearly shown, that it is better for man to die than to live'". h 'May I be permitted', said Hermes 'for why should I not be generous even to an adversary? in confirmation of this remark to remind you of the analogous but perhaps not quite so familiar narrative concerning Trophonius and Agamedes, which, originally related by Pindar, has been preserved to us by Cicero and Plutarch? After those two brothers, the sons of a king of Orchomenus, had with great exertions and sacrifices built the beautiful temple of Apollo at Delphi, they entreated the god to bestow upon them as a recompense that gift which would make them most happy. Apollo replied that in three days their petition would be granted, and at daybreak on the third day they were found dead. 1 Nay when Pindar himself once enquired of the oracle, what was best for man, the priestess is said to have replied: of this he could not be ignorant, if indeed he had sung of the fate of Trophonius and Agamedes; yet he would soon be still more clearly enlightened and a few days afterwards he died. k But what do all these stories prove ? Hardly anything else, I THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 67 imagine, than the Biblical account of the comparatively short life of Enoch, who "walked with God, and was no more, for God had taken him"'. 'How is it possible', cried Humphrey, loftily, 'to maintain such a parallel for a single moment? The heathen fables exhibit the gods as arbitrary, capricious and frivolous; for why do they grant life, if they do not mean it to extend to its natural duration? Whether giving or taking away, they act alike without a deeper ethical purpose. You will ask, Why then was it necessary that Enoch should depart prematurely? If the reason were not amply evident from the narrative in Genesis, we should learn it from that profound Apocryphal Book, the Wisdom of Solomon, which plainly tells us: "Enoch pleased God, and was beloved by Him, so that, living among sinners, he was translated"; and again: "He being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long time". a Enoch', continued Humphrey, beating regular time with his right forefinger, 'Enoch died so young, not that he might be delivered from worldly troubles, but that he might be protected from the pitfalls of sin ; therefore, in dying young, he lost not the true end of his existence ; for when he died, he was perfect in piety and righteousness. We have here one of the many striking instances proving the necessity of extreme cautiousness in adducing heathen analogies: materials almost identical are generally made to convey ideas totally opposite. Paganism regards the body, revelation the soul; the one is of the earth, earthy, the other connects man with heaven'. 'On these points', replied Hermes politely, 'I cannot presume to argue with the learned Professor of Divinity, who enjoys means of illumination denied to an uninitiated layman: may I ask him to continue with his relentless indictment of classical antiquity'? 'I had observed', resumed Humphrey, ignoring the irony, 'that, according to Herodotus, even the most deserving men were at a loss how to employ their lives with profit 68 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. or contentment. But this is not all ; he declares, through the mouth of the Persian Artabanus, that there has pro- bably never existed a man who did not more than once yearn for death as his sole escape from constant af- fliction, and our torture is only enhanced by the moments of happiness we are occasionally allowed to taste ; so that, both in our life and our death, we manifestly see the envy of the deity a , that does not suffer our prosperity to be either great or lasting b . Indeed the thoughtful historian is constantly and irrepressibly pursued by the idea that human life is nothing but an unbroken chain of unavoi- dable accidents which may at any moment shatter the proudest power or fortune; he illustrates this conviction, with tragical effect, by the conspicuous instance of Croesus, and he never fails to impress a warning against calling a man happy before his death. c Are such principles in any way compatible with serenity of mind? More excruciating than a Damocles' sword, the fear of rousing the jealousy of the gods poisoned the enjoyment of the very boons which they themselves were supposed to have bestowed. Nor was that a fear which leads to wisdom or piety, but on the contrary, a fear which undermined both, founded as it was upon a depravity in the gods, which is the most odious and detestable even in men'. 'But should we not remember', said Mondoza, 'that this old view of the envy the deity was but transitorily held; that not long after Herodotus, Anaxagoras with equal decision laid down the maxim, "The deity is good"; and that the same pure notion was still more refined by subsequent thinkers' ? d 'Be this as it may', continued Humphrey, who felt that he had laid perhaps too much stress on that point ; 'was the disheartening apprehension of the treacherous insta- bility of all human possessions ever conquered? The fickleness of fortune was dwelt upon at all times 6 and des- cribed in every conceivable imagery as a hasty flight, a swiftly rolling stream, and especially as withering foliage/ THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 69 which simile indeed Biblical writers also employ, but never without adding some elevating comfort; for when they exclaim, "All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is as the flower of the field", they hasten to continue, "But the word of our God shall stand for ever": a we are readily reconciled to the brevity of our existence when we know, that, whether we live or die, God's kingdom on earth is steadily advanced'. Several of the listeners seemed desirous to reply, but Humphrey resumed quickly: 'Pray, do not let me lose the thread of my remarks. I have hitherto spoken of the poets and historians ; do we find the matter different when we turn to the philosophers? Did these succeed in attaining by reflection that cheer- fulness which the former were unable to secure by ima- gination and experience? Certainly not; the writings of the philosophers are no less shrouded in gloom and des- pondency. Not astonishing perhaps is the saying of the mystic Empedocles that "the miserable and wretched race of men is wholly made up of struggles and groans" ; b but who would expect similar, nay stronger laments being uttered by that Plato whom our ardent Graecophile, in common with many others, has called the divine, who is uniformly pourtrayed to us as ever dwelling in the ce- lestial and joyous harmonies of the spheres, and who, in conjunction with his master, unjustly condemned and ready to die, is so often asserted not only to have anticipated, but in many points to have surpassed, the doctrines of Christianity? And yet this divine Plato contends, that "he who properly applies himself to philosophy ... is only intent upon the one object of dying and being dead", c that is, he is burning to escape from life's torments'. 'You must indeed allow me', said Canon Mortimer, 'here to interrupt you for a moment. If I remember rightly, Plato, in this passage of Phaedo, meant to express that peculiar idea of "yearning for death" [AsXsrav ano- ^vyvKetv which recalls the Apostle's words, "you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God", d and to convey 70 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. that the wise man frees himself, by every effort of con- templation, from the disturbing influences of the body, and thus tastes, even while still living on earth, a felicity si- milar to that which his unfettered soul will enjoy in the realms of immortality.* Am I mistaken in this reading of the words?' he added, turning to Hermes. 'I believe,' replied Hermes, 'that they have always been so understood by the profane expositors of the fine dialogue, from Cicero down to our own time." 3 'By all in fact', added Wolfram calmly, 'who do not search the literature of the Greeks as a polemical armoury, but study it for improvement. In assuming an absolute hostility between Christianity and pagan culture, you will neither understand the one nor the other'. "'"Anyone", muttered Attinghausen, glancing at Hum- phrey, "anyone can cite Scripture for his purpose", as the poet says/ c 'Well', continued Humphrey, by no means disconcerted, *I can easily afford to sacrifice a few lines in Plato, as I am able to adduce for my argument a whole work, in which the same philosopher expresses himself with unmistakable clearness I mean the dialogue "Axiochus" or "On death"'. 'It is with extreme regret', said Hermes with a passing expression of irony, 'that I am again compelled to con- tradict. The small book, in its first part, alludes to the instruction given in the Academy and the Lyceum; it cannot, therefore, have been written by Plato, but only after his death, when his successors occupied the Academy, and those of Aristotle the Lyceum.' d 'But certainly', rejoined Humphrey stubbornly, 'the author of the "Axiochus" lived not long after Plato and wrote in his spirit'. 'This must, to a certain extent, be admitted', said Hermes, 'and you are free to draw any legitimate con- clusion from this concession'. 'Well then', continued Humphrey in a tone as if he had achieved a triumph, 'what does Socrates maintain in THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 71 that work? After quoting with approval some of the Ho- meric and Euripidean meanings on human distress,* he contends that man is a soul pent up in a mortal prison during a wearisome journey, not a single portion of which, from the helplessness of infancy to the crippling infirmities of old age, b is exempt from pain and vexation; that a removal from this life is a change from an evil to a blessing which the gods grant early to those they love; and that all alike, writhing under cares and passions, be- wail their condition, whether they follow the slippery and thorny paths of ambition as statesmen and scholars, or earn a precarious livelihood in constant toil and peril; and he finally confesses that he was so strongly impressed by the teaching of the wise Prodicus on these matters, that he had long since "drawn a line through the word life as a thing utterly valueless", and was longing for nothing so fervently as for death'. d *I must at present', observed Hermes with more than his usual decision, 'content myself with simply recording my protest against these remarks and deductions, hoping that a subsequent meeting will afford me an opportunity of stating my reasons'. 'But this is not enough', continued Humphrey, without attempting a rejoinder, and without the least change in his voice and manner; 'the much extolled lessons of Socrates, bearing fruit in many directions, matured two monstrosities opposite in character but equal in hideous noxiousness the sect of the Cynics andofCyrenaics. Who can be so bold as to talk of enjoyment of life, when he recalls the caricature figures of an Antisthenes and his still more uncouth disciple Diogenes? When we represent to ourselves these so-styled philosophers enveloped in a coarse cloak as their only garment, and carrying a stick and wallet to complete their beggar's outfit, and when we see them infesting the streets and market places, demanding alms or food, we fancy ourselves in the desolate forests near one of the Buddhistic vihdras in China or Japan, in 72 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. Ceylon or Java, and not in the presence of the "radiant temples" and "flower- wreathed altars" of holy Athens or Corinth; and instead of admiration, we can only feel dis- gust or a Christian's compassion.' '"Those who live in glass houses etc.'", said Atting- hausen sotto voce. 'As if the Church had not fed more mendicants than all the other creeds together'! 'The wise Sirach enjoins', said Rabbi Gideon with emphasis, "My son, lead not a beggar's life; far better it is to die than to beg"; and he declares justly, "Beg- ging is sweet in the mouth of the shameless'".* 'Properly, therefore', added Humphrey with satis- faction, 'was Antisthenes, on account of that brazen- faced shamelessness, called "a downright dog" 'AnXo- KVUV and his votaries simply Cynics'. b 'But Diogenes', interposed Mondoza, 'was designated "the offspring of Zeus and a heavenly dog"\ c 'I thank our good host for this timely remark', said Subbhuti with ardour. 'The fame of Diogenes has reached us also and has penetrated into those Buddhistic monastries to which our theological friend has referred so contemptuously, and which, I am sure, he can not have visited. We greatly admired Diogenes when we learnt that, living in a tub, he cast away even his cup when he saw a child drink out of the hand, and broke his spoon when he found a boy taking up his lentils with a crust of bread ; d that he asked of the mighty king of Macedon no other favour than "not to shade him from the sun"; and that, begging his simple wants, he devoted himself entirely to his own improve- ment and that of his fellow-men. All this we heard with delight and confessed that he was a worthy disciple of the great Buddha himself. For Gautama, the prince, brought up in luxury and splendour, the heir to a power- ful kingdom, gloried in none of his numerous names so much as in that of "Maha Bhixu" or "the Great Mendi- cant"; of this appellation he was prouder than of the THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 73 titles of Tatliagata, Baglmvat, Bodliisattva, Arhat, Qra- mana, and even Dagabala, which describe his spiritual dignity, his greatness of mind, and sanctity of heart; a and we, his followers, feel honoured when our opponents mean to deride us as Bhixus'. 'More easily indeed can you endure this designation', said Arvada-Kalama pointedly, 'than those more reproach- ful names of Ndstikas and Sunyavadins, which mark you as believers in nothing or in a universal void'. b 'I know well how to appreciate your kind indulgence', rejoined Subbhuti, without showing irritation, 'when I recall to my mind those Brahmans who, with a high-sounding term, call themselves Digambaras, that is, "men clothed with space", but whom the Greeks, when they saw them with amazement on the borders of the Ganges, called yymnosophists, because they rejoice in a nudity shunned even by savages. That simplicity of dress which our Master enjoined and practised, was, however, one only of the twelve rigorous observances which, in their combina- tion, constitute the life of a pious ascetic, and one only of the two hundred and twenty-seven precepts and pro- hibitions of the Pratimoksha or great code of discipline, which qualify him to rise to the highest contemplation. And when we remember how strongly Buddha insisted on almsgiving as a boundless charity to be practised towards all creatures with the utmost self-sacrifice, and how he intended it to lead "to the perfect maturity of our individual being", that is, to the absolute extinction of every impulse of selfishness; we must acknowledge that the prescribed mendicancy of the holy monks is an important means of moral training, and as such it has in reality ever been found efficacious. 7 'Forsooth', exclaimed Humphrey emphatically, 'the champions of Cynicism, by a strange fatality, become its severest arraigners, and the very analogies they cite condemn it. For what is Buddhism but an unwieldy tree rank and poisonous, and ready to be cut down by 74 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. the axe of Christianity, since it "cumbereth the ground" as the most formidable of all superstitions that oppose the spread of the Gospel? The Buddhist's charity is not self-denial, but the most transparent selfishness; it does not inculcate the command "to give", but the prohi- bition "to take", unless the gift be offered as alms; it engenders none of the activities of benevolence; it is as inoperative as the dead faith which the Apostle James rebukes; for the whole character of the Buddhist's prin- ciples is negative; he resembles the modern utilitarian, not in aiming at the greatest possible happiness, but at the removal of all possible inconvenience from himself; and in his scheme "nature becomes a machine, man an organism, morality self-interested, deity a fiction". a Almost the same may be said of his western twin-brother, the Cynic', continued Humphrey quickly, as he saw Subbhuti ready to reply; 'no sophistries will be able to disprove that the Greek Cynics made human existence a frightful parody, outraged decency, and revelled in habits at once preposterous and repulsive. 6 To live in conformity to nature was to them to live like beasts ; the human body, which the Apostle Paul more than once calls "the Temple of the living God", c was to them not merely the dungeon of the soul, but its very grave'. d 'They called it even "a carcase" ', murmured Gideon, 6 'thus surpassing the very Buddhists, who regard it as one large wound or sore, of which the garments are the bandage'/ 'Is "beasts" not rather a strong term to apply to the sect'? said Panini with hesitation. 'Not at all', answered Humphrey dogmatically. 'Diogenes did not blush to advocate the community of women and children, the nullity of marriage, and horribile dictu the eating of human flesh. In such principles and practices he saw nothing either "absurd" or "impious", and he believed that all nations might adopt them with the greatest advantage.^ The Cynics, in clamouring for the suppression THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 75 of the passions, blunted all natural feelings; and in preaching contempt of praise, displayed an unbearable vanity and arrogance. The bitter abuse with which the disciples of the same master assailed each other incessantly, was surely not edifying; but when Diogenes reproached Plato with conceit and interminable ventilation of palpable fallacies, and Plato, on the other hand, raised the counter- accusations of affectation, morbid love of notoriety, and even insincerity ; a or when Socrates, beholding Antis- thenes with the rent in his cloak conspicuously turned outside, taunted him saying, "I see your vanity through the hole of your garment" ; it can be doubtful to nobody on which side was the greater sense and truth. It is well known and he has confessed it himself thatDiogenes, this reputed despiser of temporal possessions, was com- pelled to flee from his native town Sinope as a coiner and a debaser of the public money ; b and how far from insanity was a man who constantly repeated, "I would rather go mad than feel pleasure"'? 'Those Cynics', said Gideon contemptuously, 'held indeed, that "most men are within a finger's breadth of being insane", d and Diogenes was by his contemporaries fitly called "Socrates gone mad"'. e 'It is not surprising', continued Humphrey, who began to feel some uneasiness at seeing himself so often in agreement with Eabbi Gideon, 'that one who insolently mocked, vilified and repelled everything which Providence and nature supply for the comfort and beauty of life, who despised the sciences and all arts as unnecessary and unprofitable/ and was entirely indifferent to politics and the interests of the state, as he boastingly called himself "a citizen of the world" s it is not surprising that such a man should at last lament that he had been overtaken by the tragic curse, since he was "Houseless and citiless, a wretched exile "From his dear native land; a wandering outlaw, "Begging a pittance poor from day to day". h 76 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 'This is your Greece and her beaming gladness; this the happiness bestowed by the gods of your pantheon' ! 'It cannot be denied', said Mondoza with a slight smile, 'that there is much truth in these eloquent charges; but are they quite free from exaggeration ? I fear that, just as Cynicism was a onesided interpretation of the lessons of Socrates, so are those charges a onesided exposition of the system of the Cynics. It appears that Socrates' mind and character were so large and all-embracing that his disciples with the exception of Plato alone were unable to grasp his teaching in its totality, and that therefore some, as Euclid and the rest of the "Megarics", studied only his scientific methods, and some, as the Cynics and Cyrenaics, only his code of ethics. This was of itself a dissolution of that fine harmony which was the master's main characteristic, but it must be admitted that, in addition to this error, Antisthenes and his votaries in many respects sadly confounded nature and human nature* They forgot that none of our instincts can be injurious if controlled by reason, which is the seal of human nature, and blended with those higher principles to which our whole life must obey; nay that all natural impulses, thus ennobled and working in mutual subordi- nation, not only engender a feeling of joyous well-being and completeness, but open and enlarge the mind to a deeper insight into the spirit and organism of the universe. The whole man only can understand the whole creation: if but a single nerve in the wonderful mechanism of the eye be destroyed or inactive, the objects appear perverted in form, colour, and proportions and all beauty has vanished. The very misconceptions of the Cynics, who fancied that by deadening some powers they fortified the rest, prove most strikingly the truth of that principle of Ecclesiastes, which our worthy Buddhist friend seems so indignantly to repudiate, that "God has made everything beautiful in its time, and has also set worldliness in man's heart, without which he cannot understand the work that THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 77 God does, from beginning to end". I think I may hope that his penetration and sincere love of enlightenment begin to bring this idea nearer to his mind, and that he will in theory also adopt those principles which, by aban- doning his monastic life, he has acknowledged in practice'. 'I may confess', said Subbhuti cautiously, 'that our conversations have strongly roused my reflection; yet I cannot arrive at a decision; and I am so far from regard- ing my withdrawal from the holy order as a merit, that, on the contrary, I deeply deplore it as a weakness, which the worldliness of my disposition was unable to overcome. I am, alas! not one of those "brave conquerors", of whom your poet speaks, "That war against their own affections "And the huge army of the world's desires ; " but one who broke the solemn vow I had taken that "To love, to wealth, to pomp I pine and die, "With all these living in philosophy." 'Doubt is the pioneer of truth', rejoined Mondoza, encouragingly; 'and conviction will, I trust, soon follow. But do not, in order to sanction a stunted life, invoke that poet whose gifts were as varied as the universe and whose sympathies as wide as mankind, and who declared -that "Every man with his affects is born, "Not by might master'd but by special grace", and who almost seemed to point to your sect when he wrote: "All delights are vain, but that most vain, "Which with pain purchased doth inherit painV 'Cynicism, I ventured to observe, is disfigured by grave defects; yet extreme carefulness is needed in our final estimate. For who knows to what extent the Cynics owe their evil repute to those eccentric singularities of manner, which, being offences against established customs, are often less readily pardoned than offences against nature? And can we be quite certain that the accounts preserved 78 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. to us by ancient writers are exact or even truthful, since nothing is more easy than to make peculiarities con- temptible and odious by travesty? Who would recognise the real Socrates, such as Xenophon and Plato have drawn him, in the reckless parodies of Aristophanes ? But granting the authenticity of all the scurrilous details handed down to us, we shall yet, if we keep our judgment unbiassed, discover the grandeur of the Socratic mind even in its Cynical mutilation and distortion. Penetrated with the principle that, as the deity needs nothing, those approach nearest to the deity who want least, Socrates had incul- cated the utmost abstinence, temperance and simplicity: the practical development of this principle in its fullest consistency, was the aim of Antisthenes and his successors. They were unable to attain it, as they strove mainly after virtue and not equally after intellectual knowledge, and by this error even imperilled their morals. Yet they were surely neither without a certain happiness, nor without a certain dignity and greatness. They looked upon them- selves by no means as poor, for they argued: "Every- thing belongs to the gods, and wise men are the friends of the gods; but friends have all things in common, therefore everything belongs to the wise"; a and Seneca hence remarked that, if anyone doubted their felicity, he might as well doubt the felicity of the immortal gods b . In self- denial they found a source of constant cheerfulness. "The very contempt of pleasure", they said, "if we only inure ourselves to it, is a hearty pleasure", which those who have once tasted it will not easily renounce. "A life of ease", they were certain, the gods have graciously given to men, who, however, by pining for luxuries, turn that existence into a torture. d But a life of ease was to them above all a life of independence; and fully in the spirit of the sect was the answer given by Diogenes, who, when Plato saw him wash vegetables and said, "If you had paid court to Dionysius, you would not now be washing vege- tables", laughingly exclaimed : "If you had washed vegetables, THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 79 you would never have paid court to Dionysius".* Yet they were neither averse to life nor to such pleasures as came spontaneously in their way. u lt is not living that is a bad thing, hut living badly", said Diogenes, including, of course, moral evil; and when asked whether he would accept delicacies, he replied: "Philosophers eat everything just as the rest of mankind do"'. b "These little things", whispered Attinghausen to Wolfram, "are great to little man" 'and even to great men'. When Antisthenes, dangerously ill', continued Mondoza, 'endured terrible pain, and Diogenes hinted that a sword might release him, he said: "I desire to escape from my suffering, not from my life", to which his Greek biographer adds: "He seemed to bear his disease more calmly for his love of life"'.' 'But Diogenes himself, said Humphrey, 'is, by the most trustworthy account, reported to have died by holding his breath, "wishing", as the same biographer observes, "to get rid of the remaining portion of his life"'. 'True', replied Mondoza, 'but Diogenes had at that time reached the age of ninety. d Moreover, the Cynics found delight and support in the exercise of virtue, which, they contended, is of itself sufficient for happiness, may be taught, can never be lost, and is like "a fortress in our own impregnable thoughts" ; e pleasure they found in useful labour, which, they contended, is sure to make life happy, and even in literary pursuits; for they were by no- means ignorant, as has been assumed, and they produced numerous works especially on ethical subjects/ Their most deplorable misapprehensions were those associated with their professed return to nature ; and yet, even in carrying out this idea, they acquired a merit for which they surely deserve no slight praise ; for they were the first among the ancients who denounced slavery as treason against the dignity of man, because opposed to the ordinances of nature. In this momentous question they were, therefore,, in advance not only of Aristotle who considered that some 80 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. men are born for servitude,* but also of legislators who claimed a higher inspiration and are honoured as the wisest guides of mankind. And when Diogenes himself fell into slavery, he displayed an equanimity, a freedom, and a manly self-respect, which compelled the esteem of an illiterate master and evoked the deep attachment of the children he instructed and trained; he became virtually the ruler of the household, into which, as his employer declared, a good genius seemed to have entered; so that it was no empty boast when he, taken prisoner and exposed for sale, bade the herald enquire, "if any one desired to purchase a master". b And what was the opinion enter- tained of him by those among whom he lived with a publicity perhaps never equalled by any other man? We are told that "he was greatly beloved by the Athenians'^, not merely on account of the wonderful charm of his lectures and conversations and his fascinating gift of persuasion, but because, as an inscription on his brazen statues recorded, "he alone taught men the great art of a contented life and the surest path to glory and a lasting happiness".' 'I cannot resist the tempation', continued Mondoza after a short pause, 'to ask your permission to read to you a translation I have prepared for a special purpose of a few pages from the Discourses of Epictetus, which may perhaps be new to some of our Eastern friends. The wise Epictetus, not unjustly called the second Socrates, draws in that treatise a picture of Diogenes and of Cynicism, which appears to me hardly less than sublime, and as the question how far simplicity of life contributes to its happiness and enjoyment, is closely connected with the chief subject of our discussion, I am inclined to believe that the reading I propose would at this point not be irrelevant'. Mondoza, complying with a general request, brought from his adjoining study a manuscript, and having observed that he would omit a few passages not directly bearing upon the main enquiry, read as follows: THE CYNIC "Epictetus was once asked by an acquaiStSHS^'wn seemed disposed to join the sect of Diogenes, what were the Cynic's qualifications and in what light the doctrine should be viewed. 'Let us consider the question at leisure', he replied. 'But I must at once tell you so much that, whosoever approaches so weighty a matter without God, is hateful in His eyes and only brings upon himself disgrace . . . Therefore, weigh the subject well; it is different from what you may imagine it to be. You think: "I am wearing a coarse cloak now; I shall wear one as a Cynic also; I am sleeping on a hard bed now, I shall lie hard then; I shall, besides, take a little wallet and a staff, and going about to beg I shall begin to abuse everyone I meet; and if I see anybody plucking the hair out of his body, or having his hair neatly dressed, or walking in purple, I shall revile him". If you fancy Cynicism to be something like this, keep away, do not come near, it will never suit you. But if, on the other hand, you represent it to your mind as it really is and do not deem yourself unworthy of it, reflect what a grand thing you undertake. 'First, as regards yourself, you must henceforth appear in none of your actions as you are at present : you must accuse neither Grod nor man ; must entirely banish desire, and con- fine aversion solely to things that lie within our will and choice ; you must be free from anger, resentment, envy and pity; must covet no beauty, no fame, no luxury. For you should remember that, when other people do such things, they conceal them by their walls and houses, by darkness and many similar expedients . . . But instead of all this, the Cynic's only protection is a sense of shame and honour . . . This is his house, his door, his attendant, his darkness. He must never wish to hide any of his actions; if he does, he is lost, he has ceased to be a Cynic, ceased to be a person living under the open sky, a free man ; he has begun to be afraid of something external, begun to need concealment, and he cannot act as he likes ... If he thus lives in fear, how can he have courage to direct other men with all his soul? It is impracticable, impossible. 'Therefore you must, in the first place, purify your mind or ruling faculty, and next your mode of life. Now the mind is my material, as the wood is the material of the carpenter, . . . and the work I have to accomplish is the right use of the perceptions and impressions. But this poor body of mine does not concern me ; its limbs do not concern me. Death? G 82 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. Let it come whenever it pleases, whether death of the whole body or of any part. Flee? But whither? Can anybody banish me from the world? He cannot. For wherever I go, there I find the sun and the moon and the stars, there I find visions and prophecies and intercourse with the gods. a 'However, the true Cynic must not be contented with this preparation, but should remember that he has been sent as a messenger from Zeus to mankind to instruct them with respect to good and evil, and to show that they have gone astray and are seeking the substance of good and evil in paths where it is not, while they take no heed of those paths where it may be found. And he must be a scout in the same manner as Diogenes declared to Philip after the battle of Chaeronea that he was a scout ; b for he must eagerly and carefully espy which things are beneficent to men and which hostile, and having espied them, he must come forward and impart the truth fearlessly, taking care not to mark as hostile that which is not really so, nor in any way to be perturbed or confounded by false imaginations. 'He must, therefore, if occasion arises, be able to ascend the tragic stage and with uplifted voice to say, like Socrates : '"Oh friends, whither are you rushing? what are you beginning? Oh ye miserable men, you are driven up and down like the blind ; you are proceeding on a wrong road, having left the right one; you seek happiness and strength where they are not, nor do you trust others who would direct you. Why do you seek happiness without? In the body? It is not there ... In riches? It is not there. If you disbelieve me, look at Croesus, look at the many wealthy men of our time and consider the dire griefs which fill their lives. In high station? It is not there; for if it were, those who have been twice or three times consuls would necessarily be happy; but they are not ... In royalty? Certainly not; for then Nero and Sardanapalus would be happy; yet not even Agamemnon was happy, although he was nobler than either. '"Oh wretched man, what is it that goes wrong with you? Your money affairs? No. Your body? No. You are rich in gold and copper. What then goes wrong with you? That part of you, whatever it may be, is neglected and corrupted, with which we desire and avoid, strive onward and hold aloof. In what respect is it neglected? It is ignorant of the good for which it was created, ignorant also of the nature of evil, and knows not what is essential to it and what foreign . . . THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 83 '"But how is it possible to live happily without money or raiment, without house or hearth, without slave or home? See, God has sent you a man to prove to you that it is possible. Look at me: I am homeless and houseless, own no property nor slaves, sleep on the ground, have neither wife nor children nor protection, but only earth and heaven, and one rough cloak; yet what do I want? Am I not painless? Am I not fearless? Am I not free? When did ever anyone of you see me fail in anything I desired, or fall into anything I wished to avoid? When did I ever blame God or man? When did I accuse anybody? Did onyone of you ever see me looking distressed or dejected? How do I treat those whom you fear and admire? Do I not meet them like servants? Who, seeing me, does not believe he is seeing his king and master?'" 'This is the Cynic's language, his character, his aim in life. Do you still suppose he is merely distinguished by wallet and staff and begging and indiscriminate jeering at everybody? . . . Therefore, reflect more carefully; know thyself; consult the Deity; do not attempt anything without God; for when He approves of your plan, you may be certain that He either intends you to become great or to receive many blows : for this also is peculiar to the Cynic, that he must be beaten like an ass, and even while he is being beaten love those that beat him, like the father of all, and like their brother. a But you, when beaten, run into the public streets and cry out: '"Oh Emperor, how am I ill- treated in the midst of thy peace! Let us go to the Pro- consul"' ! 'But what concern has the Cynic with the Emperor or the Proconsul or anyone else except Zeus alone, who has sent him on the earth and whom he serves? Does he invoke any other than him? Is he not convinced that, when he suffers anything from men, Zeus is training him? But Hercules, so trained by Eurystheus, did not consider himself unhappy, but ungrudgingly performed his tasks; and should anyone practised and trained by Zeus himself, call out and be angry, if he is worthy to bear the sceptre of Diogenes? . . . Was this Diogenes likely to argue with the god who sent him into the world, complaining that he was not treated as he deserved he who gloried in his trials? . . . 'For why should he argue with Zeus? . . . Well, what did he say about poverty ? what about death or toil ? How did he estimate his own happiness compared to that of the great king of Persia? Indeed he thought the two were not 84 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. comparable at all. For do perturbations and griefs and fears, and unsatisfied desires and the dread of accidents, and envy and jealousies, allow even an approach to happiness? But wherever the principles are depraved, there all these evils are inevitable . . . 'If there existed a community composed only of wise men, the Cynic might marry without detriment . . . But in the condition of things as we find it at present, when we are, as it were, arrayed for battle, the true Cynic should never be drawn away from the ministration of God. He must be able to move about among men, unfettered by the ordinary duties of the world, and unentangled by those relations of life, which he cannot neglect without forfeiting the character of an honourable and good man, and to which he cannot attend without ceasing to be a messenger and scout and herald of the gods . . . When generalship or statesmanship exempts a man from the obligation of matrimony and is held to secure boons sufficient to compensate for childlessness ; should the Cynic's royalty not be worth as much? 'We do not properly feel his greatness, nor represent to ourselves his character in its full dignity . . . For if we did, we should not wonder that he has not wife and children. All are his children the men his sons, the women his daughters ; he goes to all, he cares for all. Or do you think that he rebukes the people from idle recklessness? He does it as a father, as a brother and as the minister of our common father Zeus. a 'If you please, ask me also if the Cynic shall take part in affairs of the state. Do you require a higher kind of public duty than that in which he is engaged? Must he come forward among the Athenians and address them on the revenues and the supplies? he who must speak to all men, to Athenians and Corinthians and Romans alike, not about revenues and supplies, nor about peace and war, but about happiness and unhappiness, about well-being and misery, about servitude and freedom? . . . What more exalted public post can he fill than that which he actually occupies ?... b 'However, not merely by the qualities of his mind must he convince the people that it is possible to be honourable and good without enjoying the possessions they generally prize; but he must prove to them also by the robustness of his body that a simple and plain life in the open air is by no means injurious to health and vigour ... A Cynic who inspires pity, is considered a beggar; all turn away THE CYNIC AKD THE STOIC. 85 from him, all take offence at him. Nor must he appear dirty, lest he repel people ; but his very ruggedness should be clean and attractive. He ought also to have that natural grace and penetration ... by which he is enabled to acquit himself in all emergencies with readiness and propriety . . . 'But above all his mind, the dominant faculty, must be purer than the sun; or else he is no better than an unprincipled gambler who, being himself in the bonds of vice, presumes to correct others . . . "When you see that he has watched and laboured for mankind ; . . . that all his thoughts are such as behove a friend and minister of the gods and a sharer of Jove's dominion; and that he has constantly before his mind these two maxims, "Guide me, Zeus, and thou, Destiny", and "If it so pleases the gods, let it so be done": a why should he not take courage to speak freely to his brothers, his children, in a word, to his kinsmen? 'And finally, the Cynic's patience must be such that he might appear to the multitude as devoid of all feeling and like a stone. Nobody abuses him, nobody strikes him, nobody insults him. He readily delivers up his body to all, to let them use it as they please . . . 'So great, my friend, is the matter you contemplate; there- fore, if you follow my counsel, take God as your guide, and consider well your own qualifications'". 11 'No one, I believe, will deny', said Mondoza, laying aside the manuscript, 'that a grand spirit breathes through these thoughts; and few will fail to discover a striking resemblance to many conceptions of the Old and the New Testament, especially to that type of the Hebrew prophets, or of the suffering Messiah, who, despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, is sent down to enlighten or to redeem mankind, and patiently bears their trespasses, sins, and woes'. c 'This remark may be correct', replied Humphrey, evidently summoning all his courage and confidence, 'but it refutes most conclusively what it is meant to prove. Such principles admit indeed a certain kind of happiness, but whatever truth they contain, Epictetus has undoubtedly borrowed from Christianity. . .' 'Indeed!' cried Hermes with unconcealed irony, 'bor- rowed from . . .' 86 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 'I entreat you, gentlemen', interposed Mondoza, 'to re- frain from an old and intricate dispute rarely carried on with profit, and still more rarely without bitterness; for our purpose it is sufficient to know that the later successors of Diogenes believed his views to have been faithfully expoun- ded by Epictetus and his pupil Arrianus. But it is, perhaps, just to remember that even Cicero quotes Antisthenes' doctrine of one God pervading all nature, in declared op- position to the plurality of gods assumed by the people'.* 'Well', said Humphrey, mortified and reluctantly sub- duing his polemical ardour, 'I contend that such enjoy- ment as may flow from the sonorous and strained senti- ments to which we have been privileged to listen, is not the enjoyment we are accustomed to associate with the cheerfulness of the Greeks, and that, at any rate, it differs toto coelo from that high-wrought picture which, early this evening, has been so enticingly unfolded to us in the description of a time "when sombre reality beamed in the roseate hues of poetry, and grave truth smiled in the dazzling garb of blithe fancy". Instead of pleasure we find austerity, and instead of contentment we meet dismal resignation; yet this austerity involves no depth, and this resignation no strength. Thus the Cynic's life, shrinking from man's most important duties and shorn of all refining graces, is neither a full nor a beautiful life, and is devoid both of true harmony and true joy'! 'How great, in spite of all its defects', began Hermes, 'were the charm and vitality of Cynicism'. . . 'Assuredly', interrupted Berghorn, 'in this age of "restitutions", or as Lessing would say "Ehrenrettungen", when scholars waste their energy and learning in glori- fying a Tiberius or' (he added with knit brows and a raised voice) 'even a Balaam, we cannot be surprised at meeting with enthusiastic champions and uncompromising votaries of a Krates and Hipparchia, a Monimus and Onesicratus, all taking their inspirations from the ex- patriated coiner'. THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 87 'How great were the charm and vitality of Cynicism, I was about to observe', continued Hermes, suppressing a smile, 'appears from the fact that it became the parent of Stoicism, which, while following the profound Heraclitus in physics, and Aristotle in logic, avoided in practical life all that was offensive in the adherents of Antisthenes, and enlarged his moral precepts into a system of ethics, the wonderful consistency of which has been a frequent theme of admiration,* and which, I do not hesitate to affirm, was more calculated than that of any other school or sect, whether philosophical or religious, to call forth and to train men in the noblest sense of the word, b men of an immovable strength of character, men who, being the very prototypes of dignity and self-respect, attained an absolute dominion not only over their passions and affections but over the events of life itself, who governed but were not governed, the real "lords of human kind"'. 'Hardly men', protested Rabbi Gideon with a tinge of an- noyance; 'did not Diogenes himself describe the Athenians as women, the Spartans as boys' ? c 'I will not at present', interrupted Humphrey, 'enter into the doctrines of Zeno; but I may ask: were the Stoics happy? Did they, any more than the Cynics, enjoy that cheerfulness which is supposed to be specifically Hellenic? Most pitiful were their declamations about the miseries of human existence, and what was their sole and effectual deliverance and remedy? Suicide! Suicide they legalised and declared heroic, and they resorted to it without any sense of its criminality. They maintained that "the only, or at least the highest, boon for man is death", d which is simply a parting from evils; 6 in fact that life is really death, and ought to be lamented, if laments did not render it still more unbearable/ Yet Cicero, who quotes these sentiments with approval, devoted to the subject a special work with such effect that many readers declared they desired nothing more ardently than to quit the world and its agonies. ff 88 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 'From the writings of that Stoic sage, whose "Christian" piety and enlightenment it is the custom of neologian sceptics triumphantly to extol, from the writings of Seneca, it would be easy to gather a large florilegium of despair. "Our life", he says, "is a perpetual source of tears" ; "to the most happy we can wish nothing better than death"; nay, "whenever you see a wretched creature, you may be sure that it is a man", and so in endless forms and shades, varied and yet tediously monotonous. a Hardly less fruitful in such dreary utterances is that other cheval de bataille of heathen eulogists M. Aurelius, who plainly declared it to be contrary to common sense to suppose that man was created for the least enjoyment ; b but I will only cite very few sentences as I must hasten to an even more conspicuous example. "All human affairs", says the glorious Emperor, "are smoke and nothing", "smoke and ashes and a tale, nay, not even a tale". c "All that belongs to the body is a river, all that belongs to the soul a dream and vapour, life a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame oblivion". d "Amidst the darkness and squalor of the world . . . our chief consolation is the prospect of a speedy dissolution", 6 of "the extinction of that soul which is nothing but a mist rising from the blood"/ 'But now, passing over many other Stoic threnodies, I finally proceed to Pliny's portraiture of human suffering, which, in its shocking hideousness, might satisfy even a Schopenhauer and Biichner, or any other fanatic of modern pessimism a veritable slough of despond, black, ghastly, and agonising'. 'But Pliny', observed Hermes calmly, 'was no Stoic ; he did not sympathise with the teaching of Zeno, he did not even understand it'.e 'Well', rejoined Humphrey, quickly collecting himself, 'I shall return to Pliny's dismal wail on a future occasion; for I think, I have sufficiently illustrated the joyousness of your Stoic idols'. THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 89 'The lot of the Stoics', said Dr. Mortimer, 'was not cast in happy times. The independence of Greece had succumbed to the ambition and astuteness of the Macedonian tyrant. a The best and ablest minds, no longer finding satisfaction in public life, and shunning it as a chaos of lawless selfishness and mean passions, reluctantly withdrew, for comfort and repose, into the sanctuary of their own thoughts, and thus gathered strength to bear a sad and painful reality. b To them liberty was the divinest attribute of man, and liberty had been forfeited not more through the insidious stratagems of a foreign conqueror, than through the violence of a licentious populace: is it surprising that a veil of gloom was spread over their vision, and that, when their principles were diffused in Italy at a period when Rome, corrupt and demoralised, groaned under the terrors of a military despotism, they borrowed additional shadows from the sternness of the Roman character and the dangers of the time? "To be self-collected, to strive after moral improvement, to bear, to suffer, to die, became the object of life". c A favourite maxim was, "Gold is tried by fire, a brave man by misery ". d There prevailed that revelling in adversity, that keen delight in trials, which is echoed in the beatitudes of our Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted"; "blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven". 6 Calamities were wel- comed especially as a training to virtue. As Paul declared, "We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience", and James exhorted, "Count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations"; so the Cynic Demetrius considered that man most unfortunate who lived without troubles and disturbing vicissitudes ; and Seneca was con- vinced that God educates good men with severity, since, like a strict father, he applies to them his own high standard/ 'But the retirement of the Greek Stoics from their immediate surroundings was not without consequences both important and beneficent. For it prompted them to 90 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. raise their eyes beyond the narrow limits of their own country, and thus not only to demolish the hateful distinction between Greek and barbarian, but this is their immortal merit to conceive the idea of a universal community, to consider themselves as citizens of the world, and to realise the scheme of a united mankind, governed and guarded by an omnipresent and bountiful deity, the world-pervading primeval Cause, at once supreme Reason and supreme Love. Is it necessary to adduce proofs and examples? They are copiously supplied in recent works attempting to elucidate the analogies of the chief systems of religion, and giving its due meed to paganism without questioning the superior claims of Christianity. a But I may be per- mitted to cite a few additional sentences which have struck me as remarkable. For by a happy chance, I have this morning gathered on this very point some passages of which I intend availing myself in my next Missionary Sermon, and which, as I found them, I at once translated into English'. And taking a note-book from his pocket, he read as follows : "If you have abandoned the offices of a citizen, exercise those of a man. Therefore we do not shut ourselves up within the walls of a single city, but have extended our life to an intercourse with the whole earth, and have declared our country to be the world, being thus enabled to afford to virtue a larger field. Are the tribune and the public Assembly closed to you, look round and behold the lands and nations endlessly spread before your eyes". b "It is wicked to injure our country, therefore also any citizen, for each citizen is a part of the country, and the parts are sacred if the whole claims reverence. Hence it is also wicked to injure any man, for every man is our fellow-citizen in the larger commonwealth. How, if the hands were to injure the feet, or the eyes the hands? As all the members work together because it is in the interest of the whole body that each should be preserved intact, so must men take care of every individual, because all are born for one community". "Why should I specify in detail all that a man should do and should not do, when I can express his whole duty in THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 91 a single formula? All that you see, all that appertains both to matters human and divine, is one. We are members of one great body. Nature has created us as kinsmen, since we are all born from the same substance and for the same work. She has implanted in us mutual love and made us sociable beings". 4 "Let us have in our thoughts two commonwealths the one large and truly common, which embraces both* gods and men, in which we do not look upon this corner or upon that, but measure the boundaries of our state by those of the sun; and the other, that assigned to us by the accident of our birth, and not including all men, but only a small number. Some cherish both the larger and the smaller commonwealth, some only the smaller, some only the larger". b "To the wise we have given a commonwealth worthy of him the world". c "To whatever country I come, I come to my own. No country is a place of exile, but another home". d "Asia, Europe, are only corners of the world, the whole ocean a drop in the universe, . . . the whole present time a point in eternity. All is small, changeful, perishable. Everything proceeds from the common ruling Power, either issuing from it directly or by sequence". 6 "As you are yourself a component part of a social system, so every act of yours should be a component part of it. Therefore, any act which has no reference to the social good either directly or remotely, tears your life asunder, destroys its unity, and is factious, just as in a community a man is factious when he acts for himself, standing apart from the common agreement"/ "A person separatinghimself from one fellow-man through hat- red or aversion, cuts himself off from the whole social system".^ "I say to the Universe, 'I love as thou lovest'". h "Everything harmonises with me, which is in full harmony with thee, Universe. The poet says, 'Dear city of Cecrops'; should you not say, 'Dear city of Zeus'"? 1 "Man has kinship with the whole human family, not a community of blood or race, but of mind". k 'I will omit', continued the Canon, 'the terse aphorisms in which Cicero states these views of the Stoics, 1 and will conclude with a saying attributed to the founder of the sect himself, and noteworthy as recalling one of the most memorable utterances attributed to Christ: 92 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. "The whole organisation tends to this, that we shall no more live separated by towns and communities, each distin- guished by its own statutes, but that we shall consider all men fellow-citizens and kinsmen, and that there shall be one rule and order of life, like that of a single flock guided and feeding by a common law". a 'Is there no grandeur', continued Mortimer, 'in views so large and elevated? Is it possible for anyone to be penetrated with their spirit, and at the same time, as the Stoics did, to deem virtue the highest good and the end of all knowledge, without feeling a constant thrill of joy at any progress achieved even in the most distant country by the obscurest race? It is easy to ridicule the hyper- bolical saying of Chrysippus, "If a single wise man, wherever he may be, only lifts up his finger intelligently, all the good men on the whole earth are thereby bene- fited" ; b yet it implies a wonderful conviction not only of human community, but of the magic power of truth. Every step the Stoic advanced in his wisdom added to his clearness, his confidence, his cheerfulness. No more than the Buddhist, could the Stoic understand the affirma- tion of the Hebrew sage, "In much wisdom is much grief, and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow", because his only object was duty, and his sole enjoyment obedience to its call for the weal of mankind. "Toil" and "wearying labour" were as foreign to him as pain and grief. And even if, in the depth of his sympathy, he should sometimes have been saddened by a bitter experience, is not that sympathy itself the intensest pleasure, the holiest joy? The Apostle Paul speaks of a "godly sorrow" which brings salvation, while "the sorrow of the world worketh death"'. d 'I must positively protest', said Humphrey with ill- restrained vehemence, 'against this perversion of Stoicism. The true Stoic was proud of feeling nothing, proud of an impassiveness equally inaccessible to pleasure and distress, to sympathy and aversion; or in the words of Pope: "In lazy Apathy let Stoics boast "Their virtue fix'd ; 'tis fix'd as in a frost". 6 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 93 'Epictetus contended that it is better for a father to let his children grow up in wickedness than, by chastising them, to imperil his own equanimity.* In losing a child or a wife, we should simply say, it was a mortal being we had loved, and we shall no more be disturbed; or "My son died: what has happened? My son died, nothing else". b The same sage graciously permitted a man to pity a mourner with words and even to sigh and weep with him, but only on condition that he felt no pity in his heart. c Not even in the theatre ought we to evince any inward interest in the action, nor should we speak of the performance afterwards, lest we seem to feel admiration. d Justly, therefore, has the Stoic's tranquillity been called by Lactantius "an arrogant and almost insane principle", since "he fancies he is able to overrule the power and design of nature". 6 When Macduff was informed of the murder of his wife and children, and bidden by Malcolm to "dispute it like a man", he replied, "I shall do so, but I must also feel it as a man". This is nature, at once true and great, as depicted by a Christian poet. f 'And what is the Stoics' liberty, upon which so much stress has been laid? Had they even lived in the most flourishing period of republican Greece, they would have been pitiful bondmen enthralled by the dreary doctrine of a necessity or fate, to which man must blindly bend, and which leaves no room whatever for the exercise of his will. Do such notions admit of elastic buoyancy of mind, of energy and hopefulness'? 'It is strange', observed Hermes, 'how prejudices are bequeathed from generation to generation "like an eternal disease"! There are questions, the discussion of which should be approached with the warning given by Cleanthes especially to the young, "Silence, silence, gently step"!e Is it in itself credible that men like Zeno, Chrysippus, Eratosthenes, or Panaetius, who scrupulously weighed and considered even the least of their actions, regarded themselves and others to be reduced to lifeless automata? Their "necessity" 94 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. was hardly anything else than our "Providence or law of nature" ; and the difficulties they experienced were scarcely greater than ours are when we try to harmonise those notions with the principle of free-will'. 'Good, good', said Movayyid-eddin pensively; 'the very same charge has constantly been brought against Mohammed and the Koran, and with equal injustice; for neither the Prophet nor his revealed Book ever favoured fatalism. He enjoined sincere and pious submission to Allah's dis- pensations ; but who was more wonderfully active ? It was tradition with its usual distortions, which, lowering itself to man's natural indolence, grafted the idea of immovable fatalism on the Islam. Tradition invented that "Preserved Table" or "Book of Divine Councils", regarded as the heavenly prototype of the Koran, which, woven of light and gold, written with an angel's pen before the creation of the world, and guarded by the awful arch-angel Israfil, contains the record of God's unalterable decrees and sets forth whether a man is to be happy or wretched, good or bad, a child of Paradise or of hell. Thus the folly of the Sunna has made men idle and helpless tools. One of our great poets has these lines: "You do not escape your fate ! This belief, listen, shall not discourage but fortify you in trials: you are wise if, in every deed, you rely on God's counsel, yet exert your strength'". 3 - 'I am glad', said Mondoza, 'that you have referred to a very farspread prejudice against your religion. As regards the Stoics, caution seems at least desirable. For Josephus, in speaking of the chief sects of the Jews, employs terms very similar to those used by the Stoics. For with regard to the pious Essenes, he says plainly, "They affirm that fate governs all things and that nothing happens to man but what is in accordance with its decision;" 6 and even in reference to the strict Pharisees, his own sect, he intimates, "They believe that some actions, but not all, are the work of fate, while some are in our own power, being liable to fate, but not caused by fate" c THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 95 which casuistry betrays an embarrassment the historian exhibits elsewhere still more decidedly.* Yet the Jews have ever claimed the privilege of unfettered free-will, and pro- bably with good reason, considering such declarations of the Pentateuch as: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may live"'. b 'Our Eabbins say', observed Gideon with an air of great satisfaction, "Everything is in the hands of God except our fear of God"; c and they relate that, when Job was to be born, the angel of birth enquired of God whether the man about to be called into existence was to be brave or weak, wise or simple, rich or poor, but it is signi- ficant to observe he did not enquire whether he was to be pious or wicked. d Yet this is no more than what God Himself said to Moses, as stated in Deuteronomy, "0 that there were such a heart in them that they would fear Me and keep My commandments . . . that it might be well with them" ; e which implies that piety and happiness are so entirely in man's own power that not even God can compel him to the one in order to secure for him the other. And the same principle is very clearly unfolded by the wise Sirach, who enjoins, "Say not thou, It is through the Lord that I fall away ... He has caused me to err; . He left man in the hand of his own counsel ; . . . He has set fire and water before thee, stretch forth thy hand unto whether thou wilt"'. f 'Yet your wise Sirach', said Attinghausen, who always showed peculiar impatience whenever the Rabbi spoke, 'your Sirach repeats with approval that "the Lord hardened Pharaoh, that he should not know Him"; your chief historian narrates that God incited, or allowed Satan to incite, the great king David to commit a sin which He punished with a fearful plague destroying the innocent; and your most sublime prophet records God's injunction concerning His chosen nation, "Make the heart of this people torpid, and make their ears heavy, and shut their 96 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. eyes, lest . . . they turn from their evil ways and be healed'". a 'Very thoughtfully', said Arvada-Kalama, 'our poet sings : "Brahma may indeed at will "Threaten the flamingo's joys "And his nest of lotus twined: "But deprive him of his gift of "Drawing milk from out the water, "This not even Brahma may." b 'It is unnecessary', resumed Hermes smiling, 'here to enter into the subtle speculations, by which the Stoics strove to solve this problem, one of the obscurest in philosophy and theology; it is sufficient to remark that, in spite of their "Fate", they considered free-will possible, since they referred the predestined decrees only to the concatenation of events, not to human efforts, and only to the general course of the whole, not specially to the actions of in- dividuals; and that at any rate which is the essential con- sideration they held men responsible for their conduct, and hence sanctioned rewards and punishments : the well-known anecdote of Zeno who, when his slave, convicted of theft and chastised, remonstrated saying, "It was fated that I should steal", answered him, "True, but it was also fated that thou shouldest be scourged" this simple anecdote settles the point. c And as they held virtue inseparable from good intention or disposition, they stamped all deeds as emanations of their own will, and could thus justly call virtue "self-chosen". d Seneca declared: "Oh immortal gods, I shall give you willingly whatever you demand; I am compelled in nothing, I suffer nothing against my wish, I do not serve God but give him my assent". 6 Epictetus affirmed: "Nobody is master over another's will, . . . God has placed me by myself, has put my will in obedience to myself alone, and given me rules for its right use"; f nay he boldly maintained: "If God had made that part of himself which he took from himself and gave to us, of such a nature as to be hindered or compelled either by him or by others, he would not then be God, THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 97 nor would lie be taking care of us as he ought"*. And Marcus Aurelius wrote that, in all the changes of life, it was his comfort to know: "I have the power to do nothing displeasing to my God and to the Divine genius within me, for there is none who can force me to trespass against him" ; b a view very closely approaching that expressed by the English poet who described the great First Cause as a Being "Who, binding Nature fast in Fate, "Left free the human will". 'Hence the Stoics neither sanctioned the dark concep- tion of the tragic poets that "God himself puts guilt into man's heart when he desires utterly to destroy a house" ; c nor were they tempted to assume, like the Greek people and the Hebrews, that God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children'. d 'The Stoics', said Attinghausen, who evidently found it impossible to remain silent any longer, and fairly rose to his feet, 'were on the right track with regard to human liberty as well as to several momentous problems of physics; but they had neither sufficient courage nor sufficient knowledge to be consistent. Their pantheism and pessimism, their sound materialism, their partial insight into the relation of "force" and "matter" 6 and the indestructibility of both, all this not less than their pro- clamation of an all-governing law irrevocable as Fate, were the first harbingers of the great truths which modern researches into the operations of nature have worked out and placed beyond all doubt ; while with respect to God, it is enough to refer to that fine passage of Seneca declaring how preposterous it is to pray to heaven with uplifted hands, since the God who is able to grant us everything is with us and in us, and raises us above every extraneous Power/ However, the Stoics carried no principle to its full and legitimate conclusions, and have by this half- heartedness caused manifold and serious mischief. For they set the example of monastic ascetism; they assumed in H 98 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. the universe a perfection and fitness entirely imaginary; they suggested to the Christian theologian most of his proofs of the existence of God; a they retained as a damnosa hcereditas from the schools of Socrates the fantastic doctrine of Immortality as far as it was com- patible with their view of a periodical conflagration of the world; and they invented that purgatory fire, which for many millions of men has converted the earth into a veritable hell. b Thus, in physics, they were unable to conquer the old dualism of God and universe; and in ethics, they clung to the no less dangerous dualism of necessity and free-will'. 'However important these points are', said Mondoza more quickly than was his wont, 'I beg you to refrain from the consideration of subjects which would draw us far away from our present discussion. I am indeed, for my part, inclined to think that the Stoics did not feel themselves so unfree in their actions as is often repre- sented, since they defined virtue as strength of will founded on good sense ; but I believe that we should more surely arrive at an agreement, if it were possible to place before our minds a complete picture of the Stoic sage, the indi- vidual traits being carefully gathered from ancient authori- ties, and the whole bearing the stamp of authentic truth- fulness in fact the real eagle, and not some fabulous griffin or visionary dragon. All of us, I am sure, would be pleased and grateful, if our erudite friend Hermes, who lives and breathes in the classics, would undertake the task'. 'It is impossible', replied Hermes, 'to decline an appeal which imposes upon me so agreeable a duty, although I am afraid that my extemporised attempt after the elabo- rate efforts of not a few ancient and modern writers will prove an Ilias post Homerum. Like our amiable host, I well perceive how essential an element in our enquiry such a portrait would be, and I am, therefore, doubly anxious to do it full justice: the subject is ramified rerum tamen ordine ducar. THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 99 'Well, the wise man, say the Stoics, finds supreme happiness or "the .chief good" in a life conformable to nature, by which he understands a life in accordance with reason, with virtue, and the laws of the universe, since "men's individual natures are all parts of universal nature" ;* and as he holds that virtue alone, which may be taught, b leads to happiness, so he believes that it is of itself sufficient to secure it; wherefore he deems everything else to be "indifferent", such as noble birth, health, beauty, power, fame, riches, life itself, and above all pleasure; 6 although some Stoic teachers d allowed that for happiness "there is also need of good health and strength and competence." 6 But virtue is by the Stoic sage considered to be a disposition of the mind always consistent and resulting in a life of perfect harmony. This disposition he is bound to seek for its own sake, in purity of heart and intention; and in the same spirit he must practise virtue, not in obedience to the law, or from hope and fear, or any other extrinsic motive in all which cases it is no quality that produces right actions/ In virtue he includes the virtues, of which four are fundamental viz. prudence, manliness, justice, and temperance and the rest subordinate yet indis- pensable, such as magnanimity, self-restraint, endurance, energy, and thoughtfulness ;* although some admit only the one all-comprising virtue of prudence analogous to James 7 and Paul's "royal" or "perfect" law of charity 11 or consider that he who possesses one virtue completely, possesses all, since they are mutually connected. 1 He is "good", which is to him equivalent to being "perfect according to the nature of a rational being" ; for reason is his guide and guardian, and morality his strongest principle of action k . 'Therefore, though he does not disregard logic and physics, he attaches supreme importance to ethics. Comparing philosophy to a fertile field, he looks upon logic as the fence, on physics as the soil or the fruit-tree, and on ethics as the crop ; and in this sense the chief good is to him 100 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. also "knowledge". a His first and holiest law is duty, and he scrupulously fulfils his obligations towards his country, his parents, b relatives and friends ; for the wise man alone is capable of that true and unselfish friendship which holds the friend to be "another self". c He does not live in soli- tude or inactivity, d being by nature "sociable and prac- tical". He takes part in the affairs of the state according to his abilities and opportunities; since he alone is fit to be magistrate, judge, and orator. He marries and carefully educates his children in his own strict principles. 6 Yet he does not consider himself the citizen of a particular country, but of the whole community of men, since all are brothers and must live together as such, being not merely "parts" v but "organic members" of the same divinely formed and >A\H directed system. f He alone is happy, free, good, perfect, \ Mionourable, beautiful, loveable. He is anxious for self- Vj improvement and therefore never wholly immersed in worldly business. He is without vanity, presumption or hypocrisy, modest and contented, equally free from false pride and servile humility. He is upright in heart and mind. He appreciates men's good qualities and overlooks their faults; he cherishes, therefore, neither hatred nor revenge. He s severe in countenance and demeanour, yet affable and kind, and considers urbanity a duty. He is strictly economical, yet no lover of money, which he spends freely for the acquisition of knowledge. He is abstemious and rigidly simple in food and dress ; in this respect he regards Cynicism as "a short cut to virtue" ; but he rejects it in as much as it is indecorous and self-castigating. He is pious and worships the gods by prayer and sacrifice in holiness of heart a true priest and a true king, nay even divine and godlike.^ 'He believes that God is one or a unity, whether He be called Mind, Providence, Fate, Zeus, or by any other name ; h that He is "unbegotten", immortal and imperishable, wise, rational, perfect, omniscient, without human form, the Creator of the Universe, the beneficent Father of all men. 1 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 101 'He wonders at nothing as extraordinary, 3 but is parti- cularly careful to keep himself free from all perturbations of the mind, not only from their four chief forms of pleasure and desire, grief and fear, but also from anger, and passion, displeasure and indignation,^ and'-^though he should constantly practise benevolence 3ven from' pity> However, and this has too frequently" been oveiloofed he is a stranger to perturbations, not, like the bad, from callousness and obtuseness, but from self-control ; d and he admits sensibility so far as it does not impair composure. He is indeed so teaches even Epictetus like all men unavoidably subject to first and sudden emotions or affec- tions of the mind 6 in feeling fright, terror or grief, but his reason at once recovers its balance and, refusing assent to those emotions, soon restores him to complete equanimity/ He does not regard physical pain as an evil ; for there is only one evil that can befall the virtuous, which is his succumbing to vice. He thus lives in perfect "impassi- bility" (apatlma), sustained by reason and nature, enjoying "a fearless liberty".* 'He does not form his opinions lightly, and takes care not to be misled by appearances, whence he is "free from error" and always acts and judges rightly. h He attaches little value to the polish and graces of style and is satisfied with clearness and precision. 1 Yet when elo- quence offers itself spontaneously, he may properly employ it to adorn noble thoughts. k Nor is he in general indifferent to the beautiful, but, like all Socratics assigning to it a very high function, he holds that the beautiful is the only good, which is virtue ; as, on the other hand, everything good is beautiful, since both terms are equivalent. 1 'And lastly, though he regards pleasure as no good but as "an irrational elation of the mind at something which appears to be desirable"," 1 and shuns much or excessive laughter, he loves and courts joy, which, being the opposite of pleasure, is "a rational elation of the mind", and includes delight, mirth and cheerfulness of spirits. He reckons it 102 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. among the three "good conditions of the mind", the other two being caution and volition, and among the few "final boons" in conjunction with courage, prudence and liberty ; and he is ccnripced that such joy is felt especially as a concomitant' of the chief good, or of the practice of virtue.* * ''Tli6se : are : tH-e main features of the picture', concluded Hermes, ~'ancl they suggest, I think, serious doubts as to the right of desponding pessimists to claim the Stoics as their own.' b 'If this is not', said Humphrey, "haughtiness and rebellious presumption, it is simply and purely an ideal'. 'And so is Christ, the Christ of our faith', said Abington, who had followed Hermes with close attention. 'Let no one undervalue ideals, whether those of the philosopher or of the theologian. They are the fullest expression of the eternal attributes in man, the guides of his soul to the Promised Land of light and truth. Man's greatness is in his deeds, his dignity in his aspirations. The goal lies in a bound- less distance, it is enough for mortals to be sure that they are advancing on the Divinely illumined path. But were the Stoics on that path?' he added musingly, and almost to himself. 'The statement with which we have been favoured', resumed Humphrey, 'is a mixtum compositum, the motley ingredients of which, like the herbs for Medea's cauldron, have been collected from all zones and all ages. Glance at the model sage as he is revealed to us in the pages of Seneca: that exemplar has aptly been characterised by a recent writer as "a pompous abstraction at once ambitious and sterile, a sort of moral Phoenix, impossible and repul- sive, a faultless and unpleasant monster, dry and bloodless, yet indulging in practical Epicureanism."' 'I must beg your pardon', said Hermes with a slight shade of sarcasm in his manner, 'my delineation has not been culled from "all zones and ages", but I have been particularly anxious not to introduce any trait unwarranted by the authority of the earliest founders of the sect them- THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 103 selves. And as regards Seneca's description of the "vir bonus", I must confess, I am fairly amazed. That sketch breathes a fervour for virtue, which it seems hardly possible to feel or to express more strongly. The passage is too long for quotation. Seneca begins : "If we were permitted a vision of the good man's soul, what beautiful and holy features should we behold! how grandly and serenely bright" ! He then specifies the sage's qualities, which com- prise nearly every manly excellence; 8 he continues: "If anyone should meet with such a character, more exalted and more majestic than any we are accustomed to see among men, should he not, spell-bound with awe as if he had met a divinity, silently pray that the sight may not be accounted to him sinful" ? h and he concludes: "It will be in our power to recognise such virtue even if it be hidden by bodily infirmity, oppressed by indigence, and assailed by humiliation and ignominy". 6 How much is wanting to complete the figure of a "Servant of God" or "a suffering Messiah"'? 'But the visionary character of the Stoic ideal', said Humphrey, 'is amply proved by the fact that it has never been even distantly approached'. 'This assertion may well be questioned', said Hermes. 'We are told that the Athenians who honoured Zeno with a golden crown and a splendid tomb, declared in a pub- lic decree that these distinctions were accorded to him because "he made his life a pattern to all men in adapting it to the doctrines he had taught". d Seneca expressly declares : "Let it not be said that our wise man is nowhere found ; we do not invent an idle paragon of human per- fection, nor do we conceive the lofty image of a phantom ; but such as we really see him, so we have represented him and shall in future represent him, although within long periods one only may be found" ; he adds that Cato perhaps exceeded even the Stoic model ; e and with rising confidence he encourages men to nourish the expectation of seeing such greatness commonly realised ; for, he says, 104 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. "it is in consonance with the commonwealth of the human race, that there should exist something invincible, that there should be some one against whom fortune is power- less ". a And did not the first Antonines on the imperial throne, who as men and rulers followed no other law than that of reason and nature, almost make this dream a truth? It is only necessary to recall the wonderful character of Antoninus Pius, as depicted by his adop- tive son Marcus Aurelius. b And may not our hope almost grow into a cheering certainty when we remember how constantly this Emperor exhorted himself, in his high position "to remain simple, to be good, pure, earnest, unostentatious, a lover of justice, pious, kind, affectionate, and zealous in all good works; in a word, to become and always to be such as philosophy would wish to make hini"? c Not even the most inveterate opponents of the Stoics, who denounced their tenets, dared to attack the purity of their lives ; nay those who, like Plutarch, tried to ridicule their teaching, bore brilliant witness to their moral elevation ; d though it would, of course, be too much to suppose, that all who assumed the Stoic's cloak were distinguished by the Stoic's virtues ; for everywhere "there are many wandbearers, but few inspired"'. 6 'Well is it said in our great national epic', remarked Arvada-Kalama : "The triple staff, long matted hair, "A squalid garb of skins or bark, "A vow of silence, meagre fare, "All signs the devotee that mark, "And all the round of rites, are vain, "Unless the soul be pure from stain."' f 'But even if all this were so', cried Humphrey with increased eagerness, 'it would prove very little ; for grant- ing that you are right in attributing to the Stoics all the fine qualities you have so adroitly woven into a specious likeness, I must accuse you of a partiality into which a scholar ought not to be misled even by blind enthusiasm; THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 105 for it amounts to a deliberate suppression of an important part of the truth'. Heedless of the murmur of disapprobation with which the last words were received, Humphrey continued firmly : 'I do not hazard statements without being prepared to support them by adequate proofs. I will not dwell upon the many sophistical absurdities propounded by the Stoics, which have often and deservedly been covered with derision, such as, that the "wise man" is the lawful and sovereign possessor of everything; that the foolish are mad; that suffering, misery and bondage do not exist ; that all offences are equal in guilt and all virtues equal in merit, without any differences or intermediate gradations conceits which the so-styled philosophers of the sect have themselves called "paradoxes'". 4 'Let us even here be lenient or at least cautions', inter- posed Abington ; 'the central doctrine of Christianity was "unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness" ; b many of the noblest maxims in the New Testament might sound like "paradoxes" to those who, shrouded in worldly prudence, are blind to all-sacrificing Wisdom ; for "the foolishness of God is wiser than men". c "Willst du, Freund, die erhabensten Holm der Weisheit erfliegen, "TVag' es auf die Gefahr, dass dich die Klugheit verlacht. "Die Kurzsichtige sieht nur das Ufer, das dir zuruckflieht, "Jenes nicht, wo dereinst landet dein muthiger Flug." d 'Like Stoicism, Christianity allows only the one distinction between a godly and an ungodly life; there is nothing between the two". 6 That truth which is drawn from the depth of our inner nature, if measured by the ordinary standard of temporal interest, must appear paradoxcial. Not without justice Chrysippus observed: "On account of the exceeding grandeur and beauty of our doctrines, they appear to many like exaggerated fancies" ; f and Epictetus said to a disciple : "Those who taunt you at first, will afterwards admire you".* This was certainly the case of the 106 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. Christians. For who but the spiritually minded will fathom Christ's injunction, "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also"? or his affirmation, 'If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say unto this mountain, remove hence . . . and it shall remove' ; or St. Paul's saying, almost in the words of the Stoics, that the believers "though having nothing, yet possess all things"? or the maxim of John, 'Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer', or of James, "Whosoever shall keep the whole Law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" ? a or even the repeated utterances expressing the absolute inability of the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, at which Christ's very disciples were "excee- dingly amazed"' ? b 'Sophocles' Antigone also', added Hermes, 'valuing the unwritten and eternal law of the~gods more highly than the king's command, declared, when about to meet her death: "If I now appear to thee to do a deed of folly, I am, I think, guilty of folly only in a fool's eye"' c . 'I certainly did not expect', said Humphrey lightly, 'that the Stoic extravagances would find so many warm champions in this company. But this is of little importance to my argument, and I proceed to observe that your Stoic sage, that non-pareil of perfection, repudiated none of those detestable doctrines which he had inherited from the schools of Socrates, neither the community of women surely a hideous blot on your fair picture, admirably screened by the plea that "thus he could love all children equally after the manner of fathers" , cl nor incestuous marriages 6 , nor the eating of human flesh/ nor the super- stitions and abuses of divination, which the Stoics even confirmed and extended'.^ 'May I venture to remark', said Hermes timidly, and avoid- ing Humphrey's sparkling eye, 'that the reason why Zeno and Chrysippus, Athenodorus and Posidonius, vindicated to divination a universal existence was because they believed "that Providence was universal" ; while Panaetius and others THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 107 denied it all foundation ? a And may I be permitted to add', he continued, regaining his confidence, 'that most of the eccentricities with which the Stoics have been charged, were gradually corrected by themselves through the force of common sense and experience? Some plainly admitted that pain was an evil and health a good, that even property was not undesirable, that pleasure might without reproach be enjoyed as "a common boon", though not valued as "an end", b and that all offences and crimes are not equal. With respect to power, fame and the adiaphora in general, Seneca observes, that the wise man, who is worthy of them all, need not shun them, though he must not be anxious for their possession; and he need not abandon them, though he must be able to bear their loss without apang. d The same philosopher avows that the Stoics depart indeed from the prevailing views, but generally return to them by another path. 6 This was admitted by their ancient antagonists, though these blamed it as inconsistency/ Even in reference to the mode of living I beg you to allow me this one remark more , a moderate enjoyment was gradually permitted and recommended. True, Stoics loved to repeat those verses of Euripides which Chrysippus was wont to quote : "Mortals need but two things, the ground corn of Demeter and a draught of water ";& they faithfully maintained this old diet of "water and polenta", which satisfied even the wealthy Seneca, and with which, he said, he would challenge the gods to a contest of bliss ; h and they clung to the traditional habit of "a plank-bed and skin", which the great Stoic Emperor thankfully enjoyed; 1 nay, a few of their very rigorous teachers, such as Epictetus, believed that he only who denies himself even unsought enjoyments, "will govern with the immortals" like "those godlike men" Diogenes and Heraclitus. k But as a rule, they adopted, in these matters also, a judicious middle- course delineated by Seneca with excellent good sense: the Stoic, he says, should in his dress and all his habits carefully avoid everything that might bring his tenets into 108 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. contempt and repel people from adopting them; being directed to live in accordance with nature, he should not neglect his physical wants ; and while practising frugality, he should abstain from self-torture, and keep equally remote from worldliness and austerity'. a 'May I now', said Humphrey impatiently, 'at last be allowed to proceed to my principal point? The Stoic reprehensibly passed beyond the anterior schools in showing indulgence to no one, in considering no punishment too severe for the slightest offence, and holding himself free from any obligation whatever towards the animals "on account of their dissimilarity to men". b He did not con- ceive God simply as he has been described to us but and now I am able to make good my charge of a suppressio veri he believes that "the substance of God is the whole world and the heaven" in such manner that each fraction of the universe is pervaded by "a portion of God", each division bearing a distinct name according to its powers, such as Zeus, Hephaestus, or Poseidon ; while every human soul is a part or fragment of the world, which is one and finite and, of course, endowed with life and reason. 6 He holds, therefore, the most unequivocal pantheism and the crudest materialism, which make "God is the world" identical with "God produced the world". He conceives God both as the primary matter d from which all existing things were formed, and as the primary power that formed them; and he thus arrives at the paradoxical inference that "the universe is neither animate nor inanimate". 6 Yet in order not to leave the slightest doubt, he assigns the rank of "the first god" also to the ether or original fire sensibly infused into all created beings and things ; f nay he sets forth the bare definition: "God is a rational body", or "Intelligence in matter. "" It was therefore, a well-founded taunt that "the Stoic god has neither head nor heart" '. h 'Allow me a single word in self-justification', interrupted Hermes. 'My object was to describe the wise man of THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 109 the Stoics from the ethical aspect, and hence I did not include their views on physics or metaphysics. Pray, continue'. 'The ancient writers of the school', resumed Humphrey, without heeding the explanation, 'furnish, with respect to God, a long series of alternatives, from which they allow us to choose ad libitum. Seneca speaks of "that Framer of the Universe, whoever he was", whether an all-powerful God or incorporeal Reason, whether a divine Breath diffused with equal force through all things great and small or a Spirit hovering over the world extraneously, whether Fate or an immutable chain of closely connected causes.* No less helplessly does Marcus Aurelius waver between a Power that has regulated the world for all times by a single act of creation, and a perpetual pro- duction and annihilation of atoms ; between the anthropo- morphic gods of Greece and Rome, who freely interfere in the course of events, and an invisible Spirit who has no influence over the eternal order of nature; between a God and no God; between a God who concerns himself with the affairs of men, and one to whom these affairs are utterly indifferent; between stern Necessity, benign Providence, and blind Chance. b In a word, a pantheistic monotheism is confusedly mingled with a motley polytheism'. 'But is it not' said Hermes, 'a splendid proof of the Stoic's moral greatness that, in spite of these uncertainties, he never flinched in his allegiance to virtue, and that, even if he should have failed to recognise a ruling Provi- dence, he had in his own "dominant principle" an unerring guide all-sufficient to secure his well-being by fortifying him for his duties'? 'This rationalistic assertion', replied Humphrey, 'which is a mere evasion of my charge, may well be doubted. For what is the Stoic's "dominant principle" ? What is his soul? It is, by his own definition, "a body" divisible into eight parts, which if it be the precious soul of a sage of the Porch, for the souls of the rest of mankind 110 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. are not worth troubling about continues indeed after death, but only, like every other material substance, to perish in the periodical conflagration of the world, a or, according to a later teacher, to return "to its friends and kinsmen, the elements" 6 a noble kinship! Chrysippus thus compendiously expounds the Stoic's theology: "Zeus and the world equal man, while Providence equals the soul; at the universal conflagration Zeus, being alone imperishable, withdraws himself into Providence ; and then both combined continue to exist in the single substance of the ether" c surely, a wonderful system, as luminous as it is sublime, and an exquisite foundation of a sound morality! To complete his aids to self-improvement, the Stoic considers the only criteria of truth and the only means of judgment to be external "perception and sen- sation" ' d 'Not a few, however', remarked Hermes, 'added also "right reason"'. 6 'Thus', concluded Humphrey, 'the magnificent sage descending from his soaring elevation to grovelling materialism, is responsible for the fatal principles of a Hobbes and Locke; he is the true author of the tabula rasa of the human mind ; it is he who first taught virtually that "nothing is in the intellect that was not before in the senses"/ This is your "fragment of the deity": it is certainly not our "Divine image" 7 ! 'Let angry censors beware', said Attinghausen with a great effort at composure, 'lest all these alleged charges be in reality as many eminent praises ; for they strongly recall that famous cosmogony of the Stoics, which almost disputes with Kant and Laplace the palm of originality^, and even that monism or absolute unity of the world, which it is the glory of modern science to have established. How imperfect and elementary, compared to these notions, are those of the Hebrew sage Ecclesiastes ! He may possibly have had a faint glimmer of the uniform and unchangeable order of things, when he said, "I found THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. Ill that whatever God does, that shall he for ever, nothing can be added to it and nothing can be taken from it"; or -perhaps also when he declared that everything has its fixed and appointed season : a but of an intimate interchaining of the parts of the universe, of an inner and inevitable relation of cause and effect, he exhibits not the slightest appreciation'. *I will not at present', said Humphrey, 'argue these wide and somewhat irrelevant subjects; for I must advance to my concluding and most serious impeachment of the Stoics, namely, that they reckoned life among the "in- different" things, and thus not only authorised but encou- raged suicide. "Of all matters necessary to man", they said, "none is easier to him than to kill himself". b It was their particular pride to be true to nature: but nature binds everything that lives to life. If there were any consistency in their system, no occasion for the crime of suicide could possibly arise. For if, as they maintain, there exists a complete harmony between the laws of human life and the laws of the universe, the result would follow that man could never be brought into a condition con- stituting a material antagonism between the course of the world and his own destiny. But such perfect harmony, quite natural under a monotheistic dispensation, can never be realised under the assumption of a pantheistic autonomy of reason, which consistently leads to self- extinction. Yet life is a sacred trust, of which we have not the arbitrary disposal; life is a post, which we must not desert; life is a preparation for eternity, which it is iniquitous to shorten; life is' ... 'Yes, yes', cried Attinghausen impatiently, 'but what would become of liberty, of truth, of patriotism? what would have become of the Christian Church itself without a contempt of life? "A path for liberty"! Der Freiheit eine Gasse! my great countryman Arnold von Winkelried is said to have exclaimed when he threw himself into the dense forest of hostile spears. You believe, that "there 112 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. is no atonement without blood"; and we know that a signal progress was never achieved without self-sacrifice. The Cynics and Stoics were the great examples of the host of martyrs who sealed their convictions with their death'. 'Our ancestors', said Rabbi Gideon with an expression of contempt, 'hardly required such questionable models. That they could die for the truth, they proved in the age of the Maccabees, in the wars with the sanguinary Romans, and ever afterwards during unhappy centuries. The mother of the seven children was not more brave than Rabbi Akiva, or than Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon, who exclaimed when the flames were closing round him: "My children, I see this holy parchment crumble into ashes, but its Divine words rise uninjured to heaven" '. a 'To offer up our lives', said Humphrey, as if he had not heard the last speaker's remark, c for the highest boons, for the revealed truths and the glory of the Church, is a worship precious in the sight of God and securing the crown of immortality. But to throw away our existence for a caprice or in a fit of frivolous despondency, "to commit suicide out of pure ennui and discontent at a life overflowing with every possible means of indulgence"' . . . b 'The Stoics', interrupted Mondoza, 'certainly did not act thus. They regarded life as worthless when they believed they could, neither in the world nor in solitude, continue it any longer in congruity to their notions of moral dignity, that is, "according to nature" in the sense which they attached to the term; c and they only held themselves justified in resorting to the "rational departure", as they euphemistically called self-destruction,* 1 when they desired to escape from thraldom and ignominy, from the ruthlessness of despotism, from compulsory acts of baseness, yet also from paralysing -infirmity of body or mind. They were wrong. Their action was, in most cases, shortsighted impatience. It was flight, not combat. 6 For there are thousand unexpected ways of rescue from difficulties which despair deems insur- THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 113 mountable. Everyone leaves behind those for whom it is his duty to live, to work, or at least to feel; and even to the weakened frame and intellect a sphere of usefulness is possible, which may be most important for the completion of the great task of life or for the purposes of the whole. 'This conviction began to dawn upon the later Stoics themselves; Seneca exhorted alike to "a fortitude of dying" and "a fortitude of living", to a frame of mind equally averse to a passion for life and a passion for death ; a and Epictetus said that, if disciples consulted him on this point, he would answer: "Wait for God; when he shall give the signal and release you from this service, then depart to him; till then, persevere in the duties he has imposed upon you; . . . remain, do not recklessly withdraw yourselves" ; b and both acknowledged that there is hardly any condition or misfortune, in which a well-balanced mind cannot discover features of brightness or hopefulness, or which might not be made profitable for self-training. d 'Yet, notwithstanding all this, many of the eager Stoics were noble and heroic souls. An ever elevating spectacle will be the life and death of Cato, whose unbending mind alone, as Horace wrote, Caesar who conquered the world, could not conquer; whom Yirgil, the pure-minded, has placed in the pious retreats of Elysium as a lawgiver and a judge ; whose self-destruction even Cicero recognised as the inevitable necessity of a nature of unsurpassed grandeur; and whom the enthusiasm of Lucanus has pictured as one not born for himself but for the whole earth, the common father of nations, the spotless defender of right and justice, virtuous for mankind. 6 When in Rome every depraving vice was sapping the foundations of society and success was worshipped as the supreme deity, it was the Stoics alone who still believed in integrity, the Stoics alone who opposed their lives to unscrupulous violence or criminal ambition. They were convinced that not conquest, not wealth, not even art or refinement makes and preserves 1 14 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. a state powerful, but the citizen's inflexible morality. Their lot could not be otherwise than tragical; for they were preachers in the desert. They vainly believed that they could save the republic when the ancestral manliness and purity had vanished, and when "the question was not whether there should be despotism but who should be the despot". a Yet they did not shrink from the post as- signed to them by the deity that spoke in their hearts ; they boldly asserted it even against the apparent decision of fate or the gods "Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni" b than which few grander words have ever been uttered: for the sake of human right and human dignity they calmly suffered derision and death. Their spirit guided the stinging pen of a Tacitus, c a Persius and Juvenal ; d and even Horace, who in his earlier productions taunted some of their paradoxes, has yet, in devoting one of his finest and maturest odes to the description of "the just and steadfast man" who "is neither terrified by the lawless dictates of the populace nor the tyrant's frowning mien nor even by Jove's destructive thunderbolt", 6 unconsciously depicted a Quintus Sextius and a Julius Canus, a Thrasea and a Helvidius, a Musonius Rufus and a Cornutus. "Das Leben ist der Giiter hochstes nicht" life is not the highest of boons this was the watchword of all patriots, all great champions of mankind, and will remain our watchword as long as we are faithful to our nature and our duty'. 'The modern English poet', said Canon Mortimer, 'has well echoed our thoughts: "We must be free or die, who speak the tongue "That Shakespeare spoke, the faith and morals hold "Which Milton held"'. f 'This fills me with great delight', said Subbhuti warmly, 'for it reminds me of a fine saying of Confucius in his Tchong-yong. The true sage, he declares, combines equanimity and heroism, which never forsake him, whether he lives in a land where virtue or the divine Tao reigns, THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 115 or in a land where it is despised; not even there will he bend, but look bravely into the face of death"'*. 'But this subordination of life to yet more precious possessions', continued Mondoza gratified, 'by no means involves indifference to its value. On the contrary, "the readiness" imparts to our mind a secure and intrepid composure, which is at least akin to serenity, if to many it is not one of its choicest forms'. 'Whatever judgment we may pass on the adiapliora', said Gregovius, anxious to complement Mondoza's remarks, 'this notion was fraught with momentous consequence for the Stoic's life and mode of thinking. Our worthy friend Subbhuti has referred to the inconsistencies of Ecclesiastes with respect to the doctrine of retribution to the frequent instances of good men suffering and wicked men flourishing. 1 * In fact, the Preacher finally discarded the whole problem in utter perplexity as unfathomable by human wisdom. To the Stoic that problem did not exist. For all those boons which the Preacher had in view, were to the Stoic no boons, all those ills were to him no ills : he knew only one good virtue, and only one ill moral evil. Of the former, he believed, he could be robbed by no fate; the latter, he was certain, no fate could force upon him. The saying alluded to before, "Whenever you see a wretched being, you may be sure that it is a man", he met with the maxim, "Whenever you see a manly man, you may be sure that he is not wretched". d The gods, he said, have put it entirely into our power not to fall into any real calamity; for how can that which does not make a man worse, make a man's life worse? Universal nature, he argued, can surely not have committed so great a mistake as to suffer good and evil to happen indiscrimi- nately to the upright and the bad; but as life and death, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, happen equally to the upright and the bad, being intrinsically neither honourable nor base, they are neither boons nor ills. 6 A production like the Book of Job was impossible from the 116 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. Stoic point of view; Stoical is not even the sentence, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord;" nor the final result, "The fear of the Lord that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding." And the Book of Ecclesiastes? It would not be difficult to gather from this work a number of maxims which might appear to coincide with the principles of the Stoic. The Preacher recognises also the beauty of a tranquil mind devoted to a life of simplicity and labour. "Better is a handful of quietness" he declares, "than both hands full of toil and empty trouble"; "He that loves silver is not satisfied with silver" ; "The sleep of the labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much". a He insists likewise on purity of thought, cautious- ness of speech, and charity of deeds: "Approaching to listen is better than the offering of sacrifices by fools"; "Be not rash with thy mouth and let not thy heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and thou art upon earth, therefore let thy words be few" ; "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it again in many days". b And he also censures heedless laughter, rejects speculation as weariness of the flesh, and counsels practical obedience to God's commands. But is therefore the spirit of the Book, of Ecclesiastes akin to the Discourses of Epictetus or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius? Even these excellent maxims lose a great part of their value by being scattered, amidst frequent and palpable self- contradictions, in a composition which conveys the spasmodic lamentations of a restless discontent utterly foreign to Stoicism. But even if this better teaching were consistently carried out, would it harmonise with that of Zeno? Reference to one fundamental idea will suffice. As a physician, says the Stoic, "prescribes" for different patients different remedies with the identical object of curing them, so universal nature "prescribes" for men cer- tain afflictions in consonance with the order establisted by Fate, since the whole universe is one harmonious system : THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 117 therefore man must be satisfied with anything that befalls him, first because it was so appointed and interwoven with his destiny through an unbroken series of antecedent causes, and secondly, because it is certain to contribute to the good of the whole.* Is this at all in the spirit of the Bible? 'I should say. certainly not', cried Humphrey emphatically. 'But might not that pious resignation in the will of Providence, as exemplified in the Book of Job, and espe- cially in the two verses you have quoted from it', said Paniniwith some hesitation, 'be made to agree, at least in a certain sense, with the Stoic principles you have enunciated' ? b 'By no means', replied Gregovius ; 'but in order to answer your question fully, I shall have to make a few prelimi- nary remarks on' ... 'Pray', interposed Mondoza, 'let us not to-night enter into a new subject. The evening is far advanced, and our Eastern friends are not accustomed like ourselves in this respect far from following nature in the manner of the Stoics to turn night into day and day into night. You will, however, permit me to add a few words. Our esteemed Canon Mortimer has kindly compared me to a gentle shepherd; I would fain aspire to be at least a vigilant one. Yet my flock seems to-night to have roamed and strayed in various directions, though I trust always to good and wholesome pastures. I would, therefore, re-unite the flock once more and bring it back to the fold that is, I would, before we part, briefly recapitulate the course of our argument, as far as it has gone, lest we lose the Path and miss the Goal. 'In our meeting of yesterday, I proposed, in connection with the Book of Ecclesiastes, to make "the enjoyment of life" the subject of our conversations, and this evening an accidental description and eulogy of Greek art and habits furnished the welcome opportunity for advancing at once to the heart of the question. Our friend Hum- phrey considered that praise not only exaggerated, but 118 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. entirely undeserved, and, with great knowledge and a zeal evidently stimulated by some ulterior object dear to him, he endeavoured to prove that a cheerful view of life is neither discoverable in Homer nor in Hesiod, neither in Theognis nor in Pindar, nor in the works of the three great tragic poets, nor in the pages of Herodotus, and still less in the teaching of those philosophers whom he has so far characterised. Against the earlier portions of his remarks comparatively few objections were entertained, although it appeared to me that our friends Hermes and Wolfram have only postponed, not renounced, a full rejoinder. But a very determined opposition was at once raised against the depreciatory account and estimate of Cynicism and Stoicism; and what is the result of the discus- sion? It seems to be this: both systems are certainly grand in conception and design, but cannot be absolved from a harshness and onesidedness which do not permit a life either full or joyous; for they impart indeed to the character strength, but not elasticity; fortify the moral sense and partially occupy and train the intellect, but leave the feelings and the imagination unsatisfied. 'A commonwealth of Stoics would be glorious and magnificent, but it is impossible. For by placing fame, power, and wealth among the adiaphora, it banishes all those incentives to action, by which, as the experience of many ages has shown and thoughtful Stoics have themselves admitted, men are generally prompted and urged onward. The interests of such a society would be few, and stagna- tion would inevitably terminate in decay. a Chrysippus, in acknowledging that the wise man, when engaged as orator or statesman, must speak and act as if riches, reputation, health and all other temporal objects, were boons and not adiaplioraf virtually acknowledged the impractibility of Stoicism in actual society. Thus again the truth of the Hebrew philosopher's maxim is brought home to us that without "worldliness" man is unable either to measure or to carry out his aims and tasks. THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. 119 'Yet, we should be careful to notice, Stoicism involves three important elements of true happiness. It teaches universal fellowship and equality with an unrestricted consistency upheld by no other sect or creed: it enforces constant self-improvement and untiring exertion for the true welfare of others: and it aims at an equanimity undisturbed by passion and unshaken by events; while it supplies at the same time the means for maintaining this fortitude in assigning absolute sovereignity to reason, reducing earthly boons to their true value, and exalting man's dignity and freedom. These are not only strong foundations but essential ingredients of a serene existence. They realise what Wordsworth describes as "the homely beauty of the good old cause", that is, "plain living and high thinking". 'However, the Cynic and Stoic systems are not co-extensive with Greek culture or philosophy ; and our erudite Hellenists will no doubt take care to prevent in this respect mistakes or injustice. I foresee a struggle, but the minds, as Luther thinks, must "burst against each other" to produce the spark of truth'. Refreshments were again taken, after which most of the guests departed. Abington alone remained to speak with the host, while Hermes engaged in conversation with Humphrey. At first the latter was cold and distant, but Hermes' consummate urbanity soon conquered this reserve, and he was just observing that he agreed with Antisthenes' saying that we ought to be most thankful to our enemies, as they are the first to detect our errors, 4 when they were joined by Mondoza who, strongly commending this sentiment, remarked that he admired it especially in the improved form given to it by his favourite German poet: "Theuer ist mir der Freund, doch auch den Feind kann ich niitzen ; "Zeigt mir der Freund was ich kann, lehrt mich der Feind was ich soll"; b 120 THE CYNIC AND THE STOIC. but that he admired even more the maxim of the Stoics that "good men are friends even when they belong to different countries", and that therefore, though the one had his intellectual home in Greece and the other in Palestine, they would, he was sure, continue to enrich the discussions in Cordova Lodge by their instructive encounters : upon which Humphrey and Hermes separated with a cordial shake of the hand. IY. THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. THE next evening, many of the guests had already assembled and were admiring the splendid roses which Movayyid-eddin had sent to the host from Yeitch's famous nursery, and which, he said, surpassed in brilliancy of colour and richness of perfume those even of his own native Teheran, the home of some of the finest varieties, when Humphrey entered with a quick step and, instead of taking the empty chair by the side of Hermes, he sat down almost exactly opposite to him in the farthest window. This circumstance, Mondoza surmised, augured little good for the stability of the amicable alliance which he had flattered himself he had secured between his theological and his classical friend; and in order to remove the un- certainty at once, he turned to Humphrey saying: 4 We must indeed at least, not a few of us must beg your forgiveness for having yesterday so often inter- rupted you in your remarks on what you believe to be the current fallacy of ascribing cheerfulness to the ancient Greeks ; may I ask whether you intend continuing the argument, or whether we may now enter upon a general examination of our main subject'? 'I shall briefly continue the argument', replied Humphrey; 'but', he added with decision, 'I hope that, in this cos- mopolitan company, we shall be allowed freedom of dis- cussion. For the contention which I yesterday waived in reference to Cynicism, I now repeat in reference to Stoicism with increased determination and maintain that the later Stoics borrowed their best doctrines from Christianity and then surreptitiously foisted them on the founders of their sect, whose opinions are known to us 122 THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. only through the questionable medium of those later followers, as the original writings are almost totally lost'. 'But will not this enquiry', remonstrated Mondoza with some anxiety, 'lead us considerably away from our prin- cipal point'? 'Only apparently', replied Humphrey; 'moreover, the importance of the subject would even justify a digression. 1 am supported by the uncontestable authority of the Christian Fathers. Origen and Jerome do not merely point out a general resemblance between the Stoic para- doxes and some striking maxims of Christ, a but the one distinctly informs us that Epictetus was a Christian, the other, in common with St. Augustin, says the same of Seneca, who should be recognised as a Father of the Church and inserted in the "Catalogue of Saints" ; b while Tertullian and Eusebius assure us of the intimate relations enter- tained by Marcus Aurelius with Christian teachers. 6 We are, therefore, justified in regarding the Stoic writers as unscrupulous plagiarists of the New Testament.'* 1 'It is an amazing folly', cried Berghorn, 'to stamp Seneca as a Christian on the ludicrous assumption that the pro- consul Gallic, who tried St. Paul in Achaia and treated him with supreme contempt, sent to his brother Seneca some of the Apostle's writings at a time when the latter had hardly yet written anything; 6 or on the strength of the spurious, though early, fabrication of a fictitious corres- pondence between St. Paul and Seneca, the absurd triviality of which is a shameless libel on the fiery originality of the one and the eloquent persuasiveness of the other. f All that has been discovered in Seneca of Christian dog- mas, such as the Trinity, Confession, or the Paradise of Saints, is simply a proof of the incredible ignorance and obtuseness of purblind though perhaps well-meaning theologians. Seneca utterly ignored the Christians, probably because he knew 7 , and cared to know, nothing about their life or creed, and not, as St. Augustin supposes, because he dared not praise and would not blame them; while THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 123 he branded the Jews as "a most iniquitous people" wasting the seventh part of their existence in the culpable idleness of their sabbath.' 4 'We have the testimony of the Talmud', remarked Rabbi Gideon peremptorily, 'that Marcus Aurelius, the friend of Rabbi Judah Hannasi, was a secret Jew. True, there is still some Itttle doubt as to the identity of that "An- toninus" whom our Rabbins so often introduce, since Jewish historians of almost equal authority identify him, severally, with Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Alexander Severus, Caracalla, and Heliogabalus ; b but as Marcus Aurelius in his "Meditations" declares that "all men are children of one Father", and that "all are citizens of the same world- comprising state, and enjoy equal rights", what is clearer than that he is the "Antoninus" of the Talmud, since those maxims are evidently echoes from the Old Testament? Indeed we have almost a right to consider Zeno himself a Hebrew; for was not his native town, Citium in Cyprus, largely populated by Shemites, and did not ancient writers repeatedly call him a "Phoenician"? Not so preposterous, therefore, as has often been asserted, is Philo's view that Zeno derived the chief part of his wisdom from the Books of Moses, and that for this reason he deserves, like Cleanthes, to be called a holy man. More- over, Josephus plainly says that "the sect of the Pharisees greatly resembles that which the Greeks call Stoic" '. d 'Surely', said Arvada-Kalama, 'great and good must those have been whom all races and creeds are proud to call their own'. 'How is it possible', said Hermes, 'to attribute to Epictetus the least sympathy with the Nazarenes, when we remember that he characterised them as "madmen", 6 though his admirable "Manual", adapted and modified, was diligently read by Christians ! f Or how can we consider Marcus Aurelius as a friend of the Christians when we know that he sanctioned more than one sanguinary persecution; that in Rome not a few were cruelly tortured; that almost 124 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. under his eyes many, and among them the pious Justin, suffered the death of martyrdom ; a that, so far from being impressed with this heroism, he wrote in his "Meditations", slightingly, that man's readiness to die "must proceed from his judgment and not be mere obstinacy, such as is displayed by the Christians, and it must be carried out rationally and with dignity, not theatrically"'! 5 'The reason is obvious', replied Humphrey. 'The Stoic Emperor, accustomed to regard self-sacrifice merely as cold resignation, was utterly incapable of understanding the fervent enthusiasm with which the Christian martyrs went to death "glorying in the Lord". Moreover, the taunt has of late been fully returned by a celebrated historian, who properly describes Stoic philosophy as u an empty, yet perfidious play with hypocritical phrases", "a terminological chatter" made up of "hollow conceits", and the Stoics themselves as "bigmouthed and unbearable Pharisees", among whom Cato was conspicuous "as a fool of prin- ciples" and "a Don Quixote". 'And certainly', continued Hermes, a smile of irony having passed quickly away, 'no one in our days will found a conclusion on the famous story of the Legio Fiilminatrix said to have been composed entirely of Christians and so called because, in the war against the Quadi, their prayers called down a terrible thunderstorm which scattered the enemy, and copious showers of rain which saved the exhausted Romans ; d in consequence of which phenomenon, the Emperor, it is asserted, wrote a letter to the Senate, attributing his deliverance to the Christians and thenceforth recommending them to clemency and consideration : e a legion of that name existed even under Augustus j f the letter to the Senate has, from Scaliger to our time, been recog- nised as the composition of some ignorant semi-barbarian f and the second awful persecution of the Christians took place three years after the alleged miracle ; h whereas, on the other hand, there can be no doubt as to the authenticity of imperial decrees warning all, under penalty THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 125 of banishment, against the introduction of creeds calculated to excite or unsettle people's minds. 3 Marcus Aurelius was, therefore, a no less determined, and a much more dangerous, enemy of the new faith than the Epicurean Celsus, the earliest and strongest type of its literary opponents'. 13 'But do not all these facts plainly prove', said Gideon, 'that the philosophical Emperor inclined towards Judaism'? 'In his time', replied Hermes, 'Christianity was hardly considered as anything else than a sect of Judaism, and both alike were denounced as "pernicious and execrable superstitions", the diffusion and toleration of which, to the detriment of the national religion, was supposed to have incited the angry gods to visit the Empire with grievous perils and disasters.* 1 It was a common charge that the Christians "practised the feasts of Thyestes and the incests of Oedipus" ; current on all lips was the saying, "Rain is wanting, it is the Christians' fault"; when the Tiber overflowed its banks or the Nile did not overflow, when famine or pestilence ravaged, when a solar eclipse or an earthquake spread terror, the multitude, to appease the gods, at once raised the cry, "The Christians to the lions"! 6 'Fain would I, to conciliate our theological friends, admit at least a mutual influence between Christianity and Stoicsm; f but not even this middle course is open to us. In the two centuries before and after the Christian era, Stoicism was in the Roman world the most widespread and the most popular of all speculative schools. The "domestic philosophers", such as from the time of the Scipios were attached to the households of the great, and who, similar to the Christian private chaplains, attended to their masters' spiritual wants as moral guides, confessors, and comforters in misfortune or bereavement, were, as a rule, Stoics, among whom Areus of Alexandria, in the retinue of Augustus, has become noted in history/ And as the Stoics taught in the palaces of the rich, so the kindred Cynics preached to the poor and the idle in the streets, in the market place, in all public thorough- 126 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. fares, an ever active band of wandering "messengers" or apostles, reproving the reckless, correcting the profligate, and constantly keeping before the eyes of all the bright and spotless image of virtue. Such a life tempted, of course, the pen of the satirist, and it is difficult to resist the impression that Lucian, in pourtraying Peregrinus Proteus travelling about and enjoining a new code of morals, then imprisoned and issuing cyclical epistles, but always surrounded by an admiring crowd wearing the Cynical cloak, and at last, amidst a terrible earthquake, dying voluntarily for the good of mankind, yet walking and seen on earth even after his death it is difficult, I say, not to recognise in this delineation a travesty of the life, labours and death partly of St. Paul and partly of Christ. a 'Thus an impartial study of history compels the con- viction that Christianity, in its most essential tenets and conclusions, is largely indebted to the system of the Stoics ; and it is so indebted in the doctrine of the logos through Philo and the Alexandrian teachers ; in the ascetic severity, poverty and unworldliness of the Essenes, with their rejection of slavery and their un- Jewish partiality for celibacy ; b and above all in that limitless universalism which embraces within its circle all mankind'. 'But was not this universalism', said Panini fervently, 'proclaimed with unequalled force by the Hebrew prophets, from the earliest down to the latest, and cherished as the most precious of human hopes'? 'This is in a certain sense true', rejoined Hermes, 'but that great principle would unfailingly have been lost, if Judaism, which in the four or five centuries intervening between the last prophet and the origin of Christianity, was steadily narrowed and contracted, had not been fertilised from without. Moreover, I repeat, your remark can only be admitted with great restrictions. The univer- salism of the Hebrews, glorious as it was, never freed itself entirely from a certain national peculiarity and exclusiveness : it was in Jerusalem and the mountain of THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. 127 the Temple of the Lord that, in the Messianic time, the Gentiles were to join the Hebrews under the sceptre of a king from the favoured race of David ; a whereas Diogenes and Zeno, Epictetus and Antoninus declared the world to be their home, considered that, wherever they found fellow-men, they had found the abode of the deity, and deemed all good and wise men alike fit rulers of the world. b The Hebrew legislators never abrogated slavery, and even in their latest ordinances they sanctioned odious distinctions between Hebrew and Gentile slaves. And when in a subsequent period the doctrine of Immor- tality was developed, it was only by a few isolated and enlightened Rabbins that the idea of an equal par- ticipation of Jew and Gentile in the bliss of a future world was timidly and vaguely entertained'. 4 'But are the Christians less rigorous in this point'? asked Gideon sarcastically, and taking care not to look at the speaker. 'I think I have somewhere read that Gregory, called the Great, once wept and prayed for the soul of Trajan who had afforded protection to the Christians : in the following night, so he relates, he was assured by a Divine vision that the power of his supplications had delivered the good Emperor from hell, but that this favour was only granted on condition that he would never intercede for any other heathen'. 6 'It is neither my wish nor my duty to defend Christian intolerance', replied Hermes firmly; 'only Christians like Zwinglius, Erasmus and others nurtured by the humanising spirit of the classics, admit into their heaven upright pagans like Aristides, Socrates, or Marcus Aurelius; f and I rejoice to think that, under the same beneficent influence, the number of su<Sh large-minded Christians is increasing, because James's and Peter's humane and intelligent doctrine of justification by works triumphs more and more over Paul's dangerous mysticism of justification by faith' .e 'Our sages contend', said Rabbi Gideon, 'that if "the strangers of justice" have part in the other world, Anto- 128 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. ninus that is, Marcus Aurelius is at the head of them air a . 'Even Christ', continued Herrnes, 'reared as he was in a Jewish atmosphere, seems to have been content with a mission to his co-religionists only. I need not remind you that to the Syro-Phoenician woman who entreated him to heal her daughter, he replied, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of Israel; ... let the children first be filled, for it is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs" b yes, "to cast it to the dogs"; and that he consequently enjoined upon his disciples not to preach to the Gentiles or any city of the Samaritans, but to "go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" ; c nay that James declared in the assembly of the Apostles, that their appointed work was to "build up again the tabernacle of David which was fallen down", and to gather the Gentiles under its roof-, d so that in reality, if we con- sider, besides, Christ's affirmation that in all eternity not a tittle of the Mosaic Law shall fail, 6 the "universal Church" could have been nothing more than a moderately extended Judaism. But Paul', continued Hermes with a warmth unusual in him 'oh, that he had not elaborated that fatal dogma of justification by faith, and thus destroyed his own great work! Paul, born in Tarsus, a principal centre of Stoicism/ and apparently well acquainted with its tenets and literature^ recognised no "chosen people", but boldly declared, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Chris t", h and thus pro tanto opened to Christianity the gates of the whole world. In support of his principles he referred indeed to utterances of Hebrew prophets, 1 yet it is not impossible that he derived the chief impulse to his cosmopolitan exertions from the Stoics, and thus set the example to Justin and Tertullian, Clemens of Alexandria and Origen, and the other early Fathers who sedulously studied and freely used the works of Stoic teachers. Christianity, therefore, as represented THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 129 by Christ and St. Paul, is a combination, not quite organic, of a peculiar the Essenic form of Hebraism and a peculiar branch of Hellenism ; and as it unites the merits, so it shares the defects of both, which are a one-sided, however praiseworthy, striving after moral perfection and the "Kingdom of Heaven", with a deplorable neglect of public and domestic life, of art and science, commerce and industry, and every other pursuit or culture calculated to expand the mind and to enlarge the fabric of society that is, with an almost total neglect of everything which we at present call civilisation'. 'Be this as it may', said Mondoza 'and I confess, I cannot wholly deny the truth and force of these remarks I may be allowed to add one observation on a subject so fraught with important aspects and inferences. Stoicism and Christianity differ fundamentally in those very points which are distinctively characteristic of the Bible, and more particularly of the New Testament: for the Stoics do not hold the creation of the world, out of nothing, by a living and personal God; a they do not recognise any special scheme of Redemption through another's death; they assign predominant rule not to faith, but to reason, wherefore Paul warned his followers against "philosophy and the vain deceit" of natural religion, since Christ is the only true foundation ; b and they do not believe in the eternity of the soul and an after-life dispensing rewards and punishments. Sage and saint, "rational departure" and devout martyrdom, virtue and piety, fortitude and holiness these contrasts express the chief distinctions between Stoic and Christian. Erasmus says of Seneca, "If you read him as a heathen, he wrote like a Christian; if you read him like a Christian, he wrote like a heathen" : d this apt description may well be applied to the Stoics in general ; and though, in some of the ethical features, the Stoic wise man exhibits a remarkable and even startling resemblance to the righteous man of the Bible, not those traits even need have been copied or imitated from the K 1 30 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. Old and New Testament, since analogous precepts of morality are scattered in nearly all systems of religion and philosophy'. a 'We shall never do justice to this great subject', said Abington after a little pause, evidently absorbed in his thoughts, 'unless we remember the two fundamental truths, that the end of all historical development is Christianity, and that ancient history is merely "a prophecy heralding Christ". The pagan world, penetrated with the sense of its own insufficiency, conceived moral and philosophical ideas, of which it was able to foster no more than the first germs, and which were only matured by Christianity. It marked out aims which it had not the power to realise, and which pointed forward to Christianity as their fulfil- ment. This is the most manifest of all proofs ofateleological scheme in the education of mankind, the goal of which is the incarnate Christ a proof far more striking and cogent than any derived from an analysis of the ancient forms of religion. Stoicism awarded to man a dignity raising him to a giddy, artificial and untenable height: Epicureanism relegated him to an abyss testifying to his deep fall: but both were a preparation for Christianity, which was destined to restore the human character to its primitive and natural nobility. The Stoic's aberration in ethics followed with necessity from his aberration in physics. His pantheism, like every other shade of pantheism, rendered a genuinely moral disposition of mind impossible ; any truly ethical element it might involve, it adopted as if by chance and as an inconsistency ; and any vividly religious feeling it might display, it tolerated only by a logical confusion'. b 'By my soul' ! Attinghausen burst forth, rising involun- tarily, 'this is almost too strong. Pantheism is graciously admitted to be compatible with a high degree of ethical and religious sentiment; and yet, in the same breath, it is pronounced entirely incapable of all such principles. Mysteries like these are far above plain men of science. THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 131 I contend, on the contrary, that true morality can only be expected from true pantheists'. 'Hardly from those', continued Abington calmly, 'whose conceptions are evolved exclusively by the negative opera- tions of the intellect, or who place themselves in conscious opposition to the proclaimed theism of Christianity; though in a certain degree from those ancient thinkers who, unable to rise to one personal God, yet felt and acknow- ledged a deity pervading the universe, and expressed this unity by the indefinite term of "the divine"'. 'I would not allow even such a restriction', said Melville with great earnestness; 'for from the idea of the one infinite Substance with its infinite Attributes from "the One and the All" which is identical with the deity, results with unfailing necessity a law of ethics as lofty and pure as that idea itself; since all that exists is but a modality of the divine Substance the natura naturata is indeed identical with the natura naturans. I will at present not pursue this subject farther ; a but I could not sanction by silence an assumed hostility between pantheism and morals: I hold both to be inseparable, and in a great measure identical'. "Nor am I at this moment disposed', resumed Abington, 'to argue either against the hard texture of our current materialism or against the subtler tissues of Spinozism. Allow me, then, to continue my remarks. The idea of a Divine principle permeating alike men and all nature, led the Stoics to the just conviction of a fixed order to which everything must submit, and of a far-reaching law which indissolubly connects the development of man with the development of the Divine force in the universe; and in acting on this conviction, they found the possibility of virtue and happiness. However, as in following their pursuits, they had before their eyes no supreme aim, no common work to be accomplished conjointly by the universe and individual men, or to be carried onward towards completion by a self-conscious eternal Love and a teleological Wisdom; 132 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. neither their virtue nor their felicity could be real and genuine. For man's morality consists in his advancing, as a free organ yet with ready subserviency to the whole, the accomplishment of the great common task; and his happiness consists in a complete harmony of his single life with the general course of the world; which harmony, however, the Stoics were so entirely unable to attain that under certain circumstances they permitted the wise man to put an end to his life with his own hand. It is only Christianity which has established a supreme aim and a universal purpose in the idea of the Kingdom of God and its glorification by means of a living and active theism; and it is only Christianity which has discovered the indispen- sable consonance in which every individual should live with the general law of a moral order of the world. "Considered from a Christian point of view, this entire globe is designed that on it God might be revealed and sanctified through mankind ; Nature is designed with the object of revealing God to man; and man is designed so as to receive in his mind this revelation and to stamp his own Divine impress on the matter borrowed from Nature : in fact, Christianity discloses to us that the whole world has been framed with the view that it should be brought to the goal of perfection by visibly realising the Kingdom of God"'. a i Valketab-ilmubmi ) , said Movayyid-eddin devoutly, 'by the Book of lucid Instruction! 13 How profound is the intelligence of the learned Giours! May Allah sharpen my understanding and illumine me by their wisdom'! 'You may well be perplexed', said Attinghausen. 'The Stoics have been reproached with indulging in empty verbiage: all we have just heard is hardly more than soun- ding phrases. It amounts to the much quoted proposition: "Object and end alike of every man and of the whole universe is the glorification of God through the Kingdom of God". But what is the precise meaning of such terms? How can the universe be co-ordinated with man as contributing to THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. 133 the glorification of the Kingdom of God, unless it be in some manner endowed with life and consciousness ? But if so, we have virtually that pantheism which has been rejected with such contempt and horror. As Nature follows its own immanent laws, it could, at best, only glorify itself, if it were not so grievously imperfect and often so wildly and terribly destructive. And I much suspect that in the words, "This entire globe is designed that on it God might be revealed through mankind", there lurks the old pre- scientific delusion of the earth being the chief and central body of the world, since, as far as we know, men are only found on the earth. Is it necessary to refute speculations founded on exploded fancies'? 'Certain systems of thought are indeed irreconcilable', rejoined Abington ; 'therefore, without attempting a reply, I proceed to point out that the fundamental error of the Stoics their pantheism unfitted them to form a proper notion of personal individuality. Their world was devoid of that archetype of all individuality, a personal Spirit. Unable, therefore, to bridge over the chasm between the Personal and the Universal, they were compelled blindly to subject themselves to the unintelligible law of an im- mutable and iron necessity; and, when assailed by difficulties, they saw nothing left but resignation in the form of self- destruction. Again, the Stoics deduced everything from theoretical "knowledge", and would, therefore, have been incapable of finding virtue, even if their "knowledge" had not been spurious and false'. 'But is not "intellectual love", said Melville, 'man's most perfect, because most godlike, attribute'? 'Not to the Christian', replied Abington, 'whose love is the gift of grace and the fruit of faith'. 'Do not, however', said Canon Mortimer, 'high authorities acknowledge that the principle of noble intention, upon which the Stoics, in all "right actions", strongly insist as essential, almost coincides with the principle implied in St. Paul's distinction between "good deeds" and "deeds of 134 THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. the Law", the former having their root in a holy disposition gained by inward regeneration, the other resulting from outward discipline and therefore only apparently good'? a 'Certainly', replied Abington; 'but this regeneration must indeed be that of the Christian a regeneration flowing from, and accompanied by, those qualities to which I shall presently refer, but to which paganism was a stranger. 'It is true, that the Stoic rightly discriminates between .a legitimate dispassionateless or apatheia and an immo- vable insensibility; yet, while proudly imagining that he rules by his reason, he is constantly reminded that he is no more than the toy of an implacable necessity. Though at liberty to love his child, he must not mourn its death, because death ensues from the inherent ordinances of the universe in their inextricable connection. The Christian, on the other hand, feels his weakness and his dependence, and suffers; but he conquers the infirmity by the force of the Divine life that is within him; for he gratefully .accepts the suffering as the decree of an educating Wisdom .and Love, and he bears it joyfully as a sacrifice he readily offers to his heavenly Father. "While feeling his weakness, he feels his strength; it is not his own power by which he prevails, but the power of God". Humility teaches him in his griefs and trials that moderation which is the true apatheia] for this he does not gain by overweening reason, but by that submission to God, which rules his whole life; and thus the Christian apatheia is "the com- plete symmetry between the human and the Divine, or the true beauty of the soul"'. b 'All this would be most excellent', Attinghausen broke forth like an uncontrollable torrent, 'if you could prove it to be true. Prove it true, and I shall be the first to adopt it. But everything is pure assumption. The wish has been father to the thought. Because such views, con- ceived by feebleness and reared by fancy, permit you to live in ease and security, you have decreed them to be in- contestable. This is the action of children and cowards, and THE STOIC AND THE CHKISTIAN. 135 not of men. But we are no longer children. Paul said nearly two thousand years ago: "When I was a child . . . I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away, childish things". If Paul was a man in comparison with his Jewish contemporaries, he is in comparison with our age a child. "We are no longer under a school- master". We do not deem it our duty to "submit our- selves to our spiritual masters and pastors". When you say that the opinions you have stated are based upon "revelation", you say what to many of us has ceased to have any meaning. All proofs of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul have signally failed; to the man of science they are a priori inadmissible. Atticus said to Cicero who had recommended to him Plato's Phaedo, "While I am reading, I assent, but when I lay down the book and begin to reflect for myself on Immortality, my assent vanishes" ; a and when Laplace was asked by Napoleon, why he never mentioned God in his Mechanism of the Heavens, he replied, "Sire, je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothese". But intrinsically baseless is the fanciful contrast of a fallen world and a saving or atoning deus ex machina. And if you were at least honest! But you are not. The Bible censures Asa, king of Judah, because "in his illness he did not consult God but the physicians". b This is consistent and intelli- gible. But how do you act? You punish with fine and imprisonment a Christian sect for consulting, in illness, not the physicians, but God; although you have been assured that "the prayer of faith shall save the sick". c You have been enjoined, "Take no thought for the morrow", and taught to ask, "Give us this day our daily bread", yet you pru- dently adhere to the Preacher's admonition, "In the mor- ning sow thy seed, and in the evening let not thy hand rest". d In a word, you profess belief in the guidance of a higher Power, but you act as if there were ^neither a God nor a Providence. Your political and private life is regulated on principles diametrically opposed to those' 136 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. of the Old and New Testament. You extol the Kingdom of Heaven and long for empire on earth. You confess it to be your duty to "renounce the pomps and vanity of this wicked world", yet you not only deem pleasure desirable but luxury a social necessity. You have been told again and again how difficult it is for the rich to be saved, and you are hotly engaged in a race for wealth. You suspect and often denounce science, but you practically act upon all its ascertained conclusions. Till you demonstrate your dogmas, we must decline your fools 7 paradise; and trying to bear life as best we may in patient labours for our fellow-men, we find our hell in self-contempt, and our heaven in the certainty of partaking in the eternal life of mankind'. 'A brutumfulmen! Sound and fury !' muttered Humphrey with set teeth. 'No, no ! I pray 7 , cried Mondoza, who at last succeeded in checking Attinghausen, 'let us, I implore you, leave these subjects to calmer deliberation; they are too weighty to be disposed of by dogmatic assertions, however earnest the convictions which prompts them. May I ask our friend Abington to continue where he has been interrupted' ? 'Like the Buddhist, who has no Deity and no Divine lawgiver', resumed Abington placidly, 'the Stoic had no just consciousness of guilt or sin, and had therefore no sense of holiness or of communion with God; he could not be a true "priest"'. 'But', said Gregovius, 'I must crave permission for a few words we find in Stoic writings, especially those of Seneca, on this point many remarkable utterances, in form and spirit almost Biblical. Let me cite a few as specimens. "There is not one of us who is without fault". "We all have erred and shall trespass to the end of our lives". "We strive after virtue, while entangled by vices". "I have not attained health, nor shall I ever attain it; I am tossed on a sea of infirmities." "When I reprove THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 137 vice, I reprehend above all my own". And only this one more: "There is no man found who can absolve himself; and if anybody claims to be innocent, he can only do so with respect to witnesses, not before his con- science"'.* 'And may I ask', added Subbhuti not without some irritation, 'whether our learned friend has ever read the Confession of sins embodied in "the Liturgical Services of the great compassionate Kwan-yin", which are adorned by a Preface of the great Emperor Yung Loh'? b 'These analogies', said Abington with unusual hesitation, 'are mostly external and accidental, for a reason which I soon hope to make evident. The Stoic is ignorant of the great consummation for which this world has been planned, ignorant of the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, to which everything else must be made subordinate; he can, therefore, have no share in the universal-dominion reserved for that Kingdom; he is hence not a true "king", not truly a "judge", not truly "rich". In a word, it is only in connection with a Christian life, founded on Christian humility, that the truth implied in the Stoic paradoxes receives its significance and realisation. 'Further, the Stoic did not bear in his heart the principle of a Divine Love ; he was ruled by selfishness ; he was, therefore, not "free". His much-praised "power of self-determination" was an illusion, because it was involved in an irreconcilable contradiction to the law of universe. He was the sport of outward influences and forces, because he ever remained a slave of nature, and therefore of sin ; and his conception of sovereign liberty, which presumed to lift itself above the law of morality and to create its own law, consistently led him to the legalisation of self-destruction. True liberty is the privilege of the Christian alone, who, "while following the impulse of the will of God, guides himself by his own will, . . . and who, though he cannot escape dependence, makes this dependence itself a subject for the exercise of his moral liberty"'. 138 THE STOIC AND THE CHBISTIAN. 'Marvellous'! said Attinghausen; "Mir wird von alle dem so dumm, "Als ging' mir ein Muhlrad im Kopf herum"'! a 'Marvellous indeed"! added Asho-raoco, who had evidently not understood the meaning of the German quotation. 'How admirable a notion of liberty! How plain! how clear! Ah, your ability and acuteness might even reconcile Ormuzd and Ahriman, and thus relieve me from my heavy perplexity'! 'In the strongest possible contrast to the Stoic's egotistical and baneful self-exaltation', continued Abington calmly, 'is the other extreme of desperate self-annihilation, which cannot but follow from the submission to a cruel necessity absorbing all individual existence. Christianity alone carries out consistently the principle of a complete agree- ment between the personal and the universal law ; it teaches man that he fulfils his appointed task by acting simply as the organ of Divine Providence, and by maintaining his dignity through the glorification of God. It thus elevates him so high above the operation of all worldly conditions that, however narrow and depressing these may appear, they exhibit him in impregnable majesty; and it enables him. to understand, that true fortitude, equally unconquerable by life and by death, is manifested in self-preservation, as suffering and struggling Christians have testified under the most terrible trials. b The right direction is given to us by St. Paul who, in the midst of his toils and perils, wrote: "I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you"'. c 'Did not the noble Stoics also', remonstrated Hermes, 'intend, by their "rational departure", a "glorification of God", when they proved by a resolute deed that life was valueless without the Divine attribute of liberty? That they were clearly conscious of such a mission, cannot be doubted. To the question, why wise and good men must THE STOIC AND THE CHBISTIAN. 139 meet with misfortunes, a Stoic master replied: "That they may instruct others how to endure ; they are born to be examples' 7 .* When throwing himself into the flames, Peregrinus said: "I desire to be useful to the world in showing how death should be despised". b Indeed, the philosophers considered that God himself had assigned to them their post as preceptors, which they were not allowed to desert either in life or in death'. "'The santification of God's name", said Rabbi Gideon, 'was the avowed object of all Jewish martyrs; they died, not for their own fame, but for God and His holy cause'. 'This has never been questioned', replied Hermes; 'but how did the Jews act when they were not inflamed by religious passion? Ecclesiastes, living in a time of lawless oppression similar to that in which the greatest Stoics proved their valour, counsels deference and submission to the rich and the powerful; against outrage and degrada- tion he has only tears and an impotent wish for death; he can summon neither fortitude nor resignation. In his perplexed despondency, he, on the one hand, praises those as the most happy who have never been born, and, on the other hand, maintains that "a living dog is better than a dead lion", because the living have at least the one comfort of knowing that they will die. d The Stoic admits that life is valuable, but only so long as he can realise its highest objects. Or would Cicero, who quietly awaited his inevitable assassination, appear to us less deserving of respect or less matfly, if he had followed the example of Cato ? And did not even Eusebius and Jerome and other Christian Fathers, under similar circumstances, approve of determined anticipation'? 6 'True', answered Abington, 'but many more condemned it Justin Martyr, Lactantius, and St. Augustin, and also several ecumenical Councils. f The Bible deemed a direct prohibition unnecessary. The instances of self- destruction it records are few ; but the motives of Samson, 140 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. Ahitophel, and Judas Iscariot were contemptible or cul- pable; the instance of Saul alone bears an analogy to the cases we are considering; yet even Saul shrank from the deed and "fell upon his sword" only when his sole companion refused to lay hand on him. a Permit me, however, to resume the thread of my observations. The Stoic, in recognising a law common to the world and the individual, rose indeed to a certain universalism; but this universalism was not life, but bore the germ of death in itself; for it effaced every distinctive individuality, without which no buoyancy or progress is possible. By removing all particular differences founded on the statutes of reason and creation, it did violence to nature; it lacked that true and organic unity which, inwardly animated by a higher principle, yet leaves all vital varieties intact, and which could only be established by the life-giving breath of Christianity'. 'This objection to Stoic universality', said Hermes, 'it would, I think, be difficult to substantiate. As it was the rule in ancient countries to allow even to a subjected people its national and ancestral customs, no special character or development was suppressed or disturbed. Even the exceptional example of Alexander the Great confirms this rule. It is difficult to see why Zeno's hope that all men will one day live, like a united flock, under the rule of a common law, cannot be understood in the same sense as the very analogous saying of the New Testament that "there shall be one fold and one shepherd'". b 'But where', asked Abifigton, 'was the bond that could hold together the incongruous parts ? It was certainly not science, which was without a general or even far- spread influence. The result could only have been a confused and shapeless mass sure to crumble again into the original atoms. 'I come to another point. Plato regarded evil on earth as indispensable, because, according to his theories, there must exist the opposite of good, which cannot possibly reside THE STOIC AND THE CHKISTIAN. 141 with the gods. a The Stoics went farther. They were by their pantheism misled to look upon evil as a necessity in the harmony of the world: "the evil also", says Chrysippus, "is an integral part of the rest, for it happens in a certain manner according to the law of nature and not without ad- vantage to the whole ; and without it there would be no good" '. b 'So then', exclaimed Asho-raoco, 'the sages of Greece also recognise the necessity for Ahriman'! 'But does not that doctrine', said Mortimer, 'virtually coincide with the Biblical teaching which is most distinctly expressed by the later Isaiah: "I form light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things"? 6 And do not most men agree with the poet who considers "All discord harmony not understood, "All partial evil universal good'"? d 'True', answered Abington, 'but this applies only to the physical world and the incidents of life, not to the iniquities of man. These the Christian regards with a holy indignation, with "the hate of hate" and "the scorn of scorn" not weakened even by his brotherly charity; he deems vice and crime by no means useful, still less necessary for the harmony of the whole, and he strives with all his might to banish them from the earth. Indeed, warfare against per- versity is the Christian's chief duty, for he knows that sin arises from man's guilty abuse of the precious gift of liberty'. 'I think', said Attinghausen with some warmth, 'that the Stoics are treated by theologians with shameless in- gratitude. They were, of course, wrong in asserting the necessity or usefulness of moral evil. For if man is destined for virtue and happiness, why is he born with those vicious propensities which, as experience shows, render felicity and peace of mind impossible? And what advantage for the whole can there be in murder, plunder and tyrannical oppression? in avarice, envy, anger and hatred? It is enough to be sorrowfully aware that such deeds of wickedness are perpetrated, and that man is tor- 142 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. tured by pernicious passions; and we must guard and protect ourselves as much as lies in our power. But we should not, by a mischievous ingenuity, labour to de- monstrate that those terrible evils are really boons that dense darkness is light, that deadly poison is wholesome food. a And as regards the physical world, what advantage to the whole are earthquake, floods, drought, famine, de- structive lightning, hurricane, tornado, pestilence? disease, tormenting pain, premature death? Yet in thus distorting facts and falsifying reason, the Stoics surely meant to "vindicate the ways of God to man", or to prove that "whatever is, is right", b by establishing one of those aerial systems of ''-theodicy", which, from Chrysippus to Leibniz and from Leibniz to our recent optimists, form one of the most astounding phenomena in the history of philo- sophy, as they seem deduced from some imaginary structure like Campanella's Utopian "Civitas Solis", rather than from the stern world in which we live. Therefore, I am so far from admitting that the Stoics were not religious enough, that, on the contrary, I contend, with deep re- gret, that they made too large concessions to the superstitions of their time in vainly attempting to uphold the dogma of a uniform harmony belied alike by the life of individuals, the events of history, and the awful ravages of the elements'. 'Very different from the superb apathy of the Stoic sage', continued Abington, in no way disturbed by Atting- hausen's remarks, 'is the equanimity of the militant Christian. And that Stoic sage, how indistinct is his portrait in spite of the numerous traits which compose it! He can not, therefore, serve as a practical guide to morality ; his existence can nowhere be proved; he remains a dim phantom. Never- theless, by a sad but significant confusion, the Stoic, while still in the midst of self-education, unconsciously identifies himself with his ideal; and from this strange error arises an overweening apotheosis of human virtue, in which the Stoic sage fancies that he is raised above THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 143 all laws of morality and aspires to be himself a law to others an elated haughtiness which does not shrink from asserting a complete equality of the "good man' 7 with Zeus himself. 3 "As it behoves Zeus", he affirms, "to know his dignity in himself and his life, and to talk loftily while living in accordance with such high pro- fessions, so this behoves every good man, to whom Zeus is superior in nothing". b The Stoic could not pass beyond the limits of paganism. His portrait of the sage owes its origin to man's legitimate and irrepressible desire of be- holding all Divine perfection united in a concrete personality and in human form; c but in Christ alone has that grand figure been realised, because he is himself the supreme law, he judges, but is judged by none, and he alone can avail us as a complete type for the regulation of our lives'. 'The Christ to whom these remarks refer', said Hermes, 'is no less a creation of idealising reason than the Cynic or Stoic model depicted by Epictetus and Seneca. Whether the actual contemporaries of the great prophet of Na- zareth, who knew him as "Joseph's sou", held him to be sinless and faultless, the image of Divine perfection, may be doubted and is a question that does not here con- cern us; it is enough that, after his death, he was con- ceived as such and set forth as the eternal exemplar. d If he is deemed efficient for the practical guidance of life, why not the wise men of the Stoa, who are theoretical constructions founded upon at least as much reality and experience? 6 Was it necessary to proclaim one of them a god in order to qualify him for such a function? Was it even necessary to bestow upon him divine honours such as were bestowed upon Epicurus by the veneration of his disciples' ? f 'The many millions who follow the great Confucius', said Asho-raoco slowly and pensively, 'have never been tempted to make of him a god'. 'Nor we of Buddha', said Subbhuti hesitatingly, and then added sadly, 'at first'. 144 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 'Nor we ever of Moses', said Gideon proudly, 'and our Rabbins assure us that the reason why God Himself buried him in a grave known to no mortal was to pre- vent idolatrous worship and superstitious pilgrimages/ 'But this very point', said Abington in his most me- ditative manner, his head bent on his breast, 'constitutes an eminent, if not the most striking, superiority of Christianity. The pagans were incapable of conceiving a deity essentially distinct from man; to them the Divine was nothing else than the human intensified and exalted, nothing more than "the reflexion which man's reason, mirrored in the radiance of its own light, casts beyond the sphere of the human ". a The difference was merely a difference of degree. But the God of Christianity is a Spirit. He has no affinity with the human except that He breathed into man an immortal soul. He is a Being absolute, existing above and beyond all nature, incomparable, unattainable by any chain or gradation. Therefore, on the one hand, Plato and his successors, though consciously and zealously idealising Socrates, were unable to deify him, or even to endow him with a single superhuman attribute by which he might have been empowered to work, as God's messenger, for the weal of mankind in accordance with a large plan of teleological education as the fixed aim. b They were unable to achieve this be- cause the figure of Socrates, however noble and com- manding, rested on a human foundation and was not fitted to realise the full and living amalgamation of the Divine and the human. 'But, on the other hand, Christianity, to accomplish its scheme of redemption, was privileged to let God descend upon earth as the eternal source of grace and forgiveness ; for "the human cannot rise to the Divine, unless the Divine descends to the human" ; and "the Divine can never be perfectly understood and contemplated save in its unity with the human". This is the essential difference which sharply separates paganism from Christianity: in THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. 145 the former, the divine, expressed through the world of ideals, always remains to man's consciousness something extra- neous which lies in the domain of imagination and know- ledge; while in the latter, the divine penetrates into the sphere of religion and faith, and it accomplishes this truly and efficaciously by concentrating the multitude of ideals into the unity of the Logos, and then imparting to the Logos a concrete form in the flesh'. a 'I am amazed', said Gideon, who had listened to Abing- ton's speech with knitted brow and closed eyes, evidently making the utmost effort to understand its meaning; 'I am really amazed at this prodigious feat of logic. In plain terms it amounts to this: Paganism makes hardly a distinction between god and man, therefore it cannot declare a man to be a god ; Christianity regards God as a Spirit absolutely different from the attributes of man, therefore it is able to endow God with the form of a man. Common sense would expect exactly the reverse ; for is it not much more natural for man, who has in himself a Divine breath, to ascend and to become Divine, than for God, who has nothing corporeal, to descend and to become human? But what is poor common sense to the fathomless depths of Ecclesiastical theology? Yet supposing even, that the logic were faultless, is it such wonderful praise for a religion professing to be spiritual, that it conceives and requires a God assuming bodily form? Taunt the Rabbins as contemptuously as you may, in the whole range of their vast literature you will find nothing like this deceptive casuistry 7 . 'In Dante's words', muttered Panini, "'State contenti, umana gente, al gwm"'. b 'You share', replied Abington, 'a misconception of Incarnation very common among your co-religionists. Luther declared it grievous heresy to contend that "the Father or the Holy Ghost has become a man"; and he rightly taught that "Christ was born a natural son of Mary and the Holy Ghost, in every way and manner a 146 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. true man, like myself and everybody else"; a and a similar doctrine is very clearly enunciated in the second of our Thirty-nine Articles of Religion. b For in Christ "the two whole and perfect natures" are joined in one person by a union unio personalis that can be compared to no other combination, because the connecting bond is the person of the Logos, who blends both natures by an indissoluble tie: c Christ is at once very God and very man who, as the Apostle says, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but . . . took upon himself the form of a servant". d But while, as perfect man, or as the concrete realisation of a life holy, sublime and self-sacrificing, he has for ever become the distinct and historical prototype of the existence of every man according to his individual gifts, peculiar aims and special relations, he is, as perfect God, the eternally inapproachable prototype, which man should strive to imitate, but with which he can never confound himself; and thus he constantly teaches that humility which is the supreme and cardinal quality of the Christian, but is despised or disregarded by the Stoic. Every step in moral improvement makes the follower of Christ more lowly, the Stoic more defiant; the one more deeply conscious of his dependence, the other more strongly intoxicated with that presumptuous self-sufficiency which leaves no room for any genuine and meritorious virtue'. 'Marcus Aurelius is right', said Attinghausen, whispering to Hermes: '"The most intolerable of men are those who boast of their humility"'. 6 'There exists', continued Abington unfalteringly, 'no more prominent contrast between Christian and heathen. But in that feeling of dependence is joy, in this empty self-sufficiency nothing but melancholy resignation : for it is this point to which, in accordance with our common enquiry, my remarks have tended from the beginning, and for the elucidation of which I have, with your kind indulgence, ventured to enter into the essence of Christian ethics. THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 147 There is, I maintain, no true happiness in the Stoic's unreal life no true happiness in the dark abysses of his pantheism and materialism, none in the chilly altitudes of his audacious self-idolatry ; and whatever light or warmth it may have possessed in the times of paganism, has been eclipsed by the bright radiance of Christianity'. 'Is it thus', said Wolfram, not without a slight irony, 'that you account for the fact that, as Christianity spread, Stoicism vanished, and that Marcus Aurelius, whose reign probably witnessed the first collection of New Testament Scriptures, was almost the last great Stoic'? "*I certainly think so', replied Abington. 'That highly praised Emperor, who dreamt of "liberty and equality", and re-instated the people into their ancient rights, 3 despaired of establishing a superior commonwealth, because, as he complained, he was unable to effect that moral reformation without which nothing could be expected but servitude and debasement^ Marcus Aurelius was too much infatuated by the pride of reason to see that the remedy could not be supplied by philosophy, but only by religion, and too shortsighted to perceive that his own Stoic ideal, long since more than realised in Christ, had begun to effect a regeneration which was to extend to all mankind in all ages. The Stoa had gravitated towards the Christian standpoint; when this aim was reached, it had accom- plished its pre-ordained purpose in the teleological course of history ; and it disappeared by that process of absorption, which ever merges the lower in the higher phase'. c 'I admit the fact', said Hermes, 'but I must question the explanation. "While there was the faintest prospect of the recovery of a rational and a dignified existence, the noblest characters sought a refuge in the citadel of Stoicism, lived and died as patriots, and tried to re-kindle the flame of republican honour and integrity. But when, after the period of the excellent Emperors, all hope was extinguished; when, as Marcus Aurelius himself wrote, "faith and reverence and justice had fled up to Olympus 148 THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. from the earth", a and people constantly re-echoed the old words of Euripides, that Virtue is "but a word and a dark delusion of nocturnal dreams" ; b when all lands and nations groaned, without redress or relief, under ruthless tyranny, rapine and bloodshed: then even the most heroic courage was broken; the pithy maxim of Epictetus, "Bear and Forbear", lost its magic power ; d the feeling of self-reliance changed into a feeling of dependence, and Stoicism gave way to Christianity. Men renounced this world and centred their hopes in the next; they abandoned earthly boons in exchange for spiritual bliss. For as the state is, so are religion and philosophy: the monarchical EaSt developed monotheism, republican Greece and Rome maintained long a polytheism; the Court of the great king of Persia was the exact image of the Court of Ahura-Mazda in the celestial spheres; and the Christian "Kingdom of heaven" itself is but a human Empire raised to its ideal prototype. There was indeed an absorption of paganism by Christianity ; but in this process some of the finest and grandest elements of humanity were destroyed or weakened. The transformation was not in every respect a gain, and it is only by the revival of classical learning that the loss has been partially recovered. Greece and Rome restored to Europe the vital forces withdrawn or enchained by Judea and Galilee. Neglect the study of the classics, and you relapse into barbarism'! 'We seem certainly', said Rabbi Gideon with bitterness, 'to have relapsed into the "hot fever of Graecomania"'. 'It appears impossible', said Mondoza after a brief interval, during which most of the guests carried on desultory conversations, 'to dismiss the wider subject so clearly and so suggestively introduced by our learned friend Abington, without a few observations which he has almost rendered imperative by his earnestness and decision. It is true and I think the remarks I made yesterday prove my impartiality in this point that several features in the Stoic's THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 149 character are harsh, narrow, perhaps unloveable, but they are strong, manly and commanding; and it will always depend on the natural disposition of individuals whether they admire these latter or the opposite qualities : some will feel more attracted by Bossuet, others by Fenelon ; some more by Calvin, others by Erasmus. But the assertion that those qualities are not compatible with a proper degree of humility, seems to me scarcely just. Epictetus says of Diogenes: "How did he love mankind? As it behoved the minister of Zeus at the same time yearning for the welfare of men and obedient to the behests of God". a It would be easy to quote from the Hebrew prophets, the Apostles, the Christian Fathers and later divines numerous utterances conveying precisely the same combination of personal effort and conscious submission under a Divine guidance that combination which con- stitutes a modesty neither destructive of energy nor of self-respect. How many sad errors and abuses would have been avoided in the Christian Church itself if both elements had always been heeded alike upon this subject I will not at present dilate. But I must urge grave objections against the very foundations upon which our friend Abington has raised his finely designed structure. "The end of all historical development", he contends, "is Christianity". What is "Christianity"? Is it the teaching of Christ or of Paul ? of Paul or of James and Peter? Is the Christianity of Athanasius identical with that of Arius? that of Jerome identical with that of Luther? that of Wesley kindred to that of Arnold? Which, then, of all these and many other forms, is the "end of historical development"? By each new progress that end is obviously removed into greater distance; it is no fixed point, but the illimitable horizon ever near yet ever unapproached. When one development of Christianity has been reached, it becomes the starting point of another, perhaps materially different phase, which is still Christia- nity. Nor are the modifications always caused exclusively 150 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. by an organic advancement from within, but they often result from influences not only extraneous but foreign. St. John's elaborate doctrine of the Logos was derived from the Hellenistic speculations of Alexandria ; Scholastic theology was thoroughly tinctured by a very complex form of heathen philosophy; Luther's liberal concessions to reason were stimulated by the remarkable discoveries in the exact sciences. Christianity is the powerful stream which, absorbing in its course numerous rivers and rivulets, is constantly swelled and widened; and thus it coincides at last with civilisation which is the real, but never really attained, aim of historical development.* 'In this sense, yet in no other, we may assent to our thoughtful friend's second contention, that the entire history of antiquity was only "a prophecy heralding Christianity", or pointing towards it as its realisation. In as much as the founders of the chief schools of Greek philosophy preceded by centuries the earliest originators of Christianity, it was not only possible, but probable and almost necessary, that the great and fruitful ideas they had promulgated should, in that long interval, be enlarged, deepened and refined, and that, therefore, the form given to them in the New Testament should be better fitted for the conquest of the world than the original Hellenic conception, especially as, in that form, they were not a little ennobled by the spirit of Hebrew prophecy. The blossoms of Stoic wisdom, which grew on the great tree of knowledge, had in the course of ages been matured into fruits, which, in their turn, require other ages to be mellowed, but will probably never attain perfection, to refresh and to satisfy struggling humanity. "Die Zeit ist eine bliihende Flur, "Ein grosses Lebendiges ist die Natur, "Und alles ist Frucht und alles ist Samen". b 'Thus Christianity, though undoubtedly representing a higher stage of culture than that of Greece or Rome, is a term not implying finality. But I trust', concluded Mondoza, THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 151 speaking in a graver tone than was his wont, 'I shall be par- doned if I add that Christianity, by raising its founder into an incarnation of the Eternal, not only excluded from its community the stricter monotheists, but, when these refused to forswear the One God of their fathers, considered it its duty to consign them to the flames of the stake and still more terrible deaths, or cruelly to expel them from sunny climes and happy homes'. A deep melancholy had, during the last words, spread over Mondoza's features, and he seemed to suppress some additional observations from fear of being betrayed into exhibiting yet greater emotion. 'I can well understand your grief, said Hermes after a few moments, 'when I remember the misery your own ancestors suffered in the land of Philip and Alva: but are not these names sufficient to remind us that the Christians raged no less fiercely and mercilessly against each other? that the vaunt of Christianity being a religion of all-embracing brotherhood under the banner of God, became a hollow and blasphemous mockery'? 'Let the dark past', said Mondoza, recovering his serenity, 'be forgotten, as its crimes have long since been forgiven, but let us not forget the warnings it inculcates. Christianity, I am thankful to know, has advanced to that toleration which permits all creeds to live and to work peacefully side by side. But we should not be lulled into a dangerous sense of security. The aberrations of the human intellect, the vagaries of human fancy, are incal- culable and, I am afraid, ineradicable. They are possible even in our age of high scientific progress; for even in our days the pernicious principle, "I believe because it is aburd", is echoed in authoritative maxims like these: "The paradoxical is the criterion of the Divine", or, "A religion of Divine revelation must have paradoxes"; 8 whereas in truth the safest criterion of the Divine is that plainness which is felt by all and understood by all, and the most blissful religion that which has no "mysteries". 152 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. Dangerous to society is not that rationalism which is so often misjudged because it is occasionally misused, but any system resting on the command, "Crucify your reason" ! Therefore, whenever we are in peril of deserting the broad and luminous path of intelligence and moderation, we should, in sorrow, not in anger, recall to our minds a religion of love turned by abstruse dogmas into an instru- ment of persecution and carnage perhaps more fearful and more destructive than any that has been recorded in the annals of mankind'. After a brief pause, Hermes said, addressing Mondoza : 'I cannot refrain from expressing to you my acknowledgments and gratitude for having, in the earlier parts of your remarks, vindicated to the Stoics that true modesty which alone deserves the name of a virtue. There was surely no supercilious self-righteousness in Seneca, who advised, "Think ill of yourself in your heart", and who looked upon himself not as a physician, but as a patient who had culpably caused his . disease ; a nor in Epictetus, who declared that the beginning of all philosophy is our sense of being weak and imperfect in the most essential things, b wherefore we should watch our own nature like an enemy laying snares to our safety ; c and surely not in Marcus Aure- lius, to whose mind the feeling of moral frailty was ever present.* 1 Nor can arrogant vaingloriousness have been a characteristic of men who acted upon the admonition, "You must not wish to appear to possess any knowledge, and if others have a high opinion of you, mistrust yourself" ; e nor want of humble resignation a fault of those who, in case of any accident, never complained, "I have lost a boon", but accustomed themselves to say, "I have given the boon back"/ who, in fact, considered it the proof of a well-trained mind, on every occasion meekly and contentedly to ad- dress all-governing Fate: "Give what thou pleasest, take back what thou pleasest"! g which sentiment has even by zealous divines been allowed to breathe the spirit of the THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 153 Bible, though I think it is stronger and manlier. 8 As my remarks have led me to this comparison, may I presume to engage your attention for a few moments longer and extend the analogy to those two points which are generally described as specifically and distinctively Christian universal charity and love of the enemy? I do not hesitate to contend that in both respects Christianity is no more than the echo of paganism. Antisthenes declared four hundred years before Christ literally: "It is royal to do good, although you are abused for it" which is identical with the Apostle's "royal law" of love. b Marcus Aurelius, confirming the apho- rism, said: "It is peculiar to man to love even those who injure him" ; c "The best mode of taking revenge upon an ad- versary is not to act like him" ; d and which is one of the admirable nine precepts prized by him as the gift of the heavenly Muses "True benevolence is invincible; for what can the most reckless man do to you if you preserve towards him a kind disposition" ? e Nay, the Stoics aspired to pass even beyond Christ's precepts. To the question, "What shall the wise man do when he is smitten on the cheek"? the answer was given: "What Cato did in such a case; he did not fall into a passion, he did not take revenge for the insult, he did not even pardon it, but protested that he had suffered none; which was more magnanimous than if he had expressed forgiveness"'/ 'We are told', said Arvada-Kalama, 'that he who does good to those who have abused and insulted him, is the truly twice-born man'. g 'Even so', said Subbhuti; 'for Buddha enjoins: "A man who foolishly inflicts upon me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me" ; for, as the Maitri or the great meditation of kindness says, "though his words and his actions be bad, his mind may be free from evil" ; and if he has but one good quality, we should think of this, and forget all his faults. And how truly beautiful are the words we are taught daily to repeat: 154 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. "May every being experience happiness, peace and enjoy- ment! ... As a mother protects her child, the child of her heart, so let immeasurable benevolence prevail among all beings! . . . Let these dispositions be established in all wherever they may be, so that every place may be con- stituted an abode of holiness"'! 3 'But the brotherly love of the Stoics, and of the heathen in general', said Humphrey with even more than his usual dogmatism, 'was nothing but selfishness. I will at present not speak of the Buddhists, who bless by honied words and not by acts, who take but do not give, who are an overflowing fountain of mercy receiving back all streams within themselves, and whose religion is "a mere code of proprieties, a mental opiate, a venal traffic in merit, a system of personal profit "'. b 'How can we be selfish', said Subbhuti perplexed, 'as our Master constantly denies that there is any self, neither an inferior or finite self, nor a superior or infinite self? 'But as regards the Stoics', continued Humphrey uncon- cerned, 'in assuming the closest connection between all parts of the universe, they cherished the hope that, in doing good to others, they were useful to themselves, and hence they made self-love, as Epictetus distinctly says, the principle and foundation of charity'. 'And so did the Old Testament', said Gregovius 'in commanding, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"; and so did Christ and the Apostles in repeating that command as the chief test, if not as the sum, of all righteousness'. 'Yet the ancients', said Hermes, 'were by no means blind to the dangers of self-love. It is indeed right, observed Plato, that everyone should be his own friend; but as, by undue excess, self-love has a tendency to degenerate into egotism, it is often the cause of every sin. d And as to Epictetus, no one will seriously accuse of mean selfishness a philosopher whose ethics were based on the conviction that every man is a child of God like ourselves, THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 155 and hence claims our affection and forbearance. 3 The judgment of many has indeed been misled by outward appea- rances. The sect of the Stoics, remarks Seneca, is by those who do not know it often described as "harsh" and "stern" 5 , but "in reality none is kinder and gentler, none more philan- thropic or more zealous for the common weal, so that it seems to be their only object to benefit and help not themselves merely but to do good to all and every one". c And this law of benevolence was also applied to slaves with an intense sympathy not even surpassed in the New Testament. 4 "Slaves", said Chrysippus, "are onlypermanent hirelings"; 6 and as St. Paul commanded, "Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven", with whom "there is no respect of persons" 5 , so said Seneca, at a time when the Roman slaves, vast in numbers, were help- lessly at their masters' mercy for life and death: 8 Slaves are "men, comrades, friends" ; they have the same origin as their masters, enjoy the same heaven, breathe, live and die like them; and moreover, their bodies only, not their souls, can be brought into subjection; 11 they should, therefore, not only be treated with kindness, but be instructed in all profitable knowledge, be admitted to the conversation, the councils and the social intercourse of the family, so that they may be held by the ties of love, not of fear'. 1 'We have heard much of the moral indignation', said Attinghausen, 'in which it is the pious Christian's duty and privilege to burn against evil-doers; will you telL us, how this subject was viewed by the heathen Stoics' ? 'The point', replied Hermes, 'is admirably treated by Seneca in a full and elaborate exposition. Starting from the maxim of Theophrastus that "it is impossible for the good not to be wroth with the bad", he maintains that the virtuous ought to feel neither anger nor hatred against the erring, but, remembering his own imperfections, try to improve and reclaim him by a paternal spirit of com- 156 THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. bined severity and love. a Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius speak in the same generous sense and in terms even more explicit. 1 * Is this aristocratic or "superb" apathy? Is it not, both morally and practically, at least as excellent as that precept of the Pentateuch, which I admit to be very beautiful: "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart; thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbour, so that thou bear not sin on his account"'? 6 'Whatever assertions', said Berghorn positively, 'may be hazarded by onesided panegyrists, the incontestable fact remains that Marcus Aurelius was not only a Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, but the offspring and product of a Christian age'. 'We have this proverb', said Movayyid-eddin, 'appro- vingly: "Men bear a greater resemblance to their time than to their fathers"'. d 'In those very points', continued Berghorn, 'which showed Marcus Aurelius to have passed beyond the old Roman spirit and beyond original Stoicism, he approached Christianity most remarkably and manifestly especially in his inward piety, his unmurmuring submission ta the will of the deity, his deep sense of the vanity of all things temporal, his conviction of man's weakness and sinfulness, his constant care for the purity or salvation of his soul, in the spotless probity of his life, in a scrupulous devotion to all duties great and small, in a boundless philanthropy including even the unworthy, the treacherous and the ungrateful: all these are traits which shone conspicuously in the con- duct of the primitive Christians'. 6 'It is a mistake', replied Hermes, 'which is frequently made, to assume an essential difference between the earlier and the later Stoics. Their system, by its nature, admitted little change or development. Seneca, yielding to the exigencies of his political and social position, may partially and in subordinate matters have relaxed the traditional severity; but the moral tenets of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are virtually identical with those of Zeno and THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 157 Chrysippus; and among all the qualities that have just been enumerated there is not a single one that has not been taught and insisted upon by the founders and oldest adherents of Stoicism, however alien some of them may be to the ancient Roman's tone of mind'. 'I am not prepared to admit', cried Humphrey, 'what our ingenious Berghorn postulates. "The divergencies of Marcus Aurelius, as well as of Seneca, from the spirit of Christianity are at least as remarkable as the closest of their resemblances ". a For I must, once for all, pro- test against an idol worship which threatens to become general and mischievous. What is it that we really find in the Emperor's perpetually lauded Confessions, which some have described not merely as pure but as holy? We see in them a pedant entirely incapable of emancipating himself from the arid wisdom of the school; a brooding casuist who, with the painful self-complacency and assurance of his sect, enunciates ex cathedra maxims and reflexions vague and fragmentary, conveying a frigid morality never relieved by a breath of individual sentiment or thought barren directions of a fastidious pedagogue without any practical tendency or effect" 3 . 'A few words in answer must suffice', said Hermes in the tone of one who feels that he needs all his powers of self-restraint. 'The practical value of Marcus Aurelius' principles was tried and ever found effectual, not in the idyllic tranquillity of a rural ministry, but in the tur- moil of imperial duties embracing a large part of the globe during a reign signalised by unexampled and almost uninterrupted convulsions, wars and disasters. Practical ethics, always characteristic of the Stoics, was by their later followers cultivated with an almost absolute exclusion of speculation. As the sheep, says Epictetus, do not show to the shepherds the grass to prove to them how much they eat, but digest it and then give to their master wool and milk, so must well-digested science and theory become evident by good and useful works. 158 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 'And with regard to the principles themselves, I will only quote three which are in close connection with the centre of our discussion. 'The first: u To enjoy life means to join one good deed to another so as not to leave the smallest interval between". 8 'The second: "Man's cheerfulness results from perfor- ming the proper duties of a man, the chief of which is benevolence towards his fellow- creatures ". b 'And the third : "In this above all take delight and seek recreation in passing from one' act of goodwill to another act of goodwill, with your thoughts directed to God'V 'Is this not more than the frigid or barren declamation of a pedant? "There is nothing great in human affairs unless they be surveyed with a large mind". d And is it just to assert that the votaries of such a philosophy, however wise, tender and blameless, must necessarily be of an intense and deep sadness, vainly yearning for that "peace of God which passeth all understanding", and restlessly stretching out their arms for something beyond? 6 Kings praised and envied Zeno's "perfect happiness"/ and Marcus Aurelius maintained that "a man who in all things follows reason, can never be otherwise than collected and cheerful" '. 'And is not', remarked Attinghausen, 'Seneca perhaps right when he says, that "True joy is an earnest matter, and is not felt most by those who laugh most",? h 'Moreover', he added with great seriousness, 'has there ever been a truly eminent man without a tinge of deep sadness in the recesses of his heart? "Wer erfreute sich des Lebens, "Der in seine Tiefen blickt"'? 1 'But', resumed Humphrey, 'Marcus Aurelius himself confessed that his disposition was such that, without special and constant efforts, he might have committed the most grievous offences ; k and as a constitution requiring incessant physic, must be unsound, so also a mind needing perpetual self-admonition'. THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 159 'The character', said Mortimer, 'may thus lose in simple beauty, but it gains in heroism. Noble is a great man's struggle with adversity, nobler the struggle with his own failings and passions. Are we not also commanded, "Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation"' ? 'And yet', continued Humphrey with renewed eagerness, 'this model sage who "passed from one act of charity and goodwill to another", has in ecclesiastical history written his name with blood as the author of two of the most inhuman persecutions suffered by the Christians. Annulling the law of Trajan who had allowed no action on the part of the judges without the previous testimony of an unsuspected witness, he permitted inquisitorial impeachments and indiscriminate massacres'.* 'Indeed', said Abington with his usual absorption in his subject, 'the Stoic aversion to a faith that could not be proved by arguments of reason and fortified itself by the hope of an eternal life, was in Marcus Aurelius intensified into "a philosophical fanaticism of logic inevi- tably engendering intolerance and thirst of persecution"'. 11 'It would be impossible', said Hermes calmly, 'to declare the Emperor guiltless. I will not even shelter him under the excuse which adversaries no less than apologists have considered valid, that the horrors were committed, without his knowledge, by the arbitrary recklessness of his Governors or Proconsuls and the irrepressible bigotry of the heathen populace. Trustworthy records of history preclude such a plea. c But his deplorable policy can at least be compre- hended and in a certain sense extenuated. The Christians were constantly accused to him of breaking and defying the public laws, and especially of refusing the customary homage to the statues of the Emperors. Steadily increasing in numbers, they formed associations always regarded by Roman statesmen with the utmost suspicion ; d and evidently preferring these religious unions to the political organi- sations, they seemed to constitute an imperium in imperio distrusted as a dangerous step towards the dissolution 1 60 THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. of society. Though incessantly admonished by the authori- ties to conform to the ordinary usages of the Roman world, they persisted in their combinations and meetings a ; and therefore, even independently of their doctrines, they appeared culpable on account of their "stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy" b . Christianity, at that time little known or understood, and branded as "atheism", was con- founded with every kind of foreign superstition, and, often hardly distinguished from Judaism, was looked upon as a contemptible branch of a most detestable religion. Many Christians, impelled by an ardour for martyrdom, exhibited an exaggerated and wild enthusiasm which even con- temporary Fathers stigmatized as frenzy, and which the Stoic Emperor could not regard otherwise than as theatrical display. d In spite of his philosophical principles, Marcus Aurelius preserved a large fund of the old Roman piety, which he was particularly anxious to foster among the people, as the Roman religion was inseparably entwined with the Roman polity, and it was hardly possible to shake the one without undermining the other. As all the great oaths of state were sworn by the national deities, and all public enterprises of importance were inaugurated by offerings and supplications, he declared not only disbelief in the gods but neglect of prayer and sacrifice to be wicked. 6 "The gods", he even said, "are visible to our eyes"/ He was guided by dreams. g The appearance of the plague in Italy and the threatening danger of war were taken by him as warnings from the gods demanding the faith- ful restoration of the ancient worship. For this purpose, to which he subordinated even his military plans, he summoned to Rome priests from all parts of the Empire, caused the town to be purified and expiated in every way both by Roman and foreign ceremonials, and prepared to the gods lectisternia for seven days. h If these points are kept in mind, they will impart additional weight to the plea which appears to me the most forcible namely, that the Christians, unlike the heathen, regarded every THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 161 religious conviction except their own as execrable super- stition, and denounced every other religious worship as diabolical delusion. This intolerance was unprecedented in the Roman commonwealth, which readily recognised every foreign nationality and every strange creed; and it naturally provoked intense and bitter hostility. 3 The Roman authorities, indifferent to the religious doctrines of the subdued nations, simply enforced obedience to the civil laws. Of this policy even the New Testament offers several con- spicuous proofs in the proceedings of Pontius Pilate towards the Pharisees and Christ ; b of Junius Gallio, c Seneca's elder brother, towards St. Paul and the Jews in Achaia; d and of Festus andAgrippain Caesarea towards the same Apostle. 6 Although the Christians constantly protested to be good citizens/ Christianity was in truth incompatible with the permanence of the Roman state. It beheld in the pagan Empire an ungodly power, to be obeyed indeed, but ripe for destruction, which, as was ardently hoped, would soon be consummated at Christ's expected re-appearance in the clouds of heaven. When- ever the Christians believed the ordinances of men to be in conflict with the ordinances of God, they evaded or defied the former, not by rebellious violence, but by a passive and invincible resistance unto death; and they eschewed as much as possible military service, public offices, and lawsuits before the ordinary tribunals, because they were unwilling to swear the prescribed oaths.s 'Yet, in spite of all this, Marcus Aurelius addressed to the General Assembly of Asia a very moderate Rescript, which he caused to be published in Ephesus, probably in the ninth year of his reign (A. D. 169): he warned the authorites not to instigate the Christians to tumult by false accusations, nor to afford to them opportunities for dying as triumphant martyrs of their God ; he repeated the injunctions of his predecessor not to trouble them unless they made attempts against the Roman government; and he added that, if anyone was arraigned merely on account M 162 THE STOIC ANB THE CHKISTIAN. of being a Christian, he was to be absolved, and his accuser punished. a Of a "fanaticism of logic" we can find no trace whatever in a man so calm, mild and temperate. The material interests of the Empire were the only object of his solicitude'. 'It is satisfactory to find', said Humphrey, this time rather disconcerted, 'that even so ardent a champion is at least compelled to admit that the pagan prince, in spite of his philosophical enlightenment which, however, did not prevent him from seeing the gods with his own eyes acknowledged the necessity of prayer'. 'Yes', replied Hermes, 'but of what kind of prayer ! True, he once said, that if a man wished to entreat the gods, he should do so "simply and nobly", after the model of that Athenian invocation, "Send rain, send rain, Oh dear Zeus, upon the fields of the Athenians and upon the plains" ! b thus ascribing to prayer, in the usual childlike manner, a positive effect. But in one of the finest parts of his Reflections he develops a theory of supplication which not even the most advanced philosopher or naturalist in our age need hesitate to adopt. Instead of anxiously petitioning, he says, for the possession or preservation of specified boons, we should rather ask for that force of character which does not need those boons for happiness. To the anticipated objection that for this no prayer is required as it lies in our own power, he replies: "Is it not better to use with liberty what we can achieve our- selves, than in slavery and mean subjection to crave for what is unattainable" ? c And then he confidently invites a trial of the comforting efficacy of such practical supplication'. 'A pride', cried Humphrey, 'almost amounting to blas- phemy! Lucifer's fall awaits it'. 'Yet our immortal Buddha', observed Subbhuti, 'dis- claimed likewise all thoughts of dependence on any extraneous power. Man, he says, makes his own fortune, shapes his own destiny, since he inherits from his pre- vious existences the moral strength or karma to curb THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. 163 and subdue the upadana or attachment to worldly objects. He may become sublimer and happier than any god, not by prayer or sacrifice, but by meditation profound and holy above all by the secret and silent meditation of dliyana^ which shuts out the entire world. Alas! that I could not rise to such greatness. Our whole worship consists in repeating the moral precepts, in placing flowers before the image of Gautama, and in reading the bana on sacred days. 3 'Of course', replied Humphrey, vehemently, 'those who are ignorant of an intelligent Ruler of the universe, to whose glory they are bidden to live, must be ignorant both of the nature of sin and of rational prayer, because by them no supreme and holy will can be offended, invoked, or propitiated. They have no unerring Law, because they have no unerring Lawgiver from whom it emanates. And what is the result of such cold and meagre devotions? When your people, in the hour of trial, have in vain repeated the eternal tun-sarana, "I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in the Truth, I take refuge in the Priest- hood", and feel the burden of their affliction unrelieved, they forget your Buddha, who exists no longer, and his "Truth", which is no more than a sound and a fancy, and turn for help to the demon priest with his lying incantations and offerings'. 11 'Pray, let me conclude my remarks on the Roman Emperor's creed', said Hermes, who had not been displeased at the interruption. 'As regards the visible appearance of the gods, the phrase itself is in its context obscure; but supposing even that it is so grossly heathen as it impresses us at first sight, the monarch hastens to add, that he venerates the gods as he venerates his soul: for just as he is certain of his soul, although he has never beheld it, so he is certain of the existence of the gods through the power which they everywhere exercise and he constantly feels d a notion expressed in almost precisely the same manner by Christian philosophers and theologians'. 6 164 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 'Surely 7 , said Attinghausen, half indignantly, 'no such trouble need be taken to defend the heathen against Jew or Christian with respect to Divine apparitions, which abound in the Bible and culminate in Christ'. 'Like all Stoics', continued Hernies smiling, 'in fact like most of the ancient thinkers, he freely accepted the tenets of the popular religion, but only as myths. For employing those well-known modes of allegorical inter- pretation, which so largely exercised the ingenuity of Jews and Christians also, he infused into those myths the -pure conceptions of his own philosophy. He could thus, he believed, supply nobler motives of action without destroying, nay while apparently supporting and strengthening, those old faiths upon which the stability of the commonwealth seemed to depend. In this sense Plutarch justly com- plained, that, like the other Stoics, he left no single notion of their ancestral theology sound and unadulterated. a Against superstitious fears, against exorcisms and incanta- tions, against miracle-working and similar juggleries, he expressed himself with unequivocal contempt. b And as regards religious worship, he held, with Seneca, that "God is not honoured by the fat bodies of slaughtered bulls nor by offerings of gold and silver, but by a pious and righteous disposition"; and taught, with Epictetus, that "Sacred acts must be performed in thoughtfulness and purity of mind ; otherwise you have only learnt the words by heart and say, 'Sacred are the words by themselves'". d All this combined, I think, forms a theory of religion worthy of the philosophical freedom of the most enlightened of the ancients whether Greek or Hebrew 7 . 'Granting even, for argument's sake', said Humphrey after a short reflection, for he saw the necessity of shifting his line of attack, 'granting even that these opinions and sentiments are not derived from Christian sources though, I repeat, this can never be demonstrated, since we have no authentic writings of Stoics earlier than the middle of the first Christian century , they prove nothing THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. 165 For the heathen world, however deeply fallen, never lost the original image of God entirely, but retained some sparks of the Divine Intellect, and preserved some faint traditions of the primitive revelation; so that the Apostle might well say, that "the Gentiles, though not having the Law, do by nature the things contained in the Law and show the works of the Law written in their hearts'".* 'Nothing', said Arvada-Kalama with zeal, 'proves more conclusively how men wandered away from primitive truth to superstition and polytheism than the literature of the Hindoos, which, in its earlier productions, alludes to no image of any god, to no mode of idol worship, not even to a formal temple, since heaven was regarded as the father of the universe and earth as the mother'. 'Whether we start from the supposition of a primitive revelation of the principal truths or not', said Abington r evidently anxious to avert a discussion on this vexed and, as he believed, intangible subject, 'it would be an unfair and a bigoted view of the world's history were we to deny the high standard of morality and practice, of which, by the invisible workings of God's spirit, paganism was capable. But though many of the heathen might well be described as just, were there any who deserved the epithet of righteous or holy? And allowing even that men like Socrates, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius might, by straining the term, be described as holy, how many like them can be counted in all the annals of antiquity? Their number is most insignificant "not five in the whole circle of ancient history and ancient literature"; while under the dispensation of the Kingdom of Heaven we see holy lives constantly realised among the high and the humble, the cultivated and the illiterate lives transfigured with a light from the Throne of Mercy'. b 'Men like those you have named', said Melville, 'are rare under any system, rare also among Christians ; it is enough that they were possible under the discipline of heathen philosophy. Moreover, they could never have 166 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. arisen, unless there had existed in their age and amidst their people the elements, it may be the weak and scattered elements, which composed their character; and unless we assume a miracle repudiated by nature and disproved by history, we are compelled to admit that at least the germs of those moral qualities which we admire in the Stoic sages must, even in periods of apparently hopeless corruption, not only have been numerous and far-spread among the masses, but must have maintained such vitality that, under favourable conditions, they could develop into righteousness and holiness. But in no case are we allowed to make a religion or a philosophy alone responsible for the moral deficiencies of any age. That even Christianity, although rooted for so many cen- turies, does not necessarily train even just men, that it may co-exist with vice, fraud, and crime, we are taught, alas! by daily experience. Pagan truth, as far as it is truth, is not less Divine than Christian truth, and the Christian's weakness is as completely human as the pagan's weakness. All religions are noble efforts to reach the Spiritual, but all are imperfect because subject to the resisting forces of the material world; and as yet none has succeeded in penetrating and sanctifying the intellects of men although', he added more slowly, 'I believe that one of them, beginning to be recognised in its whole beauty, is destined thus to bless mankind'. 'It is certain', resumed Abington, desirous to make his view still clearer, 'that life, conscience and reason supplied some of the heathen with a partial knowledge of God with a kind of natural religion which, in a certain sense, is also a revelation, since, however inadequate, it could not have been obtained without the Divine spirit and guidance. "It was a striving to pass beyond the limits of the old world, an impatient effort to outrun the organic development of history in the removal of those boundaries". 51 Thus a few of the pagan doctrines seem to coincide with the lessons of Christianity. Yet they are only the dim THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 167 images, the fleeting and unsubstantial shadows of the truth, because they are not vivified by the belief in the efficacy of repentance and the forgiveness of sin through Divine goodness, nor animated by the cardinal hope of Immortality, which paganism never definitely grasped and without which man is only an unheeded atom destined to be swallowed up in the mystery of nature. "Alike the morality and the philosophy of paganism, as contrasted with the splendour of revealed truth, are but as moon- light is to sunlight", the "rays of heaven struggling their impeded way through clouds of darkness and ignorance". The heathen's and particularly the Stoic's hope, as the best among them felt most strongly, was uncertain; his illumination fragmentary and vague; his speculative thought incapable of reaching the radiance of heaven or of touching the heart of the multitude; his tentative knowledge too abstract, too fantastic, too purely theoretical to form the character or to exercise influence over political and social institutions ; his whole life without a central principle or motive, without an authoritative sanction, without a kindling ardour, without real or lasting consolations. Christianity, on the other hand, "has stirred the hearts of men, moulded the laws of nations, regenerated the condition of society. It gave to mankind a fresh sanction in Christ's word, a perfect example in his life, a powerful motive in his love, an all-sufficient comfort in Immortality made sure by his Resurrection and Ascension" '. a 'I own', said Arvada-Kalama, who had shown signs of restlessness almost from the beginning of Abington's speech, 'I am utterly perplexed, and all I have heard is to me like a dark riddle. I have read of a philosophy which flourished in the Middle Ages and is called the Scholastic. In listening to our friend, I imagined that he was enriching it by a new theory, with this difference that the dialectic portions of his remarks were not borrowed from Plato or Aristotle but from some text-book of Christian Evidences. I cannot discover a single fixed principle. 168 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. In that description, which I take to be a fair specimen of modern theology, I neither recognise Christianity nor paganism, but behold a monstrous conglomeration of both'. . . i Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam etc.\ muttered Attinghausen, with a smile of satisfaction. 'Everything rocks and rolls', continued the fervid Brahman, 'like a light plank helplessly tossed on treacherous waves. First heathenism is flattered by a large concession like this: "To the present day the best Christian may study the Manual of Epictetus not with interest only but with real advantage", or "An unconscious Christianity covers all the sentiments of Marcus Aurelius". a Then heathenism is depreciated to serve as a foil for the glorification of Christianity. Next again our attention is called to some fine features which heathenism displayed independently of Christianity; as for instance, "Epictetus showed that a Phrygian slave could live a life of the loftiest exaltation ; Marcus Aurelius proved that a Roman Emperor could live a life of the deepest humility" : b and thus the estimate constantly oscillates to and fro, or reels in a giddy circle. 'If, as you admit, God guided those pure-minded Gentiles who anxiously sought His love and His attributes, why did He not vouchsafe to them His whole truth? why at least not enough for salvation ? Do you believe I know you affirm the contrary that God is a respecter of persons? Will He not accept me because I am not of the seed of Abraham, or because my reason cannot consent to your creeds? Do not halt between two opinions. Either say plainly, that you allow to reason no dominion whatever and insist upon those dogmas which constitute your "revealed" religion; or confess, though the admission may cost you a pang,, that in every age and clime, anyone following reason with singleness of heart, is vouchsafed to find God, to understand His nature, and to be received into His grace. 'We, the followers of the Brahmo-Somadsh, have set you the example. We have discarded the Trinity, the THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAniT" 169 Incarnation, every form of Transubstantiation. We approach God in spirit as a Spirit and as our common Father, without an Intercessor. We recognise no "Holy Scriptures", except the pious thoughts of good men, of whatever country or language; for, as you say yourselves very beautifully, "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh all in all". a Hence whosoever adores the one, the living, the personal God, and hopes to see Him face to face in eternity, is our brother. Mankind is one great community, such as the Stoics darkly divined. Yet we honour the harmless customs of our ancestors and grant everyone the fullest freedom of conscience and practice within the boundaries of a pure theism. 'If you are honest, if you are logical and I know you are the one and desire to be the other you will arrive at the same goal. Candour and consistency will force you, as it has forced us, to abandon all artificial and irrational beliefs. I know well you say: "The Divine origin of Christianity does not rest on its morality alone". But you confidently expect that Christianity will one day be adopted by the whole world: if this ever come to pass, it will be on account of its morality, not on account of its mysteries. How can a universal religion be built upon doctrines so specific and peculiar that they have never been discovered except by a small sect of a small people, and can hardly be made intelligible or acceptable to anyone beyond the pale of the Christian Church ? But the conviction of the existence of God or gods, of a Pro- vidence, and a binding law of ethics is found among nearly all nations of the earth, and the trust in Immortality among most of them. A universal religion must appeal to what is universal in human nature. 'Now, you defend the Christian principles and assert their imperative necessity; but do not deceive yourselves the defence and the assertion are made with a faint- 170 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN, heartedness vainly covered by a generous glow of language, splendid generalities, and often by a strained vigour. Your arguments are not like those cords which it required a Samson's strength to tear asunder, but like the delicate gossamer destroyed by a breath. You resemble those strange people who try to leap over their own shadow a you do not get beyond your old prejudices. For is a truth not a truth, unless it has a supernatural sanction which you cannot prove ? Is a truth not a truth, if we see it indeed realised by a few only, but feel certain that, with proper opportunities, it will be realised by all, and that then the aim of humanity will almost be reached? 'If the philosophy of the Stoics had little influence over political and social life, can the same objection be made to that of the Academics or Peripatetics, who yet were also heathen philosophers? The contention that Stoicism was purely abstract and theoretical, without a guiding principle or motive, without ardour or comfort, I will not stoop to refute;, for it is overthrown by every Stoic utterance. Into such perversions, I might also say into such pious frauds, are even excellent men ensnared by a sectarian zeal! Your good sense and your ingenuousness make you yield point after point to Natural Religion, and yet you convulsively cling to your fancied Revelations. You refine and you toil in order to find out palpable distinctions ; but these distinctions are like the grass upon the housetops, of which your Psalmist speaks and "where- with the mower does not fill his hand, nor the sheaf- binder his arm", but "which withers before it is cut". Yet we resolute theists hope soon to welcome you, saying, "The blessing of the Lord be upon you; we bless you in the name of the Lord"M b 'What can be simpler and more self-evident', said Mo- vayyid-eddin, 'than my religion? It bids me only agree to two things: that Allah is God, and that Mohammed is His prophet. Justly our poet says: How easy has God made the believer's task! He sent down from heaven THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 171 a hundred books, the contents of these he reduced to four, and these again to a single one. In the Koran is enclosed all science, and in the first seven verses the Koran's whole strength, as the full tree is enclosed in its germ. We need for perfect piety nothing more than seven short verses. May not, then, the Islam one day be spread over the whole globe as the religion of all nations and tribes'? 4 'It is strange', said Rabbi Gideon with mingled in- dignation and scorn, 'that men should so heedlessly forget "the rock whence they were hewn and the pit whence they were dug" that they should forget Abraham, who alone was called and blessed, b and who is the source of all salvation. His children are unfettered by obscure dogmas, theirs is a religion of reason and demonstrable truth. This fact has been recognised by so early a Jew- ish writer as Josephus, the Pharisee, and has been con- clusively proved by the long line of Jewish philosophers from Simeon ben Jochai, the reputed author of the Sohar, to Saadiah and the rest of the Geonim, by Ebn Ezra, Solomon ben Gabirol and Judah Halevi, by Mai- monides, Bechai and Aramah, Abarbanel, Gersonides, Cresca and Mendelssohn, down to Frankel, Luzzatto and Hirsch in our own age. The Jews need no faith, but only the knowledge of God and His Law; and to them, therefore, belongs that future when the God of Israel will be one and His name one'. 'It is indeed remarkable', said Melville with his usual serenity and composure, 'to what extent the minds of men can be blinded by self-deception. Our worthy young friend Arvada-Kalama regards himself as most liberal and tolerant in admitting to his religion all men "within the boundaries of a pure theism". But how, if seekers as earnest as himself do not find that personal God with whom he seems to commune so familiarly, but see the working of the Divine spirit diffused through all nature, through all mankind, in the eternal Substance and the 172 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. eternal Attributes? Like him, they follow the direction of reason; will he insist that his reason is infallible and theirs perverted? If he values toleration so sincerely as he undoubtedly does, he should not restrict it "within the boundaries of a pure theism". 'And as regards our Mohammedan and Jewish guests, can they have seriously reflected on the scope of the remarks with which they have favoured us? Both assume it to be a self-evident axiom of reason that God literally dictated codes of laws to chosen servants, and dictated them under manifestations wholly irreconcilable with their own notions of God as an incorporeal Spirit. The Lord so we read in the Hebrew records descended upon Mount Sinai, and there, though not seen, He spoke distinctly and intelligibly, yet so awfully that the people, in terror and consternation, entreated Moses: "Speak thou with us, and we will readily hear, but let not God speak with us, lest we die". a The conception may be grand, but it is mythical ; nor is it in congruity to reason, for it is in opposition to the laws of nature. 'But even irrespective of the origin of those codes, we must ask: does reason require or sanction the six hundred and thirteen laws, many of them ceremonial and ritual, which Judaism finds in the Pentateuch, or the numerous and motley stories, most of them legendary and fan- tastical, gravely related in the Koran? If Judaism were a religion of reason, it would not have excommunicated and cursed Spinoza; if Mohammedanism were a religion of reason, it would not have employed, as it would not have needed, for its propagation the aid of fire and sword and every sanguinary cruelty. 'Judaism and Mohammedanism are "positive religions," like Christianity, and the difference is only one of mode or qualification. If the two former enclose fewer and perhaps less astounding dogmas than the latter, they are founded on a dogma also involving an absolute enchainment of reason ; for they claim, merely by virtue of their exis- THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 173 tence, to be Divine, to be unchangeable, and to be all- sufficient. The one Biblical command, "Thou shalt not add to it, nor shalt thou take away from it", would alone be enough to arrest all progress and to shackle all in- telligence. Yet there have been additions. Now, the expansion of reason is increase of light, of depth, of liberty; but the expansion of the Pentateuch is the Talmud, and the expansion of the Koran is the stupendous and sterile mass of Sunnite speculations and fables. I think, no other argument is needed'. 'All this', said Movayyid-eddin pointedly, looking at Subbhuti, applies equally to Buddha, who, declaring, "I know, therefore you must believe", demanded implicit submission to his doctrines, which "his intuition" as- sured him were identical with those taught by all former Buddhas'. a "Nothing can be more unanswerable than our excellent Melville's remarks', said Attinghausen gleefully, his spi- rits having evidently been heightened by the turn of the conversation. 'Once when Mendelssohn had a favour to ask of Frederick the Great, his friend, the Marquis d'Argens, pleaded for him in these terms: "A Catholic who is no Catholic, intercedes for a Jew who is no Jew, with a Protestant who is no Protestant". This is the case of most Jews and Christians of the present time. You are what Lessing calls "betrogene Betriiger". You belong nominally to one religion, but really to another, or to none at all. But this self-illusion is inevitable. The current of the age in which you live is stronger than your professions and your creeds. The Stoics say, "The fates lead the willing, the unwilling they drag onward" Volentem ducunt fata, nolentem trdhunt: you are carried away volentes, nolentes. Yet you continue to nurse the fiction that you are Rabbanites or Catholics, Karaites or Protestants; while, in fact, with you the Bible is like the tragedy of Hamlet without Hamlet. The very core and centre are wanting. 174 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 'However, I trust that our spiritual pantheist, to whose observations some of us at least have listened with sincere pleasure, will not himself imitate the obnoxious practice he has impugned in others, but will allow us, the mis- understood and much reviled adherents of an honestly realistic pantheism and hearty pessimism, to build up an edifice of philosophy^ and morals according to our reason, and to build it up with the strong and imperishable materials supplied by experience and a patient study of the operations of nature. And as I am sure that no religion is, or can be, more comprehensive, more intel- ligible and more incontestable than that resulting from our principles, researches and conclusions, I confidently predict the near approach of the day when a free and noble materialism will be the creed of the world and connect all nations by the ties of one clear and unerring conviction. Then there will be no disputes about the nature of a Deity we ignore ; no exclusion from a heaven we deny; no distinctions of races or castes we prove to be unnatural. There will only be one uniform law of manly integrity and tender kindness, about which we are all agreed'. 'I may perhaps be justly blamed', said Mondoza, who during the last two or three speeches had evidently yielded to his own reflexions, 'to have allowed the discussion to take so meandering a course. For opinions of such gravity ought not to be propounded without being at once fully supported. But I promise you, Gentlemen, that you shall find me in future less indulgent. I shall try to hold the reins with a firmness sufficient, I hope, to check the exuberant ardour of even the most fiery and most generous steed. 'However', he continued with an hesitation which but gradually gave way to his customary decision, 'has this entire conversation brought us no essential gain for the chief point we are pursuing? Stoicism has exhibited to us fortitude and uprightness through reason as precious THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 175 elements of happiness; does Christianity include none that is peculiar to it ? It includes indeed such an element ; but the form in which this characteristic appears I say it reluctantly and with deep sorrow not only neutralises its intrinsic beneficence, but is fraught with immeasurable injury. Christianity inspires the faithful with the calm confidence of a firmly established union with God and of eternal salvation; and this conviction cannot but shed over the whole existence a radiance of joy and comfort. 'But what is the source of this felicity? A vicarious Sacrifice. Either of these two notions is an offence against reason, against human dignity, and against God. In Adam it is affirmed all men have sinned; through Christ's life and blood all men are saved. a But the God of justice can neither impute to unborn generations the guilt of an ancestor, nor can He impute the righteousness of His Son or of Himself to an unrighteous world. Without intention and consciousness, without actual deed or thought, there is neither sin nor piety; and in subjecting the one or the other to the principle of vicariousness, we expose moral right and wrong to utter confusion. b And the Sacrifice? Christianity claims to have delivered men from the "curse of the Law", that is, from its "killing" forms and rites, and yet it centres its own scheme of Redemption in the grossest of all ceremonials. Why was this "sacrifice" necessary, in opposition to the declaration that God has pleasure only in "sacrifice of praise" and "doing good"? c Was it because "without shedding of blood there is no remission"?* 1 But if so, the new dispensation clung to one of the crudest conceptions of the old: in- deed the analogy between the atoning "blood of goats and calves" at the conclusion of the Old Covenant, and the atoning "blood of Christ" at the conclusion of the New, is in the Epistle to the Hebrews carefully and minutely developed, 6 although with this inevitable ambiguity that, as Christ is both man and God, he is at once victim and High-priest. f And why "an atonement" at all? Because 176 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. God's majesty, offended by Adam's transgression, in order to be upheld in its honour and authority, required "satis- faction", or "propitiation", or "a ransom", to appease His "wrath", and "to reconcile" Him to men. a But this teaching of the Christian Church, besides involving the Scripture narrative in grave self-contradictions, 15 attributes to God no majesty but such contemptible littleness that He can neither be adored nor loved. It destroys, morever, the one grand feature in the scheme of Redemption; for it exhibits in- deed the example of a sublime self-sacrifice for the wel- fare of mankind ; but, instead of representing Christ's career, in probable accordance with history, as a voluntary and heroic struggle for the truth of the prophets against the bigotry of the Pharisees,* 1 it assumes that, for the con- summation of a pre-ordained design, Christ was "sent" or "charged" by God to suffer a death from which he could not possibly withdraw, as he himself declared, "I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me". e Yet in that bitter struggle for such, in spite of his readiness f , he proved it to have been by his sorrowful prayer in the garden of Gethsemane and his words of agony on the crosse in that struggle lies an interest at once human, pathetic, and inspiring. 'But these theoretical errors might be overlooked with a sigh of regret if they were not unhappily coupled with the two terrible doctrines of election and eternal damnation, which turn the regret into anguish. Whether the "election" be taken in the more rigorous Calvinistic sense of real pre-destination solely by God's sovereign will, or in that wavering and almost meaningless Lutheran modification which makes it coincide with the Divine fore-knowledge of men's piety or impiety , h all orthodox authorities are agreed that the elect are few, 1 while the rest are con- demned to the everlasting tortures of hell. k And as hu- mility is incessantly and properly inculcated as a chief Christian virtue, who can be confident that he is among those few of God's chosen favourites? Must not just the THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 177 most sensitive hearts, the most tender consciences be torn by doubts and excruciated by the thought of a horrible destiny that may await them through untold millenniums? 4 Not even the cautious and moderate teaching of the Anglican Church on this point, as set forth in the seventeenth of the thirty-nine Articles of Religion, is altogether consolatory ; for although it lays stress mainly on the "Predestination to Life" vouchsafed to those "whom God hath chosen for everlasting salvation", and hardly touches the question of their own co-operation; yet it cannot help alluding to "the most dangerous downfall" of the rest, "whereby they are thrust either into desperation" or utter wrecklessness. Let hereto be added that awful figure against which the Christian is bidden to be ever on his guard the malignant figure of the arch-fiend and seducer Satan, who ensnared Eve and tempted Christ himself, b "the god of this world", who, "armed with all powers and unrighteous deceit", poisons the hearts of men, and "as a roaring lion walks about seeking whom he may devour". 'Is such a belief compatible with enjoyment or happi- ness? It may be answered that experience shows that it is. But can we be sure of this? On the one hand, many earnest minds may be the secret prey of agonies concealed from the world ; and, on the other hand, many minds are not earnest: in their frivolous superficiality they either do not realise the exact force of the dogmas they profess, or they modify them, conveniently and arbitrarily, so as to allow at least comparative tranquillity ; in the former case they are irreligious, in the latter they are not Christians. In those ages when Christianity really filled the hearts and thoughts of men, nothing was left to the timid and the sincere but to seek refuge from temptations in seclusion, and, while making sterile devotions and dreary ascetism a preparation for death, to desert the duties of life. d 'Their hopes were fanned by the doctrine that, besides election, faith secures salvation. 6 It would at first sight seem difficult to harmonise both agencies, the one depending N 178 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. on the decree of God, the other appearing to flow from the volition of man. But the difficulty vanishes by remem- bering that faith also is regarded as a gift of God's grace, a without which man, by the Fall totally disabled in his powers and perverted in his aims, is intellectually dead and morally so helpless that even St. Paul, long after his call, exclaimed in despair at his unavailing combats against sin, "0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death" ? b God's "fore-knowing" is really and in every respect a "pre- destinating", and man's free-will is restricted within limits narrower than those in which the Stoic is held by Fate. For as the Apostle teaches that "God hath mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth"; or that, like the potter, "of the same clay He maketh one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour" : d it is difficult to see how the Christian can at all be made reponsible for his actions, and what scope and effect are left to contrition and repentance'. 6 'Surely, this is right', said Movayyid-eddin, 'for our holy Koran says: "God leads into error whom He pleases, and whom He pleases He guides on the right path"'. f 'But how', continued Mondoza, 'if honest and struggling minds could not attain a "faith" in the atoning power of Christ's blood,^ and could not help regarding the doctrine of justification by faith as pernicious to moral energy and improvement? 11 if they could not attach to baptism the mystic force of being, like faith, wholly indispensable for salvation? 1 if, in spite of his decided, though sometimes prudently reserved affirmations, 15 they could not recognise the humble Galilean, "the carpenter" and "the carpenter's son", 1 who declared, "My kingdom is not of this world", 111 as the Messiah described in the Old Testament as the powerful restorer of the throne and splendour of his ancestor David of Judah, n and if, surrounded by strife, ignorance and iniquity, they could not look upon him as the promised bringer of universal peace, knowledge and THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 179 righteousness? if they could not fathom the idea of his pre-existence "in glory before the world was", a nor the idea of his immaculate conception through the Holy Ghost ? b if they could not regard him as the "Son of God" in any other than the ordinary sense familiar to the Hebrews, and could still less understand that he was "one with the Father ", d without sin and error, 6 all-powerful in heaven and on earth, Creator and Preserver of the world, "Lord of the dead and the living"/ since he repeatedly makes a clear distinction between himself and God,e or that he formed with God and the Holy Ghost a Trinity, which is yet a Unity, all three being "of one substance, power and eternity ", h of which conception there is not even a trustworthy trace in the New Testament,' and which strongly recalls analogous notions in eastern and western mytho- logy? 1 ' if they could not credit the extraordinary miracles attributed to him in the Gospels, and questioned, as quite inadequate, the proofs and authorities adduced for his Resurrection, which at first the Apostles themselves doubted as "an idle tale", 1 or for his Transfiguration, Descent into hell, and Ascension ? m if they were entirely at a loss how to reconcile Christ's assurance that "till heaven and earth pass no jot or tittle of the Law shall pass", with Paul's vehement and almost paradoxical contention that he who upholds circumcision, that is, the very "sign" and foundation of the Old Covenant, has no part or "profit" in the New, since Christ has "redeemed men from the curse of the Law" which "worketh wrath"? 11 if they felt that they might piously entreat their God for strength in temptation without the intercession of a Mediator who declared, "No one cometh unto the Father but by me", and therefore called himself the "door" or the "way", and if they could assign no reality to the Devil and his host of demons? Then, held to be excluded from the number of God's elect and to be rejected by His grace, those earnest men were a horror to the world and perhaps a detestation to themselves objects of implacable 180 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. persecution and unspeakable misery;* for "the wrath of God" so says the Gospel of St. John "abideth on them"; b and to them applied those injunctions which recall the harshest commands of the Pentateuch against the bitterest political foes: "If there come any unto you and bring not the doctrine of Christ, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed"; or: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what part hath he that belie veth with an infidel"? 'And what was their offence? Had they no right to listen to that reason which the Bible describes as "the light of God"? No, answered the Church; by Adam's dis- obedience man lost the Divine image, and his deteriorated intellect became wholly unfit for truth and righteousness. How is serenity to be found amidst such uncertainties? how a calm clearness in such entangled conflicts? Again you will say and I readily admit it that many real Christians, following the summons, "Come unto me, all ye that la- bour, and I will give you rest", d lead lives of sunny and tranquil happiness in the exercise of every noble virtue, nay that some almost realise that heavenly peace which a great modern painter has poured out over a group of early Christians in his grand picture of "the Destruction of Jerusalem". But at what price do they purchase that felicity and peace? A Proverb of Solomon says, "The man who strays from the path of reason, dwells in the assembly of shadows". 6 Shadowy is an existence enveloped in an atmosphere of self-illusion and fancy; shadowy an existence that allows, nay compels man's Divinest power to slumber the sleep of death or to fight with unreal phantoms. 'The tree is known by its fruit, you say. But what crimes, what horrible iniquities have been possible side by side with the Christians' noble virtues? And can be- lievers, nay ought they to be happy when they remember the hundred millions of their non-Christian fellow-men the Lutheran Catechism mentions expressly "pagans, THE STOIC AND THE CHBISTIAN. 181 Turks and Jews'' whom they, in addition to the rejected of their own community, without exception, the good as well as the bad, consign to the unquenchable flames of Gehenna?* Is happiness conceivable with this awful cruelty or callousness of heart ? b 'Where is that refreshing simplicity of teaching, "re- vealed unto babes" and "hid to the wise", c which at first so powerfully attracted "the poor in spirit" and the simple-minded, and which, comprised in the words Charity and Love, d the Master conveyed in plain maxims and pleasing parables or allegories? But alas! even he, by alluding to "the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, 6 and thus seeming to point to esoteric tenets, unfortunately encouraged and almost sanctioned the reveries of dogmatic speculation; 1 " and even he, in affirming with respect to believers, "In my name shall they cast out devils, take up serpents, drink deadly things without hurt, and heal the sick by laying their hands on them"* in assigning such effects to "faith", removed it beyond the experience of the human soul into the sphere of the miraculous and the fanciful. 'That Christianity which has been worked out by the mysticism of Apostles and Fathers, and the subtle ca- suistry of Councils and even of Reformers, bestows neither true illumination nor true peace. It has hence been virtually relinquished by the best and most gifted Christians in their abhorrence of the doctrines of eternal punishment and of the damnation of the unbaptised; h in their abandonment, with even greater decision than the Pelagians and Socinians, of the dogma of man's absolute depravity and his natural incapacity for any moral or spiritual impulse whatever in consequence of Adam's Fall; 1 in their placing "works" above "faith" ; k in their substituting for a vague" Kingdom of Heaven" a healthy appreciation of the interests of this world, and for "a groaning desire" to be released from life since "to die is gain" a manly resolution to fulfil its obligations j 1 in 182 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. their essential adoption of a free theism by an allegorising conception of Christ's attributes and mission ; and in their rational interpretation of the Scriptures generally. In short, traditional Christianity is more and more replaced by a religion which, cleared from confusing myths and obscuring symbols, may really become a worship "in spirit and in truth" and therefore in "liberty".* 'In the crucible of philosophic and historical analysis, the abstruse ingredients of Christianity have imperceptibly been volatilised. This liberal view has found a strong support in two maxims of the Gospels, which indeed cannot easily be fitted into the Christian scheme, as they annul the cardinal dogma of election by grace, but are unquestionably its vital germs; the first: "God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved" ; b and the other : "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him"? c Even Paul, following his better instincts in what is perhaps the purest and noblest portion of all his writings, declares charity to be greater than faith; he elsewhere calls it "the bond of perfection" or "the end of the commandment"; indeed love, or "bearing one another's burdens", is to him "the fulfilling of the Law". d In this teaching rests the conquering power of the system. 6 'Yet the Christian's "calm confidence of a firmly established union with God and of eternal salvation", is a sublime strength, a profound truth, and an un- failing spring of happiness/ That confidence is won by a modest subordination under the plans of an all-embracing Love, by the indelible Hope of the final triumph of right, and by the earnest promotion of this "Kingdom of Heaven" through energy of action, sincerity of purpose, and benevo- lence of heart. Such a conviction will engender a true eudae- monism manifested in contentment and tranquillity of soul through the consciousness of God's mercy and approval. 6 The THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 183 shell which encloses this pearl the form in which the New Testament teaches this truth is not of primary importance: the shell, whether tempting or not, does not impair the value of the pearl ; even in the received form the truth may, though indeed but partially, work its beneficent ends. While the Stoic's philosophy contributes to our happiness the element of self-dependent strength, the Christian's creed furnishes the no less important constituent of hopeful reliance : for without hope man could not bear the sternness of life'. With very different and mingled feelings was this speech of Mondoza heard by his various guests. Humphrey had, at several points, hardly been able to master his impetuous desire of protesting against the remarks. Abington more than once made signs of decided dissent. Rabbi Gideon and Panini looked at their co-religionist in mute perplexity. Canon Mortimer studiously maintained an absolute impassiveness of face defying all interpretation ; while Gregovius and Melville preserved their usual calm- ness, and Hermes, Wolfram and Attinghausen scarcely concealed their satisfaction. Of the Orientals, Arvada- Kalama and Subbhuti, in unison for once, exhibited a lively and, as it seemed, a gratified interest; the dignified composure of the others was but occasionally broken by marks of a roused attention. After a short interval Mondoza resumed: 'Pray, Gentlemen, do not consider me ungenerous in now concluding our conversations for this evening and thus seeming to secure the advantage of the last word'. 'Forgive me', interrupted Subbhuti with his native vi- vacity, and producing a small volume, 'if I detain you for a few moments longer in calling your attention to a passage in an eloquent book written in my island of Ceylon by one of the best and kindest of Christian mi- nisters, with whom I ever had the privilege of coming into contact. In so far as the work is intended as a re- futation of Buddhist doctrines, I can, of course, find no fault with the author, whom, on the contrary, I greatly 184 THE STOIC AND THE CHEISTIAN. admire both for his ability and his generous ardour in furthering what he considers the salvation of his heathen fellow-men. But I sincerely think that he, like all other Christian missionaries, totally defeats his object by laying stress on a point which is indeed the centre of his creed, but is repugnant to the followers of Gautama to such a degree that it will ever repel them from Christianity. Towards the end of the work, the writer, addressing us Buddhists, says: "If the mighty Lord of all could not, in consistence with his attribute of justice, save man without an atonement, neither will he save you, if you reject that atonement. I feel for you; I sympathise with you; I know something of the difficulties with which you have to contend. For many generations your forefathers have been taught to regard the sacrifice of blood with aversion, as a thing impure in itself, and as the root of all evil; and whilst these thoughts are cherished, or the remembrance of them retained, there can be no sincere trust in the expiation wrought out for man upon the cross; though it is by this alone that we can be saved from God's Wrath and eternal perdition. When the flower and the fruit are thought to be an adequate offering, as an expression of religious thought and feeling, there can be no right appreciation of the vileness of sin, or of man's need of an all-worthy Substitution. We can only learn this from the saddest of all sights, the outpouring of the life's blood".i 'Is this the teaching', continued Subbhuti, 4 by which Christians endeavour to civilise or to humanise our people? Our good host seems to reject all sacrifices as irreligious. But granting that the idea of sacrifice to an all-loving Being might be entertained, are we to understand that the agony of bloodshed is more acceptable to Him than the harmless offering of fragrant fruits and flowers? The worthy man from whose book I have quoted admits that "there is a winningness, a pleasantness, and a natural gentleness i B. Spence Hardy, The Le- gends and Theories of the Buddhists, compared with History and Science (Williams and, Norgate), 1866, pp. 223, 224. THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 185 about the people of Ceylon, that when converted to Christianity will make them like angel-spirits": 1 is that doctrine of blood likely to enhance a "natural gentleness" which, I may confidently affirm, is common to all follo- wers of our Tathagata? 'The writer does not hesitate to predict that "the time will come when the vihara will be deserted, the dagoba unhonoured, and the bana unread". If this should ever happen, the lessons of Siddharta will surely not be sup- planted by those of a Church which represents its God not only as delighting in a human victim, but as so ruth- lessly cruel that in the words of the same excellent minister "the dangers that await the unbelieving will be more appalling than all the horrors that are told of Awichi, and they will be everlasting"; while he admits the awful fact that, according to his Scriptures, "the saved are few, the perishing many". 2 'Is it, then, surprising to hear him lament that the number of my brethren influenced by the saving power of Christianity is insignificant, and that, "apart from the paid agents of the Church", fewer still are found willing to aid in its diffusion? Or do you hope to allure us by your ce- lestial rewards? You are mistaken. You who brand the religion of the Maha-Bhixu as "a system of personal profit, a traffic in merit, a venal process" you promise to the faithful a place "in heaven among the seraphim with the dazzling diadem upon the brow". 3 We dis- claim, we hardly understand, such "traffic in merit". 'I admit that Christianity is grand and noble in its morality, and that through this it may one day spread not only over my beautiful island but over many of the coun- tries peopled by hundreds of millions of Gautama's vo- taries; but your toil and treasure will be wasted, unless you divest the creed of all that is specifically Christian of the 1 Ibid. p. 229. 2 Ibid. pp. 223, 225. 3 Ibid. pp. 213, 214, 227. 186 THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. belief in a personal God and an individual self with an immortal soul, in a Gospel, a Holy Spirit, and above all in a redeeming or atoning Sacrifice of blood. Then Christianity will essentially coincide with the code of Buddha. For like him you proclaim universal equality and universal charity, and like him one of your Apostles has declared: "The world is crucified to me, and I unto the world". 'Buddhism is no new inspiration; for Gautama has only repeated and sanctioned the tenets of the twenty- four Buddhas that preceded him in twelve anterior Tcalpas, and he will himself be followed by another and yet higher Buddha, the great Nagardjuna. He readily acknow- ledged excellencies in other religions also, and ungrud- gingly allowed wisdom and miraculous powers to his op- ponents. Therefore he never persecuted ; and during the twenty-three centuries of our existence we have not ori- ginated a single war. I know that even this has by your animosity been turned into a reproach, as indicating "moral imbecility" and "a fatal indifference about error as about everything else." But by the nirwdna which I yet hope to reach! Is moral strength manifested by that horrid carnage in which Jews and Christians, Brahmans and Mohammedans alike have revelled? You say, war also is beneficial, as it stimulates the energies and prevents stag- nation. Yet you profess that p,eace is your highest aim ; your millennium is the age of peace, and your Redeemer is the prince of peace. And is not toleration a better proof of a strong conviction in the final triumph of truth than impatient fanaticism? We are of opinion that tran- quillity and holiness may be attained by all who earnestly yearn for them. We are not indifferent to the truth, but we do not pretend to be its sole possessors, and as such entitled to condemn and to hurl into the eternal flames all who do not seek "the city of peace" by the same path as we do. Buddha did not affirm, "I am the Light of the world", but was content to say, as every good THE STOIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. 187 man should be able to say, "I am sent to bear witness of the light"'. A storm of controversy threatened to burst forth, when Subbhuti had finished. Not only did Berghorn and Humphrey look like angry Discontent, but even Abington and Melville seemed eager to give expression to strong remonstrance ; but Mondoza was happily able to forestall them all by saying: 'You must allow, Gentlemen, that it would be inexpedient to attempt a criticism on so large a subject at this late hour. You will have ample opportunities of refuting both me and our Buddhist friend in every point and as far as I am concerned, I shall even court the occasions of further discussion, were it only to unfold my own po- sitive views with greater distinctness'. Longer than usual the guests remained to converse in various groups. The host had a large scope for dis- playing his fine tact and judgment, and, effectually aided by Mortimer and Hermes, he at last succeeded so well in conciliating even those who had been most startled or pained by the last speeches, that all separated in genial cordiality. Wolfram alone, a master in astronomical enquiries, stayed and accompanied Mondoza to the observatory, where they were occupied for several hours, as the night was beautifully fine and clear. Y. EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. WHEN the guests assembled the next evening, the first stars were already glittering in the cloudless sky. Mondoza and Wolfram were seen in lively conversation. Hermes, approaching Wolfram, with whom he had long been on terms of affectionate intimacy, said: 'Yesterday night, when we ordinary mortals were either in the land of dreams or poring over faded parchments, you and our worthy host, rising above this humble planet on the wings of the telescope, were roaming in infinite space and travelled no doubt through the twenty millions of stars attainable by your excellent instrument, alighting, it may be, for a while at the famous a centauri, the nearest of your three hundred and fifty thousand catalogued stations, and then rushing onward till you reached the remotest of these orbs, your awful a aurigae, the distance of which from this mite of an atom inhabited by us poor creatures of an hour, is, I am sure, like the Hindoo world-periods, expressed by a unit with sixty-three noughts. 3 May we be allowed to participate in those fairy rambles and be initiated in your discoveries with respect to the ap- palling time when, by the disappearance of air and water, all life will become extinct on the earth, as it has long since va- nished on our faithful satellite, the moon; or when the earth will lapse into the sun and be burnt up ; or when the sun, by the Greek poet called the heart of the universe, will be cold and dead, having spent all its light and warmth, so that this globe, "changed into an ice-ball, will lazily roll round the cherry-red sun, and the last human eye will be closed amidst all-enfolding darkness" b consummations impending EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 189 within such a very few billions of years that we are utterly unable to enjoy a single moment of peace'? 'Not the telescope', replied Wolfram, laughing, 'engaged us yesterday so much as that even more wonderful contri- vance, the spectroscope. With an instinct which professional astronomers might envy, our host, from the very day that Kirchhoff's and Bunsen's remarkable invention and theory permitted an intelligible interpretation of Frauenhofer's mysterious lines, divined the supreme importance of spec- tral analysis for ascertaining that "world-formula", or finally establishing that unity of all worlds, which alone seems to satisfy his logical and organically connecting mind'. 4 You owe forgiveness for this humiliating praise', said Mondoza, 'to the indulgence of friendship. But it ever appeared to me an irresistible conclusion that, if the earth is, through our central sun, allied with the distant Neptune, this sun itself must, by the same law of gravity, be allied to a more general, if not a universal, system of suns. a This conception, an inevitable corollary of Kant's and Laplace's nebular theory, seemed to me to receive the strongest support from a discovery which, enabling us to examine the chemical composition of the astral worlds, proved the ingredients of many of the remotest fixed stars to be virtually identical with those composing our own planet; and when the spectrum disclosed to us, one by one, the familiar elements of hydrogen, natrium, magnesium, titanium, aluminum, and others to the number of twenty- four out of the sixty-five hitherto known to us, b I could not help proceeding one step farther and asking whether there does not exist one primary element which, no more found on this developed earth and in other advanced stars, is the origin or foundation of the rest, and which, by the nature of its particles, is capable of the required multiplicity of combinations. And indeed, at the extreme boundaries of the cosmic systems accessible to our obser- vation, and in nebulae apparently indis solvable, a substance 190 EPICUEUS AND DARWINISM. has been detected in large quantities an igneous ga mingled with hydrogen and oxygen which seems t< exercise an important influence on the formation am development of new worlds. Only after having fathomec this primary element and its attributes, together with th< functions and forces of molecules in connection witl light, heat and electricity, will it be possible for uf approximately at best to find that "world-formula' to which our friend Wolfram has alluded and which wil permit us to determine the probable condition of the universe at any period, past or future to find the one idea, first and last, the one cardinal principle, that dominates the cosmos, and of which all other laws and forces are secondary varieties. This subject, to which my slight studies are directed, will, I am certain, not be ne- glected by our great astronomers. I know indeed, the difficulties are immeasurable; but our hopefulness is encouraged when, among numerous other proofs of astonishing progress, we consider that the use of the simple spectroscope, has, within a very short time, brought the heavenly bodies suddenly and unexpectedly so near to our comprehension that we shall soon be more familiar with their innermost constitution than with their distances, dimensions and movements, and many other problems which have absorbed men's attention for thousands of years'.* 'But supposing', said Rabbi Gideon in a tone slightly sarcastical, 'that mystic formula were revealed, what would be the gain for wisdom or happiness'? 'To this most pertinent question', said Mondoza com- posedly, 'I reply that my cosmological idea of nature would indeed be sadly incomplete and sterile if it did not include the enquiry in what sense the universe is the result of Thought, and consequently discloses an Intelligence which may be traced as a phenomenon no less real than the elementary substances and forces, and may thus be proved objectively and inductively. The question of EPICUEtTS AND DAEWINISM. 191 questions, therefore, seems to be whether, as the whole creation is ruled by the same physical and mechanical laws, it is also pervaded by the same principles of logic and ethics or, in a word, whether it operates by plan and design. Not before we have attained clearness on this point, can our minds and hearts derive true satisfaction from the scientific examination of nature. I have of late pondered much over Goethe's aphorism: "When philosophers banished the teleological view, they divested Nature of understanding (Verstand); they had not the courage to endow her with reason (Vernunft), and so she was left spiritless (geistlos)". I wish that our conversa- tions may mature our conclusions: but I for one am not impatient, and I shall welcome, without partiality or disquietude, any inference which honest research may mark out as truth'. 'I see the time approaching', said Wolfram, with enthusiasm, 'when we, in a form infinitely higher than that of Plato's harmony of spheres, shall comprehend the whole world as an eternal symphony of powers in rhythmic motion, and when the aspect of the star-spangled heavens, arousing the mighty chords of that symphony, shall bind our intellects to that of the universe, and our hearts to that of every sentient creature, to bless us at once with divine elevation and human sympathy'! 'What is the object of this rhapsodical effusion'? said Humphrey, sharply; 'and what is its source? Its object is rebellion and its source conceit. Nature's Holy of Holies will ever remain veiled from your irreverent eyes : you hardly advance to the Court of her Temple. All your deductions are based on a boundless space filled with infinite agglomera- tions of atoms two undemonstrable abstractions. Hence your systems are nothing but airy conjectures withered leaves chased about by every wind'. 'Let us at once', said Attinghausen with mock solem- nity, 'take our vows upon the Astro-theology of Derham and proclaim that the distant nebulae are clefts or 192 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. "threadbare spots" in the firmament, intended to afford us a glimpse of the glory of the empyrean, the abode of beatified spirits. And, to complete our science, let us abjure the heresy of supposing that the fossils in the earth are remains of destroyed organisms, and piously confess that they are marvellous lusus naturae; or rough and inorganic models afterwards infused with the breath of life; or, lastly, "stone-flesh" engendered by the rocks fertilised through the "seminal air"'. 'Scepticism', said Panini, sadly, 'is like that insatiable beast of prey in Dante's Inferno: "Ha natura si malvagia e ria "Che mai non empie la bramosa voglia, ''E dopo il pasto ha piu fame che pria"'. a 'If indeed', said Rabbi Gideon with a scornful glance at Attinghausen, 'the numberless stars, as you naturalists opine, are as many light-giving worlds or suns, it would follow that the vault of heaven should in the night be illumined with infinitely greater brightness than by day, and you can uphold your dogmas only by another unproved assumption the existence, in the universe, of an extremely fine medium absorbing the light of those countless suns. But if so, space would, by the principle of the preservation of force, have in the course of time acquired an immense intensity of heat: but as this is not the case, one of your oracles, to explain everything to his own satisfaction, has generously presented us with a "fourth dimension". b Thus surmise is made to support surmise, and your whole science is guesswork. You are not ashamed to declare, that "the naturalist knows only bodies and qualities of bodies ; that he calls all beyond this transcendent, and that transcendency is regarded by him as an aberration of the human mind". c Your fancy may rise to a suppositi- tious ether, but your wingless soul creeps inertly in the dust. You may pile up knowledge as high as the ill-fated tower of Babylon, but wisdom is far from you. Pierce space with your telescopes and your spectroscopes; the EPICUEUS AND DARWINISM. 193 mind that pervades it eludes your rude grasp. How much vain toil and empty trouble could you spare yourselves by remembering the words of the sacred writer: "Where shall wisdom be found? It is not found in the land of the living; God understandeth the way thereof; for He looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven"'*. 'Or', added Abington, 'by remembering the modern poet's plaintive address to Truth, "To catch Thee, they start forth with nets and poles, "But with a spirit's stride Thou walkest through their midst", 'and his apostrophe to Astronomers, "Your subject is indeed the most sublime in Space, "But not in Space doth the sublime reside"'. b The company had not noticed that the south-easterly part of the heavens had gradually darkened till it was overspread with a dense mass of clouds. But the peculiar shades of the atmosphere now arrested general attention, and all burst out in a simultaneous expression of astonishment when they suddenly beheld a magnificently brilliant meteor of a vivid red rising from the north-west, below the Great Bear, and observed how that meteor, moving south-eastward, sank beneath the clouds, describing between the skies and the surface of the earth a rectilineal course of almost fifty degrees. When the phenomenon had vanished, the eager eyes of the guests turned spontaneously to Wolfram, as if expecting an ex- planation. Nor were they disappointed; for the zealous Nestor, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the 'point where the star had vanished, in order to observe the characteristic luminosity to its final disappearance, exclaimed: 'A wonderful spectacle! The height of the clouds can not have exceeded 900 metres, and the shooting star must have passed through our atmosphere at an elevation of less than 800 metres above the earth's surface ! These heavenly visitors are becoming extremely familiar, though o 194 EPICUEUS AND DARWINISM. it would be desirable to admire their beauty at a some- what safer distance'*. 'But are not these meteors', said Arvada-Kalama, 'very innocuous bodies, which, just on account of their harm- lessness, are contemplated with so much quiet pleasure' ? 'It would be cruel', replied Wolfram, 'to disturb an exquisite enjoyment by needless alarm; but we now know that those shooting stars are nothing else than small comets freely wandering through space in irregular swarms, and perceived by us only when their journeys bring them near our earth. b But the chief interest lies in their contingent changes; for the sun is capable of converting the swarm into a parabolic group, and a planet to which it approaches, may transform it into an elliptical or annular conglomeration. Therefore, it is not quite beyond the range of possibility that these small comets, on their part, may at any time influence the nature or the orbit of our earth, and that then' . . . 'Justly has the prophet warned us', interrupted Gideon, "Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them"'.i 'One at least of the great heathens', said Hermes, laughing, 'was certainly not terrified by them, and earnestly strove to deliver his benighted fellow-men from the same unreasonable apprehensions.' 'Ah'! cried Humphrey, with his usual quickness, 'you allude to that arch-infidel Epicurus; but his confidence was the confidence of folly, of which Solomon speaks; for surely, t*hat knowledge of nature, from which he borrowed his sense of security, is hardly distinguishable from dream or fiction. He speaks as if he had sat in the council of creation. A world, he is certain, is produced by suitable seeds emanating from one or several other 1 Jerem. X. 2. EPICUBUS AND DARWINISM. 195 worlds and moving towards a particular point where they unite and crystallise into a nucleus for successive additions.* The sun, the moon and the stars may, according to his exalted wisdom, be "a little greater or a little smaller than they appear, or they may be just such as they look" 6 ; while their rising and setting may be caused by their becoming lighted up and extinguished alternately; or this is the pinnacle of his erudition a new moon is generated and decays every day, to be substituted by another in its place ! d Earthquakes, he tells us, arise from the wind penetrating into the interior of the earth, although he admits other possibilities equally sagacious and scientific ; e and as regards shooting meteors, such as we have just seen, he allows us the choice between particles detached from stars, substances set on fire by the action of the wind, the re-union of inflammable atoms brought together by reciprocal attractions, and not a few similar conceits/ Yet I am thankful to our ardent Hellenist for having reminded us of Epicurus; for it is to this philosopher if philosopher he can be called and to his school that our argument, Broken off last night, must proceed, if it is to lead to a solid or satisfactory conclusion'. 'By all means 7 , said Mondoza, 'let us continue that line of reasoning which you have hitherto pursued with so much consistency, and which, by eliciting every variety of opinion, seems best calculated to promote our object of discovering the elements of human felicity and of harmony of character. But I suppose that even your penetration and ingenuity will find it difficult to deduce from the systems of Aristippus and Epicurus a Greek life tainted with gloom or moroseness'. 'Nothing seems to me easier or more evident', replied Humphrey, his small eyes sparkling in unusual restlessness; 'for it is an indisputable law of psychology that one extreme generates another "Violent delights have violent ends, "And in their triumph die". 196 EPICUEUS AND DARWINISM. 'A striking proof is at hand. I need hardly remind you of the reckless levity displayed by the Cyrenaics who gloried in the unprincipled adroitness and versatility of their master Aristippus. a Pleasure was their god; sensual indulgence the aim of their existence. Varying a line of Horace, they might have taken as their motto: "Get pleasure, get pleasure ; if you can, lawfully; if not, pleasure by any means". Defining the highest good as "a gentle motion tending to sensation", b they did not allow that to be pleasure which consists in a calm condition of well- being or in a state of undisturbedness, but they demanded "motion", that is, special and positive enjoyment. This they considered desirable for its own sake, but happiness simply for the sake of the definite pleasure. Under such circumstances, it is a matter ,of course that they declared the pleasures of the body to be superior to those of the soul, and the sufferings of the body to be more agonising than those of the mind. d They were only consistent when they affirmed that gratitude, friendship and charity had no real existence, but were merely upheld or cultivated as far as they were advantageous; that a man of sense will do everything for his own interests, since no one else is to him of equal importance with himself; and that he will, therefore, not be so rash and foolish as to risk any danger on behalf of his country. 6 Indeed, it is in no respect surprising that, going a step farther, they con- tended that "pleasure is a good even if it arises from the most obj ectionable causes and the most preposterous actions" ; f nay that, proceeding yet a further step towards the precipice of iniquity, they held that "a wise man might steal and commit adultery and sacrilege at proper seasons" of course, for the purpose of winning the highest boon of pleasure. And why not? "None of those actions", they logically maintained, "are disgraceful by nature, if we only have the courage to discard the common opinion about them, which owes its existence to the consent of fools"; whence the wise man's only duty lies EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 197 in avoiding public acts which might bring upon him punishment or discredit. 3 '"Were they at least happy at such a price' ? continued Humphrey rapidly, to prevent being interrupted. 'The answer given by history to this question is ghastly. Hegesias, one of the most famous of the Cyrenaic teachers, was by king Ptolemy banished from the country because he set forth life's disappointments and vexations, man's miseries and agonies, so persistently and so forcibly that many of his hearers in despair committed suicide whence he obtained the name of "Death-Advocate". 15 This is the grim climax of your Greek merriment'! 'Is it just', said Canon Mortimer in a tone of gentle reproof, 'to judge the merits of a school of philosophy by the wild exaggerations of extreme fanatics? The atheist Theodorus is answerable for most of those disgraceful utterances which so shock our sense of morality. Yet charity might at least discover some points of extenuation. A mere love of paradox often induces men to give expression to views which scarcely represent their con- victions. For even Theodorus, in evident self-contradiction, repeatedly called thoughtfulness and justice good qualites, and their opposites evils. c But the founder of the Hedonic sect, though in many respects displaying a deplorable laxity of conduct, enjoined lessons which go far to account for the great influence he exercised. He indulged indeed in luxury whenever it was in his grasp for indifference to enjoyment he held to be perversity of mind , but he never pined for it. His maxim was: "The most merito- rious thing is not abstention from pleasures, but, while having them at our command, not to be their slave" ; d and in harmony with this principle, he earnestly advised his daughter Arete not to attach herself to superfluities. Other masters of the school taught that the wise man should be absolutely free from envy, passion and super- stition, as these originate in a distortion of judgment; and the followers of Anniceris strongly insisted upon 198 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. gratitude and patriotism to be practised as sacred duties, and upon friendship prompted, not by selfishness, but by a natural feeling of benevolence. It is, therefore, easy to see that even the Cyrenaics, in proposing pleasure as their chief end, set forth opinions enclosing the germs of a nobler development'. 'All of us', said Hermes with a smile of satisfaction, 'must admire the large-minded equity of observations which prove that the Church has room for every variety of opinion, or, if it should have none, that it is at any moment ready to widen its aisles'. 'A most valuable ally'! whispered Attinghausen to "Wolfram. 4 I cannot prevail upon myself, said Humphrey pointedly, but without looking at the Canon, 'to pass so lightly over views fraught with the utmost significance for those who have the sacred truths of Christianity at heart. I must, of course, not hope to make myself understood by those who, wrapped in the pharisaical cloak of a humanitarian Hellenism, thank their gods that they are not like those barbarians, the Christians; nor by those who, looking upon their own enlightened selves as the measure of all things, and reducing Nature to a mechanical agglomeration of matter, have banished from their language the words God, mind, and soul. But I have a right to expect a broader and more impartial examination from those who have not entirely shaken off authority and tradition as an unbearable yoke, and profess to teach the Gospel and its spiritual lessons'. 'I trust', said Mondoza with the utmost courtesy, 'that the remarks with which you are about to favour us, will not carry us too far from our chosen path by entering into the mazes of metaphysical or dogmatic speculation'? 'I shall try to heed your warning', replied Humphrey; 'but it is especially in order to protest against your own concluding observations of last evening that I feel it to be my duty to draw the inferences from the ascertained EPICURUS AND DABWINTSM. 199 . course of Greek culture more fully and more distinctly than would otherwise have been required. 'Now, I contend, that nothing proves so strikingly as that very culture to the excellencies of which I am not insensible that the knowledge of the natural man has a sharply marked boundary, beyond which it is unable to pass'. 'Who has ever denied that'? interrupted Attinghausen. 'The knowledge to which I allude', continued Hum- phrey earnestly, 'is probably not that which you have in your mind. I refer to the invisible world to the hidden life of our hearts and souls, and I affirm that, however varied and brilliant the achievements of the human intellect have been, there is one enigma which the natural man could not solve; one question, suggested by a longing deep and painful, which he could not answer; it is the question : "How can I be made free from my sins" ? The key to this problem has been supplied by Christ in revealing the way of redemption, of conciliation with the Father, and of justification before His tribunal. This message of peace is the centre and the cardinal point of all wisdom; * it is the new truth which Christianity has brought to mankind, which was never divined by any mortal, and is higher than all reason, nay which the angels themselves are desirous to fathom'.* 'But this Christian dogma', said "Wolfram, 'is not exclusively Christian'. 'It is such mistakes', replied Humphrey, 'which I am anxious to remove. That doctrine is exclusively and specifically Christian. To the enquiry, which the heathen too raised in a thousand forms and with burning eagerness, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death"? the new Covenant alone was able to reply, "I thank God through Christ our Lord", who "of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" 15 . Pagan antiquity also justice requires this acknowledgment harboured a 200 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. certain consciousness of sin and the oppressive feeling of impotence in struggling against its wiles. Let me recall to you the one touching appeal of Euripides: "0 send a light to illumine the souls of men anxious to ''learn the germ and root of misery, anxious to know which "is the immortal god whom they should appease to find "relief in their wretchedness"!* 'Yet pagans failed to see the true cause of their weak- ness and dejection. They possessed indeed a more or less clear idea of God as the all-powerful Creator and Ruler, but they did not know Him as the Father, as the source of Love and Holiness, and they were thus unable to conceive the hope of salvation. Persecuted by the incessant admonition of the inner voice, "What must we do to be saved"? and seeing no star to guide them, they fell a prey to the scourges of the inexorable Erinnys, and the rod of relentless ate. And, what is both most remark- able and most saddening, when at last, in the fulness of time, He appeared who was able to heal their bleeding wounds, the vehement yearning changed into a no less vehement resistance, and instead of recognising and hailing him as the great physician, they rejected him with obdurate bitterness and malice. 'That strong yearning is testified not only by the works of their poets and historians, but, with still more thrilling power, by some of their master-pieces of sculpture, the aesthetic merit of which, however eminent, is yet subordinate to their religious significance. Who can behold the mournful figure of Niobe, that mater dolorosa of ancient art, without finding in the sublime composition a confir- mation of the Biblical doctrine, that God visits men's iniquity on their children and children's children? Or who can contemplate the grandly pathetic group of Laocoon without feeling that the serpents of sin and death hold us and our children inextricably enfolded, threatening agony and doom ? Indeed that group is a faithful image of the ancient world itself: it rouses at the same time a certain EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 201 human admiration and the profoundest compassion; it reveals at once the most perfect symmetry of beauty and the giant struggle of the best and noblest against the dark powers of iniquity and destruction. The struggle was hopeless; the serpents encompassed their unhappy victims in closer and closer coils; for there was none who crushed the serpents' heads. 'Thus an unspeakable despondency is diffused over all antiquity like a lowering cloud. Escape from these feelings of torment was possible only in two ways by intoxication through sensual enjoyment, or by self-annihilation; and the philosophical schools of Greece chose either the one or the other, and sometimes both in succession. Stoicism, no more than Hedonism, armed man with strength, purity, comfort, and hope'. 'But it should not be forgotten', said Hermes, with an expression of surprise, 'that, as the Cynic school was refined into Stoicism, so the teaching of Hedonics advanced to the higher stage of Epicureanism'. 'Epicureanism'! echoed Humphrey almost with a shudder. 'It is the most detestable, because the most insidious of all poisonous excrescences of the Grecian mind. The Epicurean is a dangerous voluptuary, a despicable drone in the human hive'. 'He is worse', added Rabbi Gideon; 'he is an infidel, and our sages, in searching for a term to designate an apostate, could find none stronger or more reproachful than "an Epicurus'". 'Indeed', said Subbhuti earnestly, 'we have always been taught to hold his life and theories in the deepest detestation'. 'Hedonism', added Panini, 'leaves at least faith un- touched, but the doctrines of Epicurus are so' ... 'I hope to goodness', interrupted Attinghausen with a stamp of unusual vehemence, 'there will soon be an end of these pious ejaculations! I lay any wager you like, that none of you, who seem horror-stricken at the mere mention of Epicureanism, have the least notion of the 202 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. system beyond that which you imbibed from the "good" books of your nurseries, or from the fact, duly inculcated in your minds, that the first learned and formidable writer against Christianity, was an Epicurean. Shall I calmly listen to blasphemous ravings'? 'I can well understand your indignation', said Abington with his accustomed composure; 'for to you that system is doubtless a religion alas, how lifeless a substitute! and I admit that it is not unfrequently condemned without an adequate acquaintance with its tenets ; yet the repug- nance seems to me to arise from an instinct the strength and extent of which are no mean presumptions of its soundness and legitimacy'. 'And yet', observed Mondoza, 'Epicurean philosophy seems to be endowed with a wonderful vitality. Ridiculed, despised and, as I believe, misunderstood from the beginning, it again and again rose triumphantly over doctrines of apparently greater elevation, and flourished when almost every other school had decayed.* And if I do not misread the signs of the time, its general tendencies are at present more wide-spread than ever, and are likely to gain still further ground as science advances. It seems to me, therefore, not only a matter of interest but of considerable importance to obtain a clear and accurate knowledge of the subject; and I am sure I shall not appeal to our friend Hermes in vain for performing, with respect to the gardens of Epicurus, the same office he so readily undertook in connection with the shades of the Porch'. 'The task', replied Hermes cheerfully, 'is equally grateful and much less complicated; for the whole system flows naturally from a few principles almost as plain as axioms. These principles are: all men desire happiness; happiness is impossible without tranquillity of mind ; tranquillity of mind is secured by freedom from all fears of superstition; superstition is conquered by a thorough study of nature and her laws ; and this study is facilitated by ease and the comforts EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 203 of life ; therefore, ease and comfort are desirable for the attainment of supreme happiness'.* 'Everything depends', said Arvada-Kalama, 'upon the meaning of "ease and comfort"'. 'Excepting the last link', said Panini with a doubtful shake of the head, 'the whole sounds, in your statement, almost like the teaching of the Stoics'. 'The resemblance between the two schools is indeed remarkable', replied Hermes. 'No Stoic paradoxes'! cried Humphrey sarcastically. 'Every unbiassed mind has the unmistakable impression that both are opposed almost like antipodes; and as I strongly abhor Stoic haughtiness, so have I the pro- foundest aversion to Epicurean frivolousness'. 'I trust', replied Hermes, with dignity, 'that scholars listened to as authorities in important branches of learn- ing, are not solely guided by impressions and groundless antipathies, but show themselves amenable to the evidence of facts, even if these should aim at demolishing a long- cherished conviction or prejudice. Now', continued Hermes placidly, 'Epicureanism is commonly held to be syno- nymous with luxury and self-indulgence. But what is the account given in authentic sources? "Simple fare", said the founder of the school, "procures us as much pleasure as costly viands, provided that the feelings of suffering and want are removed ; and corn and water afford extreme enjoyment if taken when needed. To accustom oneself, therefore, to simple and inexpensive habits is a chief ingredient in promoting health ; and then, when we occasio- nally have an opportunity for more sumptuous repasts, we appreciate them the more heartily"'. 'Excuse the interruption', said Arvada-Kalama ; 'are these your own words'? 'They are a quotation', replied Hermes', as literal as pos- sible, from Diogenes Laertius. This writer continues :" When, therefore, we say, that pleasure is a chief good, we are not speaking of the delights of the libertine or voluptuary, 204 EPICUKUS AND DARWINISM. as some of our opponents fancy, who are ignorant of our views or interpret them perversely; but we mean the freedom of the body from pain and of the soul from perturbation. For it is not protracted revelries and splendid feasts that make life agreeable, but sober con- templation which examines into the reasons for all we choose or avoid, and which chases away the vain opinions which usually engender soul-troubling confusion"'*. 'And are these indeed the principles of the Epicureans' ? exclaimed Movayyid-eddin. 'Then let us write over the door of Cordova Lodge the words that were inscribed over the temple library of Thebes: ^TXHS IATPEION; for here the soul is truly healed of deceitful traditions'. 'It is, moreover, added', continued Hermes, 'that "the gifts of nature are well defined and easily acquired, while idle desires are insatiable". 1 * Contemporary testimonies assure us that "Epicurus and all his disciples lived most simply and most economically; that they were content with a small cup of light wine, while all the rest of their drink was water". Epicurus himself observed in a letter to a friend that he was satisfied with water and plain bread, adding: "Send me some Cytherean cheese, so that if I wish to have a grand feast, I may have the means". Hence Juvenal could write, "If you ask me what amount of income is sufficient, I will tell you: just as much as thirst and hunger and cold require; as much as satisfied thee, Epicurus, in thy small garden; no more than the home of Socrates once contained".* 1 Is it, therefore, necessary to point out how closely the Epicureans' mode of life coincided with the simplicity of the Stoics themselves? In one of the finest and noblest works that have happily been bequeathed to us by the ancients the immortal poem of the Epicurean Lucretius that simplicity is in more than one passage glowingly extolled; let one specimen suffice : "0 wretched mortals! Race perverse arid blind! "Through what dread dark, what perilous pursuits, EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 205 "Pass ye this round of being! know ye not, "Of all you toil for, Nature nothing asks "But for the body freedom from disease, "And sweet unanxious quiet for the mind? "And little claims the body to be sound: "But little serves to strew the paths we tread "With joys beyond e'en Nature's utmost wish . . . "Since, then, nor wealth, nor splendour, nor the boast "Of birth illustrious, nor e'en regal state "Avails the body, so the free-born mind "Their aid as little asksV 'Therefore Epicurus praised as a high virtue that con- tentment which does not necessarily demand smallness of possession, but teaches the tranquil use of whatever has fallen to our share, since he believed that "those men enjoy luxury most thoroughly who are best able to do without it". b Hence you will easily infer what lie meant when he declared pleasure to be "the beginning and end of a happy life": c pleasure was to him indeed the first boon and "connate" with us, d the motive power of all we choose and avoid, the standard measure of every sen- sation; 6 but how did be define pleasure? In distinct op- position to the Cyrenaics, he found it simply in the ab- sence of pain and discomfort; he required no "motion" or individual and positive enjoyments, but merely a general condition of well-being; nay his antagonists taunted him that his pleasure was not pleasure at all, and that, "according to him, it was not even possible to live agreeably"'/ 'This is exactly', said Arvada-Kalama approvingly, 'like the Nydya system of our Hindoo philosophy the absence of pain is the summum ~bonum'. 'Not quite like your intricate and confused Nyaya', said Asho-raoco ironically. 5 'Let me adduce a Stoic's testimony', continued Hermes quickly. 'Seneca writes : "Those Epicureans who indulge in luxury, do not act so by the precept of their master Epicurus, but, being slaves to vice, they cover their own effeminacy by his teaching, and frequent places of in- 206 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. struction where they are sure to hear self-indulgence praised; they do not consider how sober and temperate that pleasure of Epicurus is, but, clinging to the name, they seek for their illicit affections an authority and a cloak". Nay he adds that, what Epicurus prescribes is not only holy and righteous but, when closely examined, most serious; for his "pleasure is reduced to very dimi- nutive and meagre proportions, and the very same thing we call the law of virtue, is called by him the law of pleasure".* Moreover, as pleasure is to him only the means of attaining happiness, it must be rejected whenever it might possibly result in annoyance; while pain must be endured when it promises to engender a, higher gra- tification. But the pleasures of the soul are considered by him superior to those of the body ; whence it follows that we should readily undergo physical discomfort to secure an intellectual enjoyment. Now pleasure is inseparable from virtue alone, whereas everything else, being perishable, is separable from pleasure. In this sense we must take the maxim that we choose the virtues, not on their own account, but for the sake of pleasure, just as we seek the skill of the physician for the sake of health. Nor should we permit ourselves to misconstrue the bolder saying that, if the pleasures of the profligate made an end of the fears of his mind and taught him the limit of his desires, we could not reasonably blame him: for the premises are, according to Epicurus, an impossibility. Freedom from disquietude of the soul is the supreme object, to which everything must be made subservient. b In a word, the "pleasure" of Epicurus is not materially different from the "cheerfulness" of Democritus; nor the "dulce est" of the Epicurean from the "bene est" of the Stoic. c 'Again, Epicureanism is usually considered equivalent to enervated cowardice. But Epicurus declared that "if the wise man were even put to the torture, he would still be happy", d and a few hours before his death he EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 207 wrote: "Painful disorders have attacked me so fiercely that their violence can hardly be exceeded; but the serenity of my mind, arising from the recollection of my philosophical enquiries, counterbalances all these ills". a Nor was he subdued by adversity; for "the wise man", he said, "defies chance"; b and "not making Fortune a goddess, he believed it better to be wretched while acting with reason, than to be prosperous without reason". 'Among the many marvels of history, this is not the least surprising that a speculative school inculcating such principles should have become almost a by- word of contempt and ridicule. Yet such was the case at a very early period. The only explanation lies in the obvious fact that, as among the Stoics, so there were a- mong the Epicureans many "wandbearers", but few "in- spired". Opinions involving so nice a balance of impulse and reason, were particularly liable to the abuse of the weak and the insincere. Epicureanism easily relapsed into Hedonism for both "drank of one cup" d till it appeared to centre in the reckless self-admonition: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die". 6 Horace was in the right medium when, in the spirit of the lines, "Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem, "Dulce est desipere in loco," he invited to a moderate and rational enjoyment/ But when he called himself "a porker of the herd of Epicurus", he easily misled himself and others into regarding Epicurus' teaching as "an insane philosophy"^. That even an Epictetus should have so far mistaken the "pleasure" of the Epicurean as to accuse the whole sect of sacrificing to it every behest of morality, 11 proves the great difficulty, experienced by many, of recognising virtue in any other garb than that of austerity though not a few, as Cicero, Lucian, and Plutarch, have levelled their hostile darts against Epicureans and Stoics alike. 1 208 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 'What, then, was the Epicurean's ideal of happiness? Fortified in the calmness of his reflexions, unshaken by all extraneous influences, and absolute master of his de- sires and passions, he tried to rise to the heights of wis- dom and thence tranquilly to contemplate the breathless race and giddy strife of the multitude wrestling for power, wealth, and fame a in a word, "to be undisturbed either by sleeping or waking fancies, but to live among men like a god". b Is this not almost precisely the existence of the Stoic sage who, in his placid self-possession, vies in happiness with Zeus himself?' c 'Swayed by the pagan's characteristic egotism', interrupted Humphrey, who had been very restless during this speech, 'the Epicurean philosopher is satisfied if he has but pro- vided for his own magnificent self. What concern has he with the ignoble crowd? To him "it is sweetest enjoyment to behold from the safe coast a vessel in distress, and the voyagers struggling with the fury of the waves". d Yet even he draws a terrible picture of human misery and uses it as a main support of one of his worst heresies. How helpless, he exclaims, is man from his infancy! Fitly is the child ushered with bitter cries into a life of interminable woes, a life of enforced and slavish toil for an uncertain existence, and of constant warfare against insidious foes and dangers. 6 There you see again, in its full bloom and tempting beauty, the joyousness of your Grecian life and temperament'! 'Your reproaches', replied Hermes, 'are unfounded; for one of the Epicurean's strongest feelings was com- passion, and in those verses to which you have alluded, Lucretius expressly declares that the pleasure at our own safety is marred by the sight of the sufferers ; f while the earnest and deeply sympathetic picture of the ills of humanity should shelter him from the common charges of heedless levity. Yet in spite of that description, he called life "delightful", and blamed as utterly false the lines of Theognis, which you have quoted a few days ago EPICUKUS AND DARWINISM. 209 with so much emphasis, to the effect that the most de- sirable of all things is not to be born ; and the next desirable, to pass into Hades as quickly as possible after birth. a If in these two points there is a contrast between the wise man of Epicurus and of Zeno and many will admit that the difference is in favour of the former the affinity between both is in various other features again strik- ingly manifest. For like the Stoics, the Epicureans main- tain that the wise man should not be a "Cynic" or a "beggar"'. 'He knew not Buddha's dignity', murmured Subbhuti. 'But should, on the contrary', continued Hermes, 'take care of his property and provide for the future ; that he should not entangle himself in the affairs of the state; that he should not marry except under certain uncommon circumstances; that he should be indifferent to the arts of oratory; that he should pursue theoretical knowledge only in so far as it will help him fully to understand the code of ethics and to acquire that freedom from anxiety which is "the health of the soul" and is derived from convictions; although, with this object in view, he cannot study too diligently or too seriously; 1 ' and to support himself in these difficult tasks, he should always have before his mind some great model as leader and guardian. 6 'But in various doctrines Epicurus maintained a decided and conspicuous opposition to Zeno. For not only did he, as I have observed, allow that the good man, though clinging to pleasure as the highest boon, may feel grief and pity, but he affirmed that all faults are not equal; that self-destruction is legitimate under no condition whatever, since death is neither to be feared nor to be sought, and satiety of life arises usually from men's own errors; that the heavenly bodies are not endowed with reason, and are not portions of the divine nature; that augury has no reality ; that true piety is shown by the serene contemplation of all things, and requires neither prayers, vows, nor sacrifices ; d and lastly, that we are not under the rule of Necessity, which is an irresponsible power, 210 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. but are endowed with free-will, which renders us answerable for our actions; as, indeed, the fables of mythology would be preferable to the harrowing belief in an inexorable Fate. a 'Briefly, then, his chief principles are these. The riches needed to satisfy our wants are easily procurable, while imaginary wealth has no limits. They do not consist in accumulating property but in diminishing our desires. The wise man requires little, but he may expend largely accord- ing to his means, as he does not reject an ampler enjoyment of life. He gains his subsistence honourably, but not too laboriously, and best by imparting instruction in philosophy. He restrains his passions, especially those of love, as they disturb his tranquillity of mind, and therefore his happiness. He values the esteem of his fellow-men, but is indifferent to fame. He does not waste the present in anxiety about the future. He banishes envy and covetousness, finds greater delight in bestowing than in receiving benefits, and readily pardons injuries. 13 If we consider, besides, the irreproachable lives of the ancient Epicureans, admitted by those who jeered at their principles, 6 their fidelity in friendship even unto death, d and the qualities of kindness and beneficence, which they seemed to have inherited from their beloved and almost divinely honoured Master and unfading exemplar; 6 and if we, lastly, remember that they cultivated and encouraged industry and commerce, the fine arts and all polite pursuits of the intellect, which they considered "the blessings and delights of life"; f we shall be inclined to avow that, in avoiding the one-sided harshness of Stoicism, and assigning to reason, not a despotic sovereignty, but merely a con- trolling power, over the senses and all legitimate instincts, they closely approached to the highest form of a com- plete, harmonious, and happy humanity'. 'In this highest form of humanity', said Humphrey bitterly, 'they deemed it indispensable to include some of the admirable principles of their Cyrenaic predecessors ; for, like these, they maintained that "Justice has no EPICUKUS AND DARWINISM. 211 independent existence, but is simply a mutual engagement to guard against injury" ; that "Injustice is not intrinsically bad, but bad only on account of the fear of detection inseparable from it" ; in a word, that "Everything ceases to be right when it ceases to be useful" ! a Perfectly justified, therefore, is the severe reprobation of Epictetus, to which you have alluded, declaring that the views of the Epicureans are mischievous, causing the ruin of cities and families, unfit even for women, and instead of supporting and fortifying men in the temptations of life, confirming and encouraging them in every vice. b And as regards the affinity between the Epicureans and the Stoics, I can hardly deny it when I remember that the Stoic Brutus and the Epicurean Cassius made common cause for the assassination of their mutual benefactor'! 'As in all other matters', said Mondoza, 'the truth lies probably midway between the extremes. With regard to the sentences bearing on justice and injustice, which sound indeed most objectionable, we should not forget that they form part of political speculations, which it would be as unfair absolutely to transfer to the sphere of private morality, as it would be so to transfer the ideas of modern thinkers who have written about the "Social Contract". In another utterance preserved to us, Epicurus declares on the contrary, that right should be done, not in the letter but in the spirit of the laws, not only in public but also in secret, not from compulsion but from the pleasure felt in the exercise of justice.* 1 Moreover, Epicurus propounded that the highest of all qualities and one even more valuable than philosophy itself is "thoughtfulness" fypwycig , which is the source of all other virtues, and that "we cannot possibly live agreeably unless we live also prudently and honourably and justly"; or live prudently and honourably and justly without also living agreeably, as this is inseparable from the virtues. 6 Yet it seems impossible to acquit the Epicu- reans entirely from the charge of a certain selfishness. It 212 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. has been quaintly said by Spinoza : if a triangle could speak, it would say, God is eminently triangular ; and a circle would say, the Divine nature is eminently circular'.* 'Similarly', said Hermes laughing, 'Xenophanes had declared long before that, judging from the gods of Homer, the horses would represent their deities with hoofs, and the oxen with horns'. b 'For as man is', continued Mondoza, 'so is his heavenly ideal. Now the God of Epicurus is a being "exempt from all occupation, incorruptible, and living in perfect joy and bliss", c "neither doing anything himself, nor giving others anything to do", d removed high above all affairs of men, and in his Olympic repose unconcerned at their piety or iniquity, their struggles and sufferings. 6 Such is the prototype of the Epicurean philosopher. Happily delivered from all fear of death and superstition, this sage has but the one aim of preserving his serene com- posure undisturbed by any activity that might involve him in conflicts or difficulties. Hence also, arises the fallacy from which he seeks to 'derive comfort in death: "We are continually engaged in the very same pursuits, nor can the prolongation of life bring to us any new pleasure"/ Useful labour, beneficent employment of time and strength, and opportunities for advancing the whole these were to him but secondary considerations in reflecting on the object of life.s Like the Stoic, there- fore, he kept aloof from affairs of the state and evaded the obligations of matrimony and of the education of children. It was this that gave rise to the reproach often repeated against the Epicureans that they desired to dissolve the natural community of men. h Their own happiness and that of their immediate associates and friends, their own purity and moral elevation, were their sole end; they cared little whether they promoted the interests of the common weal or not. While the Stoics conceived a cosmopolitanism to which every individual readily subordinated himself as a ministering organ, the EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 213 Epicureans, though theoretically recognising the same prin- ciple, in reality narrowed it to a friendship which each member hoped to make serviceable for his own support and encouragement'. 'For the very same reasons', said Gregovius, 'the Prea- cher was unable to attain true happiness. In his copious laments about the monotony of existence 4 and the vanity of all things, we can discover no public-spirited aim which he had at heart and furthered with all his might. Constantly brooding upon himself, he remained a stranger to joy and tranquillity of mind. In his failure that of the Epicureans is mirrored'. 'The aptness of this analogy and inference', resumed Mondoza, 'can hardly be doubted; and I have only to add that science, which the Stoics placed beneath ethics, was by the Epicureans positively slighted : b forced into the service of practical usefulness, it was treated with an empirical superficiality which deprived it of its proper rank in the economy of human pursuits'. 'This last charge', said Attinghausen with warmth, 'I say it with regret and reluctance, is not without foundation. Yet I must most strongly protest against the conclusions which might be drawn, and have frequently been drawn, from this concession. Not by his ethics, but by his physics has Epicurus become one of the greatest benefactors of mankind. We owe him a greater debt than the deepest gratitude can avow or the most fervid eloquence can describe. For he alone among the ancients carried out the important and fruitful principles of Democritus' doctrine of atoms with almost perfect con- sistency, and he has thus, in the truest sense, become the father of modern science. Although admitting occasional delusions, he declared, with unqualified decision, the senses to be the only safe and irrefutable criteria of truth, to which even reason must submit, as all reasoning has the senses for its indispensable basis. c He taught that there are no other than bodily realities, the qualities of things being only 214 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. accidents without an independent and incorporeal exis- tence. 'Yes', interrupted Humphrey sarcastically; 'to him the soul also is corporeal a bodily substance composed of certain particles which are diffused over the frame, and some of which are endowed with an extreme mobility causing life and thought. From being enveloped by the rest of the body, this wonderful soul "an aggregate of atoms, or whatever it may be" a obtains the power of sensation; and, of course, as it is produced together with the body, so it grows, gains or loses in strength, decays and is dissolved in concert with it : sensation perishes in both simultaneously; for the mind and soul are as inseparable from the body "as the perfume is from balls of frankincense". b And having thus improved upon the sublime teaching of Democritus, c the sage plainly lays down the maxim that "they who pretend that the soul is incorporeal, utter words destitute of sense, since, if it were incorporeal, it would be unable to do or to suffer any thin g". d From such excellent materials it was easy for the poetical champion of Epicurus to construct a mind and a soul consisting of four distinct corporeal elements, though he was unable to find names for all. 6 Surely, these are views after the materialist's own heart, and no wonder that he lavishes incense on their heathen author'. 'No wonder indeed', said Attinghausen, who had listened to Humphrey's remarks with surprising calmness; 'for hence it follows that death is a matter with which we are not at all concerned, since it is only the end of sensation ; and while relieved from fear of death, we are cured of all vain longings after Immortality/ 'I was not allowed before', said Arvada-Kalama with some irritation, 'to complete my comparison between Hindoo and Epicurean philosophy; but the similarity is striking and affords another proof of the great influence which Indian thought exercised upon the culture of Greece. Our Nyaya philosophy is often branded as materialistic yet only by EPICUBUS AND DARWINISM. 215 those who do not, as we do, distinguish between the soul and the soul's organs, which alone we derive from nature ; nor between soul (atman), which is the self, and mind (manas, mens) or the medium which, standing between the self and the impressions of the senses, prevents these impressions from crowding upon the soul simultaneously or promiscuously, and admits them but singly and con- secutively, as the mind, which is no larger than an atom, can attend only to one thought at a time. a If this resemblance should not appear sufficient', continued Arvada-Kalama more rapidly, as Attinghausen showed signs of impatience, 'I can refer you to our Sarikhya theory, which regards the souls alone as substances, aims at a complete cessation of the three kinds of pain that inherent in man (as desire or grief), that arising from ordinary things, and that produced by supernatural causes , and considers the soul, though apparently held in thraldom, to be "ever essentially a pure and free intelligence"'. 1 * 'But, unlike Epicurus', said Subbhuti calmly, yet some-, what pointedly, 'your wise Kapila endowed man with a plurality of souls, as he was compelled to do from the inter- minable number of new births with which he favours you'. c 'True', rejoined Arvada-Kalama warmly, 'yet this provi- sion saves the soul at least from that annihilation, which Epicurus glorified and Kapila deprecated'. 'Theologians are alike all over the world', said Atting- hausen, fully looking at Arvada-Kalama with mingled contempt and pity. 'You call yourselves Reformers and Unitarians, but you retain a sneaking affection for old creeds and old subtleties, and while at every point your philosophy undermines your religion, your religion in return confuses your philosophy. But let me continue', he added with an abrupt shrug of his shoulders. 'Epicurus has intrepidly and effectually destroyed the Socratic fallacy of a teleological design in nature. d We must beware, he tells us, of imagining that the 216 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. heavenly phenomena and the movement of the stars are regulated by an immortal Being, or that they gave them- selves, with reflection and wisdom, the motions they possess; for, he says with a remarkable approach to the truth, "from the first impulse imparted to the heavenly bodies since the organisation of the world, there is derived a sort of necessity which regulates their course to this day". a In a word, he insists upon the unalterable laws of matter as determining- the condition and progress of nature. He thus extirpated all superstition arising from religion indeed both terms were to him equivalent; he silenced all terrors born of ignorance, and, I need not say, dethroned all popular gods, or, as he expressed it, "released Nature from her proud masters and cruel tyrants " b for those unoccupied and perfectly happy entities dwelling in the regions of light, were mere puppets incapable of doing any harm, and entirely unlike the Stoic or Academic Providence I say, he really and finally dethroned the anthropomorphic gods, without half- heartedly propping up their authority ? as the Stoics did, by allegorical artifices ; d nay he, or at least his great disciple Lucretius, declined in the clearest terms any idea of a theodicy; for he proved that this world, so far from being the best that is possible, was by no means even a tolerably good one. If there were nothing else to show that the earth was not prepared by a divine power for man's abode, this would be amply manifest from its numerous and grievous defects large portions occupied by mountains, seas and marshes; burning heat rendering almost two-thirds of the rest uninhabitable; the soil yielding its produce reluctantly to exhausting labour, and yet the crops liable to perish by drought or ruthless hurricanes; diseases and wild beasts raging against men; men destroying men in bloody strife; and the elements often annihilating the virtuous, while sparing the wicked. 6 *But Epicurus' greatest and most lasting merit is this that he has for ever overthrown the doctrine of Creation of EPICUEUS AND DARWINISM. 217 calling into existence out of nothing by substituting the natural and fortuitous combination of an infinitude of eternal and indestructible atoms. a Everything that exists, he taught, was produced from these blind and senseless elements, or, "Nature carries on her operations through imperceptible particles ". b By this principle, together with its correlative that no single thing is ever reduced to nothing, he struck at the very root of all errors and super- stitions. The universe, he affirmed, is boundless both in reference to the quantity of bodies it contains, and to the magnitude of the vacuum. d There is an unlimited number of worlds, not necessarily all of the same form, some being perhaps spherical, others elliptical, and others of a different shape. 6 The varieties of living creatures did not originate in heaven, but were produced by that earth which now nourishes them, in the same manner as, though far less vigorously or abundantly than in the youthful ages of nature, at present "many animals spring forth from the earth, generated by moisture and the quickening heat of the sun"; whence the earth is justly called the universal mother/ And all bodies will be successively destroyed from various causes, some more, others less rapidly, yet only to be reconstructed in new combinations of their atoms'.^ 'How utterly incapable', said Abington, 'the Epicureans necessarily were of rising above inert matter into the sphere of the spiritual, is proved, with appalling vividness, by that earliest and most venomous of all assaults which, no later than the second Christian century, was levelled against the new faith by Celsus the Epicurean. 11 But we have reason to be thankful even for these audacious blas- phemies, as they called forth Origen's triumphant vin- dication, which, as it surpasses the treatise of Celsus no less in learning and acumen than in depth and charity, has anticipated the refutation of almost every objection that has been, or that can be made to the teaching of Christianity'. 11 218 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 'As far as I am aware', said Hermes, 'Celsus did not inveigh against the moral principles of the Bible, but only against its dogmas; for as regards the former, he denounced the Scriptures merely for attempting to support them by the fictitious authority of God or a direct in- spiration, while other nations who discovered the same truths honestly and modestly set them forth as the sug- gestions of men'. a 'His mistake', replied Abington, 'was one which he shared with all pagans: Christian ethics are not identical with heathen ethics, however specious the resemblance occasionally may appear to a cursory observation ; for it is only through the mystery of those dogmas, unfathom- able to the heathen mind, that they receive their full meaning and significance'. 'Notwithstanding some errors of detail', said Wolfram, lost in his reflections, 'the system of Epicurus is a wonderful example of instinctive insight into the operations of nature '. b 'It seems to me', said Berghorn dogmatically, 'a crude conglomeration of daring fancies and impious hazards fully rebutted by Cardinal Polignac's "Anti-Lucretius'". 'And all these fair and promising germs', continued Wolfram musingly, 'were doomed to lie dormant for fifteen centuries in the cold soil of Christianity, and would surely have perished, were not their vigour and vitality so extraordinary. What incentives had Christianity for investigating the earth which, laden with the primeval curse, was not man's real home; or for studying the ce- lestial bodies which were soon to be replaced by a new heaven, or the human frame which, being the carnal obstacle to salvation, needed subdual by self-torture? What in- centives indeed to such researches had Christianity which dreaded science as ungodly and imprisoned or burnt its most illustrious votaries? It revelled in signs and wonders and scouted the laws of nature. The only science it suf- fered was the double-faced abnormity of scholasticism, EPICUEUS AND DARWINISM. 219 and the cosmic power whose dominion it made omnipotent was that of Satan. Thought was a shadow and life a caricature'. 'Well', resumed Attinghausen with new fervour, 'the germs of ancient Greece were not destroyed but have, within our own century, sprung up with marvellous strength and rapidity. 1 repeat, the idea of Creation the idea of acts of production arbitrarily performed by an extra- mundane Being on a premeditated plan must be un- reservedly renounced, both as regards the inorganic and the organic world. In the one reigns, with irrepressible necessity, the principle of force inherent in matter; and in the other rules, with equal imperiousness, the principle of development, evolution or descent, and either principle acts mechanically that is blindly and aimlessly by agencies purely physical and chemical. We cannot even admit the compromise of the inconsistent and the timid who indeed allow "efficient causes", that is, the immanent forces of nature, to be adequate to the formation of the heavenly bodies and the whole inorganic kingdom, but insist, with respect to animals and plants, upon the co- operation of "final causes" or of forces working with consciousness and design a distinction without any foun- dation either in science or logic. What room, therefore, is left to miracle and supernaturalism, which have too long usurped the place of knowledge and law ? What room to those fairy fancies of a man-like Creator, with which we are unfortunately imbued in our childhood, and which, car- rying confusion and darkness into every sphere of thought, many are unable to shake off through life? The origin of a thousandfold mischief, the embryo of a thousand- headed hydra, is the very opening sentence of the tra- ditional Book: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth"'. 'Not all the powers of hell', exclaimed Humphrey, 'will prevail against that Book. How often have its enemies raised a shout of jubilation at its supposed 220 EPICUEUS AND DARWINISM. ovortlirow! It stands as firm as the eternal Rock iron which its life-giving waters have emanated. As if youi hypothesis of evolution were a new discovery! It has not even the poor merit of originality. I will not speak of the Greeks who, it is asserted with pride, were the first to propound this monstrosity too'. 'I am afraid', said Hermes, 'you do the Greeks too much honour. With the exception of a casual remark of Aristotle, which he himself at once rejects, bearing on the possible existence of creatures produced by chance with fitness, and the probable disappearance of others so 'produced without fitness I say, with the exception of this one incidental remark, which is never made the starting point for further conclusions, there is nothing in all the Greek philosophers, which has more than a very superficial and, I must add, a very crude resemblance to recent theories.' 8 'This is quite immaterial to my purpose', continued Humphrey; 'it is enough for me to refer to Kant and Goethe, whose genius, it is contended, divined the law of the conservation of force, and the metamorphosis of plants and animals, and to Lamarck, Oken, Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire, and the irreverent author or authors of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation", who endeavoured to set forth the hypothesis in pseudo-systematic connection. Did all these luminaries and even Schopenhauer, the tearful, is claimed as a pioneer b succeed in shaking the authority of the Bible or the faith derived from it? Did they succeed in making the world believe that man is no more than a developed ape, bird, reptile, or fish? They possessed as little power for evil as that arch-blasphemer Voltaire; for they were ignominiously repulsed by one infinitely their superior in every attainment and quali- fication by the great Cuvier, who in that memorable public discussion held in the French Academy in 1830, effectually silenced Geofroy Saint-Hilaire, the most eminent of the daring neologians. c Peace was restored, and I EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 221 say it with grief and humiliation it was left to one of my countrymen, nearly thirty years afterwards, to renew the unholy war, to disturb the tranquillity of the Church, and to degrade the dignity of man. And what, after all, is the feat of which he boasts? He appropriated Saint- Hila ire's idea of "a structural plan common to all creatures" or "1'unite de composition organique"; and he appro- priated at the same time his antagonist Cuvier's opposite idea of an individual organisation accorded to, or acquired by, each plant and animal in conformity with its peculiar conditions of life; and out of these two borrowed prin- ciples he framed his paradox that new species and old species are virtually identical'. 'You seem desirous', said Attinghausen ironically, 'to prove once more how justly your great Charles Lyell observed that, whenever a new and surprising scientific discovery is made, people, and especially theologians, say at first, "It is not true"; next "It is opposed to religion"; and finally, "We have known that long ago". The day will come, and it is not far off now, when Englishmen will be as proud of Darwin as they are of Newton. He has clone for the organic creation what Newton achieved for the inorganic world. But the one as little as the other was original in the strictest sense of the word; for neither of them originated the great law with which their names are associated ; but they did more they demonstrated it, and thus raised a speculative conjecture into a scientific truth. The highest genius does not necessarily create, but more frequently constructs or adapts; and the most fruitful operation of the mind is the free combination of opposites or extremes. Darwin started indeed from the two antagonistic views of Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier, but he avoided the one-sidedness of both in neither assuming an absolute identity nor an infinite multiplicity of species, but aiming at unity in variety, and at variety in unity. And this object he accomplished by introducing the new and most important principle of inheritance, which 222 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. acts as a universal law of organic nature, and which, as it includes that of variableness a part only of the progenitors' qualities being transmitted most satisfactorily accounts both for the constant resemblances and the ever changeful differences, both for uniformity and individuality, in a word, for the production of new species. The system of Copernicus migh't have remained a barren, though interesting, hypothesis, claiming many more mar- tyrs like Galilei, had not Newton for ever established it on an immoveable basis and made it so absolutely irre- futable, that science could smile at the impotent opposition even of a Leibniz. The system of Lamarck might have been transferred from book to book as a fantastic curiosity without exercising the slightest practical influence, had not Darwin demonstrated it by such an overwhelming mass of exact and cogent facts and by the suggestion of such plausible means of transmutation, that, in its main features, it will for ever be unassailable. Other agencies of course, likewise of a purely mechanical kind may in future be discovered besides natural selection, struggle for existence, and survival of the fittest, inheritance and variability, freedom and migration, adaptation to climate, abodes, and other physical conditions ; or we may see reason for altering our estimate of the relative efficacy of these in- fluences^ But although so short a time has elapsed since the publication of the "Origin of Species" the "Principia" of the nineteenth century , there is hardly a branch of science, which it has not revolutionised, nay which it has not kindled into new life. b We were before aware that new species are produced from the old in constant and unbroken succession; we can now see how they are pro- duced; we had formerly a belief, we have now a 'know- ledge; and this is derived from transmutations such as we sea effected daily before our eyes'. 'I may be allowed', said Gregovius, 'to confirm this reasoning from my own sphere of study. Allusion has been made to the "arch-blasphemer" Yoltaire and his EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 223 attacks on the Scriptures. These attacks, though prompted, I am confident, by a pure love of truth and by his deep anxiety "d'ecraser Finfame", and, I may add, though often guided by a fine literary instinct, would have remained fruitless and have left the edifice of medieval theology untouched, had the^r not been followed by those minute and patient labours of Biblical critics, which, calling in the aid of philosophy and history, of philology and general literature, have demonstrated for all who are open to argument that the Bible and its doctrines represent a gradual development of human thought in matters of religion as marvellous, if not as grand, as the slow and successive evolution of organic growths. Thus a rationalistic and often frivolous scepticism was changed into a severe and systematic science. No subsequent efforts of traditionalists will ever be able to alter the outlines of the two new branches of knowledge thus called into existence the science of comparative mythology and of the history of religions. Though, therefore, Biblical criticism, as understood and pursued in our time, may, in one sense, not be original, yet in another and more im- portant aspect it is a new creation'. 'It is really incomprehensible', cried Humphry, instigated to increased vehemence by the introduction of the Scrip- tural analogy, 'how men pretending to the capacity of weighing and sifting evidence, can speak of Darwinism as demonstrated, when the very basis on which it rests is either a tacit acknowledgment of its utter hollowness or an entirely unproved assumption. In answer to the fundamental question, "How did the first and simplest living beings originate" ? it is contended that they were either brought forth by a creative Intelligence, or by the spontaneous production the generatio aeqidvoca or epi- genesisQi organisms of the most rudimentary kind which it is possible to conceive. At first, the former alternative was no doubt as a concession to the religious preju- dices of Englishmen prudently put forward by the new 224 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. apostle, who, with the same cautious discretion, refrained from applying his debasing principles to the origin of man. But soon that view was abandoned, first by his clamorous disciples, and afterwards by himself, in favour of the second and more radical alternatives Not only audacious theorists like Blichner, Vogt, and Hackel, but, I grieve to say, scholars like our distinguished countrymen Lyell and Huxley, from whom we had a right to expect greater moderation, threw aside the transparent mask. It was boldly asserted that man, being merely the most highly organised of vertebrate animals, must take his "place" as the immediate offspring or "development" of ape-like mammals, kangaroo-like marsupialia, lizard-like reptiles, certain classes of fishes, and the Acrania, those remark- able vertebrates of the lowest kind, which are without head, skull and brain, without a centralised heart, jaws and legs, and resemble the still extant amphioxus; that man has twenty-two such progenitors in continuous grades ; b but that his primary ancestor is one of those microscopic particles of primordial slime or of the semi-fluid albumi- nous substance formed by inorganic combinations of carbon organisms without organs, or, as they are called with an overwhelming variety of denominations, Protoplasms, Plastidules, Monera, Protists, Protogenes, Protamoeba, Protomyxa, Vampyrella, et cetera et cetera ; and that these "last factors of psychical life" arise by spontaneous birth, are formless and structureless, not having reached even the organisation of a simple "cell", yet live and feed, and propagate by self- division. The signal honour of re- presenting this new Adam was conferred upon that Bathy- bius which Huxley detected by analysing, in 1868, some of that wonderful slime presented to him, and which he bap- tised.Ifathytius Haeckeliis If Huxley and Haeckel expected immortality from this discovery, their hopes were doomed to speedy disappointment. For not only were they, soon afterwards, forced to confess that "spontaneous gene- ration has as yet not been clearly ascertained", 4 but the EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 225 very existence of that Bathybius Protoplast, which had been asserted to "cover the depths of the ocean in the form of an unbroken expanse of slime", has proved to be a delusion.* Now the questions obviously arise : if generatio cequivoca produced from inorganic matter one or as is generously conceded "a few" protoplasms, why could it not produce the primordial germs of all organic struc- tures in whatever number? And if so, where is the necessity of assuming evolution or lineal descent of a family or class from one entirely different, such as has never yet been observed in nature? Again, if evolution really takes place, is it not marvellous that, after the many millions of years you assume to have elapsed since the beginning of animal life on earth, there still exist vast numbers of creatures of the lowest types, on which all your laws of inheritance, adaptation and struggle for life have not exercised the least effect? And what is the reason that urges romancing scholars to the adoption of the precarious principle of spontaneous production ? Their reason forsooth! It is simply this: there must either be a self-made and self-developing protoplasm or a God, and they prefer the protoplasm. They plainly say : generatio ceqmvoca, though not proved and not provable I wonder what has become of that unbegotten chemical entity, the Acarus - Crossiij which played so conspicuous a part in this matter some forty years ago b generatio ceqmvoca, though unproved, "has nothing improbable in itself, and must, for general reasons, necessarily be assumed as the beginning of all living populations" which supposition is "simply an unavoidable conclusion of logically arguing reason"! Let us not be deceived: the secret of the un- exampled success of Darwinism is the ill-concealed hope of shaking off, together with the miracle and the prin- ciple of design, the Creator also. The revived doctrine was seized with such exulting eagerness because it seemed to aim a deadly blow against the Scriptures and Christianity. For why was that strange dogmatism which, you will Q 226 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. admit, makes larger demands upon blind faith than any decree of Pope or Council, so convulsively grasped ? Simply because certain persons cannot suffer even a God powerful enough to call into being "a microscopic atom of slime". Into such absurdities are they ensnared by their Satanic arrogance'! 4 Is it quite impossible', said Canon Mortimer cautiously, 'to reconcile the two opposite opinions? May we not suppose that the Creator, having once produced the world with all its laws and forces, and having determined thence- forth not to interfere in their operation, endowed them with the qualities required for "natural selection", and thus secured a predestined progress in His works' ? 'No compromise' ! exclaimed Attinghausen warmly. 'A similar view has been held by some of the most eminent votaries of the theory, nay perhaps by its framers them- selves. 3 But apart from introducing the teleological prin- ciple, which all nature disclaims, and apart from thoroughly destroying unity and sublimity, as there would be neither a sovereign Creator nor a sovereign Force, I do not see how that expedient can aid Biblical orthodoxy, which assumes, for instance, the production of man on the sixth day by a direct act of Creation, and not by natural selection or evolution during many myriads of years'. 'Let me pass in review', said Humphrey with evident zest, 'a few of your proofs or illustrations of "develop- ment". Moles and shrew-mice, you say, once upon a time found no longer any food either on or in the earth; then they "adapted" themselves to a flying mode of life, in order to snatch the insects moving above them; in consequence of these attempts, they acquired the mem- brane between their toes and became bats: that is', continued Humphrey, beating time with his right fore- finger and continuing to do so during the whole of this speech, 'first the moles learnt to fly, and then they obtained the membrane which qualified them for flying. Certain antelopes, searching the ground in vain for sustenance, EPICUBUS AND DARWINISM. 227 stretched their heads in order to reach the leaves of the palm-trees; thus their necks grew longer and longer and they became giraffes; that is, the food of the antelopes must, in the course of millenniums, have con- stantly risen a little higher and higher, in order to give their necks an opportunity to stretch and grow longer. Some lizards, in order to seize their prey more unobserved, discontinued their old habit of running, crept and became serpents : which surely was a very questionable policy on the part of the lizards, and was, evidently for this reason, not adopted by all. At a certain period, the short- legged wolves had devoured all beasts they could con- veniently take hold of; in the struggle for existence they strove to overtake animals of greater speed and they became long-legged wolves: there remains only the problem, why those swifter animals which, in the terrible race, struggled no less for life, did not likewise get legs of increasing length. These few instances will sufficiently show the wonderful solidity of Darwinian "demonstrations". The whole system is a reckless play with words and facts, calculated to decoy and to entrap the vanity of sciolists'.* 'With a little humour', said Attinghausen laughing, 'it would be easy to ridicule any profound or comprehensive theory, including that of Copernicus and Newton. Paradox and truth are often close neighbours; but many a paradox is recog'nised as a truth if we consider the gradual and often imperceptible links of transition that mark a long chain of conclusions. And in this respect, Darwinism labours at present more from a superabundance than from a deficiency of minute details accumulated by careful observers'. 'The abrupt statement', added Gregovius approvingly, 'that "the Law of Moses" was written thousand years after Moses, may appear a startling paradox to those who have not patiently traced the literature of the Hebrews from age to age'. 228 EPICUEUS AND DABWINISM. 'I admit', continued Attinghausen, 'that spontaneous generation has as yet been proved neither in nature nor by experiment. But does this justify the inference that it is impossible, or that it did not really happen in any of the earlier stages of our planet? Are at present diamonds still formed in nature, or have we succeeded in the laboratory in crystallising carbon ? As the conditions for the production of that mineral existed at a certain period, so a condition might once have existed for the origin of the first organic cell: you claim no special act of creation in the one instance; why do you claim it in the other ? a We must insist, that the supposition of spontaneous generation is indispensable, if we desire to -comprehend nature by the laws of causality' 'Darwinism is a horrible hypothesis', cried Rabbi Gideon, greatly irritated by the remarks of the last two speakers. 4 The Psalmist says, and I say with him, "I hate those, O Lord, that hate Thee; I hate them with a perfect hatred" those who delight in telling us that we are formed, not in the image of God, not "marvellously and wonderfully", but in the image of the ape. Can beasts transmit to us the Divine qualities they do not possess? Are grapes gathered from thistles'? 'I would not go so far in condemning the doctrine', said Subbhuti reflectingly. 'If there were no connection between the animals, how would transmigration or rather repetition of existence be possible? It is true, we may now be delivered from these awful states by entering intc the Nirwana, but Buddha himself, in the many anterioi births to which he voluntarily submitted for the welfare of mankind, has been as he remembered and declared "an elephant, a lion, a horse, a bull, a deer, a dog, z guana, a jackal, a monkey, a hare, a pig, a rat, a ..." 'I hope you have soon finished the dreary catalogue' interrupted Gideon. "'A serpent', continued Subbhuti quietly, as if he were repeating a prayer, 'a frog, a fish, an alligator, a hansg EPICUBUS AND DAEWINISM. 229 bird, a pea-fowl, an eagle, a cock, a wood-pecker, a water-fowl, a jungle-fowl, a crow, a snipe, and a kindura or merman" : a there must, therefore, be a transition con- ceivable from one creature into another. Besides', he added with great seriousness, 'I really think that animals are wiser than many men; for in my countries I have seen monkeys who had once been intoxicated, turn away with disgust from beer or brandy and would on no account touch it again; 6 while in your streets I have often been saddened by the sight of drunken men and women who must have known from experience the shocking eifects of strong beverages'. 'You are right', said Attinghausen, laughing merrily; 'and something like it has struck me also since I came here from Switzerland. Nor are you mistaken in supposing perpetual transitions. Nature as little as the history of a people and of mankind knows a chasm or bound. There is throughout an unbroken continuity. Not even the spheres of the organic and inorganic creations can be entirely separated. This has been recognised by nearly all biologists and chymists, who have adopted the living "soul-atom" of Leibniz, endowed with affinity, whereas the physicists, as a rule, still cling to the inert and passive atoms of Descartes. As the ideas which dominate each period of history are the outcome of the ideas of all preceding epochs, from which they were evolved by the operation of precise laws, so the plants and animals which distinguish the various eras of geology, are not new creations, but developments or lineal descendants of those characterising the preceding ages. This continuity is, in wonderful agreement, proved by the palaeontological remains and the embryonic stages of existing creatures. The higher we ascend in the geological strata, the more numerous and the more fully organised, in steady advance, are the petrefactions they contain. Of vertebrates we find in the oldest Silurian layers only the fossils of imperfect cartilaginous fishes, the place of which is in 230 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. the next strata occupied by fishes of a higher class ; then follow, successively, amphibia and reptiles, especially the colossal lizards; again, after a long interval and in the younger formations of the earth, the warmblooded birds, and lastly, in the uppermost layers, the mammals, beginning with the marsupialia, then rising to the more perfect genera up to the man-like ape, and finally to man himself. Now it is a most noteworthy and significant fact that the human embryo passes through precisely the same stages and in precisely the same order as is indicated by these palaeontological organisms. I need only recall the gradual progress of the heart, and remind you that at first this chief organ is wanting in the embryo and is replaced by a pulsating vein as is the case with the lowest vertebrates, the Acrania, permanently during life ; that then this vein grows thicker and bends in the shape of an S just as is the case with the following class of the vertebrates, the Cydostoma ; that next this curve changes into a complete knot, which becomes a double-chambered heart with the simplest circulation of the blood from the heart to the respiratory organs, hence through all parts of the body, and then back to the heart just as is permanently the case with the fishes; that the heart next unfolds itself into three chambers with the same simple circulation of the blood as is constantly the case with the reptiles; that thus, continuing through several other stages, it is enlarged into four chambers as is the case with all mammals ; but that it is only after birth that the circulation becomes twofold, viz. successively, from the heart into the lungs, back to the heart, into all parts of the body, and again to the heart. Similar metamorphoses are undergone by the other vital organs, especially the brain in its relation to the spinal cord and spinal marrow. Anyone may obtain a clear idea of this important matter if, watching fowls' eggs in a hatching apparatus, he is careful to notice how the simple egg- cell changes into a bipartite gastrula, this again into a worm- EPICUBUS AND DARWINISM. 231 like and acephalous germ, this into other forms exhibiting the structures of a fish, an amphibium, a reptile, and at last of a bird, till the chicken is finally hatched after twenty-one days. In a word, anyone may convince himself of the truth of the following momentous law of biology: the embryonic development of the individual is a rapid, compendious, and in all essentials faithful recapitulation of the development which has been accomplished by its entire cognate class of animals from the simplest begin- nings during incalculable myriads of years. Or briefly : the individual ontogenesis is an epitome and sketch-like image of the protracted phylogenesis.* This extraordinary bio- genetic principle, presenting as it does a strikingly parallel succession of forms in the fossil fauna and the actual embryos, both of which lie open to our precise observation, is doubtless one of the most irrefragable proofs in favour of the theory of evolution, and almost compels the inference that the different genera have passed through the same series of gradual development'. 'These are nothing but idle and frivolous fancies', cried Berghorn frowningly; 'and if they prove anything, they prove, on the contrary, that the same inner or ideal law of development governs the systematic succession of forma- tions throughout the physical world; and that, therefore, nature does not work by mechanical forces but by the logical principle of design'. b 'Is it still possible', continued Attinghausen, absorbed in his subject, 'to resist testimonies so authentic and so palpable? The pedigree of the animal kingdom, which we are now able to construct with almost perfect exactness, shows us man as the last branch; and as that immediately preceding, and resembling him in every material point of organisation, it shows us the Ape'. 'As long as men have self-respect', exclaimed Panini with unwonted vehemence, 'and believe in their high destiny, they will turn away with detestation from a doctrine so despicable and revolting 232 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. "Uomini siate, e non pecore matte, "Si che il Giudeo tra voi di voi non rida"'. a 'Science', said Attinghausen quietly, 'is not concerned with feelings, whether of sympathy or aversion: taking its course with the same necessity as the laws upon which it is based, it pursues truth as its sole object. Now truth may sometimes be unwelcome and even painful; but injurious it can never be. Prove our facts to be false, prove our inferences to be erroneous this is the only way of saving your traditions. Declamation is unavailing. But quite groundless are your apprehensions that the theory of transmutation is debasing in its effects. The immeasurable enlargement of knowledge it engenders, will be attended by a moral exaltation of which we are as yet unable to form an adequate idea. For that theory makes man truly cosmopolitan, releases him truly from the fetters of superstition a nodis religionum and the despotism of an overawing authority; it substitutes manly reflection for unreasoning belief, and honest research for fictitious revelation. In its purifying furnace, the creeds will be consumed, and from their ashes religion will rise'. 'The very same dangers', said Wolfram, 'which are now apprehended of Darwinism, were predicted of the doctrines of Copernicus and Newton ; the moral order of the world was declared to be imperilled; yet those doctrines marked the dawn of a brighter day -than mankind had ever enjoyed before'. 'The analogy is utterly fallacious', said Berghorn menacingly. ; The discoveries of Copernicus could, at most, unsettle the Divine authority of the Bible, but not the grandeur of positive religion ; they may be heretical, but they are not atheistical; while Darwinism destroys all religion, revealed and natural alike. There is no reason whatever why man should follow a higher code of ethics than his nearest kinsman, the Gorilla or Chimpanzee, with which he is said to form one species. Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis'I* EPICUEUS AND DARWINISM. 233 'I entreat you', said Attinghausen warmly, 'to keep aloof from a common misconception. Though man has arisen from the animals, he has risen above them. He is indeed simply an organism similar to other animal organisms ; but he is, so far, the highest and most privileged of all. His brain and nervous system especially are more remarkably developed than those of any other living creature; and as the mental and moral faculties are attached to these material organs, we contend that, in the same degree as the brain of man is superior to the brain of the most advanced ape, he is also superior in his aspirations and sentiments. For man's sole lawgiver is his head: a sound and strong mind is inseparable from a tender and generous heart. If man follows his nature, or his organisation, he cannot be otherwise than devoted and high-minded, as the monkey cannot be otherwise than cunning, spiteful, and selfish'. 'Beautifully says Marcus Aurelius', added Hermes: '"Let any one do or say what he pleases, it behoves me as a man to do what is right, just as the emerald would declare, Let anyone do or say what he pleases, I must be an emerald and preserve my brilliancy."' 'All the great virtues', continued Attinghausen, 'that have hitherto been practised by the best of our fellow- men, will be exercised by us with greater zeal when this is fanned by a doctrine which proves those virtues to be the irresistible dictate of our nature and supplies us with the means of fully understanding and more harmoniously unfolding our character. Indeed the laws of evolution alone are capable of inspiring us with a proper fervour for morality. They will be ennobling and fortifying to all, but especially to our children; for a natural and rational religion, replacing an obscure and dogmatic theology, will be "based on the feeling of human duty deduced historically, and hence most safely, from the social instincts of animals, which in some, as the ants, are in the best sense Christian". For the feeling of duty 234 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. is roused and fostered by those principles of association and division of labour, which prevail among animals no less strongly than among men ; and as the law of transmu- tation operates universally, we are justified in supposing that man's moral sentiments have been gradually evolved from the social instincts of duty actively at work in the lower creation. Yet not even moral qualities are wanting in many animals; we see touching fidelity in the dog, conjugal tenderness in parrots "the Inseparables" , and maternal affection in the lioness: such feelings are the germs of human love and charity, and the prototypes of those higher obligations which, involving the abandon- ment of our innate egotism for the benefit of our fellow- men, have by religious lawgivers been stamped with a Divine sanction. Thus the new science will be entrusted with the additional task of exploring the "the history of civilisation of animals", just as we have long been accustomed to trace the history of human civilisation.' 3 'The array of extravagances', cried Humphrey, 'seems really to be endless. Your special pleading discloses more and more fully the discreditable fact that, in your theory, the difference between man and animal is merely nominal. Both are dust and nothing but dust. They are born without an object and die without an aim; and I can well understand that one of your poets, reflecting on the toils of life, bursts forth into the sigh, "So much labour for a shroud" So viel Arbeit um ein Leichentuch! A shroud is "the portion of all your labour". But while you raise a laughter by the "Christian" virtues of your ants, bees and wasps, you provoke the bitterest hostility by the ill-considered advice of forcing your crude and scandalous doctrines upon our youth'. 'This language is not novel to me', said Attingbausen with uncommon calmness. 'Great scientific authorities say: "I approve of Darwinism, yet it must by all means be kept away from our schools". 1 * But they assign no cause for this cowardly duplicity. Is there an esoteric EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 235 and an exoteric science? Is that which is true for the master false or dangerous for the pupil' ? '"Ennobling and fortifying indeed'"! continued Hum- phrey without heeding the interruption. 'There is no form of paganism that could produce results so iniquitous and so disastrous; for none attempts such unholy treason against our dignity'. 'I rather think', said Hermes composedly, 'none places our dignity so high, and is better calculated to elevate our youth. For monism, in its method genetic, that is, strictly logical and rational, values no information unless it is understood in its causal connection with every branch of knowledge. It imparts, therefore, to the intellect a light and a clearness which you also call Divine, and it cannot accomplish this without at the same time ameliorating and enlarging the heart. But monism fosters these ethical qualities even more directly by impressing upon the young scholar at each step his relationship with everything that breathes, and by reminding him, on the one hand, of his humble origin, and stimulating him, on the other hand, to self-denying exertions in the struggle for general improvement. It permits no dead learning and it permits no moral self-sufficiency. The time cannot be far when the natural sciences, taught in this spirit, will receive in our schools the rights that have too long been withheld from them to the most serious detriment of a sound and complete culture'. 'I am surprised', said Rabbi Gideon, 'to hear this paean of the exact sciences sung by one who usually soars to the lofty heights of Parnassus and Olympus, and subsists on the nectar of Heliconian Muses'. 'It is a great error to suppose', said Hermes vivaciously, 'that those who insist upon the classics as indispensable, are indifferent to science. If they seem to urge the study of the former with excessive eagerness, it is because the cultivation of the latter is the prevailing spirit of our 236 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. time and threatens to usurp a dangerously exclusive ascendency. A great, and not the least important, portion of Greek and Roman literature is devoted to questions of natural philosophy in its widest extent. Aristotle's universal mind embraced nearly every department and laid the foundations of a science in each; and both earlier and later thinkers laboured diligently to explain the phenomena of nature. The Greeks could not have attained that fine harmony of mind which is their main glory, if they had neglected so essential a branch of human pursuits. It is true that their limited or inaccurate observation did not allow them safely to ascend to first principles, and that their cosmogonies and theories of biology are often fanciful. Yet we should not undervalue their achievements even in this respect. Beginning with the elementary conjectures of the Ionic schools, they made in less than three centuries such progress that Epicurus could divine the law of the conservation of force, on which rests the proud edifice of the mathematical physics of our day; and although he failed to formulate this law with precision, he supported it by a proof fully equal in solidity to that put forth, by Leibniz nearly two thousand years later. a With respect to the treatise on "the Opinions of Philosophers", which bears Plutarch's name, it has been justly observed, that it contains the germs of nearly all the modern discoveries, nay these discoveries them- selves, though, of course, mixed up with much error. b However this may be> the classics strongly arouse the student's interest in all problems of science it is a matter of history that the scientific study of nature followed immediately after the revival of classical learning and that keen and wholesome zest should be fully satisfied. There is no antagonism between the classics and science, and there can be none; for beauty is compatible with strength, and imagination with clearness. Let both be cultivated as sisters, not as rivals, and let them be cultivated earnestly and lovingly: the one will ward off EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 237 barbarism, the other superstition; the one will make our lives gentle and refined, the other secure and dignified. But the habit of scientific thought must be acquired early; and hand in hand with literature, it should be exercised in our lowest schools as well as in our highest, simply as a means of mental training, even independently of its practical utility'. 'The fittest bond between the classics and any special science', said Attinghausen, greatly encouraged, 4s the doctrine of evolution; it is at once philosophic, historical, and as far as- it is possible exact; at once realistic and ideal; the only true means of reconciling the con- flicting principles which, in questions of education, dispute the superiority with each other; for it engages alike memory and observation, alike the speculative and imaginative faculties'. 'But there are some children', said Panini, 'who have no taste whatever for the classics, and others who have no ability whatever for science'. 'In either case', replied Hermes, 'the need of combining both is all the greater. The one class is surely capable of acquiring the rudiments of science, the other of seiz- ing the general spirit of the classics, and the advantage will in each case be incalculable'. 'I do not think it necessary or even advisable', said Rabbi Gideon determinedly, 'to let the young spend much time on these extraneous matters. For science tends to impart to the mind hardness and dryness at a period when it needs flexibility, to limit the horizon of thought before knowledge has been surveyed as a whole, and to engender, not merely an indifference to, but often a contempt for, the emotional sides of our nature. The ancient Hebrews are generally reproached with an utter incapacity for accurate research; yet by whom has the universe ever been described more grandly or more profi- tably? The most distinguished of modern naturalists has designated the hundred-and-fourth Psalm as the 238 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. sublimest epitome of the cosmos. And why is the Psalm sublime ? Because the Hebrews looked upon the cosmos as the marvellous work of God and the reflexion of His majesty; because they regarded man not as a "cel- lular soul", but as the image of the Eternal ; and because they did not derive their code of morals from the social instincts of the ants, but from the unerring source of Wisdom. The Psalmists understood nature better and more profoundly than all pantheists and monists, because they understood it ethically and reverentially: and it is the principles of morality and religion that we must above all strengthen in our youth. Let those who feel a par- ticular vocation for science and think they can thus con- tribute to enhance the comforts of men's lives, devote themselves to that study in riper years and in special establishments'. 4 Your ethical conception of nature', cried Attinghausen, incited by his anti-Biblical fanaticism, 'does not offer us great temptations when we consider that it peopled the world with witches, demons and devils without number, and thus converted earth into hell; when we consider that it gave birth to the vagaries of the Kabbalah which cunningly utilised its pretended familiarity with the world of spirits; when we consider that Joshua' . . . 'Let there be no strife', interrupted Mondoza, 'through misunderstanding or exaggeration! Surely, our worthy Rabbi does not mean that our youth should be instructed in the Biblical notions of the cosmos instructed that the firmament of heaven is "a molten mirror" or "a curtain" spread over the earth, has a gate through which the angels descend and ascend, windows through which the stores of rain and tempests are sent down, and an expanse in which the sun, moon and stars are fixed; while the heaven itself, extended above that firmament and supported by pillars, is the palace or throne of God : instructed that the sun has, at the western boundary of heaven, a tent where he enters in the evening and remains EPICUBUS AND DARWINISM. 239 over night, to emerge in the morning with refreshed vigour, and is obscured or eclipsed by a mighty dragon ensnaring his disc; that the moon, as "the lesser luminary", bears a relation to the earth analogous to that of the sun or "the greater luminary"; that the stars, the companions or smaller associates of the moon, are designed to enhance or to replace her light, are inhabited by angels from the beginning of creation, and thus constitute God's army or "host of heaven" ; that, extended over the waters, and reposing on foundations or pillars, the earth never moves, except when God's wrath shakes it for the chastisement of men ; or that it "hangs upon nothing" and has borders, extremities, gates and bars; that the seas, on the third day of creation concentrated in certain parts of the planet, reach down to the "gates of death", since beneath the waters is the Sheol, the abode of the departed spirits, "the house of meeting for all the living"; and that all our present heaven and earth and seas, sun and moon and stars were produced out of nothing in six days. a I say, I am certain, our worthy Rabbi does not desire that these notions should be inculcated into our children as facts. I may go farther and assume that he does not even desire the incompatibility of these notions with the researches of modern science to be concealed from the young, but that he is as anxious as our ardent friend Attinghausen himself to arm them for life's struggle with all the power and light of recent discoveries. His in- genuity will not find it difficult, in spite of those cosmo- logical errors, to save the authority of the Bible as a guide in morality and religious truth, though even he must be prepared for considerable concessions. But is it necessary that, in abandoning what is antiquated, we should also renounce that sublimity which pervades the Scriptural views of the universe, and which is an unchange- able attribute of the human soul? We may convey that sublimity in another form, we may nurture it from other sources, but it can never be lost or deserted. The Bible 240 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. will for ever claim the glory of having uplifted man above the earth and himself; and even when it shall have long ceased to work these effects, it will rouse and inspire man's thoughts to devise stronger wings for reaching the same elevations'. 'It is a great injustice', said Gideon, half apologetically, 'to assert that the Jews entirely neglected science. In the later periods of their history, they were zealous astronomers, especially with the object of calculating the seasons of the festivals. There are in the Talmud many subtle disquisitions and computations, and the work of Maimonides on the course and phases of the moon his "Kiddush Hachodesh" has been extolled as remarkable by the highest scientific authorities 7 . 'The divine excellence of our religion', said Movayyid- eddin, 'is proved by this also that, while in the Middle Ages the Christian nations were enveloped in the dark- ness of ignorance, the Moslems not only studied sedu- lously all that the classical authors of Greece and Alexandria had written on Mathematics, Astronomy, and Medicine, but added to this knowledge so materially that they may justly be said to have created most dis- ciplines anew, and thus, through the medium of the Crusaders and the Spanish Moors, to have become the real parents of modern science. An empire of such extent and simple grandeur', continued Movayyid-eddin, all his latent fire bursting forth, 'an empire extending from Spain to India, which merged every difference of nations and of classes in the equal dignity and merit of all the faithful, and where the sole will of the founder or his successor ruled absolute over all, had not yet been seen in the world. When brilliant conquests unpre- cedented in history for their rapidity and completeness had established the Mussulman power on strong foundations, all the arts of peace sprang into sudden existence. Poetry and music were refined; architecture produced immortal creations ; commerce and industry flourished ; great thinkers EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 241 developed the tenets of our faith into a solid system, and with wonderful sagacity fixed the theories of language and logic; others fathomed the recondite laws of nature, and enriched the sciences of chemistry and medicine with invaluable discoveries; while enterprising and intelli- gent travellers explored distant lands and described their manners and their history. The courts of many high- minded caliphs a were the brilliant centres of famous scholars, philosophers, poets and artists. The numerous seats of learning from Ghazna to Cordova were endowed with universities, libraries, observatories and other noble institutions in abundance; and within a few hundred years Islamism brought forth a new literature more copious than that of ancient Greece and Rome, comprising all the main branches of human knowledge, and leaving its indelible mark on each so that it could well contend that it had proved its intellectual superiority over its earlier rival, Chris tianity. b Eager Jews and Christians were long obliged to gather instruction at the feet of Mohammedan teachers, and even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Christian scholasticism owed its greatest triumphs to the influences of Arabic philosophy. The first Latin translation of Aristotle was made from the Arabic ; from the Moslems Albertus Magnus borrowed the best part of his wisdom; and as late as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Canon of Avicenna was the most important work in medicine. So much for the incessant taunt of western scholars alleging that, the Shemitic races, fitted only for fantastic reverie, are in- capable of scientific research, because totally deficient in the sense of causality'. 'The new and stronger wings which our host desires', said Hermes with animation, 'have long since been found and tried. To counteract the hardening and utilitarian tendencies of science, there exists a no more ready or more effectual means than a familiar intercourse with the beau- tiful world of the Greeks. Here is wealth, fire, play and 242 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. freedom, the dominion of ideas over narrow interest, of form over matter, the empire in fact of the Muses and Graces. It raises us, more surely than anything else, above the earth and above ourselves "In die heitern Regionen, "Wo die reinen Formen wohnen". 'And yet, while our soul is borne up to the Parnassus and the assembly of the blessed gods, we do not lose the firm ground of reality. "We belong at once to heaven and to earth ; we give to the one our heart, to the other our duty, and thus realise the highest joy and the fullest perfection. When science is in danger of being lowered into a servile handmaid of materialism and avarice "into a milch-cow that provides us with butter" , she regains her liberty and her dignity she becomes again "the high, the celestial goddess" by one touch of the magic wand of classical humanism. When knowledge is in peril of being degraded into a mechanical trade, it is by this same powerful contact ennobled into Art. In holy converse with the grand and lofty souls of Helks, in the growing consciousness of our inward affinity with their aspirations, our minds are cleansed and uplifted. Then let the cold and sober laws of causality draw from Nature her mysterious veil, and from History her romantic charm; we shall be able to infuse into Nature a new life and invest History with a higher interest. Then we may safely analyse our ideals without destroying their soul, and we may acknowledge the problems of metaphysics as unsolvable without blushing before our reason. And then will be moderated that breathless haste of life, which is the disease of our time. The mind, not immersed in the poor wants of the moment, will once more be disposed to rise into the spheres of beauty or to descend into the mines of truth, patiently to search and to fashion, and in this searching and fashioning to find its chief delight and reward. It was by these means that the treasures of human enlightenment have been won, that EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 243 the impulses of our common nature have been exalted. As once Greek humanism delivered Europe from eccle- siastical bondage, so it is now destined to shield us from the monster of low and mercenary materialism, which threatens to strangle in its iron arms that delicate offspring, modern culture. Our Palladium is Hellenism. We are safe as long as we guard it and reverently trust to its protection. These are the principles which must be kept alive in the minds of our youth'. 'I see more and more clearly', said Mondoza, medi- tatingj 'how difficult it is to separate in our conversations science and art. Evidently, true science and true art are so nearly akin and touch each other in so many points that, preferring organic to formal order, we must allow both, at least partially, to be discussed together. Learning, to be a real delight, must in a certain sense become Art; and aptly says the poet with respect to the "Learned worker". "Never refresh him the fruits of the tree he traineth with labour; "Only by Taste is enjoyed what Erudition may plant n . a 'As regards the views on education which our friend Hermes has expressed with so much eagerness, I believe that few will dissent from them in principle. But alas! "Grey, friend, is all theory." Is the plan practicable ? Unfortunately all schemes of education, however excellent, are jeopardised by the one fundamental difficulty of find- ing a sufficient number of really competent teachers. As of the poet, so it may be said of the teacher: nascitur, non fit. For over and above a full mastery of his sub- jects, which is frequent enough, he requires a combination of qualities as precious as it is rare firmness and kind- ness, judgment and tact, earnestness and cheerfulness, enthusiasm and patience, the power of inspiring at once affection and respect, the strictest logic and the freest play, knowledge of character and indulgence, the capacity of rousing interest by eloquence or humour and of arrest- 244 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. ing it by clearness and solidity, a mind equally accurate in detail and illumined by great principles, and the most valuable gift of all the ability of extracting from facts the essence or spirit, and of thus converting in- formation into nourishment and strength for the intellect and the character. We can hardly discuss at present the whole of this wide question, and let me only observe that, considering the difficulty to which I have alluded, the system of education should be so framed that, while giving the largest possible scope and liberty to those who possess a teacher's natural vocation, it should ensure the best possible work from those who do not possess it. There is no better means of counteracting the nar- rowness of the latter class than by making the range of subjects as wide as possible; and under any circumstances the aim of education can never be wholly missed if the exact sciences are combined with the classics or some other idealistic study'. 'Yet I am afraid', said Melville, 'it is sure to be missed, let the masters' endowments be ever so perfect, with the present system of prizes, which stimulates a thirst for rewards instead of inculcating a sense of duty; with the present practice of publicity of results, which lays the foundation of that morbid craving for notoriety which forms so painful a feature of our time; and above all, with that network of examinations which, forced upon the master and the pupil from without, binds both together, not by a union of minds, but by the common fear of impending ordeals, which forbids the master to spend his time upon the slow process of unfolding the pupil's reasoning or moral powers, instead of employing it more expediently upon storing his memory with information capable of being weighed and counted, and calculated to swell the ag- gregate number of marks. Under such a system you require no schools, but merely repetitoria; you require no in- structors, but persons who, with an approved text-book in their hands, are able to hear lessons; nay that most EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. 245 priceless of all examples to the young, a master's great individuality, is positively dangerous to success in exa- minations. In a word, you rouse propensities that may permanently taint the character, and you test acquire- ments the value of which is at best but subordinate'. 'I have, like Nestor', said Wolfram with great warmth, 'seen three generations, and I may, therefore, be per- mitted to add one remark on a subject upon which our progress in the future so largely depends. Competition is a keen wind that scatters many tender blossoms which, under more genial conditions, might have ripened into valuable fruit; for those blossoms are not always the choicest which adhere most firmly to the tree. Yet exa- minations are an undeniable necessity. The dilemma can only be solved by constantly reminding ourselves that they are a necessary evil, the operation of which we are bound in every way to mitigate. Examinations should be made more and more absolute, less and less competitive. Their number should be more and more reduced by allowing the master in recognised schools to decide on the pupils' attainments from their general work, instead of leaving that decision to the chances of a few desultory papers. They should not demand or expect a variety and com- prehensiveness of information which ripe scholars know to be unattainable by young students. Let the questions be searching, but not enigmatical; large, but not limit- less; and let the examiners be satisfied with accomplish- ments, and not require feats of rapidity. From the one ex- treme of too great laxity you have passed to the opposite pole of an injurious and unnatural stringency it is time you should find the rational medium. If you value soundness, freedom and originality of mind, if you honour study and culture for their own sakes, if you desire to make science and literature subservient to all that is estimable and noble, education should be based on prin- ciples at once lofty and humble lofty as regards the aim, humble as regards the results we can hope to 246 EPICURUS AND DARWINISM. achieve. Then our youth, now groaning under a burden they are unable to bear, will be again, as they were described by the poets of old, fresh, buoyant, hopeful and modest'. *I am shocked and alarmed', said Mondoza, almost involuntarily rising, 'to see how far we have again strayed from our prescribed path! Pride must have its fall. I boasted yesterday that I felt strong enough to control and check your meandering courses, but I find I have been quite powerless to guide as, by a veritable process of evolution, topic was educed from topic. I am at present even at a loss how to gather into a knot the many threads which have been woven side by side. Nor must we to-night prolong the discussion any further, as 1 know that many of you are anxious to attend the un- usually interesting Conversazione of the Society of Arts at South Kensington. But I declare, even at the risk of another humiliating failure, that I will henceforth be a very Phalaris in tyranny to any erratic disputant, and I trust, therefore, that we shall to-morrow be able to gauge the value of Science and of Monism for the advance- ment of human happiness and the perfection of human character'. Humphrey and Attinghausen alone were reluctant in consenting to the host's proposal, as their anxiety for a decisive battle had evidently increased from hour to hour; but seeing the necessity of restraining their eagerness, they parted with the rest Humphrey to retire to his study, and Attinghausen to plunge into the very thick of the company at South Kensington, examining, talking, and listening with the same keenness of interest. VJ. THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 'As I know', said Attinghausen, when the next evening most of the friends had assembled in Cordova Lodge, 'that I shall to-night have to bear the brunt of a severe assault, I must be allowed to make a few remarks sug- gested by prudence for recklessness is no chivalry. 'We Darwinists do not profess to be able to solve all difficulties connected with organic life. A theory of such vast scope does not issue from a man's brain perfect and fully armed; but we may confidently leave it in the care of those who will come after us. When the system of Copernicus and the laws of Kepler and Newton were enunciated, that most wonderful of intellectual achieve- ments, the precise discovery of the planet Neptune through the irregularities in the orbit of Saturn, was potentially accomplished, though it actually followed after an in- terval of centuries. Thus the theory of transmutation, though still problematical in some of its details, has opened the possibility, nay the certainty, of physiology and biology becoming sciences almost as exact as as- tronomy itself; because the main principles are unassail- able. The impulse has been given, and the motion will continue till the idea has spent its force ; and if the idea be sound, it will gather new strength as it moves on- ward. A master hand has drawn the outlines, zealous and able disciples will complete the design. The number of curiosities of nature has by this doctrine been sensibly diminished, while the series of phenomena intelligently explained has in the same proportion increased. Barren 248 THE DIGNITY OF MAN, wonder has been succeeded by a patient enquiry which has neither weakened our appreciation nor our reverence of nature. There are still many enigmas left, but we consider them merely as enigmas to us, not in them- selves. The key may at any moment be found perhaps it is found already, awaiting the skilful hand that can apply it. There is no limit to rational investigation. Science no less than religion requires faith, but, unlike religion, it is constantly engaged in contracting its sphere and replacing its surmises by objective truth. The war- cry of "Creation and immutable Species" is growing fainter and fainter, and our standard, bearing the motto "Development and Progress", is victoriously advancing. All things originate and grow simply by physico-chemical processes operating as mechanical causes: this is the universal law. All the general phenomena in the life of animals and plants completely harmonise with the theory of evolution; and all are thereby united as by a common principle. Numerous facts that have hitherto been iso- lated or anomalous, are brought into one focus and into organic connection; others find an unexpected or more harmonious explanation ; a and conspicuous among them is that most momentous triple parallel between the em- bryonic, systematic, and palaeontological development of living organisms, which I have yesterday tried to point out. We have therefore a well-founded right to place our theory, as a great and general law of induction) at the head of the sciences of zoology and botany, and then, by means of deduction, to apply it to man, whose intimate alliance with the rest of the animal creation, and more especially with the Apes, is thus indisputably established'. 'The whole question', said Humphrey impatiently, 'hinges on the meaning of "species": can you give a precise definition'? 'This is one of the most difficult parts of the subject', said Attinghausen, slowly, 'and . . .' \ THE DIGNITY OF ^tt*r L-J^^ 249 'I was prepared for this suspicious evasion', interrupted Humphrey, looking around with a significant nod. 'And it is so difficult', continued Attinghausen quietly, 'just because the transitions from one organism to that next above it, are often almost imperceptible. Therefore, in fixing a new species, that is, in deciding on the nature and importance of an advance, much is necessarily left to individual judgment; and we must admit that both the morphological and the physiological notion of species is not absolute, but only relative. The same difficulties meet us, in a yet higher degree, in determining the genera, families, and classes; and they account for the great fluctuations we discover in comparing the complete systems that have been framed from Linnaeus to our time'. 'But is not', said Canon Mortimer, 'the sterility of hybrids an irrefutable proof of the sharp distinction and the unalterable constancy of species'? 'Even this last refuge', replied Attinghausen, 'has been closed to the votaries of ths old schools, since decisive facts and experiments have taught us, on the one hand, that two different "gopd species" as hare and rabbit, lion and tiger, willow and blackberry can produce fertile hybrids; and, on the other hand, that the offspring of the same species as horses, dogs, and hyacinths under certain conditions bring forth only sterile hybrids'. 'I see no reason', said Humphrey dogmatically, 'for discarding, in favour of minor scholars, the authority of Linnaeus, who declared that "there are as many species as there were living creatures at first created by the Divine spirit" ; or that of Agassiz, who affirmed that "each species is the separate and immutable embodiment of a creative idea of God"; or, lastly, that ofVirchow who says pithily: "The plan of organisation is within the same species unalterable; species does not depart from species" '. a 'The famous Italian astronomer Sechi', added Panini, 'has declared in his last work: "The assertion that one organism can change into another has no more sense 250 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. than if some one were to propound that a clock can change into a steam-engine". a Will men not remember our great Dante's injunction: "Non fate come agnel che lascia il latte "Delia sua madre, e seraplice e lascivo, "Seco medesimo a sua placer combatte"'? b 'It would really be unpardonable', said Attinghausen indignantly, 'were we to devote our attention to anachro- nisms which have found their reductio in absurdum in the pious fancies of Agassiz, whose God is simply an experimentalising operator. The progressive metamor- phosis of all living beings is, on a vast scale, only what is successfully carried on by ourselves in artificial breeding, which perpetually produces new varieties or races. We choose for such purposes the fittest specimens; while nature "selects" them in her own way by allowing the most perfect alone to survive in the severe contests of competition and the difficulties of existence. ()ur means are of course most limited compared with the inexhaustible resources of nature, and our time insignificant compared with her eternity; and corresponding to these factors are the smallness and magnitude, the rapidity and slowness, the transitoriness and permanence, of the results; although, with a definite aim in view, man can accomplish trans- mutations more directly by almost entirely excluding chance. Never was analogy more legitimate, and it is no less momentous than safe, for it extends to man himself. 'I will not dwell on the wonderful progress made by man during the millenniums of his historical existence in language, refinement, social and political order, and every other branch of culture, to such an extent that the ci- vilised European of our time hardly shows any point of resemblance with the. primitive savage who was unable to produce even stone implements and was probably devoid of articulate speech. Indeed, considering the immejise differences in bodily and mental characteristics, THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 251 I believe we may justly contend that the various types of men which are generally regarded as "races" or va- rieties of one species homo sapiens represent as many separate or "good" species, developed in the struggle with outward conditions, the elements and the require- ments of existence not only the five races of Blumen- bach distinguished according to the colour of the skin, a but also the three others detached by Pritchard from the brown and black races viz. the Australian negroes, the Papuas, and the Hottentots. If we regard the ex- tremes of "Longheads" and "Shortheads", b of white and black, of woolly-haired and straight-haired races, it seems impossible to include them all in the same species. It is true that there are between those extremes intermediate forms constituting manifold and very gradual transitions but the same uncertainties, as I have observed, exist in defining the species of animals. Yet transitions are im- portant as witnesses of the unity of mankind, that is, of the descent of all races from common ancestors, through probably not from one couple'. 'Be this as it may', said Humphrey, provoked especially by the speaker's last words, 'the stress laid by Darwin on "the struggle for life", is fanciful. Every species is by a wise Providence armed for self-defence and self- preservation; and all instances that have been adduced to the contrary are without any validity, because they lie wholly beyond our experience'. 'It is only necessary for me', replied Attinghausen, 'to point again to the history of man himself. Even the shortest periods jof observation suffice to force upon us the facts that certain black and brown species the Hottentots, the Australians, and the Papuas and the red species of America, are manifestly unable to maintain themselves, in the struggle for existence, against the white European species which, by a multitude of favourable influences, attained a development greatly superior to the rest; and that those species, visibly dwindling away 252 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. as the white man advances, are undoubtedly doomed to early extinction. No more cogent illustration of the law of natural selection is wanted, and it is derived from the actual experience of the last generations. I need, there- fore, not urge the probability that, in the course of time, few of the other species will prove competent to cope with the same privileged rival, whose progress is at present decided and rapid beyond all precedent. My argument gains infinitely in force on your traditional supposition of one species composing the whole human family. For if not even the feebler varieties of the same species prove capable of permanent existence, but are absorbed by the stronger races, how much less can a lower species sustain the unequal contest with a higher species ! The new prin- ciple is impregnable'. 'Who can presume', said Abington in a tone of solemn remonstrance, 'to fathom the schemes of an all-ruling Intelligence? If certain species of animals have served their appointed end, they must cease to exist, to make room for others better adapted to the altered conditions of our planet and more necessary at that epoch of the world's existence. With this conviction we must rest satisfied; all beyond is idle, unprofitable, and irreverent speculation' ! 'Ah'! exclaimed Attinghausen, half in irony and half in anger, 'it is difficult not to apply to you the words of the poet: "Are you not like the women who for ever "Again return and cling to their first words, "When one has reasoned with them for long hours" ? a 'I warn you, theologians', he continued menacingly, 'your times of spiritual arrogance are over; your old weapons have lost their edge; your thunderbolts rebound on your- selves. You must either enter the arena, or retire into your cloistered isolation withered branches cut off from the stem of human culture, withered branches neither receiving nor giving strength and nourishment. Hie THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 253 Eliodus, hie salta. Your logic for even you feel the necessity of attempting at least a semblance of argumen- tation would, from your point of view, be tolerable if we had only to account for the extinction of animals, but 1 have referred particularly to species of men, which are to you mere varieties. If all men are brothers in the sense that all are the offspring of one primary couple created by God Himself, the disappearance of some races is wanton arbitrariness on His part, and their extirpation fratricidal iniquity on yours. Instead of looking com- placently, nay rejoicingly, at the perceptible diminution of the "inferior" tribes, you should by all possible means try to prevent it, and instead of forcing those tribes under your dominion, you should educate them for rational self- governent, and then restore their independence. The children of one God possess the same Divine attributes of Immortality and liberty : compared with these common characteristics, all differences are utterly insignificant, and in your system a distinction between inferior and superior races, should not exist. But you have no faith in your system. In sanctioning the subjugation of less perfectly organised men, you sanction the reign of might over right, and you destroy the principles of unity and equality. I do not blame you: here again your common sense is stronger than your creeds; the former whispers to you that the law of "natural selection" is irresistible, and you propitiate the latter by professing that, in im- posing your rule upon lower races, you extend the empire of "civilisation". But in tacitly applying that law to men and to animals alike, you plainly admit that it is as blind as it is irresistible'. 'Then there is on this earth', said Subbhuti, 'nothing but gloom and oppression the sword of the conqueror and the cries of the conquered'! 'The struggle is deplorable', said Attinghausen cheer- fully, 'but it must be accepted as a dictate of nature, for it is the only possible means of uprooting cruelty and 254 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. superstition, and planting in their stead the humanity of the nobler and more gifted races'. 'This process may be inevitable', said "Wolfram, with a tinge of sadness, 'but it is not without deep shades. It will banish from our globe all variety, all pictu- resqueness. Our civilisation may diffuse many boons, but it destroys not a few charms and beauties. Take as an instance the Red Indian. Nothing equals the grandeur of his eloquence: his metaphors are as lofty as the pri- meval trees of his virgin forests, as clear as the air he breathes, as massive as the rocks he climbs. He is the embodiment of nature in some of her sublimest aspects. His woods will be cut down, his wigwams burnt, and his place will be taken by the vulgar wealth-accumulating settler of the western republic'. 'Here again', said Humphrey contemptuously, 'is the poet and the artist, whom I vainly imagined to have exhausted his dithyrambics on beauty in the apotheosis of the Greeks. While admiring the Red Indian's "pictu- resqueness", he forgets his serpent-like cunning, his fiendish cruelty, his vile treachery, and many other qualities which render him equally unsafe as a friend and detestable as a foe. Form and appearance are all, matter and principle are trifles this is the modern artist's code. It is simply selling man's birthright for a mess of pottage'. 'None of us, I am convinced', said Mondoza, 'will be able to suppress a feeling of profound regret at the neces- sity of the natural process on which our friend Wolfram has spoken with so much warmth. The law of selection doubtless operates alike in reference to animals and to men; but while in the one respect nature works blindly and without plan, it is the duty of rational beings to act, in the other respect, with design and with charity. Our object should be, not to exterminate but to spare, not to dominate but to train. This course is prescribed to us by the very law of development. As the European be- THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 255 lieves the white species to have gradually been evolved from the lowest types, so he may hope that the lower types now existing on our planet will, in the course of time, advance to a higher stage; he may be aware that, for accomplishing this desirable progress, they are not assisted by many of the natural advantages he himself enjoyed in his more favoured climes; but his kindness and intelligence will supply many substitutes to lessen the effects of natural deficiencies; and with that deep and all-pervading sympathy engendered by his new system, he will find expedients for raising even the meanest race to a sense of individuality, self-respect, and liberty. Thus none of the particular gifts and faculties scattered through the varied tribes of men will be lost, and mankind as a whole will be both richer and happier'. 'Indeed'! exclaimed Attinghausen, with enthusiasm, 'that unity of which the Stoics but darkly dreamt, we long to make an indestructible reality. We know, the earth and all the other celestial bodies follow the same laws as the vegetable world; this again has the same kinship with the animal creation, the latest development of which is man. The whole universe, from the most insignificant atom of our small planet to the remotest and largest of the fixed stars, is united by one bond, ruled by one law, by the same mechanical causality, the same combination of substances. Or as Goethe says: "Und es ist das ewig Eine, "Das sich vielfach offenbart, "Klein das Grosse, gross das Kleine, "Alles nach der eignen Art". a 'For all life is finally reduced to the two elementary functions of sensation and motion sensation of pleasure and displeasure, motion of attraction and repulsion. This is our Monism that general law of evolution which teaches true humility, inspires true love, fans true fellowship with every part of nature and every living being. For to us 256 THE DIGNITY OP MAN. all creatures are but branches and leaves of one huge tree ; all proceed from the same vigorous but simple root hidden in yet unexplored depths; they are the more perfect the more distant they are from the root and the primordial stem; many wither and die, as is shown by the extinct species and genera of anterior epochs, others are freshly formed with a stronger vitality. Thus the sum of all sentient beings represents to us, not an arti- ficial pedigree, but the living organism of a vast growth, in which each part, however small or obscure, influences, and is influenced by, all the rest'. 'The distinguished physiologist Du Bois-Reymond', said Humphrey tauntingly, 'has declared, amidst general ap- plause, that those "pedigrees" of phylogenesis have, in the eyes of men of sicence, about as much value as, in the eyes of critical historians, attaches to the genealogies of Homer's heroes'.* 'Surely', replied Attinghausen, 'extraordinary importance is, in this point, to be attributed to the opinion of a scholar who, meekly applying himself to science in forma pauperis, has faithlessly abandoned its highest problems the connection of force and matter and the nature of human consciousness as for ever unfathomable, and has thus proved how little he is imbued with the youthful spirit of the new era, in spite of his constant pro- testations of sincere adherence to the doctrine of evo- lution. 11 But let me continue. Christianity may teach all those virtues of sympathy and humility to which I have referred, but the fundamental principle on which it rests makes their exercise impossible. The being who is proclaimed the sovereign lord of creation and deemed totally different in his nature to everything else that breathes, cannot know true modesty, true charity, true affection. Just as Copernicus overthrew that "geocentric" pride which declared our diminutive earth to be the centre of the universe, while sun and moon and stars are its lowly attendants; so have Lamarck and Darwin THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 257 demolished that "anthropocentric" pride which made man fancy that he was not only the centre of all terrestrial life hut the sole aim and object of the universe. Kant is indeed right in affirming that "man cannot think too highly of himself, but he should conceive this lofty idea only in order to raise the standard of his duties and aspirations, not to foster a haughtiness that estranges him from the rest of the creation by assuming the position of a heaven-born master'. 'Our Maimonides', interrupted Rabbi Gideon, 'has said the same thing many centuries ago in distinct opposition to Aristotle'.* 'Your Maimonides', replied Attinghausen, 'repeated only what Epicurus whom you abhor as the arch-apostate had said before him much more clearly. Yet even this does not rise to the height of our convictions. With us the "general kinship" of earlier philosophers is no fine metaphor, but a literal truth; we are by consanguinity related to all beings that fill earth, sky and water. All have sprung from the same origin, pursue their appointed or necessary course, and when they have fulfilled the object of their existence, return to the primeval elements. Nay, all matter is endowed with life. This great and elevating thought, divined by Democritus, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza and Leibniz, is by Monism made a reality. The Psalmist's words, "Let every thing that hath hreath, praise the Lord", receive an expansion which he could not have foreseen, and invite all nature to a grand hymn extolling Life and creative Power. But the object of man's existence is the exertion of all his innate abilities in such a manner that, when he relapses into dust, he may leave behind him, in his works, the germs of a fuller perfection and a purer felicity. For surely, the laws that have hitherto operated, will continue to operate. We shall be the progenitors of a race in every way better fitted to at- tain a perfection and a felicity which we are not even able to conceive. An eternity lies behind us, an eternity 258 THE DIGNITY OP MAN. stretches before us; and as the one was, so the other will be, change and progress'. 'This is really unintelligible confusion' ! cried Humphrey, alarmed at the impression Attinghausen had evidently made on some of his hearers. 'You aver that nature works mechanically by physical and chemical forces and, you insist, aimlessly and planlessly ; you must, therefore, exclude both free-will and systematic advancement; and yet you speak of a "development" to which you can con- tribute yourself, and you speak of extending the reign of morality and happiness. It is simply self-deception if it is not something much more reprehensible'. 'I confess', said Attinghausen with a melancholy very unusual in him, 'we are in this point guilty of an incon- sistency we are unable to overcome. Even we, who so strongly proclaim an unconditional monism, are in the meshes of a dualism which we theoretically condemn. In physics we are realists, in ethics idealists. As regards the former, we acknowledge nothing but a fierce and selfish struggle for existence; as regards the latter, we demand, and endeavour to practise, entire abnegation of self. In the one sphere we feel our absolute dependence, in the other, though we must deny free-will, we think we can, if not rule, at least direct.* I have often reflected on this blamable weakness ; yet, though my reasoning censures the self-contradiction, I cannot avoid it in my actions'. 'You have pronounced your own sentence', cried Hum- phrey with an air of triumph, 'you stand convicted by your own testimony. You rebelliously labour to stifle the voice of conscience, but this voice, though still and small, is more powerful than the noisy proclamations of your perverted intellect. You sinfully strive to extinguish in your heart the Divine spark, but against your will it is fanned into a hallowing flame. The consistent materialist, who recognises merely the ruthless play of physical forces, can know no other morality than that of the beast of prey; and yet you are compelled, as if by an invisible THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 259 agency, to avow that not fear should rule men but reason, nay to advocate even devotion to general purposes. Like Balaam, the wicked, you mean to curse, and you are constrained to bless. You try, like Jonah, to flee from God's presence, but you cannot escape Him: if you take the wings of the morning and make your bed in hell, even there you are grasped by His avenging hand. You must obey Him. And shall I tell you what it is that saves you ? It is the echoes, faint and distant it may be, of your childhood, when, the Book of God opened before you, you sat at your mother's knee listening to her pious exposition of the words of life and seeing in the kindling glow of her eyes the seal of their Divine truth. But beware, beware! Do not try God's long-suffering too far! There may be, nay there are, among your votaries not a few who extend that law of selfishness which you assume in nature, to the domain of ethics; who, proud of being consistent in their monism, admit no other goal than self- advancement, and no other restraint than the sword of justice; who say, "Good and evil deeds result from man's nature, to which he owes obedience; a responsibility such as the moral or penal code imposes upon us, does not exist" ; who carry the "war of all against all" into society, and, to attain their ends shrink from no treachery or crime, because they fear no Judge whose all-searching eye penetrates into the hidden motives of all deeds, and who, though perchance delaying retribution, is sure to crush the evil-doer. Pleasure and luxury, and hoards of gold which procure them, are their idols. Right, honour, high aims, nobleness of soul all are swallowed up in the same gulf of baseness. You will be appalled by the powers of mischief you . have conjured up in destroying both revealed and natural religion, and you will be utterly impotent to allay their fury or to redress their ravages. Like the magician's pupil, you will be unable to check the demon you have put in motion and who threatens to drown you in the rising waves'. 260 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 'You are greatly mistaken', said Attingbausen, who had long recovered his usual buoyancy and confidence, 'if you think to frighten us by this awful picture of communism or social democracy those bugbears of the weak and the timid. I do not deny that within the monistic or materialistic schools there may arise some monsters like Schiller's Franz Moor with his coarse and fiendish falla- cies, or some coldly calculating egotists like Octave Feuillet's "Monsieur de Camors" with his subtler and more refined sophistries. But what religion or philosophy has been able wholly to eradicate such repulsive or dangerous abnormities? It is only malice or stupidity that can con- found two things so totally different as the scientific materialism and the materialism of life. Surely, Christia- nity has been tried and found wanting. History teaches us, more strikingly perhaps than it teaches anything else, that morality increases in the exact proportion as the influence of the Church decreases; for the ages of the strongest Christian faith were the ages of the darkest barbarity ; and within the last three centuries of scepticism mankind has made incomparably greater progress than in all the preceding fifteen centuries of belief. Try for once fairly and honestly our views of the universe and our canon of morals and duties. I am certain of the result. The partial failures in our midst I attribute to those very echoes to which you have so pathetically alluded: associated as they are with the holy bonds of filial love, they retain their hold upon our hearts to con- fuse our reasoning and to dim our intellect; we cannot, perhaps we will not, silence them for they are clear to us and yet they are our bane. Begin in the earliest and tenderest childhood a purely rational training kept scrupulously free from transcendent mythologies and dazzling tales of miracle; allow the young mind to imbibe no notion antagonistic to reason, no conception disregard- ing the inseperability of cause and effect, and you will soon perceive the beneficence of our theory. You smile THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 261 compassionately when you think of untutored tribes like those of the Sahara, who see in the most common occurrence the direct working of some secret power, and to whom the supernatural is the ordinary law of nature. a Yet your methods of education seem chiefly to aim at destroying in your children the sense of causality, which is the only safeguard against superstition. Till you have altered your systems, 1 little heed those well-worn paraphernalia of terror you have interspersed in your sombre warnings I little heed those "sulphurous and tormenting flames" which your all-loving Judge holds in readiness for His children in all eternity; and I adhere to the conviction that "an injurious truth is preferable to a useful error; for truth is able to heal the wound it may inflict" '. b From the moment that the doctrine of Monism had begun to be discussed, Asho-raoco had listened with rapt attention; he then fell into a deep reverie, from which he was only roused by the energy with which Attinghausen had delivered his last observations; and when no one replied, he said with firmness, which, however, did not conceal his inward emotion: 'I am now deeply convinced that the world with all its forces is one, and that therefore the Creator and Ruler of the world must also be one. Ormuzd or call him Jahveh, Allah, Brahma, or by any of the significant names which he bestows upon himself Ormuzd is the Eternal, the Omnipotent; he existed before all time, and rules in all stars and heavens. There is none besides him, and Ahriman is a shadow, a symbol, devised by poor mortals struggling with their fears, misfortunes and infirmities'. 4 'I hope', said Humphrey, 'that you will not, together with the error, discard the truth also. Ahriman, that is Satan, is no mere symbol or shadow, but a dread reality. He is in every place where men work and strive. But he is not, as you imagined, a Creator or Ruler, but simply the Tempter subjected to God's unconditional dominion 262 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. and compelled, however unwillingly, to promote His wise and paternal designs. Without temptation there would be no virtue, without danger no victory. Satan is indis- pensable in the economy of the moral world'. 'If Ormuzd or Jahveh', replied Asho-raoco, 'is the Good, the Pure and the Merciful, I can with difficulty believe that He, having created men weak and prone to sin, does not fortify, rather than tempt them, in the laborious con- tests of their lives. Ahriman or Satan is in our hearts ; he is the serpent in our path, which our dauntless resolve must ever be ready to crush. But let me tell you what I have learnt besides from your wise controversy. I see that Ormuzd has endowed the world with the wonderful laws by which it is, from the creation, governed with un- changeable necessity. The stars, including even the majestic Tistrya, which you call Sirius, possess no power and influence of their own; they are creatures like men, and complete for ever their appointed courses. The astrologer's art is vanity and deceit; it must cease to exercise its mischievous interference in all phases of the Parsee's life from his birth to his death; and the obnox- ious delusion must be converted into the sublime science of astronomy, which, more than any other knowledge, praises the Creator's grandeur and glory. a We may still remember with veneration the Amshaspands, Fravashis, Yazatas, and the many other divinities and angels, spirits and genii mentioned in our holy books; we may still strengthen ourselves in our detestation of vice and depra- vity by recalling the Kharfesters and Daevas, the Drujas and Pairikas, and the other powers of evil our ancestors dreaded ; b and we may still, in beholding the blaze of the fire, the fittest and most perfect emblem of the beneficent Sun and of Divine illumination, feel a stronger impulse to strive after purity and enlightenment: but our adoration and our awe belong to Ahura-mazda alone, the Lord of the sun and the fire, the Preserver of the universe, the Source of all blessings, invisible and devoid of all human THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 263 attributes, to be worshipped without image or likeness, searching the hearts as the sun penetrates into the re- motest recess of the abyss'. 'The bulk of your people', said Humphrey, 'have no such notions ; they are real fire worshippers ; to them the sun and the flame are not emblems, but powerful gods; they are sunk and, by the nature of your creed, must remain sunk, in gross idolatry'. 'I trust not', replied Asho-raoco fervently. 'No religious symbol whatever is safe from the abuse of the illiterate or narrow-minded; the image worship prevalent in some of the Christian Churches seems hardly distinguishable from fetichism; but education and, if need be, the sup- pression of the dangerous emblems, will check the super- stitious infatuations'.* 'The principles you have enunciated', said Arvada- Kalama mockingly, 'sound indeed very simple; but not quite so simple are the precepts of your Vendidad- Sade with its innumerable rites and interminable ceremonies, the complete practice of which would absorb the Parsee's whole time and attention'. 'This may to a certain extent be true', said Asho- raoco with evident concern, 'and as yet I see no remedy. However, in its essence, no religion on earth is plainer and simpler; for its entire sum is embraced in the three words : Hookhte, Homute, and Vuruste, that is, Purity of Action, Purity of Speech, and Purity of Thought. In a thousand forms and repetitions the one maxim is enjoined: "Everything that is praiseworthy is united in the pure man by pure and good thought, speech, and action". b In a preserved fragment of the Kliorda-Avesta we read: "Zarathustra enquired of Ahura-mazda: 'Celestial, pure and most holy Lord, Creator of the worlds endowed with bodies! Which is the word that expresses all that is good, all that has its origin in purity'? Ahura-mazda answered him: 'The prayer Ashem-vohu, Zarathustra'. Then asked Zarathustra : ' Which is the prayer Ashem-vohu that in grandeur, excellence and beauty is equivalent to all that is between 264 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. heaven and earth, this earth itself, those luminaries and all the good and pure creations of Mazda'? And Ahura-mazda replied: 'That, pure Zarathustra, in which men renounce all evil thoughts, words, and works'". a 'Nay, our three Paradises have no higher names than those three significant words, as we are taught by many revelations like the following: "Zarathustra asked Ahura-mazda: 'Celestial, pure and most holy Lord, Creator of all the worlds endowed with bodies ! When a pure man dies, where does, in the night of his death, his soul reside'? Ahura-mazda replied: 'It sits down close to his head, repeating the Gatha Ustavaiti, praying for salvation and saying, Happy is the man who has been a happiness for every one. In that night the soul enjoys as much felicity as is possessed by the whole world of living creatures . . . Then the pure man's soul advances the first step and arrives in the paradise Homute; it proceeds a second step and reaches the paradise Hookhte; and then a third step, when it penetrates into the paradise Vuruste ; while the fourth step brings it to the boundless realm of Light"'. b 'We feel ourselves supported by an inward feeling of union with all the faithful ; for this holy KostV (touching his girdle reverentially), 'which makes us members of the community of the Pure, is the symbol of the spiritual bond which unites us all and causes us to participate in the merit of the good works that are done by the pious anywhere: our chief duties are love of truth and alms- giving, and our chief means of atonement good works, especially the killing of noxious animals, repentance and paitita or confession'. 'Even if all this were the casej', said Movayyid-eddin defiantly, 'you bave shown an utter incapacity of setting forth your doctrines with any power or beauty inspiring the believers with a holy enthusiasm. In all your numerous and dreary Yeshts there is not a single Prayer breathing the fire and sublimity which pervade nearly every part of the Koran'. 'By that Truth', said the Parsee bitterly, 'which we prize so bigbly and you value so lightly, I am compelled THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 265 to admit the justice of your taunt! The calm soberness of our lawgiver could utter no such oracles as were suggested by the epileptic frenzy of yours. Yet in wisdom, in elevation, and in purity, our Teshts yield the palm to no religious composition of any creed, and they have, during nearly double as many centuries as your Suras exist, edified a community now indeed small in numbers, but no less earnest and pious than it was in the ancient days of Persian dominion and splendour'. 'Can you favour us', said "Wolfram, 'with one or two authentic specimens of your Prayers' ? 'I do not hesitate', said the dastoor, 'to comply with your request; for our ancestors required for their worship no temple made by hands ; a temple of Ormuzd is here, and everywhere, as far as the heavens extend'. And then, rising, he recited with a slow and solemn voice: "In the name of God. I praise and glorify Thee, Ormuzd, the refulgent, majestic, omniscient Creator, Performer of deeds, Lord of lords, Prince of princes, Protector of all creatures, Provider of our daily sustenance, the mighty, good, primeval, forgiving, affectionate, wise, and pure Preserver! May Thy just rule be without end! ... I repent all my sins with patet. For all the evil thoughts, words, and deeds, which I have thought, spoken, and done in the world; for all the trespasses I have committed from the weakness of my nature ; for all sinful thoughts, words, and deeds, temporal or spiritual, earthly or celestial, I implore, Lord, Thy forgiveness, and repent of them with the three Words". a 'This is the introduction to our morning devotions. Let me add one general hymn of praise and thanks- giving: "In the name of God, the Dispenser, the Pardoner, the Benignant. Praise be to the name of Ormuzd, the God who ever was, ever is, and ever will be, the Celestial among the celestials, the Source of all power . . . With all my strength I give my thanks to the august Lord who creates and destroys . . . Offering and praise be bestowed on that Master, the Accomplisher of good deeds, who made man greater than all earthly beings, and by 266 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. investing him with the gift of speech appointed him their ruler and governor, and enabled him to wage war against the daevas. Praised be the omniscience of the Lord who through the holy Zartusht has sent peace to the creatures, the bright science of the Law, wisdom and direction for all beings the science of sciences . . . Everything that is good I accept on Thy command, Lord, and accomplish it in thought, speech, and act. I believe in the pure Law and seek pardon for my sins by every good deed . . .1 preserve pure within myself the six powers: Thought, Speech, Deed, Memory, Mind, Reason . . . I enter upon the brilliant path of Paradise: may the awful terrors of hell not befall me! May I pass the bridge Cinvat and reach Paradise rich in fragrance, joy, and splendour"' ! a 'No one', said Wolfram when Asho-raoco had sat down, 'will deny to these supplications the praise of fervour and purity, but they cannot claim the merit of art, either in con- ception or in diction. Moreover, they betray too clearly the polytheistic background, and Ormuzd is scarcely anything else than the "lord of hosts", whether these hosts are angels or stars. In order to reconcile your traditional prayers with the principles of Monism, in which, I am delighted to hear, you express your concurrence, you would be obliged to allegorise them with a dexterous arti- ficiality incompatible with your strict truthfulness. You will, therefore, bave to proceed some steps further onward, if you desire completely to harmonise your confessions with your convictions'. 'Alas, alas'! exclaimed Asho-raoco with unconcealed pain, 'scarcely have I, after long and anxious search, solved one dark problem, when my peace of mind is again disturbed by a difficulty hardly less grave and harrowing. But the mercy of Ahura-inazda will, in its own good time, send me again help and light.' 'You have passed very rapidly', said Rabbi Gideon after a short pause, turning to Attinghausen and Wolfram, 'over the intimate affinity which your hypothesis compels THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 267 you to assume between men and animals. I admire an adroitness which so prudently conceals the weak points of a glittering armour'. 'The differences between man and beast', said Atting- hausen, 'are even according to our theory sufficiently important to satisfy ordinary human pride. Man has language, which not merely conveys but creates thought. He has the ability to utilise experience by transforming individual observations into general notions, and of thus progressing. Having learnt the value and use of fire, he invents implements to serve him as mechanical aids, and thus infinitely multiplies his natural powers. He is conscious of his close connection with all creation, and is therefore prompted to sympathy, which grows into benevolence and affection. He realises the distinction between right and wrong, and subdues his passions in order to follow the dictates of that standard. He seeks and loves truth for its own sake, and is eager for its diffusion. He not merely beholds the material objects, but imagines their ideal perfection or their prototypes, and conceives the beautiful. Is this not enough? Man has speech, science, charity, reason, morality, truth, and art'. 'And laughter', added Humphrey sarcastically. 'But you must, in return, grant me some concessions', continued Attinghausen composedly. 'The animals, from the state-organising republican ant and monarchical bee, to the wondrous architects who build "homes without hands" and the "half-reasoning elephant", possess to a certain extent even the gifts I have mentioned in common with men, language alone excepted'. ^This is simply the operation of blind instinct', said Berghorn decisively; 'that is, the operation of a certain sum of impulses and faculties which God imparted to each species of animals when He first created them, and which form the unfailing and inevitable canon of their lives'. 'I was prepared for this time-honoured objection', said Attinghausen with a certain satisfaction. 'No term has 268 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. been more sadly abused or has caused greater confusion than that of instinct. By pronouncing this word in connec- tion with the most remarkable manifestations of animal I'.fe, you seem to believe that you have explained them. It would be needless to dilate on the thousand astonishing facts which have lately been either discovered or verified and which fully justify us in assuming an "intellectual life" of animals; it is even unnecessary to do more than allude to those most surprising of all analogous pheno- mena the organisation of the slave or Amazon states of the red and fair ants, a and the habits of the white ants or Termites which have indeed been partially observed more than a hundred years ago, but were by unscientific gene- rations either scouted as fabulous or slighted as incon- clusive. Yet when we watch the subtle strategy with which the European red or fair ants lure their intended victims, a smaller black variety, to a battle field most advantageous to themselves, and then dispatch a sufficient force into their enemies' defenceless tenements to carry off their larvae; when we notice how, after the hotly contested engagement, which invariably results in favour of the larger aggressors, those larvae are taken into the settlements of the latter, carefully brought up and then, as black slaves, forced to perform all the labours of the community such as building, collecting of food, rearing of children nay even forced afterwards to accompany and to support their masters in the predatory expeditions against their own tribe and then to train the plundered black youth to the same service of bondage which had been imposed upon themselves; or when we examine the habitation of such an ant colony with its thousand apart- ments conveniently connected by a labyrinth of meandering passages, corridors and stairs; when we see the young brood tended by affectionate nurses who, in fine summer weather, gently take their charges from the nurseries into the open air, and carry them back at the first sign of chilliness; when we find that these diminutive insects, THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 269 virtually devote themselves to agriculture and cattle breeding with the object of securing a constant supply of their chief dainty, the honied juice drawn, like milk from the cow, from two tiny tubes in the back of the aphis, a and that, for the same purpose, they sometimes, when a branch of a shrub peopled by these precious insects withers, cautiously remove them to a fresh twig, and sometimes, instead of constructing, as they usually do, covered walks from their dwellings to the shrub, transfer the pigmy cattle, together with the small plant on which they live, into their own homes, where they assign to them separate stables: I say, when we consider these and similar facts b without prejudice or partiality, we cannot but conclude that what we contemptuously call instinct, is as decidedly an action of mind as any performed by man, and that the difference is merely one of degree'. 'Granting even', said Humphrey, undaunted, 'that all those operations have an apparent design, they are doubt- less performed without consciousness'. 'Surely', added Panini, 'free-will is the privilege of man alone, or as our great poet expresses it: "Lo maggior don, die Dio per sua larghezza "Fesse creando, e alia sua bontate "Piu conforinato, e quel ch'ei piu apprezza, "Fu della volonta la libertate, "Di che le creature intelligent! "E tutte e sole furo e son dotate"'. d 'I am, of course, unable to prove the reverse', replied Attinghausen, shrugging his shoulders at Panini's quota- tion, and addressing Humphrey, 'but are not all agreed, from Plato to our time, that the highest creations of poetry and music, are produced in a certain "holy frenzy 71 , which to some extent precludes consciousness? Or do you really believe that the thousand allusions that have been discovered in "Faust", or the thousand beauties that have been pointed out in "Don Giovanni", were, at the time of production, clearly present to the minds of Goethe and Mozart? Goethe at least has distinctly affirmed that they 270 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. were not. The Greeks designated the prophet by mantis or one seized with a mad ecstasy'. 'And the Hebrews', added Gregovius, 'by meshugga, which means the same'. a 'You are, I am sure', rejoined Humphrey, 'fully aware of the very imperfect and halting nature of this analogy ; and I proceed therefore to observe that the ant, as any other of your ingenious prodigies, does and works at present as it has clone and worked from the beginning of creation, and will continue to do so to the end of time. They are incapable of progress, which you have yourself admitted to be an exclusive characteristic of man'. 'It is man's characteristic', replied Attinghausen, 'with that reservation which I have stipulated with respect to all distinctions. As the creatures are developed physically, in accordance with the all-pervading law of evolution, so we find, pari passu, a change and development in their faculties. It is erroneous to assert that the beavers build their water palaces, the swallows their nests, the bees their honeycombs everywhere and at all times exactly as they built them two or three thousand years ago. Obser- vation teaches us that all these structures are subjected to many and essential modifications in conformity with the varied localities and the available resources. The animals, following the powerful impulse of self-preservation, and stimulated by the hard struggle for life, readily adapt themselves to new conditions by new designs and expe- dients. Among men and animals alike, necessity is the mother of invention, and knowledge 'is power. b Again, animals, especially dogs, acquire by training and practice new accomplishments; nightingales, finches and other birds of song learn by imitation new melodies; a young linnet or wren, which has never heard the song of its parents or of other individuals of the sames pecies, imitates any bird it hears and is able to imitate, even a lark or a thrush: innate, therefore, is only the organ of singing; its use must be taught by experience.* 1 How is it, there- THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 271 fore, possible to assume an instinct working with inevi- table spontaneousness and remaining for ever unchange- able? Even as regards the ants we are able to point out a progress. There are still extant some species which, exhibiting a more elementary organisation, are strangers to any kind of division of labour, just as at present the Bushman co-exists with the Caucasian. Those species afford, a welcome corroboration of the naturalist's conviction that all our ants are the developed descendants of a rude and primary species which became extinct perhaps as early as the cretaceous period and was utterly unfitted for that wonderful economy of life which impresses upon the principal varieties of our ants the stamp of civilisation. The progress thus demonstrated involves a difference hardly less marked than that noticeable between savage society in the stone epoch and European society in this century. In a word, a hard and fast line of demarcation between instinct and reason cannot possibly be drawn by those who are candid with themselves and just to animals. At what part of that immense and un- broken line which extends from the lowest form of worms up to man, the gift which you call instinct rose to a degree of intelligence sufficient to be called reason, it is impossible to determine. The advance was imperceptibly gradual. There is, at every point, only a difference of intensity, not of kind, whether in feeling and volition, or in reflecting, judging and arguing. Animals may con- stantly be seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve. Similarly to men, they feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, terror and suspicion, attachment and aversion, affection and jealousy, desire of emulation and love of praise; they possess the faculties of wonder and curiosity, of attention and imitation; they have memory and imagination, as is shown in dreaming ; they have even in a certain manner the perception of beauty, and a conscience or the moral sense of distinguishing between right and wrong. The orang and the chimpanzee build platforms on which they sleep, 272 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. and crack a native fruit resembling the walnut with a stone. The dog expresses a multiplicity of emotions by different modes of barking. a The polar dogs, whenever they come to thin ice, do not continue to draw the sledge in a compact body, but diverge and separate, so that their weight may be more evenly distributed. But why do I begin to adduce illustrations which I can never exhaust, as they are practically unlimited? The more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less to untaught instincts. b All creatures possessing a nervous system possess a soul, and consequently intellectual life'. c 'I shall return to this question of soul presently', said Humphrey with some uneasiness; 'at present I will only urge that superiority of language, which your generosity is pleased unreservedly to allow to man in contra- distinction to animals. Nor do I owe you particular thanks for this gracious concession. We can rely upon the explicit testimony of one of our greatest authorities in comparative philology. Max Miiller observes that though the raw material of language appertains to nature, its form, or that by which language only becomes language, appertains to the mind; that the science of language is but subordinately a natural, and pre-eminently a mental or historical science; nay he concludes clearly I have been careful to mark his very words : "I am convinced that the science of language alone will still enable us to meet the Darwinian theory of evolution with the deter- mined command of 'Stop' ! and sharply to draw the boun- dary which separates mind from matter, man from animal". d Can your .fancies receive a severer blow' ? *I am really sorry', said Attinghausen, 'to find myseli in opposition to a scholar so accomplished and so amiable. But an absolute idealist, though he may occasional!} touch the outskirts of natural science, can never penetrate into its sanctuary. The feeble view you have quoted evokes the pity and contempt of all resolute enquirers. THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 273 I appeal to our venerable Gregovius who, with the zeal and freshness of youth, has applied the new principles to the science of philology, of which he is an acknow- ledged master'. 'I am led to believe', said Gregovious cautiously, 'that Hobbes' epigram, "Man has reason because he has speech" liomo animal rationale quia orationale,needs at present a material modification. The earliest men had probably no articulate speech, though, as all admit, they were endowed with reason. The distinction of "matter" and "mind", can, I am afraid, be as little upheld with respect to language as with respect to any other manifestation of life. In all cases alike, both advance simultaneously and inseperably. Thus we know that language, like man's physical organisation, is a growth and a development. Its first beginnings were a few coarse sounds sufficient to designate the most common and the most necessary objects.* Very gradually these terms were increased in number and refined in character; and many ages were required before speech advanced to a structure capable of conveying with even tolerable precision a connected narrative or an abstract thought. Trustworthy witnesses of this slow course are the languages as they now exist on our globe, from the crude and elementary utterances of some savage tribes to the grace, richness, and accuracy of the Indo-Germanic idioms; and the same advance towards a combined flexibility and strength, a blended fulness and clearness, is being continued without interruption simply as a part of universal evolution 7 . 'To whatever side we turn', said Attinghausen approv- ingly, 'from whatever aspect we regard the history of man, we meet the same laws of unity and progress'. 'But I firmly believe', said Humphrey, confident of the irresistible force of his new objection, 'I am convinced that here your law of unity or monism utterly breaks down. You cannot represent the languages of the earth in your favourite form of a ramified tree; for many of them are T 274 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. in every respect in articulation and phraseology, in in- flexion and syntax so entirely different from the rest that they cannot possibly have sprung up from the same root. One of your own authorities declares, that no linguist is able to conceive a type which can have given birth at once to the Indo-Germanic and Chinese, the Shemitic and Hottentot languages.* You are, there- fore, compelled to allow, that speech was not communi- cated by men to men, but was, as a precious gift, granted to all by God'. 'Do not entangle yourself in your own subtlety', replied Attinghausen. 'I have admitted that language is the most specific of human characteristics, and I am therefore ready to concede that it was, in different centres, worked out differently and independently, because the families of men were scattered at a time when the means of verbal expression had not yet proceeded beyond the earliest and most elementary stages of articulation, that is, at a time, when there did not yet exist a language fitted to become the parent of a multiplicity of dialects. But how can you, from your Biblical point of view, explain that total divergence between certain groups of idioms, which is undeniable ? Did God teach Adam an Arian or a Shemitic, a Chinese or Turanian language? Or did He teach him all, leaving his descendants to make their choice at pleasure? No, you require one primitive tongue "the whole earth was of one language and of one speech" . and therefore there should be a substantial uniformity of all languages. How do you solve the difficulty? B} the curious myth of the Tower of Babel and the "con- fusion of tongues". Thus you convert "God's gracious gift" into a chastisement and a curse. You are bound to acknowledge a patent fact, and you account for it b) a miracle exhibiting your deity as meanly envious anc revengeful. We acknowledge the same fact, but, in ordei to account for it, we modify our theory, while remaining true to our general principles'. THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 275 'Nor do we admit', added Gregovius, 'a "confusion of tongues". The number of distinct classes is few; the members of the same class bear a close affinity and display, from the simplest to the most perfect structure, a progress or evolution which is strictly systematic, and which comparative and historical philology, though a science of recent date, is in most cases able to point out and to elucidate ; and we cannot survey the three separate types to which the whole variety of languages has been reduced,* without perceiving how completely and how ad- mirably they represent the entire range of physiological and linguistic possibilities. In a word, the languages did not originate miraculously, nor are they consummate works of art, but natural organisms which, in conformity with more general laws, necessarily arise, grow, decay, and die off. They disclose the same series of phenomena which we are wont to understand by the term "life" ; new species are formed by gradual differentiation and by the survival of the more perfect orders in the struggle for existence; and we are grateful to find that, in treating the study of language as a natural science, we are able to give no mean confirmation and support to the dis- coveries of Lamarck, Oken, and Darwin'. b 'Do we require', said Rabbi Gideon, evidently anxious to change the subject, 'the uncertain analogies of living and extinct languages? We have the science of skull- measuring, which palpably proves man's incomparable superiority over animals ; and it has led one of the greatest authorities to the conclusion that "a progressive develop- ment of the Ape can never result in Man; but that, on the contrary, this very development results in the large chasm subsisting between Man and Ape"'. c 'How is it possible', said Attinghausen smiling, 'to dignify the harmless play of craniometry by the name of science! The subject has unfortunately been seized upon by dilettanti, who deemed themselves justified in framing the weightiest conclusions on their nap-hazard 276 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. observations. It is true, the general formation of the skull corresponds, on the whole, with the development of the brain it encloses, and the inner area of the one ap- proximately shows the outer structure of the other. Care- ful measurements and descriptions are, therefore, valuable, yet only when not restricted to the perfect skulls of men and a few other mammals, but employed as the empirical basis of a comparative and organic craniology. Now, with regard to men, the facts are in some respects sur- prising. The anthropological studies of the Novara Ex- pedition have proved, that the Javans, although, next to the Chinese, the most intellectual of the tribes submitted to examination, have the smallest heads, while the low Nicobares and Australians, have the largest.* The average cranium of the Polynesian is larger than that of the Frenchman. Some of the most illustrious men of genius, as Newton, Lessing, Voltaire and Frederick the Great, had comparatively small skulls. It appears, therefore, that the volume of the cranial cavity is no safe criterion of intellectual endowment; and our theory is in no manner affected by the circumstance that the difference between a Gorilla's and a man's skull is indeed immense, being more than five times larger than the difference between the skulls of the various races of mankind. b By far more decisive is the relative mass and weight of brains and here our hypothesis finds a strong corrob oration. It is true that the lightest brain of a sound adult man, which has ever been examined, weighed at least one kilogramme, while the brain of a Gorilla probably never reached more than two thirds of this weight. But there have been men whose brain weighed more than two kilogrammes, so that, in this important respect, the difference between man and man is greater than between man and Gorilla'. d 'This point is no doubt important', said Mondoza, 'but it can scarcely be regarded as decisive ; for some of the smallest animals are most intelligent, while some of the most bulky are the reverse. There should be means of THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 277 proving systematically the connection between man and the inferior creation'. Attinghausen did not require more than this hint. Speaking with evident relish and, from his habit of lec- turing to large classes of students, unconsciously lapsing into the professorial tone and manner, he said: 'Man belongs to the group of Mammals called Dis- coplacentalia and comprising the five divisions of Rodents, Insectivora, Bats, Monkeys, and Apes prosimiae and simiae. Nearest to man are the true Apes, and among these again the Catarrhinae a or the "narrow-nosed" apes of the old world as the tailed Pavian and above all the famous family of the tailless, manlike apes, or Anthropoids, viz. the Gibbon and the Orang of eastern Asia, the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla of tropical Africa. b The old division between the Ape and Man, or between Quadrumana and Bimana, is according to our present knowledge absolutely untenable; for the true Apes also have, like man, two hands and two feet. c Scientific zoology cannot help assigning to Man a place within the order of true Apes. For, he continued, growing more and more didactic, "whatever system of organs we study, we obtain the same result viz. that the structural differences which separate Man from the highest tailless Apes, the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee, are not so great as those which separate the Gorilla from the lower tailed Apes". This cardinal fact established by Huxley through a method of demonstration which, for perspicuity, completeness and cogency, may well be called exemplary, d is now recognised as the firm foundation of higher physiology. Consequently, the human race has been gradually developed from the true Apes. 6 But we have another striking proof, or rather an ocular demonstration. In observing the development of the human individual from its first beginning, we notice for a long time not the least difference from the rest of the mammals. In the one case, as in the others, the ovum, about one-tenth of a line in diameter, is a simple 278 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. cell, which by repeated divisions becomes a globular cluster of many small cells having the appearance of a blackberry or mulberry, the so-called morula, from which the germ or embryo is formed. This passes through a long series of changes, transformations and developments exactly corresponding, as I have shown yesterday, with the systematic division in classes, orders, families, genera, and species. Now and this is most noteworthy it is only at a very late stage, in fact but shortly before birth and after the differences of the ape embryo from that of the other mammals have long been conspicuous, that the human embryo becomes distinguishable from that of the highest tailless ape by those divergencies which, after birth, gradually grow more decided. Yet the resemblances remain permanently both numerous and marked. The catarrhine ape, like man, has all the fingers of the hands and all the toes of the feet provided with nails, not with claws; both have the nostrils turned downward, not out- wardly, or placed at the sides, and the partition that separates the two apertures is, in the one case as in the other, narrow and thin; both have, what is most charac- teristic, thirty-two teeth and not, like the other Apes, thirty-six viz. in each jaw four incisors, two canines, and ten molars. We are, therefore, justified in looking, as we have done, for man's immediate ancestors among that group of true Apes, which is still the most common in the Old "World and is known under the name of catar- rJiinae] and among these the choice remains between Gorilla, Chimpanzee or some distinct, as yet undiscovered species of Anthropoids. On the other hand, the differences between these man-like apes and the ape-like men the Papuas, Hottentots, and Australian negroes are not sufficiently great to permit the zoologist to classify both as two distinct orders, that is, to exclude Man from the order of Ape or simia. It would be a palpable incon- gruity, of which no man of science should in our days be guilty, to combine in one order the Pavian and the THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 279 Gorilla, which dift'er from each other much more widely than the Gorilla does from the Papua, and yet to up- hold the separation of Man and Ape. Call this idea odious and repulsive; you must familiarise yourselves with facts however unwelcome. Zoology is fortunately in a position to settle this momentous branch of man's pedigree with exceptional confidence. A new and in- teresting proof has been furnished by the comparative measurements which the learned members of the Austrian Novara Expedition instituted of the bodies of the various races, and which led them to the conclusion that "Man's resemblance with the Ape is by no means confined to this or that tribe, but is so distributed that each race is more or less provided with some particular inheritance of this relationship, of which we Europeans can certainly not claim exemption'".* 'May heaven arm me with patience'! Humphrey burst forth, no longer able to control his indignation. 'But I cannot listen to blasphemous absurdities. You forget that we are not your pupils and that we refuse to ac- cept your ex cathedra disputations as oracles. It does not require your "science", in which you shroud yourself with the mysteriousness of an Egyptian priest or Eleu- sinian hierophant it does not require your wisdom which is of yesterday and may wither in a night, to perceive the vast difference between the Gorilla of our Zoological Gardens and even the lowest type of man a difference indisputably and infinitely larger than that between the Pavian and the Gorilla. The chasm is immense, and not only justifies but demands the retention of the old and well-founded separation of Quadrumana and Bimana. Not all the magic wonders of the dissecting room will shake the evidence of our senses, on which we are re- solved to rely as heretofore, "dilettanti" though we are. Moreover, the most erudite naturalists, who made this subject their special study and even went so far as to describe the connection between men and the animal 280 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. kingdom as "a desideratum of science", declared that "every positive progress we have achieved in the field of pre-historic anthropology, has removed us farther and farther from the proofs and vestiges of such a connection".* All the fossil human skulls that have been found, are absolutely like the crania of men now living; some of them are in size and development even superior to the latter; while none exhibit a lower type. Fossil skulls of apes have not yet been discovered. Thus the line of demarcation between Man and Ape remains strong and unmistakable; and the descent of the one from the other is not a doctrine of science, but the wanton assumption of a distempered fancy'. 'I regret', said Attinghausen ? evidently anxious to soothe susceptibilities as much as he possibly could with consis- tency, 'that I have given rise to a misconception. I could, of course, not intend to say that man is descended from any of the species of Apes at present found on our planet. His sire must have belonged to a much more perfect genus which became extinct many eras since, after it had fulfilled its appointed end of calling into life, by the law of natural selection, a being higher than itself an ape-like man, probably a woolly-haired, dark "Longhead". b It is true, no petrified remains of such a being have hitherto been met with; nor do we as yet possess any clue as to the time and locality of its existence; but palaeontology is a comparatively young science, and the evolution, necessarily a very slow process, probably took place as far back as the pliocene, if not the miocene, epoch and, what enhances the difficulty still more, it probably took place on that tropical Continent of Lemuria, which stretched, in the south of Asia, from India to Africa, and was, many ages ago, submerged in the Indian Ocean'. c 'Surely', said Humphrey with a peal of ironical laughter, 'on such terms you are safe: an extinct type of Man-ape, an incalculably remote epoch of geology, and an engulfed THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 281 Continent on these solid foundations build up whatever "scientific" system you please'! 'Pardon me', said Attinghausen with some hesitation, 'your sarcasm, though to some extent justified, does not touch my theories. The phenomena of phylogenesis can, from their nature, not be demonstrated with exactness, as they lie beyond observation and experiment. That biological discipline is a science leaning for support in a great measure on history and philosophy. Its object is the explanation of processes accomplished in the course of indefinite periods previous to the origin of the human race. But the very same applies to geology, to which no one has ventured to dispute the rank of a science. As I have before frankly conceded that other causes of evolution may in future be discovered in addition to, or even in the place of, those pointed out by Darwin and others, so I readily concede now that continued research may lead us although at present I do not consider it probable to abandon the Ape in favour of some other animal as the progenitor of man. But this uncertainty in details can never invalidate the doctrine of evolution in its principles. These are for ever impregnably es- tablished, for they alone disclose the causal connection between all biological facts, exhibit man's nature in its unity, and allow an harmonious conception of the universe. We may err in determining the genealogical ramifications, but the genealogy itself is equally evident and incontestable, for it infuses life into a system hitherto mechanically conglomerated out of a dry nomenclature. Yet we are at every moment ready to modify our special conjectures, and though, I think, we shall not easily be induced to leave the track we are now following, we teach no unalterable dogmas, but cling to our old motto: Dies diem docet\ 'The conclusions we draw are not so aerial as you seem to suppose', said Wolfram. 'Fossil remains of vertebrates identical with the genera now peopling the earth, have 282 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. in no case been dicovered; and yet those ancient types are undoubtedly the progenitors of the later, though very different forms. You may ridicule some of our inferences as the suggestions of "fancy". But do not underrate the value of this faculty even in science. It would be difficult to decide how much of the marvellous calculations of a Newton was, in the last instance, due to the soaring flight of imagination. He created a science of optics by the bold hypothesis of the emanation of light, which is now superseded by another bold hypothesis Young's and Helmholtz' undulation theory constructed on the undemonstrable ether of light. Accurate knowledge or observation must indeed precede, but it remains tied to the earth till fancy lends it wings; it remains dead, till fancy gives it life. Yet it must be the fancy of genius, that is, the mystic union of the calmest reason and an apparently uncontrolled impulse a union whose offspring is not fanciful arbitrariness, but truthful reality. Goethe was at once an eminent poet and a prophetic discoverer in natural science, 8 and he owed his twofold triumphs to the same heavenly gift of fancy. b Will you permit me to read to you a version of one of his compositions, for which he repeatedly expressed a great predilection? I mean "Meine Gottin", written in a free rhythm ap- proaching the ancient lyrics. MY GODDESS. "Which of Immortals Shall win highest praises? With none I argue, But I bestow the palm On the ever variable, Eternally novel, Wondrous daughter of Jove, The child of his bosom- On fantasy. For to her he Granted freely All the caprices That else to himself He is wont to reserve, And has his delight In her folly. Whether with chaplets of roses Wreathed and with lilies, She roams through flowery vales, Commands the birds of summer, And with bee-like lips Sucks from blossoms Light-nourishing dew: THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 283 Or whether again, With streaming hair And frowning look, She sweeps through the wind Round mountain cliffs, And in thousand hues, Like morning and eve, Ever changing As Luna's face, Appears to us mortals. All of us, rise! Praise the Father, The ancient, the great, Who deigned to ally A spouse so fair, Unfading for ever, With mortal man. For to us alone He chose to link her By heavenly bond, And solemnly bid her, In joy and in sorrow, A faithful spouse, Never to part. All the other Pitiful tribes Of the rich and teeming, Life-bearing earth Move and feed In the gloomy enjoyment And the dismal pain Of their narrow lives, Bound by the moment, Bent in the yoke Of poor necessity. But to us, rejoice! He was pleased to grant His nimblest daughter, His own, his cherished. Speak to her tenderly As to a bride! Leave her the dear wife's Bank in the house! And let old Wisdom, The mother-in-law, Beware not to hurt The delicate child! Yet I know her sister, The elder, the graver, My calm companion. Oh! let her not sooner Than sweet life itself Turn away from me, The noble inspirer, The consoler Hope'". 'If it were not for the pleasure you have given us', said Mondoza with ill- feigned severity, when Wolfram had concluded, *I ought strongly to protest against the introduction of this poem at the present stage of our dis- cussion; for it irregularly anticipates a future phase of our culture, which, I trust, we shall ere long have an opportunity of considering 7 . 'Allow me to dissent from the drift of this observation', answered Wolfram politely. 'The history of general lite- rature proves that Poetry commonly gave birth to Science. The literature of the Greeks, the most normal and the most perfect we possess, affords ample illustrations. At first, Poetry reigned supreme; then it allied itself with Philosophy i the Ionic speculations being almost without exception ex- pounded in verse; and it was only at a very advanced 284 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. period that Poetry and Science separated and each went its own way yet not so that the severance was made complete. From the tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides we are able to cull a string of maxims embodying the chief tenets of nearly every philosophic system that had till then arisen. If I correctly understand the goal to which our excellent host desires to lead our conver- sations the harmonious blending and co-operation of all human faculties as the strong basis of human hap- piness I may be pardoned for having, even at this point, alluded to the connection indissolubly subsisting between the gifts of Reason and Imagination, which are too often regarded as opposite poles. Indeed of the very highest importance seems to me the poet's warning: "Let old Wisdom, "The mother-in-law, "Beware not to hurt "The delicate child'" ! a 'I believe', said Melville with his usual concentration, 'that the divergencies of opinion, to which expression has just been given, involve a most important question of philosphy the question of the relative value of the analytical and synthetical mode of reasoning. Some enquirers favour exclusively the one, and some exclusively the other with equal detriment to truth. Both forms are alike indispen- sable, as they are designed for mutual completion and control. Mere analysis or induction, being essentially empirical, is halting and torpid; mere synthesis or generalisation, being mainly transcendental, is blind and wandering. It is not the accuracy of detail attempted by the one, nor the comprehensiveness of principle aimed at by the other, but the combination of both, or the union of discipline and liberty, which engenders true science. The only correct and fruitful process seems to be this: first to "dissolve" a subject into its component parts, and then "to combine" these constituents again, freely and in- dependently, by the bond of a common idea which THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 285 process is at least as much subjective as objective. It is, therefore, impossible to blame our zealous friend Attinghausen for his synthetic generalisations, because these, as all must admit, are the real end of research; they may be framed prematurely, rashly, or fantastically, but they are inevitable. Nor do I believe that our friend errs in any of these three directions; for the materials with which he operates have been accumulated during generations; the steps by which he advances are on the whole gradual and safe; and the conclusions are derived from facts in most instances as well ascertained as any upon which a philosophical science can be built. But he exposes his arguments to the hostile charge of being both premature, rash, and fantastical, through technical inaccuracies in his terminology and through occasional bounds in his reasoning: the former are not important, and the latter are not real, yet both combined impart to his theory the appearance, not of science, but of imagination, and they retard its more general adoption, because they leave it uncertain whether he does not cleave to that exploded form of materialism, which starts from the corpuscular atoms of Democritus. This is a striking instance of the necessity of a severely logical training at present so sadly neglected'. 'You are no doubt correct', said Wolfram, 'if you do not mean that "strait-laced" logic which impedes, instead of regulating, the movements of the mind; but recommend that wholesome method which, avoiding empty formulas, exercises the mind in concluding boldly, yet solidly, on facts and observations in a word that method which, at the right point, exchanges analysis for synthesis and thus creates a general proposition. Where that right point lies, can, of course, not be defined mechanically, but must, in each case, be determined by the innermost nature of the subject. This is our main difficulty; and, in the last instance, therefore, we remain conceal it as you may in the dominion of individual judgment or 286 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. intuition, which is the human form of instinct. Toilsomely and laboriously genius climbs the mountain heights of knowledge and thence takes a daring flight into the empyrean of Truth. He may fail; but his failure will deter no successor who is satisfied with the proudly simple epitaph: "Magnis tamen excidit ausis"'. 'This I admit', rejoined Melville, 'but it is just because that supreme element is unavoidably uncertain, and synthesis must ever be more or less hypothetical, that we should most earnestly qualify our intellect for cautiousness and precision of argumentation up to the utmost limits of our technical faculties'. 'However discreetly you may advocate deduction and hypothesis', said Gregovius, 'we cannot help looking upon those expedients with the strongest mistrust if we consider the mischief they have caused, and not least in Biblical criticism'. 'They are generally denounced by those', said Berghorn in a manner as if he had been personally attacked, 'who are weighed down by their dull and inert Geistlosigkeit'. In his vehemence, the English term did not readily oc- cur to him. 'I will not speak', continued Gregovius, smiling, 'of the baseless reveries of the Middle Ages, when alchemists strove to evolve the homunculus from their retorts, and the philosopher's stone from their visionary recipes; but will only refer to the hollow constructions and abstruse unrealities of Hegel's and Schelling's "philosophy of nature" or "absolute idealism", which, elaborated as if Bacon and Gassendi, Hobbes and Locke had never lived, could not fail to produce a new and mystical scholasticism starting from the paradoxical principle of ontology or the identity of "thinking" and "being", and even attempting by dialectic artifices to weave imaginary facts which were regarded as the only legitimate materials of science'. 'Your objection', said Mondoza, 'just as it is, implies, I believe, its own refutation. The synthesis to which you THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 287 allude was "premature". It was about that time that Schiller wrote the remarkable distich entitled "Naturalist and Metaphysician" N aturforscher und Transcendental- Philosoph : "Let there be feud between you! the alliance comes yet too early: "Truth can only be found, if you diverge in the search".* 'Hegel and Schelling, like the medieval speculators, working on insufficient and onesided data, reared systems that were necessarily frail and fanciful. Since then the zeal of a thousand able enquirers has gathered a stupendous mass of precise facts not only permitting but imperatively demanding the light of deduction and general principles to prevent it from falling into chaos; and hence a living naturalist was justified in expressing the hope that, in all those points where the zoologist comes into contact with the metaphysician, this contact will lead, not to a hostile repulsion, but to a useful amalgamation. 11 If Kant, Schiller's contemporary, succeeded in escaping from the pitfalls of empty abstractions, and in accomplishing a fruitful synthesis, it is because his attention was, in a great measure, directed upon two great realities the human mind itself and the mechanism of the universe, that is, on the instrument and the chief object of our researches; he argued on experience and observation, and, with their aid, his marvellous intuition anticipated the system of Laplace and the doctrine of Lamarck. Leading ideas or theories are indispensable in our time when, the materials having vastly accumulated, the necessary division of labour threatens to destroy not merely the insight into the organic connection of all sciences, but even the perception of any single of the sciences as a whole. Although, to promote any branch, we must be specialists, we should avoid being specialists only, but should feel ourselves members of the uni- versitas literarum. No number of specialities, however per- fect and valuable individually, makes up living scholarship. This is impossible without a great and common principle 288 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. pervading all like a vivifying breath: else, instead of knowledge wide and humble, we shall have learning narrow and vain. We must generalise and combine even at the risk of committing, in particular disciplines, errors at which the specialist may smile. The human mind cannot pass beyond its natural boundaries, yet it should never lose sight of its highest aims'. 'Our opponents', said Attinghausen, with a glance oi gratitude at the host, 'our opponents, who have a horror of our conclusions, would fain keep us breathlessly in the bondservice of delving and digging; they understand perfectly the wisdom of Mephistopheles : "Wer will was Lebendig's erkennen und beschreiben. "Sucht erst den Geist herauszutreiben; "Dann hat er die Theile in seiner Hand; "Fehrt leider nur das geistige Band"'. a 'Even specialists', said Wolfram, 'should be thankful to philosophers ; for it is wonderful to observe, when once a new and great principle begins to diffuse its rays, what a surprising abundance of fresh materials before unnoticed starts into unexpected light; and how strongly men are urged to look for proofs in directions till then disregarded. This has received a signal corroboration from the uncommon eagerness which has been displayed in every department of natural science since the torch of Evolution and Monism has illumined the horizon; and it is not too much to contend that in exact details also the last twenty years have been productive in a degree utterly unknown at any previous period. Never before has any class of animals been studied with so much zeal and success, or been so fully understood in its importance and significance, as the lowest microscopic organisms, the Protists, Monera, and Infusoria, have of late been examined. Thus synthesis, properly carried out, is so far from fostering recklessness or superficiality, that it eminently subserves the acquisition of minute and solid information'. THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 289 'Even we have felt this impulse', said Gregovius; 'for since we have adopted the potent principle of develop- ment, the Scriptures and all auxiliary sciences which in any way contribute to their illustration, have been searched with such zest and diligence that, even with respect to mere accuracy and copiousness of learning, Buxtorf, Yitringa and Carpzov would not deny us their approval'. 'From all that has just been said', observed Mondoza after a short reflection, 'I believe we are justified in con- sidering that method of deduction which has resulted in the doctrines of Monism not only as exempt from the charge of fanciful arbitrariness, but as perfectly legitimate and in the true sense scientific. No mean proof of the correctness of the laws of natural selection and the struggle for life is the universality of their application. They hold good no more decidedly in the physical world than in the sphere of the mind. Force succumbs to thought, however fierce or protracted the strife. The stronger and healthier ideas which we are wont to call truth, and for which those who first proclaimed them may have suffered persecution and death, always prevail finally over prejudice and error. The grander and nobler sentiments, which we call morals, ultimately assert their superior vitality in a warfare, which at times might appear hopeless, against selfishness and meanness. And it is these victories of truth and morality, and not the rise and decay of empires, which form the real landmarks of history: the ideas of a Plato or Spinoza continue, and will ever continue, to influence men's innermost lives ; and if in a history written on right principles, great conquerors are remembered, it is because their ambitious expeditions helped to diffuse the ideas of philosophy and the discoveries of science. The most comforting and most elevating feature of the new doctrines is the uniform progress they proclaim. 'And are these doctrines, as is so often maintained, quite devoid of poetry? Are they indeed low, material, u 290 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. and earthy? A poet's eye and temperament might perhaps detect in them elements of beauty rivalling even the cosmic splendours of the ancients. The Greeks endowed nature with life and sympathy. But when the modern naturalist sees in the oak not the life of one dryad but as many stirring lives as it contains cells; when he sees in the noble stag not an animal sacred to Artemis but a creature with a gentle soul that can attach itself to our own does he not lend to nature life, grace and sympathy in a much higher spirit than the Greek? I believe, he is almost realising the poet's conception of Nature: "Life she received from the Fable, the Schoolmen have rendered her soulless, "Reason imparts her anew breath and the vigour of life". a 'And when, yielding to this disposition of mind, he becomes aware that there is not a creature on this planet, not a planet in our solar system, not a system in the myriads of suns, which does not, in its minutest parts, obey the same laws upon which he himself acts is there no poetry, no sublimity, no idealism in this expansion of his humble self to the infinitude of the universe ? Nor is this a vague or impalpable abstraction ; it has the plastic unity and limita- tion of Art; it can be felt, conceived, and expressed with equal distinctness and power ; and if we learn to regulate our lives accordingly, we cannot but be free, tranquil, high- souled, and happy'. 'Not unjustly therefore', added Attinghausen, greatly pleased, 'we may affirm, that the Monism which spon- taneously results from the theory of evolution, is the long- sought and much-desired system that harmonises the dualistic views hitherto arrayed against each other in implacable antagonism: it avoids the one-sidedness of a coarse materialism, no less than an empty spiritualism; it unites a theoretic realism and a practical idealism; and it blends the sciences of nature and of philosophy into one all-comprehensive and organic science'. b THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 291 'But do not forget', said Humphrey with bitter and taunting sarcasm, 'that choicest offspring of your precious Monism the Ape-Man 7 . 'I am far from forgetting him', said Attinghausen, generously trying to conceal or to moderate his victory; 'and I look upon him with mingled pride and humility. I do not know whether, in our time, many finer sentences have been written than those with which Huxley concludes his principal Essay I have committed them to memory: ''Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extra- ordinary a series of gradation as the Primates leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures* from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental Mammalia. It is as if Nature herself had foreseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumph, should call into prominence the slaves admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust"'. b 'Not all of him is mortal dust', said Abington solemnly; 'his Divine part is imperishable'. 'And if he be "the conqueror" over the lower creation', added Canon Mortimer, 'he cannot forget, in the words of Ecclesiastes as rendered by our host: "A high one watches over a high one, and a Highest one over these"'. 'Untouched by the changeful speculations of the moment', added Rabbi Gideon, 'are these three eternal truths: there is a God; we have a Soul; and this soul is immortal. Nor is it difficult to set these great points at rest for ever, and to place them in security against all cavils of sceptics and abject materialists'. 'The discussion of these important questions', said Mondoza, 'which, with your leave, we will postpone till to-morrow, will form at once a complement and a test of the Monistic doctrines which have engaged us the last two evenings. It will at the same time afford to our conservative friends a great opportunity for recovering the ground they may seem to have lost, if it does not 292 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. entirely change the issue of the contest. Meanwhile we may all rest assured in the conviction that, whosoever were our first progenitors, the value and the true aims of our lives remain precisely the same: no accident of birth can rob us of our zeal for knowledge, of our enjoy- ment of the beautiful, of the consciousness of our dignity, or of our strong sense of duty. Nay, universal sympathy as a constituent of human character and human happiness is enforced by Monism with so much greater power and significance than it was taught even by Stoicism, that it almost assumes the value of a new element. There can surely be no disgrace in having gained these heights, not through, but in spite of, our ancestry, if the Roman poet is right: "Nam genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi, "Vix ea nostra voco'". Humphrey, Gideon and some others were by no means satisfied with this moderate estimate of Monism; but as they could, at the moment, discover no tangible point of attack, they reluctantly joined the groups that for some time remained engaged in private interchange of views. VII. GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. As the topics of the ensuing enquiries had been distinctly agreed upon, many of those who intended taking part in the discussion, devoted the morning to the study of the chief works treating on those subjects, and some arrived in the evening at Cordova Lodge strongly armed with notes and extracts which they hoped to make useful. The eagerness which all displayed of shortening the preliminary conversations, proved that they expected and desired a pitched battle; and they were, therefore, well content when Canon Mortimer, not long after he had entered the room, began: 'It seems to me, to say the least, an unwarranted exaggeration, even from the standpoint of science, to describe the whole teaching of the Church as consisting of undemonstrated dogmas. The cardinal point, the existence of a personal God, apart from its being an axiom of our reason and an instinctive demand of our nature, and therefore universally adopted, apart from its constant manifestation through our inner experience, and apart from its absolute necessity as a bond of union connecting all things visible and invisible I say, the existence of a personal God, even irrespective of intuition and faith, can be established by proofs as cogent as any that are deemed sufficient in questions of science and history 7 . 'If you allude', said Hermes, 'to the four well-known proofs which have found a place in Christian dogmatics, you will, in our days, not find many, outside of theological Colleges, willing to pronounce them satisfactory. They move all, without exception, in a vicious circle, tacitly assuming what they profess to substantiate. It is, for 294 GOD, SOUL, IMMOBTALITY. instance, inconceivable that any discipline except divinity would have suffered for a moment the ontological argument of your Archbishop Anselm, who contends that, as the idea of a most perfect Being eo ipso includes the quality of existence, a most perfect Being or a God exists; he thus places the conclusion into the first premises, and virtually declares: as there is a God, God exists'. 'There is some force in this objection', rejoined Mortimer slowly; 'but certainly, the cosmological proof, as framed by the high philosophical authorities of Leibniz and Wolf, is unassailable : the infinite variety of accidental objects necessarily claims an absolute Author ; an effect points to a cause, this again to a remoter cause, and so onward till we arrive at a Being that has no cause, but bears the reason of His existence in Himself, and is the First Cause of all possible things'. 'This again', said Attinghausen somewhat impatiently, as if wished to get once for all rid of an unprofitable subject, 'is nothing but putting the cart before the horse in spite of your philosophical authorities. You simply assume that, because there is variety, there must be unity, and because there is accident, there must be necessity. You conceive the cosmos as a whole, or a unity, and therefore postulate an individual Author. You have in your mind the idea of the absolute, and you transfer it, without proof or reason, to the world. But how, if we deny that there are "accidental" things in the world and, on the contrary, affirm that everything exists according to necessary and immutable laws? Then the pantheist, turning the argument against yourself, may justly maintain that, because there prevails in the universe an eternally established order, the forces that produce or constitute it, are that which is absolutely necessary, has the reason of existence in itself, and is the ultimate cause of all possibility or accident. The cosmological proof leads up to a First Cause, but by no means imperatively to a personal or intelligent one not imperatively to a God'. GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 295 'I think', said Wolfram, 'very little can be urged against this line of reasoning which, like every truly logical deduc- tion, confirms the conceptions of pantheism. "If each of the things in the world has its reason in another thing, and so on indefinitely, we do not obtain the idea of a cause whose effect is the world, but of a substance, the accidents of which are the individual objects in the world; we obtain no God, but a universe resting on itself and remaining unaltered in the constant change of things visible"'.* 'I cannot see', said Mortimer with some confidence, 'that the regularity of the laws of nature is incompatible with the belief in a ruling Providence. We insist indeed that those laws have no absolute necessity; but in affirming this we do not mean to assert that they are changeable and subject to arbitrariness. "When eternal Wisdom fixed them in the beginning, it surveyed their totality and made among them such a choice, that all work in harmony; and it is this harmony which man, with his limited powers, strives to disclose. Constancy of the laws is far from equivalent with their necessity?* 'This distinction', said Attinghausen with a shrug of the shoulders, 'is much too subtle for a layman's intellect. Whether the Creator abdicates in order to leave the throne for all times to "constancy", calmly looking at the horrible mischief perpetually wrought by His natural laws, or whether from the first "necessity" dominates the same laws of nature, is practically of little consequence. The second alternative seems certainly more religious'. 'May I be allowed', said Hermes, 'to remind you of a fine passage in Pliny, which, I believe, will satisfy our friend Attinghausen himself? Pliny writes in the beginning of his Natural History: "The world and whatever that may be which we otherwise call the heavens, in the vault of which everything lives, must be conceived by us as a deity, and regarded as eternal, boundless, both uncreated and imperishable . . . This being 296 GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. is sacred as well as eternal and boundless; it is all in all, or rather it is itself the all ; infinite, yet appearing to be finite; in all things obeying settled laws, yet seeming to be lawless ; without and within embracing all things in itself; the work of original nature, and at the same time itself nature"'. a 'This is not bad', said Attinghausen with a far less decided approval than had been anticipated; 'yet it is impossible to know what heresies may be hidden in the word "deity" or numen'* "You need not be uneasy', said Berghorn sarcastically; 'Pliny reproduces the atheism of Epicurus, though he veils it by Stoic inconsistencies'. 'Can there be', resumed Mortimer hesitatingly, 'any serious difficulty in accepting the third or pliysico-theolo- gical proof? 'By all that is good and true' ! exclaimed Attinghausen, 'it requires the wilful blindness of orthodoxy to find in this world of ours an excellence, harmony and fitness so consummate that we needs must attribute it to a perfect and loving Creator. A few days ago I have severely censured the Stoics for preposterously attempting a "theodicy", which Christian teachers have eagerly adopted and diligently enlarged. I may ask again, where is that excellence, harmony and fitness in the thousand evils that surround us? in the interminable and ruthless destruction carried on by all creatures against all ? in the numberless beings which are called forth only to encounter a merciless and fatal struggle without accomplishing the object of their existence? in the base and wretched passions, which even the Bible and the Church declare to be innate and in- eradicable, and to engender temporal wretchedness and eternal damnation ? If you, therefore, consider that the fitness the world exhibits justifies you in supposing a good Creator and Ruler, we must be allowed to assume another Creator and Ruler to whom we can refer the manifold unfitness found in the world, and especially that most GOD, SOUL, IMMOETALITY. 297 incongruous of all creations Man. We are thus driven to Parseeism ; for the very Satan of the Christians, though he be "like a roaring lion", is insufficient, since he is in some way subordinate to God, whereas the second or evil Creator is at least as powerful as the first'.* 'Must we then indeed', said Asho-raoco in deep medi- tation, 'either believe in Ahriman or renounce Ahura- mazda also'? 'Even heathen writers', said Humphrey, 'recognised and extolled the wonderful perfection of earth and heaven and the no less wonderful adaptation of every creature to the purposes of its life, and were thus irresistibly led to the acknowledgment of an all-wise creative Intelligence. Citations are unnecessary; Cicero alone has expressed this view in a hundred passages with inexhaustible elo- quence and enthusiasm. 11 But if you do not believe the ancients, you will believe Kant who observed: "Whosoever reflectingly surveys the order that rules nature, is seized with astonishment at a wisdom of which he had no con- ception"; 6 and you will believe Goethe who declared: "In contemplating the structure of the universe, we cannot resist the conclusion that the whole is founded upon a distinct idea". d And let me adduce one instance derived from recent observation I mean the remarkable pheno- menon of the so-called "sympathetic colours of animals", that is, the resemblance of their chromatic appearance with that of their usual surroundings; thus beetles settling on leaves are commonly green; insects feeding on the bark of trees, grey or brown; nocturnal butterflies, of a spotted grey; medusae and fishes living on the surface of the sea, glassy and transparent; quadrupeds like gazelles, inhabiting sandy districts, yellow or yellowish-brown ; the polar animals of the snow regions, white. Thus the creatures are at once better fitted to escape the notice of their enemies, and to approach their own prey un- observed, than they would be if their colours were conspicuously different from those of their abodes 298 GOD, SOUL, IMMOETALITY. which is manifestly a beneficent provision and intelligent design'. 'This form of "beneficent provision and intelligent design", said Attinghausen with a slight admixture of anger, 'is another of the exploded fallacies, yet it still remains one upon which ecclesiastics are fond to descant with wearisome sameness, and for the support of which by public Lectures and elaborate Treatises large endow- ments have been made. a No one will deny that the Cre- ation, as we now behold it, is imposing to such a degree that our intellect often finds it indeed difficult to disavow the impression of a directly creative and intelligent Cause. But we should not forget that we see before us, con- centrated in a single picture, the infinite effects of natural forces that have incessantly operated during many millions of years: no wonder, therefore, if that picture in its totality sometimes appears to us stupendous and over- whelming. As regards your recent observation, it has been disposed of by researches still more recent, which have transformed it into a striking corrob oration of "the struggle for existence" : for the animals happening to possess those sympathetic colours survived and transmitted the same favourable tints to their descendants ; while the rest, not enjoying this advantage, gradually succumbed. And with respect to the question in general, what are the facts? In spite of the marvellous mechanism of the heavens, our planet is subject to convulsions and a wanton rage of the elements that often in an instant destroy thousands of men, demolish their laborious works, and convert blooming districts into wastes and deserts. It is true, we find a large number of creatures organised with complete and often surprising fitness. But without en- quiring how many unsuccessful attempts nature made before that fitness was reached for we find not a few useless or rudimentary organs, eyes that do not see, wings that do not fly, teeth that never cut through the gums, muscles that do not move b , and without, therefore, GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 299 arguing that the fitness apparently arises, not from the design of an unfailing Intelligence, but from the working of chance finally resulting in permanence and vitality, we may ask, is that much-praised appropriateness general? Moths are irresistibly attracted by the flame and burnt. Flies, though possessing eyes of wonderful structure, are unable to see the spider's web and are fatally entangled. Spiders themselves, though remarkably organised for capturing flies, are insufficiently armed against their own enemies. The camel is often killed by eating poisonous herbs which it has not the instinct to distinguish. Similar examples will occur to you all indefinitely, though a few, nay a single one, would be enough to establish the fact that organic creations were produced, not by the wisdom of a beneficent Artificer, but by the fortuitous concurrence of mechanical causes acting with necessity. The faculty of admiration is a precious boon fraught both with en- joyment and profit, Yet it should not blind us. While gratefully acknowledging man's physical, mental and moral gifts, we should not overlook his grave deficiencies; for he is not in all respects adapted to the existence into which he has been called. The earth is rich and beau- tiful, but it is not in every manner, and certainly not in every part, a suitable abode of man. 3 It proves no har- mony of design that myriads of sentient creatures cannot live without preying upon other myriads of sentient crea- tures. I know you find even in this sad fact a wonderful scheme assigning to each tribe its special duties in the economy of nature: thus the swallow and the nighthawk, the woodpecker and chicadee, the warbler and flycatcher, the blackbird and crow, the snipe and woodcock, have "the duty" of devouring countless insects and thus to be, respectively, "the guardians" of the atmosphere, of the trunks and the foliage of trees, of the surface of the soil and the subsoil, all of which would be hopelessly infested or injured without those voracious protectors. You palliate the general warfare on the plea of necessity : the offspring 300 GOD, SOUL, IMMOETALITY. of one couple of mice, if left unmolested, would in a few years cover the whole face of the earth, and the offspring of one couple of slowly propagating elephants would, at the lowest computation, within five hundred years increase to the number of fifteen millions of individuals. But that necessity results from some palpable faults and deficiencies in consequence of which all nature is filled with tragical struggles and fearful agonies. In a perfect world each or- S\ ganic creature would have its own useful object of existence v^ \ and all would live together at least in peace, if not foi A Mmutual support; as it is, vast numbers are only born t( ^J be as soon as possible deprived of their noxious lives as else all nature would perish, or at least men, in youi eyes the chief objects of creation, could not exist. a The argument of teleological fitness breaks down at ever point'. 'I am curious to know', said Humphrey, covering hi retreat with Parthian arrows, 'how in one of the example referred to you account for the singular fact that som< of the polar animals, as the northern fox, the ptarmigar and the snow-hare, in the summer, when the snow ha partially melted, always lose their white colour and be come grey or brown? And as regards the struggle carrie< on in nature, fanatic prejudice only can deny that it i one of the most striking evidences of a superior wisdom for "without it, without the uncertainty of existence an the possibility of destruction, the organisms would b robbed of the mightiest incentive to exertion, robbed c the feeling of their own strength, which is the very sourc of enjoyment and delight". Moreover, that struggle, whic never yet has destroyed a single species of animals, ho^ ever fatal it may be to individuals, is ordained in cor sequence of the primeval curse, which on account of man' sin has been laid upon Nature also; while man's warfai with the animals and the elements is intended to shiel him from indolence and apathy, from haughtiness an self-sufficiency, and is, there-fore, in the hand of God, a GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 301 effectual means of training and education at once for a more energetic and a more lowly life. Does this not show that the alleged planlessness in the world does not disturb the harmony of religious and teleological con- ceptions, but that it belongs to them as the shadow be- longs to the picture'? 4 As Attinghausen did not reply, as was expected, but looked, with raised eye-brows and firmly closed lips, into vacancy, as if the matter did not concern him at all, Canon Mortimer, summoning fresh confidence, said: 'I will not urge these points further, but I am certain, the fourth and chief proof of a Divine Ruler, which the great Kant himself has put forward, is logically un- impeachable. He justly designated it the moral demon- stration; for starting from the axiom that practical reason demands a perfect accordance of our thoughts and acts with the law of morality, and that this accordance, in conjunction with true felicity, constitutes the sovereign '^ good after which we strive and are bound to strive, and />" moreover rightly affirming that the sovereign good as just defined viz. the combination of morality and happiness- can only be conceived as attainable if we at the same */ time conceive a Being that embodies it in all perfection, .. he concludes with irrefragable consistency that there / must be such a Being, that is, that there exists a God ''* who, if there is in the lives of men a disproportion be- tween the two factors, is able to remedy it in a future world'. 'We ought really to be grateful to you', said Atting- hausen laughing, 'for stating the subtle argument with such clearness, since, so stated, it is almost its own re- futation. From beginning to end it is a menial process without any necessary existence in reality. The great and noble-minded philosopher had formed in his intellect the idea of a highest good composed of virtue and hap- piness, and he set forth this idea as if it were a reality, and called it God. Thus he created his God and, as is 302 GOD, SOUL, IMMOETALITY. usual in similar operations, he created Him after his own image. The mistake he made is hardly less striking than that involved in his "volition argument", which de- clares: "I will the good, God is the good, and by virtue of my will I grasp the belief in God" which is virtually faith, not argument. Yet beyond this you will never be able to pass. a I admit that "the conviction of an all- seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advance- ment of morality"; 13 but we can accept nothing as con- viction without adequate proofs, which you are unable to produce, and instead of which you must be satisfied with those "aparts" which our excellent Canon, at the be- ginning of his remarks, dismissed as subordinate satisfied with a God who is "an axiom of our reason and an in- stinctive demand of our nature, a constant revelation of our inner experience and a universal bond of union". And fortunately such a God is eminently fitted to make men both happy and upright, because, being an emanation from themselves alone, He is readily obeyed as the Lawgiver and Judge; whereas history teaches but too plainly how little influence over the hearts and actions of men is exercised by a transcendent God of fear, wielding the awful rod of wrath and chastisement'. 'Even so I see no need of dissension', said the Canon suavely. 'May not the world have purposely been so framed by God that there are, and that there can be, no positive proofs in all such questions? The prob- lems of the exact sciences are ultimately solved in such a manner as to compel men's assent, whatever their degree of piety: would such a belief, in matters relating to re- ligious life, be desirable? Forced upon the mind, it would be without any moral value. As it is, every man has the free choice according to his inclination, and the right decision is accounted to him as a merit'. 'This is excellent theology' ! exclaimed "Wolfram. 'And let me add another consideration', continued the Canon. 'The doubts which assail our minds with respect to GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 303 heavenly things, are experienced by us as a painful want; but this very privation makes us in our innermost hearts feel the reality of that which is the object of our doubts; and thus our apparent distance from God often reveals the stars of a deeper faith than are visible in the glare of a supposed knowledge attained by reason'. 'This, I think', said Movayyid-eddin, 'must also have been the opinion of the author of the Arabic work Ni- yaristan, who addresses Allah: "If Thou pleasest, delight me by Thy presence, or if Thou preferrest, let me sigh through Thy absence"'.* 'It seems to me', said Abington with great seriousness, 'a signal triumph of truth that the man who has perhaps inflicted deeper wounds on Christianity than any other scholar within the present century I say, I consider it a noteworthy triumph of truth that Strauss in his last work, though betraying Christ even more heartlessly than ever before, felt at least constrained to recognise in the world a supreme Intelligence and virtually returned to the fold of monotheism'. 'I am extremely glad', said Attinghausen with eagerness, 'that you have reminded us of this new form of "mo- notheism". It is needless for me to express the respect and gratitude I entertain for Strauss not only for having clearly proved the whole of the Gospel narrative to be a tissue of idle myths, but especially for having brought the study of the Bible into close connection with natural science, and especially with Darwinism. b How great, therefore, is my astonishment at his recent theory devoid both of his usual acumen and his characteristic soberness of judgment! The God he proclaims is "the law-governed Universe invested with life and reason". This Universe possesses indeed all the chief and obnoxious criteria of a positive faith: it involves a theodicy interpreting all the terrible evils of the world as instruments for main- taining general harmony ; d it is "rational and good" and "the primary Source of all that is rational and good"; 304 GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. it is that on which men feel their absolute dependent and to which they submit with loving confidence; it i exclusive, dogmatic, . and violently fanatical ; any attacl ventured against its majesty is both absurd and " blas- phemous" ; a nay this Universe enforces the same piefr which the believer of the old style claims for his God since it is impossible to tolerate in any man a denial o the feeling of dependence. Yet in spite of all this, w< are startled by such phrases as: "The Universe is orde: and law" which sounds, not like a personality, but lik( an abstraction; or: "The Universe is no elementary powe] to which we must bend with mute resignation" whicl seems to assign to man a certain freedom; or lastly "The Universe admits no cultus or worship, since it ii unable to fulfil any human wish or satisfy any humai want"; the notion of Divine service being altogether "* low anthropopathism". What, therefore, is the relatioi between Strauss' doctrine and that of the Church? H( looks upon the world not as the work of an absolutely rational and good individuality, but as the "manufactory' Werkstatte of all that is rational and good; not a* designed ~by a highest reason but for the highest reason. 1 How is this to be understood? There is no rational ar- tificer but a "manufactory" of the rational: whence does Reason come if there is no prototype of Reason? Yet the world is "designed" for the highest reason designed b} whom or by what? This would require a designer, thai is, one who conceives the design. How does Strauss extricate himself from this dilemma? By an expediem which would do honour to any Scholastic casuist anc which is indeed borrowed from another system. Thai distinction, he says, "results from the narrowness and in- completeness of our human understanding; in reality the Universe is at once cause and effect, at once extrinsic and intrinsic". In a word, the Universe has reason be- cause it is identical with a rational Author who does not exist ! c This is the wisdom of the wise if they perforce GOD, SOUL. IMMOETALITY. 305 will not give up metaphysics, and the piety of the pious if they want perforce to have a religion over and above ethics, philosophy and science! Strauss seemed on the very point of piloting his way successfully from a monistic idealism to a scientific monism, when he was unfortu- nately shipwrecked by the Siren songs of transcendental speculation 7 . 'Not a single day', said Humphrey with undisguisedal anger for "the Universe" of Strauss had been publicly hailed by him as a "conversion" /not a single day could a community ruled on your principles exist or be secure. Anarchy would shake society to its very centre; all the frenzied passions of evil, let loose without check or restraint, would bring back chaos; and a barbarism would be re- established more fiendish and more shockingly cruel than any that, in former ages, spread ruin and desolation, be- cause it would fight with the terribly efficient weapons of civilisation'. 'Your alarm', said Attinghausen with uncommon calm- ness, 'is proved by experience to be groundless. Atheistic states have existed and flourished for thousands of years. The Chinese, Tartars, Mongols, and Tibetans have in their languages no word to express the idea of God, and the Japanese have no belief in a God in your sense; yet China is one of the oldest and Japan one of the best regulated commonwealths on earth. The question is not new. It has been made famous by the controversy which, in the last century, was carried on by Bayle and Voltaire. Bayle affirmed the possible stability of atheistic polities, Yoltaire denied it. At that time the subject could only be argued theoretically, and Yoltaire maintained that the nations referred to could with as little justice be called atheists as they could be called Anti-Cartesians, since they have no more heard of God than they have heard of Descartes, and, like children, are neither atheists nor deists. a But since then a flood of light has been thrown upon the East and its religions, and assertions like those 306 GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. of Voltaire sound at present paradoxical. Buddha was deeply imbued with the large pantheon of Brahmanism, yet he ignored a deity and was practically an atheist; and the many millions who, from his age to ours, have followed his views, are above all other men distinguished by law-abiding integrity and gentle peacefulness. The argument of despair is, therefore, as futile as it is un- necessary; it leads, moreover, to the inevitable corollary, that the worldly authorities or the guardians of public safety, are bound to enforce the belief in God by perse- cution, imprisonment and torture, in fact to stamp hetero- doxy as a civil crime, and the sceptic as an outlaw.* 'But I must make one additional remark', he continued with great earnestness. 'You call the monists perpetually atheists and think you have thereby branded us with the darkest ignominy as pernicious and execrable monsters. The word has an ominous sound to timid souls, just as not long since the word Republican had. But Buddha could not glory more in the name of "Great Mendicant" than we glory in the name of Atheists, if the term is understood to involve rejection of your God. Yet we solemnly protest against the charge that we are without a God, or that we are believers in "Nothing". We are neither Atheists nor Nihilists. Our God is no personal Being, that is, He is not finite, limited, human-like. He is all in all. He is to us Duty, Devotion, Fidelity unto death. We can live and die for this God; for He is one with ourselves. He is our Reason, our Conscience, our Charity. He is our Law and our Liberty; but as the freest republics have the severest laws, so He exacts from us the strictest submission and self-control. He is not a negation, but an active principle that at every moment impels us to shun what is mean and contemptible, and to perform what is righteous and beneficial. He is not an empty abstraction, because He is the sum of all qualities which experience and wisdom have taught us to be pure and noble. And He is not cheerless or saddening, for GOD, SOUL, IMMOKTALITY. 307 He is our Hope and our Faith our hope of the ultimate reign of truth and goodness, and our faith in His power to establish on earth that happy dominion. Our God is like your God in all that contributes to elevation and tranquillity; but He is entirely within us to warn, to direct, and to encourage. He is, in fact, that "unknown God" who "is not far from every one of us"'! 'This is very fine and beautiful', said Movayyid-eddin, shaking his head doubtingly, 'but I cannot quite see that it is religion. We are taught that religion is a faith existing from all eternity and lasting to the end of time unchanged; and as far as I know, our Jewish and Christian friends agree on this point with us Mohammedans. As they believe that the Law and the Logos were with God from all ages, so we believe that the Koran existed, and was treasured up in heaven, before the world was created, and will remain our unerring guide to the cessation of all things. But if I understand our learned naturalist rightly, everyone makes his religion for himself, and alters it whensoever and howsoever he pleases. This seems to me most questionable and dangerous. Our sect has re- jected the greatest part of the oral traditions for no other reason than because they appeared to us to modify the teaching of the eternal Book'. 'Justly', said Panini, 'our poet exhorts: "Non prendano i inortali il voto a ciancia; "Siate fideli"'! 'True', said Wolfram, 'but he adds: "Ed a cio far non bieci "Come fu Jepte alia sua prima mancia"'. a 'The Mussulman shames the Christian', said Humphrey eagerly; 'there must be a binding law this is the true meaning of religion, and its proper essence is Authority or rather Divine authority, or, as Kant expresses it, the recognition of our duties as Divine commandments accedat Verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum, says St. Augustine : for this alone is constant amidst universal 308 GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. fluctuation, certain amidst general uncertainty, "the fixed pole in the fugitive phenomena of the moment"'. 'This would be admirable', said Wolfram, 'if man re- mained unchanged. But Havre* ^s? everything is in a state of flux. The only thing unchangeable is change.* As the whole of organic nature is one unbroken process of metamorphosis, so is the mind of man. While we speak, we are changed. The thought that struck us yesterday as unassailable, appears to us doubtful to-day; the object we admire to-day as exquisite, may leave us indifferent to-morrow. We are like the shadow of a tree, thrown upon a running stream. The precepts that warmed the hearts and inspired the moral energies of our ancestors, may have no meaning for us and may fall upon our ears as a dead language. If in their stead other rules have been discovered which so warm and inspire us, they are our religion yet only so long as they produce the same be- neficent effects ; when they have ceased to do so, or, in other words, when we have materially changed, they must be changed likewise. A fearful responsibility is incurred by legislators who pledge future generations to institutions they deem expedient for their own, States that were ruled by unalterable laws stagnated and soon decayed. Com- munities which accepted an unalterable code of religion, lapsed into superstition, hypocrisy, and wickedness: the words remained, but each worshipper associated with them a special meaning; and while uniformity was professed, a confusing diversity prevailed. This is eminently the case in our own time. The Judaism of the present Jews is not the Judaism of Shammai or the compilers of the Talmud, and the Christianity of the present Christians is not the Christianity of a Jerome or a Luther, though the received rites and formulas are in the main identical. This incessant shifting and modifying are the terms on which alone the ancient creeds can be preserved at all, and to which we happily owe the existence of many enlightened men who still call themselves Jews and Christians. Admit, there- GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 309 fore, in theory what you cannot help practising, though you practise it often unconsciously; and by making your words conformable to your acts, relieve your consciences from the burden of insincerity. Our religions have been brought to us from the Eastern lands of immobility ; free them from the defects of their origin and thus secure for them a new life. Do not be afraid there is "a fixed pole in the fugitive phenomena of the moment": it is man's moral and intellectual nature. Not all of you are perhaps familiar with the beautiful little poem of Goethe bearing on this subject; anticipating the turn our dis- cussion has taken, I have this morning tried to translate it into English blank verse I could not attempt the rhymes , and I beg your permission to read to you the imperfect version. It is the poem: "Dauer im Wechsel" or PERMANENCE IN CHANGE. "Cannot, oh! this vernal blessing Tarry e'en a single hour? Lo! a shower of tender blossoms Falls by zephyr's gentle breeze. Will this foliage still delight me, That affords us grateful shade? Soon it shall lie seared and withered, Scattered by autumnal blasts. Dost thou wish the fruits to gather? Quickly seize thy rightful share! These begin e'en now to ripen, Those appear to bud and swell: Instantly by every rainfall Is the lovely valley changed; Nor, alas! in the same river Dost thou swim a second time. And thyself! What firm and rocklike Struck thy wond'ring gaze before Walls thou seest and stately mansions Ever with a varying eye. 310 GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. Vanished is the lip that truly Found the kiss a healing balm, Grone the foot that on the mountain With the chamois dared to vie. And the hand that, kind and ready, Lavished gifts of charity, And the frame, the limbs so stalwart, Are no longer what they were. And what, in their stead, at present Calls itself by thy old name, Came in silence like a wavelet, And so hastens to its goal. Let the end and the beginning As a whole be closely joined! Let thy own self move more swiftly Than the things that round thee move! Praise the favour of the Muses, Who will grant thee changeless boons: Wealth of high thoughts in thy bosom, Form and beauty in thy mind". 'This is our only safety', concluded Wolfram: 'follow the poet's wise counsel and in forestalling the flight of time and its changes, guard what is imperishable and all-sufficient "Den Gehalt in deinem Busen "Und die Form in deinem Geist"'. a 'This is excellent', said Attinghausen cheerfully, 'as far as it goes ; but it does not go far enough. The laws to which you have referred apply to the inorganic as well as to the organic world. There exists nowhere inert matter or a quiescent substance remaining unchanged. All is in constant motion, every rock, every grain of sand, every particle of metal; and that motion is the force or soul of the substance. The difference between organic and inorganic nature is not absolute, but only one of degree. The motion may, in every instant, be infinitesimal and utterly imperceptible, yet it is carried GOD, SOUL, IMMOKTALITY. 311 on irresistibly and after longer intervals manifests itself in changes often astounding. The great geological epochs with their prodigiously varied formations have not, as was long believed, been caused by violent and periodical revolutions of mysterious origin, but by the slow and calm operation of matter continued uninterruptedly through thousands of millenniums.* "The mighty masses of the Alpine mountain chains are nothing but hardened sea mud". The phosphorus united with chalk in the (bone, appears dead, and yet it is the same which, combined in the brain with fat and other matter, co-operates in the production of thought. There is neither matter without mind, nor mind without matter, but only that which is both at once. The separation of the two exists not in nature nor in the objects; it is an artificial operation of the human intellect and a mischievous one; for in the separa- tion, neither the one nor the other is properly understood. 11 All manifestations of the soul invariably depend on parts of the animal body, which form the "soul apparatus'" on the organs of the senses, the nerves and muscles, or, in the lower animals, on the cell groups or even individual cells. For this law extends to the very polypes, which, destitute of any nervous system, perform the functions of the soul sensation, will, movement -by means of a single cell, the exterior of which is nerve, while the inner half is muscle; so that, as the whole skin is the seat bf the soul, the remarkable result follows that, if, for instance, a hydra-polype is cut into any number of pieces, as many perfect polypes are, within a few weeks, developed from these fragments. There is absolutely no function without an organ, no organ without a function. If parts of the brain of a man or an animal decay or are taken out successful experiments have been made with several animals , a cer- tain set of impressions or conceptions vanishes. A dog, a portion of whose brain had been removed, no longer recognised the bowl in which he had been accustomed to get his milk ; yet after some time, his memory, attaching 312 GOD, SOUL, IMMOETALITY. itself to some of the remaining sections of the organ, was gradually revived. Whereas the deterioration, or even the loss, of limbs not directly connected with the brain, as of the arm or leg, does riot affect the intellectual life, greater or smaller injuries of the brain, nay even a slight pressure, disturb the functions of thought, or cause their total cessation. An officer of the Prussian army had been wounded in the head, and been badly cured. He fell into utter obtuseness and became a common labourer. Many years afterwards, his head was by an accident again damaged. This time lie had the good fortune of being attended in the hospital by the celebrated Grafe, who found that, in consequence of the previous unskilful treatment, the injured bone had formed an excrescence which pressed on the brain. Grafe was able to remove the abnormal growth, when the officer at once recovered his intelligence and the remembrance of his professional career, which he had entirely lost. a Gall's phrenology may, in its detailed application, be difficult or even questionable; but that it rests on a sound basis, is manifest from the conformation of the brain itself, which, in the two symme- trical hemispheres, and in the lobes pointing to other subdivisions, obviously betrays a systematic constitution of parts meant to serve as the organs for different func- tions; indeed certain parts have, with sufficient clearness, been "recognised as the seats of distinct faculties, whether mechanical or intellectual; and as our monistic physiology advances, the important doctrine of Gall, now unduly neglected, will be cultivated with a new zest. In a word, we cling to the irrefutable conclusion, that no mental function is possible without a physical substratum'. 'Pray, moderate your triumphant confidence'! said Humphrey ; 'you will not find it easy to overcome a per- plexity created by your own "exact observations". You suppose, it may be justly, that the human organism is constantly subjected to a change of matter in such a way that it is more than once completely renewed in the GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 313 course of our lives perhaps once in seven years, the brain probably even more often on account of its greater activity. Now if man's memory, reflection and mental acquirements are tied to his brain substance, how does it happen that he retains his full knowledge even after an entirely new substance has taken the place of the old one in which that knowledge is supposed to have been imprinted? how does it, above all, happen that it is just the earliest impressions which are the most permanent and remain freshest up to old age, after the brain must have repeatedly and thoroughly changed? Do the new atoms receive the experiences of the defunct ones as a sacred bequest? How, then, can you account for the identity of consciousness and personality, which, as a matter of fact, is virtually preserved from the earliest to the latest years of life ? Your coarse materialism is scattered to the winds by this single difficulty'.* 'I admit', said Attinghausen laughing, 'the objection is cleverly devised; but it might easily be removed even by those who advance it, if it were in their interest to do so. Starting from the safe principle of explaining the unknown by the known, we simply say that as, on the one hand, the permanent identity of consciousness, and, on the other hand, the intimate connection of mental functions with the brain and nervous system, are undoubted facts, it follows that the change of matter in the human organism, which is also an undoubted fact, must proceed in such a mode as not to interfere with the impressions previously stamped on the brain, whether that change is not so complete as is generally supposed, or the very gradual substitution of the atoms does not efface their original configuration, especially if the first impressions were strong and deep. This much is certain that our bodily substance is always reproduced in precisely the same shape which it possessed from the beginning, so that even scars and slight injuries in the skin are invariably so replaced by the newly formed matter. We are not ashamed to confess 314 GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. that this is one of the points enveloped in a veil of mystery, which we are as yet unable to lift. We are still ignorant of the manner in which magnetism is allied with steel and iron, or electricity with other bodies; yet our ignorance in this respect does not mislead us into declaring such alliances to be deceptions, or into supposing that magnetism and electricity exist apart from the steel and apart from the electric substances. Why, then, should we reason differently in the analogous instance of brain and mental function, and. denying the close connection of both, assume a mind apart from matter and thus attribute to man two distinct and essentially different natures? Yet we ought not to overlook', he added with a melancholy smile, 'that man really forgets a good deal. I have heard men who had been first-rate classical scholars in their College period, complain that ten or fifteen years afterwards they could not read a Greek tragedy without great effort ; a and musicians who do not constantly practise on their instrument, soon lose the skill of execution, the character of which is partly technical and partly intellectual. Nor should we overlook that, intellectually and morally, we are apt to change during our lives so essentially that there is some ground for the contention that two men are rarely so dissimilar to each other as the same man is to himself in two extreme periods of his existence: this may be an exaggeration, but our theory does not require so large a concession'. 'You seem', said Abington, 'to be yourself aware of the weakness of your plea ; instead, therefore, -of replying to it, I may venture a general observation. It will ever remain an axiom of common sense that neither "matter" nor "force" is able to think, but that man thinks. For some time we have heard comparatively little of the "free phosphorus" of the brain to which a conspicuous part had long been assigned in the operations of the mind. Yet it appears true that these operations' are in some special manner associated with a cerebral function or a molecular GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 315 working of the brain. But in acknowledging this, we must guard against the great error of identifying both actions. When the telegraph speaks, an electro -chemical process is carried on ; but what it speaks is entirely independent of this process, and is determined by a distinct intelligence. In the same manner, the brain is the instrument of the mind, not the mind itself. When an organ is played, its sound-producing parts are moved in a certain complicated manner; but the fugue that is played is not the work of the organ, and only in a limited sense the work of the executing artist, but rather that of the creating composer. Thus the material brain is merely the apparatus mani- pulated and worked by the mind, which is distinct from that mechanical contrivance ""But the soul is not the body": and the breath is not the flute; "Both together make the music: either marred and all is mute"'. a *As you judiciously admit', said Attinghausen with satis- faction, 'the close relation between thought and the molecular action of the brain, I have only to reply that the impelling agent of this action that is, the sender of your telegraphic despatch or your musical executant is in most cases an outward impression, and in some instances the will, a reminiscence, or an association of ideas. That the brain is so induced or obliged to operate, is perceived by everyone who observes himself impartially; but how it performs this work, is a part of that problem of consciousness, which constitutes our most difficult task. All elementary forces have hitherto proved inexplicable; we know nothing of the inner nature of gravity, hardness, electricity, pro- pulsion; and we are well aware that, in saying the mind produces thought, we are only putting obscure words for an obscure idea. Yet it does not behove us to despair of an ultimate solution ; for, as Darwin justly observes, "it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science"'. b 316 GOD, SOUL, IMMOETALITY. 'This then', said Rabbi Gideon after a short interval, 'is the worthy crowning-stone of your noble edifice! Compared to your whims and freaks, the quadruple mind or soul of the Epicureans is soberness itself. Your "soul" is an agglomeration of cells, or rather the sum of the "souls" that animate those cells; hence it would follow that, the bulkier a creature, the more large-souled it must be, and men would have less intelligence than the stupid rhinoceros. And where do you find the room for "the reason" of your tiny idols, the ants, with their scanty number of living compartments 7 ? 'It is easy enough', said Attinghausen, good-humouredly joining in the general laughter, 'to ridicule an hypothesis which must sound strange to those who cannot be acquainted with the wonderful revelations of morphology and biology. There is, of course, a distinction to be made between the vital and the mental functions; the seat of the latter is the brain, the structure of which in the ant is indeed remarkable; and remembering the diversified instincts and faculties of this insect, and considering that its central ganglia are not so large as the quarter of a small pin's head, we must confess that "the brain of the ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more marvellous than the brain of man". a Stated with greater precision, our law of biology is this : A cell consists of small particles which we call plastidules; but these are composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, and are each endowed with a separate soul which is the aggregate or product of the powers possessed by the chemical atoms. We have not reached this hypothesis at a bound, but have been pressed towards it step by step ; and while each successive stage was small, we are ourselves surprised at the final result, which, just because it was forced upon us by logical necessity, we consider impregnable'. 'Your preposterous revelations', said Humphrey, greatly irritated, 'are not alone rejected by the educated in general, GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 317 but have been repudiated and satirised by no less an authority than Virchow, the very discoverer of "cellular pathology'', a theory which wilful enthusiasts grasp and indefinitely enlarge, even after Virchow himself has partially abandoned it as untenable. It was of no avail that he protested against their extravagant application of his doctrine they persistently continue to build upon it their aerial castles. How, the mind asks in amazement, can you, by summing up carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, get a soul? What are your criteria? You idly play with empty words. "If we declare attraction and repulsion to be phenomena of the mind or of the soul, we simply throw the soul out of the window, and the soul ceases to be soul". a It is futile to point out the transition of inorganic into organic matter or the connection between the material and the spiritual world; and it is ridiculous to attribute to the lowest animals psychical qualities not clearly discoverable in the highest. The momentous principle of Harvey, Omne vivum ex ovo, though subject to a few exceptions, still preserves its general truth. b It is surely no edifying spectacle to see rival schools of naturalists assail, nay abuse each other publicly on a fundamental question which should command unanimity. Scarcely has one of the oracles propounded a "Pangenesis-hypothesis", when another confronts it with an hypothesis of the "Perigenesis of the Plastidule", which, like the former, modestly aims at "explaining the whole of the phenomena of organic development by elementary processes strictly mechanical, physical and chemical"; and now the strife is raging between the "gemmulae" of the one and the plastidules or molecules of the other; and one party is fighting for the promiscuous diffusion of the germs of life, and another for their "undulating generation". c But even these scandals are providential, for they open the eyes of an unbiassed public to the pernicious effects of the "impregnable" results of physical science, and to the recklessness of which we should be guilty were we to give up, in favour 318 GOD, SOUL, IMMOETALITY. of such hallucinations, truths and doctrines that have been the strength, the comfort, and the glory of so many generations'. 'In the interests of liberty itself, said Abington earnestly, 'it is desirable that the boundless license of hazardous teaching should be checked. The reasonable freedom we now happily enjoy must be endangered if carried to a point which society might feel compelled to characterise as dangerous. "Try to picture to yourselves what shape the doctrine of evolution is likely to take in the head of a socialist! I sincerely hope that it may not bring us all the terrors which similar theories have really called forth in a neighbouring country". a The right of free enquiry must indeed be conceded to science yet only to true science; for that true science which is based on safe facts, can never be in conflict with that true religion which flows from the holy depths of human nature'. 'The most precious boons', added Berghorn, 'have been forfeited by excess; and it is a wicked excess on the part of men of science who, knowing the utter uncertainty of their surmises, insist on imparting them to our youth as authoritative dogmas with the undisguised object of undermining the teaching of Christianity and putting in its place the insane superstition of the miraculous power of atoms and molecules'. 'Are we indeed', said Attinghausen, staring at the speaker, 'to fetter the liberty of ... 'The indulgence of society', interrupted Gideon, 'has its limits. The Law of Sinai is older than the law of evolution, and it is Divine. The blasphemies which are constantly uttered without punishment or atonement, must call down fearful retribution on godless nations. Duty and expediency alike demand that they should be suppressed, and that those by whom they are taught should be removed from academical chairs they abuse and degrade'. 'Are we then to understand', said Attinghausen, turning mechanically from one speaker to another, 'that' . . . GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 319 'Not even the Hebrew prophets', interrupted Panini, 'those staunch champions of liberty, though they would perhaps not, like Moses in the desert, have stoned the blasphemer to death I say, not even the Hebrew prophets would have tolerated the unblushing denial of the Lord of earth and heaven. They could not have listened without indignation to the folly of placing the animals, which they described as mere "flesh and not spirit",* on a level with men, who were deemed worthy to receive the holy re- velations of the Eternal'. '0 ye of little faith' ! said Canon Mortimer rebukingly ; 'are you afraid that God cannot plead His own cause, fight His own battle? Let Him be served by every one according to his lights. For indeed, indeed, even those whom you accuse of having deserted Him, glorify His name by searching and unfolding the wonders of His works. They entertain new thoughts as we are bidden to welcome strangers and thereby some of them have entertained angels unawares'. 'With golden letters', said Melville, 'we should publicly and conspicuously engrave the words of Spinoza explaining the object of one of his chief Treatises, which is intended to show "that the liberty of philosophising may not only be allowed without danger to piety and to the commonwealth, but that it can only be destroyed together with the peace of the commonwealth and piety itself ". b This sentence is a precious treasure, a great work in itself. Gregovius, Hermes, Wolfram and Subbhuti were about to speak, but Attinghausen anticipated them and said calmly but with a raised voice, turning to Humphrey and those who had joined in his protests: 'I despise your threats and alarms I am accustomed to them. You cannot, fortunately, restore your noble institu- tions of the inquisition, torture and stake, of excommunication and public cursing. But it seems, you have not yet been taught wisdom by awful experience. You speak of modera- tion, of a discreet renouncement of personal opinions and 320 GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. favourite theories. 3 By heaven'! he continued with a vehement stamp of his right foot, 'this is tantamount to a cowardly desertion of all progress; for all new ideas are at first, and often for a long time, personal opinions of the discoverers. You bid us distinguish between established facts and speculation, and require us to teach the one, but cautiously to keep back the other. How many facts are "established", that is, universally acknow- ledged, in any division of science or literature ? By your rule, theology and history, philology and philosophy, could hardly be taught, and astronomy and geology only descriptively or empirically. By far the largest portion of our knowledge is speculative, from the alphabet, of the origin of which we know nothing certain, to the Biblical Records, about the composition and date of which no two scholars agree. Only with the utmost reserve and restriction can we at all speak of an objective science; for none can dispense with conjectures, and we must hold with Kant, that any branch of knowledge includes only as much undisputed truth as it includes mathematics. There is, as our philosophical friend Melville has explained, no dogmatic science, because there is no infallible synthesis. Even the so-called exact sciences, as physics, optics, or chemistry, are, to a great extent, a fabric of suppositions framed and demolished in rapid succession, or upheld and contested by antagonistic schools. You tell us that we may devote ourselves to the investigation of problems, but must not, as teachers, diffuse the solution we have found till it has been fully ratified by the learned world. This is an impossibility and would virtually exclude the bulk of the people from all scientific information. You exhort us not to attach any weight to conclusions obtained by deduction or analogy. You can hardly be in earnest, and we have yesterday agreed that synthesis and generali- sation are indispensable. All your counsels are the suggestions of a craven alarm and therefore worthless. They convert the republic of letters into a police des- GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 321 potism. Like all tyrants, you are afraid of liberty. We contend that without liberty no truth is safe, and with liberty no error dangerous. The great authority of Virchow you invoke is a lamentable proof of retrogression. The distinguished man to whom science and its disciples owe a large debt of gratitude, has of late become faithless to his own important discoveries. By enunciating the principle, Omnis cellula e cellula, he bid fair to rival the repu- tation even of Harvey, though this maxim is no less liable to exceptions than that of Omne vivum ex ovo. But now, evidently, like Baer, overtaken by the quietism of advancing years, he prefers the safety of the beaten track to the bold hazards of the pioneer. But truly chimerical and ridi- culous are the apprehensions of communism you associate with the theory of evolution. This theory is, on the contrary, the best antidote against the insane ideas and utopian objects of socialism ; for it proclaims the constant and necessary inequality of individuals, separation of organs, and division of labour in every variety of gradation; in a word, it shows that, in spite of an original equality and unity of organisation, the most striking differences prevail. For from the earliest stages, the conditions of existence are unequal, and accordingly also its results or successes. But Darwinism in particular, with its principles of "selection" and the exclusive survival, in the struggle for life, of the privileged few, is essentially aristocratic in character, and certainly not socialistic. 4 But why do I enter on this point at all? What concern has science with vague insinuations and cowardly denouncements ? What concern with political parties and passions? Its sole object is to seek the truth and to teach it. 'I repeat therefore plainly, that we do not consider the soul as the enigmatical emanation of a mystic force, but as the combined result of the mechanical performances of the various organs, just as the life and power of a state are the total result of the co-operating energies of all its members ; b while we regard the organs themselves Y 322 GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. as the sum of many microscopic organisms, or individuals, which we call cells. These, therefore, are the elementary unit, "the physical basis of life" the Plasson or Bio- plasson , and their form, combination, and division of labour, determine the structure and functions of each organ. a They are no dead automata moved from without, but are animated by intrinsic or chemical forces of affinity. The sympathy and antipathy of atoms, the attraction and repulsion of molecules, the motion and sensation of cells and organisms, the production of thought and consciousness these are but different stages of the universal process of physiological development or of true Monism. 'The soul, therefore, is not a simple, but an extremely complex power, and, being the aggregate of the vital energies garnered up in the protoplasms, it is inseparably allied with the protoplasm body. If all the living particles properly perform their duties, the body is in health; if a part of them accomplish their appointed tasks imperfectly, the body is in disease ; and if their harmonious action is essentially disturbed, death ensues. Each cell that is, each citizen of the great polity has, to some extent, an independent life with respect to nutrition and to pro- pagation by division, and each possesses a certain degree of sensibility, which, in the most perfect cells, those of the brain, is heightened into consciousness. All this applies alike to men and to animals, and' . . . 'How then', interrupted Berghorn with decision, and speaking with undisguised contempt, 'how are we to define consciousness? Human consciousness is the intensified sensibility of the albuminous and viscous molecules forming the microscopic cell substance or the protoplasm. You know that, when Plato was praised for the definition, "Man is a two-legged, featherless animal", Diogenes brought into his school a plucked cock saying, "This is Plato's man", upon which the philosopher improved the definition by adding "with broad flat nails " . I am aware', he continue d GOD, SOUL, IMMOETALITY. 323 looking superciliously at Attinghausen, 'you also have an improvement in reserve. Is it possible that a republican proud of his courage should flinch from expressing his convictions? Has your temerity found its limits at last? For why did you not tell us clearly, what you have else- where whispered, that you do not stop at the "cell-soul". Even this is to you an entity far too advanced to form the primeval germ of man. You go backward and find a w plastidule-soul", and you proceed yet farther towards nothing and you discover the "atom-soul". Let me see: your plastidule-soul is the active factor of the protoplastic molecules and is distinguished from the inorganic molecule- soul, you are positive, by the possession of memory, while your atom-soul is a centre of power representing the last elementary factors of all physical and chemical processes, and, you are equally positive, is endowed with "a constant soul", or with sensation and motion ; and then you finally arrive, of course, at your archi-demiurgos of carbon with its associates. 1 Holy shades of Moses and Isaiah, of Aeschylus and Shakespeare, of Aristotle and Kant ! The constant atom- soul is the fountain-head of your wisdom and your sublimity. That is your Mind, your Deity. But the poet is right', he concluded with a gloomy frown at Attinghausen '"Every one resembles the god he com- prehends"'. 'Through the nervous system', continued Attinghausen, unruffled, and as if he were lecturing, 'which is composed of comparatively few but large and star-like cells through the nervous system, I say, the whole life of the soul and the mind is necessarily carried on. Up to this point all is clear and pretty certain' . . . 'Clear and certain' ! interrupted Arvada-Kalama in amazement. 'Fables, dreams and cobwebs' ! added Rabbi Gideon. 'But', continued Attinghausen meditatingly and more slowly, 'the brain cells have not only the function of con- veying the impressions received through the sense nerves 324 GOD, SOUL, IMMOETALITY. from without, and of . thus causing the motion of the muscle nerves, but upon them devolves, besides, the high task of producing perceptions, that is, of assisting in the operations of intelligence, reason and consciousness. I have before admitted that the origin of perceptions and of consciousness in the brain is still wrapt in mystery as impenetrable as it was two or three thousand years ago. But I believe that our researches have opened a path which will ultimately lead us to the sunny heights of knowledge. We have learnt that the brain cells, which form the central government of the organic common- wealth, are the more firmly and closely united, that is, they endow the brain with the greater dominion, the more perfectly the creature is organised. The very next generation may bring the full solution of the momentous problem. For psychology is no longer studied as a transcendental, but as a natural science ; and the phenomena of the mind are examined on the same principles as the phenomena of the cosmos. Nor are enquirers now satisfied with analysing the superior intellect of civilised adults, but they trace the soul from the earliest stages, whether of the child or the savage, in its gradual and progressive development. It is by this method that the aim will infallibly be reached. But what idea do you form of the soul', continued Attinghausen, suddenly turning to Berghorn and looking him intrepidly and fully into the face. 'Does your soul originate at the moment of conception, at any definite period during the growth of the embryo, or at the time of birth? Is each man's soul a new creation on the part of God, or is it transmitted by the parents? On the former questions you can give no answer at all, and to the latter you can only reply by the old and confused ecclesiastical controversy of Creatianism and Traducianism.* In the one case as in the other, it is dogmatism which decides, or the supposed teaching of your traditional books, and not observation or logical reasoning. The souls of an Aeschylus and a Shakespeare, GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 325 of an Aristotle and a Kant, were at first also weak and powerless; by slow degrees only they grew and increased to that vigour which enabled them to embrace with their thoughts earth and heaven and as they grew and increased in strength after birth, so also before birth during unnum- bered aeons. In order to comprehend this last process, the naturalist dispassionately compares the psychic powers of animals with those of man, and examines the bodily organs on which those powers depend and by these two operations he raises psychology into an exact science, which will in future probably bear the name of "cellular psychology". In surveying the entire scale of mental energies from the Infusoria and those lower creatures which are devoid of even the simplest kind of nervous system, the corals, polypes and sponges, up to the dog and the elephant, we are encouraged by a welcome ray of light which partially illumines the darkness. For we are now guided by the very remarkable facts that the various sense organs of animals the nerves of motion and sensation, and the muscles are at first merely separate parts of their irritable outer skin; a that the cells which compose this soul apparatus, are fundamentally identical with those of which the other organs of the animal body likewise consist; and that the division of the original micro- scopic egg-cell into numerous cells, which involves the division of labour between the different organs, is at present indeed accomplished within a few days, but that it is only a rapid repetition, through inheritance, of an historical process which occupied many millions of years, and in the course of which the cells, in the struggle of development, gradually acquired, through adaptation, varied forms fitted for the varied functions of life. Thus the brain was, in these unlimited periods, made more and more perfect, and with the brain the faculties of perception, thought, and consciousness. 5 Inseparable from the form and structure of the organ is its function. In this sense we must understand the important principle that the 326 GOD, SOUL, IMMOETALITY. so-called innate ideas are the effects, through inheritance, of experiences actually made; or, in other words, that our supposed knowledge a priori is really knowledge gained empirically or a posteriori.* But since, as I have observed, the other organs are, in their constitution, not materially different from the brain, they are, in some animals, capable of movement even after the individuals have been deprived of their heads. The brain, as the central power, possesses indeed the highest and intensest form of life, but not exclusively the whole sum of life ; the cell-souls are subordinate to the brain-soul, yet they preserve some measure of independence^ The organ of the central soul is the aggregate of the cerebral soul- cells ; the organ of every individual cell-soul is the substance of the cells themselves, the protoplasm and the cell- nucleus, or a part of it'. 'All this', said Hermes quickly, to anticipate other speakers who evidently desired to make a stronger protest, 'all this may be ingenious; but does there exist in all nature anything like that assumed double life'? 'A few years ago', said Wolfram, 'I had the good fortune to meet with and observe in the Atlantic near the Canary islands one of those wonderful animal polities known under the name of Siphonophora, and most frequently found in and near the straits of Messina. Picture and description fail to furnish an idea of the exquisite beauty of this phenomenon. It might be compared to a large floating flower stalk, the variegated leaves and blossoms of which, tastefully shaped and delicately tinted, appear to be skilfully formed of cut crystal to a flower stalk which, however, at the same time has body and soul, graceful movement, sensation and consciousness. Each branch of the stalk is properly a distinct medusa-like animal; but the members of this society have, by division of labour, assumed very various shapes; for some perform exclusively the movements of swimming for the whole, others as exclusively, and likewise for the entire community, GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 327 the reception and digestion of food, others again the public defence or the maturation of ova. While thus each part of this intricate organism is engaged on its own special task, it is yet imperatively linked to the whole, detached from which it must perish, since each is only fitted for one of the many vital functions. Side by side with individual volition, rules a central soul to which all must obey'. a 'I could not have found a better illustration', said Attinghausen, gratified. 'It proves incontestably that the one soul of an apparently simple animal may, in reality, be compounded of very numerous different souls. I am fully aware that the theory of the "cell-soul" is yet far from being generally accepted and is opposed even by some of the ablest naturalists; but, taken in conduction with the doctrine of Lamarck and Darwin, it is "an equally necessary and important consequence of the monistic conception of nature". This, view has recently received a strong corroboration from the researches of Huxley and Gegenbaur with respect to the relation of the vertebral column and the skull researches which, modifying and correcting those of Goethe and Oken, have clearly demon- strated the existence of a primary cartilaginous cranium formed by nine or ten vertebrae, such as is still approxi- mately found in some fishes, as the Selachia, the roaches and sharks. b These great discoveries not only exhibit anew the most intimate anatomical connection between the lowest and highest vertebrates, but also the virtual identity of the external bones with the receptacle of the important brain substance or soul organ. Thus the theory of evolu- tion has by comparative anatomy been subjected to a crucial test, from which it has issued most successfully; and I have, therefore, a right to ask again : how do you define the soul? To us life is only a special form of mechanical force applied to elementary cells, only a special kind of motion operating by chemical changes under singular conditions. What is it in your view? I am curious to have an intelligible definition'. 328 GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. read in the Koran', said Movayyid-eddin reveren- tially: "They ask each other about the soul; tell them, God has reserved the knowledge of it to Himself; He has left us but little light "; a and in one of his grandest utterances the Prophet says: "When the heavens shall be shattered and the stars dispersed, when the seas shall mingle their waters and the sepulchres be overthrown, then the soul shall see the picture of its whole life"'. b 'The soul', said Berghorn confidently, 'is a peculiar gazeous substance'. 'How is that possible' ! cried Humphrey ; 'it is a breath immaterial and imponderable "like the luminous ether"'. 'We know', said Gideon, 'it is an afflatus constituting our resemblance with God'. 'It is', said Abington, 'the subtlest essence that can be conceived as being akin to the Divine soul of the world'. 'You give me a difficult choice', said Attinghausen, laughing loudly ; 'but begging you to suppose that I under- stand your exact meaning for why should I avow my obtuseness ? , I may say, that, in spite of the divergencies, your definitions seem all to agree in the evident desire of making it possible or probable for the soul to exist independently of the body which it may temporarily in- habit like "an hostelry", and then leave in order to con- tinue its existence elsewhere ; c in a word, they are all framed with a view to the theory of Immortality. This fact is enough to deprive them of all value. Science demands an examination of notions on their own intrinsic merits; but you are anxious to establish a favourite doctrine, and you fashion your soul accordingly'. 4 'But our Avesta declares', said Asho-raoco earnestly: '"What is man's most precious boon? Immortality is the desire of the soul of the pure"; and Ahura-Mazda will grant it in abundance'. 6 'We confess', said Movayyid-eddin with fervour, 'that we could not bear the troubles of this life, were we not GOD, SOUL, IMMORTALITY. 329 certain of eternal delights in another. Justly says our Prophet: "The life in the world is but idle play, the eternal abode is the true life"'. 3 'And our sages say', added Rabbi Gideon: '"This world resembles the entrance hall to the next." b In a year of famine, king Monobas expended all the wealth he had inherited from his predecessors to relieve the poor. Up- braided by his family as a heedless prodigal, he said: "My ancestors laid up treasures in a place where they are liable to be lost, I lay up treasures in a place where they cannot be touched; my ancestors gathered possessions which are unproductive, I gather possessions which bear fruit; they acquired gold, I win souls; they collected for others, I collect for myself; they garnered up for the earth, I garner up for heaven"'. 'I believe', continued Movayyid-eddin, 'all nations of the world have clung to this hope as the strongest safe- guard of religion. You have tried to demolish the proofs of the existence of God may Allah forgive you! as you say, you believe in some God ; what objections can you possibly raise against those arguments in favour of Im- mortality which have ever been held incontestable both by philosophers and Imams'? 'It is a great and important subject', said Mondoza, replying instead of Attinghausen, 'and its consideration will require all our energies. May I, therefore, suggest that we postpone the discussion till to-morrow? The questions of God and Immortality are so closely connected that the value of the arguments with respect to both must be weighed together. But as regards the soul, I believe, I may, even after what we have heard to-night, repeat my conviction, that the monistic conception is neither derogatory to our dignity nor devoid of a certain poetic elevation if we are content to find our dignity in the faculty of limitless progress, and are able to dis- cover poetry in a sentiment that links, us both to the lowest living creature and the most distant sun. But 330 GOD, SOUL, IMMOBTALITY. our final estimate must depend on the probable extent of man's individual life, and I am certain that we are all prepared it may be each in a different way to ap- proach this cardinal question with a calm confidence'. For a long time private conversations were continued with a general harmony, since so far either side believed itself to have the right of claiming the victory. Till. IMMORTALITY. 'You have been directly appealed to', said Mondoza to Attinghausen the next evening, when most of the guests had assembled, 'and I am sure you will not attempt to escape from a contest you have yourself provoked, although the numbers seem to be ominously against you and your few partisans'. 'It is a task of no small difficulty', said Attinghausen with some hesitation, 'which you have so unexpectedly thrown upon me. I am not versed in metaphysical speculation I consider it an unpardonable waste of time and strength and, with one recent exception which I regret, it is very, very long since the arguments for and against Immortality have seriously engaged my attention not in fact since that memorable epoch which divides youth from manhood, when', he added musingly, 'a fierce inward struggle shattered, not without many a bitter pang, the chains of early impressions and forced the gates of liberty: I say, though I feel my incompetence, I do not shrink from the enterprise, trusting that my "few partisans" will support me with their learning and sagacity'. 'I am really curious to hear', said Movayyid-eddin, his dark eyes flashing anger, 'what your joint efforts can effect against the dispensation of Allah and the infallible promises of His messengers'. 'You seem to feel strongly on the subject', said Mon- doza soothingly, 'and as the arguments you have demanded may entail upon us some mental exertion, I think we should feel fortified and refreshed if you would kindly give us a glimpse of that heaven to which you are looking forward so hopefully? I ask this favour because I know 332 ' J F^ IMMORTALITY. that a man of your erudition will not offer us a fancy picture, and that a Shiite of your strictness will not mix up the utterances of Mohammed with the later adorn- ments of tradition. I am certain, all would be grateful for an authentic description, as far as possible in the very words of the Koran'. 'Nothing can be more pleasing to me', said Movayyid- eddin, brightening. 'But where am I to begin' ? he added with some perplexity. 'Pray, tell us first', rejoined Mondoza, 'who they are that will enter Paradise'. 'The Koran is very explicit on this point', said Mo- vayyid-eddin, evidently relieved by the idea that he had not to find the thread of his remarks himself. 'Heaven is opened to the faithful who obey God and His prophet, ever think in fear of the account they will have to render to Him, and gather fortitude in misfortune from the ex- pectation of seeing His glory; to those who are ever patient, truthful, pious and benevolent, who give alms both in happiness and adversity, and who, controlling their passion, pardon offences; to those who show gratitude for the mercy of God and the love of their parents, who join true repentance with faith and good works, are strict in their prayers and devoutly read the Divine Book; to those who fall fighting for God's truth, are among the first to leave their country in entering upon a holy war, and especially to those who sacrifice their property and shed their blood for the defence of Islam. All these are received into Paradise; nay more, by their merit they effect the salvation of their parents, their wives, and their children'. 'All this is no doubt very good', said Gideon lightly; 'for it was suggested to Mohammed by his Jewish teachers. But your heaven, scarcely large enough for Moslems, shuts its portals against all other fellow-men'. 'I am surprised', replied Movayyid-eddin, 'to find so learned a Rabbi share so vulgar a misconception. But alas! prejudice blinds even the eyes of the wise. For the honour of my faith, I will quote literally a few sen- tences from the Koran in refutation of that charge. "Certainly Mussulmans, Jews, Christians and Sabaeans, who believe in God and a last judgment, and act right- eously, will receive their recompense; they will be exempt from fears and punishments. 4 We have given the Book of the Law to Moses; it is in its light that the Hebrews must walk: do not doubt that you will meet in heaven the leader of the Israelites. 15 We have made Jesus and his mother the admiration of the world; we have removed them to an abode where peace reigns and pure water flows. c If the Jews had faith and feared the Lord, we should efface their sins; we should introduce them to the gardens of delight. The observance of the Pentateuch, the Gospel and the Divine precepts would procure them the enjoyment of every boon. There are among them some who walk in the right path. d The Christians shall be judged by the Gospels; those who judge them differently are prevaricators. 6 God could have united you all under one religion; but He desired to try whether you would be faithful to the diversity of your commandments. Strive zealously to do what is right, and if you return to Him, He will point out to you your errors"'/ 'Do not omit', said Humphrey sharply, 'the most im- portant of all sayings bearing on the subject that verse in the third Sura which declares distinctly: "Whosoever follows any other religion than Islam, shall not be ac- cepted and shall, in the next world, be among those that perish" \e 'Alas' ! said Movayyid-eddin, sadly, 'this verse has proved a grievous misfortune to our religion, if not to man- kind; for it was seized upon by over-zealous ulemahs to sanction their bigotry. They purposely overlooked as our Christian friend here has done, though not purposely, I am sure the beautiful words immediately preceding, which leave no doubt: "Do they demand another religion than that of God? All that is in heaven and on earth offers Him homage, 334 IMMORTALITY. whether spontaneously or by compulsion. You will all appear before Him. Say: 'We believe in God, in that which He has revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and to the twelve tribes. We believe in the holy books which Moses, Jesus and the prophets have received from heaven. We make no difference between them. We are Moslems'".* 'Do these words not prove that all who believe in Abraham, Moses and Christ are included among the Mos- lems'? Against idolaters alone the Koran is pitiless. b "When, therefore, shall we cease to hear the old accusation that our prophet regards the Islam as the only true faith and condemns all other creeds as noxious perversities? So far from haughtily despising his predecessors, he again and again declares in the strongest terms that they were his masters and superiors whom all are bound to honour and revere. A few more of his numerous utterances on this point will be sufficient to convince the impartial. "Signs and books were the proofs of the mission of those prophets who have preceded thee: we have sent thee the Koran in order to remind men of the doctrines they have received, and to impress them on their memory. Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian: he was a true believer, a Moslem, a worshipper of one God. d We have sent the Pentateuch for man's direction and enlightenment. The prophets who followed afterwards used that Book for the judgment of the Hebrews . . . After the prophets we sent Jesus, the son of Mary, in order to con- firm the Pentateuch. We have given him the Gospel, which is the torch of faith, and puts the seal to the truth of the ancient Scriptures, instructing and illumining the Godfearing. 6 The covenant we have concluded with the prophets, with thee, with Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, is inviolable/ God has given to David the Book and Wisdom; He taught him what He pleased.^ We invested Jesus, the son of Mary, with the ministry of Messenger; we gave him the Gospel; and we put inta the hearts of his disciples piety and compassion. 11 The angel said to Mary: God has chosen thee; he has purified thee; thou art the elect of all women . . . Thy son will teach the Scriptures and wisdom, the Pentateuch and the Gospel . . . Divine miracles will testify his mission. 1 IMMOETALITT. 335 Jesus said to the Jews again and again: I am the Mes- senger of God; I come to confirm the tr^uth of the Pentateuch which has been given before me, and to announce to you the happy advent of the prophet who shall follow me, and whose name is Mohammed" '. a 'In recalling these sentences', continued Movayyid-eddin, 'I feel justly proud of our prophet's high-minded toleration, and my reverence is enhanced when I remember that not even that toleration ever tempted him to imperil the main pillars of Islam, which are that God is one and that He is a Spirit. For in spite of his great veneration for Christ, he declared: "Those who say that the son of Mary is God, are infidels"; or "Do not say that there is a trinity in God, He is one . . . He is self-sufficient"; and he narrated that God asked Jesus whether be and bis mother had ordered men to worship them as gods, upon wbicb Jesus answered: "Ob Lord, could I have enjoined upon them a blasphemy? If I were guilty of tbis, would it be unknown to Tbee"'? b 'Yet your prophet's sublime toleration', said Humphrey with acrimony, 'did not prevent him from waging and commanding the most terrible and the most ruthless wars for tbe propagation of bis artfully agglomerated creed'. 'Our annals', said Asho-raoco with bitter irony, 'bear witness to tbe Mussulmans' "toleration". Like a scourge of Ahriman and tbe fiendish daevas, their frenzied legions swept over tbe fair plains of Persia, they burnt, massacred and pillaged, destroyed our fire-temples or degraded them into mosques, and brandished tbe terror of their merciless swords over Zoroaster's pious followers, till of tbe many millions a remnant was left, wbicb a child might count, and wbicb either sought an unsafe shelter in the mountain fastnesses of tbeir own beloved country, or went out to distant lands to find a borne of exiles. Not even tbe lapse of so many centuries has appeased our burning hatred of tbe invaders wbo converted our 336 IMMORTALITY. ancient abodes, like all lands cursed by their presence, into haunts of superstition, vice, and wretchedness. The baneful effects of the conquest are notorious: while the Greek historians extolled the proverbial truthfulness of their Persian contemporaries, modern writers denounce the Persians of our own times as "a nation of liars". Happy ourselves under the blessed and beneficent sway of England, we might perhaps be inclined to greater leniency, did we not constantly receive the most heart- rending accounts of the cruel extortion, injustice and ignominy which our brethren in Persia, insultingly styled "Gabres", are suffering at the hands of their inhuman masters 7 .* 'Yet these misfortunes', said Humphrey in a somewhat subdued tone, 'were only a just retribution for the im- placable hostility the Parsees opposed to the spread of the Gospel'. 'Woe, woe' ! exclaimed Movayyid-eddin, deeply pained. 'How unspeakably great are man's weakness and infa- tuation ! The Prophet's noble spirit was soon lost among his unintelligent followers; in their admiration for his valour some European scholars say, he was by nature timid and cowardly, but this I deny', he added, his eyes darting fire 'in their admiration for his courage and military genius, they forgot that those wars were, against his will and inclination, forced upon him by the fierce spirit of his countrymen, and that he could not evade them without endangering his holy mission of rescuing so many savage tribes from a state of horrid barbarism and base fetichism, and of sowing the seeds of a civilisation which was to reform a large part of the inhabited globe'. 'I am afraid', said Canon Mortimer, 'this view of the matter is prompted by respect for your prophet and the benevolence of your own heart'. 'Pardon me', replied Movayyid-eddin, 'it is no hazardous assertion, but Mohammed's plain and express command. Not in his spirit, as you may infer from the sayings on IMMORTALITY. 337 Christ and Mary I have quoted, were the fearful feuds in later centuries carried on between Moslems and Christians and ever most deeply deplored by the devoutest believers among ourselves. He enjoins indeed, "Fight bravely against your enemies in the war undertaken for religion" ; but he adds, "Do not be the first to attack, for God hates aggressors, and let all enmity cease against those who abandon their idols".* More clearly still he says, "Commit no violence against any men on account of their religion" ; b "The prophet's office is confined to instruction and preaching"; and "Tell to those who have received the Scriptures and to the blind, 'Embrace Islam and you will be enlightened'; if they are obstinate, you are only charged to preach to them the truth". Nay he enjoins, "Bid the faithful pardon the infidels"; and he lays down the general rule, "Do not use compulsion to make unbelievers adopt Islam". d Is greater distinctness possible? Yet the pure gold of the Prophet's commands has, from an ea.rly age, been hidden by the thick rust of Sunnite additions and fictions. Of the extent of these corruptions you may form an idea from the fact that Bockhari, travelling from land to land, gathered from the learned Mussulmans no less than 600,000 traditions, of which scarcely 4,000 were ascertained to be authentic'. 6 'Christians', said Attinghausen almost fiercely, 'have every reason to be cautious in their censure. Have they never baptised with blood, rather than with water? Did not Charlemagne, did not the Spaniards in America, make terrible conversions with the sword ? Were crusades against heretics never heard of in the Christian Church? Were the Inquisition and auto da fes ever heard of in any other Church? How wonderfully keen-sighted positive religions are in discovering the motes in their rivals' eyes'! 'From your remarks', said Humphrey, turning to Mo- vayyid-eddin, without heeding Attinghausen's outburst, 'I think I may conclude that you belong to the reforming Wahabites: but supposing even that these succeed in z 338 IMMORTALITY. returning to the point where your religion was left by Mohammed, they would only repeat the same weary circle of errors and misdeeds which mark the history of Islam, as they shape their creed and their action on the same fallacious authority, the Koran. Indeed, as regards savage destructiveness and bloodthirsty lust of conquest, the early "Wahabites differ in nothing from the earliest adherents of Mohammed'. *I do not deny', replied Movayyid-eddin with great composure, 'that we owe a large debt of gratitude to Abd el Wahab, who, himself an Arab Bedouin, tried to restore the pristine character of a religion which was founded by an Arab for Arabs, but which has, in many respects, been misunderstood, perverted and falsified by so many alien races, and especially the Turks. For though these also profess to follow the Koran, they practise merely the dead ceremonials, while neglecting the weightier duties, and indulge in a luxury that was abhorred by the Prophet and has so deplorably weakened the Mohammedan rule and power. He who rigorously prohibited all intoxicating beverages and made the Moslems models of temperance, surely did not sanction those numerous forms of self- indulgence which have proved infinitely more enervating, and are much more despicable, than even an excessive enjoyment of wine; a and he who constantly declared that he was a man like all other mortals, b surely did not authorise the worship of himself and of the countless "saints" created by blind superstition, and fancied to possess, at the throne of God, the power of mediation, to be secured by wild and frantic invocations at their graves. In re-establishing, therefore, the simple and national doctrine of Mohammed, Abd el Wahab has, I believe, not only infused new life into Islam, but has made it a religion that can be adopted and practised by the enlightened of all nations'. 'Excellent, excellent'! cried Rabbi Gideon sarcasti- cally. 'A new founder of a "universal religion"! Let us IMMORTALITY. 339 at once procure copies of the Wahabite Catechism and teach it to our children'! 'Do not ridicule the Wahabite Catechism' ! said Movayyid- eddin with a fiery glance. 'If it were possible for men to conform their lives to its commandments, they would be holy as angels'. 'May we hear the chief tenets of that creed'? said "Wolfram, evidently much interested. 'With pleasure', replied Movayyid-eddin. 'We learn it, of course, by heart in our childhood and repeat it con- stantly. I shall omit the questions and give the answers abridged. "There are three foundations of faith: the knowledge of the Lord, of His religion, and of His Prophet. 1. The Lord is God, by whose grace and mercy I grow up. I know Him from the signs of His omnipotence and from the marvellous works of Creation. He has given me life that I might worship Him. His will is Unity, that is, He demands that He alone shall be adored and none else besides Him. This adoration is proved by firm attachment to the faith, by almsgiving, vows and sacrifices, resignation, fear, hope, love, awe, humility, and fervent prayer, by fasting the Ramadhan, and by the pilgrimage to Grod's holy House. 2. Religion consists in submission to the Almighty. It is divided into the three branches of Islam, of faith, and of good deeds. These last are comprised in the single command: 'Worship God as if He were manifest before thy eyes; and though thou canst not see Him, know that He sees thee'. 3. The Prophet is Mohammed, the son of Abdallah, whose race ascends as far as Ismail, the son of Ibrahim. He is a Messenger whom we do not worship, and a prophet whom we must not contradict; for men and spirits have been commanded to obey him. If thou art asked, 'Has he been sent to a particular class of men'? answer, 'No, he has been sent to all mankind'. No prophet succeeds him, for after him comes the last day he is the seal of all prophets".* 'This is the whole sum of our creed', concluded Movayyid-eddin, 'and it is concisely conveyed in the one verse of our holy Book: "To be justified, it is not enough to turn the face to the east and the west; it is necessary 340 IMMORTALITY. to believe in God, in the day of judgment, the angels, the Koran, and the prophets. We must, for the love of God, assist our neighbours, the orphans, the poor, the travellers, the prisoners, and those who ask for help. We must pray, keep our promises, and bear adversity and the ills of war with patience. These are the obliga- tions of the true believers'". 3 'You are proud of the simplicity of your faith', said Berghorn, severely; 'but this simplicity is its greatest blot. Mohammed makes life and religion too easy. The devotion to God, which he demands, is poor, empty and hollow. The duties he imposes upon men in the name of Allah, are aimed too low. He recommends some virtues taken at random from the canon of morality, the complete organism of which he entirely ignores. The means by which he endeavours to bring his votaries nearer to God are external and ineffectual ordinances of ascetism and diet, enforced prayers for every day and every part of the day, fasting, ablutions, pilgrimages, almsgiving, and warfare against infidels. All these precepts might be scrupulously carried out without raising the Moslem beyond the sphere of natural pride and callousness, of frivolity and sensualism. Of a deep and earnest sanctifi- cation, such as is provided for in the religion of the Bible, of the terrible strength and despotism of sin and temptation, of the necessity for inward atonement and redemption in a word, for all that tends to spiritualise our nature and to assimilate it to the Divine standard, Mohammed had not the faintest idea'. b *I know', said Movayyid-eddin, with sadness, 'that this is your usual estimate of our religion; and of what avail would it be if I were to quote to you a hundred verses from the Koran and a hundred passages from the works of our philosophers, plainly and positively contradicting every single charge and objection you have brought forward? You would continue to reiterate the same charges and objections, simply because you think that IMMORTALITY. 341 you can prove the excellence of Christianity most strikingly by contrasting it with the alleged blemishes of Moham- medanism. But I still hope though almost against hope that a spirit of justice will yet come upon the votaries of a religion of love'. 'They have treated Judaism no better', said Rabbi Gideon gloomily, turning to Movayyid-eddin : 'in order to be able to point out a progress in the scheme of salvation, they have pourtrayed the God of the Old Testament as a God of implacable revenge and stern vindictiveness that God who proclaimed Himself through Moses as "the Lord God merciful and gracious, longsuffering in goodness and truth", and who is described with these attributes of mercy by every Hebrew prophet and sacred writer'. C I admit', said Wolfram, unwilling to follow the last speakers into the by-paths they had taken, 'I readily admit that the religion of the Wahabites appears to be strictly identical with that of the Koran and the earliest traditions infinitely more dignified and more rational than that which we generally consider to be Mohammedanism, and that, if carried out in its spirit, it might effect a beneficent regeneration of the Mussulman races. I am therefore, sincerely glad to think that, in spite of bloody wars and violent persecutions, its adherents are at present counted by millions, spreading from Mecca and Medinah to the Persian Gulf. Yet the expectation of seeing it diffused as the religion of the world can only raise a smile; for it involves the adoption of the Koran with its multitudinous commands, fables and fallacies, its sanction of slavery, polygamy and the debasing position of women. Is there indeed no means', he continued thoughtfully, 'to win the hundred and seventy millions of Mohammedans to a freer and a higher religion? For let us not indulge in illusions: it is possible that Turkey, in view of European ambitions and jealousies, may prove unable to prolong its existence as a theocratic commonwealth; but even if her political position should be reduced to insignificance, the 342 IMMORTALITY. vitality of Islam would thereby be as little affected as the vitality of Judaism has been affected by the cessation of the Jewish polity, or that of Catholicism by the dissolu- tion of the Papal States. The proselytising exertions of Christianity have hitherto signally failed; and Islam, however strongly divided by rival sects, retains an undis- puted hold not only upon the masses but on the most cultivated : how is a progress towards enlightenment ever to be hoped for'? 'Exclusively', saidGregovius, 'through the same instrumen- tality to which Christianity owes all its progress through historical criticism, which, being the art of separating truth and fiction, is the chemistry of the ideal sciences. No phenomenon of civilisation can be truly comprehended unless we trace it to its origin and then follow the course of its growth and changes step by step. Now historical criticism which is also a doctrine of evolution has shown that the Hebrew Scriptures were composed, not by infallible prophets, but by very fallible mortals; and that many portions were not even written by those who pro- fessed, or were by tradition asserted, to be their authors. Exactly the same lessons have been taught by criticism with respect to the New Testament; and not before the Mohammedan scholars perceive that Mohammed, in calKng the Biblical writers inspired prophets, shared the chief er- rors of his time and of his masters, and that he was "the seal of prophets" in no other sense than Moses and Paul were "prophets" I say, not before Mohammedan scholars acquire this insight, will a genuine advance among the nations of Islam be possible. It is true, Mohammed desired only to be regarded as a man, but as one who by his extraordinary gifts and privileges was lifted high above his species. Like the Hebrew and Christian teachers, he delivered his laws and injunctions as infallible and unalter- able revelations communicated to him verbally by God or His angel; and in claiming to be the last and greatest of Divine messengers, he engaged his devotees upon a blind IMMORTALITY. 343 submission to Ms person and the letter of his Koran. But why should not Islamism, as once in the time of its youthful freshness, be roused to a spirit of research and enquiry? There was a period in its history when the highest problems of the nature and attributes of God, of predestination and free-will, of the relative value of faith and good works, were examined with much liberty; when the Mutazila, a school of freethinkers, boldly disclosed the weak points of the Koran and attempted to devise remedies and supports; and when, under the influence of Greek science, the Caliph Mamun went so far as to raise the view that the Koran is created into a state dogma. But too soon afterwards the opposite opinion, that the Koran is uncreated, that is, is absolutely Divine, obtained supremacy, and since then the nations of Islam have been doomed to stagnation and spiritual death. Why should not Mohammedan scholars, as a first step, go back to the intelligent conception of Mamun, and then impar- tially analyse, as European scholars have done, the com- ponent parts of the Koran, ascertain the historical occa- sion of each division, and especially investigate the elements and notions adopted by Mohammed from Jewish and Christian masters or sources, not unfrequently with strange perversions? This is the 'only way of improvement and deliverance. Aid may also arise from a circumstance which many would perhaps regard with concern. Victory of arms and possession of power were deemed the first and highest credentials of the Divine truth of Islam; defeat and loss of territory may rouse the Mussulmans' reflection and open his mind to a wholesome scepticism. Mohammedan science in the Middle Ages our worthy friend Movayyid- eddin will forgive me was indeed neither very profound nor very original; yet it evinced no mean aptitude for philosophical speculation and even for historical research ; and why should not these faculties, fanned and fed by the now lively intercourse with the West, be successfully exercised so as to bring the many millions of Mohammedans 344 IMMORTALITY. into intellectual affinity with the highest forms of modern culture? I believe I can discover in the distant horizon isolated harbingers of this Eastern dawn ; and I will only add that all these observations apply, mutatis mutandis, also to the Buddhist, the Parsee, and the Hindoo Scrip- tures and races'. 'May these beautiful hopes be realised'! said Mondoza; f and may then the fine qualities which signalise the East charity, hospitality and social kindness, uncomplaining patience and resignation become general among every people ! But it is really time, after this almost too erratic digression I offered you one finger and you ungenerously seized the whole hand to return to the Mohammedan heaven, into which, I rejoice to think, our friend Movayyid- eddin admits the good and pious men of all creeds'. 'Well', said Movayyid-eddin, 'when the elect appear at the gates of Paradise I beg you to remember that I am employing the language of our holy Book which defies "historical criticism" an angel receives them with the words: "This is the Paradise, the inheritance of which your heart has procured for you". They are then led before the throne of the Omnipotent, who addresses to them the question: "Is this not a veritable resurrection"? Upon which they repeat incessantly: "Glory be to God"! and in return they are greeted by angels exclaiming: "Peace be with you"! Gradually they are able to examine the abode they have entered, and they become aware that it equals in extent heaven and earth; they behold lovely gardens watered by limpid streams which cool their feet ; they see exquisite fruits growing on majestic trees, and think: "these are the fruits which nourished us on earth": but when, by Allah's gracious permission, they taste them, they feel assured that, though there is an outward re- semblance, the earth bears nothing like their deliciousness. They find prepared for their use silk garments and golden bracelets and, near sparkling fountains and under the shade of ever fresh foliage, beautiful couches, on which IMMOBTALITY. 345 they may repose by the side of their purified and black- eyed wives radiant in a complexion "of the colour of ostrich eggs". a There they are reverentially served with fruit and, in golden goblets, with the clearest water "which does not intoxicate nor obscure reason". In a word? they find everything that can delight the mind and gratify the eye. They have indeed entered an abode of supreme magnificence. But as true felicity is peace, God vouch- safes to them a blessing more precious than all I have described, for He promises: "I shall banish envy and every evil feeling from their hearts, and they shall be inspired with brotherly benevolence towards each other ". b And this unspeakable rest and joyous tranquillity, tenderly guarded by God's beneficence, is their lot in all eternity. Is such a Paradise not worth striving for by a life of piety or a patriotic death in defence of our faith'? 'I have no doubt', said Attinghausen hurriedly, 'it serves a good purpose, for it makes you brave soldiers, and the Turks fought indeed wonderfully against those northern "deliverers", the Muscovites I mean', he added, correcting himself, 'your Paradise serves a good purpose, if real good can ever come of a childish superstition; and I will not enquire whether you have not passed too discreetly over those black-eyed houris that crowd your Elysium. d But let me acquit myself of the unwelcome task with which I have been burdened, for it haunts and distresses me. And yet I really think, the subject may be dismissed with a few words. For nearly all the arguments brought forward in favour of a life in heaven are deduced from the undeniable wretchedness of our life on earth'. 'This may be the perverse pessimist's morbid fancy', said Berghorn sternly. 'Allow me to explain my meaning', said Attinghausen, trying to avoid a personal conflict with Berghorn. 'In the first place, it is usually contended: man suffers so much in this life that there must be another to afford him compensation. Why "must" ? You answer : on account 346 IMMORTALITY. of God's goodness, who cannot have created beings in His image merely for trouble and misery. See how you move, from the beginning, in a deceptive circle. You try to prove the problem of Immortality by the unproved assump- tion of a God. You next admit that on earth many good men are unhappy and many wicked men prosperous; therefore, you conclude, there must be an existence to redress these painful anomalies. Why "must"? You reply: God's justice demands it. Your error is the same as before, and the only result of your first two arguments is an acknowledgment of the prevalence of misery and crying injustice on earth which certainly lends no support to the hypothesis of a ruling Deity or Providence. Again, you say mournfully, that in the brief span of life allotted to man, he cannot possibly mature his innate faculties and needs, therefore, eternity for their full development and the acquisition of complete knowledge. It is amazing! That men who are proud of their reason should indulge in such a chain of absurdities! Who can assert that man's mind does not reach on earth all the perfection of which it is capable? Nay, we know from experience that most men are in their old age even unable to maintain themselves on the intellectual height they had attained in the years of their vigour, and that not a few feel their mental faculties decay and return to the weakness of childhood: where, then, is that progress for which eternity is deemed necessary? Do not object to me that there are aged men preserving to the last their full power and elasticity of mind. I do not deny it, and I am rejoiced to see some such here among us. But they are enviable exceptions. Yet, ask even these privi- leged favourites of fate, and they will probably tell you how many fair blossoms of earlier years have withered they will tell you that the powers of old age are not those of youth and manhood, that especially the wings of Divine fancy grow heavier and heavier, and that much of the apparent strength is due to the long habit and IMMORTALITY. 347 practice in the use of the faculties, and still more to the stores of experience and information laid up in the years of plenty. As a rule, the vigour of the mind diminishes with that of the body, and when the latter ceases, the former ceases also'. 'But you recollect', interrupted Humphrey, that 'Goethe, whose authority is in your eyes canonical, said a few years before his death: "The conviction of a continued life arises within me from the notion of activity ; for if I am restlessly active up to my end, Nature is bound to assign to me another form of existence, if the present one is no longer suitable for my mind."' 'True', replied Attinghausen pointedly, 'but Goethe has been well answered by a theologian who recognised no canonical authority, and who justly observed that the words "Nature is bound" are very strange in the mouth of one who above all men was aware that Nature knows no duties, but only laws, and that man is obliged quietly to submit to these laws. "What Nature", continues Strauss, "owed him for his restless activity, that is, what resulted from it according to natural laws, was abundantly enjoyed by him during his life in the wholesome feeling of his strength, in the cheering consciousness of his intellectual progress, and in the admiration of all his nobler contemporaries". 8 Behind that argument lingers, besides, the old assumption, so difficult to dispel, of a thoughtful design in all that concerns man and nature. I now come to the next proof. Let me see. I cannot remember ... Is there really no other? And on such hollow grounds' . . . 'You conveniently forget the most important one', said Humphrey, 'probably because even you cannot find the heart to question its force'. 'What is it' ? asked Attinghausen eagerly. 'It is the moral necessity of the belief in Immortality', replied Humphrey; 'I mean the absolute necessity of that belief for checking man's unbridled passions and 348 IMMORTALITY. preventing society from being torn asunder by crime and iniquity'. 'Oh, certainly' ! said Attinghausen, laughing merrily. 'How could I ever forget your fondly cherished hell with its dear unquenchable flames and eternal tortures ! It ought really to have occur ed to me in mentioning the second "proof" ; for I always admired for its amusing ingenuity a vindication of God's justice propounded, I believe, by the Rabbins and Mohammedans, and amounting to this: the wicked man receives on earth all the reward he deserves for his few good actions, and the pious man all the punishment he merits for his few sins, in order that the former may hereafter endure uninterrupted agony, and the other enjoy uninterrupted bliss that is, the one gets ready payment, the other an uncertain bond. You deem hell indispensable to keep the bad in terror: whether it is fiction or not, is a matter of indifference, as long as the fiction is useful. But let us be candid: has it achieved the expected result? Has that place of unending anguish, upon the description of which you have exhausted all the powers of an extra- vagant imagination, prevented malice and bloodshed and every atrocious misdeed ? You degrade a tenet of religion into an ineffectual measure of police'. 'It may perhaps be desirable to remember', said Grego- vius, 'that, as Biblical researches have proved, the belief in Immortality was during long epochs unknown to the Israelites, whom their legislators tried to guide exclusively by earthly promises and threats, and that it was just during those epochs that their commonwealth flourished, while it subsequently grew feeble, unenergetic, and hierarchical'. 'This is by no means so certain', said Humphrey, 'as a misleading rationalism is wont to assert with astonishing boldness'. 'Though our Prophet', said Movayyid-eddin, 'with that loving compassion which distinguished him, has not often alluded to hell, he could yet not avoid reminding unbelieving IMMORTALITY. 349 evildoers that, groaning under the burden of their crimes and overwhelmed with curses, laden with fetters and clothed in pitch, they shall be hurled into the eternal flames, where, to allay their thirst, boiling water will be given to them'.* 'Horrible, horrible'! exclaimed Wolfram. 'All the vast communities', said Subbhuti cheerfully, 'that are governed by the precepts of Buddha and Con- fucius, strongly confirm the truth that men can restrain their passions and wicked inclinations without being har- rowed by the alleged agonies of another world'. 'Yet', said Canon Mortimer, 'we should not forget that the thought of utter extinction after death makes this life of such supreme and exclusive value that not many will be ready to risk it even for the highest and most glorious ends for liberty and truth, and that this convulsive clinging to life must engender a low and despicable self- ishness. I am indeed aware that not a few, though un- happily harbouring that thought, have yet nobly sacrificed themselves for a great cause; but it almost seems that, in acting thus, they were guided by their hearts, not by their principles. 1 * Moreover, it can hardly be denied that the elevating belief of Immortality is a blessed comfort to those who, in their affliction and sorrow, yearn after a reunion with the loved ones they have lost'. 'This I readily admit', said Attinghausen in a gentler tone, 'and I should be delighted if we were allowed to foster hopes inspired by feelings so truly human and so tenderly affectionate. Those hopes are, perhaps, the sublimest creation of poetic fancy ever ventured by mankind, and they possess just that kind or degree of truth which pervades all poetry but no more. For alas! implacable science can, in the whole of the wide universe, find as little room for a heaven as for a hell. It has searched space and has discovered no celestial empyrean; it has explored the earth, and has found in its depths and abysses no possible abode for the shades of a Sheol or 350 IMMORTALITY. Gehenna; it has in fact destroyed the distinction of above and below. The longing for another life must indeed be deeply planted in the human breast, as it is met with, in the most varied forms, among nearly all nations and tribes of the world; but neither the strength nor the uni- versality of a feeling is a guarantee of its truth, a and the belief in Immortality is only the necessary complement of the belief in God. Agitated by the consciousness of his frailty and helplessness, man has devised supports which have proved broken reeds'. 'But it cannot be imagined', rejoined Mortimer, 'that an organism so wonderfully contrived as that of man, should be devoid of a soul, and that this soul should not have a separate existence'. *Let me answer you', said Attinghausen, 'by an illus- tration which has been employed before, but which, in a modified form, will bear repetition. Suppose a savage who has never seen a watch, finds one that is going. He listens and hears the ticking, he looks and sees the hands slowly advancing. He naturally thinks, there must be in the little instrument something that causes the sound and the motion; he succeeds in opening it and beholds with wonder a number of wheels propelling and propelled; he turns the object round and round and looks intently at every part, but he can nowhere discover that something the power or being that produces the .astonishing effects. Determined to satisfy his curiosity, he takes a stone and breaks the watch to pieces. It no longer moves; wheels, dial and hands, lie before him in confused disorder, and he concludes that the spirit which animated the singular contrivance, had been in it unseen, but has now escaped and dwells in some other place, from whence it may perhaps return to impart to the shattered frag- ments a new life. He is fully satisfied with this reasoning, for he knows that the metal of the wheels is in itself motionless, and he knows that spirits are invisible; and it might perhaps be as difficult to convince him that the IMMORTALITY. 351 movement was caused by the simplest laws of mechanics, as it is to convince many of our theological friends that human life is the product of the forces inherent in the organs of our body'. 'I accept this illustration', said Humphrey triumphantly, 'in so far as it shows that there must have been an arti- ficer who, by his intelligence and skill, so arranged the component parts of the watch as to produce the nice and regular movements at which the savage marvels, just as there must be a Creator who, by His wisdom, has framed our body and endowed it with life, though this escapes under the knife of the barbarous anatomist'. 'I was prepared for this inference', rejoined Attinghausen calmly, 'and it is fully invalidated by what I have said a few days ago about the successive stages of evolution. But you will not be able so easily to rebut my inference that, if remarkable organisation is employed as an argument, the higher animals also must have immortal souls'. 'How self-assurance perverts the judgment'! rejoined Humphrey. 'Animals possess no individuality; but that which has not advanced to the value of a person cannot prolong its being as a person ; for a survival without the remembrance of a former self would be equally aimless and worthless. Moreover and this I add in spite of your effusions to the contrary animals develop during life their instincts perfectly, men their gifts and abilities very imperfectly; the former, therefore, do not^ require a second existence, whereas the latter do. Is it so difficult to rebut your incontrovertible objections'? 'You prove everything to your own satisfaction', replied Attinghausen, 'by dexterously smuggling in some unproved assertion: for the whole problem turns on the question whether consciousness remains after death; and in quietly assuming that it does as far as man is concerned, you easily establish a distinction between the limited existence of animals and the unlimited and progressive existence of man. I am not sure whether you desire more to delude 352 IMMORTALITY. yourselves or others. Give up at last these hopeless efforts and confess that "that which is so closely and so completely tied to the bodily organ, can, after this has perished, as little continue to exist as the centre of a circle remains after its circumference has been dissolved".* You desire to be .immortal, and therefore you decree a soul, and for this soul you decree a heaven. Are these the acts of men''? 'But nearly all you have hitherto said', remarked Mo- vayyid-eddin with renewed zeal, 'relates to the practical or religious grounds of Immortality; you have not touched upon those much stronger philosophical reasons which are derived from the nature of the human soul'. 'Every one of those "philosophical reasons'", exclaimed Attinghausen, 'has been scattered to the winds by the twenty-six strict arguments set forth by Lucretius against Immortality'. b 'Twenty-six arguments against Immortality' ! cried Mo- vayyid-eddin in amazement. 'The very number shows that the poet must have considered each of them in- dividually feeble and inconclusive'. 'The frivolous pleas of the Epicureans', said Berghorn, 'have even in ancient times been thoroughly and strik- ingly refuted by Plutarch, who allowed his antagonists no escape or refuge'. 'The objections of Plutarch', observed Hermes, 'are not those of the naturalist or philosopher but of the theologian, and it is very remarkable how entirely they coincide with those remonstrances of modern apologists, which we have just discussed. There is indeed nothing new under the sun'. c 'It really seems so', said Attinghausen with zest, 'for the twenty-six scientific arguments of Lucretius comprise almost everything that has been, or that can be, urged on our side of the question; but it is their particular merit to have pointed out, with a clearness and force unsurpassed even by physiologists of our time, the indis- soluble connection between the organs and their functions IMMORTALITY. 353 that is, the impossibility of the latter existing without the former, or the impossibility of the soul existing apart from the body: a though I admit that some of the other arguments are not of equal cogency. b 'You admit so much', said Movayyid-eddin, somewhat relieved; 'but in order to arrive at just conclusions, we must weigh the philosophical reasonings on the other side of the question, and above all those that have been so sagaciously and so beautifully expounded by Plato in his Phaedo'. 'This is just what I dreaded', sighed Attinghausen, with a slight shudder. 'I have studied that admirable work', continued Mo- vayyid-eddin, 'again and again, both in the Greek text and in our Arabic translations, and I have written a Commentary on it in ten volumes, which I could send you: do you read Arabic'? 'No, no', cried Attinghausen, 'I do not! To me Plato's original is quite enough. I remember how I tortured my poor brain at school ridiculous to force such a book on boys of sixteen or seventeen, and that simultaneously with the poem of Lucretius : I suppose as an antidote to the poison how I tortured my brain to understand the author's subtleties, and I can honestly say that nothing has ever shaken my trust in all philosophies and creeds so much as those casuistries when I had at last mastered them. I have lately read the Dialogue again, as I was curious to see how Plato's arguments would impress me in the light of the cellular theory; but by the dog! to use Socrates' own fine oath they all appeared to me sophistical, except those which struck me as laughably fantastical'. 'I think', said Hermes pleadingly, 'you are too severe and do not make sufficient allowance for' . . . 'I mean to make no allowance whatever', replied Atting- hausen with determination, 'but desire the opinions which by courtesy are called proofs to be examined on their AA 354 IMMORTALITY. own merits; for we are here to search for absolute truth'. 'But those reasons', said Movayyid-eddin with great warmth, 'bear the most rigid examination and will always remain firm rocks for the Imam and the sage to build upon. First, Socrates reminds his friends of the ancient saying X6yo$ that the souls of departed men exist in Hades, "and return hither again and are produced yiyvovTcu from the dead" ; and from this fact he justly infers that they are not extinguished by death, "since surely they could not be produced again if they did not exist "'. a 'A marvellous argumentation' ! exclaimed Attinghausen. 'You start with a "saying", then, under your hands, you change it into a "fact" and next you infer exactly that from which you started: for if we admit that the souls exist in Hades, we admit that they exist after death, and the proof is superfluous. But what kind of existence do the souls lead in the lower world according to the poets' "saying"? It may be satisfactory to feeble and sleepy souls, but it is hateful to energetic and fiery ones like that of Achilles, who, as Homer describes it, groans in Elysium and would rather be a hired labourer to the poorest man on earth, than rule over all the bloodless shadows of Styx. But the chief legerdemain of the ar- gument consists in calmly assuming that the souls of men return and are reproduced in other men. A person who believes that without proof, will believe anything, and it would be a mockery to appeal to him with reasons'. 'Plato', rejoined Movayyid-eddin, 'has anticipated this objection, and answered it acutely by referring to a law of nature which you will be the last to deny. All things that are generated, he says, whether men, animals or plants, are so produced yiyvsrai that "contraries arise from contraries" ; b for instance, the smaller from the greater and the greater from the smaller, the stronger from the weaker and the weaker from the stronger; and IMMORTALITY. 355 this production is constantly reciprocal: now, the con- trary of life is death; therefore life produces death, and death produces life that is, the soul is immortal. The proof is admirable'. 'Admirable indeed'! echoed Attinghausen ironically. 'There are in that chain of reasoning more faults than it has links. The fundamental fallacy is this that, if the soul is immortal, it can never be subjected to "the pro- duction of the contrary"; it cannot be "revived",* as it never dies ; its very essence would be unbroken continuity of life. The question would not be whether the soul exists or does not exist, but whether it exists in the body or carries on its life in some other abode. Thus, in trying to prove Immortality, the philosopher abandons it at the outset or takes it in a sense which destroys its inherent meaning. But behold still further the conjuror's feats at work! Look closely or else you are deceived in a trice. Before your eyes he employs the same term "production" y/yvsra/ in two significations entirely dif- ferent, either of them being, moreover, utterly opposed to common usage. At first it means simply generation, and afterwards simply change: the larger tree is not pro- duced by the smaller one but becomes larger by growing; the smaller candle is not produced by the larger one but becomes smaller by burning or cutting. Nor is this change, or transition of contraries into contraries, ne- cessarily reciprocal. What remains of a piece of wood after being burnt is ashes, but the ashes do not, on their part, become a tree; what remains of the candle when it is burnt down, is perhaps a portion of the wick, which does not become a candle. Thus life changes into death, but death does not necessarily change into life. There exists in logical argument no more perplexing trick than the insidious infusion of new meanings into old terms : whole systems of philosophy have been perverted by this dis- ingenuous ingenuity as we may yet have an opportunity of showing by a prominent example'. 356 IMMOETALITY. 'But', rejoined Movayyid-eddin, 'does not, to quote Plato's clear and pertinent illustration, waking produce sleeping and sleeping produce waking'? 'By no means', replied Attinghausen, 'there is a transition from one into the other, but no production. Waking produces weariness, yet weariness does not produce waking. Sleeping produces renewal of strength, yet renewal of strength does not produce sleeping. And see how dim and fluctuating your definitions are! We may suppose that waking is essentially identical with living, as the main attribute of both is conscious activity; and yet at one time you assume its contrary to be sleep, at another death just as it suits your argument, or your fancy'. 'I think', said Movayyid-eddin pertinaciously, 'you are overthrowing the very principles you have often and most strongly advocated. You admit that there is in nature "a constant revolving as it were in a circle";* for if not, that would happen which Socrates pointed out as the in- evitable consequence, namely, that at length all things would have the same form and be in the same state, and more especially that at length all living beings would be absorbed in death and entirely disappear. There must, therefore, be a revival of the dead'. 'It is really difficult', replied Attinghausen laughing, 'to treat such oddities seriously. But I see your drift. We admit indeed a constantly revolving change in nature, no single particle of which we believe ever to be lost. But we hold that each particle is endowed with force or life, and that, therefore, the preservation of a particle involves the preservation of soul; we are, therefore, in no fear of seeing some day all nature collapse into one mass of lifeless monotony. But your expedient would not be effectual long. I will not lay much weight on the in- consistency that, on the one hand, Socrates considers the souls to be in Hades, and yet to be urgently re- quired on earth to prevent it from becoming utterly devoid of life; but you should not forget that, as according IMMORTALITY. 357 to one of his conceits, many human souls, as a punishment for their vices or crimes, pass into the bodies of ani- mals, the number of souls available for human bodies must in the course of time be alarmingly diminished, unless new souls are constantly created simultaneously with the bodies. But if this is the case, what need is there to dread that human life, if not recruited from Hades, will disappear from the earth? And I must add that the elect of Plato's Elysium are almost as few in number as the elect of the Christian heaven; for it is only "those who have studied philosophy rightly, and departed from this life perfectly ipure", that can hope "to pass into the rank of the gods" ; the souls of the rest migrate into the bodies of asses and mules, of wolves, hawks and kites, or, if they have been distinguished by temperance and justice practised from habit, without the aid of philosophy, into the bodies of "civilised and peace- able kinds of animals", such as bees, wasps and ants; while a small number of these may again be united to the human species. a A curious compound of Egyptian, Hindoo, and Pythagorean whimsicalities'! Here Abington, fearing lest the cause he had at heart should suffer in the Mohammedan's hand, interposed and said: 'We must indeed deplore Plato's inability to shake off the notion of transmigration, which had become dear to him on account of the wisdom of those from whom he had borrowed it. Yet even that notion influenced his mind beneficially, for it helped him indirectly to de- velop that theory of Ideas, which is for ever associated with his name, and from which his chief argument in favour of Immortality is also derived'. 'Whatever truth that theory may possess', replied Attinghausen, anxious to maintain his ground against the new and more formidable opponent, 'its extrava- gances become glaringly manifest when applied to the doctrine we are discussing. For as it compelled Plato 358 IMMORTALITY. to assume a state of existence previous to birth, during which man's mind imbibed the ideas or abstract types of all objects and conceptions of which we realise on earth only the imperfect images, he was led to conclude that all our knowledge is only reminiscence, and that, as it was obtained by the soul before the body was framed, a so it will be preserved after the body is dissolved and is, therefore, imperishable, like the soul itself. You have truly said that this doctrine is Plato's principal support ; it is this which both he and his friends incessantly affirm to be incontestable, and on which he throws the whole weight of the final conclusion. But how does he prove that reminiscence? He offers some illustrations. When a man sees a lyre, he "remembers" its owner; or when he sees an acquaintance, he "remembers" this person's friend. Again, when he sees two stones which "aim" at being equal b but fall short of being so, he is reminded of perfect or abstract equality,* 5 which he finds actually nowhere on earth, and the notion of which he can, there- fore, only have acquired in some preceding existence; or in Socrates' own words: "It is necessary that we must have known abstract equality before the time when, on first seeing equal things, we perceived that they all aimed at resembling equality, but failed in doing so". d It surely needs little penetration to discover the strange errors of these deductions. The philosopher had before confounded production and change, what is he doing now ? Can being reminded of a certain individual on seeing his lyre, or of one friend on seeing another, be called reminiscence ? Certainly not. It is simply association of ideas. In both cases the person who is so reminded really knows, or is at least in some way familiar with, the owner of the lyre and the absent friend; but no one has ever remem- bered a former condition of existence, or any period anterior to his birth when he possessed the notion of abstract equality or any other idea: it is a conjecture, a mere fancy. Man, helpless and ignorant at his birth, IMMORTALITY. 359 acquires his notions, apart from instruction, very gradually through the senses by experience, and through the mental operations of comparison and inference ; and he then, on the one hand, ungratefully degrades the senses as obnox- ious hindrances, and on the other hand, unduly exalts his intellect and tries to vindicate for it eternity and immortality. "With all its just claims to our respect, Plato's idealism has caused infinite mischief in imparting an appearance of beauty and elevation to some of the strangest of human eccentricities and superstitions. But the days of idealism in any form are numbered, and a sober realism will henceforth shield the common sense and sound judgment of mankind'. 'Yet our sages', said Eabbi Gideon with a strong em- phasis, 'are of Plato's opinion that all knowledge is re- miniscence, and they tell us that at the moment a child is born, an angel places his fore-finger on the infant's mouth: the touch causes the soul suddenly to forget what it had learnt in heaven; and the depression on our upper lip is the mark left by the angel's finger. Philo justly adopted Plato's doctrine of pre-existence ; the Talmud assures us that all souls were produced at the time of Creation, and that the Messiah connot appear before all, leaving their original abode in heaven, have passed into human bodies; and it is more than probable that the Bible itself sanctions that doctrine in the words of the Book of Jeremiah: "Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee, and before thou earnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee". a 'Are there many more of such "arguments" for Immor- tality'? asked Subbhuti with some impatience. 'Fortunately not', replied Attinghausen with growing buoyancy; 'for, properly speaking, Plato considers the two whims I mean opinions of the "pre-existence of the soul" and the inevitable "production of contraries from contraries", if taken together, as amply conclusive: the soul exists before; when it enters life, it can have 360 IMMORTALITY. bee*n produced from nothing else than death, and it must be so produced by necessity; therefore it abides also after death. a This is the ratiocination as evolved from the confusion of two pairs of terms. 'Plato, however, adds a few other supports which, I think, can be very briefly disposed of. With an elaborate fulness and reiteration proving the weight he attaches to it, he dwells on a syllogism which, I believe, must have delighted his sophistical antagonists. A contrary,^ he says, can never become a contrary to itself, neither that which is in us, nor that which is in nature. Thus, for instance, snow can never admit the idea of heat, but when heat approaches, one of two things necessarily happens either the snow must flee and withdraw, or it must perish. In the same manner, he argues, the soul, which is the body's principle of life, never admits its contrary death, that is, it is immortal. b In the same manner? we ask with as- tonishment. Does not the example of the snow and heat present an alternative, whereas the application to the soul and death categorically assumes one possibility only? As the snow may perish through the approach of heat, so the soul this is the clear analogy may perish through the approach of death: whether the snow becomes hot or perishes by the heat, in other words, whether the soul becomes death or perishes in death, this is a subtle dis- tinction over which school dialecticians may wrangle; practically it is worthless'. 'Yet I believe', said Canon Mortimer, 'there is some force in the argument that only what is compounded can be scattered and dissolved; and as the soul is perfectly simple, it must for ever remain in a state of changeless existence'. d 'Here again', replied Attinghausen briskly, 'Socrates exhibits himself as an accomplished prestigiator. He starts from abstract notions, such as beauty and justice, and easily causes his young friends to admit that those ideas are eternal and unvarying. But then, by a sudden IMMORTALITY. 361 manipulation, he makes the abstract synonymous with the invisible, and hence concludes that the soul, being invi- sible, is eternal and immortal. 4 It is really wonderful how readily people believe what is agreeable to them. On this principle, all the invisible gases would be un- changeable, yet nothing is so volatile and changeable. 'All that Socrates says on the subject besides, signifies very little that the soul has dominion over the body and is therefore divine; that not even the body is dis- solved immediately after death and if embalmed lasts "an incredible length of time", and that, therefore, the soul, which is infinitely superior to the body, cannot so easily be dispersed or destroyed. "Far from it", he exclaims; "but if the soul is separated in a pure state taking nothing of the body with it, does it not rather depart to that which resembles itself, the invisible, the divine, the immortal and wise? and on its arrival there, is not its lot to be happy, free from error, ignorance, fears, wild passions and all the other evils to which human nature is subject? and does it not in truth pass the rest of the time with the gods" ? All this, and much more in the same strain, befits the rhetorician rather than the philosopher. Indeed one of the hearers, by no means satisfied, advances an illustration which, in my opinion, admirably settles the whole question: when a lyre, he says, which is visible and corporeal, is broken, the invisible and indwelling harmony vanishes with it and subsists nowhere. But Socrates has that talisman ready, to whom all his friends devoutly pay unconditional hom- age: the two cases, he urges, are not parallel; for the harmony was only formed after the completion of the lyre, whereas the soul existed before the creation of the body ; though, therefore, he concludes, the harmony perishes with the instrument, the human soul need not disappear with the body. b To the metaphysician that ghostly goblin of pre-existence of the soul is indeed an invaluable auxi- liary; for it frightens reason, logic and science into 362 IMMORTALITY. precipitate flight. Therefore, I have finished and Heaven be praised'! 'You have not finished', said Movayyid-eddin, 'and cannot yet be released from your pledge. There is another powerful argument set forth by Plato in a different work. That which is self-moved, he says in substance, or has the principle of motion in itself, moves eternally ; whereas that which, though moving something else, is moved itself by some external cause, necessarily ceases to move when that cause is withdrawn. Now a principle from its very nature has no beginning, as it cannot owe its origin to anything else; but if it has no beginning, it can have no end; for if it were once extinguished, it would never be restored either by anything else or through itself. But the soul has the power of self-motion, or is moved by an interior force belonging to itself; it is, therefore, both without a beginning and without an end it is eternal and immortal'. 1 'Excellent, excellent'! cried Attinghausen, rather moodily; 'an argument quite to the ulemah's heart. But it proves unfortunately a little too much; for the souls of animals, being likewise "self-moved", must also be eternal and immortal you cannot get rid of the unpleasant company. 1 * Besides', he continued in his usual spirits, 'I really do not see why you take the trouble of devising or citing proofs if more even than you want to prove is perpetually assumed in your premises; for if I were certain that the soul of man or animal is "self-moved", I could not deny its immortality. But that is just the cardinal question: does the soul possess "motion", that is life, in itself, or is this life only acquired in connection with certain organs, and ceases when the organs are destroyed or dissolved? You might be a little less technical in form, if you were a little more logical in matter'. 'You have every reason', said Humphrey, 'not to be too critical as regards logic. One of the usual arguments on your side runs thus: nothing is sensible of pain, IMMORTALITY. 363 which is not also liable to disease ; but whatever is liable to disease must be liable to death; now the soul is sensible to pain, therefore it is liable to perish. a It is mere sophistry, but you do not, of course, see the beam in your own eye'. 'Do not play with dangerous weapons' ! replied Atting- hausen. 'The syllogism you have quoted is as effectual as it is compact. If the soul were something incorporeal apart from the body, we should not even be subject to fatigue, much less to death; whereas experience teaches that the greater the activity of the brain is, the more in- tense must be the sleep, in order to restore the cerebral matter by an increased influx of blood'. 'You will never be able', said Abington after a short pause, 'to banish from the sanctuary of the human heart that intuitive certainty of an immortal life, which is something infinitely more real and positive than the mere feeling or desire which you have before admitted to exist. Supposing even what I cannot grant that every argument adduced by Plato is as untenable as cold rationalism asserts, he is invincible in that appeal to our higher nature, with which he concludes his memorable Dialogue. He is confident and this confidence of a high-souled heathen outweighs all the scepticism of reason that, if we have but sufficiently purified ourselves by philosophy let me say instead, purified ourselves by faith in God and His Redemption ,we shall live without bodies throughout all future time and shall arrive at habitations more beau- tiful than human words can describe ; and appropriately crowning his eloquent address, he adds: "That the soul is immortal, appears to me most fitting to be be- lieved, and worthy the hazard for one who is convinced of this truth; for the hazard is noble, and it is right that we should allure ourselves with those hopes as with en- chantments". 1 ' Even a man of St. Paul's indomitable strength of character declared that he and his fellow- 364 IMMORTALITY. workers would be guilty of folly in exposing themselves to constant dangers for their faith instead of indulging in the pleasures of the world, if there were no resur- rection of the dead'. a 'Resurrection' ! exclaimed Attinghausen', bewildered, as if he could not realise the import of the word. 'Yes, indeed', said Movayyid-eddin; 'our Prophet says beautifully: "Sterile fields bursting forth in the germs of fertility, and producing life-sustaining harvests this is a striking image of the resurrection" '. b 'And even philosophers like Kant and Mendelssohn', continued Abington placidly, 'affirmed that without a personal immortality all precepts of ethics are deprived of their natural basis and prop'. c 'You remind me opportunely', said Rabbi Gideon, 'of Moses Mendelssohn, the very mention of whose name is a joy to the heart, and raises the soul to the heights of peace and purity. Not he, but the wise Athenian is honoured by the appellation he bears of the "modern Socrates"; and this name is especially suitable on account of the success with which he improved and enlarged the Socratic arguments of Immortality. His "Phaedon" is a worthy counterpart of Plato's work, and while he equals his pagan predecessor in natural elevation of mind, he greatly surpasses him in true knowledge and depth'. 'Do not injure your illustrious co-religionist', said Wolfram calmly, 'by an indiscriminate praise which he would have been the first to repudiate. And yet exag- geration even seems to me in this instance almost par- donable. For who can help feeling a glow of admiration for the man who, in every line he wrote, impresses upon us the devout earnestness with which he approached all great questions of humanity; for the thinker to whom these were indeed questions of life and death; who pursued his enquiries with a trembling heart, because the result determined in his eyes the value and dignity of existence, and who yet, in his sacred love of truth, dared not influence IMMORTALITY. 365 the result by bias or partiality ? I have still another cause for revering the name', continued Wolfram with visible emotion. 'I was intimate with Moses Mendelssohn's gifted grand-son during nearly the whole of his short life, and the memory of this sweet friendship is the dearest treasure of my old age. Felix Mendelssohn was the most perfect man I have ever known ; he combined the fire of the East with the clear "dry light" of the West; the exquisite sensitiveness of the artist with the solid perseverance of the scholar; the light-heartedness of the child with the matured wisdom of the philosopher. Yet neither admira- tion for the sire nor affection for the descendant must dim my judgment; our love of truth, kindled perhaps by Lessing's Jewish contemporary, is not less strong and, I trust, not less pure, and it compels me to declare that I can hardly attribute any importance to the additions he made to the reasonings of his Greek predecessor'. 'They always appeared to me conclusive', replied Gideon, evidently in a great conflict of feelings. 'His great argu- ment in the first Dialogue is briefly this' . . . 'I know', interrupted Wolfram, 'and I must say that I was seldom more deeply pained than by the feeble inconsistency it displays. The premises are admirable: all our notions originate in an impression of the senses;* nothing in nature is completely destroyed, but there is a perpetual transition ; the body is in process of gradual decay, and together with the body the soul decays ; "this grows weaker, feels anomalously, thinks wrongly, and frequently acts so as to provoke displeasure from itself ". b And what is it that follows from these propositions with inevitable cogency ? That, when the body is dissolved, the soul is no longer able to think or to form notions, since the instru- ments of reflection no longer exist; that is, that it peri- shes as soul. But what are Mendelssohn's conclusions? That the soul is immortal and, after the dissolution of the body, strives as before after happiness, that is, after 366 IMMORTALITY. wisdom, virtue and truth. How does he consider this practicable ? He clings to the idea that a total destruction in the world is impossible and inconceivable. But can the soul still operate after it has been deprived of the organs of thought? Well, he replies, the proposition that our notions arise from impressions of the senses is merely deduced "from the experience we are making in this life" ; but, he continues, "what right have we to extend this experience beyond the limits of our present existence, and absolutely to deny nature the power of letting the soul think apart from this body and its organs" ? a and he concludes with the illustration: "If a child in its mother's womb could think, would it be persuaded that, detached from its root, it was destined to enjoy in the free air the delicious light of the sun" ? The reader asks in astonish- ment: why did the author trouble himself with setting forth a series of premises all derived from experience, if he finally denounces and rejects experience as "the blindness of idiots" ? b Nay what need has he at all of proofs of Immortality if he bases them on the assumption of an existence "extending beyond the limits of the present life" ? The excellence of his intentions shields him from being judged with severity and his concluding apostrophe to the heavenly joy felt by the soul in the contemplation of the Deity is indeed most beautiful ; yet we cannot help recognising that his mind, though possessing elasticity and delicacy, was seriously wanting in energy: it resembled the mind of Maimonides, not that of Spinoza'. 'He once said wittily', interrupted Attinghausen, 'that Pope was a philosopher among poets, and a poet among philo- sophers; similarly his own position might be described with reference to philosophers and Rabbis'. 'He could not summon', continued Wolfram, smiling, 'sufficient determination to abandon the traditional view that the soul is something separate over and above the powers of the body: this was the source of all his errors. IMMORTALITY. 367 *But the second Part of his Phaedon', rejoined Gideon with increased decision, 'has generally been acknowledged as a model of close reasoning, and the last Part, independently of its valuable matter, is one of the finest compositions in German literature 7 . 'In the second conversation', replied Wolfram, 'Mendels- sohn approaches the truth indeed several times very nearly; but that fatal defect of mental irresolution to which I have alluded, prevents him from grasping it. He states the bolder view with clearness, but only in order to make a strained attempt at proving it erroneous. He calmly considers the possibility that "sensation in animals and even reason in men are nothing but qualities of the compound body, which, from their nature, cannot outlast the organi- sation of which they are inseparable".* But instead of firmly pursuing this plain and even track, and drawing the obvious inference that "the soul" is the sum of the forces possessed by all the organs, he arrives, by a path which he himself repeatedly describes as thorny and circuitous, at the conclusion that there must be one single "substance" which, simple and uncompounded itself, unites all individual faculties, all knowledge, desires, passions and inclinations, and that this substance is the soul. Yet he reaches this result not by the gradual steps of his laborious argumentation, but by a sudden and hazardous bound, and by loosely assuming that "all conceptions and propensities of our mind are so intimately connected and blended that they must necessarily exist somewhere in undivided unity ". b This is one of the grounds why I cannot admit the reasoning of the second Part to be faultless, and another is, that this reasoning is devoid of unity. The author offers the fitting illustration that, as symmetry is produced by a certain mode in the composition of the parts, the symmetry of an edifice can no longer exist when the stones are torn asunder and crushed to dust the application of which to the soul is evident . But though again so near the truth, his centrifugal mind 368 IMMOBTALITT. carries him, in the opposite direction, to the principle that "without reference to the Simple, that is, to sentient and thinking beings, it is impossible to ascribe to the Compound either beauty, order, symmetry, or perfection; nay these attributes can, without that reference, not even be conbined to form a whole ". a But this new consideration, by a not uncommon mistake, shifts the point of view from the work to the artificer. Returning to the example properly introduced by our friend Attinghausen, we must indeed say that, when a watch is dashed to pieces, the intelligence that produced it is thereby unaffected, and that the idea of an instrument for the indication of time continues to live in the minds of the artificers. But that particular watch has for ever lost its "soul". For this resulted exclusively from a manner of composition, which has been broken up. The mind of the architect, or the idea of symmetry in the minds of architects, may outlive many edifices; yet when the stones of one particular structure are reduced to fragments, the symmetry of this structure is for ever destroyed. Thus, when a man dies and is dissolved into atoms, his individual life is lost, though the idea of humanity may continue to exist in the cosmos'. 'Permit me to add', said Hermes, 'that so early a philosopher as Thales attributed to the magnet a "soul"; yet we know that, when this mineral is pulverised, it loses this soul or power of attraction, which it possessed only through a certain, as it were organic, arrangement of its component parts'. 'We should unpardonably inflict weariness upon oui friends', said Gideon, who had not expected Wolfram tc enter into so full a criticism, 'were we to follow the philo- sopher through the skilful intricacies of his deductions that these are, in their result, substantially correct, canno. be rendered doubtful by hairsplitting perversions inspired by the foregone conclusions of unbelief. Mendelssohr himself declared that "although none of his arguments IMMORTALITY. 369 taken singly, may involve a supreme degree of certainty, yet, if considered together, they carry conviction with such triumphant force as to scatter all doubts and impart to us a perfect tranquillity"; and then he admitted that "more than a high measure of probability was not required to countenance the supposition that a better life is reserved for the virtuous"'. 8 'As if Mendelssohn felt', continued Wolfram, deeming a reply to Gideon's remarks needless, 'that, at best, the arguments in the first two divisions of his book proved the existence of the soul, but not its permanence or immortality, he added a third Part, which indeed, as a literary composition and as the expression of a fervid and exalted philanthropy, deserves all the enthusiastic praise it has called forth, but is in reality nothing more than declamation, and leaves all the great problems exactly on the point where they had been two or three thousand years before. It combines the fallacies and exaggerations of the theologian, the eudaemonist, and the unconditional champion of design in nature. Man, the writer urges, deve- lops during his life the most remarkable gifts and qualities, which cannot possibly be lost after his death, and which he must not only preserve but unfold still further, although the soul, detached from the body, its natural instrument, will certainly be subjected to very different laws from those it follows on earth. What notions of the plan of Creation, he asks, are presupposed by the contrary opinion, since the whole universe has been produced in order that there may exist rational beings able to advance from stage to stage to the highest perfection ? b Only by adhering to Immortality can our faith in God's mercy and justice be saved, since, if we consider the course of the world in itself vice victorious, misdeeds crowned, innocence persecuted, happiness and misfortune scattered at random to the good and the bad ,"we are sometimes tempted to believe that men's destinies are ordained by a Cause delighting in evil". c But if we survey a man's BB 370 IMMORTALITY. lot during the whole extent of eternity, we shall admire and adore the heavenly Ruler's wisdom and beneficence, for we shall find that the pious receive their rewards, while the wicked learn that crime is not the path to happiness.* The author is so strong in his reliance that he proposes the rule that whatever, if true, would bestow upon the human race comfort and advantage, or is indis- pensable for its happiness, is on this account alone pre- sumably true. b 'In reading these generous effusions, we do not inhale the fresh breezes of the eighteenth century. They are the hereditary traditions of bygone ages. Moses Mendelssohn's world is essentially the world of the Old Testament and the Rabbins, although he surrounded it with a halo partly of Greek beauty and partly of modern humanism'. A short pause ensued, as the listeners seemed to have been very variously affected by the last part of the conver- sation. At length Panini, whose natural gentleness was severely tried by Wolfram's criticisms of his favourite author, resumed the main subject and said with an evident effort: 'All attacks on the belief of Immortality are unavailing. They have spent their force. In times of unhappy scep- ticism they enjoyed a momentary triumph to be followed by a more signal repulse. We need only turn to the pure and profound utterances of the Wisdom of Solomon. In them we find the whole subject condensed and vie wed in all its aspects. There is the description of the unbeliever's reckless mockery, who says to himself: Our life is short and full of troubles; it is a faint spark, which being extinguished, our body is turned into ashes and our spirit vanishes as the soft air; it passes away tracelessly like a cloud or a shadow, and is dispersed like a mist, for no one has ever returned from the grave. Is not this precisely the language of our present materialists? And might not such unfortunate persons write on the gates of Death the IMMORTALITY. 371 famous words of our great poet: "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi clie entrate" ? a of that poet who was sure that death is "the soul's eclipse, not the soul's extinction"? 11 But I proceed. The wise moralist then sketches the awful con- sequences of such mischievous views. Those who hold them proclaim : Let us plunge into every worldly pleasure and voluptuousness; "let us oppress the poor righteous man, let us not spare the widow, nor reverence the gray hairs of the aged; let our strength be the law of justice, and let us lie in wait for the righteous, let us"' . . . 'By all the holy lives that have been led without the aid of your superstitions', "Wolfram burst forth with a startling energy, 'by the shadows of all beloved friends I have followed to the grave as their last resting place, I bid you check your slanderous indictment ! If your fabled heaven and hell existed, those friends would now be ministering angels, while churlish priests lie howling. Denounce opinions you cannot comprehend, but beware of aspersing lives that are above the calumny even of saintly theologians'! 'I was simply quoting from the Wisdom of Solomon', said the excellent Panini, almost trembling, for he was a timid and peace-loving man. 'It could surely not be my intention to offend or to insult. And yet', he continued, borrowing courage from the purity and ardour of his convictions, 'I know that salvation is in that faith alone which men proudly following their own light wantonly reject: "Quel Sol, che pria d'amor mi scaldo il petto, "Di bella verita m'avea scoverto, "Provando et riprovando, il dolce aspettoV 'And again I echo the Wisdom of Solomon: "As for the mysteries of God, they knew them not, neither hoped they for the wages of righteousness, nor discerned a reward for blameless souls ; for God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of His own eternity ". d Even the wavering reflections of Ecclesiastes reach at 372 IMMOETALITY. last the firm conviction of Immortality; and thus the remarkable Book, in exhibiting faith as impregnable by the subtlest doubt, is one of its strongest and most valuable supports'. 8 'Go on', said Attinghausen, 'fortifying yourselves with confused utterances anxiously gleaned from semi-barbarism ! Go on placing yourselves consciously in direct opposition to the innermost spirit of the age you presume to instruct and to guide! Your dualistic hypothesis continues to regard the force associated with the substance of the soul as a special and mystic power totally independent of chemical agencies and untouched by the mechanics of atoms. You thus postulate a metaphysical spectre which, exempt from all ordinary laws of existence, acts and rules with its own perplexing arbitrariness. The consequences of this infatuation will not tarry to make themselves felt, and you will have to bear them with regret and dismay. Even now some of you may be alarmed at the shocking effects of a belief in a supernatural world of spirits, when they reflect on the scandal of a Slade, a Louise Lateau or a Virgin of Marpingen an abuse, which in our own days has ensnared both the uneducated and the educated, even a Wallace and a Zollner; but you will be impotent against delusion and imposture alike; for your theories engender the one in the weak and foster the other in the unscrupulous'. 'What have you to offer us as a substitute'? asked Humphrey sneeringly. 'Truth and its strength', replied Attinghausen firmly. 'We reject that principle of retribution, which is in reality a principle of fear and barter, and rely on that unfading canon of right and justice, of love and charity, which is written in our hearts and consciences written in all hearts and all consciences alike. "I am immortal", says Fichte, "by the resolve I take to obey the precepts of reason". If we know and practise our duty, we are on earth leading a life of eternity. The light of the imperishable IMMOETALITY. 373 heavens shines in every pure mind. We are determined actively and strenuously to carry on the work bequeathed to us by the past, and then to leave it to be continued by the unnumbered generations that will follow. We delight in the idea that one day a higher spirit, which we have helped to nourish, will rule on this earth, and, far surpassing our own labours, will approach the solution of the problems now engaging us with faculties infinitely stronger and more perfect; and that, when we have passed away in death and oblivion, better, wiser and happier beings will occupy our places, the forerunners of yet nobler and more exalted types. This is our only and our true immortality or in the poet's words: "Death is a terror to you? You desire an immortal existence? "Live in the Whole ! When yourself long will have gone, it remains".* 'Goethe was wont to call this briefly "being resigned in the Whole ", b and Riickert says similarly: "Vernichtung weht dich an, so lang du Einzles bist; "0 fiihl' im Ganzen dich, das unvernichtbar isf'. 'Indeed'! exclaimed Wolfram, as if inspired; 'over the thundering cataract that scatters its drops in constant change with the rapidity of the lightning flash over the cataract stands in majestic calmness the rainbow which is mirrored in each drop : thus the light of mankind falls upon the race, unconcerned at the perpetual change of individuals. Nature looks calmly at the profuse destruction of men, because she knows that their true being is guarded in the species. Other leaves bud forth in spring instead of those which the autumn has thrown withered at our feet, but it is the same vital strength of the tree, which calls forth both alike. 6 "Ich bin ein Blatt des Baums, der ewig neue tragt; "Heil mir! Es bleibt mem Stamm, wenn mich der Wind verschlagtf".' d 'The thought of actual eternity', continued Attinghausen, 'would be terrible to me. Pliny says, The yearning for 374 IMMORTALITY. immortality "spoils nature's choicest boon, death"; and my greatest comfort is the Roman poet's trust, Mors ultima liena rerum esf. 9 - <I am afraid', said Mondoza with great deliberation, 'that we cannot hope even approximately to arrive at unanimity on this momentous question. We have done, I believe, a service to each other by the unreserved statement of arguments on both sides. For the rest, we must at present agree to disagree. Let us be content with the alternative as expressed by a gifted living poet: "Ask the rush if it suspects "Whence and how the stream that floats it had a rise, and where and how "Falls or flows on still! What answer makes the rush except that now "Certainly it flows and is, and, no less certain than itself, u ls the everyway external stream that now through shoal and shelf "Floats it onward, leaves it may be wrecked at last, or lands on shore, "There to root again and grow and flourish stable evermore". b 'I may at some future time, when our enquiries are more advanced, have occasion to offer a few remarks on the influence the belief in Immortality exercises on our conduct and our happiness'. 'Permit me' said Abington, who found it impossible to leave the great and sacred question in such uncertainty, 'to add one word in conclusion. I address myself to those nobler feelings which our realistic friends betray almost against their will, nay at which they seem to blush. They have acknowledged the existence and the power of the human conscience as an agent of morality. If they are logical, this one concession is sufficient to compel their recognition of those elevated doctrines which they so persistently reject. For if you admit the dominion of conscience in man, you are obliged also to admit con- science as the supreme power in the world ; for would it not be absurd to follow conscience if it were not the IMMORTALITY. 375 highest of all tribunals? But recognising conscience as the highest tribunal in the world, is nothing else than acknowledging God; for God is both love and justice. Again, according to history, the time of Christ's life, and still more the time of his death, was the moment when con- science or as you say devotion to the general weal- unfolded among men its fullest blossoms; it is hence im- possible to doubt the divinity and mission of Christ. And lastly, in order to devote yourselves to the general weal with energy and confidence, you must be convinced that you are able to achieve your object. Now the highest object of general value is the perfect cultivation of man's moral individuality ; and as this can only be accomplished in eternity, it is evident that the belief of Immortality also is a necessary consequence of your admission in favour of the power of conscience'.* After the very first sentences of Abington's speech, Attinghausen gave unmistakable signs of restlessness, while most of the others evinced a polite, though rather passive attention, with the exception of Humphrey and Gideon, by whom the argument seemed to be greatly relished till at last, after the mention of Christ's life and death, Humphrey was the only interested listener. When Abington had finished, Mondoza barely succeeded in anticipating and checking Attinghausen, who had al- ready risen to reply, and said: 'The vastness, depth and paramount importance of the subject are manifest from the almost endless variety of reasonings it allows, all connecting the soul of man with the soul of the universe. Yet though each of these de- monstrations may possess profound truth and significance for some minds, and may, therefore, fully satisfy them, none, I believe, has yet been brought forward which bears a rigidly logical and objective examination, and I am afraid, that which has just been so earnestly propounded, forms no exception to this remark. For it would, for instance, be difficult to answer the possible query of an 376 IMMORTALITY. opponent if I have a conscience, does it follow that the power which produces earthquakes and tornadoes, tigers and poisonous snakes, has a conscience? We should not rest in considering the problem again and again and from every side ; but at present, I repeat, we must be satisfied with being in agreement with ourselves, and not despair if we find it impossible to agree with others. Let us but courageously pursue our path the guide may appear where we least expected him'. All seemed, on the whole, satisfied with this provisional decision; and if Attinghausen found it difficult wholly to suppress a look of triumph, his theological antagonists met it with an air of sublime disregard and confidence, quasi re lene gesta. IX. PANTHEISM. To the surprise of many of the guests, Melville had, in the preceding nights, taken comparatively little part in the discussion of subjects which, it was believed, pos- sessed for him a particular interest, and on which his deep thought and knowledge were able to throw so much light. Yet he had followed each turn of the conversation most intently, and, when the next evening, the assembled friends were seated, he began: 'Like our zealous naturalists, I am convinced that Monism alone avoids the two preposterous extremes of either endowing the universe, as the hyper spiritualists do, with a superhuman and ghostlike clairvoyance, or re- ducing it, as the materialists do, into a dead machine or huge manufactory. But it must be a true and full Monism. The confusion prevailing in these subjects is manifest from the fact that, although all materialists alike assume with Democritus and Descartes an entirely inert matter in the cosmos, a part of them are atheists, while others virtually recognise a Deity whose power moves the world from without'. 4 I do not see quite clearly', said Wolfram, 'what Monism you mean, unless it be that which has been at the foundation of our whole discussion'. 'I mean the Monism of Spinoza', replied Melville, 'a conception which does not lead to materialism but to idealism; not to pessimism but to a bright and well- founded optimism'. 'I must confess', said Wolfram, 'that the much-praised unity, consistency and clearness of Spinoza's system have, on a careful study of his works, become to me very 378 PANTHEISM. doubtful. I do not at present speak of his ethics, which are all that is purest, noblest and holiest ever felt by a human heart, ever revealed by a human mind. I speak of his Pantheism, which I am often unable to distinguish from a misty Theism. I know that much of this vagueness is attributable to the cautiousness with which his fanatical age compelled him to convey his thoughts. While he, therefore, used the traditional terms, he invested them with an entirely new meaning.* The word "God" especially was employed by him in a manner which almost baffles our efforts of deciding with dis- tinctness whether he conceived the Deity as a personal being or an abstract idea; and indeed opposite schools have in support of their views quoted the very same pro- positions'. l l should think', rejoined Melville, 'that there is not a single one of his utterances which leaves any doubt that, in his opinion, the world is no lifeless mechanism subsisting under the compulsion of a blind necessity, but an organism endowed with reason and reflection. In the second Book of his Ethics he teaches expressly : "Reflection is an at- tribute of God, or God is a reflecting thing Cogitatio attributum Dei est, sive Dem est res cogitans"'. 'True', replied Wolfram, 'but in the very next Pro- position he declares: "Extension is an attribute of God, or God is an extended thing Extensio attributum Dei est, sive Deus est res extensa". And even in that former sentence, what is the meaning of "a reflecting thing"? Does such a thing at all deserve the designation "God", if language is to preserve any significance? Moreover, I need not remind you how constantly Spinoza argues that God has neither "will" nor "intellect" b , and it suf- fices to keep in mind the one sentence, "That eternal and infinite entity which we call God or Nature, acts with the same necessity as it exists"'. 'But', replied Melville, 'he expresses the fundamental principle of his system unambiguously and pithily in the PANTHEISM. 379 famous passage: "The laws of nature, by which everything happens and is determined, are nothing else than the eternal decrees of God, which invariably involve im- mutable truth and necessity; whether we therefore say, everything happens by the laws of nature, or everything is ordained by God's council and direction, we say the same thing". How can God's spiritual nature be described more clearly'? 'I find in that passage', said Wolfram, 'nothing but a dark play with words. By the terms "council and direction of God" we cannot possibly understand anything else than the self-conscious and free action of a rational and personal being: how can this be identical with the laws of nature to which Spinoza constantly attributes necessity working aimlessly and purposely? But overlook- ing this contradiction, and assuming that he supposes "God" to be immanent in Nature and invests Nature, in the manner of the Stoics, with a rational soul: what kind of a God would this be? Would He be able and this is for us the most important point to exercise the functions of a Providence? The sequel of the passage quoted by you gives the reply: "Since the power of all natural things is nothing else than the power of God Himself, by which alone everything is done and determined, it follows that all which man, who is likewise a part of Nature, procures for his subsistence or which Nature supplies to him, is procured and supplied solely by the Divine power". Here we have suddenly a third factor, Man; and all three God, Nature, and Man are es- sentially one : Man is his own power, his own Providence, his own God. This is the only intelligible kernel of Spinozism, however mysteriously it may be enveloped in a double and triple shell'. 'Half of Spinoza's writings might be quoted', said Hermes with great vivacity, 'and yet we should evolve nothing but the same obscurities and inconsistencies. The prin- cipal fault lies in his one-sided application of the synthetic 380 PANTHEISM. method detached from the safe ground of experience and observation. Exclusively relying on the strength of his logic, he was in many of the chief questions unahle to reach the truth. Under his hands all tangible matter seemed to vanish; and there remained to him in the end "only an artificial network of empty relations, which indeed offer no resistance to the experiments of reasoning, but afford no knowledge of reality".* He remained partially in the bonds of Scholasticism. He worked with abstract formulas, combined them freely, and drew from them conclusions, as if they were geometrical axioms. But his definitions of Causa sui, Substance, Attribute, Modus and God, with which he operated so confidently, were hazy assumptions, and hence his system, in spite of its apparent and iron-like compactness, is built on sand and crumbles away under a firm touch. b Yet even if the foundations were sound, the method applied could yield no profitable result, as the variety of nature and life mocks the methodical rigour of geometrical deductions. These can only again and again reproduce themselves and never create anything new. The great truths the system includes are derived from those experiences which, contrary to its design, it accepts and inductively utilises. It deserves therefore admiration, strange as it may seem, not on account of its unity, which is disturbed by a frequent relapse from the higher Pantheism into the common individualism, nor on account of its logical severity, which is its gravest defect, but for those single and intuitive flashes of genius which suddenly illumine old and obscure problems, and the vivid force of which nothing can impair. One illustration will suffice. Spinoza expresses the idea, most important for practical morality, that an affection of the mind cannot be checked or silenced by mere reflection or by the simple knowledge of what is right, but only by another and stronger affection, whence it follows that impressions and passions cannot be conquered unless the principles of right be transformed PANTHEISM. 381 into motives or impulses and thus made active agencies. By a happy intuition, therefore, Spinoza avoided the great and fatal error of idealism, which fancies that the formal notions of the understanding essentially in- fluence our actions. But this is, as I have observed, only a flash of light; the requirements of his system lead him con- stantly into that very error ; a and the whole of the fifth Book of his Ethics is based on the assumption that the mind, by knowledge and intelligence, has power over the affections'. 5 'Spinoza's greatness', said Attinghausen with zeal, 'is to me inviolable, and not merely respect but reverence is due to the man who, with an independence of thought truly heroic, released philosophy from the chains of religious belief, banished from benighted minds the delusion of teleological design in nature, demolished the fallacy of free-will which he proved to be only a form of natural necessity,* 1 had the courage to treat and analyse our feelings and actions not as moral or spiritual, but simply as mechanical forces, just as he "treated mathematical lines, planes and bodies," and thus to change the science of ethics into one of physics, 6 and honestly proclaimed the principles of utility and self-preservation to be the main- springs of our conduct; so that, as a grand result, ra- tional man requires no laws of authority, and needs nothing but a stimulating knowledge of what is true and expedient to prepare for himself and others a blessed life. Yet no name, however illustrious and honoured, must dazzle or awe us. It was a daring hazard in Spinoza's time even to modify the God of the Bible or to assign to the eternal Substance, however guardedly, the functions of the Deity. But the God of the Bible can be saved by no modification; and the universal Substance possesses no intelligence capable of a guiding influence over men's destinies. Who can associate a clear meaning with the propositions that God and the world, the creating and the created Nature, are identical, God 382 PANTHEISM. or unity being the same as Nature or the world, only viewed in the multiplicity of His individual and visible forms? As the whole is not larger than the sum of its parts, nor different from them in quality, "God" can be no more spiritual than universal Nature. Or do, in the manner of the human body and its organs, the parts in their combination possess a life or soul not possessed by the parts in themselves? But this is contrary to the system, which declares all things to be simply modifi- cations of the one Substance. However, there is no uniformity in these notions. At one time God and Nature are taken as equivalents ; at another time it is described as an egregious error to identify both. a And though Spinoza perpetually refers to that Substance, he affords us but a scanty insight into its essence. For of the in- finite number of attributes he ascribes to it, he singles out, empirically and almost arbitrarily, two only, those of thought and extension, merely because they are most familiar to man and most accessible to his intellect from observation and self-scrutiny. 15 Spinoza's God therefore, unlike Nature and her infinite variety, is bare and poor. The playful compound "God-Nature" was useful as a transition and as a means of training. At present we must say either God or Nature, and must in both cases understand the same viz. the unbending necessity of the immutable laws which rule all existence. There is in the whole wide universe, there is in all the intricate and entangled destinies of individuals and of nations, not the faintest trace discoverable of a personal, wise or bene- ficent Intelligence guiding with a conscious purpose. Consistency forces us inexorably to an atheistic mate- rialism which you may denounce as blind and base, but which, even if it had no other merits than those of honesty and manliness, would be an elevating and ennobling force arming us for vanquishing the dangers and difficulties of life, which it does not shrink from disclosing and facing. We despise and scorn a Monism which plays hide and seek PANTHEISM. with the Deity, and is therefore a concealed Dualism; we have constructed one which diffuses the same life through the entire cosmos a life engendered mechanically by physico-chemical processes, and through the same agencies preserved and extinguished. Spinoza's concealed Dualism appears indeed sometimes open and undisguised: for although he declares the physical world and the totality of souls or spirits to be virtually identical, since both are modi of the same Substance ; and although he admits, for the same reason, that every idea corresponds with some corporeal matter, and conversely, and that therefore no spiritual process is conceivable without an analogous material one, the soul being nothing but the idea of the body I say, in spite of all this, he asserts, in the manner of Descartes, that all that is corporeal must be solely explained from corporeal causes, and all that is spiritual solely from spiritual reasons, so that neither the body is able to make the mind think, nor the mind able to make the body move or rest: body and mind are indeed in a certain strange and enigmatical parallelism, but they have no connection and exercise no mutual influence. 4 This clearly involves an abandonment of the monistic principle, which takes mind and body, matter and force, to be inseparable; and in point of fact, the theory in- cludes a double Dualism in the world the Dualism of Substance and its modi, and in God that of extension and thought'. b 'I believe', said Mondoza with earnestness, 'impartiality compels us to acknowledge that there is in Spinoza's system a large residue of vagueness and mysticism. Plain reason will never be able to understand how Nature can be at once creator and creature, or "the cause of itself. " c But this very defect leads us to the cardinal feature which has made the system the foundation of modern thought the principle of the unity of all existence, which no previous enquirer had applied to Nature with equal strictness and universality. By virtue of that unity, mind 384 PANTHEISM. and matter are blended into one notion, and for mind the philosopher knows no other designation than the old and venerable term God God the only conceivable Sub- stance, infinite, including all things finite and producing them from the very constitution of its nature, existing with necessity and through itself, absolutely independent, indivisible, eternal, and free. Whether God works in the Substance or works upon or through it, is frequently left ambiguous, but He is certainly co-extensive with the universal Substance. With no less justice, therefore, than Spinoza's theory has been called a Pantheism, it might be described as a grand formal or immanent Mo- notheism; and such a scheme came fitly from a thinker of the race of Isaiah, Micah, and Habakkuk. Absolute unity, at least in plan and design, is the keystone of his conceptions. And though these may be mingled some will say alloyed with realism, they undoubtedly kindled in his mind all that is purifying and ennobling in a monotheistic creed. For viewed as a whole, they reveal to us the following four gradations of increasing signifi- cance. 'Starting from the notions of good and evil, of useful and injurious, Spinoza declares that to be good and useful, which upholds and strengthens our real being. But our real being is thought or knowledge, for this alone makes us free, that is, inspires us with the will and the power victoriously to resist the irrational emotions which disturb our reasonable resolutions and actions. Now the highest knowledge is the knowledge of God, and the highest duty is to love Him: the second stage is, therefore, "the in- tellectual love" of God. This love is the parent of all happiness, the source of all joy of the soul, or its highest bliss. And such joy, lastly, spontaneously engenders the conviction of a complete harmony of all creation, a har- mony uniting our own being with that of God, the Eternal and the Infinite, through imperturbable tranquillity of mind. While no monotheistic religion has propounded an PANTHEISM. 385 ethical aim of greater loftiness, none is so safe from the dangers of superstition. For Spinoza's edifice is not reared in the ethereal heights of faith, but on the solid rocks of thought and knowledge, which are at every moment near and ready to correct that mystical residue which I deplore. Reflection, Love, Joy, Harmony Cogitatio, Amor, Laetitia, Harmonia this is the true angels' ladder that reaches to the gates of heaven'. 'There is really', said Humphrey, 'nothing remarkable in the final end of "harmony"; it is simply the Christian's union with God through the Redeemer'. 'It is the "peace" of the Old Testament and the Tal- mud', said Rabbi Gideon with equal indifference.* 'It is essentially the Stoic's apatheia\ said Hermes. 'Or the Epicurean's ataraxia', added Attinghausen with equal satisfaction. 'It is the poet's aesthetic disposition', said Wolfram musingly. 'It is surely', said Subbhuti with great eagerness, 'nothing but the Buddhist's Nirwana, and the proof is, that we have likewise four stages of the dhyana leading up to supreme perfection. He who seriously aspires to that beatitude, seats himself under a tree, in complete solitude, cross-legged and in upright position, his mind free from worldly desires and evil propensities, and his heart full of compassion towards all creatures. He fixes his thoughts upon the one point of his salvation, and, exercising his reason and judgment, while being refreshed and exhilarated in every part of his body, he feels in this first con- templation, in this victory . over vice and sin, a pleasure like that experienced by a sick man regaining his health, by a prisoner or slave recovering his liberty after a long bondage, or by a traveller at last reaching a safe resting- place after a journey beset with dangers. Then he over- comes the restraints of reason and judgment and is penetrated with that calm joy and gladness which results from pure meditation. This is the second dhyana. He CO 386 PANTHEISM. next attains indifference even to this intellectual joy and gladness, or a complete freedom from satisfaction no less than from dissatisfaction, accompanied by a tranquil hap- piness which is diffused through his whole frame as the water that nourishes the lotus pervades and saturates every part of the plant from the root to the petals. In the fourth and last stage, he is delivered from all emotions and all attachment to sensual objects, and loses even the recollection of his indifference; he knows neither delight nor sorrow, he rises to purity and illumination, which envelope him like an ample garment. Then he becomes endowed with those marvellous powers which I have before described to you; a the four chief kinds of evil anger, love of life, ignorance, and doubt are for ever subdued; he has annulled the repetitions of existence; his work is done ; he is as near Nirwdna as it is possible to be for one who is not a Buddha; or, as the sacred book Lalita-vistara expresses it, "he is a spirit self-col- lected, perfect, cleansed from all stain and exempt from all vice, enlightened, active, fit for every task, resolute, raised to impassiveness". When our Sakyamuni had arrived at this degree, he said to his pupils: "Now I know all, I have acquired the full disposal of everything that can be fathomed by the highest science; I am without desires, I long for nothing, I am delivered from all feelings of egotism, personality, pride, obstinacy, and 'I would fain be just to the doctrines of Buddhism', replied Mondoza, with gentleness, 'and I trust I shall be able to convince you of my sincerity; but while admitting the great spiritual elevation of your four dhydnasRea- soning, Meditation, Indifference, Impassibility I am bound to enquire what is their origin and what their effect. Their origin is isolation from the world, and their effect is to render that estrangement complete. For after the fourth dhydna the saint or Bhagavat rises into boundless space, and farther and farther into the regions where PANTHEISM. 387 nothing exists; and as even here some conception might yet linger, namely the conception that nothing exists, he finally advances to the last sphere, the world without forms, where no idea remains, not even that of the ab- sence of all ideas. Of what avail, then, is your con- templation, your harmony? It may be sublime, but it is empty. This I believe to be the chief test of any system of thought or religion: we are born for action, and that system is the most salutary, which, while stimulating our practical energies, best protects our purity and repose. Measured by this test, Buddhism is fatally deficient, while Spinozism is the most perfect theory hitherto devised. You flee from the world and its labours ; Spinoza encourages men to live in the world both usefully and nobly. You try to escape from yourselves; Spinoza trains men to entertain a holy communion with themselves resulting in in- creasing self-knowledge. Therefore you have no public life, while some of Spinoza's finest deductions are political : strenuously asserting as a citizen that liberty which he renounces as an individual, he knows how to blend order and freedom, the legitimate powers of authority and the inalienable rights of the people. And if we consider his teaching from that point of view which most closely con- cerns our investigation, I may confidently ask, is it not full of joy and happiness? A main principle of his ethics affirms that "joyousness" (laetitia) marks the transition to a higher degree of perfection, because it supports and augments our power of action: to keep sadness aloof is, therefore, with him not a precept of well-being but of moral duty; and as we can master sadness only by en- hancing our strength of intellect, which, on its part, depends on the vigour of the body, joyousness is finally the emanation of a mens sana in corpore sano\ and being thus one of our highest aims, it is identified with the "good", as sadness is identified with "evil". a Hence follow the beautiful maxims : "The more cheerful we are, the more fully do we participate in the Divine nature"; and 388 PANTHEISM. "Happiness is tranquillity of the soul arising from a clear knowledge of God". a Let Spinoza be his own witness. He displayed a serenity undimmed by privation, a placid composure cloudless under the persecution of unscrupulous fanatics, a generous benevolence unchanged under stinging injustice, and a constant elevation to the sunny heights of reflection, which cast their radiance over every concern of daily existence. In simplicity of habits and greatness of aim, in purity of mind and singleness of purpose, he equalled Marcus Aurelius; in completeness of character and calmness of soul he surpassed him; for he needed not that incessant self-exhortation, and was not disturbed by that "restless yearning for something beyond", which some of the great Emperor's warmest admirers have acknow- ledged to be defects. His life is the strongest argument for his system; and this system is well calculated to lead all candid followers to similar perfection of character and happiness 7 . 'An angelic philosopher, indeed'! cried Humphrey ironically. 'Could he discover no better pastime than throwing helpless flies into a spider's web, to gloat over the cruel struggle? Like the Stoics, from whom he borrowed more than is generally supposed, he absolved men from every duty and consideration towards animals, merely because the nature of both is essentially different ; b and like the Stoics, he bluntly declared, "Pity, in a man who lives according to reason, is objectionable and inex- pedient' . 'Granting', said Panini with more decision than usual, 'the justice of all the praise that has been bestowed upon Spinoza's system, 1 think I have a right to transfer that praise, in a great measure, to the Hebrew Scriptures. "You have yourself described Spinoza's doctrine as a monotheism. However this may be, you will admit that its central sun is "the intellectual love of God" ; for it is this idea that imparts light and warmth to his cold and cheerless contemplations, and kindles that joy which PANTHEISM. 389 beautifies life and accompanies true felicity. Now I contend that the God who is so loved and produces these blessed effects, is not the God of Spinoza, who is "an extended thing", but the living God of Israel, whom the philosopher had learnt to adore in his youth, whom he was unable to uproot from his heart, and who, consciously or unconsciously, illumined and brightened his riper man- hood. If he had never known this God, or if he had not continued to feel His power and His paternal Provi- dence, he could on no account have conceived a vivifying "intellectual love", but would have sunk into that abyss of despondency and pessimism, which is the bane and the retribution of all pantheistic heresies. There rang in his ears for he treasured the Scriptures throughout life the words of the Psalmists, "Drawing near to God is joy to me", and, "One day in Thy courts is better than a thousand"; and there vibrated through his heart the utterances of the prophets, "By repentance and rest shall ye be saved, in tranquillity and confidence shall be your strength", and, "Walk in the path of goodness and you shall find repose for your souls"; till he was urged to exclaim, "Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous" ! a Prom these perennial sources he drew his inspirations of inward peace, of unity with the Eternal, and of joy in God: for his intellectual love of God is nothing else than the sterile pleasure in philosophy, impotent even to raise the sage above his own poor self, and utterly unavailing as a support for struggling mankind. b His only elements of truth and soundness he borrowed from that faith which he ungrate- fully deserted*. 'He eagerly searched the New Testament 7 , said Humphrey, 'and there he found: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, faith, meekness, temperance'. This was the text of all his dissertations. If he was "God-intoxicated", he took his incentives from those words of St. Paul and St. John, which he constantly quoted, "In Him we live and move and have our being", 390 PANTHEISM. and, "Hereby know that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His spirit".* Nay, I am confident that, though he unhappily did not join the Church of Christ after he had been banished from the Synagogue, he was in his heart a Christian, as his most intimate friends distinctly affirmed. b For in a remarkable letter, to quote one instance out of very many, he declared that "without that eternal Son of God, that is, without that eternal Wisdom, which : though appearing in all things and especially in the human mind, is most clearly of all manifested in Christ Jesus, nobody is able to attain a state of beatitude or salvation". In fact, he frequently used language which would befit a Christian Father'. 'Surely', said Rabbi Gideon with pointed irony, 'this cannot be denied by anyone who remembers the conclusion of your quotation: "When the Christians affirm that God has assumed the nature of a man, this, to confess the truth, does not appear to me less paradoxical than if someone were to tell me that the circle has assumed the nature of the square". d But I must add with respect to that much overrated apostate that, besides the Hebrew Sciptures, the mines from which he derived all that is profitable in his theories, were the Talmud and those Jewish philoso- phers whose works he continued to study, but whose names he never mentioned, though he occasionally sneered at their opinions. The Rabbins, like the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, offer many fine sentences in praise of joy and cheerfulness. Not as if, with Greek levity, they forgot the seriousness of life; for they founded all their institutions on the principles, "Rejoice with trembling", and, "Blessed is the man who feareth always" ; f and they advised that we should, in times of happiness, remind ourselves by voluntary sacrifices of the possibility of sudden and overwhelming reverses ; nor did they refuse their approval of the sombre picture drawn by the wise Sirach of the miseries and hardships of human life; h nay, in view of these heavy trials, they declared, "When man PANTHEISM. 391 is born, he is entered in the Book of Death, and when he dies, in the Book of Life";* they left us this lament: "Weep for him who loses, not for him who departs; he departs to rest, we remain for grief" ; b and the words of David, "Our days on the earth are as a shadow" 6 , they explained to mean that our days are not like the shadow of a tree or a tower, which lasts and is repeated, but like the shadow of a bird which flies by neither bird nor shadow remaining. But it is just on this account that they invited, though in a very different sense from that of the skeleton in the banquets of the Egyptians, "Hasten and eat, hasten and drink, this life is like a wedding day"; d they were sure that the Deity does not dwell on a sad face; 6 they reckoned "the stripes of the Pharisees", like the crimes of the cunning evildoer, among the misfortunes of the world ; f strongly insisted upon joyousness of heart during worship and prayer ;" declared hymns of praise the noblest form of devotion ; h regarded the Sabbath as the choicest boon, since it blesses the pious with "a new soul" breathing the peace and serenity of Paradise; and specially appointed various festivals of joy; 1 for they justly held that under the influence of cheerfulness the soul more readily opens itself and rises to a piety of pure love, untouched by hope of reward. k All this we find clearly reflected in Spinoza's writings. But his ecstatic admirers will be obliged still more to tone down the eulogies of his originality, when they learn that, both with respect to his notion of God and of Creation, he adopted almost literally some of the most striking ideas of Maimonides, Gersonides, and especially' of Creskas; that his chief conception, the intellectual love of God, corresponding to Maimonides' "fourth perfection", 1 which alone redeems his teaching from dreary inertness, was taken from the Kabbalah, whose "Adam Kadnion" or "First Creature", the sum total of all ideas, he repro- duced in his "Infinite Intellect" ; and that, in fact, he is virtually a Jewish philosopher, partly appropriating, partly 392 PANTHEISM. unfolding the views of his learned co-religionists who had preceded him.' a *I regret', said Mondoza, evidently not quite without a certain agitation, 'that I must contradict my worthy friend. Considerable industry, acumen and learning have been lavished on the task of proving Spinoza's indebtedness to Jewish thinkers; 6 but I believe, all these efforts have only served to exhibit his singular greatness and originality in a stronger light. He was, of course, familiar with the philosophical literature of his people, and could not fail occasionally to use a term or phrase impressed upon his mind from early youth, or even to adopt a subordinate idea. Indeed, with that comprehensiveness which is the criterion of genius, he gathered the materials for his edifice from all ages and all nations from Zeno and Epicurus, from Descartes, Hobbes and Bacon, from that Platonism which prevailed in the fifteenth and sixteenth century and combined Neoplatonic and Christian prin- ciples , and that Aristotelian physicism which, in the same ages, was elaborated into a kind of naturalistic meta- physics, and above all from the gifted Giordano Bruno, who united the chief ideas of these two schools and who treated copiously of "the Unity of all Existence", of the "universal Substance" and its "infinite Attributes", of God as "the immanent principle", and of many other points of primary importance in Spinoza's doctrine : d yet the plan and style of that edifice are his own grand conception; and he blends the heterogeneous materials, in most cases greatly improved, so skilfully and independently with his own cardinal thought of the absolute Substance, that there is no trace of incongruity, and the whole possesses the form and value of an entirely original production. A truth in Spinoza's mind was not, as it eminently was in the minds of the Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages, a fine pebble sparkling unproductively in the sand, but a grain put into fruitful soil. He admitted that some Jewish writers have, "as if through a mist", seen the truth "that PANTHEISM. 393 God, God's Intellect, and the things comprehended by His Intellect, are one and the same thing" ; a yet they had not the faculty or the courage to dissipate that mist. From their writings many views and speculations of undoubted depth and excellence might easily be collected; but they remained isolated and proved powerless to break down the prison walls of dogma and tradition. We may thus understand why Spinoza found it difficult to preserve his usual calmness of temper when he spoke of his philosophical co-religionists: Maimonides and his followers he described as "peripatetics indulging in a farrago of distinctions unworthy of notice", b and the Kabbalists as "triflers at whose insanity he was amazed". He was naturally apprehensive lest their occasional truths should countenance and support the radical errors with which these truths were associated. How, then, is it possible to stamp Spinoza as a "Jewish philosopher" ! If his views were Jewish, why was he excommunicated and execrated ? and yet at the time of his expulsion from the Synagogue, he had not yet departed so fundamentally from the tenets of his ancestors as when he wrote his principal work, the Ethics, in which all the borrowed elements were, by elimination or adaptation, more completely harmonised with his own inexorable principles. A cursory or biassed comparison may discover apparent similarities, but a more accurate examination shows the entire absence of a deeper affinity. It seems almost superfluous to point out the thorough differences, and nothing but the respect I enter- tain for the zeal and learning of my Rabbinical friend could induce me to add that the God of Maimonides is a personal Intelligence, the God of Spinoza a being without will and reason, and identical with Nature ; that Maimonides teaches a creation of the world in time by God's free resolve, Spinoza an eternal Substance which is its own cause; that the former counts liberty of will among the axiomatic truths requiring no proof, while the latter denies it; that the one postulates design and fitness 394 PANTHEISM. in the world, while the other rejects them categorically.* But need I refer to individual points ? The Jewish thinkers are beforehand determined to ward off as untrue any conclusions of philosophy opposed to their revealed religion, and they can therefore hardly be called philosophers; Spinoza's sole lawgiver is speculation, whose authority is to him absolute and final, and he has hence not only become the regenerator of philosophy but also one of the first champions of a sound criticism rationally applying to the Sciptures the ordinary canons of interpretation. 11 Yet I hail with sincere delight the strenuous exertions made by our pious friends towards claiming or reclaiming Spinoza. Those efforts seem to prove not only that the old hatred has happily died away and is being replaced by a secret sentiment of pride, but that even orthodoxy feels that the time has come for repeating that process which, during the last two thousand years, has been so often accomplished the process of reconciling, by con- cessions and modifications, the teaching of the Bible with the advancing spirit of the age'. Mondoza paused and expected a reply from Gideon or Panini, but neither of them answered both seemed absorbed in their thoughts. After a short interval, Melville said with his usual imperturbability : 'I readily acknowledge the great weight of some of the objections that have this evening been urged against the system of Spinoza: yet, whether it is rigorously consistent or not, whether it is a pure development of Descartes' doctrine or includes a hidden admixture of more ancient notions, it will ever remain a wonderful attempt at spiritualising Nature by entwining her laws with the necessity of the Divine Being or the inherent Cause of the world. 6 This is a Monism thoroughly congenial to me; and the mystical element it involves seems even to possess a charm of its own. As it leaves the notion of the PANTHEISM. 395 Deity intact, and merges the world in His essence, it creates a sublimity and unity which satisfy both the aspirations of the heart and the legitimate demands of the intellect; and it calls forth our admiration in the same degree as we are able to fathom its depths'. 'Spinoza's doctrines', said Abington with even more than his ordinary emphasis, 'imply the great redeeming feature that they nourish the feeling of absolute dependence on the Deity with an earnestness which stamps them as truly religious. However, they are tainted by that egotism which has indeed been praised as rational soberness, but which poisons all morality at its source. They establish self- preservation and utility as the sole principles of action; and holding "desire" to be man's innermost nature, they leave no room for sacrifice and devotion.* They are, from beginning to end, a tissue of mere rules of prudence. The same selfishness which debases the morality of the Stoics, destroys that of Spinoza, because both alike are emanations of an abstract pantheism. But Spinoza proceeds considerably farther than his heathen predecessors in decla- ring self-preservation to be man's supreme duty to which everything else must yield unconditionally; whence it follows that no chivalry, no death for our country or for truth is justifiable a worthy seal of the gospel of egotism' ! b 'As I have been directly attacked', said Attinghausen with great zest, *I am ready for defence. First I can quote some striking sentences from Spinoza's Ethics which not even a Christian's theosophic speculation can misunder- stand or depreciate. I will lay no stress on his demand that we should strive after virtue for its own sake, c since he makes no distinction between virtue and pleasure. But he defines "compassion" to be "charity" or "love" which so affects us that we delight in another's happiness and mourn for another's woe. d Can you still uphold your reproach of egotism? But this is not enough. The philosopher says: "The good which the virtuous desires for himself, he wishes to secure to others also, and his wish is the stronger, 396 PANTHEISM. the more he has advanced in the knowledge of God;"' "The eagerness of doing good, which results from oui living under the guidance of reason, this I call piety"; 1 "Whosoever submits to the direction of reason, endeavours as much as he possibly can, to requite another's hatred, anger or contempt with charity and generosity"/ Bui supposing even, that Spinoza introduced into his Ethics the principle of egotism, or of "self-preservation", he only did openly and ingenuously what men generally conceal either from others or from themselves; and I think it both more honourable and more brave candidly to avow a principle upon which we invariably act. As reason, said Spinoza, demands nothing against nature, it demands also that everyone should love himself, seek his advantage as far as it is really expedient, and seize any- thing that can lead him to greater perfection; in fact, that he should try by every means to preserve his own self. "This rule", he concluded, "is surely as incontest- able as the proposition that the whole is greater than the part". Like the Stoics, he contended that men who in this sense are led by reason, desire no more strongly that they themselves, than they desire that others, should be just, faithful and upright; and he was convinced that the principle requiring everyone to be intent on his own interests his true interests is the foundation of godly virtue and piety. d But against the charge of a cowardly love of life at the call of country or truth, I need not surely defend Spinoza. Every page of his writings breathes a high-souled heroism which he confirmed in his own life. He speaks of self-preservation as the highest duty only in opposition to suicide; 6 and so far is he from at- taching to life supreme importance that he condemns as immoral even the attempt to escape death from the hands of a murderer by telling an untruth f . Consciously or unconsciously, we shall always strive to make our morality contribute to our worldly well-being. If this is selfishness, it is human nature, which you cannot alter'. PANTHEISM. 397 'It is human nature unregenerated', replied Abington. 'The fathomless and insatiable gulf of Spinoza's Sub- stance swallows up all individuality. It admits only a dreary monotony of indistinguishable existences working, not for nor even through themselves, but for the sake of a whole which is held together by irresistible necessity. The vaunted "One and All" is a mere shadow. In such a theory there is no room for the two great ideas which alone impel men to acts of true morality, the ideas of uncalculating self-sacrifice and of Divine authority. Spinoza's "love" or "charity" is simply a sentiment of "mirth attended by the idea of an external cause" which it is desired to preserve, not for the sake of the beloved object, but for the sake of maintaining that mirth. a And as love and charity, so are gratitude, benevolence and those noble virtues of which Spinoza speaks so frequently and so beautifully, nothing more than means for the pro- tection of man's own pleasure ; nay that "intellectual love of God", so often praised as sublime, is only man's own sovereign delight which flows from knowledge and merges in this knowledge the restless desire for any other delight. The philosopher inculcates an active humanity, but chiefly on the principles that nothing is so useful to man as man "man is to man a God" ,and that the more perfect and powerful our fellow-men are, the more can they con- tribute to make ourselves more powerful and perfect, and consequently more happy. This is the kernel of his ethical code: the good is to be done because it is useful. b He is thus quite unable to avoid inextricable contradictions. He denies all liberty of will, and yet he affirms that his Ethics aim at exhibiting an exemplar, by the imitation of which men might improve in every virtue: can a willow ever become a vine, even if the finest specimen of a vine is placed before it as a model? That concession to free-will shows, to modify a line of Horace, "You may expel common sense with a pitchfork, it will ever come back". Spinoza acknowledges a God 398 PANTHEISM. who is good, yet has neither intellect nor will. Hence he naturally concludes, on the one hand, that there exists no e\jl in the world, since that which we call so cannot be associated with an essential attribute of God ; and on the other hand, that the world has been created and exists without any plan or design. But is there indeed nothing positively bad in the world? Spinoza answers categorically: No; not even Nero's matricide can be brought into relation with God, and was, in so far, no crime. 3 The things, he says sweepingly, are not more or less perfect from pleasing or offending man's mind, or from being in conformity with his nature or not ; b for "good" and "bad" are nothing absolute in the things considered by themselves, but merely modes of thought or conceptions formed by comparison. Again, if God, the world, or the Substance acts without design, and man is nothing else than a variety of the Substance, how is it possible to ascribe to man the faculty of acting with design? Yet this Spinoza does. All these and many similar aberrations in thought and morality are inevitable unless we admit a living and personal God, who, self- conscious and free, is the eternal principle of right and rules the universe by the purposes of His wisdom. Human logic, proud of its infallibility, is entangled in its own nets and is at last compelled to the humiliating avowal of its impotence. It aspires to build its tower into heaven, and the result is a confusion of tongues'. 'Say rather', cried Attinghausen, 'the confusion arose because Spinoza's logic was not faultless. Had he been consistent, he would have seen that, as God is without will and intellect and therefore totally indifferent to the evils of the world, it is impossible to uphold an optimism which is the most fruitful source of his errors. For to the question, why God did not create men so as to make them readily follow reason and instinctively shun sin and crime, he could only answer by a conceit which would have done honour to the subtle Duns Scotus or the PANTHEISM. 391) angelic Thomas Aquinas: God had the materials for producing everything from the highest to the lowest de- gree of perfection;* and as regards nature, he simply denies, in defiance of "all experience, that it produces anything that is defective 5 which paradox he would probably not have hazarded, had he thought it worth his while to test his abstractions by observation and the exact study of nature. Let me remind you of another fine instance of his dialectic skill, one that relates to a very important doctrine of his system. God, he says, loves Himself with an infinite spiritual love ; the soul's spiritual love of God is God's own love, by which He loves Himself; whence it follows that God, in as much as He loves Himself, loves men, and that consequently God's love of men and the soul's spiritual love of God are one and the same. c Has this not the true Scholastic ring? And yet the meaning is very simple if we remember that, according to Spinoza, God's perception is not different from the perceptions of the souls, as it is merely the compound or aggregate of the latter. d If thus two different names are bestowed upon the same thing, and are then identified, it is easy to give to a real identity the appearance of a reciprocity. But I must say once more, these are riddles which do not repay the trouble of solution; for Spinoza finally assumes a separate perception besides that of the human soul 6 a necessary consequence of his fluctuating notion of God. This is the just retribution of that philoso- phic haughtiness which loftily starts from general principles, instead of humbly beginning with a patient examination of details. Allusion has before been made to Spinoza's unfortunate habit of employing common words in a new and unusual sense. This is another cause of the many obscurities and the comparative sterility of his system. It imparts a shadowy vagueness to not a few propositions, and lends to others a fictitious significance. Thus there is great point in the sentence, "The knowledge of good and evil is only an emanation of cheerfulness or sadness, in 400 PANTHEISM. so far as we are conscious of it"; but it derives this poignancy only from our naturally understanding the words good and evil as that which is morally noble or obnoxious, whereas Spinoza takes them also as cheer- fulness and sadness, so that in reality the sentence is a tautology.* An elevated sound has the aphorism : "Whoever knows himself and his emotions fully and distinctly, knows God; and it is this love of God which should above all fill the soul;" b yet it is nothing more than an enunciation of formal logic without a distinct reality, as it simply states: the thinker loves thinking and philosophy best. Thus the author finally proceeds to frame apophthegms which those who take the words in their current meaning, cannot consider otherwise than paradoxical : for instance, "He who loves God, cannot desire that God should love him in return "; which, however, has only the simple and insignificant sense that true knowlege is aware that the inanimate Substance possesses no affections, and is there- fore incapable of love. And lastly, he concludes the proud structure of his Ethics with the epigram: "Hap- piness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself"/ 1 This utterance has called forth the highest admiration and has been praised as sublime; and yet, with regard to Spinoza's terminology, it is again merely a tautological expression, since he takes throughout joyfulness and virtue as identical. We should be disposed to look indulgently on this artful abuse of language, if it had not caused, and if it were not still causing, immense mischief. Spinoza's teaching is extolled for having "spiritualised matter", and having vindicated for the universe a divine principle : but divested of its hollow mystifications, it is an ordinary and godless materialism, which admits no higher spiritual element than human intelligence, and which is distinguished from that modern materialism which we profess by nothing except its fluctuations and inconsistencies. It has paved the way to the truth, which it approaches more closely than its metaphysical adherents are willing to avow'. PANTHEISM. 401 'It can never be allowed', said Melville calmly, but very determinedly, 'that the ideal Pantheism of Spinoza has any essential community with the inert and deadening materialism of our days. If both systems were separated by nothing else, the belief in Immortality taught by Spinoza would alone suffice to indicate the immeasurable chasm'. 'You could not have given into my hands a more ef- fective weapon', rejoined Attinghausen. 'For, indeed, of all the wonderful exploits of Spinoza's logic none is so astounding as the dexterity with which he manages to distil the dogma of Immortality out of his Substance without reason and will, and out of his soul which "is able to conceive images, or to remember the past, only while its body exists".* He says literally: "There is in God necessarily a perception expressing the essence of this or that human body under the form of eternity", and therefore "can the human soul not wholly perish with the body, but something remains of it which is eternal". 6 What does this signify? The soul can indeed conceive nothing without its body, but it can penetrate into the "essence" of bodies, independently of their existence in time; and as this "essence", which is also exempt from all relations of time, coincides with the Substance and its attributes, which are eternal, the soul likewise is eternal and immortal. The soul's Immortality consists, therefore, in the adequate comprehension of those eternal things which are equivalent to God, and which secure imperishable existence to the soul that fathoms them. It is, like all the other notions of Spinoza, simply an abstraction of thought; it is philosophical know- ledge, not real permanence ; it is a part of that specula- tive truth which, existing by itself, is imagined apart from actual existence; it is surely not the "Immortality" of religion in the sense which men are wont to connect with that term; it involves no perpetuity of the soul, no individual life in another world with the promise of DD 402 PANTHEISM. compensation for trials suffered, or the hope of reunion with the departed souls of our heloved. Nor does Spinoza clearly affirm that the soul is immortal; he merely hints that it cannot "wholly" be destroyed with the body, and that "something" remains, which is eternal. What is this "something"? It is not the soul itself, but its "essence", or its intelligence and knowledge. It is a daring and questionable sleight of hand; for it leads consistently to the conclusion, assumed by the Stoics also, that the "intelligent" souls only, that is the souls of the wise, are immortal, but not those of other men, a since the in- telligent soul only is a part of Grod; b and it compels the inference that the essence of the body also is imperishable, as according to Spinoza extension is no less an eternal attribute of the Substance than thinking, since both are parallel and differ only in conception. Moreover, he attempts no real proof whatever of the assertion that the essence of the soul is a knowledge capable of existing without the body. And lastly, his propositions regarding Immortality are an inorganic appendage to his system, for the completeness of which, as he himself declares, it is unnecessary. You are welcome to such an Immorta- lity, as you were welcome to an impalpable God, who is no more than the sum of all human souls : d both the one and the other are devoid of all personality'. 6 'Deep wisdom', said Abington calmly, 'and fortifying truth lie in the idea of the absolute unity of the human soul and Divine Intelligence; for this idea expands the individual into the Infinite, and rouses within him the feelings of awe and adoration, which are the mainsprings of all that is noble and holy. That idea has, therefore, been adopted with equal fervour by Schleiermacher and Hegel, and by all who feel, or desire their mind to be, at one with that of the Universe'. 'These pathetic oracles', rejoined Attinghausen im- patiently, 'I can only meet with the unpathetic fact, that for Spinoza the sentiments of awe and adoration, or of PANTHEISM. 403 respect for any superhuman authority, did not at all exist. His supreme principle was intellectual, not moral ; and in his political theories especially he entirely ignores ethics and religion as practical agencies'. 'I believe', said Mondoza, 'we have arrived at the point where we may safely draw a conclusion with reference to the chief end of our discussion. We shall hardly be able to deny that, among all the varied endowments of man, Spinoza assigns to a single one the intellect an almost exclusive dominion, and allows to the rest to morality, religion, the feelings, aesthetics a legitimate right only in so far as they flow from that ruling prin- ciple or can be subordinated to it. That absolute unity, or Monism, which he strives to establish in the material world, he endeavours to construct also in the world of the mind: with the universal and eternal Substance cor- responds the all-comprising and all-directing Intellect. It is a rigorism of reason exceeding that of the Stoics. The danger of this onesidedness seems to be increased by the circumstance that Spinoza, fearlessly consistent in this respect, constitutes self-preservation and utility as the chief motives of human action. But the danger vanishes if we remember that, in reality, it is not simply the intellect to which Spinoza attributs the highest rank, but "the intellectual love of God", that is, in his language, the innermost and enthusiastic delight in knowledge and enquiry, study and research, in a word the irrepressible and unconquerable yearning for Truth. The "intellect", so taken, is not an abstract and theoretical faculty, but a living and powerful motive; it leads not to a passive quies- cence, but, as the whole universe and all mankind are the objects of knowledge, to an energetic participation in all the manifold interests of society. Spinoza's doctrine furnishes us, therefore, with a new and most important element of happiness the search of truth for its own sake, since truth is identical with joy, and joy with virtue. In thus mingling all essential notions into one, the system partially remedies 404 PANTHEISM. the defect which undoubtedly attaches to its fundamental design; for it combines the intellectualism of Aristotle and the Stoa with the dignified eudaemonism of Epi- curus, and creates a serene felicity of combined reflection and gladness. It considers meditation imperfect, unless it engenders a glow of joy; and it considers joy imperfect, unless it pervades all our faculties alike, and thus holds them in equipoise. This "waveless calm of the soul" is Spinoza's consummation of bliss'. 'Granting', interrupted Canon Mortimer, 'that such a doctrine might satisfy the sage, is it suitable for the mul- titude or even the generality of men? Can we suppose these to be so swayed by a passion for thought and knowledge, that it grows into an active impulse of virtuous conduct' ? 'This may be doubtful', replied Mondoza; 'but here fortunately enters, as an auxiliary and a rescuer, that very principle of the system which, at first sight, is almost repulsive and has been branded as its great blot the undisguised principle of egotism. Teaching us to regard every boon and advancement of our fellow-men as a boon and advancement for ourselves, it encourges all works of love, charity and beneficence, with a view of securing both to the community and to every individual the utmost possible power and happiness, since through these we increase our own. The motive is not elevated, but it is judicious, because it is derived from a propensity or defect of human nature, which seems ineradicable. It is indeed egotism, but an enlightened one. It does not for a moment renounce the intellect as the governing lawgiver; it is a step, though only a first step, in the right direction; it may prove, and in many cases does prove, "a schoolmaster to bring" or train men to the true and pure intellectual joy; and where it has nol this effect, it produces at least all the pradieal results of an exalted morality. Thus Spinoza, in his seclusior and solitude, worked out a theory which, wonderfully uniting the highest and the meanest instincts the Divine PANTHEISM. 405 and the human, the ideal and the selfish renders it pos- sible to the refined and the gifted to live as philosophers, and to the worldly and unintellectual to attain a morality of prudence useful to others no less than themselves, and at the same time serving as an efficient medium of self-im- provement. How mighty a force that love of truth is, Spinoza proved both as a young man when he defied the threats and resisted the allurements of his co-religionists, and towards the close of his life when he declined the honourable offer of an academical chair made to him by a Christian prince, because he would neither compromise his convictions nor in any way evade the spirit of his pledges. In him Truth had all the strength of an ele- mentary power. This is the grand aim and example he has bequeathed to mankind'. Although the subject had greatly taxed the attention of some, the friends were not yet inclined to conclude the discussion for the evening. Enjoying the delicious coolness of the air, they partook of refreshments on the terrace, and then, either sitting in groups or walking in pairs, conversed on Spinoza and his system with great vivacity. The host was rejoiced to see side by side Humphrey with Rabbi Gideon, and Melville with Atting- hausen; while he remarked with concern that the Orientals kept, as usual, apart from each other in mutual distrust or antipathy, He felt that a full opportunity should be given to them to state their views and doubts on a question which appeared to be so closely connected with some of their principal tenets. He was, therefore, much gratified when Arvada-Kalama, soon after the guests had re-assembled, began, in immediate continuation of the previous controversy: 'I sincerely believe, that the system of the Eastern thinker for was not Spinoza a Hebrew? virtually coin- cides with the highest or Yedanta form of our Hindoo speculations. Like him, we start from one all-embracing 406 PANTHEISM. existence; like him, we define this one reality indifferently as "knowledge" or "God"; and like him, we strive after supreme felicity through "entity, thought, and joy", which three, however as is also the case in his theory are only one, "the existent joy-thought"'. 'But how do you arrive at this "existent joy-thought"'? said Asho-raoco ironically. 'By subtleties and fancies infinitely stranger than those that have just been exposed. As "knowledge" is with you "the one and the all", there is no object of knowledge, for there is nothing left that can be known. God, filling the universe with his omni- presence and omniscience, and yet, as you believe, unable to create out of nothing, creates the world out of him- self. This is your first great fallacy: your god is the material as well as the efficient cause of the universe, both creator and nature, doer and deed. a And what is the world? An aggregate of souls with limited capacities, such as the souls of men. But how can an omnipotent and omnipresent God produce anything limited and finite? You answer: the soul of man is indeed God, or infinite like God, but man is ignorant of this fact. Without asking how you can assume that to be a fact which you Imow not to be a fact, I insist that, by a single artifice, you dethrone your knowledge and set up in its place ignorance (adjuana). You are for a moment disconcerted and think that, if it were not for this fatal ignorance, the woeful world would not exist; for there would be nothing except God and God- like souls. But if ignorance is the cause of the world, it must be an energy or a power, a prakriti or sakti; and as energy and power belong to none but the one God, ignorance is a force with divine attributes, through the influence of which "souls which are God do not know that they are so". But this is not enough; it is that ignorance which causes the world to seem real, which in fact is no reality, but an illusion or maya, that is, deceit or jugglery; and hence maya is elevated into a supreme goddess and made the wife of Brahma the Creator'! PANTHEISM. 407 'This mythological excrescence of later dreamers', said Arvada-Kalama, 'is quite foreign to the genuine Vedantin philosophy, which is complete and consistent in itself.* 'Yet it now forms undeniably part of the popular creed', rejoined Asho-raoco; 'nay.it is one of its es- sential dogmas. As, therefore, the universe is the joint result of the all-pervading Soul and of Ignorance strange couple! . . . 'Not stranger', interrupted Arvada-Kalama, 'than your dual Lords of light and darkness with their legions of attendant demons'. 'And as the Soul is the Substance 1 , continued the Parsee with composure, 'it follows that Ignorance must be identical with the sum total of the attributes or qualities, of which you assume three pure cognition, lively emotion, and inertness, engendering, severally, hap- piness, pain, and indifference. Your happiness, therefore, if it is not "fettered", as you call it, by the two other qualities, is the offspring of dark ignorance, whereas that of Spinoza is the child of bright intelligence. Your hap- piness, akin to illusion, lulls you into a brooding lethargy ; his happiness, akin to love and joy, urges him to a buoyant activity. Your world is a phantasmagoria of your own deception, his world is an eternal creation. Your whole doctrine, when tried and sifted, crumbles like a well sunk in loose sand. How can you presume that both systems are analogous? They are as opposite as Ormuzd and Ahriman, whose mysteries have never touched your soul as opposite as the unity of mankind taught by the wise Hebrew and the detestable distinction of castes forced by Hindoo pundits upon their own people'. b 'You cannot abhor the curse of castes more deeply than I do', said Arvada-Kalama in a milder tone; 'yet while rejecting the errors and superstitions of the Vedanta, I retain that part of its teaching which, in essential ac- cordance with Spinoza, declares that "Ananda or felicity is Bralime, since all beings are produced from pleasure; 408 PANTHEISM. when born, they live by joy; they tend towards happiness; they pass into felicity"'.* 'A much greater affinity', said Gregovius, 'can, I believe, be pointed out between the ethics of Spinoza and the system of Confucius'. 'How is it possible', cried Humphrey, 'to speak of a system where we have nothing but a mass of incongruous and disconnected aphorisms'! 'However grave the faults of Spinoza may be', added Berghorn, 'he was at least penetrated with a deep longing for the Divine and the Infinite; but the teaching of Con- fucius is a dry and trivial morality that has no other aim than cold expediency and is destitute both of a God and a heaven. It has thrown no new light upon any of the higher questions; it has given no impulse whatever to religion'. 'Neither the one reproach nor the other', said Gregovius, 'seems to me justified by a more accurate acquaintance with Confucius' authentic writings, especially the Ta-Hio and the Tchong-Yong. These works are as remarkable for their close reasoning as for their elevation of thought ; and if, while satisfying our profounder nature, they are at the same time eminently practical if, while pointing to heaven, they try to secure to men a paradise on earth ,that is surely no fault or defect'. 'This is the very conviction at which I arrived', said Subbhuti, 'when I studied the great man's precepts during my stay in China; and it has exercised upon my mind a more powerful influence than I dare to confess to myself. 'It is easy', said Berghorn positively, 'to venture as- sertions or to indulge in effusions of sentiment. Con- fucius' shallow doctrine, I repeat, has little of true morality, and nothing whatever of religion'. 'Well, let us see', said Gregovius with his usual cheer- fulness. 'What does Confucius propose to teach? The Ta-Hio, that is, the Sublime Science. What does he PANTHEISM. 409 consider to be the foundations of this Science? "The restoration of celestial virtue in its original purity and perfection within ourselves, all-embracing charity, and the steadfast perseverance in the highest good"'. 'But it would be important to know', said Berghorn, frowning, 'what he exactly understands by "the highest good"'. 'Thus much is certain', said Gregovius, 'that it is not the Cyrenaic's "pleasure", nor the vulgar Epicurean's eudae- monism. But what is it positively? You will perhaps be able to form an idea if I describe to you what Confucius regards to be the result of the "steadfast perseverance in the highest good". He who is able to persevere in the highest good, he says, "has attained firmness of character: he who has attained firmness of character, possesses clearness of intellect and purity of heart: he who has acquired clearness of intellect and purity of heart, has tranquillity of mind and peace of soul : he who has secured tranquillity of mind and peace of soul, is enabled to reflect with precision: and he who is enabled to reflect with precision, is capable of attaining his final object, which consists in achieving by serious thought a satisfactory result of meditation". So far Confucius. Now, I may ask, what kind of "highest good" can that be which bears such fruits? which engenders firmness of character, clearnes of intellect and purity of heart, tran- quillity of mind and peace of soul, precision and energy of thought? The answer cannot be doubtful if we consider, besides, the two other foundations of the sublime Science before mentioned the restoration, within ourselves, of the celestial virtue in its original purity (for the Chinese sage considers men to be created in moral perfection), and all-embracing charity.* The highest boon can only be true virtue producing inward felicity a virtue which ennobles life, and a felicity which is not deemed complete unless it tries, by sympathy and benevolence, to create the same happy condition for others also. It is true, 410 PANTHEISM. Confucius does not use the word God, but is not the idea Divine? Is it not as pure and elevated as that of any Kingdom of God established on earth by love and peace' ? 'But how can man', replied Humphrey sharply, 'establish a Kingdom of God on earth without a Divine prototype ? Sinful man, however high he rises, can only reach a sinful humanity. Supposing even that Confucius is right in his pagan assumption that man is born pure, he admits that this purity is lost after birth and must be regained by toilsome efforts : but what is the true and eternal standard of righteousness ? what incentive is there for striving after perfection? and who is the judge to decide whether it has been attained or not'? 'I am not bound', said Gregovius, 'to defend more than I have affirmed. I desired to call attention to the analogies between the doctrines of Confucius and Spinoza: in both, philosophy tends mainly to ethics ; both draw within the circle of their enquiry the state, although that of Confucius is essentially patriarchal in organisation;* 1 and both regard virtue as knowledge or the result of intellectual labour. For making goodness a reality in the world, men require intelligence and energy, knowledge and resolution. 5 The ideal of original purity, which is implanted in the human soul, is for Confucius and for the millions who adhere to him in truth a deity full of life, power and majesty, and works in them the same effects as the personal God in other millions. He writes: "The divine spirit inherent in the spirit of man produces in us the celestial virtue by its blissful superabundance. Although we do not behold that spirit, it makes itself inwardly felt; although we do not hear it, we yet perceive its voice; for it is eternally and inseparably united with all men. It imparts to all the faculty of improving, gaining intelligence, and becoming more perfect, and it causes everyone to stimulate himself and others to the scrupulous performance of duty". c '"Celestial virtue" ming-te is, therefore, to Confucius what to his great rival Lao-tse is the "godly virtue" PANTHEISM. 411 tao-te: it dwells only in hearts that are pure, stainless and pious. a None of his precepts is without the sanctity of religion, none without the deep and strong conviction of a holy will which vibrates in the minds of men and shapes their destinies. That he did not confine his thoughts to the visible world is evident from the worship of ancestors which he strongly upheld and which is inconceivable without the belief in the permanence of souls. Permit me only to point out in addition that the one chain of reasoning I have quoted sufficiently proves how much the memory of the great man is wronged by those translators and popularisers who offer to the public nothing but detached and desultory fragments'. 'I am much afraid', said Abington, 'that in that theory lurks the Stoic's and Spinoza's pride which, elated by "knowledge", has one law for the sage and another for the meaner man'. 'Allow me to differ', replied Gregovius deferentially. 'Confucius declares that the Tao as conceived by the wise is indeed transcendently mysterious and etherial, but that "all men, even those of limited intelligence, may have knowledge of the Tao; while to fathom it completely, even the wisdom of the most highly gifted is insufficient". 1 * This, you will admit, is neither exclusiveness nor arrogance; and with unfeigned humility Confucius again and again confesses that he has never been able perfectly to fulfil a single one of the chief duties. He was fond of quoting the verse from the Book of Songs, "Over the silk garment embroidered with bright flowers, I wear a simple robe" : like this, he said, should be the Tao of the wise an illumined virtue not manifested by the loud boast of high-sounding words. d To him all men were equals : "From the Emperor down to his lowest subject, self-improvement is the task incumbent on all alike; it is the fundamental requirement of all'". 6 'Confucius goes even farther', said Subbhuti with fervour; 'his heart embraced the whole world. He refers to the 412 PANTHEISM. old wise kings who strove to raise a universal empire of peace and felicity by fanning anew the flame of celestial virtue ; they began, he says, with ruling their own feudal kingdom in accordance with their principles of enlighten- ment; therefore they gave to their families the fullest harmony; to attain this end they tried to make them- selves more noble and perfect; hence they endeavoured to acquire a pure and upright heart; this they laboured to secure by truthful and pure intentions; for which purpose they aimed at reaching the highest possible knowledge which enables the mind to explore the things in their innermost and spiritual essence and their dominant ideas. As models of such a general reign of happiness he set forth the government of the Emperors Shun and Wu-wang, who realised the golden age on earth'. a 'But nevertheless', protested Gideon, 'Confucius' morality, because destitute of any higher motive, is cold and bare'. 'Cold and selfish', echoed Humphrey. 'It is the morality of Hillel, the morality of Chris V, replied Gregovius; 'for like them Confucius taught: "What we do not wish others to do to us, that we should not do to others"; and "What you dislike to be commanded by your superiors, that do not command your inferiors". This he called the plain and infallible rule of right conduct. b It is the canon propounded by nearly all civilised nations. 6 "Humanity, that is man" was Confucius' pithy apophtegm'. d 'Selfish you call the doctrine of the Chinese sage'? exclaimed Subbhuti. 'It is ever the same meaningless charge. He who has attained eternal truth, enjoins Confucius, is not content with improving himself, but tries to make others perfect; and he only who combines the one task with the other, possesses virtue such as corresponds with our higher nature'. 6 'To the worldly-minded', said Asho-raoco, who had intently followed the speakers, 'truth and truthfulness are not of -such paramount sanctity as they are to Confucius, PANTHEISM. 413 who declares that "only he who is thoroughly true in himself has the Tao and is penetrated with the Tao; for eternal truth is the Tao of heaven, and inward truth is the Tao, or the Divine, in man". a And still more pregnantly he says, "Untruth is unreality ". b Is it a reproach that, in demanding purity of soul, he does not forget the common duties of life and thus incites and trains his votaries to energetic action'? 'And as regards the "coldness or barrenness" of his maxims', continued Gregovius, 'this may be admitted if it means absence of miracles, myths and legends, or ab- sence of obscurely recondite and metaphysical speculations. Confucius offered the simple, transparent truth which leads to virtue. He firmly disdained all accessories which might dim the clearness or imperil the vigour of mental or moral perception. "I desire to give light", he said, "not brilliancy"'. 'This is an admirable principle', said Attinghausen with keen satisfaction. 'But did Confucius remain quite faithful to it, and am I righty informed that he established a difference between sage and sainV? 'Certainly', said Gregovius, smiling. 'He distinguished between the wise man who teaches the natural duties, and the holy man who reveals the eternal truths'. d 'Alas, alas'! said Attinghausen, greatly disappointed. 'The weakness of man ! Actually the mischievous contrast of natural and revealed religion! That even a Confucius could go so lamentably astray ! For where the saint is, the mystic is not far'. 'I do not know', said Gregovius, trying hard to be serious, 'whether you allude to Confucius' doctrine of a Messiah or of a Trinity'. 'A Chinese Messiah and Trinity'! exclaimed Atting- hausen in amazement. 'Well', replied Gregovius genially, 'the term Messiah is, of course, not Chinese, but that of Trinity is. In his Tchong-yong Confucius says: "The Tao, as known by the 414 PANTHEISM. saint, is of infinite sublimity far removed from us, far far away in heaven. But", he continues, "we are waiting for that man, the holy one, who will one day be sent to us", and who, absolutely perfect, will disclose to us the Tao with infallibility and in all its completeness'.* 'Even the distant heathens', said Abington earnestly, 'nourished the vague expectation or prophecy that, in due time, there would arise in the west a holy Ruler, Teacher and Saviour of men; and readily did the three kings of the East follow the star that guided them to Bethlehem. Most memorable are the words employed by Lao-tse, Confucius' elder contemporary, with respect to the holy one: "He bears the dust of the world and yet is called lord of lords; he bears the misery of the world and yet is called king of the whole world'". b 'However this may be', said Gregovius quietly, 'the belief in the advent of a perfect Saint disarms at least those who stigmatise Confucius' teaching as commonplace and trite; for that belief raises it into the sphere of the ideal, and the expected Saint may be taken as the exemplar who is to the follower of Confucius the embodiment of all perfection of mind and heart, and the exalted standard by which he measures everything human and earthly'. 'Did Confucius', enquired Attinghausen, 'conceive this Saint as a supernatural being'? 'I should hardly think so', replied Gregovius; 'for he says that "the testimony of the Saint who is to come after a hundred generations, is as unerring as the testimony of the Divine mind immanent in the human intellect". The Saint is, therefore, only an absolutely sinless man'. c 'Such a man', rejoined Attinghausen, 'is a fiction, and postulating one like him, leads inevitably to superstition and enthusiastic reverie'. 'This cannot well be denied', observed Gregovius; 'for the saint who has reached the complete wisdom of the Tao, Confucius contends, is able to predict the whole future, since his knowledge is equal to that of God'. d PANTHEISM. 415 'This aberration', said Attinghausen with an air of triumph, 'is the deserved punishment for extravagant assumptions. But now', he added more reverently, 'I am curious to learu the nature of the Chinese Trinity'. Whatever it is', said Abington with earnestness, 'whether it be elevated or not, it bears at least witness, like many other pagan theories of the Trinity, to the patent fact that "the reflecting mind of man, in a certain stage of its progress, must necessarily arrive at the conception and development of that idea"'. a 'The Persian Avesta also', added Humphrey eagerly, 'often invokes and praises together Ahura-Mazda, Mithra, and the holy Craosha, evidently forming a kind of Trinity, though it was perhaps only comprehended as in a dark image ; b for Craosha is probably the soul of Ahura-Mazda, that is, the Holy Ghost'. c 'This is new to me', said Asho-raoco pensively, 'and I have never heard or read of it. True, true', he continued, lowering his voice, 'there are in our holy Books some remarkable passages where Ahura-Mazda is addressed in the plural and yet seems to be conceived as one person. Should it really be so? No, no', he added resolutely, 'I cling to that unity which has at last dawned upon my struggling mind: should I now thoughtlessly exchange it for a trinity' ? 'The ancient Babylonians likewise', continued Humphrey rapidly, 'included in their large Pantheon the three leading gods Anu, Bel, and Hea, a trinity representing the deity under a threefold aspect Anu, the god of heaven and father of the gods; Bel, the god of the earth; and Hea, the god of the ocean and of the forces of nature ; d though the heathen confusion and arbitrariness are manifested in the fact that subsequently Bel was raised from the second to the first rank. I need not remind you that the Egyptians, besides cherishing a primitive monotheism, entertained no less clearly the idea of a divine trias, which appears under the most varied forms, and that, as one old document 416 PANTHEISM. declares, "Three were the beginning of the gods Amon, Ra, and Ptah", or Amon, Ptah, and Kneph, that is, God the Father, the Creator or Logos, and the Divine Spirit. a Moreover 7 . . . 'What is, I ask again', interrupted Attinghausen impa- tiently, 'the nature of the Chinese Trinity'? 'Well', resumed Gregovius placidly, 'Confucius teaches : "Only the saint, who has on earth received the knowledge of eternal truth, obtains the faculty of comprehending his Divine nature in its innermost depths ; but if he has gained that faculty, he will also be able to comprehend the Divine nature of mankind in general and to penetrate into the true character of all creatures. When he has advanced to this stage, he acquires the power of assisting heaven and earth in their glorious and all-beneficent works; and then he may be said to form, together with heaven and earth, the Trinity". b 'Hence the Trinity of Confucius consists of the trans- cendental Deity who is enthroned in heaven and has created the world; the immanent Deity who appears visible or rules on earth and in nature ; and the holy ideal of human dignity and perfection'. 'I am somewhat relieved', said Attinghausen; 'it is at least not more abstruse than might be expected in any venturesome roamings into the visionary realms of trans- cendency and immanency'. 6 'Confucius could not essentially err', said Melville, 'as he was thoroughly imbued with the principles of a sound pantheism, which constitutes his strongest affinity with Spinoza. I do not remember his exact words, but pantheistic ideas pervade all his profounder writings'. 'True', said Subbhuti with zeal ; 'in a remarkable passage of the Tchong-yong he says: "As the numberless beings that grow up on the earth simultaneously without injuring or disturbing one another, have their prototypes in the heavenly bodies which simul- taneously move in their orbits without ever being brought into confusion, so also the power and virtue inherent in the creatures are emanations from the superabundance of the one mighty power and virtue by which all is created, PANTHEISM. 417 endowed with life, and led onward towards its final purpose. And it is this that invests heaven and earth with an aspect so truly sublime"'.* 'This is indeed your dear Pantheism', said Attinghausen, 'refulgent in the roseate hues of your no less dear Optimism, though distorted by the Procrustean principle of design'. 'We may well overlook the one theoretical mistake', rejoined Melville ; 'for in a life of eager action the sage of Confucius preserves purity and tastes constant joy. "Penetrating into his heart with a searching eye, he finds nothing that can cause him pain or grief, for he feels himself free from all baseness in his pursuits, aspirations and intentions". He needs neither blush before himself nor others, for he is true in word and deed. He is fortified by the inspiring thought that he is one with Sublime Truth, the incomparable Tao of heaven and earth, which, uncreated and imperishable, is unfathomable and infinite in majesty and wisdom, itself unchangeable yet the cause of all change, the Source and Preserver of all beings. b The Tao is the jewel he carries in his bosom from his birth ; he has the duty to preserve it in its brilliancy and to make it shine in all the radiance of its light and beauty, so as to illumine his own soul and to warm the hearts of his fellow-men. If he succeeds, his Tao becomes the celestial virtue, the ming-te, which strives to bestow upon all mankind peace, righteousness and felicity; and he has gained the road to the highest perfection. Beautiful goal, transforming earth into heaven'! No one felt inclined to speak after these earnest words, to which Melville's manner imparted a religious solemnity, and which seemed so well to reflect the ethical elevation of his own noble Pantheism; and as the hour was unusually late, the friends dispersed soon afterwards, Wolfram alone remaining for some time longer in close conversation with the host. EE X. PESSIMISM. WHEN the company met again the next evening, it was long before they were able to collect their thoughts for a systematic discussion. That morning's papers had reported a whole budget of terrible catastrophes a colliery explosion in the north of England, a railway accident in the Midland Counties, and a tornado in the East, all attended with a frightful loss of life. Atting- hausen seemed, therefore, to be in harmony with the prevailing mood, when he said in a lugubrious tone of voice : 'Alas, alas, we poor mortals! We ever remain the sport of blind chance and cruel elements. But this is not the worst. We appear to be doomed to the hopeless lot of the Danaids: the sieve of our knowledge is being constantly filled, yet it is never full. Errors that were deemed to have been thoroughly uprooted, grow up again with a ranker luxuriance, though perhaps in a modified form; and we have to begin anew the old weary round of toilsome labour'. 'I wonder', said Berghorn tartly, 'what this dreary threnody portends, and what doleful idea it is meant to herald'. 'I cannot help', continued Attinghausen with the same melancholy, which he made comical efforts to sustain, 'I cannot help deploring the wilfulness of men who, undeterred by the luckless fate of a host of Icarian adventurers, persist in reckless flights into the impalpable ether of metaphysics, and thereby threaten to consign even our fine and healthy Pessimism to a fathomless grave'. PESSIMISM. 419 'Pessimism'! cried Berghorn sarcastically. '"Das ist des Pudel's Kern" ! It is a principle as false as it is per- nicious'. 'Optimism, I maintain', replied Attinghausen, now with his usual buoyancy, 'is a principle as wicked as it is perverse;* for it is callously blind and deaf to the horrible misery that surrounds us, and it constantly feeds that hideous monster selfishness, against which you have struggled for thousands of years in vain. You have tried your eudaeinonistic philosophies and have failed; you have tried your supernatural theologies and have signally failed : that hydra is as rampant and as bristling with vitality as ever. Pessimism is the torch of lolaus that burns out the poisonous serpents at the root'. 'I am happy to perceive', said Mondoza cheerfully, 'that, for once, you are not too proud to betray your nobleness of aim. This chief end of self-conquest places you into essential agreement with your opponents, and we can, therefore, follow the contest without anxiety'. 'I am afraid', answered Attinghausen, 'our differences are radical. We do not consider self-denial the aim but the means. For we contend that man must begin with extirpating all love of self, and then he will be sure to find and to obey a code of pure morality. But you begin with enjoining upon men what you believe to be a code of pure morality by which you expect to train them ultimately to self-denial. Your enterprise is a priori as hopeless as history has proved it to be. As your code sets forth "happiness" as man's supreme object, it is pervaded by that very egotism which it is meant to eradicate. Whether your happiness be that of the Epi- curean, the Christian, or the Spinozist, that is, whether it be expected in this world or in another, whether it be sought in delights of the body or of the intellect, your morality is sapped at its foundation: for striving after happiness in whatever form is pitiful and despicable egotism'. 420 PESSIMISM. 'But the Christian', said Abington, 'is taught above all resignation, which is the very opposite of self-assertion'. 'This is true', replied Attinghausen quickly, 'it is the very opposite of selfishness it is the other extreme which proves the utter hollowness of your eudaemonistic dreams. After having moved heaven and earth to foster your precious self, you finally abandon it as absolutely worthless. Cured of the vain illusions of the world, you throw away, in the bitterness of your heart, that for the sake of which you fancied the whole world was created. You deny the lord you professed to serve, and in disgust and anger you turn away from the deceitful idol'. 8 'Christian resignation', rejoined Abington, 'has in it nothing of bitterness, disgust or anger. It renounces freely, nay cheerfully, the boons withheld by an all-wise Providence, but it is ready at any moment gratefully to accept those which its beneficence may be disposed to grant. But I wonder that you to whom nature's law is supreme, do not see that it is in direct contradiction to your Pessimism: for nature teaches that every creature strives not only after self-preservation but after enjoyment, or as one of your favourite poets says: "Was lebt, will sich erfreun". Why, then, do you so persistently revolt against her benign ordinances'? 'I might retort', answered Attinghausen eagerly, 'by saying, I greatly wonder that you who so systematically debase nature's law as opposed to the regenerated spirit, so strongly urge me to cleave to it when I attempt to rise above the selfishness of its lessons. But I deny your premises. It is quite fitting in a convivial song to say that "all that lives is bent on enjoying life". But that is a poetical license. Look at the reality', continued Attinghausen, relapsing into a tone of dismal lamentation, which caused no little hilarity, and speaking with a tentativeness and hesitation quite foreign to him; 'where- ver you turn, you see gloom, agony, and despair; . . . nature in arms against man, and man arrayed against PESSIMISM. 421 rapacious beasts and . . . and against his fellow-men; the heart of poor mortals torn asunder by fierce passions ; the needy groaning under their misery and the rich unfit for the Kingdom of Heaven ... I mean unfit by the thousand ills of body and mind to enjoy their wealth; not a beam of gladness anywhere, not a single ray of ... not a single ray' . . .* 'Really', interrupted Canon Mortimer, with the merriest peal of laughter, 'it is impossible to remain serious in hearing this dirge from your lips. If I have ever had the good fortune to see keen enjoyment, I have witnessed it in the zest with which you attack and try to overwhelm your luckless opponents, in the relish with which you expound your theories of protoplastic cells and of absolute Monism, your ontogenesis and phylogenesis nay your very Pessimism, in which you revel with the hearty delight of an intellectual Epicurean. No wonder that your enthusiastic praise of Pessimism excuse the remark : is singularly strained and forced. For once you are deserted by your usual flow and readiness of language. Pessimism is obviously not natural to you ; it is an adopted principle against which the hopeful elasticity of your practical character constantly reacts; and you enjoy life it may be to your great regret and grief as thoroughly as I wish all men may enjoy it'. 'Did I ever admit', replied Attinghausen with his ordinary vivacity, 'that Pessimism was comfortless? Have I not repeatedly declared that it is compatible with considerable and real cheerfulness? Yet I affirm that there is no salvation except in Schopenhauers "Negation of life" VerneinungzumLeben. This voluntary removal, through the power of our "will", of a world which exists only as our "conception", can alone rescue us from that demon of egotism which permits us neither rest nor happiness'. 'You have betrayed yourself, cried Humphrey trium- phantly, 'you have revealed the glaring sophistry of your creed. You reject or "negative" the world, and for what 422 PESSIMISM. object? To attain "rest and happiness". Who does not see that this is the coarsest egotism or, as you are pleased to call it, "individual eudaemonism" ? You are weary of the evils and troubles which, you believe, fill the world, and instead of trying to remedy them or at least sharing them courageously with your fellow-men, you banish, in your idea, the world from existence and retire to the silent solitude you have created, in order to enjoy "rest and happiness" for yourself, unconcerned at the wretched- ness of all other men. And this you describe magnilo- quently as burning out the roots of egotism with the torch of loalaus! I shudder when I imagine to myself the awful desolation amidst which your mind has chosen to take up its abode it is not Chaos, out of which a world may be produced; it is the ,dead, empty, and absolute Nothing'. 'I must repeat', said Attinghausen with decision, 'spare your compassion! It is true, there is left to us, when we have arrived at our aim, no will, no conception, no world. Before us, as the last object of all virtue and holiness, remains only the Nothing; into this are dissolved "these worlds, so real to men, with all their suns and milky ways, Time and Space, Subject and Object". But we have heroically conquered all repugnance to being merged in the Nothing, for we have conquered our nature, which prompts us to a fatal and selfish "desire of life" Wille zum Leben. When we have thus far advanced, and are only awaiting the disappearance both of our body and of the last trace of our will, then, "instead of the restless urging and pressing, instead of the incessant change from wish to fear and from joy to grief, instead of the never satisfied and never extinguished hope, out of which man's life- dream is woven, there arises within us that peace which surpasses all human understanding, that total calm of the mind, that deep tranquillity with unshaken confidence and cheerfulness, the very reflex of which in a face, such as is pourtrayed by Raphael or Correggio, is itself a complete PESSIMISM. 423 and sure gospel: knowledge alone has remained; the will has vanished". 11 From these celestial heights we look down with pity and with sorrow upon our infatuated fellow-men, who prefer remaining in a woeful and incurable conflict with an ungovernable world'. 'As far as your opinions have any truth or meaning*, said Berghorn dogmatically, 'they are borrowed partly from Stoicism and partly from Christianity, whether you are conscious of your dependence on sources you despise or not. But they imply so much that is deceptive, absurd and dangerous, that it is indeed an amazing phenomenon how a theory intensifying all the follies of Buddhism, could obtain acceptance among rational Europeans'. Subbhuti, who from the beginning had followed this conversation with the deepest attention, desired to speak, but Berghorn did not afford him the opportunity, and continued in a severer tone: 'Carried out with consistency, Pessimism must lead to suicide not, as with the Stoics, in single cases as excep- tions, but as the ordinary rule, and almost as a moral duty, since Nihilists consider life, under all circumstances, an unendurable burden. Shrinking from such iniquity by virtue of their small remnant of sound sense, they declare self-destruction inadmissible, not for ethical, but for meta- physical reasons, with which I should be sorry to trouble you. b But I beg you to remember that, as they deem the negation of life through the will to be the highest perfection, they regard every suffering, misfortune and self-castigation, every insult, ill-usage and oppression, in a word, everything that impels men to that negation, as a blessing and a solid gain, and, on the other hand, every pleasure or comfort as a sad misfortune, since it tends to link them to this miserable life. Morality and virtue are important to them only in so far as they form inter- mediate stages between the unqualified affirmation of the will in favour of life and its negation in the contrary direction. What results from these eccentric premises? 424 PESSIMISM. Plainly this, that we can show to our fellow-man no greater love and affection than inflicting upon him every pos- sible torture and anguish, since we thereby bring him nearer to his true salvation, whereas it is fiendish malice and cruelty to show him any kindness, to help him out of difficulties, or to protect him against injustice and ignominy, since we thereby lure him away from the blessed path of deliverance, which leads through trials, and thus make him miss the true object of existence. Men are to be envied for their misfortunes. Active morality is a mis- chievous evil, because it hinders the recovery of the pa- tient who is suffering from attachment to the world; the noblest heroism is displayed by those who, unmindful of the curses they bring upon themselves from their blind and ungrateful brethren, heap upon them every con- ceivable agony and disgrace ; and one of the greatest benefactors of mankind is the despot who inflicts upon thousands of his subj ects the most exquisite cruelties. These are the logical consequences of your much extolled Pes- simism.* I do not know whether anything more imbecile or more baleful has ever sprung from a human brain'. 'In the first place', replied Attinghausen resolutely, 'allow me to observe that, theoretically, very similar "dangers" might be deduced from your own religious views. You look upon nothing as more meritorious than martyrdom, and upon nothing as more profitable for salvation than self-mortifying privations; and yet charity and benevolence are the highest virtues to you as they are to us; and none of you will think of persecuting your co-religionists from benevolence, or of being heedless of their distress from charity'. 'The two cases are utterly dissimilar', interrupted Gideon. 'The Talmud speaks indeed frequently of the value of trials. "Sufferings", it says, "are the salt that wards off corruption" b . Rabbi Simeon observed: "The three most precious boons God granted to Israel the Law, the holy Land, and the bliss of the future life - are the fruits of mis- PESSIMISM. 425 fortune".* And consistently with this idea, the Rabbins view happiness as a questionable, if not an injurious gift. "He who passes forty days without discomfort", they de- clare, "has received his full share in the world". b Rabbi Eliezer was lying on his bed of sickness, excruciated by pain. While all the friends and disciples who visited him, were overwhelmed with grief, Rabbi Akiva alone smiled serenely and happily. The sufferer asked him in surprise whether he felt no compassion j upon which the thoughtful Rabbi replied: "When thou \ast properous in everything, when thou hadst corn and wine, oil and honey in abundance, I was uneasy on thy account and thought thou hadst already enjoyed thy world: now, seeing thee in agony, my apprehension vanishes and I am full of gladness". The learned and wise Rabbi Chanina lived in the greatest poverty. One day his wife said to him: "Thou art pious and righteous, and wilt surely be blessed in the next world; pray to God that He might give thee a part of thy reward at once". The Rabbi, reluctantly yielding to his wife's importunities, addressed to God a fervent supplication. When he had finished, he saw a massive piece of gold, evidently a leg belonging to a golden table, descend from on high. He took it, but felt his heart disquieted and saddened. His tormenting thoughts pursued him till late in the night, when he, at last exhausted, fell asleep. In his dream he was transferred to the magnificient Palace of heaven and, like all saints assembled in its halls, he was sitting at a golden table; but he soon found that this table was unsteady and tottering, for it wanted one leg. He then remembered the saying of our sages: "Man cannot partake of two feasts; he cannot enjoy the happiness both of earth and of heaven". He awoke alarmed, and implored God that He would take back His gift, and the prayer was granted. d These and many similar tales prove that our forefathers considered terrestrial happiness a misfortune, because it imperils the hopes of Paradise. 426 PESSIMISM. They originated in times of persecution, calamity a servitude ; a but the ideas underlying the stories took de root and remained essentially unchanged. b Most interest! in this respect is a passage in a letter of Maimonid addressed to one of his disciples. "Know", he wroi "that all the greatness and all the prosperity enjoyed 1 the Jews in our time is, in my opinion, no happinef and no complete or desirable boon; indeed, by the li of God! it is no small evil. c For the truly happy mi is he who finds his delight in fulfilling the Divine precep and all his human obligations, and keeps aloof from tl thoughts of the multitude ". d But all these views of tl importance of trials as means of moral training cann< be injurious to the votaries of a creed which teach< them to regard all that happens as sent by an all-wis God and Father acting in pursuance of His own inscn table plans, and to carry out, unconditionally and unmu] muringly, the commandments of charity and beneficent enjoined by a Divine and unchangeable Law. We d not presume to be a Providence to our fellow-men; w perform our nearest duties from day to day in sincerit of heart, and leave the rest to the Euler of the world 'Pray', said Mondoza, 'let us not lose the thread c our argument through the copiousness of the worth Rabbi's learning. Berghorn's sagacity has clearly pointe< out a fatal consequence of Schopenhauer's Pessimism Attinghausen believes he can rebut this charge and begai by affirming that a similar inference might be drawi from the tenets of some positive religions; this Rabb Gideon denies, as far as Judaism is concerned; may w( now ask our zealous Attinghausen to continue his cham- pionship of Nihilism'? 1 Well', said Attinghausen, manifestly not quite pleased with Mondoza's recapitulation of the argument, 'I con- fess, we shall be compelled to abandon Pessimism in the form in which it has been conceived by our master, and adopt it in the modification most acutely and convincingly PESSIMISM. 427 worked out by his great pupil, our new apostle, Eduard von Hartmann'. 'By whom' ? exclaimed Berghorn ]n' a thundering voice that made even Attinghausen start back. 'Do you mean to bring forward in this society of sober men the insanities of "the Philosophy of the Unconscious"? Do you profess to understand the meaning of an unconscious Absolute, one of whose modes of manifestation is consciousness? an Unconscious which performs acts of the will by which, as if by sorcery, it is at any moment able to destroy matter and to call it again into existence? an Un- conscious which is a spirit serving as "the common bond of the world and as the principle of unity pervading its plan of creation"? an Unconscious that not only pos- sesses "reason and intelligence" but is endowed with "a clearsighted wisdom infinitely superior to any conceivable consciousness"? Do you really dare to insult our reason and outrage our common sense so far as to introduce such a medley of confused and frivolous puerility'? 'The contradictions you have pointed out', replied Attinghausen undauntedly, 'are the weak and deplorable features in Hartmann's theory. But why did so gifted a man fall into such incredible errors? Simply because and this is it that prompted my lament in the begin- ning because he was not satisfied with an honest and mechanical, but needs must have a "spiritual" Pessimism; and anyone chasing such a hollow phantom, cannot fail to be lured into tangled woods and treacherous moras- ses. A few days ago I referred to Strauss who, after having rejected the Bible and its God, elevated his "living and intelligent Universe" to a Gospel no less fanatical and to a metaphysical being no less etherial than those which he had abandoned after a life-time of study and reflection, but which partially clung to him as a remnant of the old Adam. Hence he simply substituted a new faith for the old faith, which we desire to replace by a new know- ledge* Nay Schopenhauer himself, though starting with 428 PESSIMISM. the distinct declaration that he trusts to experience and observation alone, at once proceeds to the important assumption that man and the world, or the microcosm and the macrocosm, are by the principle of Monism identical in nature, and that hence, as man has will and conception, the world also is throughout will and con- ception, from which fundamental dogma follow all the metaphysical oddities of his system.* Hartmann also begins like a sensible man with stating that all specu- lation is false, which is not in agreement with empirical research^ but then, decoyed by the aurora borealis oi idealism glittering in the distant heavens, he flies through infinitude on the Pegasus of his transcendentalism and discovers the Unconscious. Heedless of the conspicuous failures of Hegel, Fichte and Schelling, he indulges in the farrago of an abstruse phraseology which has no more reality than the over-refining dialectics of Scholastic mysticism. He has once more attempted to vindicate for men a false position of aristocracy so flattering to their pride; but his transparent casuistries may help to bring scholars nearer to that humbler but more creditable condition which makes them plain working citizens of a republican cosmos ruled by a common and mechanical necessity'. 'But what is his modification of Schopenhauer's doctrine, to which you have alluded' ? asked Subbhuti, in evident anxiety. 'Well', replied Attinghausen, 'he adheres to Pessimism as firmly as his predecessor did. Both reflection and experience have more and more convinced him that life in every form is made up of torments, and that the pursuit oi happiness is as idle as it is foolish. But he has partially detected those defects of Schopenhauer's theory, which have been censured already ; he saw that Pessimism, in that shape, tended to egotism and weakened the instincts oi morality inherent in mankind. b Yet the principal task and strength of Pessimism, as I have said, is the complete uprooting of selfishness. How, therefore, is this great end to be attained? Only by absolute self-denial inten- PESSIMISM. 429 sified into a complete indifference to life and death, to happiness and misery. For it is selfishness to save our- selves by the negation of life and by withdrawing from the general arena, while all the time we are "allowing the mad fools' dance of common life go on as it can and may". a What indeed can the separate deliverance of an individual avail, when he knows that all others remain in the hell of existence, out of which they find no means of escape ? We must accustom ourselves, says the energetic apostle of the new doctrine, and I believe justly, to ac- knowledge that death is not preferable to life, nor life preferable to death; that all endeavours to rise against the iron destinies of fate are only a futile shaking of the bars of that dungeon in which we, like our fellow-prisoners, have been confined without any action of our own ; that we must, therefore, not selfishly expect to be rescued from distress by death and annihilation, but must bear with equa- nimity the idea that, in the place of our destroyed self, another self will appear, doomed to endure the same agonies; since "our consciousness, in spite of the change of brains, continues to hope and to suffer, just as the spectrum of a cascade continues to shine in the same colours in spite of the change of the water-drops". And then he exclaims with a fine pathos : "What does it matter whether I slightly acce- lerate the falling of a drop in a cataract ? what does it matter whether a leaf is torn from the tree of humanity a little be- fore the autumn, as the wind at all times blows off vast num- bers of fresh leaves and the tree germinates ever anew'"? b 'Better and better 7 ! cried Humphrey in his most sati- rical manner. 'Your advanced Pessimist deems this life so entirely worthless as not even to deserve the trouble of being cast away ; and yet, as it is immediately replaced by another life as wretched and worthless as itself, it has a Buddhistic sort of immortality. Your triumph of unselfishness consists in feeling and sharing the tortures that will be endured by your substitutes during all future ages; and you are able to be charitable without being 430 PESSIMISM. harassed by remorse, as a fellow-man's life or death is a matter of utter indifference : for this is the great pro- gress you have made that now your negation of life i* no longer personal but embraces all mankind! Horrible monstrosity ! Is it credible that erudition, industry and tnt highest culture should be wasted on theories surpassing the worst extravagances of the East'? 'I believe', said Canon Mortimer, serenely, 'that ever these labours are not fruitless. Pursued as they are wit! the purest zeal and singleness of purpose, they cannot in the extended and varied fields they explore, fail tc discover many precious gems which were not the primary objects of their search. Now it has struck me as mosi remarkable that the originator of modern Pessimism should in his own manner, have evolved from his very peculiai system all the specific doctrines of Christianity : and this I take to be no mean proof of their imperishable truth if they are understood in the right spirit, as universal symbols. Thus Schopenhauer contends that a man's character can indeed never change partially, and is com- pelled to execute the dictates of the will with the con- sistency of a law of nature ; but that the whole man, or his character in its totality, may be completely transformed by a radical alteration in his intellectual vision, seizing him suddenly and without any effort on his part with irre- sistible force. What else is this wonderful revolution bu1 that which the Christian Church has most aptly called regeneration or new Urth? and what else is that fresl light bursting upon the mind spontaneously but what wt call the operation of grace? In this sense, renewal of birtl and operation of grace coincide with free-will, whict Schopenhauer, therefore, like Malebranche, calls u t mystery", and which he so decidedly declares to con- stitute man's main superiority over animals that he defines necessity as the dominion of nature, liberty as the domi- nion of grace. The redemption of the natural man devoid of all faculty of righteousness and delivered up to perdi- PESSIMISM. 431 tion, is wrought, so teaches Christianity also, by turning away from the world and by inward revival ; for beneath our ordinary self there is another self which appears and acts only after we have shaken off the world. But still more: Adam, says the philosopher, typifies the idea of men in their unity, and corresponds, therefore, with the affirmation of the will in favour of life; consequently Adam's sin, which we have inherited, makes us all partici- pators of suffering and spiritual death; whereas grace or salvation, that is, the negation of the will with respect to life, typifies the incarnate God, "who, free from all sin, that is, from all desire of life, cannot have a body like ourselves but, born of the pure virgin, has only an apparitional body." To this must be added that, as Schopenhauer, like St. Augustine and other Fathers, attributes to men an original disposition to wickedness, he regards all their works as imperfect and tainted with sin, and thinks salvation only possible through a faith unalloyed by calculating egotism. Thus he is in full agreement with Luther who demands that, after faith has taken root, good works should proceed from it as its natural fruits, without claiming merit or reward. In advan- cing therefore, successively, from justice to love, then to a complete removal of selfishness, and finally to indifference or resignation, Schopenhauer's teaching includes all the chief tenets which form the kernel of Christianity the tenets of original sin, the operation of grace, regenerating birth, justification by faith, and redemption, provided that Christ is conceived as a general emblem of men's deliver- ance from a life of worldliness'. a 'On these terms', said Attinghausen, with a burst of laughter, 'even I might call myself a Christian. I know that Schopenhauer, in a moment of weakness, wrote the strange and fatal words that his ethics are indeed in their terminology new and unprecedented, but by no means in their nature, as they fully harmonise with the peculiar dog- mas of Christianity, in which all the essential points of his 432 PESSIMISM. system are clearly involved. But I am afraid, the slightest touch reduces Schopenhauer's Christianity to dust. He con- siders it possible on the one condition only that "the Jewish dogma" on which the Gospels are based, be given up. And what is that fundamental doctrine? That "man is the work of another", that is, that he is created by God; whereas, in truth, he is "the work of his own will". I know that you are indignant at this view, but Schopenhauer insists upon it with a vehemence to which he is otherwise a stranger. He avers that the opinion of man being created by God entangles all theologies and philosophies in the greatest contradictions and absurdities; that it is the soil which brought forth the "revolting" doctrine of predestination; that it fastens the guilt of the distress and misery which abound in the world upon God as their cruel author; and that it stamps man's responsibility as a preposterous paradox. "What", he asks, "should we think of a watch- maker who is angry with his watch for not keeping correct time"? and, in general, he declares that philo- sophy busies itself only with the world and leaves the gods in peace, but expects, in return, to be left alone by them. He acknowledges, in a certain sense, the "One and All" of Pantheism, since he pronounces the will as the essence and centre of the universe; but he is very careful not, like Spinoza, to call that "One and All" God, and expressly declines to represent the world as a theophany, since he condemns it as radically bad and productive of nothing but trouble, distress, mutual strife, and self-laceration. And lastly, the Christian expects after his renouncement of life another world more glorious and magnificent than anything the human eye has ever seen on this earth; but what is the Pessimist's goal? The empty Nothing, that is, an absolute negation; for not even that positive element, whatever it is, that may be included in ecstasy, illumination, or union with God, can be recognised by the philosopher, since it is not knowledge which can be communicated,* In a word, \tfrf / ^^ins^-D^^/ PESSIMISM. ^a? W *V433 Schopenhauer's Christianity must be considered as no more than an ingenious play with significant terms, to which he assigns meanings they never bear in Christian dogmatics. Nevertheless, I am most sincerely grateful to our amiable Canon for trying to penetrate into the nature of a system so essentially different from his own, and for endeavouring, as is his praiseworthy habit, to discover affinities, rather than divergencies. This and not abuse or denouncement', he added with an aggressive glance at Berghorn and Humphrey, 'is the way of promoting truth and peace'. *I cordially echo this sentiment', said Mondoza, turning to Attinghausen, 'and I am sure you are willing to act upon it yourself. There are', he continued, 'few earnest men in our time who have not candidly striven to under- stand, and to do justice to the principles of Pessimism.* Alas! there exists and there happens in the world but too much that countenances and supports them. Only levity can close itself against the thousand ills by which we are assailed against the sorrows endured by our fellow- men, against the painful and unsatisfied yearnings of our own hearts. Yet at the very moment we are threatened with distressing despondency or despair, we hear within us a voice whose whisperings we cannot stifle a voice encou- raging, reviving, fortifying ; it is the voice of human nature in its health and vigour; the voice which bids us suffer, work, and hope; which calls us away from the sights of affliction and woe to the hardly less numerous scenes of joy and beauty and goodness; which urges us to toil on in spite of all unfathomed mysteries, to love even if our love is rejected, to cling to life with all its confusion and burdens, to cling to our fellow-men with all their failings and errors. Shall we shut our ears to that voice? Shall we say proudly, its counsels are illogical, unphilo- sophical; they are against all reason and experience; they advise a cowardly flight when victory is in our grasp? Say so, if it so pleases you: but as long as your reason 434 PESSIMISM. is sound and your heart fresh as it came from the hand of nature, the same voice will repeat the same words louder and louder, till you obey it even against your will. The struggle is fruitless; hope is indestructible. With deep truth the poet lets the Evil one declare: "That which resists the empty Nothing, "This something, this coarse, rough-grained world, "However much I have attempted, "I knew not how to do it harm. "Spite waves and tempests, earthquakes, fire, "Unchanged and safe are sea and land! "And those damned things, the brood of beast and man, "Are ever proof 'gainst my attacks. "How many, ere this, have I buried! "And ever circulates a new, fresh blood"* 'Yes, "Immer circulirt ein neues frisches Blut". The words of Ecclesiastes, from which we started in our discussions, assume, at this stage, a new and more preg- nant truth: "He has also set worldliness in their heart, without which man cannot understand the works that God does, from beginning to end". It is simply "worldliness" the strong 'love of the world which sustains us, which whets our understanding, stimulates our action. For in advising men to yield to the persuasive voice of nature, I do not advise them to betray their intellect. I approve of no theodicy; I would not even, like Spinoza, pave the way to one by the dogmatic assertion that there exists in the world nothing that is bad and obnoxious, and that we consider some things so merely because we "see them blurred, mutilated and confused" ; b for this would compel me, as it compelled Spinoza and the Stoics, to console myself in sufferings with the idea of a necessity which keeps all things in an infinite concatenation of causes. 6 The device is dangerous and the support is frail. There are many things in life and in nature which the unbiassed mind is bound to pronounce to be worse and more obnoxious, the more clearly it contemplates them; and it is a poor consolation to us in our trials that we must PESSIMISM. 435 he miserable. We will rather adhere to the great philo- sopher's fine and fruitful idea that gladness, by increasing man's power, leads him to higher perfection. That which produces such effect, must be natural, must be true. We disavow the Pessimist's reproach that eveiy principle of eudaemonism is egotistical : it is a mere sophism. If we strive to attain by cheerfulness greater strength for being useful to others, is this egotism? To call it so, is no less singular than the assertion of some thinkers that a good deed which we perform readily and willingly, is less meri- torious than one we carry out with repugnance and self- conquest. These refinements are either morbid or artifi- cial. Is it a moral offence to feel pleasure in being able to give pleasure to our fellow-men, to work for them, and to relieve their griefs? Those who do not shrink from such a contention, have left the path of common reason and strayed into abstruseness or affectation. The men who have become the guides of the world, though perhaps pervaded by a certain sympathetic sadness at evils they see and cannot remedy, have ever fanned the hope and joyousness of life, whether their eye was more directed to the outward world and its experience, or to their own genius and its revelations'. 'There is a frame of mind', said Wolfram, 'which can hardly be called otherwise than pessimist, and which yet involves, I believe, a high degree of nobleness and moral dignity: it is the impression which is often forced upon our feelings and reflections, that the phenomena of nature, the deeds of men, and the events of the world do not harmonise with those notions of perfection, goodness and beneficence, which are strongly rooted in our soul, and which form our invariable standard of judgment. This incongruity calls forth a regretful mourning of our spirit at being placed in a world full of dark anomalies. Yet as the sadness flows from the depths of our divine reason, it is essentially ethical; and though painfully reminding us of our limits and fetters, it keeps alive the image of ideal perfection'. 436 PESSIMISM. 'So taken', said Abington eagerly, 'even Pessimism is not without its pre-ordained advantage. For the conscious- ness that the empirical world is an abnormal or fallen one, is logically inseparable from the conviction that there exists a normal condition of things beyond the boundaries of experience. But the notion of a supreme and unalterable canon is nothing else than the notion of the Deity, or the true foundation of religion. Even the most distorted systems of philosophic thought must ultimately bear testi- mony to the peerless value of religious truth'. 'This is very fine', said Attinghausen with some warmth, 'but of what use is it to the poor husbandman who sees his crops, the labour and hope of a year, in one short hour destroyed by a terrible hailstorm what comfort is it to him to be told that such a hailstorm does not properly belong to the true essence of nature, but is a mere oddity and irregular whim, since in reality nature is perfect and beneficent? Will this idea calm and console him when he hears his children cry for bread? Such refinements may be charming in the pulpit as an adornment of eloquence, but they do not stand the rough usage of daily life. And then', continued Attinghausen with greater hesitation, 'I cannot exactly see that the Pessimist doctrines are in any way injurious or paralysing. As a matter of fact, Pessimists are often men of remarkable activity; and what is still more important, they adopt their vfews, as a rule, simply from temperament and not from philosophical conviction; they would unconsciously act on the very same principles, even if Schopenhauer and others had never expounded and inculcated them'. 'There is no doubt some truth in these remarks', replied Mondoza; 'and I am, of course, very far from desiring that the teaching of your opinions should in the least be checked or restrained. On the contrary, I think the more fully they are explained, the sooner and the more com- pletely will their fallacies be refuted. Yet I cannot help thinking that, in the mean time, they are causing con- PESSIMISM. 437 siderable mischief. Tour life is one of uncommon energy and, deny it as you may, of uncommon enjoyment: your noble zeal for science is your safeguard. But there exist thousands who are not shielded by such a master passion, but who, weak and listless, are easily swayed by views which cannot but confirm them in a brooding apathy. It is utterly impossible to imagine that men who, by an operation of the will, have reduced the world to nothing, can have the same powerful incentives to action as those who look upon the world as an inexhaustible mine promising abundant rewards to their industry, or as a vast deposi- tory of materials to be fashioned by their skill. For your Nihilism is only a philosophical theory forced upon you, in spite of your buoyant temperament, by a trenchant logic as straightforward and fearless as your character. But for many others it is a practical canon adopted because they find it congenial to their nature, and grasped with increased tenacity because they hear it praised and supported by men of ability and fame. To the latter class, I am compelled to conclude, Pessimism is a disastrous bane not only deadening their resolution, but falsifying their judgment, because in spreading over the horizon an unnatural darkness, it unfits them for healthful vision. But I repeat, there is some light in the world; the rays may be rare and chequered, but they are not the less cheering, and we should train ourselves so as to enjoy them fully. There is beauty to charm the eye, magnanimity to elevate the soul, kindness to touch the heart, truth to kindle the intellect; there are the works of genius and the deeds of heroism; there are Nature and Art, Science and Literature; there are even occasional intervals of unclouded happiness, and there may be now and then an improvement in our own inner selves, that fills us with a pure joy.* It is just as much exaggeration and onesidedness to see only shadows as it is to see only the bright tints of sunshine. Unflinching logic is excellent in its place in the exact sciences. But human life is no mathematical problem, 438 PESSIMISM. and the human organisation is no mere mechanism: both into the one and the other enter influences and forces disturbing the rigour of methodical reasoning. The com- plexity of both can only be understood by judgment, which is logic in concrete application; and judgment tells us that, neither revelling in a light-headed Optimism nor fretting in an ungrateful Pessimism, we should keep a middle course in consonance with actual facts. For supposing happiness to be the centre, then the undeniable sufferings of life supply the centrifugal force, while human nature, such as we find it, furnishes the centripetal gravi- tation, preventing us from being carried away into the emptiness of despair. This is no dogma, but, as I have tried to point out, the dictate of man's constitution itself. There is no grief so overwhelming from which we do not gradually recover either by our innate elasticity or by consolations we succeed in discovering; and as daily experience proves that these conquests over misfortune are decided and rapid in the same proportion as we are sound and strong in body and mind, the inference is incontestable that gloom and despondency are results of morbidness and weakness, that is, that they are abnormal conditions'. 'But what is it', asked Attinghausen, rather perplexed, 'that is to uphold man and keep him in that middle course you have described'? 'The sense of duty', said Mondoza firmly. 'You have yourselves, in the course of the remarks with which you favoured us a few days ago, affirmed that the moral qualities in man are the regular development of the social instincts of duty in animals, and you have emphatically dwelt on your favourite illustrations of bees and ants. If your idea is divested of the peculiar form in which you present it, we may, I think, adopt it as essentially correct. So much is certain that in man, as long as he is true to his nature, the sense of duty has the strength and force of an instinct, and, directed by his reason, is capable of PESSIMISM. 439 maintaining him, if not in a constant exuberance of spirits, at least in a state of calm serenity which, I believe, is the nearest approach to happiness attainable by mortals'. 'It is impossible to see', said Humphrey with suppressed irritation, 'how a cold sense of duty is able to produce that which can issue only from our union with a supreme Love and Perfection. I fear, the proposed remedy for the fancied evils of the world is the heretical justification by works so congenial to most men's pride and venal selfishness'. 'I must beg your pardon', replied Mondoza, 'I speak of no Justification, for I have no knowledge of a Fall or hereditary sin; nor do I even speak of good works as such, that is, of works mainly prompted by the belief of their meritoriousness. In comparing the sense of duty to an instinct, I think I have made my meaning suf- ficiently clear. We should try to be useful simply be- cause we cannot help being so. We may propose to ourselves special aims, yet not their achievement, but the pursuit itself should be our chief care and object. Grateful for the boon of life, and opening our hearts to the sor- rows that surround us, we should do with all our might whatever devolves upon us or comes into our way as- suage a grief or dispel a superstition, protect the oppressed or guide the erring. We should thus indeed try to be "all things to all men", that we "might by all means save some"; but, forgetting our own selves in our work, we should not stop anxiously to examine the results. Neither elated by success nor discouraged by failure, we should continue to labour simply from a sense of duty as the bee continues, simply from instinct, to prepare the honey it leaves to others. As Goethe's Minstrel says: "Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt, "Der in den Zweigen wohnet, "Das Lied, das aus der Kehle dringt, "1st Lohn, der reichlich lohnet"; 440 PESSIMISM. so should we all say, whether we are engaged in humble avocations and in a narrow sphere, or whether we are endowed for elucidating high truths and creating noble works of beauty. Such principles, I believe, are free both from pride and from venal selfishness ; they seem effectual in warding off that depressing melancholy which is at once the parent and the offspring of Pessimism ; and while tending to diminish the sum of human misery, they allow us to see and to enjoy whatever the world offers of pleasure and delight'. 'This is an impossibility', said Humphrey with increasing decision. 'You expect men to toil incessantly without the stimulus of ambition and self-advancement, without the impulse of pity and compassion, and without the sup- port of a belief in God and Immortality. The demand is not ideal, but utopian'. 'Not more so', rejoined Mondoza, 'than Christ's precept that if a man takes away our coat, we should let him have our cloak also exemplifying an abnegation of self almost superhuman and yet justly enjoined as our ideal, not utopian, aim. Allow me, however, to observe that, although I would fain, as far as possible, wean men from requiring the incentives of ambition and self-advancement, I have not alluded to the other aids you mention. Let the Stoic condemn pity as a perturbation of his apafheia, let Spinoza reject it as a diminution of our strength- imparting cheerfulness, or as an obstacle to our calmness of judgment, I believe we shall never banish it from our hearts, and as it is made a leading principle in Buddha's doctrine', . . . 'You are right', interrupted Subbhuti, who had been listening with the closest attention, 'our Gautama enjoins upon us to feel the misery of others as our own, and at seeing a fellow-creature in misfortune to say tat twamasi "that thou art thyself". 'Even the advocates of Pessimism', continued Mondoza, 'acknowledge compassion as a ruling principle, and all PESSIMISM. 441 the efforts that have been made to stamp it as egotism are as futile as the efforts made to fasten the same stigma on gladness. I neither believe that true pity destroys true tranquillity for if this consists in an equilibrium of our powers, it cannot be imperilled by a feeling which is essential to our nature ; nor do I believe that pity diminishes our faculties of action, into which, on the con- trary, as experience shows, it generally instils additional energy. I speak, allow me to add, of "true" pity and ''true" tranquillity for even the former must be held under the control of reason, without which it becomes mischievous; and even the latter must bear a superficial emotion without being stirred in its depths, that is, without losing for a moment the clear perception of the relative value of all earthly things. And as regards the two remaining "supports" pointed out, I avow for why should I not be frank? I do not attach to them supreme importance. We have seen men live happily and virtu- ously without a belief in God and Immortality, and we have seen others, with the words God and Immortality on their lips, disgracing humanity nay disgracing hu- manity "for the greater glory of God" and for the sake of winning eternal bliss in another world. If the two beliefs could be proved, all would be compelled to accept them unconditionally as truths. But we have listened for two evenings to the main arguments that can be ad- duced in their favour; these arguments appeared to some conclusive, to others utterly insufficient; and the estimate of their weight seems, therefore, to be largely influenced by individual idiosyncrasies. It is for this reason that I would deprecate fanaticism on either side. A pure Theism and an ideal Immortality cannot even by the most determined atheist be classed among those dangerous superstitions against which he feels bound to wage a war of life and death: for even he I mean the temperate and intellectual atheist recognises, in some form, a universal Intelligence and an all-balancing 442 PESSIMISM. Eternity. These tenets will ever remain the strength and solace of myriads of elevated minds and ardent souls, simply because they rouse holy chords in their own nature ; and they should, therefore, be respected. But even they might forfeit the privilege of toleration if their votaries refuse to extend it to other convictions, or if they presume to claim unassailable certainty; in a word, if they aspire to the sanction of fixed dogmas. For we have unfortu- nately found even enlightened theists capable of a fana- ticism little less fierce than that displayed by adherents of the positive creeds. Let then the questions of God and Immortality remain open beliefs to be adopted by those who feel that they exalt their lives and fortify their hearts. But let these believers not be irritated by occasional opposition ; let them, on the contrary, welcome it as a salutary warning against bigoted self-sufficiency as an opportune reminder of the necessity they share with all men of examining their belief in order to pre- vent it from becoming an unprofitable formula. There remains, therefore, besides pity and compassion, that is, besides sympathy deep yet rational, only the sense of duty which, not depending on the fluctuations of metaphysical argument, is capable of securing a moral, a useful, a dignified, and, as far as it is possible, a cheerful life 7 . *I cannot be silent any longer', said Subbhuti after a short pause, allowing the fullest scope to his natural vivacity. 'I have come to Europe to find rest in my uneasiness, and clearness in my harassing doubts; and these discussions are my only trust. Many of you have yesterday and to-day touched upon various points which affect the very centre of my creed the creed of unnum- bered millions of earnest men; but I confess that, though I see some faint glimmerings of relief, I feel very far from the broad daylight of truth. You have made some concessions which raise my hopes; yet these hopes seem to vanish like delusions when I attempt to grasp them. PESSIMISM. 443 To begin with our worthy host's last remark, we agree with him in so far that we acknowledge no God* . . . 'Allow me to interrupt you', said Mondoza politely; 'I did not venture so absolute an opinion on this point; I have merely placed it among the open problems'. 'Exactly so', replied Subbhuti quickly ; 'we also abstain from attacking the notion of a deity, we simply leave it aside, because it is superfluous in our system ; we do not require it for our salvation'.* 'You do not want it indeed'! cried Arvada-Kalama; 'you have borrowed nearly all the ancient gods of the Hindoos, and have created a pantheon more crowded and more confused than any we have ever read of. 'This is unfortunately true to some extent', replied Subbhuti with unmistakable pain, 'but it is denounced by our noblest minds as a deplorable aberration, and we are now making every effort to devise a remedy. Alas, alas, how frail is man! Our great Sakyamuni ignored even the Brahman's Universal Spirit supposed to produce all things by emanation and to re-absorb them after endless changes. He thus delivered us finally from the horrid circle of new births and transmigrations, and enabled the pious at once to pass into the blissful peace of the Nirwdna. And yet many of his followers, utterly unable to maintain themselves in the heights to which he had borne them, sank so low as to worship him whose lessons they distorted. Raising Buddha into a god, they gathered his relics and adored them superstitiously in the shrines of the countless stupas built wherever they supposed he had dwelt. b With sorrow I find in the "Daily Manual of the Shaman" the following verses prescribed to be said on bowing down before Buddha: "King of the Law, thou most exalted Lord! "Unequalled through the Threefold World, "Teacher and Gruide of men and gods! "Our loving Father and of all that breathes! "I bow myself in lowest reverence and pray, 444 PESSIMISM. "That thou would'st soon destroy "The power of my former works. "To set forth all thy praise, "Unbounded Time would not suffice".* 'Yet so far I can comprehend and even partially pardon the unfortunate mistake; for I believe, the very same error has been committed by the Christians who, im- pressed with the sublime purity of their Founder, first made him an ideal of perfection and then a god'. 'You cannot, of course, be expected to fathom the Christian scheme of redemption', said Abington, with kindness; 'yet even for you the day of Pentecost may come'. 'We are not incapable', replied Subbhuti, 'of under- standing and appreciating what is really beautiful and intelligible in your faith. For we believe that Buddha, like Christ, moved by profound compassion at men's misery, left the glory of heaven in order to bring them salvation. His earthly birth was attended with signs and wonders. As an infant, he received the homage of sages and kings who came from afar. He was tempted and he conquered. All this can easily be explained from Gautama's actual life ; for, reared in a royal palace and resisting its pomps and allurements, he chose poverty and exile to redeem us by the depth of his love and the power of his noble example. Yet even these apparently harmless allegories proved most dangerous, for they opened the door to fancy and fiction; and just as many a Christian saint, if closely examined, is really some familiar Greek or Teuton god in disguise, so unhappily my co-religionists associated with Buddha the effete and impotent gods of the old Hindoos. I can never remember, without a bitter pang, that famous stupa in Ceylon, erected only three or four centuries after his death, where a gorgeous shrine enclosed a golden statue of Sakyamuni in a sitting posture, with Brahma on one side holding over him a silver umbrella, and Qakra or Indra on the other side anointing him from his shell king of men and gods. b True, it is only PESSIMISM. 445 the unintelligent among us who assign to him such a supernatural position, and even they address their prayers not to him but to those privileged mortals who by their piety have won a high place in heaven, yet not the highest rank, such as has been attained by Buddha who, in his absolute indifference and impassiveness, in his utter negation and self-abstraction, is unconcerned at human wishes and supplications'. 'This is the wonderful god of Epicurus', said Berghorn disdainfully. 'He is adorable', continued Subbhuti with vivacity, 'just because he declines for himself all honours and powers that may not be procured by any other man. It is impossible to think without rapture of the magni- ficent speech he addressed to the occupants of heaven, when he was about to descend on earth for the ac- complishment of his grand mission. That speech alone is sufficient to dispel the grave misconceptions which, to my great distress, I find prevailing even among the most learned and most well-meaning scholars of the West'. 'What is that speech', asked Wolfram eagerly, 'and what is its authority'? 'It is contained', replied Subbhuti, 'in one of the most revered of our sacred books in the Lalitd-vistara which we believe to have been written by Ananda himself, Gautama's near kinsman. We learn it, of course, by heart, and it will give me great pleasure, with your per- mission, to quote from it a few sentences. 'The Bodhisattva, sitting on his throne, first reminded his hearers of the eight hundred "manifest gates" or main precepts of the Law, and then, in the course of a solemn exhortation, he said: "Every noble and pure delight, born of the mind and the heart, is the fruit of a virtuous deed. Therefore be heedful in your actions . . . Desire is fleeting and in- constant, it resembles a dream, a mirage, an illusion, the lightning, the froth . . . Faithful to instruction, morality 446 PESSIMISM. and almsgiving, keep yourselves in perfect patience and sanctity. Live in a spirit of mutual benevolence and help- fulness . . . All that you see in me of uncommon power, of knowledge and strength, is produced by the exercise of virtue . . . But it is not by maxims nor by words or pro- testations that the rules of virtue are reached. You must acquire them by action: act as you speak; this should be the invariable end of your efforts. There is no recompense for those who act well; but those who do not act well, accomplish nothing. Shun pride, haughtiness and arrogance. Ever gentle and strictly adhering to the right path, pursue steadily the road to the Ninvdna . . . Scatter the mists of ignorance with the lamp of wisdom . . . But why need I say more? The Law abounds with reason and purity". a 'You will see yourselves how closely 'these injunctions approach the principles recommended by our good host in his last and some of his previous remarks for they aim at virtue flowing from enlightenment; at intellectual joy or love; unceasing activity from a sense of duty without expectation of reward; and finally, at complete tranquillity of heart and mind. You will, therefore, ad- mit the great injustice of the reproaches commonly raised against our creed the reproaches of sterile apathy and self-seeking egotism; but I beg you above all to notice that the Bodhisattva's splendid privileges are simply the result of virtuous deeds, and hence attainable by any- one through the fulfilment of the Law, which is Reason and Purity'. S I own', said Mondoza, 'I am deeply gratified at these well-founded observations; for it is, I believe, to the ad- mirable principles you bave pointed out that Buddhism is indebted for its marvellous success and vitality. Yet, though we travel together a large portion of the road, we separate at a cross-path and arrive at different, nay almost opposite goals. Your way leads to the seclusion of forests and vihdras, ours to tbe teeming abodes of men and their labours; yours to mortification of the flesh, ours to a rational enjoyment; yours to the desolation of celibacy, ours to the beneficent influences of cheerful PESSIMISM. 447 family life. Each step in advance should, I think, tend to a more marked individuality; but the close of your pro- gress is utter extinction. We value no peace which is equivalent or akin to inaction; you are indifferent to the price at which you purchase peace, were the price required even the whole world and your own existence'. 'I suppose', said Suhbhuti, with a slight irritation, 'you allude to our Nirwana. Now it is indeed most remarkable to consider the strange meanings which have been at- tributed to that term by the scholars of Europe. Some have defined it "the apotheosis of the human soul", or a communion with God, or an absorption of the individual soul by the Divine essence, as a drop is ab- sorbed in the ocean which notions, coinciding as they do with those of the Vedanta and of Sufism, are pal- pably erroneous, as we have no God or Divine essence. Others have taken Nirwana to be a kind of immortality, which is equally impossible, since we believe that the souls of men disappear at death, as lights vanish when they are blown out, or as the star-like sparks emitted from a heated bar of iron that is hammered, are scattered everywhere, are lost and have no further place of being. But the great majority have declared Nirwana to be simply annihilation, or the Nothing, or an eternal sleep, and have therefore identified Buddhism with Nihilism, which is grossly false, as the sage, after having passed through those four dhyanas or contemplations which 1 have attempted to describe to you, acquires by the Nir- wana, while continuing to live, the most extraordinary gifts and powers. What view remains, therefore, as the only possible one? The Nirwana is essentially that which I here, within the last few days, have heard explained by various other names that which is the salvation of the Cynic and Stoic, the Jew and the Christian, the Epicurean and the Pantheist namely, a perfect and unutterable tranquillity for ever imperturbable, including exemption from all pain and uneasiness, and deliverance 448 PESSIMISM. from the terrible law of transmigration. It is our "City of Peace". All misconceptions on this point have arisen from overlooking the distinction invariaWy made by our sutras between "the Nirvana" ard "the complete Nirwana" : the latter is indeed death or annihilation, which has been wrongly imputed to the former also. That which is destroyed by the simple Nirwana is not life or conscious- ness, but desire, sorrow, sin, and selfishness. Let me, in confirmation, add that, besides the dhyanas, we have another matchless kind of meditation, the bhavana, in five degrees benevolence towards all beings, which comprises forgiveness of injuries received from possible enemies; sympathy with every misfortune and misery; joyful interest in every boon and happiness ; disdain of the body and all its wants; and lastly, indifference, the source of an un- changeable calmness.* This, I believe, is sufficiently clear'. b 'I may admit your opinions so far', replied Mondoza, 'but you are aware that the fourth dhyana and fifth bhavana are not the final stages previous to reaching the Nirwana, but that they are followed by the so-called "four regions of the world without form", which prove my con- tention that, though the Nirwana may not be actual an- nihilation, it is the complete suspension of thought and will. For after the last dhyana, the saint or Rahat enters into the infinitude of space, next into infinitude of in- telligence, then into that region where nothing exists, and finally into that where there is no longer any idea, not even the idea that there is none. c Can such a con- dition of mind engender a practical activity? The perfect Rahat may be a part, at best an indistinguishable part, of universal existence, but he has ceased to be a unit of individual life. d His powers may not be destroyed, but they are paralysed; they are unavailable and valueless both for the saint himself and for others. Our "intel- lectual love of God" quickens every energy; your Nir- wana is living death'. PESSIMISM. 449 'But pray', rejoined Subbhuti with diminished confidence, 'consider the real state of the Raljat, which a holy book describes thus: "He has renounced existence . . . Like the bird emerging from the egg, he, has broken his shell . . . He has made himself master, of the elements of life";* and the Rabat himself declares: "I have no wish to live, I have no wish to die; desire is extinct". Does this not almost literally coincide with the teaching of your chief Pessimist philosopher and his now celebrated pupil Hartmann, who find so many admirers'? 'The resemblance', replied Mondoza, 'is undeniable, but it does not extend to identity. It is true that modern Pessimism, like your ancient Buddhism, attempts the negation of the world by an act of the will; but since it admits pity and compassion as legitimate impulses, it is com- patible with a very considerable amount of beneficent work'. 'But we also', said Subbhuti eagerly, 'reckon pity and compassion among the chief precepts of morality'. 'Undoubtedly', replied Mondoza, 'but they reveal, and are associated with, a very peculiar feature of your creed. The degree of perfection which you consider the higher one spiritually, is in truth the lower one morally; for he whom the four dhyanas have only enabled to pass through the preparatory stages of the Nirwana, may by his zeal and endowments effectually assist his fellow-men; whereas he who has actually attained the supreme state, nay a Buddha himself, is by his absolute detachment from every thought and action precluded from all deeds of benevolence, and even from listening to the entreaties of the distressed. I am sure, you will not reply, that the Buddha's utter impassiveness is really a higher perfection than the Bha- gavat's active kindness; for this would be advocating selfishness, which, I know, you detest as the source of every vice and wrong, and which, in fact, similar to our Pessimists, you mean to overcome by taking refuge in a condition of negative existence. A doctrine which finally leads to a result so disastrous to humanity, must GG 450 PESSIMISM. be fundamentally erroneous. Pursue your ideas one step farther. Suppose that, as you cannot but wish, all the adherents of Gautama were to aspire to the eminence of Buddhaship, what would be the consequence? Your sect would vanish within one generation. You must, therefore, be aware that the distinction between priest and layman is also radically false. History has taught us this, in clear and often painful lessons, by the theo- cracy of the Hebrews who were, theoretically, meant to be a nation of priests, and by the hierarchy of the Christians who were, theoretically, meant to be brothers in Christ both of which systems proved fatal to freedom and enlightenment'. 'This is but too true', said Wolfram, greatly interested. 'Take, on the other hand, the example of the Greeks who, by avoiding that noxious distinction for they had no spe- cial class or caste of priesthood , were unimpeded in advancing to that fulness and brightness of culture which are still our wonder and admiration'. 3 '"What then', asked Subbhuti in a tone of sadness and depression, 'do you desire us to do? Our religion has not prevented us from increasing and exercising influence in large territories; it cannot, therefore, have the effects you so gloomily describe'. 'It has not had these effects', replied Wolfram, 'simply because it is but partially carried out, and because its rigour is resisted by the sound instincts of the masses. The number of those who, as priests or saints, submit to your twelve frightful rules of ascetism and self-castigation, is infinitesimal compared to your vast populations^ You are yourself a striking example: trained for the vihdra and in every way endowed to adorn it, your better impulses revolted against unnatural restrictions and a deadening ceremonial. The awakening power you have felt in yourself it is your duty to rouse in others and thus to originate a reform of immeasurably larger scope and importance than that which you have inaugurated in your island'. PESSIMISM. 451 'But you do not advise us', rejoined Subbhuti with a trembling voice, 'to close the vihdras and to abolish the priesthood? Will not always teachers of the people be required' ? 'I would not advise', answered Wolfram, 'to abolish the priesthood, but to close the vihdras. Teachers, to instruct with profit in the duties of life, must themselves know life with all its difficulties and temptations, must themselves have wrestled with those errors and sins which ever assault us in the world. Virtue consists in choosing what is right in a conflict of duties: this conflict can never be completely felt by those who, in suppressing some of our noblest feelings and affections, are strangers to the holiest of domestic and social ties. You will now fully understand the words our host has repeatedly im- pressed upon us, that "worldliness" also, that is, a sense of worldly duties and enjoyments, has been planted in our hearts. The neglect of this weighty truth is the secret of the failure of Buddhism. For Buddhism, I grieve to think, has hitherto been a lamentable failure. With its grand doctrines of morality, with its absence, in its ori- ginal form, of all elements of superstition and mysticism, with its avoidance of all national and sectarian exclu- siveness, it might have regenerated the world. What has it achieved? You say, it has exercised influence over wide territories. Was it, and is it, the influence that should be swayed by three or four hundred millions of people, that is, at least one fourth of the whole human race? Your enemies say: "Buddhism, worn out by time, as all error is worn out, holds in sterile apathy the nations it has lulled to sleep".* There seems to be but too much truth in this accusation. Why have you not been able to found or rule powerful states? Why, in spite of over- whelming numbers, have you for thousands of years sub- mitted to the most cruel despotisms and have never made your weight felt in reforming abuses and corruption, or enforcing political laws of any practical value ? Why have 452 PESSIMISM. you constantly moved in the narrowest circle of monoto- nous avocations, and have never risen to the cultivation of science and art? Why have you in all these respects been inferior even to the Brahmans whose tenets you disdain? Because the highest aim of sanctity you have proposed to yourselves, the Nirwana, draws you away from life, closes your eyes to Nature and her operations, and enthrals your energies. Learn to prize as the highest aim of sanctity that unwearied and self-denying activit) which your Master has inculcated in a thousand beau- tiful and touching forms, but which he unfortunate!) defeated by two fatal errors in the chain of his con- clusions. Because life is full of distress and sorrow, ii follows, not that we should withdraw from it, but thai we should as brethren help one another to bear its burdens; and because life abounds with troubles anc cares, it follows not, that we should wilfully enhance thes( miseries by harassing austerities and terrible self-tortures but that we should relieve and embellish our existenc< by every means in consonance with reason and upright ness. Your principles may be manly, even heroic, bu they are not wise. A grand, a magnificent task lie; before you', continued the venerable Wolfram with rising enthusiasm, 'I know you are free from a vulgar am vain ambition; but to stir up so many millions of fellow men from a degrading torpor, is worth the life-long toil o the earnest and the high-minded. There must be among yoi large numbers of zealous men who feel like yourself. See] strength in union. Begin with your beautiful island o Ceylon. When I visited it in my early travels, I learn to admire the gentleness of the population and the pa tience of the priesthood. Try there to establish a secur home for enlightenment, for toleration, for every excellenc of the heart, for every accomplishment of the mind. Eeceiv into your community all who are willing to join you QJ these terms, to whatever race, to whatever nation the may belong. Let the persuasion of truth be your weapor PESSIMISM. 453 In a word, make your three hundred millions of souls the large nucleus of a world-wide religion of humanity, such as has been the dream and yearning of the best men of all ages such as your own Buddha meant to create'. Only when he had stopped, Wolfram felt that his zeal had unconsciously carried him too far in ignoring sus- ceptibilities. He was indeed gratified at the deep im- pression he had evidently made on Subbhuti; but he could not fail to notice with some regret the no less manifest displeasure of several others. Before he was able to offer an apology, Arvada-Kalama observed with vehe- mence: 'Atheists should continue to infest with their base pre- sence the fairest lands of the fairest Continent! God be praised for having mercifully driven them at least from the sacred boundaries of India'! 'Disbelievers in immortal bliss', said Movayyid-eddin, 'should by Allah and His prophet be allowed still further to desecrate the earth by their blasphemies ! infidels who have as little knowledge of a soul as they have of a God, swear upon their five khandas, and admit nothing besides;* who insist that if these constituents of man are broken up, he ceases to be in the same way as a cloud ceases to be when its particles are scattered in the shower; to whom, in fact, man is merely "a machine or a piece of curious mosaic", a being "empty and unreal", a "mass, a cluster, a name", a "heap, a collection of atoms, an accumulation, an aggregation, a congeries, and nothing more"'! b 'Pantheists, I am certain', said Abington with emphasis, 'cannot be expected or desired to possess any command- ing influence over the destinies of men Pantheists who, bolder and more paradoxical than even Spinoza, assign existence to the "unity of the Substance" alone, and establish no distinction between man on the one hand, and the animals and inorganic nature on the other. 454 PESSIMISM. 'Pessimists', said Berghorn sternly, 'who transform the earth into one horrid graveyard, and deny the beauties of Creation and of the moral world because their barren minds and inert souls cannot perceive them, are the dead branches of the tree of mankind, doomed to be shivered by the first blast. "When the luminous rays of the smile of Buddha", so they rave, "penetrate through the clouds", heaven is fabled to resound with this hymn: "All is transitory, all is misery, all is void, all is without sub- stance" which far surpasses in dismal desolation the Preacher's vanity .of vanities.'* 'Blind fatalists', chimed in Rabbi Gideon, 'who deny free-will on account of their puerile theory of the "conca- tination of causes", b are the predestined slaves, not the masters or guides of the world.' 'Sophistical sceptics', said Panini for even he gathered courage for a strong expression of opinion 'to whom nothing has reality, not even the notion of the supreme good and of duty, c are surely incapable to spread on earth the Messianic reign of universal virtue and knowledge'. 'Crude and degraded materialists,' added Humphrey, 'who confound body and soul, matter and mind, can only bring perdition on mankind. d They can never reach the idea of spirit, they merely know lifeless phenomena linked together in monotonous succession of antecedents and consequents. Sin loses its poignancy; logic and history alike demonstrate, as inevitable results, a dreary void and an unutterable despondency' 6 . 'I really cannot endure this any longer', interrupted Attinghausen with no gentle stamp of his right foot, and then rising menacingly. 'Learn at least to be just, if you cannot be magnanimous. The other evening the wort of a Christian missionary was quoted here; the extract made me curious to read the book, and though the author is by no means friendly to Buddhism, he has the honesty to admit the passage struck me as a naturalist parti- cularly that, in spite of the materialism of his system, PESSIMISM. 455 Buddha acknowledges an ethical power of all-pervading in- fluence, both in relation to the individual and the economy of the world; that this power, though not allied to any intelligence, unfailingly benefits those who seek the right way, and acts with as much regularity as any other law of nature. "The dew drop is formed, the heart is tran- quillised, and the practice of virtue is rewarded, through the instrumentality of causes that are alike in the manner of their operation".* In my eyes, there can be for Buddha no higher praise or recommendation'. 'It is a grand merit in a religion', said Humphrey satirically, 'to acknowledge an ethical power unallied to intelligence! How gigantic a practical force such a "power" is likely to be ! You might as well maintain that the Buddhists acknowledge Immortality, because they hold the fantastical belief that when a man dies, his whole karma, that is, the aggregate of all his actions, interests and obligations, is transferred intact to another man who is in every way his successor and continues his life : instinctively clinging to existence in some form, they devise one as preposterous as it is unjust, since every man enjoys or suffers the consequences, not of his own deeds, but those of his presumed predecessors in his own and all anterior generations. This strange expedient borrowed and slightly modified by our modern Pessimists b merges the person of the present in his connections with the endless past and future; it is the utter obliteration of individuality. Indeed, atheism, materialism, complete extinction of existence, and fatalism are indissolubly united the first being the poisonous root that produces the rest; while atheism, in its turn, necessarily grows up where man's personality is so lamentably misunderstood. It is difficult to speak with calmness of the haughty arrogance of dreamers who boast that they are men because they rely upon themselves alone, and taunt the Christians as children for imploring God's paternal aid d . A fearful awakening will come in the day of judgment' ! 456 PESSIMISM. 'There can hardly be a doubt', observed Abington, evidently anxious to prevent a still stronger outburst of Humphrey's indignation, 'that Buddhism will be the inheritance of Christianity. All the phases in the world's history point to this issue as inevitable. It would be most unfair to deny the many beautiful features in the Buddhist's creed; but it is vitiated by a radical defect it starts from man and tries to raise him by degrees to the Divine. Yain endeavour, delusive hope! The only effectual scheme is that of Christianity, which starts from God and lets Him graciously descend to man. Hence the Buddhist's pride, the Christian's humility ; hence, on the one side, a constant progress towards self-infatuation, and on the other side, a gradual approach to self- conquest. Without the feeling of unqualified dependence no religious impulse is con- ceivable, and the Buddhist knows no Being on whom he can feel absolutely dependent. He falls therefore necessarily into the Stoic's grievous mistake of confounding himself with his ideal or exemplar, and thus feeds the flame of his conceit. He does not say, like the Christian, I will strive after the perfection of God through His kindness and mercy, although I am born a sinner; but he boldlly declares, I will be a Buddha through the force of my infallible devotions and contemplations. He considers his virtue all-powerful, his merit unlimited he is his own deity, he is both a man and a potential god. With us, one God only and one Christ only are possible; he admits an indefinite number of Buddhas. a We believe that "except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven"; b he dreads and abhors nothing so strongly as a new birth. The most deplorable result of these errors is his utter inability to understand the beauty and loftiness of the Christian's relation to God as his loving and beloved Father. This is indeed the innermost kernel of the difference ; for it closely touches the idea of Redemption. The Buddhist, like ourselves, is imbued with the conscious- ness of trespass and guilt; but how does he overcome PESSIMISM. 457 the pang and humiliation of this feeling? Simply by his flight into unconsciousness, into his Nirwana, into Nothing; and this refuge he hopes to reach by the unaided exer- tions of his own frail humanity. He is agitated by a most legitimate sentiment, but instead of satisfying its yearnings, he extinguishes its existence; he is pervaded by a religious impulse, but he fetters it by the operation of a stubborn will and a cold understanding; he begins with an inward avowal of lowliness, and he ends with the haughtiest self-sufficiency. Wanton and blind, he smothers the Divine spark instead of fanning it carefully and reverenti- ally. But how does the Christian act? Oppressed by a sense of sinfulness, which he is unable to subdue and unwilling to silence, he turns to the boundless love of an all- merciful Father and is sure of His compassion and for- giveness; for he is in God and God in him, and he deems it his highest privilege to call himself His child. Moved by a salutary, yet bitter, feeling, we replace it by another no less strong but more blissful; seized by a sentiment of religion, we foster it with our heart, while we bid our intellect keep aloof from a sphere in which it owns no dominion; and proceeding from the knowledge of our unworthiness, we arrive at a union with God, in which our own will is completely obliterated. But such a union is only possible, if God is distinctly conceived as a personal Being capable of loving and being loved, of giving and taking; and such a God is only accessible to man's faculties, if he realises Him in a human form and likeness visibly embodying His whole perfection and goodness; and hence it follows that the Christian faith alone can truly and fully deliver us from guilt and the overwhelming consciousness of guilt that the Christian faith alone can secure that Salvation and Eedemption so ardently longed for by the Buddhists also. Gautama has sown and watered, the harvest belongs to Christ 7 . 'I cannot vie with you', said Subbhuti deliberately but firmly, 'in subtlety of argument ; but I believe I have now, 458 PESSIMISM. thanks to these meetings, gained a clearness of principle, which enables me to discover the errors of other creeds as well as those of my own. Your reasoning seems to amount to this, that Christianity is a religion of sentiment or of the heart, Buddhism a religion of the self-dependent intellect; and that, therefore, the former is not merely the superior but the only true religion. Allow me, I pray, most decidedly to question this conclusion. When I reflect on the superstitions, the intolerance, and the carnage, which have been engendered by your positive creeds all based on the degradation of reason, I can surely not be tempted to follow a track so ghastly and bloodstained. I honestly add that I have read, with equal horror, the hardly less atrocious misdeeds which, at the end of the last century, were perpetrated by men who established the worship of Reason. Yet I remain steadfast in the conviction that the intellect is man's safest guide and must be left in unrestricted freedom. What was done in highly cultured France was done by a reason which for many ages had been held in chains by a religion declaring "absurdity" to be the test of religious truth, and which, at last breaking its fetters with uncontrollable fury, raged like a bondman suddenly released to unwonted liberty'. 'Quite so', muttered Attinghausen, highly gratified ; "Vo dem Sklaven, wenn er die Kette bricht, "Vor dem freien Menschen erzittert nicht"'. 'It was a wild dream', continued Subbhuti, 'but it was fortunately as short. Reason may stray, but it cannot stray far; it may be dimmed and obscured, but it can never be extinguished, and soon regains its native clearness and brightness. No wiser words has Buddha spoken than these: "All that is in harmony with reason and the circum- stances generally, must be considered in harmony with truth and be taken as the canon of our actions".* Philo- sophy and religion are identical; if there is a difference, it is this that the one devises the rules of conduct, the other helps to carry them out. I begin to see that we have failed, PESSIMISM. 459 not because we have followed reason too much, but because we have not followed it sufficiently and rightly. It has taught us to subdue passion, and we, mistaking its direc- tions, have endeavoured to stifle emotion; we were afraid of the blast and have excluded the air. We were pained to see the world imperfect, and we removed it altogether out of sight, till, making a vain effort of blending "to be" and "not to be", we arrived at an indefinite and ambiguous condition which is neither existence nor Nothing. We felt our own wretchedness and that of our fellow-men, and we fled instead of resisting or aiding." But these I believe to have been our chief, if not our only errors. All the other charges that have been so freely levelled against us, I hold to be so many praises, for they are charges against reason and experience. We do not shrink from the confession of Atheism, because the intellect does not sanction a personal Deity with human attributes ; nor of Pantheism and Materialism, because the whole world with all its systems is one and indivisble; nor of disbelief in Immortality, because a soul cannot possibly exist apart from matter; nor of Pessimism, because we consider it sinful to ignore the horrid miseries of mankind; nor of Scepticism, because we have seen the mischief of traditional faiths upheld without examination; nor even of Fatalism, if this means a deep conviction of the immutable order of nature and the necessity of her laws. But I indignantly repel the imputation that we are destitute of the ideas of a supreme good and of duty. We assuredly have both; but we have hitherto made the great mistake of separating the one from the other, and have thus failed to realise either. Our supreme good is peace of mind, and our idea of duty our dharma which is incessantly inculcated, is* compassion or charity ; but instead of seeking tranquillity through benevolent deeds, we unfitted ourselves for the latter in the same measure as we approached the former. I now see that we need not, nay must not, turn away from the world and the sweetness of social communion; 460 PESSIMISM. that the "City of Peace" may re-echo with the inspiriting sounds of life and action, of zeal and emulation; that it is not desecrated j but hallowed, by admitting within its boundaries every pursuit that can enlarge the mind and elevate the soul; that it is a Temple of Buddha the more glorious the greater scope it affords us for the exercise of those wonderful injunctions of wisdom and kindness, which he has bequeathed to us for ever. This must henceforth be our Nirwana'. 'We hear perpetually', said Humphrey almost in anger, 'Buddha's moral commandments lauded to the skies; but I positively affirm that they are tainted by all the faults and defects which disfigure every pagan creed'. 'Would it be asking too much', said Mondoza, who had heard Subbhuti's remarks with manifest satisfaction, 'if I begged you to give us a few specimens of Buddhistic ethics, such as cannot fail to occur to your well-stored memory' ? 'How is it possible', replied Subbhuti with enthusiasm, 'to begin, and how to end? The night would not be sufficient to touch upon the merest heads. I must content myself with citing a few precepts almost at random. Christian missionaries have often explained to me the admirable "Sermon on the Mount", and in self-defence I was forced to adduce, verse by verse, corresponding sentences from our own holy books. I could easily do the same now, but I dislike this mode of rivalry; the parallels can never be exact, as the foundations of the two religions are so entirely different. Let, therefore, our moral statutes, framed as they are without regard to a Creator or to any recompense, be judged on their own merits. 'You are aware that the principal object of the Buddhist's moral exertions is to deliver himself, by "the Method" or "the Way" of salvation, from the torments of human existence and their unhappy causes, the passions and desires. This object is expounded to him in the "Four Sublime Truths", which are recognised by all Buddhists PESSIMISM. 461 alike as the starting point of their creed, because they were taught by Sakyamuni to his first disciples after six years of severe contemplation, and because it was through them that he became a Buddha.* Now that Method or Way consists of the following eight parts: 1. The right view or the correct faith ; 2. the right will or the purity of intentions; 3. the right language or perfect truthfulness; 4. the right purpose or honourable conduct; 5. right actions or a religious life; 6. right application of the mind to the precepts of the Law; 7. right and faithful memory; and 8. right meditation leading to holy tranquillity of mind. b 'Another summary of our faith is this: "Scrupulously avoiding all wicked actions ; reverently performing all virtuous ones ; purifying our intention from all selfish ends this is the doctrine of all the Buddhas"; c to which I join a similar maxim which proves that our system is not one of gloom and despondency: "Without complaint, without envy, continuing in the practice of the Precepts ; knowing the way to moderate appetite; ever joyous, without any weight of care; fixed yet ever advancing in virtue this is the doctrine of all the Buddhas". d Few can com- prehend the intensity of the festive joy felt and displayed by the faithful, unless they have been present at one of our public recitations of the sutras, or at the performance of the ceremonies of the pirit.* For Buddha said: "A man in the practice of his religious duties is like one eating honey, which is sweet throughout; the rules taught in my sutras are altogether a fountain of pleasure"/ 'Next in importance to the "Four Sublime Truths" are the "Five Aversions" or "Eepugnances" deemed obligatory on all men, viz. not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to lie, and not to be intoxicated.* 'To these must be added the six "Transcendent Virtues" or paramitds, which "enable men to pass to the other shore", and which are : almsgiving, charity, purity, patience, courage, and wisdom shown in contemplation and science. 11 The most important of them is charity, which has in our 462 PESSIMISM. eyes almost a character of holiness, for Buddha said that it leads to the perfect maturity of the personal being, and in order to exemplify its universality, he once so relates the legend gave up his body to a famished tigress who had no strength left to suckle her whelps. He held in slight esteem the man who exercises charity from a feeling of obligation or of partiality,* and he praised bene- factions especially if bestowed, not from our superfluity, but from the produce of our labour: thus we are told that an illustrious king of Ceylon worked daily in a plantation and gave his wages to the poor. 'I cannot help smiling when I hear again and again Christian teachers and writers taunt us with selfishness. What are the grounds of this charge? The idea of "eternal salvation", it is contended, after which Buddhists strive with all their might, makes their morality narrow and egotistical. h But what creed does not propose the same end ? In this point all religions are agreed, however they differ in defining the nature of eternal salvation, and in so far we are neither more nor less selfish than Jews or Christians. But our salvation does not include the glories of a heaven and the delights of a Paradise, but consists simply in a perfect calm of the soul acquired by our own most laborious endeavours; and in this respect, our religion, I believe, is the only one that is not selfish. The celebrated "Sutra of the forty-two Sections" begins thus : "When Buddha had arrived at complete enlighten- ment, he thought within himself, The perfect Rest, which results from the extinction of Desire, this is the highest conquest of self". c But I can expect to dispel this monstrous prejudice as little as I can another with which it is generally coupled and which reproaches us with super- cilious pride. Yet next to selfishness, pride is the vice against which Buddha inveighed most earnestly. Once he was requested by a royal friend to silence his Brah- manic adversaries by a miracle, but he replied: "Great King, I do not teach my disciples the Law, saying, Go PESSIMISM. 463 and perform wonders before the world, but I tell them, Live quietly, concealing your good deeds, and not hiding your faults". Penetrated with these feelings, he instituted Confession, commanding all the faithful at certain longer intervals, and the priests twice every month, a to avow openly before the Chief of the Assembly their errors and sins; and powerful monarchs have submitted to this rule, because Buddha insisted that atonement was unattainable without public self-humiliation. b 'As there are no limits to charity, so there are none to brotherly love or sympathy. For Buddha has come into the world to deliver all men. Community of woe was to him the common bond of affection. His great heart was not satisfied with healing the wounds of his Indian countrymen, but burnt to save the human race. When taunted by the Brahmans for having converted, and received among his immediate followers, a beggarly member of one of the lowest classes, he replied: "My Law is a Law of grace for all". To him there was no difference between prince and slave. He has for ever broken down not only the hateful barriers of caste, but also those of race. In comprehensiveness of creed and sympathy he yields neither to the Hebrew prophets nor to Christ and his most enlightened disciples. 6 Nay and this is a point to which, I know, you attach very great importance he has also abolished the degrading differences in the position of the sexes; he made woman the equal of man, and endowed her with exactly the same religious privileges as he enjoys, so that she may even attain the dignity of a Buddha. d I have read with admiration of Hebrew prophetesses who inspired national armies by their poetic fire and were consulted by Kings on account of their wisdom and knowledge of the Law; and I have read with some surprise the injunction of Christian apostles, "Let the woman learn in silence with all sub- jection"; but I could not help being gratified when I com- pared this with Buddha's large-minded ordinances breathing 464 PESSIMISM. respect and touching tenderness for the weaker sex. For by another strange misconception, Buddha is supposed to have extinguished all domestic affections, all the joys of family and home. He enforced indeed the celibacy of monks and priests': Subbhuti paused a moment and then added in a calm, low voice, 'perhaps wrongly' ; and after another short interval of reflection, he continued: 'But no one has ever evinced a more pious veneration for his parents, no one has ever enjoined more strongly the duty of filial gratitude. In a solemn exhortation to his pupils, he said: "Father and mother are for the child Brahma himself, the spiritual teacher himself, the sacri- ficial flame itself, and the domestic fire itself" ; a and he included in the children's obligations not merely physi- cal care and material support, but also, when necessary, the communication of any truth or knowledge they may have acquired. 'Allow me now to add a few miscellaneous maxims and precepts, just as they happen to strike my memory. "Buddha, addressing the priests, declared: 'Say to your- self I am placed in this sinful world, let me then be as the spotless lily, unsoiled by the mud in which it grows'". b "As the bee collects honey and departs without having injured the flower, so let the sage dwell and work on earth". c "Flies discover sores, bees flowers, good men virtues, bad men faults". d "Religious observances are mere rafts to carry over the treasure". 6 "Among the twelve difficult things of the world, which constitute piety, are : to bear insult without anger ; to move in the world without setting our heart on it ; not to despise the ignorant; thoroughly to extirpate self-love; to be good and at the same time learned and clever; to see the hidden principle in the professions of religion; to save men by converting them; to be sound in heart and life"/ "Earthly honours and possessions are like dust motes in the sunbeam". "What is goodness? First and foremost, it is the agree- ment of the will with conscience or with reason". h PESSIMISM. 465 "As sound belongs to the drum, and the .shadow to the substance, so in the end misery will certainly overtake the evildoer".* "A virtuous man cannot be hurt; the misery another would inflict falls back upon himself . b "The three poisons which corrupt the heart covetousness, anger, and delusion, and the five dark mists which envelop it envy, passion, sloth, vacillation, and unbelief thoroughly prevent a man from attaining supreme reason". "The pious are like wood that floats down the running stream without touching either the left or the right bank". d "Never tire of self-scrutiny". 6 'Of "the Shaman's Daily Manual", prescribing the prayers to be repeated on every occasion that can possibly arise during the day, I will only quote two or three short extracts, and beg you to notice that the worshipper's supplications are offered not for himself alone, but for all mankind. On awaking in the morning be says: "I pray that every breathing thing "May wake to saving wisdom vast "As wide and boundless universe". 'On getting out of bed: "Oh! let me pray that every living soul "May gain complete release of mind and self, "And so in perfect rest abide unmoved". 'On binding on the sash: "I pray that every living soul may closely bind "Each virtuous principle around himself, "And never losen it or let it go". f 'But I am afraid', continued Subbbuti, 'that I have already tried your patience far too long; I hope you will forgive me, and I will only observe in conclusion that Buddha, similar to the great Stoic teachers, was averse to specu- lation as unprofitable, because it tends to make man forget his cbief task of considering the cardinal question of Life and Death. "I devote myself entirely to moral culture", he declared, "that I may arrive at the highest condition of Rest"; and he contended that "to feed one good man HH 466 PESSIMISM. is infinitely greater in point of merit than to enter into discussions about heaven and earth, spirits and demons, such as ordinarily occupy men"'. a Then, after a brief pause, Subbhuti said gently and with an almost imploring look at several of the company : 'Is this a creed deserving that contempt and abuse with which it is still too frequently assailed by Christian scholars? Is this "a system hideous, irrational, revolting to the best instincts of humanity" ; b a system "humiliating, cheerless, man-marring, soul-crushing"; in fact one that "manifests throughout the most palpable ignorance as to the essential principles of morality", or, as one of your popular Orientalists expresses it, "a religion made for a madhouse" ? d With all deference to the learning of these men, I cannot help thinking that their judgment is as shallow as it is uncharitable. Seated on the high throne of Christian infallibility, they hurl down their imperial thunderbolts upon all other creeds, and you, captivated by the jingle of the fine words in which they know how to clothe their anathemas, accept without examination any fallacy flattering to your prejudices'. 'Your uncontrolled anger', replied Humphrey with the stubborn determination of one fighting pro aris et focis it may be observed that Subbhuti had pronounced the whole of his speech with the utmost calmness, 'your impotent rage befits the weakness of your cause. With the completest justice has your morality been stigmatised by searching scholars; for it is throughout built on the quick- sand of ignorance, nay for the most part on the marshy soil of superstition. The Buddhist's vaunted readiness of pardoning injuries rests on his preposterous belief in transmigration, or, what amounts to the same, in the transference of his karma; for he has been taught to consider any violence or insult he may suffer as the punish- ment for some sin he or his fancied alter ago has committed in one of the anterior existences. Can he claim any merit for indulgence which he virtually practises towards PESSIMISM. 467 himself? And is his alleged meekness anything else than that cowardly submission which encourges the baneful oppres- sions of Eastern despotism? 3 From the same despicable cause flows his much praised fortitude in avoiding self- destruction, for it is prompted by his puerile dread of a new birth, or of an existence more miserable and agonising than that from which he is anxious to escape. His tole- ration arises, as has been remarked before, from his incapacity for distinguishing between right and wrong, and from his indifference to the truth'. b Must now', muttered Attinghausen, 'he has been blamed for his excessive earnestness or "uncontrolled anger"'. 'He has the terms for supreme good and duty', con- tinued Humphrey as before, 'but not the realities; these are only possible where there is a God as the fountain and standard of both: where there is none, man is his own partial and biassed judge the summum bonum is no more than an empty phantom, and duty no more than a hollow obedience to a categorical code of bare pru- dence, without heart and without conscience.* 5 And where Buddha is not fatally wrong, he is paradoxically onesided. He notices merely the physical evils of disease, old age and death, and overlooks the greater sufferings of the soul. In his eyes, the body with its weaknesses and passions is man's sole enemy that requires to be curbed by cruel self-mortification; and therefore, though classifying the vices with great subtlety, he warns against them merely as impediments to the attainment of the Nirwana, and not on account of their inherent obnoxiousness. d And again, by fretfully bemoaning human life as wholly com- posed of wretchedness, he falsifies even duty, nay that filial affection on which so much stress has been laid; for the Buddhist can love his parents only if he forgets that they are the authors of his woes and miseries. There are other features equally objectionable, as, for instance, Gautama's silly contests with his Brahmanic rivals in performing miracles'. 6 468 PESSIMISM. 'As if Moses', murmured Attinghausen, 'did not en- gage in similar rivalries with Egyptian magicians'! 'But after all that has been said', continued Humphrey, collecting his full energy, 'details are unnecessary, and I can sum up the pith of Buddhism in very few words. It makes man lower than the lowest creature that moves, a being weak and drooping ; it reduces him to an animal in hybernation, enchains the functions of body and mind, and causes sentient existence to become non-sentient ; a while in its long tissue of absurd contradictions it is "a spiritualism without a soul, a virtue without duty, a mo- rality without freedom, a charity without love, and a world without Nature and without God'". b Evidently displeased at the tone of Humphrey's ob- servations, Abington began to speak before Subbhuti could reply, and said with that deep absorption in his subject, which was peculiar to him: 'I believe that every Christian is anxious to do justice to the many fine qualities that distinguish the Buddhists to their patience and forbearance, their complete toleration, and their employment of instruction and example only for the diffusion of an ardently loved faith, c their re- nouncement of rewards of piety and their brave resistance to thoughts of self-destruction in the midst of miseries aggravated by imagination. These and other excellent features we readily and cheerfully acknowledge. Yet all this is merely striving after natural perfection it is not religion ; for this is inconceivable without the ideas of God and Immortality. I must go farther still. The ultimate roots of all religion are the feelings of awe and veneration, of sin and guilt. These are experiences of the heart, and the heart alone can solve its own problems. Just as reason does not suffer fancy to rule in the sphere of formal logic, it must not usurp the right of dictating laws in the domain of the feelings. It may reduce the emotions to clear principles, but it can never suppress them or aspire to take their place. To have overlooked PESSIMISM. 469 this point, is the central fault of Buddhism. It vainly endeavours to effect by abstract thought what is only accessible to pious sentiment or intuition. Unless you imbue yourself with this obvious truth, you may, urged on by daily observation, lay aside this or that individual error, but you will lapse anew into other and perhaps graver fallacies. A right notion of the world and its fulness, of its life, beauty and variety, seems to dawn upon your conviction; but that reason of which you are so proud will again and again toss you on the sea of doubt, sorrow and despair; you will find no sure haven of rest so long as you disdain our beacon of safety. For Love is life's innermost strength; but it is not in the stony soil and chilly atmosphere of the intellect that its tender blossoms thrive'. 'There is, I am sure', said Mondoza, 'no one among us, who was not rejoiced to hear the welcome and thoughtful concessions of our Buddhist guest, admitting the necessity of a new Nirwana. They seem to me almost like a first step in the realisation of our friend Wolfram's sanguine hope of making Buddhism the starting point of a common religion of reason and humanity. But to secure genuine progress towards this supreme end, we must guard against all misunderstandings that can possibly be avoided. We may easily comprehend our worthy Subbhuti's indignation at the unjust estimates of Buddhism he constantly meets with; but his indignation I trust he will pardon me seems, like those estimates, to exceed the limits of moderation. The objections of European scholars are chiefly directed against the Buddhists' intangible speculations, not against their morality. One of those who has judged most bitterly of the former, affirms with regard to the latter that it breathes "a singular greatness of character, an almost perfect purity, a boundless charity", and that it engenders "a life of heroism which never for^a moment is faithless to itself" ; while he speaks of Buddha with an enthusiasm which can hardly be surpassed by his most zealous votaries, 470 PESSIMISM. describing his individuality not only as "most grand", bu1 as "perfect, since his life, as far as we know it, is without the slightest stain, without any fault whatever" in fad calling Buddha "after Christ the sublimest and noblest figure in history", the influence of whose ethics or individuals as well as on nations is "immense and mosl auspicious"*. Another writer went even farther, and aftei long and patient studies of Buddhism, characterised il as "one of the most wonderful movements of the human mind in the direction of Spiritual Truth". b The aiir which Buddha proposed to himself deserves indeed no' only our highest admiration, but our most serious atten- tion. In its essence, it was eminently practical. Buddha desired to be a guide to happiness; he wished to brin to men deliverance from all sufferings, all passions, al sins; to break the yoke of worldly care, ignorance, am depravity ; and to banish for ever unrest, fear and anxiety The numberless adherents he has won among the mos varied tribes, and the many centuries he has swayed thei: hearts, are strong witnesses of the intrinsic value of his doc trine. We must admit that the means he employed partialb defeated their own object. The dhyanas and the succeeding contemplations are in reality not deliverances, but nev fetters not the less strong because entirely spiritual; am the final Mrwana is not moral indifference, but virtually moral death. Moreover, the unhappy separation from life engendered a playful yet dangerous scepticism whicl declared all objects to be empty semblance and delusioi without real existence, similar to the mirage of the desert and which, more and more exaggerated by Gautama's sue cessors, helped to intensify the fundamental fault o apathy. 6 And lastly, doctrine and practice are disfigure< by numerous superstitions which Buddha himself partiall; occasioned, such as the harassing belief in demons an< spirits, the most mischievous faith in the miracles of magic and the confidence in supernatural powers attainable b; meditation and piety. d PESSIMISM. 471 'But having said this, I think I have exhausted the main defects of Buddhism, and I can cordially do homage to its true grandeur. I accept the new Nirwana of our honoured friend Subbhuti as a constituent of an harmonious character. For if I understand it right, it combines the earnest morality of the Stoics with the unrestricted science of the modern Monists, and applies both the one and the other to a life of activity in state and society. The stages by which it might be reached seem to be these: detachment from worldly boons by the knowledge of their insignificance; attachment to our fellow-men from sympathetic pity for their sufferings and struggles; zealous exertion for their benefit from affection and benevolence; and finally, contentment through the consciousness of discharging these duties in unselfish purity of motives. What, then, in one word, is this Buddhistic element? Let me call it EELIGION. You are startled? Yet, I believe, you were prepared for this issue. If we can establish it, were it only as a probability, we need not regret having devoted to the consideration of Buddhism so much time. Most of you will say, it is a cold and inadequate notion of religion. I am afraid, it is the only one possible in our age to honest men who disdain self-deception. We must accustom ourselves to a religion aiming simply at that "natural perfection" which fervid believers so strongly denounce as insufficient. I am unable to discover a single metaphysical principle capable of holding all men together in common harmony and concord. Even the ideas of God and Immortality, as I have before felt bound to admit, cannot be relied upon as universal bonds. After the failure of so many creeds, it seems desirable, nay it appears to me an imperative duty, to try in sincerity of mind the efficacy of a theory of life unaided by trans- cendental suppositions. All will, perhaps, find to their surprise that Reason, the stone which the builders of creeds have rejected, is the only safe foundation of religion; and that the edifice erected on this foundation, with its 472 PESSIMISM. four stories of Knowledge, Compassion, Benevolence, anc Contentment, affords room for all men and all nations t< live together in happiness and in peace. But pray, d< not mistake me. This new Nirwana is only one side o the complex character we are endeavouring to construct Some other features have already been pointed out, an< there remain a few more of no less importance to b unfolded. Till we have had an opportunity of discussin; these remaining elements, I beg you to suspend you judgment on the proposed idea of Religion'. It was only the speaker's concluding appeal whic averted the outbreak of a terrible tempest. Even as i was, the low murmurings-of distant thunder rolled omir ously through the assembly. However, in the cours of a lively conversation on general topics, adroitly starte by Mondoza and eagerly supported by Wolfram, Hermc and Attinghausen, who were anxious to assist him in h manifest tactics, the menacing agitation gradually subside and, long before the guests parted, gave way to the usu* spirit of genial cheerfulness. XL IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. THE expectation of a final encounter leading to a definite result caused, the next evening, an early and unusually numerous attendance at Cordova Lodge. The commotion raised by Mondoza's last speech, though it had for the moment been allayed under the influence of his persuasive- ness, seemed in the interval to have even been intensified, and it was reflected on every face in an expression either of triumph, concern, or anxiety. All seemed desirous to speak, but, as if by tacit agreement, they yielded the pre- cedence to Abington who, they felt, must have been most deeply pained. "With a seriousness almost pathetic he said : 'The more I reflect on the "new Nirwana" explained by our kind host, the greater is my astonishment that a man of his depth and earnestness should rest satisfied with a notion so bare, so inconsistent, and he will forgive me so superficial. From the proud self-sufficiency of Knowledge he proposes to advance to the feebleness of Compassion and the lukewarmness of Benevolence, in order to reach a frigid Contentment neither blessing the heart nor blessed with the rapture of a higher enthusiasm. This kindling flame can only be fanned by the all-powerful and all-pervading sentiment of our complete and absolute dependence on a living and personal Prototype of love and holiness on a Being whose miraculous working in our soul converts the dim twilight of human knowledge into the radiance of heavenly conviction ; compassion and bene- volence into the ardour of affection and charity; and a passive contentment into the inward glow of joyousness. The new Nirwana, similar to the old, is essentially a sad, or at least regretful, resignation ; whereas true religion, the 474 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. religion of Christ, is the brightness of blithe buoyancy and serene happiness'. 'No system', said Humphrey, unable to restrain his irritation any longer, 'can claim the dignity of a religion, which does not take into account our inborn conscious- ness of guilt and sin. But how is this possible without an eternal Standard of purity and without an unfailing Judge of transgression'? 'It is by hope and fear alone', interrupted Berghorn. 'that man's nature can be directed and controlled; but if a spurious philosophy deprives him, by a dictatorial decree, both of his God and his Immortality, and makes his intellect at once his own ruler and his own reward, he is inevitably driven along a career of temerarious reck- lessness, till, lashed by the Satanic promptings of ac insane pride, he is finally hurled into the fathomless gulJ of moral perdition'. 'And is a religion', said Avada-Kalama zealously, 'at all conceivable without a visible worship, and especially without prayer? There exists none which does not include the two main elements of Deity and devotion. I kno\v well', he added with a derisive glance at Subbhuti, 'that some sects fancied they could dispense with the one or the other, or with both; but such communities either collapsed after an existence most brief and languishing, 01 they paid the penalty of their presumption and blasphemj by being forced into the other extreme of a senseless multitude of gods and rites. The new Nirwana, as little as that of Buddha, can avoid degenerating into the grossest and most degrading superstition'. Panini and Movayyid-eddin nodded assent, and Canon Mortimer declared Divine worship, and particularly pul- pit instruction, to be highly desirable. 'The most essential component of religion', said Eabbi Gideon with emphasis, 'is faith. As man is wonderfully and mysteriously compounded of body and mind, so the Universe consists of things visible and invisible; but the IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 475 invisible world, which every sound intellect instinctively feels to be both more momentous and more real, cannot be reached by reason or knowledge, but by belief alone. Without faith, therefore, man's strongest yearnings remain unsatisfied; he has no religion; he needs must be wretched. Moreover, as your Goethe pertinently remarks, the only legitimate as well as the grandest and profoundest theme in the history of the world and of man, the theme to which all others are subservient, is the burning conflict between dis- belief and belief; the epochs in which belief prevails, are glorious, heartstirring, and fruitful both for contemporaneous and later generations ; while all those periods in which dis- belief, in whatever form, asserts a questionable triumph, though they may transitorily boast of a fictitious brilliancy, are lost to posterity, as no one is willing to waste his attention upon empty shadows.* Dissociated from the truths revealed by faith, all human enlightenment and learning are worthless dross and dangerous deceit stony shells without a kernel'. 'The radical defect in the proposed conception', said Wolfram, 'is' . . . 'Et tu Brute 1 ? whispered Mondoza, smiling. 'Is the absence, of that element', continued Wolfram, looking benignantly at Mondoza, 'which alone uplifts man from earth to heaven and thus creates a religion the absence of Fancy. The eighteenth century was fertile in the most valuable enquiries into the history of religious creeds, and yet proved utterly unable to grasp the essence of religious elevation. And why? Because, in its ponderous and grovelling rationalism, it lacked or dis- dained the magic wings of Imagination. Trusting ex- clusively to the soberness of a dissolvent logic, it destroyed old faiths, but could build up no new one. Because the Encyclopaedists, like their kindred pre- decessors and followers, failed to pay due regard to Fancy, they sadly misunderstood Religion, which is the joint offspring of the heart and of Imagination. 11 Bene- 476 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. volence and Contentment are excellent and sensible companions, but they are no divinely inspiring guides'. 'Victory, victory'! exclaimed Humphrey; 'truth finally vindicates its irresistible force over the most recalcitrant hearts and minds'. 'No religioD, I believe', said Hermes, 'can possess true grandeur and loftiness unless it starts from Plato's Ideas. Beyond heaven's vault, and in imperishable splendour and beauty, reside those Ideas, the exemplars of all beings and all objects. The highest and that which comprises all the rest, is the one that is called the Good or God. It is in the realm of Ideas what the sun is in the material world the creative principle of all things. Behind the cosmos as it appears to us, there is a sublimer original, of which that cosmos is but a faint reflex. It is this view to which the deeper minds of all times have re- turned, though in the most diversified shapes. In a con- tinuous gradation, steadily proceeding from the imperfect to the more perfect, Love or Wisdom rises from the beauty of one or two objects to the beauty of all; from the beauty of the body to that of the soul; hence to the beauty of men's pursuits; from the beauty of these pursuits to that of science or knowledge; till at length it arrives at that matchless form which is Beauty in the abstract, or the Beautiful itself. Living in contemplation of this unfading Radiance, which is undimmed by any earthly blemish, fosters true wisdom and true virtue, and trains us for immortality, the final aim of Eros this is pure, exalted, and blissful Religion.'* 'How terrible an array of indictments' ! said Mondoza, after a short pause. 'But I must gird my loins for the defence, undismayed by the melancholy fact that attacks have been levelled against my poor Nirwana even from several quarters which I had good reason to consider friendly. When I survey your objections, I think one circumstance is most satisfactory and encouraging they all point out omissions, not errors. The four stages I IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 477 have described are not censured in themselves, but they are regarded as insufficient to constitute a Religion. This is everything I desire. For I attempted no more than to set forth a few broad principles about which we can all agree, no more than to prepare a common ground where all may meet. The hopelessness of a specific uni- formity is amply clear to the psychologist even in- dependently of the sad lessons of history. Let everyone superadd to those common principles whatever accessory his individuality may besides require for their completion. Yet care should be taken lest the addition mar the fundamental ingredients; and I am afraid that most of the elements that have been insisted upon are questionable, if not perilous. Enthusiasm is obnoxious when allowed to have a decisive voice in framing notions. Faith may lull our reason into a false security and blunt our energies. Fancy I need only remind you of the numerous de- scriptions of heaven and hell may convert the sober earnestness of religion into play both extravagant and mischievous. Plato's Ideas I beg you to remember his doctrines of pre-existence and transmigration may lead to labyrinthine tracks which no human intellect can pursue with safety. However, I do not wholly reject even these elements, provided they are kept within legitimate boundaries. Enthusiasm is invaluable in stimulating active morality and the desire of helping in all works of improvement. Faith alone can shield us from despondency and despair, yet not the faith in abstruse dogmas im- posed upon us from without by a tyrannical tradition, but the unshaken belief in realities implanted in our minds and ever putting forth fresh buds of hope the be- lief in a holy Intelligence changeless amidst perpetual change and exempt from all influence of time and space, in our Liberty and Free Will, in Virtue practised from singleness of purpose and rewarding the heart with joy and happiness, in the final triumph of Right over Might, and in our constant progress towards the sanctuary of 478 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. Truth. 4 Let Fancy, charming and delighting, rule in the domain of Art, yet even here not with an unbridled license ; for Art, the offspring of the wonderful union of the Real and the Possible, is the eternally Necessary : detached from the firm ground of reality, it soars errati- cally in romantic vagaries. And lastly, the Platonic theory of Ideas may be made as beneficent as it is ele- vating, if we change it into an honest and intelligible Idealism which refrains from assigning to those abstrac- tions a separate and distinct existence; for, in fact, Plato's Ideas, evolved from Socratic notions, are, like these, derived from actual experience^ and although Plato shrinks from making this admission in explicit terms, it is unmistakably involved in his latest and ripest work, the Laws, which permits to the Ideas hardly any prac- tical influence in the organisation of the commonwealth or in the political and social existence of individuals'. 'This is a most significant circumstance', interrupted Humphrey, whose manner had alternately expressed assent and displeasure. 'After having spent the greatest part of his days and all the fire of his passionate zeal upon the elaboration of visionary abstractions, which he boldly invested with a living, if not a creative force, the philosopher felt at last compelled to cast them aside as the idle offspring of a playful ingenuity, to return to personal deities not merely "a holy Intelligence" , and to uphold the dominion of a God who is the author of everything good and the good only, of a God who has brought forth all things and beings, who exercises a benevolent and special Pro- vidence over men whom he cherishes as His most precious possession, who rules the world in justice, and who must be regarded as the all- wise framer and eternal parent of the Ideas themselves'. 5 'But do not forget', said Attinghausen, 'that although Plato in his later years grew excessively pious, the more matured experience he had gained forced from him the avowal that man has been devised as the plaything of IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 479 the deity, and that human affairs are too insignificant and worthless to deserve any serious attention.* 1 He despondingly gave up his earlier structure of the Republic, reared on the glittering pedestals of philosophy and meta- physics, and declared that such a fabric would require for citizens gods and the progeny of gods. b He had lost all confidence in human nature and the stability of the world. He saw everywhere so much perversity, injustice and misery that amazing as it must appear to us he, the divine, Olympian Plato, could find no other explanation of this shocking confusion than by assuming, in utter contradiction to his entire system, an evil soul or genius of the world, constantly engaged in fierce struggles with its good or godly spirit. d Nay he proclaimed that, while men disagreed on all other matters, they were unanimous on the one point that death was preferable to life. 6 Thus the magnificent Idealist finally condescended to confess himself a consistent Pessimist a normal progress inevi- tably accomplished by every clear and candid mind'. 'Say rather,' rejoined Humphrey with eagerness, 'the heathen naturally passed from the mists of superstition to the utter darkness of despair. Indeed, Plato's inner life not only confirms but crowns my view of the hollow fallacy of Greek joyousness. It implies a glorious triumph of Revelation, as it supplies the strongest possible foil to the brightness of the Christian's life'. Abington and Hermes seemed ready to speak, but they courteously gave way to Mondoza, who said: 'Pray, allow me to finish my remarks, before you enter into this question, the importance of which for our main investigation is indeed obvious. I prize the element of Faith most highly, because I believe that it virtually includes the rest of the components I have alluded to. For Faith is Enthusiasm; Faith rises from the palpable objects into the ethereal spheres of Beauty and Art; and Faith perceives in the dim rays of reality the vivid splendours of the Ideal: it inspires us with confident trust in progress, in 480 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. refinement, and in goodness. Goethe seized the very core and marrow of Schiller's greatness of character when he wrote of him: "His cheek now "burnt in deeper, brighter glow "Of that fair youth which ne'er deserts our hearts, "Of that brave strength which, earlier or later, "Prevails in wrestling with this stubborn world, "Of that firm Faith which, great yet rising still, "Now boldly onward moves, now meekly waits, "That Truth and Right may work and grow and thrive "And noble deeds may have their day at last". 'But it must be the inward Faith I have described it should not be confounded with Authority; it is the sweet and tranquil harmony of the soul, not the harshnes; of sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Yet in that quie harmony is an invincible power which moves mountain and conquers the world, which is indestructible thoughou all eternity, because it is the concentrated power of th divinest instincts of our nature. The striving to attain t the height of this nature, whether we accompany th effort by words or not, is our worship, our prayer; an- the ever present consciousness of our remaining im measurably below our standard, induces a humility n less sincere and profound than the most contrite feelin of guilt and sin. Thus, I think, we secure the valuabl essence of the positive religions, while excluding thei alloy and avoiding their dangers. We are satisfied wit building up an ideal of virtue and happiness for ou] selves, without attempting to force it upon future genen tions and altered times. We refrain from raising 01 limited intelligence, it may be our contracted sympathie into an unchangeable canon. We simply consider ourselv< to have arrived at one of the many stages on a road whk is practically endless'. 'Do not be deceived', said Movayyid-eddin ferventl 'Free-thinkers or acute philosophers may, under certa circumstances, contribute much towards bringing obsole forms of religion into discredit; and if they possess ar IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 481 bition and a talent for organisation, they may even succeed in establishing a sect which keeps together during their life-time: but a new and well-conceived religious structure is alone possible through that genuine not your Faith which is the enthusiastic devotion to truths recognised by the votary, not as the product of human reflection, but of Divine revelation. Only as God's special messengers, as the almost passive instruments of a super- natural Power, could Moses, Christ and Mohammed have become the founders of religions which defy the vicis- situdes of numberless ages ; only as the direct inspiration of the Almighty, could the documents which bear their names wield so mighty an influence over men's minds; and the systems they propounded owe the largest part of their vitality, not to an absolute toleration such as you advocate, but to that strong and decided particularism which they imply and enjoin'. 'It is just on account of these awful facts which I do not dispute', replied Mondoza, 'that we shrink from fixing our views in stagnant formulas. Who is there that re- members the horrors prompted by the fanatical ex- clusiveness of former religions, and would yet rashly risk the reponsibility of framing a new one with the pretence of a higher authority? We are sure we cannot go far astray in following the united directions of reason, nature and history; and if our issues are more limited and more modest, and if, renouncing a high-wrought beatitude, we desire no more than a calm and uniform Contentment, we are at least safe from terrible outrages, errors and crimes. Moreover, we are eschewing what has hitherto been the bane of the world. Every positive religion, while uniting its own adherents, has caused a separation and estrangement from the rest of mankind; nay, split into numerous sects, each has called forth within its own sphere a dislike and an hostility the intensity of which was often in inverse ratio to the amount of disagreement : but we are trying to diffuse principles which, derived from our ii 482 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. common struggles and aspirations, shall bind together all men by the same strong ties of fellowship. And while former theologies were but too frequently in open or secret antagonism with other pursuits and manifestations of the intellect, we are endeavouring to design a theory which has nothing to fear from research, but on the contrary shall grow stronger and fuller with every advancement of true philosophy and sound science. 'And what are those principles? what are the main features of this theory as they have been evolved from our discussions? They are these: the Stoic's unshaken Fortitude through the dominion of reason; the Hebrew's or Christian's Peace through the union of the soul with the Eternal; the Epicurean's fearless Freedom through the con- quest of superstitious fears and beliefs ; the Monist's deep and vivid Sympathy with every creature and all Creation ; Spinoza's Intellectual Love of God, that is, the Love oi Truth for its own sake, with the serene clearness it engenders; the Buddhist's humble Resignation, Com- passion and unselfish Benevolence ; and lastly, the Greek's Idealism and Refinement manifested in Beauty and Art, Whether we are conscious of it or not, whether we avow it or not, these are the chief ingredients of our presenl civilisation, which correspond with man's principal faculties and instincts. a The physiologist is familiar with the notion of eucrasy signifying such a well-proportioned mixture of qualities in bodies as to constitute health anc soundness. Now the combination of all the ingredients I have summarised forms that eucrasy or "harmony Oj character which is the perfection of culture; and he ap proaches nearest to it who unites most of the elements But parallel to this culture is our happiness, and h' who succeeds in imbuing himself with the qualities w have one by one ascertained to be essential, and whc besides, diffuses over all the cheering hues of a rations Optimism born of that faith in human goodness and pro gress which I have attempted to describe, has found an< IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 483 may secure that enjoyment of life the conditions of which we desired to discover. But whether his lot be enjoy- ment or not, he will be satisfied if, at the end of his days, he can in all candour say that he has striven to deserve the epitaph: "His life was gentle and the elements "So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up "And say to all the world, This was a man"'. a *I think that very little can be objected to this con- clusion', said Wolfram with evident satisfaction. 'The Greeks were rally aware that both the beauty of our character and the reality of our happiness depend on the normal and equal development of all powers. They praised Homer and Plato as two "all-harmonious minds ". b Indeed in Plato they found their ideal of a perfect individuality almost realised. For as a philosopher he blended the boldest flight with the nicest acumen, the faculty of abstract and dialectic enquiry with the freshness of artistic creation, and enthusiasm with tranquillity of mind; while as a man he combined severity of moral prin- ciples with a keen susceptibility for the beautiful, nobleness and elevation with delicacy of feeling, and dignity with grace. The requirements which he enforced in theory, were actually incorporated in his own person; and as it has been said of Schiller that he was not a poet but a poem, so Plato might be described as not a philosopher but a philosophy, this term being taken in its most comprehensive sense. The celestial joyfulness of his nature, a consequence of the alliance of intellectual brightness and free fancy, is animatingly reflected in all his works a few sad utterances extorted by bitter experience were like fugitive clouds which the sun of his cheerfulness quickly scattered ; and by a happy instinct the Greeks associated him with Apollo, the god of light and gladness, of moral beauty and harmony. And as if we were to be assured', continued Wolfram emphatically, 'that a sterling eucrasy is'possible in our time 484 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. no less than in that of Aeschylus or Pericles, we see it personified in our worthy host, who thoroughly blends the culture of the East, of Greece, and the scientific West, who' . . . l l must protest against' . . . interrupted Mondoza. 'Who amalgamates', continued Wolfram more deter- minedly, 'a sober realism and a lofty idealism, joins the clearest judgment with the most warm-hearted sympathies, Stoic simplicity with refinement and taste, well-balanced repose with energy of thought and action, who' . . . 'I cannot allow you to add a single word more', said Mondoza with firmness. 'There should be a limit even to the prejudiced bias of friendship. Keeping my eyes fixed on the distant goal, I am content if I do not miss or lose the right path, though even this, alas! is extremely difficult'. 'Wonderful indeed', said Hermes, 'was the idiosyncrasy of Plato ; but let us not forget the perhaps even greater perfection of his immortal master a nature more homely and less aristocratic both in thought and manners, but not less sublime or less manysided. I do not know whether the whole of Greek literature includes a more remarkable delineation of an eminent man than Xeno- phon's portraiture of Socrates at the end of the "Memora- bilia", suggested by long and close intercourse. Those, he says, who have known Socrates, never cease to regret his death, since he contributed in the highest degree to their advancement in virtue. He was so pious that he did nothing without the sanction of the gods; so just that he wronged no man even in a trifling matter, but was of service, in the most important concerns, to all who enjoyed his society; so temperate that he never preferred pleasure to duty; so wise that he did not err in distin- guishing better from worse and needed no counsel from others, but was self-sufiicient for all such decisions; able to explain and settle the subtlest questions by argument, able also to discern the disposition of men, IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 485 to confute the misguided and to lead them back to uprightness and honour; in fact, "he seemed to be such as the best and happiest of men should be"'. a 'I do not hesitate to admit', said Abington, 'that this is a fine and noble description, and that in all the Books of the Bible no picture of our Saviour is found, which exhibits the features of His Divine spirit and life in such coherence and completeness. 5 However, the New Testament reveals to us incidentally traits of Christ, which our mind spontaneously combines into a figure of such grand proportions that every other character in history, however complete it may seem, is only the dim shadow of this prototype of all harmony of him who, the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature, at once perfect God and perfect Man, the heir of all things yet having not where to lay his head, d the tempted mortal and the sinless spirit, 6 died for the salvation of the world, but did not seek his own glory ; f who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed; who, when reviled reviled not again, and when suffering threatened not,e a High-priest "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens ". h He is the eternal model of every moral and spiritual perfection, and all the efforts of earnest minds, I firmly believe, have no other aim than humbly to imitate his example. In this sense I heartily approve of the eucrasy of character constructed by our host with so much care and thought- fulness'. After Humphrey and Berghorn had signified their assent to Abington's remarks, though with not a few provisoes and qualifications, Canon Mortimer said cheer- fully: 'I am strongly convinced that the complex culture which has resulted from our discussions, thoroughly coincides with the spirit of true and catholic Christianity. For we are taught that God "at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers", before 486 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. He ordained His Son to bring redemption to mankind; 1 and we may devoutly presume that He continues so to speak to His children even after He has placed His Son at the right hand of His glory. For all men and all nations, St. Paul explains, are one body consisting of many members, yet all ruled by the same God and the same Spirit; and as the foot cannot say that it is not of the body because it is not the hand, or as the ear cannot say that it is not of the body because it is not the eye, so we should beware of affirming that Zeno has not the Spirit because he is not Christ, or that Spinoza is not an apostle of God because he is not St. John. In fact, by venturing such a denial, we should wantonly destroy that fulness, unity and symmetry which St. Paul, in the remarkable passage I have alluded to, sets forth as solely possible by maintaining a heaven-appointed variety. For, he asks, if the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? or if the whole body were hearing, where would be the smelling? So we might ask, if our whole being were faith, where would be knowledge? if our whole life were election by grace, where would be energy and action ? or if our soul were wrapt up in the invisible Kingdom of Heaven, where would be art and beauty? If all functions were absorbed by one member, there would be no body. But God has set every member in the body as it pleased Him, and as the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, nor the head to the feet, I have no need of you, so the Christian must not reject the aid of the Stoic, nor the Stoic the aid of the Christian; the Hebrew cannot dispense with the graces of the Greek, nor the Greek with the earnestness and elevation of the Hebrew. "There should be no schism in the body, but the members should have the same care one for another". The Church has room for all pursuits, all truths, all enthusiasms, arid the Christian is a mere fragment of humanity so long as he excludes ven one of them from his creed and his life'. b IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 487 'I believe', said Panini calmly and deliberately, 'there is in these observations much that must commend itself to every unprejudiced mind. Harmony of character is the final aim of all self-training, and therefore of all religion. The Preacher, whose singular work was the starting-point of these conversations, in finally summing up his varied reflections, and endeavouring to define "the whole man", considers him to be one "who fears God and keeps His commandments". But what are God's precepts? It is in the Prophets that we must look for the answer, and Micah has plainly given it as a guidance for all times and nations: "The Lord has shown thee, O man, what is good, and what does He require of thee but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God"'? a Gregovius confirmed this view by quoting some additional passages from the Old Testament, b after which Panini continued: 'Justice, Charity, and Humility are the elements of an harmonious mind, and they suffice both for true piety and true happiness. Yet I willingly allow that they require extraneous additions and complements. That independence of thought which animated Spinoza, if kept within legitimate bounds, can help us to distinguish the gold of revelation from the dross of tradition; the general sympathy instilled by Monism, if divested of its fantastical excesses and not pressed to monstrous consequences, may gladden the heart with a new and deeper glow ; and above all, those innate cravings of our nature, beauty and art, must be satisfied not merely for the outward adornment of our existence, but for the purification and ennoblement of our souls. Taking Hebraism, Hellenic culture, and Natural Science as the three chief branches of civilisation, we might not inappropriately apply to them the words of Ecclesiastes : "Two are better than one . . . For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow ; but woe to the single one that falls, for he has not another to help him up; ... and a threefold cord is not quickly broken"'. 6 488 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 'I confess*, said Rabbi Gideon with an unusual cau- tiousness of manner, 'I am neither so "catholic" as our indulgent Canon, nor so exclusively enchained by the teaching of the Prophets, or so enamoured of Greek art, as the last speaker, who seems in danger of lapsing into a bare theism. But I am prepared to avow that Judaism may admit nearly all the suggested ingredients of moral and mental education without in the least compromising that strongly specific character which has resulted from the com- bined injunctions of Moses, the Prophets, and the Rabbins. Indeed our sages have repeatedly delineated human perfec- tion with a copiousness of distinctive traits, which yields to no other system or fusion of systems. The truly righteous man, they say, does not persecute his persecu- tors, bears injuries in silence, and is meek under reproof, resigned and hopeful under sufferings. He studies the Law diligently, even admidst the greatest privations, with no worldly object, but exclusively in order to diffuse and practise it ; and he tries by zeal and concentration to penetrate into its depths and masteries. He is intent upon self-improvement and aids others in their search for knowledge and truth. He deems intercourse with the wise more precious than all earthly treasures, and engages as little as possible in the pursuits of commerce. He loves God, that is, he lives so that by his actions God's name may be sanctified; and he loves his fellow-men, that is, he readily assists them in bearing their burdens. He shuns vice and sin with every effort of moral energy. He is urbane in manners and gentle in conversation, peace-loving and peace-spreading, judging every one from the most favourable side. He is modest, humble and patient, content with his lot, simple in habits and temperate in all enjoyments. He is free from that vain ambition which aspires to outward distinctions, but without desiring it he wins honour, authority and dominion.* Any one who combines these qualities, or only the most important of them, possesses, I believe, a harmony of character that may well vie with IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 489 that of Socrates or Plato. We have no need to go for our exemplars beyond the circle of our own sacred writings, and we think that these are in full agreement with all that is valuable and profitable in any other literature, or in any philosophy or science'. 'I should not be displeased with our host's eucrasy\ said Attinghausen, who found it impossible to suppress a pro- voking smile of irony at Gideon's concluding sentences, 'if I could overcome my misgivings on two points: I distrust the deceptive allurements of Optimism, and I dread the frolics and gambols of Idealism. If we could reasonably repose confidence in men's good sense and discretion, we should have little to fear even from these two insinuating Sirens. But in the light of our long and painful experience, such a confidence would be utter foolishness. Optimists will go on busying themselves with their airy castle of a theodicy and proving, to their heart's content, that they are living in the very best of all possible worlds; and idealists will go on evolving from the empyrean of their intellectual sublimity wonderful paragons of human excellence. How- ever, we may well take the hazard, provided that we cling to our Monism without faltering and without com- promise to that Monism which is the rampart and bul- wark of the future. For after all, to be candid, nobody is even tolerably consistent either in Pessimism or Materialism. We are, one and all, weak and pitiable creatures' ! 'The very two principles you shun', said Melville, 'render our host's construction acceptable to my mind. It secures, moreover, that inward peace and liberty which arise from the absence of superstitious fancies and terrors; and it opens a noble and an endless career of progress by assigning a conspicuous rank and function to Truth. I have within the last few days carefully weighed the objections that have been pointed out to the supposed spiritualism of Spinoza's Substance and Attributes, and have examined his ambiguities in now identifying and 490 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. now contrasting God and Nature; and I cannot help acknowledging the weight of those criticisms. I am, therefore, the more satisfied with a harmony of character, all the elements of which are derived from reason and observation, without allowing sway to the uncertain admixture of transcendental speculation'. l l cannot hut be rejoiced', said Mondoza, addressing those who had spoken, 'at the amicable reception you have accorded to my proposed eucrasy. You could not have met my remarks in a spirit of greater fairness. Each of you has, with a self-denial I know how to appreciate, waived one or more elements of perfect culture hitherto deemed by him indispensable. You will find yourselves amply rewarded for the sacrifice by the happy feeling of a closer kinship and a much stronger sympathy with the rest of your fellow-men. Yet you will, I believe, hardly require any important sacrifice; for with those constituents which we have adopted in common as leaders anc guardians, no principle of tradition or metaphysics car be dangerous, if intelligently and honestly subjected tc that control. Uniformity of- thought is neither possibk nor desirable; in a rational variety lies our best hope o: further advance and enlightenment. If doubts or suspicion* as to the sufficiency of the features agreed upon should ever assail us and we are all, as our friend Attinghauser reminds us, weak mortals let us fight them down b} those arguments which have at present guided our con- viction or compelled our assent; let no experience how ever perplexing, no trial however distressing, no nev discovery of any kind however startling, make us waver ii our unreserved allegiance to Reason, Truth, Faith, anc Charity the unchanging stars in our often perilous voyage And what is the common bond of the diversified elements and the stimulating force to set them in motion ? I repeat it is the sense of duty, an impulse irresistible as love stronger than death. And the only true happiness in th< world's gift is that which springs up, free and unsought IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 491 by the wayside of duty. Courage, therefore, courage! Onward in the path of concord, of universal union'! 'Deeply gratified as I am', said Abington after a short pause, 'at the substantial concurrence of views we have reached, I should be reluctant to proclaim peace where there is no peace. You have assumed Plato's Idealism as an important factor in a perfect character, and though you have judiciously modified that notion, the serious question remains whether the doctrines of Plato, in any form, can be admitted as components in a happy and religious life. The popular misconceptions that prevail, and the indiscriminate eulogies that are constantly lavished, on that dazzling and enticing system, render vigilance doubly imperative'. 'I find it difficult to believe', said Hermes, 'that the Christian can feel any real antagonism to Plato who, similarly to the Bible, enjoins that man's highest aim is "resembling God as much as possible", and that "this resemblance consists in becoming just and holy with wisdom"'.* 'True', replied Abington ; 'but how does the philosopher characterise that resemblance? As "a flight". For since, according to his theories, the evil can never cease in the world, because there must be something that is opposed to the good, he sees no other way of rescue or safety than "to fly hence thither as quickly as possible" ; b that is, he advises men, not to fight resolutely and patiently in order to conquer and remove the evil and so to assist in realising the Divine schemes, but to withdraw from this phantom world of instability and grievous defects to the world of pure Ideas, to the calm heights of reflection and theoretical knowledge, and thus to strengthen that lofty presumption of the mind which leads to a fatal alienation from the common struggles of our brethren. Christianity, on the other hand, introduces the new and vivifying principle of a practical life, which it puts in the 492 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. place of the intellectual element, and which destroys th pride of knowledge. Active charity takes the supreme rani and manifests itself in all individual virtues. Plato's sys tern involves an irreconcilable contradiction between ide; and reality; it is an enigmatical Dualism. But Christi anity assures us that the Creation was from the begin ning so designed as to embody the highest perfectior without any residue whatever of an ungodly and invincibl necessity of nature a . It does not invite us to an ascetic an< contemplative escape from the world, but to an assiduou and beneficial energy. It makes no difference between th higher erudition attainable only by the scholar and phi losopher, and the unconscious existence or the mere opining of the multitude. It guarantees to all alike the priceles and indefeasible boon of inward liberty. Yet it is Plato' great merit that, leaving the contrast unharmonised, h did not pass beyond his Dualism, and that, untempted b; monistic propensities, he did not succumb to Pantheism 'Let us not swerve from the main point', said Hermes 'the fact remains that Plato assigns to man the nobl task of striving after similitude with the Deity. Goc he says, is never and in no respect unjust, and that ma- resembles Him most who has attained the highest possibL degree of justice. This he regards as the test of huma. excellence the test of wisdom and virtue.' b 'The value of this doctrine', rejoined Abington, 'de pends chiefly on Plato's conception of God. Now, takin; even the most lenient view, we are compelled to affirr that his notion of the Deity constantly wavered be tween an abstract idea and a personal Being. For while in some of his writings, he represents God simply a synonymous with the absolute Good, or the highest of hi Ideas, he speaks of Him, in other works, as of a livinj and self-conscious Creator and Ruler, as the Father o the universe, whom it is difficult to find, and whom, whe^ He has been found, it is impossible to explain to all. Moreover, the latter opinion, it must be owned, forms n- IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 493 organic link of his system, but is, on the contrary, foreign, if not opposed, to its main principles ; it is , in fact, simply an expedient adaptation of traditional tenets. Plato seems never to have seriously attempted to fix the relation between God and the absolute Good ; and he leaves it uncertain whether both are in the mutual position of Creator and creature, or whether they have no connection whatever, but possess a parallel and independent existence. A god so vague and indefinite is practically unavailing as a monitor and exemplar. Man's resemblance to him is very far from identical with that reflexion of the Di- vine image in the affairs of the world, with that open yet unassuming glorification of God, which Christianity pro- poses as one of our principal aims. Only a Deity that fashions and acts, can guide man in his moral conduct. An ethical likeness with an incorporeal abstraction is an impossibility ; and yet nothing but such an abstraction can result from Plato's speculations'. 'While I fully admit the correctness of this view', said Hermes, '1 contend that the lack of rigorous consistency in Plato's opinions does not impair their practical utility. Are the readers of his works ever impressed with a passive contemplativeness or dreamy quietism? Do they not rather feel the breath of life and action with such force that knowledge and deed seem almost to be equivalent? Man, directed by the Idea of the Good, should labour to imitate God's world-producing and world-governing ac- tivity: this is doubtless Plato's real doctrine apart from its theoretical fluctuations. It is virtually the Christian teaching; for Christianity also conceives man as a free organ of God, destined to realise the Divine ideas'. 'This cannot be denied', answered Abington; 'but no ancient philosophy was able to point out the actual so- lution of this paramount task; it was only the life of Christ, which perfectly elucidated the design of the King- dom of God, and that life alone is capable of serving as an unfailing pattern and model. It should, moreover, not be 494 IDEAITSM AND THE GOAL. forgotten that the whole of antiquity remained in th enthralling consciousness of a slavish dependence on N? ture ; whereas Christianity, breaking through the barriei of Nature's laws, shows us the archetype of absolute fret clom in God's unlimited omnipotence'. 'I cannot enter into this wide question', said Herme with a slight sign of impatience, 'but returning to Plat- I may remind you of a few remarkable coincidences b< tween his principles and those of the Bible, which pro 1 * that the ancient world included the strong germs of tl highest truths. In opposition to the sophist Protagora Plato contended that not man but God is the measu] of all things. a The objects are not simply such as th( appear to man; they are therefore not given up to h personal arbitrariness, but ought to be estimated their relation to God, that is, they must be known ai fixed in their necessary attributes and innermost essenc Again, Plato cherishes and enforces that virtue which commonly designated as specifically Christian, and even ; distinctive between Christianity and Paganism the virti of humility, which you, though in a certain respect u justly, have denied to the Stoics: like the Bible, he us the term "lowly" ranswog not in a contemptuous but that spiritual sense which describes man's true depe dence on God'. *I readily concede', said Abington, 'that "we find he something thoroughly kindred to the Christian notion humility, which is in fact anticipated". 11 And gladly < I yield another point. Although Plato, in common wi all antiquity, makes, not charity, but justice the found tion of a moral life, he yet extols Eros, or Love, as tt power which unties the wings of the soul and enab] it to rise into the heavenly spheres, its home. T] evidently approaches the Christian conception of lo 1 which closely connects the Divine and the human. Ho ever, Plato's Eros is essentially wisdom and knowledge ; a this, like so many other instances, proves that even 1 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 495 purest ideas are only remote prophecies pointing to Christ, or isolated traits which could not yet be combined into a complete system of ethics'. 'Moreover', continued Hermes, without heeding Abing- ton's depreciating conclusion, 'Plato condemns suicide, since every man is placed by God at a post which he is bound to maintain till he is relieved; he attributes therefore, like the Scriptures, to each person a mission or moral ob- ject of life to be made subservient to the promotion of the general weal. Hence he looks upon the individual as an image of the state, and upon the state as an en- larged individual whereas Christianity entirely neglects the idea of the state'. 'But why'? interrupted Abington. 'Because from the Christian point of view the state is not the realisation of the supreme good, but only one of the forms in which the supreme good, the Kingdom of God, that embraces all boons, is imperfectly embodied.* Therefore I regard as fully justified what might perhaps appear to some as an omission or fault in our host's eucrasy namely, that he did not propose political life and patriotism as special elements, but evidently subordinated them to all -com- prising sympathy or love. For from the highest philo- sophical no less than from the Christian standpoint, the political community is only an elementary stage, or a means of training for the universal union of men; while the feeling of nationality is a onesidedness to be merged in a genuine and ardent cosmopolitanism. Yet Plato, although in framing his polity he was guided by the right idea of a communion in a higher life or of a unity crea- ted by reason an idea analogous to the Christian Kingdom of God , shared and exaggerated a questionable principle of antiquity by almost completely sacrificing the particular interests of the individual to the requirements of the state ; and, recommending community of property and women, he utterly ruined social and domestic life though he himself subsequently recognised the perniciousness of these 496 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. monstrous proposals*. By the Redemption, on the other hand, everyone is fitted to become a peculiar Temple of God in his own individuality when this has been transfigured by the influence of Love. Not a rigid and general idea rules, but the living and personal God. And besides substitu- ting the dominion of freedom for that of necessity, the Christian scheme proclaims, with no uncertain sound, the law of equality. All enjoy the same civil rights, which are expanded to rights of humanity; and these are not based on exclusive gifts or qualities possessed only by the elect few, but on the common and imperishable dignity of human nature. While, therefore, Plato ranges the bulk of men engaged in commerce, trades or handi- crafts, far beneath the governing and military orders, we allow no opposition between a superior and a vulgar exis- tence, because the life of the whole of mankind in what- ever sphere is uniformly ordained for a glorious end or- dained equally to ennoble every pursuit and to lead all believers alike to a relationship with God. "The wisdom oj the ancients, even when at the summit of pre-eminence, was unable to lift up the class of artisans from its degrada- tion; whereas the elevated and Divine life which Christi- anity has prepared for all without distinction, proceeded from the workshop of the carpenter'". 3 *I will not', rejoined Hermes, 'at present urge that the Stoics, long before Christ, rejected slavery, established the equality of all men, and gave the example of a large- minded cosmopolitanism ; but returning to the chief point from which we have again strayed, I contend that Plato's system really involves that harmony of powers which, as we have agreed, is the object of all culture in producing a condition at once complete and happy. In his dialogue of Philebus he arrives at the conclusion that neither a life of mere intellect is eligible, nor a life of mere pleasure, but a third one superior to either namely, an existence mixed of both. b It is this combination of mental and sensuous qualities which constituted the beauty of IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 497 the Greek character and stamped it for all times as the pattern of a consummate humanity'. 'From this point of view' , said Wolfram with all the fervour of his enthusiasm, 'I am ready to undertake the championship even of Plato's Ideas, which have here been attacked and disparaged from various sides. The plastic mind of the most accomplished of all Hellenics could not remain satisfied with conceiving abstract virtues and qualities; it spontaneously invested them with well-de- fined and individual forms; it brought them before the mental vision in clear outlines ; and thus the notions grew into Ideas which, framed before all time and enduring throughout all eternity, have a changeless existence in the realms of the immortals. Plato's aesthetic instincts com- prehended body and soul in an inseparable unity ; is it sur- prising that finally, lost in the contemplation of the images his intellect had fashioned, he believed in their reality and raised them to th e rank of creators ? Every true artist is a Pygmalion; the life which he infused into his work is breathed back to him with an intenser force'. 'But I may ask', said Rabbi Gideon, with a mildness of remonstrance proving that he also had been strongly influenced by the spirit of conciliation prevailing in the company, 'is Art really an indispensable element in an harmonious character or a joyous life? Does not Plato himself earnestly warn against its perilous seductions, and does not history impressively teach that the very periods when the fine arts flourished most were marked by the greatest moral and political degeneracy? The attractions of the beautiful may perhaps in pure hands serve praiseworthy aims; but it is not incompatible with their nature that, in perverse hands, they may have the contrary effect and by their soul-stirring power promote error and insincerity, vice and debasement. As taste con- templates the form alone and not the matter it enshrines, the mind ultimately acquires the fatal tendency to neglect all reality and to sacrifice to an enticing garb KK 498 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. even right and morality.* Only such art or beauty of form as we admire in the Psalms, the Prophets or the Book of Job, is beneficial and ennobling, because it is allied to truth and sublimity, and therefore it at once enlightens, fortifies and elevates; or as Shakespeare ex- presses it, "Oh! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem "By that sweet ornament which truth doth give"; and a more recent poet, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is all "Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know"'. b 'Alas' ! replied Wolfram, 'if we consulted History only and abided by her verdict whether we scan the golden age of Pericles or Augustus, of the Medici or Louis XIV , Art would be doomed, and we should be compelled to confess with sorrow that refinement is hostile to liberty, and that beauty founds her dominion on the ruin of the manly virtues and of that energy of character which is the incentive to all high deeds and the source of power and progress. It was such discouraging experiences whicl: misled Plato an artistic nature if ever the world pro- duced one to take the beautiful as identical with the true and the good, to deny to it all independent value and to banish from his Republic every kind of art excepi the moralising, nay to suffer nothing even of lyrical poetry but hymns in praise of gods and heroes, and of musi( only the Doric and Phrygian lays which are characterisec by severity and vehemence 7 . 6 'Should the doubts and apprehensions of such a man' rejoined Gideon, 'not impose upon us the duty of th< utmost carefulness in the estimate of Art' ? 'Not even the most illustrious authority should overawt our judgment', replied "Wolfram. 'Conclusions such a were reached by Plato must have been derived fron premises radically erroneous, and we need not go far t< discover them. The beautiful is the innermost amalga IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 499 mation of form and idea. But Plato, although indeed a great artist, was pre-eminently a philosopher. There- fore his poetic disposition was in constant and strong conflict with his faculty of abstraction. The idea had to him paramount importance, whereas he deemed the concrete individualisation a disturbing accessory. Nay he traced all artistic production to a sort of frenzy which, unlike philosophy, is withdrawn from logical discipline and inca- pable of being converted into knowledge, since it cannot proceed beyond dark conceits and is devoid not only of correct notions but even of clear consciousness. So gross a misconception of the nature of genuine Fancy which combines the most lucid thought with an inspiring enthusiasm, and the plainest reality with an unfettered flight into the wide spheres of the invisible inevitably resulted in an unreasonable depreciation of the effects of true Art. Hence Plato could go so far as contemptuously to describe Art as a worthless and hollow imitation of the fugitive shadow of things without their permanent essence, as a futile and dangerous play affording merely pleasure and diversion, not any instruction or advantage, flattering the worst prejudices and passions of the multitude, and perverting the character by hypocrisy and simulation ; and he, the free Greek, could demand the strictest supervision of all aesthetic creations by officers of the state, not only in order to protect the people from injurious influences but also to prevent innovations.* How far is all this from the truth and from our convictions with respect to Art, and especially to the Drama, as one of the most effectual means of popular and moral training'! 'I cannot but be highly pleased', said Gideon, 'at these admissions, which testify to a praiseworthy impartiality in one so fervently Hellenic in his sympathies. But what are the grounds on which so important a part in our culture is continually assigned to Aesthetics and Art assigned with such confidence that G oethe even ventured the aphorism: "He who possesses Science and Art, has 500 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. Religion; he who does not possess these two, let him have Religion"'?* 'This question', replied Wolfram with great zest, 'is as large as it is important, and whoever desires to study il thoroughly, and to have it finally answered, must be referred to Schiller's prose writings, and especially to his ripest work, the "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man'' perhaps the crown and choicest jewel of the whole oj German literature. b 'In one word, Art or the Beautiful is the magic bone which unites man's sensual and intellectual qualities prevents the one from being favoured at the expense o the others, and alone renders an harmonious developmen and co-operation of all his powers possible. Without the aesthetic faculty there can be no eucrasy of character sucl as was attained by the best of the Greeks, to whon sensuality was never merely sensuality, nor reason mereb reason, but who blended simplicity and severe morals, matte: and mind, earth and heaven. And this ideal the intimat< fusion of nature and refinement may well be attained b; us likewise: "Denn die Sonne Homer's, siehe, sie lachel auch uns"'. c 'I am quite content with this view 7 , said Attinghausei cheerfully, 'and it implies a great consolation. True, i seems at first sight to clash with that law of division o, labour which pervades the whole world and which we nov consider as a chief test of civilisation. In living creatures,! determines the degree of perfection to which they have risen I need only allude again to the remarkable polity of th< bees with the three estates of ruling queen, the aristocracy of pleasure-loving drones, and the democracy of th( working multitude, each class with clearly defined func tions and duties; or to the still more astonishing com monwealth of white ants or termites comprising wingec males and female 5 *, wingless workers and soldiers, al very differently organised. And so among ourselves th< completest division of labour prevails in all branches o IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 501 industry and science, and is one of the principal causes of our extraordinary progress. How, then, can we over- come an apparently irreconcilable dilemma? Only by limiting himself to a single and restricted sphere, can the individual in our time hope to excel; and yet that limitation tends to destroy the harmony of his powers and of his character. Must he, in order to be faithful to his duty, renounce that humanity which is his highest goal? He is saved by Art, which is at every moment able to restore his harmony. The strictest specialist may escape to the regions of liberty by imparting to his con- ceptions or writings beauty of form, by exchanging his solitude for a society governed by taste, or by surrendering himself to the charms of poetry, painting or music, which above all make him feel the totality of his endowments. "Amidst the terrible empire of the elementary forces, and amidst the holy empire of Jaw, the aesthetic instinct imperceptibly builds up a third and serene realm of play and appearance, which removes all chains of out- ward conditions, and exempts man from every compul- sion both in the physical and moral spheres".* Idealism and realism, philosophy and natural science, are happily balanced in our aesthetic temperament. And in this respect also the momentous doctrine of Evolution offers us the most comforting hopes. For we know at present that, by adapta- tion and inheritance, our senses of colour and sound have even within historical times astonishingly advanced, and we may therefore expect that, by attention and thoughtful exercise, they will be brought to a still higher perfection, and thus help incalculably to enhance our proficiency in music and the plastic arts. b Yet all this', continued Atting- hausen in a tone of solemnity he rarely assumed, 'must not blind us against the terrible warnings of history that the splendid culture of the ancients became an easy prey of bar- barous hordes, and was followed by the darkest ignorance and bigotry, because it was mainly founded on aesthetics and speculation. The only safe basis of civilisation is Science, 502 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. which, on the one hand, by forcing nature into its service secures our superiority over brute strength, and on the other hand, by sharpening the sense of physical causality, most effectually wards off superstition. Art regulates the symmetry, but not the solidity, of the structure. With the gods of Greece the beautiful has not disappeared from the world neither the faculty of appreciation nor the creative power, but only the unsubstantial fabric of Fancy, which was unable to resist the overwhelming flood of Time. Man, the Artist, lives and improves and will substitute for that edifice a new and more perfect work, which shall be like Nature eternaP. a After a short silence Mondoza observed with great deliberation: 'When I reflect on all that has this evening been said by the different speakers, I am rejoiced at an amount of agreement for which I could hardly have hoped even a few days ago, and I shall remember these conversa- tions with pleasure and gratitude. Yet I confess', he continued, turning to the Orientals, 'my satisfaction is seriously alloyed by seeing you, my Eastern friends, withhold from our communion, and still more by seeing you keep apart from each other in your old distrust and antagonism. None of you has offered any remark on our much discussed eucrasy: does it touch no sympathetic cord in your hearts? Deep indeed would be our regret and pain at this exclusion. We should consider our covenant most incomplete without your adhesion. For to us you are not mere numbers, but fellow-men, brethren. It is not because the creeds you represent include upwards of nine hundred millions of souls, while the Jews and Christians of all shades count not even half that amount I say, it is not this fact which makes us anxious to welcome you in our midst; but we feel a profound sympathy with you as men who, like ourselves, have eagerly searched for truths to enlighten the struggling IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 503 mind, to satisfy the yearning soul. You may have strayed in the difficult pursuit, as we have strayed: are you less courageous to avow past errors, or less disposed to attempt a different and more promising road 7 ? A protracted silence ensued. Subbhuti was desirous to answer, but a natural feeling of deference to his seniors caused him to hesitate; yet when he saw that neither Asho-raoco nor Movayyid-eddin was prepared to speak, he said at last with all his peculiar fervour: 'I can indeed see no difficulty in accepting your theories. The new Nirwana you have sketched is essentially the Buddhistic doctrine with those qualifications which I have acknowledged as indispensable Benevolence must be exhi- bited in the deeds of an active life, and the dreamlike impassiveness of our final stage of contemplation must be changed into quiet yet stimiilating Contentment; while the eucrasy you have framed is in no single feature opposed to that Nirwana, nay it is its natural sequel and comple- ment. We Buddhists are, therefore, heartily willing to join you, if you can guarantee to us that toleration which we prize most highly, and of which, in spite of our present concurrence, all of us shall, sooner or later, surely be in need. Nor do we Buddhists stand aloof, in a spirit of hostility, from the followers of other Eastern faiths; on the contrary, though relying solely on the persuasive power of truth, we deem it our highest felicity to win proselytes; and we shall, therefore, gladly hold out the hand of brotherhood to all who do not disdain to grasp it'. Another pause followed. The remaining Orientals seemed engaged in an inward conflict which did not allow them to give utterance to their thoughts. After a brief interval Gregovius said: 'Our discussions here have providentially been shared by four Eastern scholars who are all in reality Reformers. For each of you', he continued, addressing Movayyid-eddin and the others, 'has laboured to deliver his creed from an oppressive mass of fabulous traditions and to restore 504 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. it to its pristine purity. Advance one decided step farther. Investigate your Scriptures. You are amply prepared by your learning and fully qualified by your penetration to enter into your holy Books as successful critics ; and if you pursue these researches with the single- minded object of fathoming the truth and adhering to it, and if you, besides, remember the almost hopeless uncertainty prevailing with respect to the lives, motives and idiosyncrasies of the founders of your sects, you must soon admit that the idea of inspiration is utterly untenable. But from the moment that this conviction dawns upon your minds, you have broken the chains of bondage, you have regained your liberty, you are men. You need not turn away from Books venerable by antiquity and dear from long association; but you should not allow them to be your tyrants. Be benefited by their wisdom, but beware of being ensnared by dictates which mock your reason. Then you will approach each other ir confidence, and will fearlessly embrace the intelligible principles upon which we have agreed'. Gregovius had scarcely finished, when the young Arvada- Kalama, with a generous impulse,' advanced towards Subbhuti and, seizing his hand, said to him: 'I am ashamed of my stubbornness and perversity Having, like the rest of the Brahmo-Somadsh, renouncec the sacredness and binding force of the traditions Canon of the Hindoos, the rejection of which by tin Buddhists was the main cause of our mutual enmity 0] rather of the Hindoos' enmity, for the Buddhists ever offeree to us the readiest conciliation, I ought to have detectec the many points of affinity which unite our community with yours, had not the impressions of my early educa tion, uneffaced even by the thought and long struggles o maturer years, unfortunately blinded my judgment and helc me in the chains of most irrational prejudices, while ' proudly fancied I had risen to complete freedom. I ma; plead another excuse. With the strongest indignatioi IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. 505 we have stigmatised and discarded the Sankhya doctrine that action is only the consequence of false notions, wherefore the enlightened sage does not act at all. To this pernicious teaching we saw you cling with all your unconquerable tenacity; for improving upon the Hindoo philosophers, Gautama declared that the wise man is he who avoids the three cardinal mistakes of having a liking for a thing and acting accordingly, or of having a dislike for a thing and acting accordingly, or of being stupidly indifferent and thereupon acting, instead of being intelli- gently indifferent and not acting at all. a But now that you have abandoned your sterile and obnoxious Mrwana and have declared energetic action a primary condition of a virtuous and pious life, I feel myself riveted to you by a new and strong sympathy and am most willing to share your labours in the great task of regenerating the creeds of our Eastern fellow-men. True', he continued pensively, and with less ardour and decision, 'there are two points which seem to separate us as by a wide gulf your disbelief in a personal Ruler of the world and in the eternal permanence of the individual soul. But should it be impossible to reconcile a clear Theism with a noble Pantheism? and should I be justified in refusing the offer of peace and brotherhood on account of dogmas which still command so little unanimity that candid enquiry results merely in the counsel to agree to disagree? Let me rather impress upon my mind more and more deeply the frequent admonition of Hindoo sages the lesson I vainly thought I had mastered: "To consider, 'Is this man one of ourselves or an alien'? is the thought of little-minded persons; to the liberally disposed the whole earth is of kin." ' b 'I see the rays of my dearest hopes illuminate the horizon' ! exclaimed the venerable Wolfram with enthusiasm. 'The old feuds and hatreds will disappear and give way to indelible friendship and harmony. As far as the earth extends, there will be no other rivalry than that of knowledge and charity. For you 7 , he continued, addressing Asho- 506 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. raoco, 'you cannot desire that the Sun, which remains your emblem of all that is good and happy, shall look any longer upon strife and enmity between creatures who have all one Father, whom you call Ahura-mazda. You have renounced the evil Ahriman, renounce also the darkest of his works rancour and pride. We are most eager to win you, though you are' at present among the smallest sects under heaven, because our civilisation owes you a large debt of gratitude for having insisted upon a Divine worship without images and without temples, and because we prize your qualities of zeal and industry, which may be destined to stir up the lethargy of the East, as a little leaven raises the whole lump'. 'I will not, I can not resist this appeal', said Asho- raoco, deeply moved. 'We are conscious of having yet a high mission to fulfil, and we shall be faithful to the call. We feel gratified when you designate us the Anglo-Saxons of Asia, and we shall strive to deserve so honourable a title. We shall give an example of energy and enterprise that cannot be without influence on the millions that surround us. "Long sleep, man, does not behove thee". says our Vendidad. a For activity is the very essence oi Ahura's creation; yet it must not be limited to worldly pursuits; it should above all be displayed in the spheres of the mind. Following the advice of the learned Grego- vius, whose writings we esteem and study, we shall search our holy Books ; indeed we have begun to do so and have already gained some new and important light. We will, with intrepid fortitude, examine the Avesta and the later compositions, in order to ascertain whether the numerous ceremonials which now constantly engage our attention, are really divine duties, and whether religion precludes us from cultivating freely all branches of science. Noi shall we shrink openly to profess and diligently to diffuse the 4ruth, which is to us, as it was to our ancestors, the supreme commandment. I can, therefore, feel no reluctance in associating with ingenuous Hindoos and Buddhists oi IDEALISM AKD THE GOAL. 507 sincere followers of Confucius, and I hope, in unison with them, to promote the glorious aim which our worthy friend "Wolfram has marked out for us with such noble earnestness. But I will also prove to him', he continued with a stronger emphasis, 'that Ahura-mazda's true disciples are free from rancour and pride'. And advancing to Movayyid-eddin, he said: 'Let the unhappy past be forgotten. The votaries of Mohammed have seized blooming lands once graced and hallowed by the footsteps of Zoroaster, and the Parsees are strangers on the soil of Cyrus and Darius, or have sought a shelter on distant shores. But if we in openness and candour adopt the principles which our excellent host has combined in his eucrasy, and above all adhere to the general sympathy involved in that Monism which has been so fully explained to us, we annul the distinction between native and stranger, between Mussulman and Parsee we have a home wherever we find men, wherever the Sun sends his beneficent beams; the earth is one house, all nations are one family. Then you may con- tinue to possess our rich and beautiful countries, yet only on condition that you accept the vow which has been taken by the Buddhist, the Hindoo and the Parsee the vow of strenuous effort in all good and useful works. Indolence has been the bane of the Mohammedan world ; a great future may yet lie before you if you summon up courage to shake oft 7 this serpent which, coiled round your enfeebled limbs, fetters all motion and development. And as we mean to study the Avesta, so you should explore your Koran, not for slavish interpretation, but in order to penetrate into its origin and thus to fix the true degree of its authority. Then that fierce and demon-like fanaticism will vanish, which still sometimes breaks forth, like the spark from the inert flint, and causes terrible devastation. Free men like ourselves, you will enter upon the new career that has been traced out for all alike. Thus we gladly hail you as valued auxiliaries'. 508 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. Movayyid-eddin had listened with calm dignity, and when Asho-raoco had finished, he rose and, his noble features lit up by the concentrated fire of his eyes, said : 'The discussions in which I have been privileged to participate have not fallen on a barren ground. From the beginning though I strove to conceal the fact from myself they have stirred up the very depths of my soul and mind. They found the soil well prepared. For many years I have subjected the Sunnite traditions to a severe scrutiny, and I discovered in most cases their utter worth- lessness. In the course of these researches I was often astonished at the striking affinity between those legends and many narratives of the Koran itself, so that I was unable to draw a distinct line of demarcation between the two as regards their spirit and credibility. I confess with deep humiliation that I have hitherto lacked the mental and still more the moral energy to deduce from these startling facts the legitimate and almost irresistible con- clusions. Nothing will ever weaken my veneration for our Prophet, nothing will ever shake my reverence for the exquisite precepts of morality enjoined by the Koran; but I begin to see that there are other ways of salvation besides those through Mohammed and his Book, and that there are other domains of thought and enquiry besides those of religion. This firm persuasion I shall carefully cherish. The freedom of mind born of these conversations enables, nay compels me more and more to widen the circle of my sympathies, and cordially to accept the hand of concord and goodwill, which you extend to me. Amal- gamation of creeds and union of races shall henceforth be inscribed on my banner, as they are on yours. I trust I shall secure at least a moderate share of success by trying to develop, wherever I can, that harmony of cha- racter which comprises all the elements of a pure and happy humanity; and I shall fortify myself by the nume- rous and high-souled utterances of our great poets anc philosophers, such as these: IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. , 509 "All spirits have sprung from one light, all are akin; "That one light they reflect in infinite shades . . . "It is 7 only and You that engender all sects ; "This / and You are the children of folly: "When / and You and separate being vanish, "We shall no more be tied by Church or Hosque"'. a 'Won't we have a jubilation at the Dinner to-morrow' ! burst forth Attinghausen, who had all the while shown signs of the utmost excitement, which he could now no longer control. 'We shall make them drink wine jollily all round, the Mohammedan included. For we must duly celebrate the enthronment of our Monism' '. 'And of our host's new Nirwana? added Subbbuti. 'And particularly of his fine Eucrasy\ broke in Hermes. 'You have accepted, Gentlemen, and I expect you with the ladies', said Mondoza. As he saw the four Orientals standing side by side, and the other guests joining each other promiscuously and engaging in hearty and unrestrained conversation, he said almost spontaneously to himself, passing his band over bis forehead: 'Is this a dream? May it one day come true'! 'It is a grand Vision', said Canon Mortimer, who bad overheard Mondoza's exclamation. 'It heralds', added Rabbi Gideon, with a trembling voice, 'the approach of the time predicted by our prophets when "the Lord shall be One and His name One"; and when "He shall bless tbe nations saying, Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria tbe work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance"' 5 . 'You must indeed all come to-morrow', said Wolfram eagerly, 'and I trust the ladies will be numerously re- presented; for we require tbeir opinions on very weighty matters. I am in tbe secret and our amiable host will forgive me for divulging it: it is to be a real Symposion; for we shall analyse the element of elements, which bas unaccountably been forgotten in all our former discussions 510 IDEALISM AND THE GOAL. the element that is the very atmosphere in which all th( rest breathe and have their being' . . . 'What on earth do you refer to? exclaimed Atting hausen. 'We shall define that Power', continued Wolfram witl fervour, 'which inspires our youth, supports our ripe] years, and brightens our old age' . . . 'What do you mean'? was the general and impatien enquiry. 'That Power', Wolfram went on with rising enthu siasm, 'which uplifts earth to heaven and brings dowi heaven to earth; weds soul to soul and affection t( affection ; creates a Divine harmony of mind and a heart kindling happiness ; and makes us "live at once a doublec life and a halved life" a all-fearing, all-conquering, un dying LOVE. NOTES. NOTES. P. 11. a Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet. P. 20. a Viz. Buddha's Discourses (Sutras), the 'Discipline' or code of morals (Vinaya), and the metaphysics (Abhidharnia). P. 20. b The gastras, karikds, tikas, etc. P. 21. a Buddhism had nowhere out of India taken earlier roots than in Ceylon, where it was introduced B. C. 316; but the study of the sacred writings had of late been somewhat neglected. P. 21. b Travelling, respectively, in the years 399 414 and 629645. P. 22. a The earliest and simplest doctrine is that of the 'Little Ve- hicle'; five or six centuries after Buddha, was compiled the 'Great Vehicle', a renewal enlarged by subtle speculations; and lastly followed the period of Mysticism with its gross idolatry and absurd sorcery. P. 22. b Buddhism was publicly adopted in China as a state religion A. D. 61 or 65 by the Emperor Ming-ti. The first Buddhist missionary appeared in China B. C. 217. P. 22. c 'The Buddhist Canon in China, as it was settled between the years 67 and 1285 A. D., includes 1440 distinct works, comprising 5586 books. But these form only a fractional part of the entire Buddhist literature which is spread throughout the Empire' (8. Beal, A Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, Preface; comp. p. 2). P. 23. a Buddhism 'is now professed', wrote Spence Hardy in 1866, 'at the lowest computation, by three hundred millions of the human race' (Legends and Theories of the Buddhists, Pref.) ; Vassilief (Le Bouddisme, trad, par La Comme p. VI) gives three hundred and forty millions, or at least one fourth of the whole human race. It prevails in the lands from Cashmere to the eastern confines of China, and from Ceylon to the north of Tibet. It is met with also in Tartary, Mongolia, Russia and Sweden. The most recent estimates count 115 millions of Evangelical, 195 millions of Roman Catholic, and 86 millions of Greek Christians, or about 396 millions in all. P. 23. b 'Of late years there have been evidences of a growing dis- position to receive as truth only the words spoken by Buddha, and to reject all comments, glosses, and explanations' (Hardy 1. c. p. 218). P. 23. c See Hardy 1. c. pp. 216, 217, 220. 4 NOTES [pp. 2426]. P. 24. a The name Asho-raoco is mentioned in the Khorda-Avesta (XXIX. 97; Spiegel. Avesta, III. 127) among the famous sages whose Fravashi or tutelary genius is glorified. P. 24. b The seventy-two threads of the girdle cord correspond with the seventy-two chapters of the Yac.na. In tying the four knots, the Parsee says: 1. There is only one God; 2. The law of Zoroaster is true; 3. Zoroaster is the true prophet of God; and 4. Perform good actions and abstain from evil ones, or, I am resolved to do what is good (comp. Spiegel, Avesta, II. pp. xxi, xlix; III. p. 5). P. 25. a The number of Parsees in India is stated to be about 150,000, and that of the Parsees in the Persian provinces of Fars and Kerman no more than 7000 or 8000. The census of 1851 brought out the sur- prising fact that the Parsee males in Bombay numbered 68,754, and the females only 41,790, the proportion being nearly seven to four. A still more noteworthy feature disclosed by that census was this that, of the aggregate Parsee population of 110,544 counted in Bombay, no less than 61,298, or more than one half, were set down as 'merchants, bankers and brokers', 11,028 as 'writers and accountants', and 1,535 as 'money changers and assayers' which figures strikingly exhibit the commercial bias of the community. The number of 'labourers' was only 41 (comp. Dosabhoy Framjee, The Parsees, 1858, pp. 31. 52 56). P. 25. b An instance of Parsee adaptation to Hindooism is the ela- borate ceremony of mooktads performed at the end of each year in honour of the dead; whereas the Parsee Scriptures only require that the last ten days of the year should be spent in acts of charity, prayers, and freedom from worldly pursuits. Again, the law of Zoroaster permits no boy or girl to marry before having attained the fifteenth year; but by their long contact with the Hindoos, who consider it a disgrace for a girl to remain unmarried after her ninth year, the Parsees have been imbued with the same idea, and are anxious to many their daughters at this early age. P. 25. c The first objects aimed at by the 'Eahnumai Mazdiasna', i. e. Religious Reform Association, were the prevention of absurdly early marriages and the amalgamation of the two sects of the Shensoys and the far less numerous Kudmis, who differ in no essential point of faith or ritual, but merely in a trivial question of chronology, the former placing the era of Jezdezird, the last king of ancient Persian monarchy, one month earlier than the latter: the consequence of this dispute is the difference of a month in the celebration of the festivals, and its chief importance 'arises from the fact that a Parsee when he prays has to repeat the year, month and day on which he offers his petition' (comp. Dosabhoy Framjee 1. c. pp. 5660, 7678, 274279). P. 26. a Comp. Spiegel, Avesta, II. pp. Ixxv Ixxxiii; Dosabhoy Framjee 1. c. pp. 242 246, where the titles of the twenty-one original noosk are given both in Zend and Pehlvi. NOTES [pp. 3539]. 5 P. 35. a The Pr&djna paramita, i. e. th^ transcendent science, be- longing to the Abhidharma, the third division of the Tripitaka; see supra Notes p. 3 [P. 20 a ]. P. 35. b VIII. 15; comp. n. 24; HI. 12, 13; V. 17, 19; VI. 7; IX. 79; XI. 710. P. 35. C VH. 14; comp. II. 111. P. 35. d Buddha is considered to have been born in B. C. 623 and to have died 543, in his eightieth year. P. 36. a All these views have been upheld by different scholars, though it is right to add that 'the fifteen fragments and interpolations' are an inference rather than an expressed opinion. On these and all other points of criticism we must refer the reader to the third Part of our 'Bible Studies', which will contain a full exposition of the Book of Ec- clesiastes, if life and strength be spared. P. 36. b So Wilson in Journ. of Roy. Asiat. Soc. XVI, Art. 13, a chief argument being the fluctuating statements of Buddha's date, which vary from 2420 to 453 B. C.; comp. Spence Hardy } Legends and Theories of the Buddhists, pp. xxxv, 63, 78, 79, 187, 188; also Vassilief, Le Bouddisme, traduit par La Comme, p. 8, who says, though in a somewhat different sense, 'Boudda, on peut dire, n'est pas une personne; c'est aussi un terme on un dogme; . . . ce meme personnage tourne au my the'; comp. p. 9. P. 37. a ni. 1921; comp. IX. 5, 10. P. 37. b XII. 7. P. 37. C H. 14, 15; HI. 19; VIE. 15; VIII. 10, 14; IX. 2, 3, 11, 12. P. 38. a VHI. 12, 13; XII. 14; comp. VII. 26; X. 8; XI. 9, 'know thou that for all this God will bring thee into judgment'. P. 38. b ll. 13; comp. VII. 11, 12, 19; VIII. 1, 5; IX. 1618, X. 2, 10, 12; XH. 11. P. 38. C I. 18; comp. vers. 13, 16, 17. P. 38. d II. 1416; comp. VI. 8. P. 38. e Comp. Aufrecht, Bliithen aus Hindustan, p. 16. P. 39. a Comp. Burnouf, Lotus de la bonne Loi, pp. 781 796 ('les dix forces d'un Buddha', securing to him the honorary title of Dagabala), 818820; Beal, Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, p. 191, translation of the 'Sutra of the Forty-two Sections'; Spence Hardy, 'Le- gends and Theories of the Buddhists, pp. 42, 178, 179. The sankhya philosophy of the Hindoos teaches, that power, as derived from know- ledge, is eight-fold: shrinking into a minute form or enlarging to a gi- gantic body, unlimited reach of organs and irresistible will (for inst., sinking into the earth as easily as in water), etc.; see Colebrooke, Essays on the Eeligion and Philosophy of the Hindus, pp. 158, 159, ed. 1858 j see pp. 232 (as soon as that knowledge is attained, past sin is annulled, and future offence precluded), 236 ('the pitris, or shades of progenitors, may be called up by a simple act of the will'). 6 NOTES [pp. 3965]. P. 39. b Comp. Koran, XCVI. 4, 5, 'God has taught men how to use the pen; He has put into their minds a ray of science'. P. 40. a III. 11. P. 59. a Comp. Plessner, Jiidisch-mosaischer Religionsunterricht, p. 102 note. P. 60. a Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, I. i. 8487, 'Study is like the heaven's glorious sun . . . Small have continual plodders ever won Save base authority from others' books'; 58, 'Ay, that is study's godlike recompense'. P. 60. b Virg. Georg. II. 490; comp. Pers. III. 66, Discite . . . et causas cognoscite rerum. P. 62. a Comp. Schiller's poems 'Die Gotter Griechenlands', 'Die Kiinstler', etc. P. 63. a 'AKySeeg, fia.Ka.psi;, ps7a eoovre, etc. P. 63. b AXo} pporoi, II. XXTT. 76; XXIV. 525; Odyss. XI. 19; XII. 341; XV. 408; also oifw/Bo/, II. XIII. 569; Od. IV. 197; or Wjyvo/, II. XVII. 445. P. 63 c Horn. II. XVII. 446, 447, Ou fj.sv yap rl irov sanv oi'ZvpwTspov avtyoi; IlavTwv, Zoaa rs ya7av SKI nvei'st TS KOCI epirei; Odyss. XVIII. 130 135, Q&sv aifibvoTepov yaia rpsfai av^tpu>7roio K. T. X.; comp. II. XXIV. 525, 526, *l<; yap eVs/cXcouavTO ^eo) e/Xo2a* fipoToTfft Zueiv a^vvf^svoi^ avroi slai; 531, 532, T H/ $e KB TWV "kvyp&v $uy, XW^TOV s7]Ks, Ka/ sir} $r6va $7av t&yKe. P. 63. d Has. Op. et Di. 157-184; comp. also vers. 79 92, "AXXa Is fjivpla \vypa KO.T av^pMTrovg akakyrai, IIXs/Tj fJ.sv yap yaTa P. 64. a Comp. Spence Hardy, Legends and Theories of the Buddhists, pp. 16, 159. P. 64. Theogn, 425 428, Ilavrcov psv (Jirj (f>vvai iirix&ovi'otaiv apiarw . . . 4>uvra $oiru<; wKtara itvkai; 'A'ftao Kspyjaai K. T. X.; comp. Sext. Empir. Hypotyp. HI. 24, . 231; also Bacchylides, Fr. 2, ^varoiyt ^ $vvat <j>epiffTov, My$ as\i'ov npoa&eiv <j)syyo<; K. T. X.; and infra the quotations from Sophocles and Euripides. P. 65. a Jer. XX. 1418; Job III. 122; X. 18, 19; Eccl. IV. 2, 3; VII. 1, etc. P. 65. b Herod. V. 4; Sbrab. XI. xi. 8, p. 519; Mela II. 2. P. 65. c Ewrip. Cresphont. Fr. 452 (Nauck), "E$st yap -qft&f ayXXoyov 7ro/ou/*e'vov, Tov <f>vvra ^rpyvsfv si<; Za sp^srai KaKa, Tov ^u ^VOVT KK} TTOVCOV TTSffay/i/yov Xaipovrai; sv^fjiovvrat; SKTTS 'ftnsiv ^o'jttwv; Clem. Alex. Strom. HI. p. 432, ed. Sylburg; comp. Gic. Tusc. I. 48, 115, where these verses are rendered in Latin. P. 65. d Apdaavri nc&sTv, rpiyspwv ^tu^o^ ra$s <f>uvst ; Aesch. Coeph. 313, 314; comp. Agam. 1564, nc&etv TOV spfcvra, ^/u/i/ov. yap. P. 65. e Aesch. Agam. 1327 1329, 'Ico pporeta irpaypar, evrv^ovvra p.sv ^Kia rig v Tps'^sisv, si ^ U(7Tixor, BoXar? vypwyffcov oiroyyoi; taksasv K. r. X. NOTES [pp. 6568]. 7 P. 65. f Aesch. Fr. 343, 'fl? oy &;*/ ^avarov e-firtvai Pporot, "Ouirap pupa ruv TroXXwv KUKUV; comp. Prom. 103105, ... TO -ny? P. 65. f Soph. Oed. Col. 1225 1227, M^ $\>vai TOV anavra viita Xoyov, TO S 5 , eirst </>v>7, fir/vat Kal&sv o^evjrsp yitei, TroXy Ssvrapov, co rcf^iara. P. 65. h Soph. Fr. 860,^11 ^VTJTOV avfyxwv KOI ra\aiirupov y/vo$, 'fl; oyJe'v sffftev TrX^v <JKia7$ eoiKoreg, Eapoq irsptaaov *ffj$ avaorpu(f>ufjisvoi. P. 65. 1 op&. Ant. 461, 462, at Se TOW %pwov Upo&ev ^avoy/*c, Kepboi; avr eyw Xs'yco,- Aj. 125, 126, 'O^ow ya^o T^ca? oy^sv ovra? XXo TrX^v Ef&wX' Saomap Z&fjLev 17 /cou^iyv cr/f/av. P. 66. a Eurip. Hippol. 207, Atox^v Se pporoiaiv avay/n?; Supplic. 549, 550, 'AXX' w ftaTcxtoi, yvwTs Tav^WTrcov KOCKU, 7raXa/<7j&co&' ^wv o /S/o$ AC. T. X. P. 66. ^ Eurip. Fr. 813, lx OVTe 5 pvpiuv x^ KCCKWV. P. 66. c Eurip. Hippol. 189 197, Hag S'oSy^o? /S'o$ av^coffcov Koi* eyn TTOVCOV avairavffi$ K. r. X. P. 66. d Comp. Clem. Alex. Strom. III. p. 432, ed. Sylburg; Stob. Eel. phys. I. 2, p. 8. ed Meineke, the fine hymn of Cleanthes, 'AXXa Zsy . . . 'Av^0co7roy pvw airatpoavvys affo Xuy^?, "Hv av, irarsp, OK&ayov ^vyfii; TTO, o? e Kvpyyat rvupyi; K. T. X. P. 66. e Find. Pyth. HE. 3638; VIII. 135, 136, 'Rvaiupoi, rl %s rig; rt Xw TIS; GKiat; ovap y Av>puiro<;; comp. Nem. VI. 1 11. Shakesp. Macbeth, V. 'Life is but a walking shadow' etc.; Tempest, IV. i. 156, 157, 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on' etc.; Bang Lear, III. iv. Ill 113, 'Is man no more than this? . . . unaccomodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art'. P. 66. f Find. Frg. 205 Bergk., 'Oners ^eog avbp} wppa irspty, Hpo&e jtisXa/vav Kap^iav saTv^sXt^ev. P. 66. S0v oe ^ e0 i <fn\wy enT^v^ffKsi veo?. P. 66. h Herod. I. 31; comp. Cic. Tusc. I. 47, . 113. P. 66. * Cic. Tusc. I. 47, 114, petiverunt mercedem . . . quod esset optumum homini; Plut. Consol. ad Apollon. c. 14 (who mentions the seventh instead of the third day); comp. Horn. Hymn. Apoll. 295 299 (II. 117121, ed. Baumeister); Strabo, IX. iii. 9, p. 421; Pausan. IX. xxxvii. 3. P. 66. k Plut. 1. c. P. 67. a Wisd. IV. 10, 13, 14. P. 68. a Herod. VII. 46, o JJLSV &VTO; nofoepyt; soyffiy? ryj<; ZOOTJI; Kara(j>v^ atpsTcoraTT] TU av^pWTrw ysyova, 6 & &go$ yXw/cuv y*ya? TOV a/cova <j)^9vspo^ iv avru evpicfKerat e'cov. P. 68. b Ib. I. 32, liriffTapevov fie TO ^stov nav s'ov <f>^ovspov re KOU Tapa- %ca8$ K. T. X.; III. 40 (Amasis addressing Polycrates), ^fto; Se ae oat. /wyaXa* evTV%iat oy/f apeffKOvyi, eirtyTaft.evu) TO ^sTov co$ eon <ffovep6v K. T. X.; VII. 10, opSi; TO. ImspexovTa %uet co KspavvoT o ^o? oy^s ea ^avra^sa^ai . . . fyikeei yap o ^505 Ta vireps'^ovrot iravra xutkvstv . . . w yap ia tfrpoveeiv o ^o; aXXov 17 acovriv. 8 NOTES [pp. 68, 69]. P. 68. c Ib. I. 5. TTJV av^pUTrrji^v wv 3mstafjt.svQ(; ev$ai/Jt.ovb]v ou^a/ia e'v TWTW j&cevouaav K. r. X.; 32, o&Vcc wv, cc Kpo7as, irav sari av&puirog uvpfopy, . .. GKQTTSSIV s 3^077 ffavToj ^Tj/zaro^ T^V TeXsuT^v, /cvj ttiTojSriUBTai, 7roXXo?j/ yap $y vno$sa/; oX/Sov o &so irp<>ppi&v$ avsarps^s; 207 (Croesus to Cyrus), s/ Ss eyvuKtzg, on av&pwirog Kai av sl<; . . . SKSIVQ irpwrov [Ji.o&e, w KVK\QI; TWV av&puirrjiuv sari irpyyfJiaTcov K. r. X.; comp. Soph. Oed. B,. 1527 1529, "Stars &v^rov OVT sKsivrjv ryv reXsyra/av /S?7v 5 H/ispv /f. T. X.; Eurip. Suppl. 269, 270, TWV ya/> ev fiporoii; QVK SUTIV ovdsv S/ rs'Xou? r&au/ioyovv; Ovz'd, Metam. III. 135 137, dicique beatus Ante obitum nemo etc.; Plut. Mar. c. 45, OVK sari vovv I'^ovroj av^poi; STI ry Tv%y KHSTSVSIV eavrov. P. 68. d Comp. Plat. Eep. II. 18, p. 379, ou/coOv aya&o's oys ^eog . . . Kai TWV ftev aya^wv ouev aXXov ahioiTeoy, TWV ^e KKKUV XX' TT Se? CijTerv T curia, XX' ou TOV ^-eov; etc. P. 68. e Comp. /SaZZ. Jug. 104, ignari rerum humanarum, quae fluxae et mobiles in advorsa semper mutantur; Liv. XXX. 30, maximae cuique fortunae minime credendum est . . . Simul parta et sperata decora unius horae fortuna evertere potest; 31, humanae infirmitatis memini et vim fortunae reputo et omnia quaecumque agimus subjecta esse mille casibus scio ; Valer. Max. VI. ix. 7 ext., caduca nimium et fragilia puerilibusque consentanea crepundiis sunt ista quae vires atque opes humanae vocan- tur etc.; Curt. IV. 14 (53), breves et mutabiles vices rerum sunt et fortuna nunquam simpliciter indulget; V. 8 (25), equidem (Darius) quam versabilis fortuna sit, documentum ipse sum ; Sen. Epist. 91, . 10, om- nium istarum civitatum etc.; 101, . 1, omnis dies, omnis hora quam nihil simus ostendit et . . . admonet fragilitatis oblitos; Agam. 928, nulla longi temporis felicitas; Plant. Cistell. I. iii. 46, Ut sunt humana, nihil est perpetuum datum; Terent. Hecyr. III. iii. 46, fortuna, ut nunquam perpetuo es data; Eunuch. II. ii. 45, Omnium rerum, heus, vicissitude est; HOT. Od. IV. vii. 17, Quis scit an adjiciant etc.; I. xi. 8, carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero; Sat. II. vi. 97, Vive memor, quam sis aevi brevis; Ovid, Ex Pont. IV. iii. 35, 36, Omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo, Et subito casu quae valuere ruunt ; Trist. III. vii. 41, 42, Nempe dat id cuicunque h'bet fortuna rapitque, Irus et est subito, qui modo Croesus erat; P. Syr. Sentent. 347, Levis est fortuna, cito reposcit quae dedit. P. 68. f Horn. II. vi. 146 149, On? irep ^>yXXwv yBvey, TO/T? ^ } avtipuv K. T. X. etc.; comp. M. Aurel. X. 34. P. 69. a lsa. xl. 68; comp. Ps. cii. 12; ciii. 15 18; Job xiv. 2; Sir. xiv. 18; James I. 10, 11; 1 Pet. I. 24, 25, etc. P. 69. b Emped. ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. III. p. 432, T Ii TTOTTO/ ^viyTwv y/vo, w ^yaavoXjSov, Otuv g eptiwv SK TS ffTova^wv sysvsa^e. P. 69. c Plat. Phaed. c. 9, p. 64 A, oaoi Tvy%avovaiv op^twi; <j)t\oaQ<l>j<x$ . . . oy&ev XXo avroi sirirrj^evovffiv y ociro^tvr;aKstv re xai P. 69. d Coloss. m. 3; comp. II. 20; Bom. VI. 2; Gal. II. 20, 'I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live', etc.; 1 Cor. XV. 31, 'I die daily'. NOTES [pp. 7072]. 9 P. 70. a Comp. Virg. Aen. vi. 731, 732, quantum non noxia corpora tardant Terrenique hebetant artus moribundaque membra; etc. P. 70. b Comp. Cic. Tusc. I. 31, . 75, referring to a corresponding remark of Plato (Phaed. c. 12, p. 67 D, TO ^taXsny^a auro TOUTO tan TWV '///.oj9 (/>>, Xuaj KO.} %wpi<j[jLQi; ^vxys onro aco/daro?), 'tota enim philosophorum vita . . . commentatio mortis est : nam quid aliud agimus, cum a voluptate, id est a corpore . . . sevocamus animum, nisi animum . . . secum esse cogimus; secernere autem a corpore animum ecquidnam aliud est mori discere'? etc.; comp. also Plato, Theaet. c. 25, p. 176 B, 'We must strive as speedily as we can to flee hence thither (1AM* hstas); this flight consists in the utmost possible resemblance to God' (<pvfrj $s opoiuaii; ,ew K. T. X.); Senec. Ad Marc. c. 23, inde est quod Platon exclamat: sapientis animum totum in mortem prominere, hoc velle, hoc meditari, hac semper cupidine ferri in exteriora tendentem. P. 70. c With much better reason Humphrey might have adduced a preceding passage in Plato's Phaedo, where Socrates admits that the superiority of death over life is the only truth universally accepted by all men alike (c. 6, p. 62 A, TOWTO J/.QVOV TWV aXXcov TTVTCOV 7rXovv sort K. r. X.); but he probably supposed that it must also be understood in the sense explained by Canon Mortimer; and it is indeed to be taken in connection with the doctrine of Immortality, as the context proves. P. 70. d Plat. Axioch. 8 ; comp. Wolf in loc. P. 71. a Viz. Horn. II. xiv. 446. 447; xxiv. 525, 526; Eurip. Fr. Cresphont., supra Notes p. 6 [P. 65 c ]. He adds Horn. Od. xv. 244 246, stating that Amphiaraus, though dearly loved by Zeus and Apollo, 'did not reach the threshold of old age' (QV$ "KSTQ yypaoi; oi/dov), and leaving it to be inferred that the best gift of their favour was his early death. P. 71. b The writer expresses this idea quaintly (I. c. . 9): 'Should a person not pay, as a debt, his life rather quickly, Nature, like a usurer, comes forward and takes as a pledge from one his eye-sight, from another his hearing, and frequently both ; and should he still delay, she brings on a paralysis or a mutilation or distortion of limbs', etc. P. 71. c L. c. . 7, Trapa ocKapij Stsfpa^a TOV j8/ov. P. 71. d Plato's contemporary, the sophist Alcidamas, wrote a pan- egyric on Death 'consisting of an enumeration of human ills' (Gic. Tusc. I. 48, . 116, quae constat ex enumeratione humanorum malorum). P. 72. a Sir. xl. 2830. P. 72. b Comp. Diog. Laert. VI. i. 6, 13. According to some an- cient authorities, they bore the name of Cynics from the gymnasium Cynosarges, where Antisthenes delivered his discourses. Diogenes himself said that he was called dog because 'he fawned upon those who gave him anything, barked at those who gave him nothing, and bit the wicked' (ibid. VI. ii. 6, 60); which is, of course, no explanation of the origin of the name but a witty or sarcastic interpretation of it. The same ap- plies to the remark that Antisthenes, who by his severity repelled many 10 NOTES [pp. 7275]. pupils, was 'a dog biting people's minds with sharp sayings' (&<JTS Sa/cs2v KpetMip p-fjpaoN; ib. VI. i. 10, 19). P. 72. c Ib. VI. ii. 11, 77, A/oysvT??, Zavog yo'vo?, ovptxviog re KVUV, in a poem of Cercidas. P. 72. d Ib. . 32, 38. P. 73. a On the meaning of these names see Eug. Burnouf, Introductior a 1'histoire du Buddhisme Indien, pp. 70, 71, 74, 77, 155; Le Lotus d( la bonne Loi, pp. 287, 781 296; etc. P. 73. b Comp. Max Mutter, Buddhism and Buddhist Pilgrims, p. 49 P. 73. c Comp. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion p. 88; see infra Chapt. X. P. 73. d See Journ. of Eoy. Asiat. Soc. XIX. 407 sqq. P. 74. a See Spence Hardy, Legends and Theories of the Buddhists pp. vi, viii (referring to the antagonism between the missionaries am the Buddhist priests in Ceylon), xxxiv (Farrar, Bampton Lectures) xli (Schlagintweit, Buddhists in Tibet), xlviii; Vassilief, Le Boud disme, trad, par La Comme, p. 82. P. 74. b Comp. Diog. Laert. VI. ii. 2, 6, 2224, 3234, 36, 4t 58, 61, 69, etc. P. 74. c 1 Cor. III. 16, OVK o^ars or/ vaog ^sov ears K. r. X.; VI. Ii TJ OVK oftaTs on TO pupa vpwv vtxog TOV e'v vjtiv ay/ou ffvev/*aTO fartv K. r. X 2 Cor. VI. 16; John II. 21; Eph. II. 21, 22; comp. Shakesp. Hamlei I. iii. 12; etc. P. 74. d Plato, Phaedo, c. 6, p. 62 B, co? sv TIVI $pov<f)x eV/zsv oi v ^OCOTTO/; Cratyl. c. 17, p. 400 B, KOI yap a^iia. rtvst; Qaaiv avro elvai rr, yvxtfi;, co? rs^apfievys e'v TW vvv irapovrf; which designation was choser wg ^'IKY,V ^^OUJT?? Tijt; $vffl<;; compare the long diatribe against the body i: Plato, Phaed. cc. 9 sqq.; also Senec. Epist. 65, 1622, corpus ho animi pondus ac poena est etc.; Sext. Empiric. Hypotyp. III. 24, 230 Clem. Alex. Strom. III. p. 433, ed. Sylburg; etc. . P. 74. e Comp. Epictet. Enchir. I. 19, ^yx/ov el pasrafrv veKpiv; Senet Epist. 120, 17, at nos corpus tarn putre sortiti; M. Aurel. VI. 41; et< P. 74. f Comp. Spence Hardy 1. c. p. xxxvi. P. 74. S Diog. Laert. VI. ii. 6, 72, 73. P. 75. a Ib. VI. i. 4, 7, 8 (opu <jov $ia TOU T^^COVO? -nyv </>/Xo^o|/v ii. 4, 6, 2426, 40, 41, 53, 58. P- 75. b Ib. VI. ii. 1, 6, 20, 56. P. 75. c Ib. VI. i. 4, 3, naviiyv jaaXXov 17 Tya^/ijv, was a saying < Antisthenes. P. 75. d Ib. VI. ii. 6, 35, rovg TrXs/arow? eksys irapa. P. 75. e Xuxparris paivopevos P. 75. f Ib. VI. ii. 8. P. 75. S Ib. VI. ii. 6, 63. P. 75. h Ib. 38, slu^-si Ss \sysiv rag rpayiKag apag avrw sivai youv "Airdkig, o//co^, irarpi^g sarspfjiJLsvo^ nTco^o^ ffXav^Tiy?, |8/ov r,, NOTES [pp. 7685]. P. 76. a Comp. on the other hand, M. Aur. X. 8, -elvui rr,v ra ffVKys irotovyav, TOV $e xwa TO. KWO;. . . . TOV e av^puirov r P. 77. a ShaTcesp. Loves Labour's Lost, I. i. 810, 31, 32, 72, 73, 152, 153; comp. 1. 25, 'The mind shall banquet, though the body pine'. P. 78. a D. L. I. c. VI. ii. 6, 37, 72; comp. Lucian, Cynicus, passim. P. 78. b Senec. De Tranq. Anim. c. 8, 5, si quis de felicitate Diogenis dubitat etc. P. 78. c Diog. Laert. 1. c. 71. P. 78. d Ibid. 44; they hence called the stomach 'the charybdis of life', ibid. 51. P. 79. a Ib. 58. P. 79. b Ib. 55, 56. P. 79. c Ib. VI. i. 10, 19, MTO 0/Xofro/a$. P. 79. d IZ>. VI. ii. 11, 76, 77. Diogenes is supposed to have lived from B. C. 414 to 324. P. 79. e Ib. VI. i. 5, 1114. Avrapmi TTJV apsrr,v K. r. X. sv TOI/; avrcav avakuroi/; \oyiy /JLOI<;. P. 79. f Ib. VI. i. 9; ii. 6, 12, 71, 80. Antisthenes was so prolific a writer that Timon called him 'the universal chatterer* , ib. VI. i. 9, 18). P. 80. a Aristot. Polit. I. 25. P. 80. b Di. La. VII. ii. 6, 29. P. 80. c Ib. VI. ii. 6, 10, 11, 43, 75, 78, TijpaoKei KOI ^a\K^ wro , XX ffov OUT/ KuSo? o iras alwv, A/oysvs?, Kc&eke'i. Mouvo? sire} fiiQTat; ^av s^si^ai; QvaroTg, K<XI Zwrji; oJftov sXa^yOorarav. P. 82. a Comp. Senec. Ad Helv. c. 8, duo quae pulcherrima sunt se- quentur, natura communis et propria virtus; . . . undecunque ex aequo ad coelum erigitur acies etc. P. 82. b Comp. Diog. Laert. VI. ii. 6, 43, psra Xaipwvsiav au rpoi; <I>/Xr7rov, KOU apurq'&eli; ri/; S"T], KaraaTCOTro?, ) see also Epictet. Disp. I. 24, TOUTS'OT/V o?b$ ^s7 P. 83. a Aexipgy^at %st avrov cc$ ovov, KUI S//3ojttevov Qikai wg irarspa iravruv, cog S?X^ov,- Epictet. Disp. III. 22, p. 315 ed. Wolf. P. 84. a Comp. also the beautiful passage ibid. c. 24, 'Did Diogenes love no one, he who was of such gentleness and humanity that for the common weal of mankind he cheerfully took upon himself so many toils and sufferings? But how did he love? As it behoved the minister of Zeus at the same time yearning for the welfare of men and obedient to the behests of God. Therefore to him every land was his country' etc. P. 84. b Comp. Epictet. Enchirid. c. 24, 4, 'If you train others to be good and honourable citizens, are you not useful to your country'? P. 85. a 'Ayou $g pea Zsu, KOU av ye TJ IlsTrpwfJisvT}. E/ ravry To7$ &ffO/ ^>/Xov, ravry yevfa^-w ; comp. Enchirid. c. 53. P. 85. b Epictet. Disp. III. 22; comp. H. 19; IV. 8. The value and importance of this grand discourse of Epictetus have often been ack- nowledged. 'One feels as it were a frenzy of virtue and of piety, in 12 NOTES [pp. 8588]. which the plenitude of a great heart tumultuously precipitates a torrer of holy thoughts' (M. Martha, quoted by Farrar, Seekers after G-oc p. 255). See also Wieland, Nachlass des Diogenes von Sinope, Vorbericb des Herausgebers, vol. xix, ed. Leipzig 1839. P. 85. c lsai. LIL 13 LIII. 12; 1 Pet. H. 2125, etc. etc. Comj Lucan, Pharsal. II. 306 313, where Cato says: '0 utinam coelique dei Erebique liceret Hoc caput in cunctas damnatum exponere poenas; . . Hie redimat sanguis populos, hac caede luatur, Quidquid Romani meruerur pendere mores'. P. 86. a Cic. Nat. Deor. I. 13, 32, atque etiam Antisthenes in eo libi qui Physicus inscribitur, populares deos multos, naturalem unum ess dicens etc. P. 87. a Comp. Cic. De Fin. III. 22, 74, verum admirabilis composit: disciplinae incredibilisque me rerum ordo traxit, quern, per deos in mortales! nonne miraris? . . . quid non sic aliud ex alio nectitur ut, unam literam moveris, labent omnia? Nee tamen quicquam est, quc moveri possit. P. 87. b Zenodotus praised Zeno for having taught 'a manly doctrin (Dioff. Laert. VII. i. 26, 30, apasva yap Xo'yov svpsg; comp. Cic. Tus III. 10, 22, forti et ut ita dicam virili utuntur ratione atque sententi; P. 87. c Dioff. Laert. VI. ii. 4, 27, civSpag pey ot^a/iou, TrcwSa? g AaKsStxiftovt ; but comp. ibid. VI. 59: returning from Sparta to Athei he said he came SK rrji; otv^pwviTibog sic, rrjv yvvaiKioviTiv. P. 87. d Ut verear ne homini nihil sit non malum aliud, certe i nihil bonum aliud potius. P. 87. e A malis igitur mors abducit, non a bonis, verum si quaerimi P. 87. f Haec quidem vita mors est quam lamentari possem si liber< P. 87. % The work alluded to is the lost treatise ; De Consolation written by Cicero, in imitation of Grantor's Hspi Tre-Aou?, after the dea of his daughter Tullia, B. C. 45; comp. Tusc. I. 26, 31, 34, 6 76, 83. P. 88. a Senec. Ad Marc. 11, 1, quid opus est partes deflere, tc flebilis vita est; 22, 1, felicissimis mors optanda est; Here. fur. 4( Quemcunque miserum videris, hominem scias; comp. Ad Marc. 11, Quid est homo? quodlibet quassum vas et quodlibet fragile jactat 19, 5, Mors dolorum omnium exsolutio est et finis; and esp. Epist 91, etc. P. 88. b M. Aur. E/$ eauro'v, VIII. 19, au ovv Kpo/; TI; TO ffieo&cu; si ave%sTat 7] svvoia. P. 88. c M. Aur. loco citato XII. 27, K7rvos KOU CTTTO^O; / P. 88. d Ib. H. 17. P. 88. e Ib. V. 10. P. 88. f Ib. V. 33. otve&vpiaots a$ />TO$; comp. III. 3; VI. i VIII. 24, 07ro2oy <joi (frcu'vsTat TO Xoufff^-J, s'kaiov, //ow?, pvjcoe, v$wp yXo/wc TO/OVTOV TTV fJispog TOW j8/ou KOU nav viroKei'fJievQV ; XI. NOTES pp. [88-91]. 13 lav 77^77 (77 ^UX7) airo\v^vai %sy TOW awparoi;, KUI yroi yfisy^fffvai, iJYai, 77 yvpfisivai ; XII. 5; etc. P. 88. * PUn. Nat. Hist. VII. 19 or 18. P. 89. a Very characteristic was the wish, which Diogenes is said to have expressed, to be buried lying on his face, because, he was certain, everything in Greece would soon be turned upside down (Diog. Laert. VII. ii. 6, 31, 32). P. 89. b The wise man, this was the usual complaint, finds nowhere a state which satisfies him; see e. g. Senec. De Otio, cc. 7, 8, 'e lege Chrysippi vivere otioso licet, non dico ut otium patiatur, sed ut eligat . . . Negant nostri sapientem ad quamlibet rempublicam accessurum ... Si percensere singulas voluero, nullam inveniam, quae sapientem aut quam sapiens pati possit'; De Tranq. Anim. I. 10, 'promptus, compositus sequor Zenona, Cleanthem, Chrysippum, quorum tamen nemo ad rempublicam accessit et nemo non misit'; and even M. Aurel. IX. 29, co$ SVTS\TJ %s Kai ra irokiTiKa ravra KOI, oferai, <f>ikoyv(f>u$ TtpaKTiKa a'&pcairia, j&cywv psora; IV. 3. P. 89. c Bruno Bauer, Christus und die Caesaren, p. 23; comp. Zeller, Vortrage und Abhandlungen, I. 82, 97 (ed. 1865). P. 89. d Senec. De Provid. c. 5, 9, ignis aurum probat, miseria fortes viros; comp. Sir. II. 5, or/ sv irvpi SoKipaZeTat XP V S> Ka " av^puwot SSKTQ} s'v KafjLivu rairstvuaeui; ; 1 Cor. III. 13; 1 Pet. I. 6, 7; also Ovid, Trist. I. v. 25, 'Scilicet ut fulvum spectatur in ignibus aurum', etc. P. 89. e Matt. V. 4, 1012; VII. 13; X. 38, 39; comp. Luke VI. 2023; 2 Tim. III. 12, 'all that will live godly in Christ shaU suffer persecution'. P. 89. f Sen. De Provid. cc. 1, 5, 6 ; 3, 3; Epist. 67, 14 (see Luke VI. 2426; Rom. V. 3, 4; 1 Cor. XI. 32; Hebr. XII. 511; James I. 2, 3; Kev. III. 19; also Ps. XCIV. 12; Prov. HI. 11, 12; Job V. 17; and Isai. X. 5; Hab. I. 12.); comp. Sen. De Provid. c. 2, 4, marcet sine adversario virtus; c. 4, 3, 4, miserum te judico, quod nunquam fuisti miser: G-audent magni viri aliquando rebus ad- versis non aliter quam fortes milites bellis: calamitas virtutis occasio est; etc. P. 90. a Comp. Bible Studies, II. pp. 308322. P. 90. b Senec. De Tranquill. Anim. c. 4, 4. P. 90. c Senec. De Ira, H. 31, 7. Comp. Rom. XII. 4, 5; 1 Cor. VI. 15; XII. 12 27, where Paul very elaborately carries out the same simile (KO&omsp yap TO aoo/ia sv s'ar/v Kai ^3X77 TroXXa e%et K. r. X. . . . 'E av stiry 6 irovi;, QTI OUK sljjii ysip K. T. X). An eastern poet writes : 'Oh, ye that are born of woman! Are you not all members of one body? Is ever one limb in pain without the whole body feeling discomfort? If men's woes do not touch thee, you must not bear the name of man' (Ruckert, Erbauliches und Beschauliches aus dem Morgenland, I. 141). P. 91. a Senec. Epist. 95, 51, 52. 14 NOTES [pp. 9193]. P. 91. b Senec. De Otio, c. 4, 31. P. 91. c Senec. Epist. 68, 2. P. 91. d De Hemed. c. 8. Comp. Sen. De Vit. Beat. c. 20, 5, pa triam meam esse mundum sciam et praesides deos; Ad Helv. c. 9, 7 omnem locum sapient! viro patriam esse; Epist. 102, 21, patria es illi quodcunque suprema et universa circuitu suo cingit, hoc omne cor vexum intra quod jacent maria cum terris, etc. P. 91. e M. Aurel. VI. 36. P. 91. f M. Aurel. IX. 13. P. 91. 8 M. Aurel. XL 8. P. 91. M. Aur. X. 21, X/yco ouv ru> Koafjiu Zri aot avvspw, based upo the words of Euripides, 'E^oa ph opfipov ya7a, and'E/sa Se 6 aspvog afar, (comp. Arist. Eth. Nic. VIII. 1, 'Epav [isv tftfipw yaTav ^pav^siuav). P. 91. * M. Aur. IV. 23. P. 91. k M Aur. XII. 26. Comp. M. Aur. H. 1; III. 16; IV. 4 VI. 44, 54 ('that which is not good for the hive is not good for tl bee', TO ru> apyvsi py avfji<f>spQv, olds ry fteXiayy ffvpfa'psi) ; VII. 9; VII 34, 59 ('men are created for each other; therefore, teach them c bear with them') ; IX. 9, ('you will more easily find an earthy substanc unconnected with any other earthy substance, than a man entirely di i sociated from men'); X. 6 ('I am intimately connected with parts th? are of the same kind with myself), 15; XI. 18; Epict. Disp. I. 9, et P. 91. ] Cic. Legg. I. 7, . 23, ut jam universus hie mundus ur ci vitas sit communis deorum atque hominum existimanda; Nat. Deor. I 62, 154, est enim mundus quasi communis deorum atque hominiu domus aut urbs utrorumque; De Fin. III. 19, 64, mundum autei censent regi numine deorum, . . . et unumquemque nostrum ejus mum esse partem, ex quo illud natura consequi ut communem utilitatem nostrs anteponamus; ibid. 63, ex hoc nascitur ut etiam communis hominiu inter homines naturalis sit commendatio, ut oporteat hominem ab homir ob id ipsum quod homo sit non alienum videri. P. 92. a Plut. De Alex. Virt. s. Fortit. I. 6, KO,} M $ KO\V TOV . . . Z^vcovo? sig sv TOVTO UVVTSIVSI Ks<j>a\aiov, tva rag av^oco7roy f t ywf/.s'&a ^r^ra.^ KO.} itokiraq, sJq e fiiog y KCU aye'kTji; yvvvofjuv vopw KOIVU crvvrpefo/Jisvirji; comp. John X. 16, 'and the] shall be one fold and one shepherd' (/*/ Tro^cviy, sic, irot^v). We can hei only refer to the antagonism of this saying of Christ with other declar. tions in which he limits his mission to the Jews; see infra ch. IV. P. 92. b Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 22, o/' Kara, ryv oiKOVftevyv <TO$O/. P. 92. c Eccl. I. 18; comp. VII. 16, 'Be not righteous over much, n< show thyself wise'. P. 92. d 2 Cor. VTI. 10, TJ yap Kara ^sov XUTTT? K. r. X. P. 92. e Pope, Essay on Man, II. 101104. P. 93. a Epict. Enchir. c. 12, 1, Kpsiaaov $e TOV iraffia KUKQV slvai as NOTES [pp. 93-96]. 15 P. 93. b Enchir. cc. 3, 18, 26; Disp. III. 8, o v'tog air&avs- TI ^ o v/o P. 93. c Enchir. C. 16, irpoaaxe PSVTOI, /JLTJ KOI facc^sv P. 93. d Enchir. c. 33, 10. P. 93. e Lactant. Instit. VI. xiv. 710, propositum arrogans et quasi furiosum, . . . se putant mederi, et eniti posse contra vim rationemque naturae. P. 93. f Shakesp. Macbeth, IV. iii. 219221. P. 93. Eurip. Orest. 140, 27ya., aTya, Xenrov wos; comp. Diog. Laert. Vn. v. 4, 172. P. 94. a Comp. Koran, Sur. XLIH init., and Wahl in loc. The 'Preserved Table' (J^A-o. -H ^yJ\) is also caUed 'The Mother of the Book' (i^lXXJl 1), being the supposed source of the Koran; Ruckert, Erbauliches und Beschauliches aus dem Morgenland, I. 155. See G. Weil, Mohammed der Prophet, p. 399; A. Sprenger, Leben und Lehre des Mohammed, n. 308 ; Barth. St. Hilaire, Mahomet et le Goran, pp. 206 208, 'Je ne nie pas que le fatalisme ne puisse etre repandu dans les populations mohametans; mais ce n'est pas leur livre reh'gieux qui le leur impose . . . On peut douter d'ailleurs, que le fatalisme aille aussi loin qu'on le dit, meme dans ces ames fletries' etc. Like the Moham- medans, the Hindoos advise: 'Man should not be remiss in his labours; the success of a work depends both on fate and man's efforts' ; and more decidedly: 'Weaklings laud fate, not man's labour; while heroes van- quish fate by unceasing exertion' (comp. 0. BohtUngk, Indische Spriiche, pp. 83, 88). P. 94. b Joseph. Ant. XIIT. v. 9, Travrcov TT^V eipappevyv Kvptav . . . a} fttfisv 6 fjiij Kar eWvi;? i^^ov av^owffo/? airavra ; but comp. XVIII. i. 5, sir} ftsv t3u Karaknre'iv <f)ike7 TO. Travrcx. P. 94. c Antiqq. XHT. v. 9. P. 95. a Comp. Bell. Jud. II. viii. 14, 'The Pharisees ascribe all to fate and to God, and yet maintain that our actions, whether right or wrong, are mainly in our power, although fate co-operates (/Joij^rv) in every one of them' a vague compromise, or, as he himself says in another passage (Ant. XVIII. i. 3), a Kpaan; which simply enunciates the dif- ficulty without elucidating it. P. 95. b Deut. XXX. 15, 19; comp. XI. 2628; Gen. IV. 7; Isai. LVI. 4; LXVI. 3, etc. See Bible Studies, I. 118. P. 95. c Talm Berach. 33 b , D'Dtf fWPD ^H D^Dff H-Q ^DD. P. 95. d Yalk. Shim. Job 894. P. 95. e Deut. V. 26 (29). P. 95. f Sir. XV. 1120; comp. XVII. 6, 7. P. 96. a Sir. XVI. 15; 2 Sam. XXIV. 1; 1 Chr. XXI. 1; Isa. VL 10; see infra. P. 96. b See P. v. Bohlen, Die Spriiche des Bhartriharis, Aus dem Sanskrit metrisch ubertragen, p. 62. This faculty of the flamingo of 16 NOTES [pp. 96, 97]. sucking the milk out of the water, is often referred to, so e. g. also ir the Indian saying, 'In the study of grammar, it is advisable to pass bj what is unimportant and only to attend to what in essential, as tht flamingo draws the milk from the water' (0. Bohtlingk, Indischt Spriiche, p. 6). P. 96. c Dioff. Laert. VII. i. 19, 23. More humerous are the Arabic poet's lines: 'I do drink wine, as every wise man does, And readily th( Lord grants me His pardon: From aye He knew that I would wine im bibe; Hence if I did not drink, God would be ignorant' (Omar Chiam in GKinsburg's Geist des Orients, p. 193). Seneca has the aphorism 'Nemo fit fato nocens' (Oedip. 1019); and writes, 'Erras si existima nobiscum vitia nasci; supervenerunt, ingesta sunt' (Ep. 94, 55). Plu tarch (De Stoic. Eepugn. c. 34), by confounding the natural event with the actions of men, easily convicts Chrysippus of absurdity; bt this teacher clearly says that 'God punishes vice' (1. c. c. 35; comp. 4( 47, 'without our own free consent auvyKaTa^eru^ we neither act nc take any resolution'); comp. Pint. De Placit. philos. I. 27, 28, 'Fate i a predestined concatenation of causes, in which the free will of man also included, so that some things happen by Fate, and others without it P. 96. d With regard to the inanimate creation, they regarded Fal (eipexpfjLevy), by which all things were called into existence, as 'the coi nected (sipopsvy) cause or the reason that regulates the world' (Dio. Laert. VII. i. 74, alria TCOV o'vrwv stpofjt.svTr], 7 X6yo V ov o /co'ff/*o $tei aysrcxt) which notion they frequently developed with great minutenes P. 96. e Sen. De Prov. c. 5, 6, 'a volente feretis quidquid petieritis . Nihil cogor, nihil patior invitus, nee servio Deo sed adsentior'; Epis 74, 20, 'placeat homini quidquid deo placuit'; 96, 2; 107, 9 1 'malus miles est qui imperatorem gemens sequitur; . . . hie est magni animus qui se deo tradidit' etc.; which sentiment is similar to that Christ's prayer, 'Not as I will, but as Thou wilt' (Matt. XXVI. 39; com John V. 30; VI. 38; 1 Mace. III. 60, 'nevertheless, as the will of Gc is in heaven, so let Him do') ; and it is thus expressed by M. Aurelii (TV. 34): 'Willingly give thyself up to fate, allowing her to spin tl thread into whatever thing she pleases' ; and by Epictetus (Enchir. c. 8 'Do not ask that things may happen as you wish, but wish them to 1 exactly as they happen, and thy life will pass cheerfully'; which princip he seems to have deduced from some verses attributed to Cleanthes: '! guide me, Oh Zeus and thou Fate (y IIsTr/jw/ie'vij), whither I am order by you to go (el pi ^/aTeray^svoc) ; I will follow you without hesitati (oKvo$); but if I refused, I should be a coward, and yet should not t less be compelled to follow' (Enchir. c. 43, 1 ; comp. 2, 'Him I c wise, who readily yields to necessity Zarit; SavdyKy ffvyKsx&pyKev xakcag- for he understands the divine counsels'). P. 97. a Disp. I. 17, and the preceding words, 'Man, thou hast nature a will that cannot be hindered or compelled (xpoatpsuiv . NOTES [pp. 97, 98]. 17 . . . *} ayavay/cauTov); who can hinder thee from assenting to what is true? who can compel thee to accept what is false'? Comp. I. 29; in. 7, 22; IV. 1; Enchir. cc. 1, 14, forts olv fas&tpis e7vat /JovXara/, fJ.f,T8 S\8TU Tl fJll/JTS <f>8VySTU Tl TUV ilf XXo/. P. 97. b M. Aur. V. 10, egsffTi pot py$sv irpaaastv napa TOV epov &*ov Koi Sai/jLovu K. r. X. P. 97. c Aescli. Frgm. 151 (Nauck); Flut. Adv. Stoic, c. 14, 0ao$ /^v aiTtav $vet fipOTQli;, "Gray KaKUuat b&fjia irafjarffav ^sky; Soph. Antig 1 . 620 624, To KUKW SoKeTv TTOT e'a^Xov T' l/i/isy OTW $psva$ 0so ays/ TT/JOS orav, and Schol. Zoc., "Orav o Saiftcav av&pt nopovvy KUKO., Tov voSv ejS'ka^e xp&Tov tj> jSoyXevsra/; FeW. Paferc. II. 118, 'ita se res habet, ut plerumque fortunam mutaturus deus consilia corrumpat efficiatque, quod miserrimum est, ut quod acciderit, etiam merito accidisse videatur et casuw in culpam transeat'; and the proverbial saying, 'Quos perdere vult deus, dementat prius'. All this nearly coincides with the Biblical doctrine of God's 'hardening of man's heart' (comp. Bible Studies, I. pp. 118, 119). Like Maimonides, the Protestant Church teaches : 'Quod Dominus cor Pharaonis indurat ... id poena est antecedentium ipsius peccatorum' (Form. Con- cord, sol. decl. XI. 820, in De Wette, Dogmatik der Protest. Kirche, 61 b ). An ancient writer remarks on that doctrine: 'This surpasses in- deed all notions of absurdity and blasphemy (aroma and Syy^^ara) ! How could we still call the gods givers of good and not rather givers of evil? How can they still hate and detest vice'? (Plut. 1. c.) P. 97. d Exod. xx. 5; xxxiv. 7, etc.; comp. Theogn. 731742, pr$i r O'TTiyju Harpoi; Tff^X/a< irate} ysvonro KUKOV; Curt. VII. 5 (23), nunc culpam majorum posteri lucre; Hor. Od. III. vi. 1, Delicta majorum immeritus lues, Eomane, etc. P. 97. e They maintained that 'the substance and matter exist only through the quality' (T^V ph ovatav KOI ryv Z\r,v vQearavai T% TTO/OTJJJ/), but made the qualities themselves again substances and bodies (Plut. Adv. Stoicos, c. 50; comp. ibid., 'the primary substance is without quality, not because it is devoid of any quality, but because it combines in itself all qualities'); and they held, that 'matter receives motion and form through reason which is immanent in it (6 Xoyo? evwrrapxwv), as by its own power it is unable to move or take any form' (Plut. 1. c. c. 34). P. 97. f Sen. Ep. 41, 1, 2, non sunt ad coelum elevandae manus, . . . prope est a te deus, tecum est, intus est, . . . bonus vir sine deo nemo est, etc. Comp., however, Epist. 95, 37 40, deum colit qui novit . . . Primus est deorum cultus deos credere, etc,; see infra, ch. IV. P. 98. a The physico-theological, the ontological, and the teleblogical. Comp. Epict. Disp. I. 6, 16, etc. See infra ch. VII. P. 98. b Comp. Sen. Ad Marc. c. 25, 1, Integer ille nihilque in terris relinquens sui fugit et totus excessit paulumque supra nos com- moratus, dum expurgatur et inhaerentia vitia situmque omnem mortalis aevi excutit, deinde ad excelsa sublatus inter felices currit animas; 18 NOTES [pp. 98100]. Lactant. Instit. VII. 7, Esse inferos Zeno stoicus docuit, et sedes piorum ab impiis esse discretas, et illos quidem quietas ac delectabiles incolere regiones, hos vero luere poenas in tenebrosis locis atque in coeni voraginibus hor- rendis; comp. also Virg. Aen. VI. 735 751. P. 99. a Diog. Laert. VII.- i. 52, 53, TO 6/*oXoyoy/zevw rf/ <f)v?ei Cvyv, OTtsp sffTi KO.T apsTTjv Z'(jv; again, TO Kara Xoyov CTJV op^&g ysve&at To7g Kara <f>v<7iv; and conversely, 7crov sari TO KO.T apsTrjg Zyv TW KO.T sftTreipiav TCOV (f)v<jei avfifeuvwrtev Zyv . . . fJLspr t yap staiv ai Jifisrtpou <f>vcrsig ryg TOU oXov; M. Aur. VII. 11, TU \oyiKU ww 17 airy irpat;ig Kara, (frueiv sari KI Kara Xo'yov; luven. XIV. 321, Nunquam aliud Natura, aliud Sapientia dicit; Plut. De Stoic. Bepugn. c. 9, ov yap earn a\\ug . . . sirslStsTv . . . girt rag apsrat; ol$ eVJ evSaiftoviav XX' 17 TTO r-fjt; KQivr,t; <f)Vffsw<; KUI jro rf,<; TOU Koupov $ioiKi;vsic$ ; <7tc, De Fin. IV. 6, 8, 17, 19, 21, 22, 14, 19, 47, 54, 5961. P. 99. b Diog. Laert. VII. i. 54, 91, S^a/cT^v TS slvai alrijv K. T. X. P. 99. c Ibid. VII. i. 60; ii. 1. P. 99. d As the philosophers Posidonius and Panaetius. P. 99. e Diog. Laert. VII. i. 26, 30, Tav apsretv ^y^c, aya^ K. T. X.; 53, 89, e'v airy (TTJ apsryi) sJvai ryv sv^aiftoviav ; 65, 127, T3 stvai alryv irpo<; sv^atfJLOVi'av ; 128, %psiav sTvai Kai vytsiag Ka} layyoq KOU xopyyias; comp. Gic. De Fin. V. 27 29, 79 83 ; Acad. post. I. 10; Parad. II, 'In quo virtus sit, ei nihil deesse ad beate vivendum'. P. 99. f KaTOp^oofJLara; Diog. Laert. VII. i. 53, 89, rr,v TS aperqv Sta'&eaiv sJvai o/ioXoyou/iV7/v . . . eVe} y <f>vatg a<f>op[jia<; %!$ca<7iv a^tauTp^Qvi;; Plut. De Stoic. Repugn. C. 11, TOV vo/xov TroXXa TO^ (f)av\oig aTrayopsvsiv., irpouTaTTsiv $e infisv, ov yap ^vvarai Karop^ovv. P. 99 & Diog. Laert. VII. i. 54, q^ovTjov^ av^psia, StKaioyvvrj, ew<f>po<jvvri (comp. Wisd. VIII. 7); /ieyaXo^y^/ ? syKpaTsia, KapTspla, ay%tvoia, su/?ouX/a. P. 99. h James II. 8, vo/^ov ... jgaa/Xwo'v , comp. 1 Cor. XIII. ; Bom. XIII. 8 10, n\-f;pw[JL<x ouv vo'/^ou 17 ayaTry; Gal. V. 14; Col. Ill, 14, T^V ayanyv, o SUTIV avv^sofiQi; ryji; TS\SIOT^TQI;; 1 Tim. I. 5. P. 99. i Plut. De Stoic. Eepugn. cc. 7, 27; Diog. Laert. VII. i. 65, 125, Tag Se apsTag \syovatv avTa/coXovSi-eTv aXX^Xa/?, /<} TOV /*/av |'^OVT xaaag s'xsiv; comp. Gic. Acad. Pr. II. 43, 44, 132136. P. 99. k Diog. Laert. VII. i. 55, TO aya^o'v sari TO TS\SIOV KO.TO. <f>vytv \oyiKov: reason is very frequently called TO ^ys^ov/K-o'v; in M. Aur. V. 26, 27, TO yyepoviKov KOI TO Kvptsvov, (comp. Cic. Nat. Deor. II. 11, 29, principatus); and it is denned by Epictetus (Disp. IV. 7) as that faculty 'which uses all other faculties and tries them, and selects and rejects'. P. 100. a Diog. Laert. VII. i. 31 (o TTJV eWn^ojv Te'Xo? emuv), 33; II. 2; III. 1; comp. I. 66, 129, 'the common school learning (T eyKUKkia pa'&waTa) is also useful'. The statement, therefore, that the Stoics rejected the syKw\tog nailela, must be received with reserve (comp. Plut. De Stoic. Eepugn. c. 24). It is indeed true that later Stoics evinced a certain contempt for theoretical knowledge ; comp. Senec. Epist. 88, 36, NOTES [p. 100]. 19 37, 'tantum itaque ex illis (artibus) retineas quantum necessarium est . . . Plus scire velle quam sit satis, intemperantiae genus est. Quid? quod ista liberalium artium consectatio molestos, verbosos, intempestivos, sibi placentes facit', and so on to the end of the letter; also Ep. 45; 48, 11, 'quantum potes ergo, reduc te ab istis exceptionibus et praescriptionibus philoso- phorum'; 49, 5 9; 95, 13, 'The wisdom of the ancients taught merely what we should do and avoid, and then men were by far better; since we have scholars, we have no good men, ... we are instructed how to argue, not how to live' (docemur disputare, non vivere); 108, 12, 'hoc preme, hoc onera, relictis ambiguitatibus et syllogismis et cavillationibus, et ceteris acuminis inriti ludicris' ; Epict. Disp. I. 26 ; III. 21; Frgm. 175; M. Aur. I. 17; II. 2 (afes ra /3//?X/, (tr^eri ait Si), 3 (rqv J /3//2X/CCV Ztyav ptyov); HI. 14; IV. 30, etc. P. 100. b Noteworthy is a remark of Epictetus, which is a sufficient reply to a difficulty often raised with respect to the fifth commandment. 'The duties,' he observes, 'are generally in consonance with the circum- stances. As regards the father, duty commands to take care of him, to yield to him in all matters, to bear calmly his abuse or violence. But the father is perhaps a bad man. Are you, by the bonds of nature, tied to a good father? No, simply to & father' (Epict. Enchir. c. 30, [17] rt o2v vrpts aya&ov jrarspa (frvjst wKsiw'&yi;; aXXa irpoi; jrarspa). P. 100. c Diog. Laert. VII. i. 21, 28, 6062, 64, o </>/Xos aXXog e'yco; comp. Cic. De Fin. III. 17, 21. In the course of some beautiful remarks on friendship, Seneca writes : 'For what object do I secure a friend? That I may have someone for whom I can die, one whom I can follow into exile, for whose welfare I can offer and sacrifice myself (Epist. 9, 10). P. 100. d M. Aur. IV. 3, ' Ava^wp^asi; avroTg ZyTovytv, . . . oXov e roDro /S/wr/Kwrarov e'anv; comp. IX. 9. Retirement is considered ad- missible in the one case only when a man thinks he must give up all hope of remaining faithful to virtue amidst the temptations of the world (M. Aur. X. 8, e'av $s oua^y Zrt SK-XIKTSIS KI ov irspixparsT^ jrA/ ^appocv sit; yccv/av r/va OTTOV KpaTr/usn;). With respect to such a contingency, Seneca writes tersely: 'Conceal yourself in leisure, but conceal that leisure itself; you will act thus, not indeed by the Stoics' precept, but by their example' (Epist. 68, 1 sqq.). P. 100. e Diog. Laert. VIII. i. 64, 121, 123 (KOIVUVIK^ yap fyvvsi Koii irpaKTiKts); M. Aur. HI. 5 (xai ffoX/r;/cou), 7; IV. 3, 24; V. 1; IX. 16, oy/c ev Kelast XX' svepysix TO rw XoywoD Cwou KOCKQV KCXI aya&ov; etc.; comp. Sen. De Otio, d. 2, Zenon ait: accedet ad rempublicam sapiens, nisi quid impedierit (see, however, supra Notes p. 13 [P. 89 b ]). Marriage was explicitly recommended by the great Eoman Stoic C. Musonius Eufus, the master of Epictetus; comp. Epict. Disp. III. 7, ^eov os$en, yove'wv siripit.ef&ai K. r. X. 20 NOTES [pp. 100, 101]. P. 100. f See supra Notes p. 13 [P. 90 C ], especially the passage from Senec. De Ira, II. 31, 7; also Bible Studies, II. p. 321. P. 100. All these traits are distinctly mentioned by ancient writers ; comp. Diog. Laert. VII. i. 4, 12, 14, 16, 19, 2426, 64, 3 (alMjpuv $s w$ npog rrjv Kuv//oyv avai<y%WTiav), 13, 15 (OV^STTOTS e^auvw^Ty, ov$s ra 19, 22, 23, 24, 27 (neivfjv l&aeicet K. r. X.), 28 (iravrat; . . . TV? JS^VO'TTJT/), 30, 117 122; V. 2 (fy^yvat a%tTava; but Juven. XIII. 121, Stoica dogmata ... A Cynicis tunica distantia); JSpict. Enchir. CC. 33, 7 (ra. mpi TO aco^ta fJ.s%pt r-fjs xpei'a; yikijs na- pa\afjL^avs K. r. X.), 47; Cic. De Fin. III. 20, 68 (Cynicorum autem rationem atque vitam alii cadere in sapientiam dicunt . . . alii nullo modo); V. 28, 64; De Divin. II. 63, 129; Parad. V, VI, etc. P. 100. h Diog. Laert. VII. i. 68, 135, sv TS etveu &BOV Ka} vovv *ai sifjLapfJLsvr t v KOU A/a 7roXXa? rs srspat; ovopaaiaii; irpoaovofJ.aZsv'&ai. P. 100. i Diog. Laert. VII. i. 72, 147, 0sov TS sJvai ftSov, a^avarov, OV, TiksiQV, . . . ItpOVOTjTlKW KOOfJiOV TS KOU. TCOV SV KQa/AU, Hy s7vat fASVTQl . . . KOI wuirsp narspa KOLVTWV; ibid. 70, 137, og $y a<f>- <JTI Ka.} aysvvTjTo; K. T. \.; comp. Arat. Phaenom.^2 4, 'Full of Zeus are all paths, all abodes of men, full is also the sea' etc. (psarai %s Aio$ iraa/xi fjisv ayvial K. T. A.); Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 31, 'Zeus is the be- ginning, Zeus is the middle, from Zeus everything has proceeded' (Zsu? apyy, Zsu? peaaa, Aioi; $SK Kavra TSTVKTCCI), which recalls the words of St. John, 'I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last' (Rev. XXII. 13, syco TO 'X$ KOU TO , 6 np&TOi; KOU o sayaTQ!;, r, apxy KOU TO TsXo?, ed. Tischendorf; comp. I. 8, 11, 17; II. 8; XXI. 6; also Isai. XLI. 4; XLIV. 6; XL VIII. 12); ibid. c. 32, ou yap a^i-avaTOV KOU [taKapiw fjiovov aXXa KOU 0/Xav^oco7rov KOU KI^SJJ.QVIKQV KOU oo<f)s- X//^ov . . . TOV rsov; Id. De Stoic. Repugn, c. 38, quoting Antipater of Tarsus, ^eov TO/VUV voou/^sv wav paKapiov Ka} a^^a^Tov KOU SVTTOITJTIKOV a'A/3co7rcov. Chrysippus (1. c.) considers the fire of Zeus alone as un- created and eternal, but the other gods as created and perishable. P. 101. a Diog. Laert. VII. i. 64, 123, TOV ffo</>oy o^ev ^av/ta&iv TOO: &O/COUVTCOV Tra^a^o'&ov; comp. Hor. Ep. I. vi. 1, Nil admirari prope res est una etc. P. 101. b Diog. Laert. VII. i. 63; comp. Cic. Tusc. III. 11, 24 25; IV. 6, 11, 12. Cicero calls the four chief perturbations voluptaj or laetitia, cupiditas or libido, aegritudo, and metus; comp. the same notions in Virg. Aen. VI. 733, Hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolentqtu gaudentque; and Hor. Ep. I. vi. 12, G-audeat an doleat, cupiat metuatve quid ad rem? See also Senec. Epist. 75, 14; Augustin, Civit. Dei, IX. 5 P. 101. c Thus Seneca (De Clem. II. 4, 5) recommends 'dementia' but objects to 'misericordia', which he describes as a 'vitium pusilli animi and 'aegritudo animi ob alienarum miseriarum speciem', whereas the wisv man must above all maintain serenity of mind (serena ejus mens est ne< quicquam incidere potest quod illam obducat). NOTES [p. 101]. 21 P. 101. d Dioff. Laert. VII. i. 64, 117, S/a TO av>ffTccrov e7var slvat SI Koii aXXov affa^-iy TOV ^aSXov, e'v Taw Xeyd^vov T aK\r t pu> KCU ctTpsirrw; comp. also Jlf. 4wr. V. 26. P. 101. e 4>avraff//, visa animi. P. 101. f Whereas others often remain under the sway of their first impressions even after time has elapsed sufficient to argue about their real nature and effects. This thoughtful definition of the ana^sia and its true operation is set forth in a fragment of the fifth Book of the Discourses of Epictetus, preserved by Gellius (Noct. Att. XIX. 1). P. 101. % Diog. Laert. VII. i. 26, 30, ar/jsVrou . . . sXsu^/a;; comp. Cic. Tusc. IV. 6, 11. The much misunderstood anc&eia of the Stoics is by Seneca (Epist. 19, 1 3) discussed very explicitly: it is difficult, he says, to avoid ambiguity in rendering that term by a single word, as for instance by 'impatientia' or 'animus impatiens', which might convey just the opposite sense to that intended; and he, therefore, proposes 'in- volnerabilis animus', or the paraphrase 'animus extra omnem patientiam positus', since the quality can justly be attributed only to a man 'qui respuat omnis mali sensum'; for the Stoic sage 'vincit quidem incommodum omne, sed sentit', whereas the 'impatiens' in the ordinary meaning 'ne sentit quidem'; comp. also M. Aur. XL 18, oa airc&sl<x ToDro O/KS/O'TS/JOV, TOffoy-np KO.I 6vvdfj.si. P. 101. h Diog. Laert. VH. i. 64, 121, 122; ii. 6 ; vi. 2, TOV afyw a&ofaarov elvai; Cic. Tusc. IV. 16, 36, sapientem omnia recte facere; M.. Aur. III. 9, rqv virQ\7]TTTiK^v SvvafJLiv ffsfiov, sv ravTf] TO irav K. T. X., 11; VEIL 13, 26; and frequently in Epictetus (Disp. I. 1; H. 18; HI. 3, etc.; Enchir. cc. 1, 5, 6, 19, 20, 42, 45). P. 101. i Diog. Laert. VII. i. 19, 18, 21, 28, 24; comp. Cic. Parad Prooem. . 2, Cato perfectus . . . Stoicus . . . in ea est haeresi quae nullum sequitur florem orationis neque dilatat argumentum; Senec. Epist. 115, 1, 2, nimis anxium esse te circa verba et compositionem nolo, habes majora quae cures etc.; M. Aur. III. 5, pf/re Kop^ei'a TT/V Stdvoiav ffou /caXXcoff/Csrw, pyre iro\\vppTJfj.ccv ; and similar precepts are given by Epictetus with respect to speaking (Enchir. c. "33, 2, atuiiTf TO ffoXu sffTw, T] XaXs/J^co Ta avay/ca^a KOI $i oX/ywv). P. 101. k Senec. Epist. 75, 5. P. 101. ^ Diog. Laert. VII. i. 59, TO /caXov aya^ov slvai K. r. X.; Epictet. Disp. IV. 11; comp. Cic. Parad. I. 6 15, etc. Hence the Stoic sage holds that even objects like the extended jaws of an infuriated animal or the furrowed cheeks of the aged, though not beautiful in them- selves, derive beauty and interest if intelligently regarded in con- nection with the whole economy of nature (M. Aur. III. 21, S/ TO Tofc fyvaii y/vo^ts'vo/i; eVa/foXoiAsrv K. T. X.); comp. VI. 36. P. 101. ni Diog. Laert. VII. i. 60, 63, aXoyo? eirapaii;; comp. Stob. Eel. II. 6, p. 174, (p. 48 ed. Meineke), ^ov^v 2e. slvat sTrapatv ^vyf,<; Xoyw K. T. \.j which definition is very similar to that given by the 22 NOTES [pp. 101104]. Stoics of 7ra^o in general, as in Diog. Laert. VII. i. 63, 110, sari auro TO jra^os Kara Zyvcava TJ a'Xoyoj KOI irapa (frvariv $v%rt<; Kivyeii; TJ irXsovaftuaa; Stobaeus 1. c. p. 166 (p. 47 ed. Meineke), wa^o^ slval (JHXVIV. P. 101. n Comp. Sen. Ep. 23, 3, 4, disce gaudere . . . nisi forte tu judicas eum gaudere qui ridet etc.; Epict, Enchir. c. 32, 4, ys'Xco? fj.i] TroXu? fcrrto, fJirfis siri TroXXo? 1 ;, (JLTJ^S avsipsvot;. P. 102. a Jto'o^. Laert. VII. i. 55, faifnvypaTa %s rr,v rs %apav KOU rr,v ev^povuvyv KOI ra Kapankaatex, 57, 63, 115, 116; see also M. Aur. VI. 7; VHI. 26; XII. 29. P. 102. b Cicero (De Fin. III. 22, 75, 76) says of the 'persona sapientis Stoici' : 'Quam gravis vero, quam magnifica, quam constans' ! He then enumerates the names and epithets which that sage deserves in spite of ignorant sneers the names of king and master of the people (magister populi), and the epithets of rich, beautiful, free, invincible; and sums up: 'Quod si ita est, ut neque quisquam nisi bonus vir et omnes boni beati sint, quid philosophia magis colendum aut quid est virtute divinius' ? P. 102. c This description of Seneca's wise man, it may be psycho- logically instructive to mention, has been furnished by a divine eminently generous and charitable, and especially so in his estimate of Seneca's life and writings (Farrar, Seekers after God, pp. 328 330; comp. pp. 160 166). But Seneca, both as a man and an author, has often been very severely judged from the time of G-ellius (Noct. Att. XII. 2, 'ineptus et insubidus homo') down to our own, but has found at least as many, and we believe successful defenders. In spite of some grave faults and errors, the character and life of Seneca are lasting monuments of human nobleness, from which no disparagement, however vigorous or pointed, can materially detract. P. 103. a Viz. justitia, fortitude, temperantia, prudentia; frugalitas, continentia, tolerantia, liberalitas, comitas, humanitas, providentia, elegantia, magnanimitas, decus; pondus, gravitas ; gratia, auctoritas; animus amabilis, venerabilis. P. 103. b Et ut fas sit vidisse tacitus precetur. P. 103. c Sen. Epist. 115, 37. P. 103. ^Diog. Laert. VII. i. 7, 9, 26, 1012, & rs ro7 s Xonrofc ovra roT^ Xoyo/ o"ig /sXe'ysro; ib. c. 29, Antipater of Sidon declared that Zeno had found a path to heaven, not like Her- cules, by toilsome labours, but by virtue alone. P. 103. e Sen. De Constant, c. 7, 1, ceterum hie ipse M. Cato . . . vereor ne supra nostrum exemplar sit. P. 104. a Ibid. c. 19, 4, esse aliquem, in quern nihil fortuna possit, 'republica est generis humani. P. 104. b M. Aur. I. 16. NOTES [pp. 104, 105]. 23 P. 104. c M. Aur. VI. 30; comp. III. 46; V. 5; X. 1; Epict. Enchir. c. 48, etc. P. 104. d Comp. Pint. De absurd. Stoic. Opinion, cc. 1 4, o Zreofiro; usirap ef a^ocfJLavTt'vrjg vfa]$ litauTuv rq$ caro&si'as K3%a\KsvfJL8VQ$ K. r. X. ; Adv. Stoic, c. 8, etc. See Senec. Epist. 75, 4, 'concordet sermo cum vita'; 64, . 4, 'quid cessas, fortuna? congredere, paratus sum'; Vit. Beat, cc, 17, 18; especially the fine passage in Epist. 26, 6, 'nihil est adhuc quod aut rebus aut verbis exhibuimus . . . Non timide itaque componamur ad ilium diem quo . . . de me judicatures sum utrum loquar fortia an sentiam . . . Accipio conditionem, non reformido judicium'; nor was Seneca found wanting in his last hour. P. 104. e See Epict. Disp. II. 9, 19; III. 7, 'we say what is beautiful and do what is base' ; Gell. Noct. Att. XVII. 1 9, Epictetus blamed many of his followers for being avsv TOW npamiv, psxpt TOU \sfstv, Juven. II. 65, ironically designating as 'Stoicidae' those who, while declaiming against effeminacy, conspicuously exhibit it in their own appearance; Lucian, De Morte Peregrini, cc. 23, 24; Athen. XIII. 15, p. 363, cc arooaKs;, epnopot \ypov Ao'ycov viroKpirr}ps$ K. T. X. Comp. Rom. II. 17 29, 'He is not a Jew who is one outwardly' etc. P. 104. f Mahabhdrata HI. 13445, rendered by J. Muir in 'Religious and Moral Sentiments from Indian writers', p. 12; comp. p. 27, 'The man whose heart melts with pity to all creatures, has knowledge, and gains final liberation; which are not attained by matted hair, ashes, and the garb of a mendicant' (from Vriddha Chanakya XV. 1). P. 105. a Diog. Laert. VII. i. 60, 64, 65, 101, 120125, 127, TWV ao(f)u>v J TTavra slvat, $e$uiKsvai yap aurofy TtavTskfj ejiovviav TOV vo'/^ov. Hdvrat; rs TOV; a<f>pwas [jiahea&ai. -Iffoc TO, apapTr;fJ.aTa } 'for the man who is a hundred stadia from Canobus and the man who is only one, are both equally not in Canobus'; or 'a stick must either be straight or crooked' (comp. Epict. Enchir. c. 29, 7, eva, as %si av^-pwirov TJ y^ov 17 KO.KW itvai}- and with another illustration, 'he who is one cubit under water drowns no less than he who is five hundred fathoms' (Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 10; comp. cc. 6, 7; De Stoic. Repugn, c. 13). TLdvra TO. aya&a. fact eJvai . . . KOI {JLT/TS aveovv /tyrs eV/raavy $s%ee'>ai. Comp. Cic. Tusc. II. 12, 18, 29, 42; HI. 5, 10; IV. 24, 54; De Fin. IV. 9, 21; Acad. pr. II. 43, 133; Parad. IV (omnem stultum insanire); De Orat. III. 18, 65; Pro Murena, 29, 30, 6063; Hor. Sat. I. iii. 9698 (quis paria esse fere placuit peccata etc.), 115 142 (si dives, qui sapiens est, Et sutor bonus et solus formosus et est rex, etc.); Stob. Eel. H. 6, p. 218 (p. 60 ed. Meineke); Athen. IV. 51 55; especially Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, and Adversus Stoicos, passim; e. g. 'there is no absurdity so great which the Stoics have not maintained or at- tempted' (Adv. Stoic, c. 31); etc. P. 105. b 1 Cor. I. 23, feveviv %s pupiav. 24 NOTES [pp. 105-107]. P. 105. c 1 Cor. I. 26, or/ TO fiwpw TOU *&sov aQtfxxrspov TWV eari K. r. X. Cicero called the paradoxes 'Socratica longeque verissima' (Parad. Prooem. 4, III, V, VI). P. 105. d Schiller, Weisheit und Klugheit, in the 'Votivtafeln'. P. 105. e Neander, Vorlesungen iiber die Geschichte der christlichen Ethik, 1864, p. 49. P. 105. * Plut. De Stoic. Eepugn. c. 17, / rqv vnspfiokyv TOV TS p.s- ys^ov/; KOU TOU /caXXou? irkaafJiacn SoKOvpsv fyoia X/ye/v. P. 105. % Epict. Enchir. C. 22, o/' KaraysXwvrs's aou TO nporspov, ovrot as Zyrspov ^avpaaovrai; comp. c. 22, 'If you want to be a philosopher, you must be prepared to be laughed at and mocked' (; KaTays\a&r l aofjLsvo<; K. r. X.); also c. 13, si xpOKfyai &sXj, Mro/ttl/MV SVSKIX TWV eVcTos avoTjTO? <> KOI P. 106. a Matth. V. 21, 22, 27, 28, 31, 32, 3842; XVIII. 20; 2 Cor. VI. 10, C0 /*7jSsV SXOVT5S */ 7rVTa KTs';(OVT5 ; 1 John III. 15, 7T /f/awv TOV SffX(/)ov auTou a-A^coTroACTdvo^ early; James II. 10, jtratyy $e sv evij yeyovsv mxvrwv evo^o; (comp. Matth. V. 19). P. 106. b Matth. XIX. 2125, 'It is easier for a camel' etc.; VI. 19 21 ; Mark X. 21 25; Luke VI. 20, 24, 'woe unto you that are rich' etc.; XII. 33; XVI. 19 sqq.; XVIII. 2225; Acts II. 44, 45; IV. 34, 35; 1 Tim. VI. 9, 10 'love of money is the root of all evil' (but comp. vers. 17 19); James VI. 1 sqq., ; Ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you' etc, Comp. Sir. XIII. 24, 'Riches are good to him that has no sin'; Plat. Legg. V. 12, p. 742 E, 'To be very rich and at the same time good is impossible'; Origen, Contr. Cels. VI. 17. P. 106. c Soph. Antig. 449 470, 2o/ tie! o/cw vvv pupa Spuiea ri /j.wpw ftccpiav o<^X/0vcavco. P. 106. d Diog. Laert. VII. i. 28, 66, 33, 131. P. 106. e Plut. De Stoic. Eepugn. c. 22. P. 106. f Diog. Laert. VII. vii. 12, 188, KOI TOU? affo^avovra? P. 106. % Diog. Laert. VII. i. 75; comp. Cic. Divin. I. 3, 6, 33, 38, 5, 6, 10, 72, 82; II. 19, 48, 49, 44, 100, 101. P. 107. a Diog. Laert. VII. i. 75, KOU pyv pavTiKyv vfysaravat Kuaav (fxxfflv, 77 KOU yrpcivotav eivai K. r. X. P. 107. b Plut. De Stoic. Eepugn. c. 13; comp. Adv. Stoic, cc. 25, 26: /*o'vov ayc&o'v, but not rskog, according to Chrysippus. P. 107. c Diog. Laert. VII. i. 64, 121, 'Hpa&s&Tjg HSVTOI / 'A V^"/o? avtaot, (fxxui ra ay-aprr^ara. M. Aurelius was accustomed to visit all trespasses with lighter punishments than those fixed by the law, although he sometimes remained inexorable in the case of great and reckless criminals (Capitolin. M. Anton. Philos. c. 24). P. 107. d Senec. Vit. Beat. c. 21, 2, ista debere contemni, non ne habeat, sed ne sollicitus habeat; non abigit ilia a se, sed abeuntia securus prosequitur; etc. Comp. Epist. 5, etc. NOTES [pp. 107, 108]. 25 > P. 107. e Sen. De Benef. II. 35, 2, deinde alia via ad consuetudinem redeunt. P. 107. f Pint. Adv. Stoic, c. 20. P. 107. 8 Eurip. Frgm. 884 (Nauck), 'Eirst ri 8 fipoToliffi ir\yv Svo7v jstovov, AypiiTpQs aKrfjs KOI Tro/zaro? l%pr,%!>w; comp. Plut. De Stoic. Repugn, cc. 20, 21; also Athen. IV. 52, 53, apTo$ ice&apis s7$ sKaTspu,, mriipmv &<XTO$, with respect to the Pythagoreans. P. 107. h Pers. II. 5355, sapiens . . . Porticus insomnis quibus et detonsa juventas Invigilat, siliquis et grandi pasta polenta; Senec. Epist. 18, 10; 21, 10; 110, 18, 20, disce parvo esse contentus, et illam vocem magnus atque animosus exclama: habemus aquam, habemus po- lentam, Jovi ipsi controversiam de felicitate faciamus. P. 107. * M. Aur. I. 6, TO a/f/^co7roSo$ KO.} Sopas eir&virij<reu } Kai oaa TOI- avTa rijt; 'EXXifv/K^ ayuyfji; e%QfjLeva. P. 107. k Epictet. Enchir. c. 15, TOTS ov /AO'VOV avpiroTTis TCOV ^suv say, aXXa Kai cvvdpxuv K. T. X. P. 108. a Sen. Epist. 5, 16. P. 108. b Diog. Laert. VII. i. 64, 121, 123, 129; VII. 12, 187; comp. Cic. Offic. I. 35, 128; Fin. in. 20, 67. P. 108. c Diog. Laert. VII. i. 72, 147, 148, Ko/vwg ra Kai TO ftipos avTov TO SrijKQV S/a TTOVTCOV, o TroXXa?? Kpoyr,yopiaii; irpoaovofJi.aZsTai Kara rat; SvvdfJLsti;, K. r. X.,- and olui'av $s >sov ZTJVCOV psv fyrpi TOV oXov /coff/itov KCU TQV ovpavov; ibid. 70, 139 143, sva TOV KO'U^COV slvai KOI TOVTOV neirspas- jEtSVOV. TOV OXOV KQ7JJLOV CwOV OVT KOU 8fl\(/V%QV KUl Xoy//COV. -"E^C^U^OV 5, CC i^t k oy in rf,<; TjfJisTspas V y X^ SKSI^SV Q\>3r,<; aTroaTrau^aro^; comp. 156, T^V e TWV oXwv (fyv-ffl-j) a^^a^rov, yg fjispri eJvai T? sv To7<; &OK;; Senec. Ad Helv. c. 8, 14, animus contemplator admiratione mundi, pars ejus magnificentissima; M. Aur. V. 27, the Saipuv, whom every man has in himself as his guardian and guide, is a detached portion (7roWj/*a) of Zeus, and this is his intelligence and reason (o sKayrw vow? KOU Xo'yo?); comp. II. 4; IV. 40, sv aov TOV /coa^tov, fjs.iav ovalav Kat &v%qv fjitav STTB^OV; VII. 9, K-oj/io? rs yap sJq s airavTwv, KU} Qsot; si<; $ia iravTuv, K. T. X.; VIII. 7 (17 TOU in&p&mv $v<Ji$) pepoi; surl rqs K0ivf]$ fyvaswq, us TJ TOV ^yXXoy ^vj/ r-fjz TOU ^UTOW tyvusui;; IX. 28, i<p sKaarov Qpftx -fj TOV oXoy Sidvoia; XII. 2, 26, o' sKauTw vou$ ^so /c< SKS^SV sppv^Ks ; Plut. De Stoic. Repugn, c. 9, TO avvs^su^ai pix Swapst TOV /coy/zov sva OVT } mTrapaaftsvov (but Adv. Stoic, c. 30. TO Ss ?rv WTT airstpiai; avpiuTQv). Therefore the animals also, and even the plants, are regarded as liable to certain duties and obligations (Diog. Laert. VII. i. 62, opay^ai yap Kai:} TOVTUV viz. <f>VTa and Ka'&rjKWTa), while the heavenly bodies are gods (M. Aur. VIII. 19, KO,} 6 iyX/o spsJ . . . KOI oi XO/TTO/ ^so/; Plut. De Stoic. Repugn. c. 38). 'The world', say the Stoics, 'is a town, and the stars are its citizens', or 'the sun became an animate being by its moisture having changed into intellectual fire' (Plut. Adv. Stoic, cc. 34, 46, Toy yy^oy it$ nvp vospov). To deride the Stoics, Plutarch (1. c. c. 30) 26 NOTES [pp. 108, 109]. endeavours to prove that their definition of 'the universe' (TO TTV) applie equally to 'the nothing' (TO JKTJ^S'V), but forgets that, even if they contem that the universve is no part, they say that it has parts, which the; do not predicate of the nothing. Even many of their physical obsei vations are not so preposterous as they are made to appear in refutation not always fair and ingenuous (1. c. cc. 35 50). P. 108. d T^v TT^WTTJV Z\r,v, Diog. Laert. VII. i. 76. P. 108. e Dioff Laert. VII. i. 68, 'the active principle' (JTO/OUV), that if Reason or God, exists in 'the passive principle' (Traaxov), that is, Mattel and 'being eternal and permeating all Matter, produces everything'; Uric 137, the world is God himself (avrov rs TOV &sov) . . . absorbing a substance in himself and then reproducing it from himself (avaX/a/ccov . . KOI ?raX/v e' eavTov yevvcov); ibid. 141, the world is perishable becaus its parts are perishable ; Plut. De Stoic. Repugn, c. 39, TOV A/ auscr^c av sl$ auTov SafetVTtt Karavakuav] ; Adv. Stoic, c. 30, TO TTOCV . . . y.'r t i elvcu [J.T,T otyujfov. Hence immortality and eternity are attribute to none of the numerous gods except to Zeus alone, who absorbs all th others (Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 31, elq ov iravras KaTonedJcritQwri TOV? a'XXous' for these will disappear in the fire, being fusible like wax or tin (TTJ/CTOL uiynep Krjpi'vovg 77 KctTTiTspivovg ovTa$): in this respect men differ from th gods in as much as men are mortal (^VTJTO/), and the gods not morte but perishable (^aproi). Comp. the fine passage in Virgil's Aenei describing the Stoic's 'anima mundi' (VI. 724 751): 'Principle coelur ac terras camposque liquentis . . . Spiritus intus alit, totamque infus per artus Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet. Inde hominur pecudumque genus' etc.; see also Georg. IV. 221 227, where the poe states that view, without adopting it, 'deum namque ire per omnes Tei rasque tractusque maris coelumque ^profundum . . . Scilicet haec rede deinde ac resoluta referri Omnia' etc.; and Lactant. Instit. I. 5. P. 108. f n / ocoTo? ^s6g; Diog. Laert. VII. i. 70, 139, 142; comj Cic. Acad. pr. II. 41, 126, Zenoni et reliquis fere Stoicis aether videtu summus deus, mente praeditus, qua omnia regantur. P. 108. 8" Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 48, TOV ^sov . . . <7<i/*a vospov KOI vovv s lik'fj 7TOIOVVTS/;. P. 108. h Comp. Senec. Ludus, c. 8, 'nee cor nee caput habet'; an< ibid, 'quomodo potest (Stoicus deus) rotundus esse'? P. 109. a Sen. Ad Helv. c. 8, 3, ille quisquis formator universi fur sive deus . . . potens omnium, sive . . . ratio . . . operum artifex, sive divinu spiritus . . . sive fatum et . . . causaruin series; comp. Nat. Quaest. II. 4 where the same subject is treated even more explicitly: to Jupiter ever name is suitable Ruler and Guardian of the universe, Soul and Spirit c the world, its Lord and Creator, Fate, Providence, Nature, World. Som of the definitions are very distinct and instructive. God is Fate becaus he is 'causa causarum'; he is Nature, because 'ex eo nata sunt omnia cujus spiritu vivimus'; the World, because 'ipse est hoc quod vides totuir NOTES [pp. 109, 110]. 27 partibus suis inditus, et se sustinens et sua'. See also De Ofcio, c. 4, 31, where the various problems are succinctly stated, 'unum sit hoc quod maria terrasque . . . complectitur, an multa ejusmodi corpora deus spar- serit, . . . deus desidens opus suum spectet an tractet; utrumne ex- trinsecus illi circumfusus sit, an toti inditus', etc.; Plut. De Placitis Philosoph. I. 7. P. 109. b M. Aur. II. 3, ra. ruv eu>v irpwoiat; fjayra- ra ny; rvffit; OVK avev (ftvffsux; y ffuy/cXcojew?, . . . irpo78Tt $3 xai TO avayKatov Ktxi ru oXw /COJJKW avp $sp ov, ou fjispoi; el VI. 44; VII. 75, an obscure passage; IX. 28; X. 6; XI. 18, si ft,?] arofios, (f>vyi$ TJ TO. oXa SioiKwaa; XII. 14, TJTO/ eifJt.apfji.hTri KUI aKapafiaroi; ra!;i$, yj irpwota /Xa//iO, 17 <f>vpfs.o<; comp. Epictet. Disp. I. 12; Plut. De Stoic. Kepugn. c. 34, TJ Koevij Kixt o Kon<><; rrj$ <j>v<jew$ Xoyo^ siii.apfj.3vr, KOU Trpovoia, KOI Zsvt; gyres; etc. P. 109. c M. Aurel. VI. 44, spot %e sari OKS^K; its pi TOW <7u^t</)//30V VII. 3, %pi) oJy iv TOVTOH; svfjievu/; JJLSV KOI [JLTJ Kara^pvarrofjisyov P. 110. *Doff. Laert. VII. i. 63, 84, 110, nyv ^vj^v elvai 156, 157; M. Aur. V. 13, /cara^^<rsra/ TTV {Jispvg spiv Kara /isra^cX^v si<; fJt-spoi; TI TOV KWfMv . . . KOI Tj$r] elq airsipov ; ibid. c. 23; comp. Cic. Tusc. I. 9, 19; De Fin. IV. 5, 12. Chrysippus, however, characterises the soul as a 'breath (nvsvpa) consisting of the lighter parts of nature' (Plut. De Stoic. Kepugn. c. 41; De Placit. Philos. IV. 37, mnpa ^spfji6v). On the sKirvpuris or 7re/?/oSo; of the Stoics comp. Origen, Contr. Cels. IV. 68, pp. 208, 209, ed. Spencer; Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 31 ; De Placit. Philos. IV. 7, r^v J layers pay i!>v%riv, oia sari nsp} TOV/; ao<f)ovg KOI psxpi r-fji; sKirvpujew/;; whereas the souls of the uneducated avaibsvTwv mingle with the earthly substances. P. 110. b Epict. Disp. III. 13, et$ ra </>/X Kai avyysvfj, sit; ra aroiysia. P. 110. c Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 36, Zrav olv sKKVpwpii; ysvyrai, pivov . . . roy A/a . . . ava%upe7v STT'I T^v Tr/jo'vo/av, elra O/JLOV ynoftffovf e'ff/ fJ.ia<; TTJ; rov al^tspo/; ovaiag $iars\s'tv a/JLtfrorspov/;. P. 110. 4>avTa/a and afo^yyti;, the former being defined as ev tivxy rovTe'ynv aXXo/coa/^, the latter as TO rs a(f> -riysfiioviK eici ra<; ala^ast; ^KOV; Dioff. Laert. VII. i. 36, 37, 49 54; comp. C. 67; Plut. Adv. Stoic. C. 47, fyavrayia yap ri; TJ svvoia eyri, (fravray/a Se rvnuyii; ev dv^y K. r. X.; and recollections are 'permanent and du- rable impressions' (//ov/'/^ou^ nal y^sriKa; rvTruysi;). P. 110. e Diog. Laert. VII. i. 37, 54, TOV o^ov Xoyov Kprrqpiov ano- XS/TTOVJ/V. P. 110. f Plut. De Placit. Philos. IV. 811, 'The Stoics contend that, when a man is born, the intellectual part of his soul is like a clean sheet of paper on which he has to write his thoughts' (e%si TO ^-/S^OV/ATOV fJLspoz Tf t $ \i>v^g y uynep fo.pTr\^ evgpyuv affoypa^njv, K. r. X.); 'the first mode of this writing down is through the senses' (c. 11). Comp. Epict. Enchir. c. 45, 'thus it will not happen to you that the inner (subjective) con- viction yon gain be anything else than the palpable (objective) or sensual 28 NOTES [pp. 110112]. perception' (XXcov /tsv (f>avTaaia$ KaTakyjrTiKas X/-t/3avs/v, aXkot; Ss auy- KixTaTi^tsa^ai) ; Cic. Acad. post. I. 11, 42, ex quo Zeno sensibus etiam fidem tribuebat, quod . . . comprehensio facta sensibus et vera esse illi et fidelis videbatur, . . . unde postea notiones rerum in animis im- primerentur etc. P. 110. S Diog. Laert. VII. i. 68, 70, 136, 142, the present world came into existence when its substance was, by the action of the air, changed from fire into moisture, after which, its denser parts coa- gulating, the earth was formed, while its thinner portions became air etc. P. 110. h Comp. M. Aur. II. 3, 9, 11, 16; IV. 40, 45; VI. 38; IX. 1, 9; XII. 26, etc. See Cic. Nat. Deor. II. 22, 57, 58, naturam ignem esse artificiosum ad gignendum progredientem via; III. 14, 35; Senec. De Prov. c. 5, 9, non potest artifex mutare materiam; hoc passa est; quaedam separari a quibusdam non possunt, cohaerent, in- dividua sunt etc.; Plut. De Stoic. Repugn. c. 41. P. 111. a Eccl. III. 18, 14; comp. I. 5, 6. P. 111. b Diog. Laert. VII. i. 66, 130; comp. VII. v. 4, 7; Cic, De Fin. III. 18, '60, 61; IV. 20, 56; Senec. De Provid. c. 6, 7 9, ante omnia cavi ne quis vos teneret invitos; patet exitus, . . . ideo ex omnibus rebus quas esse vobis necessarias volui, nihil feci fa- cilius quam mori; Phoen. 151, 152, Eripere vitam nemo non homini potest At nemo mortem; mille ad hanc aditus patent; Epist. 70, 15 18 hoc est unum quod de vita non possumus queri: neminem tenet, etc.: also Virg. Aen. VI. 126, 127, facilis descensus Averno; Noctes atqut dies patet atri janua Ditis. P. 112. a Talm. Avod. Zar. 18 a. Comp. Mos. Mendelssohn, Phaedon p. 177 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. II, ed. Leipz. 1843), 'you are sent hen to make yourselves more perfect by promoting truth; you may, there- fore, if it cannot be protected otherwise, promote it even at the prict of your lives. If tyranny threatens ruin to your country, if justice is ir danger of being suppressed . . . die, in order to preserve to mankind these precious means of felicity' etc. P. 112. b Farrar, Seekers after God, p. 49. On such and similar mis representations see Plut. Adv. Stoic, cc. 4, 8, 11; Cic. De Fin. 18, 60 61, saepe officium est sapientis desciscere a vita cum sit beatissimus, s id opportune facere possit. P. 112. c M, . Aur. X. 8, KUV ph sir avruv pavstv Svvy, fisvs, e'av %s afa&i ZTI sKitiitTsiz, . . . air&t ^app&v 8i$ ywv/av riva . . . TJ xai iravTonrayiv s& TQV j8/oy, pij opyi&fjisvoi;. P. 112. EvXoyo e'laycoy^ or simply e'ayy^; and in Latin exitus, or ex cessus e vita (Cic. De Fin. III. 18, 60, 61); while the act is expressed b? s^aysrj TOW C>jv eavrov, or merely edysiv eavrov (Plut. Adv. Stoic, cc. 11, 33) and in Latin abire or exire. Another and frequent paraphrase is 'the doo] is open,' or 'God has opened the door 5 ; comp. Epictet. Disp. III. 8, rq NOTES [pp. 112, 113]. 29 aot ijvot&v, Srav trot {iij iroiy (when life does not please you); ibid. c. 13, TO ava/fXTfT/KOV yriftaivst (viz. Grod), TTyv ^vpav r t vut;3 KO.} Xs'ys/ 001, 8p%w ; I. 24, 25; II. 1; Senec. De Provid. c. 6, 7, patet exitus; Epist. 26, 10, liberum ostium habes; 91, 15, placet, pare; non placet, quacumque vis exi. P. 112. e See Senec. De Prov. c. 6, 7, si pugnare non vultis, licet fugere. P. 113. a Sen. Epist. 24, 22 26: after quoting the saying of Epicurus, 'Ridiculum est currere ad mortem taedio vitae, cum genere vitae, ut currendum ad mortem esset, effeceris', he continues, 'Confirmabis animum vel ad mortis vel ad vitae patientiam . . . ne nimis amemus vitam et ne nimis oderimus, etiam cum ratio suadet finire; sed non temere nee cum procursu capiendus est impetus; vir fortis ac sapiens non fugere debet e vita sed exire', and much more to the same effect and with similar moderation. P. 113. b Epict. Disp. I. 9; III. 26; comp. M. Aurel. III. 5, where he admonishes himself to act like a man 'waiting for the signal that shall summon him from life; V. 33; Plato, Phaedo, cc. 5, 6; Shakesp. Hamlet, V. 2, 'the readiness is all' (Cymbeline, III. 4, 'against self- slaughter There is a prohibition so divine' etc.). Hindoo authorities prescribe : 'Let the hermit not long for death, let him not long for life, but let him await his appointed time, as a servant awaits the command of his master' or 'as a hired servant expects his wages' (Manu VI. 45 ; Mahdbhdrata VII. 9829). P. 113. c Senec. De Tranquill c. 10, 4, nihil tarn acerbum est in quo non aequus animus solatium inveniat; comp. Ovid, Ex Pont. IV. iv. 5, 6, Nil adeo fortuna gravis miserabile fecit, Ut minuant nulla gaudia parte malum. Comp. the speech of Friar Lawrence to Borneo, with the refrain, 'there art thou happy' (Shakesp. Rom. and Jul. III. iii. 137 140). P. 113. d Epict. Enchir. C. 18, o, TI yap av TOUTCOV caro^ai'vy, eV spot scfrtv do<f>s\T]'&rivai air ayrou; comp. Rom. VIH. 28, oToa/zsv $s Zn ro7$ aya- TTCOJ/V TOV ^teov Travra crvvapysl slg aya&ov. P. 113. e Hor. Od. II. i. 23, 24, 'Et cuncta terrarum subacta Praeter atrocem animum Catonis'; I. xii. 35, 36, 'Catonis Nobile letum'; Virg. Aen. VIII. 670, 'Secretosque pios, his dantem jura Catonem'; Cic. De Offic. I. 31, 112, 'Catoni cum incredibilem tribuisset natura gravitatem . . . moriundum potius quam tyranni vultus aspiciendus fuit'; Pro Muren. cc. 29, 31, 60, 64, 'finxit enim te ipsa natura ad honestatem, gravi- tatem ... ad omnes denique virtutes magnum hominem et excelsum', etc.; comp. Tusc. Disp. I. 30, 74, 'quum vero causam justam (for self- destruction) deus ipse dederit, ut tune Socrati, nunc Catoni' etc.; Lucan, Pharsal. II. 380 391, 'Hi mores, haec duri immota Catonis Secta fuit, . . . Nee sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo . . . Urbi pater, Urbique maritus; Justitiae cultor, rigidi servator honesti, In commune bonus'. Seneca is inexhaustible in his praises of Cato, whom he recommends as 30 NOTES [pp. 113117]. a 'custos' and 'paedagogus' (Epist. 11, 10; 25, 6), and whom he considers to have passed even beyond the Stoic ideal (Const. Sap. c. 7, 1; De Tranquill. c. 7, 5; esp. Epist. 67, 13; 104, 2933, etc.). 'Neque Cato post libertatem, nee libertas post Catonem', became a cur- rent saying. P. 114. a Comp. Senec. De Benef. II. 20, 2, with respect to Brutus, 'existimavit civitatem in priorem formam posse revocari amissis pristinis moribus, . . . ubi viderat tot millia hominum pugnantia, non an servirent sed utri'; and similarly of Cato in Epist. 14, 12, 13. P. 114. b Luc. Phars. I. 128. P. 114. c Tac. Ann. XIV. 57; XYI. 22. P. 114. d About Persius see -infra. As to Juvenal, it is enough to refer to the truly Stoic lines 356 366 of the tenth Satire; comp. also XIV. 308320. P. 114. e Hor. Od. II. iii. 18, see supra Notes p. 23 [P. 105 a ]. F. 114. f Wordsworth's Poems dedicated to National Independence, Part I, Sonnet XVI. P. 115. a Tschong-yong, ch. 10 (p. 72 of Plaenckner's Translation). P. 115. b See supra p. 37. P. 115. c Eccl. VIII. 17; comp. XL 5. P. 115. d Senec. Here. Fur. 463, 464, 'Quemcunque miserum videris, hominem scias', and, 'Quemcunque fortem videris, miserum negas'. Comp. Gie. Epist. ad Famil. V. xxi. 5, 'praeter culpam et peccatum . . . homini accidere nihil posse, quod sit horribile aut pertimescendum' ; Tusc. Disp. III. 16, 34, 'malum nullum esse nisi culpam, culpam autem nullam esse, quum id quod ab homine non potuerit praestari, evenerit'. P. 115. e So M. Aurel. II. 11. This cardinal question has of course much engaged the Stoics' attention, and it is elaborately and eloquently discussed by Seneca in his Treatise "De Providentia" (see espec. c. 5, e.g. 6, 7, scio omnia certa et in aeterum dicta lege decurrere . . . causa pendet ex causa . . . fortiter omne patiendum est, quia non ut putamus accidunt cuncta . . . grande solatium est cum universe rapi etc.); comp. also Pint. De Stoic. Eepugn. cc. 18, 35. P. 116. a Eccl. IV. 6; V. 9, 11. P. 116. b IV. 17; V. 1; XI. 1; comp. V. 5, 6. P. 116. c VH. 3; XII. 12, 13; comp. VII. 4, 8, 9. P. 117. a See M. Aur. V. 8; comp. Senec. Epist. 74, 20, nihil in- dignetur sibi accidere, sciatque ilia ipsa, quibus laedi videtur, ad con- servationem universi pertinere, et ex iis esse quae cursum mundi offi- ciumque consummant, 96, 1, solet fieri; hoc parum est, debuit fieri, decernuntur ista, non accidunt. P. 117. b Panini had before his eyes views like the following of Seneca: 'We are not at liberty to be free from trials, but our mind is at liberty to rise above them and to make them even a source of genuine joy' (Const. Sap. c. 19, 3); or, 'Good men suffer . . . but they suffer NOTES [pp. 117123]. 31 willingly; they are not drawn along by Fortune, but follow her with equal step' (De Provid. c. 5, 4; comp. Epist. 74, 20); or of Epictetus: 'Disease is an impediment to the body, but not to the will, unless the will itself chooses' (Enchir. c. 9) all which passages, however, refer to the power of the human will to resist the decrees of Fate (see supra Notes p. 16 [P. 96 e ]). P. 118. a This idea is no doubt implied in the comic poet's exaggerated taunt: 'You drink but water, And so must be a worthless citizen ('AXua/rfX^ si ry iro\et jr/vccv /?); For so you wrong the farmer and the merchant' etc. (Athen. IV. 55, p. 163). P. 118. b Pint. De Stoic. Kepugn. c. 5. P. 119. a Dioff. Laert. VI. i. 5, 12. P. 119. b Schiller, Freund und Feind, in the 'Votivtafeln'. P. 122. a Origen, In Joann. II. 10; Hieron. In Esaiam XI., 'Stoici nostro dogmati in plerisque concordant' ; comp. J. C. F. Meyer, Doctrina Stoicorum ethica cum Christiana comparatur, Getting. 1823, 28 sqq.; v. Baur, Seneca und Paulus, in 'Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftl. Theologie', I. Jena 1858, and 'Drei Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der alten Philosophie' ; etc. P. 122. b Hieron. De Script. Eccl. c. 12; Augustin, De Civit. Dei, VI. 10, 11; comp. Senec. Frgm. 41; Lactant. Instit. I. v. 28, 'et quam multa alia (Seneca) de Deo nostris similia locutus est'! Amadee Fleury, Saint-Paul et Seneque, Recherches sur le Paganisme, Paris 1853; Charles Aubertin, Seneque et Saint-Paul, Etude sur les rapports supposes entre le philosophe et 1'Apotre, Paris 1862. P. 122. c Comp. Tertull. De Anima, c. 20, 'saepe noster'; Apol. c. 12. P. 122. d So Brucker, Hist. Crit. phil. II. p. 532, 'multo iUustrior facta est secta stoica, ex quo subdolo conatu Christianorum vitulis arandi occasionem nacta est'; p. 561, 'surrepsisse formulas et systemati suo subdola imitatione adtemperasse'. P. 122. e Acts XVIII. 1217. At that time, A. D. 54, St. Paul had only written the two Epistles to the Thessalonians (see Conybeare and Howson, St. Paul, vol. I, ch. XII). P. 122. f Comp. Augustin, Epist. 153, 'Seneca, cujus etiam quaedam ad Paulum Apostolum leguntur epistolae'; see L. Ann. Senec. Opera, ed. Haase, III. 476481. P. 123. a Augustin, Civit. Dei, VI. 11, 'hie (Seneca) inter alias . . . superstitiones reprehendit etiam sacramenta Judaeorum, et maxime sab- bata . . . Cum interim usque eo sceleratissimae gentis consuetudo in- valuit' etc.; comp. Senec. Frgm. 41, 42. P. 123. b See Talm. Avod. Zar. 10; Sanhedr. 91 a; Midr. Rabb. Gen. 67, 3; 75, 3; Levit. 3, etc. Comp. Rappoport, Erech Millin, sub Antoninus, pp. 123 sqq.; Jost, Gesch. der Israeliten, IV. 97 sqq.; Cassel in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclop. IE. xxvii. pp. 16 20; Gratz, Gesch. IV. 542544, note 43; Frankel, Darke Mishnah, p. 192; A. Bodek, 32 NOTES [pp. 123, 124]. M. Aurel. Antonin. als Freund und Zeitgenosse des Rabbi Jehuda ha- Nasi, 1868; Hamburger, Eeal-Encycl. II. 63 65, etc. P. 123. c Comp. Hamburger 1. c. p. 64, 'In solchen Lehren hat sich der Bruch mit dem Heidenthum und seiner Lehre von Fatum voll- zogen und die Annahrung an das Judenthum war eine vollendete Thatsache'. P. 123. d Diog. Laert. VII. i. 26, 30, si &j irarpa Qoburoa; c. 27, 31; Athen. XIII. 15, p. 563, Zijvwva TOV 3>o/yj*a; Cic. De Finib. IV. 20, 56, Poenulus; Joseph. Vit. c. 2, yp&fjiriv . . . ry Qaptaai'wv a'tpsasi KaTatfoXou5re2v ? 77 Kapair\rifft6$ sari ry nap "EXXTjov Srw/'/cvy \iyofj.svy. The Stoic Antipater was a native of Tyre, Posidonius of Syria (comp. Heinze, Die Lehre vom Legos, p. 238). The inaccuracy and vagueness in the Eabbi's argumentation will be easily accounted for by his special bias. P. 123. e Epict. Disp. IV. 7, slra viro pavias fisv bvvarai rig OUTCO ;- ra&Tjvai npog ravra KCU vno f&ovf, eo; o/ FaX/X2b/. There is no reason to suspect the genuineness of this passage ; comp. Matt. XXVI. 69, KOI ov rjc&a psra 'ITJJOU TOV FaX/Xa/ou. P. 123. f See 8. Nili Tractatus et Epistolae, Bom. 1673; 'God' was always substituted for 'gods', 'Paul' for 'Socrates', etc. P. 124. a Other contemporary martyrs were the bishops Polycarp oi Smyrna and Pothinus of Lyons, the one in his eighty-sixth, the other in his ninetieth year. Comp. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. IV. 11, 12, 15; V. 1. 5, etc. P. 124. M. Aur. XI. 3, TO $s ero//4ov TOUTO fva TTO I^IK^I; Kpiusui; epxy- rat, ny Kara ibikyv TTapdra^iv, un; 01 XpiGTtavw, aXXa XeXoy/a/isvwg KCX. ut;, . . . arpaycfOMi; ('without tragic show'); comp. X. 8, e&i row /S/oi yiZyuvos, i. e. calmly. It is impossible to assign to the words Karc Kaparaijiv the favourable sense 'by mere direction of the ecclesiastica' authorities' (so Jablonski, De Miraculo Legionis Fulminatricis, in Opusc IV. pp. 20 22), as they are in antithesis not only to euro tducqs xpiyscc; but also to \e\oy tfffJLsvwi; K. r. X. P. 124. c So Mommsen, Eomische Geschichte, 5th ed. 1869, III. 445 554, 555 ('leere doch perfide Phrasenheuchelei', 'terminologische: Geplapper', 'hohle Begriffe', 'gross maulige und langweilige Pharisaer' 'Prinzipiennan'' etc.); expressing, in terms equally choice and dignified his no less bitter contempt for Cicero, the friend of the republic, an( for Persius, the youthful and severe Stoic. Similarly also Mommsen' follower, H. Schiller, in his 'Geschichte des Eomischen Kaiserreich unter Nero', Berlin 1872. That vocabulary of abuse has for the greates part been borrowed or imitated from Plutarch and Lucian; comp. fo instance, Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 20, 'what giddiness is this' ! '(rl<; o TX/yyo OVTO/;); Lucian, De Morte Peregr. cc. 3, 5, 'commonplace and trivic chatter about virtue' (TO, avvfay ravra KOI SK rpi&ov ryv apsr^v snifioov- ; 'noisy chatterers' (/Soovvr^ or KSK payers/;), etc. How different is th NOTES [p. 124]. 33 estimate of the Stoics formed by Gibbon and even by Merivale! As regards Cicero, it is sufficient to refer to the eulogy of Pliny, who quotes also the high praise bestowed upon him by his political enemy Caesar (Plin. Nat. Hist. VII. 30 or 31, 'quo te, M. Tulli, piaculo taceam, quove maxume excellentem insigni praedicem'? etc.). Persius needs no other apology than his second Satire (comp. vers. 71 75, 'Quin damus id Superis, de magna quod dare lance Non possit magni Messalae lippa propago: Compositum jus fasque animo, sanctosque recessus Mentis, et incoctum generosum pectus honesto'; again, III. 60, 66 73, 'Est aliquid quo tendis et in quo dirigis arcum ? . . Discite, o miseri, et causas cog- noscite rerum? Quid sumus et quidnam victuri gignimur' etc; and the pathetic and noble confessions of the fifth Satire addressed to his Stoic master Annaeus Cornutus, esp. vers. 19 7, 'Libert ate opus est' etc. On Seneca see supra Notes p. 22 [P. 102 C ]. Epictetus is by Gellius (Noct. Att. I. 2) called 'Stoicorum maximus', 'venerandus senex', etc. And M. Aurelius is by Niebuhr described as the most delightful character in history; comp. Eutrop. VIII. 12 14, 'quern mirari facilius quis quam laudare possit'; and so Suidas sub Ma/jKO?, concluding o^svo; Xoyov TOII; TOV a'sbpzz ccpsraT/; |/7oy^svoy. P. 124. d Tertull. Apolog. c. 5, 'si literae M. Aurelii gravissimi Im- peratoris requirantur, quibus illam Germanicam sitim Christianorum forte militum precationtbus impetrato imbri discussam contestatur'; and after Apollinaris and Tertullian, Euseb. Hist. Eccl. V. 5, T^V /' elyrjs TO napa- oov jrsjroir t K'j7av Xsyscova, oiKstav TW ysyovor/ irp^q TOV /3aavXe'eo si\rj(f)svai irpoer;yvpiav Ks/jayvo/3oXov Ty 'Pcc/ta/ccv s'fiwXi^7jav <j>uvy. Comp., however, JuL Capitolinus, M. Anton, philos. c. 24; Dion Cass. LXXI. 8 10: the former attributes the deliverance to the prayer of the Emperor (fulmen de caelo precibus suis contra hostium machinamentum extorsit suis pluvia impetrata, cum siti laborarent), the latter to the incantations of the Egyptian Anuphis (c. 8, 'Apvovtytv nva /-cay&v A/yuTrr/ov auvovra TW HnlapKu aXXoi/j ri rrjoa; Sa/j&cova? KOI TOV f Ep^v TOV cteptov ZTI /iX/7T pay- yetvsi'atg riy'tv sTTiKaU-aa&xi KO.} %1 alruv TOV ojtfipw trt&utmta&tu ; on the name Anuphis meaning 'benefactor' see Jablonski 1. c. pp. 29 33). The Christian colouring of the tradition is invalidated by the Antonine column (now in the Piazza Colonna at Kome), by the commemorative coins which represent Jupiter hurling his lightning on prostrate barbarians, and by pictures showing the Emperor in the attitude of prayer and the army collecting the falling rain in their helmets. Modifications in such tra- ditions are natural: the Antonine column exhibits no trace of lightning (not mentioned by Tertullian either), and on the silver coin Mercury (in harmony with the account of Dion Cassius) is pictured with a bowl in the one hand and his caduceus in the other, so that the honour of the rescue was not attributed to Jupiter Pluvius alone (comp. Jablonski 1. c. pp. 10, 13, 14, and in general pp. 337, and the works there quoted on pp. 4, 5). 34 NOTES [pp. 124, 125]. P. 124. e Comp. Dion Cass. LXXI. 9, s<f> o? Karair^aysvra iff^vpwt; rwg rs Xp/ar/avovs Kara. oy/ia rtprjaai, . . . \sysTai s K riva irsp] TOUTWV given rov MapKw. The letter is usually printed after Justin's Apology. P. 124. f Comp. Dion Cass. LV. 23, KOI TO SwSsVarov TO s TO Kspavvofopov, while Eusebius 1. c. renders fulminatrix by see Em. Forster, M. Aurel. Vita et Philosoph., Eastadii, 1869, p. 20. P. 124. % Scaliger, Animadverss. ad Euseb. Chronic., pp. 222, 223, and after him Salmasius and others. P. 124. h Justin was executed in Borne A. D. 166; the persecution in Asia Minor (Smyrna) took place in 167; the war against the Quadi in 174, and the persecution in Gaul (Lyons and Vienne) in 177; comp. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. V. 1. P. 125. a 'Si quis aliquid fecerit, quo leves hominum animi superstitione numinis terrentur, divus Marcus hujusmodi homines in insulam relegari rescripsit' (Digest, 48, 19, 30, from Modestius). Whether this rescript refers to the Christians exclusively, is, of course, uncertain. In general M. Aurelius did not favour innovations (comp. Medit. I. 16). P. 125. b Comp. his charges against Christianity collected from the Beply of Origen, in Theod. Keim, Celsus' Wahres Wort; alteste Streit- schrift antiker Weltanschauung gegen das Christenthum etc. Zurich 1873. P. 125. c Comp. Sueton. Claud, c. 25, Judaeos impulsore Chresto assiduo tumultuantes Boma expulit. P. 125. d Comp. Arnob. Adv. Nation. I. 13, 'Christianorum causa mala omnia dii inferunt', 24, 'Jacent antiquae derisui cerimoniae et sacrorum quondam veterrimi ritus religionum novarum superstitionibus occiderunt, et merito humanum genus tot miseriarum angustiis premitur', etc. P. 125. e Euseb. Hist. Eccl. V. 1 ; Augustin, Civ. Dei, II. 3, 'Pluvia dent, causa Christiani . . . clades quibus . . . genus humanum oportet affligi, causa accidere nominis Christiani'. Comp. Tertull. Apol. c. 2, 'Christianum hominem omnium scelerum reum, deorum, imperatorum, legum, morum, na- turae totius inimicum existimas'; Orig. Contr. Gels. V. 63, a'XXo* XXov ^/~ Sau^aXov rs Kai Gatftova /ca/cw^ ir\a6/ji.evQi K. r. X; Plin. Epist. X. 97, 'flagitis cohaerentia nomini'; 'nihil aliud inveni quam superstitionem pravam et immodicam'; 'superstitionis istius contagio'; Tacit. Ann. XV. 44, 'quo* per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat'; 'odio humani generic convicti sunt'; 'exitiabilis superstitio'; Sueton. Nero, c. 16, 'Christiani genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae'; also Lucian, De Mort( Peregrin, cc. 11 16: Christ is called a magician who introduced ne^ mysteries (c. 11), or 'the crucified sophist' (c. 13, avsa/coXoff/j/A/vov SKSIVO: <7o0/ffT^v). The opinions of heathen authors about the Jews see Comm. or Lev. II. pp. Ill 113; M. Joel, Die Angriffe des Heidenthums gegei Juden und Christen in den ersten Jahrhunderten der romischen Casaren 1879. NOTES [pp. 125127]. 35 P. 125. f Comp. J. H. Bryant, The mutual influence etc. London 1866; I. Dowrif, Du Stoicisme et du Christianisme consideres dans leurs rapports, leur difference et 1'influence qu'ils ont exercee sur les moem^ Paris 1863. P. 1 25. % In his speech to the Alexandrians, after the battle of Actium, Augustus, in stating his reasons for treating the town with clemency, mentions a regard for his philosopher Areus; and to him Livia, after the death of her sonDrusus, also turned for consolation (Dion Cass. LI. 16, "Apuw TOV jroX/TTfv, TTOU ^/Xoffo^oSvr/ Ta } OVVQVTI oi g^prjro; Senec. Ad Marc. c. 4, 2, 'consolatori se Areo, philosopho viri sui, praebuit, et multum earn rem profuisse sibi confessa est'). The Cynic Demetrius en- couraged Thrasea while suffering a violent death; another philosopher preached fortitude to Julius Canus. Comp. Br. Bauer, Christus und die Caesaren, pp. 22, 23. P. 126. a See Lucian, De Morte Peregrini, cc. 11 13, 15, 23, 33, 36, 39, 40; comp. Gellius, Noct. Att. VIII. 3; XII, 11, where Grellius calls Peregrinus 'virum gravem atque constantem', whom he often heard in Athens 'multa dicere utiliter et honeste', thus giving a very different idea of his character than Lucian's parody; Tertull. De Pallio; Keim, Celsus' Wahres Wort, pp. 143151; Zeller, Vortrageund Abhandlungen, II. 173 188; J. Bernays, Lucian und die Kyniker, mit einer Ueber- setzung der Schrift Lucian's tiber das Lebensende des Peregrinus, 1879. P. 126. b See Comm. on Levit. II. pp. 375377. It must, however, be admitted that the N. T. allows matrimony (monogamy) even to spi- ritual teachers (1 Cor. IX. 5; 1 Tim. II. 11, 12; IV. 3; Tit. I. 6), nay that Paul's much quoted recommendations of celibacy (in 1 Cor. VII.) may, at least partially, have been prompted by the difficulties of the times, which fell heaviest on the married (comp. ibid. ver. 26, / ryv sviyrw- aav avay/o;v). Nor was the renunciation of the world originally in the Hebrew character, although a beginning was made in the institution of Nazarites (Num. VI. 1 21) as illustrated by the examples of Samson and the Bechabites (Judg. XIII. 27. 1214; Jerem. XXXV. 110), and of an hereditary priesthood without landed or other independent property. P. 127. a See Bible Stud. II. pp. 242247. P. 127. b Zeno and Cleanthes declined to become citizens of Athens, in order, as they said, "not to deny their proper country" (Plut. De Stoic. Bepugn. c. 4); comp. Sen. De Moribus, 43, 'patria est ubicunque bene est; illud enim per quod bene est non in loco sed in homine est'; etc. P. 127. c See Bible Stud. II. pp. 6369. P. 127. d Ibid. p. 108. P. 127. e See Bruno Bauer, 1. c. p. 274. P. 127. f See Bible Studies, 1. c. note f . 36 NOTES [pp. 127, 128]. P. 127. & We transcribe the following passages with sincere pleasure: 'The redeemed spirits of those great martyrs Polycarp and Justin would have been the first to welcome this holiest of the heathen M. Aurelius into the presence of a Saviour whose Church he persecuted, but to whose indwelling Spirit his virtues were due' (Farrar, 1. c. p. 300). 'A soul more fitted by virtue and chastity and self-denial to enter into the eternal peace (than that of M. Aur.), never passed into the presence of its heavenly Father' (id. p. 302). Comp. also pp. 321, 322, speaking of the heathen: 'God was their God as well as ours . . . His spirit was with them, dwelling in them . . .And more than all, our Saviour was their Saviour too; . . . through his righteousness their poor merits were accepted, their inward sicknesses were healed'. P. 128. a Talm. Avod. Zar. 10 b ; Midr. Eabb. Levit. 3, 3, DUOIB^ j^D EW3 ND; see supra Notes p. 31 [P. 123 b ]. P. 128. b Matt. XV. 2226; Mark VII. 26, 27. P. 128. c Matt. X. 5, 6; XV. 24; comp. John IV. 22; Acts III. 25 26; XIII. 46. With these clear utterances it is difficult to reconcil< passages like John IV. 4 10, X. 16 ('there shall be one fold and om shepherd'); Matt. VIII. 11; XXIV. 14 ('the gospel shall be preached . . unto all nations'); XXVI. 13; XXVIII. 19; Mark XVI. 15 ('preacl the gospel to every creature'); also Matt. XXI. 43. To regard thos utterances as 'temporary exceptions' and to trace them to 'the particula rism of the first three gospels' (De Wette, Bibl. Dogm. 250), seems ; weak and doubtful expedient. P. 128. d Acts XV. 16, 17; comp. Amos IX. 11,, 12. The words c Amos are in Acts quoted after the Septuagint, Zicwc, av 'sKfy-nrjywjiv < KaTockotTTot TU>V av^ocofTttv TOV Kvptw, reading DIN rP"}Nt^ 'IKH'?.' 1^? niJTVIN; whereas the Masoretic text has, more suitably to the context c the passage, D11N rYHNtf TIN IBh^ ]ytb. P. 128. e Matt. V. 18. See Comm. on Levit. pp. 113121. P. 128. ^ In Tarsus were born the Stoics Chrysippus, Antipater, th younger Zeno, Athenodorus, Archidemus; Cleanthes was a native c Assus in Asia Minor. P. 128. & Comp. Acts XVII. 28: the words Tou yap KOU ysvog sip. (effftev), are indeed exactly found so in the Phaenomena. of Arati (ver. 5), and the preceding words sv avrw yap %u>pev KBI /c/vou/ie^a < effpev, correspond, in their general tenour, with the preceding words i the same poem, navTy %e A/o? Ksxpyjfts'&a KO.VTSC, (ver. 4; comp. Hor, Od. III. 48, 'Travrss $s ^tsoov xT/oy<7 av^owTro/); but in the famous hym of the Stoic Cleanthes also the identical idea is embodied in an ii vocation, ' ao-j yap yivo<; eapsv (Stob. Eel. phys. I. 2, p. 8 ed. Meinekc see Virg. Aen. VI. 728, Inde hominum pecudumque genus etc.); al. 1 Corinth. XV. 33, the trimeter &\*ipwen 77^77 xP r i a ^ o^t/X/a/ KUKKI (a cording to Jerome taken from Menander, according to modern critics - Grotius, Meineke and others from that poet's 'Thais)'; Tit. I. 12, i: NOTES [pp. 128132]. 37 1 Tim. II. 11, 12 (comp. Soph. Ajax 293, Yvvai, yuv/|} Koajuov 17 a/y^ Menand. ap. Stob. Floril. HE. p. 51, ed. Meineke, Ta Isvrsp alii rr t v yyvaZica $st Xs'yv, T^v S^ys/zov/av TWV oXwv TOV a'tip s^stv). P. 128. h Gal. HI. 28; Eph. II. 14; IV. 6, 'One God and Father of all' etc., 25; comp. Bom. in. 29, 30; IX. 23 sqq.; XV. 8, 9; 1 Cor. XII. 13; Col. III. 11; 1 Tim. II. 4; VI. 2; Tit. II. 11; in. 4; 1 Pet. III. 7. See Bible Studies, II. p. 94. P. 128. i Acts XIII. 46, 47 (comp. Isai. XLH. 6; XLIX. 6); Bom. XV. 8, 9. P. 129. a Comp. M. Aurel. IV. 4, oisv yap IK row fjuj$evo<; ep^srai, usirsp prfi e!$ TO oi/c ov fatipjprmtl Pers. Sat. III. 84, 'De nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti'; like Anaxagoras, Epicurus (see infra, ch. V), and others; comp. Philo, De Incorruptib. Mundi, c. 2, etc. P. 129. b Col. II. 8, fiks-KiTa py TH; ssrui fyta 6 auXaywywy S/ rij$ <f>t\<37Q<f>ia<; Kat wrji; anarq/; K. r. X.; 1 Cor. III. 10, 11, ^w'X/ov yap aXXov o'^s/^ Swvara/ ^rsivai ifapa rov Ksiftsvov, 5$ sariv Xptyrog. P. 129. c Compare, for instance, the accounts of the death of martyrs in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History (V. 1) with the accounts of the death of a Cato, Seneca or Thrasea. See Senec. Ad Marc. c. 19, 'Keep in mind, that the departed suffer no ill; that all that makes the lower world terrible to us, is a fable; there are no rivers of fire; these are the playful fictions of poets who excite us with vain fears'; Epist. 24, 18, 'no one is so puerile as to dread Cerberus and the darkness of Hades', etc. This is the view of Seneca the Stoic, as distinct from the popular be- lief or the empty "publica persuasio" (Epist. 117, 6). Still more decided is Epictetus (Disp. III. 13): 'No Hades, no Acheron, no Cocytus' etc.; or (c. 24): 'Shall I no longer exist? You will not exist, but you will be something else of which the world has need'. Though, therefore, Zeno may have admitted abodes like Paradise and Hell (Lactant. Instit. VIE. 7; see supra Notes p. 18), his opinions on these points were by later Stoics either abandoned or greatly modified; it seems certainly to have been found impossible entirely to exclude the theories of Plato (see Senec. Ad Marc. c. 25, 1, supra 1. c.), and Socrates ever remained the highest model both of the Cynics and the Stoics. How little con- genial the Christian dogmas must have been to the Stoic philosophers, has been briefly and strongly stated by Zeller (Vortrage, I. 106). P. 129. ll yilegaseumut paganum, scripsit Christiane; siut Christianum, paganice. P. 130. a Considering the differences pointed out, we would not go so far as to characterise Christianity as 'a metamorphosed Stoicism', or as 'Stoicism appearing in a Jewish transformation' (Bruno Bauer 1. c. pp. 13, 15). P. 130. b Comp. Neander, Vorlesungen iiber Geschichte der christlichen Ethik, herausgegeben von Erdmann, pp. 29, 30. P. 131. a See Chapter IX. P. 132. a Neander 1. c. p. 32. 38 NOTES [pp. 132139]. P. 132. b This designation of the Koran, crS-^ c.jUXJl, i. e. the clear or perspicuous book, is used as a formula of solemn protestation (Kor. Sur. XLIII. 1). P. 134. a Kom. II. 7, 15; III. 28; IX. 13, 32; XIII. 3; Gal. H. 16; III. 2; Eph. II. 10; Phil. I. 6, etc. Comp. Neander 1. c. p. 48, 'Wir fmden hierin (in Chrysippus' saying, Plut. De Stoic Repugn. c. 11), einen Anklang an die Worte Pauli liber den vo//o? und sein Verhaltniss zur Siinde und zur sittlichen Entwickelung' etc. P. 134. b Comp. Neander 1. c. pp. 56, 57. P. 135. a Cic. Tusc. Disp. I. 11, 24, adsensio omnis ilia elabitur. Cicero himself says, we should not be too confident, as 'there is in the matter some obscurity' (in his est enim aliqua obscuritas). P. 135. b 2 Chr. XVI. 12, D'NEHS ^ HIH^HN #1^"**^ l^ljrtM] P. 135. c James V. 14 16. P. 135. d Matt. VI. 11, 2634; Eccl. XL 6. And similarly Paul: comp. 2 Thess. III. 10 12, 'if any would not work, neither should IK eat' etc.; 1 Thess. IV. 11; Eph. IV. 28. P. 137. a Senec. Vit. Beat. c. 18, 1 (cum vitiis convicium facio, in primis meis facio); Epist. 75, 16; De Ira I. 14 (nemo invenietur qu: se possit absolvere, et innocentem quisque se dicit respiciens testem, nor conscientiam) ; II. 28; etc. Comp. 1 Ki. VIII. 46; Ps. CXLIII. 2 Prov. XX. 9; Job IV. 1719; XV. 1416; Eccl. VII. 20,- 2 Chr. VI 36; Eom. III. 9, 23; 1 John I. 8, etc.; see Comm. on Levit. I. 250 251. P. 137. b Comp. Beat, Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, pp. 398409 esp. pp. 407, 408: the Preface was written in 1412 A. D. P. 137. c Neander 1. c. pp. 44, 45 'Dieses allein ist die wahre s'ova/a avTonpaylat;, in welcher der Mensch nur, indem er dem Antriebe de; gottlichen Willens folgt, nach seinem eigenen Willen sich bestimmt . . So wird dann durch diese wahre Freiheit eben die Unabhangigkei selbst, aus welcher der Mensch nicht heraus kann, eine gewollte, ein< freie, Stoff fur die Bethatigung der sittlichen Freiheit'. P. 138. a Schiiler in Goethe's Faust, p. 79, ed. Cotta, 1840. B. 138. b Comp. Neander 1. c. pp. 54, 55. P. 138. c Philipp. I. 2224; comp. 2 Cor. V. 8, ^appwfuv Si *a e^oK-ou/tsv jttaXXov iK^rj/ji^ffai SK TOW acojwaro^ Ktxt fafojjttfmu irpii; rov Kvptw 2 Tim. IV. 6; see also Hebr. VII. 24, roiketmwptx; e'yw av^awo^, ri<; p pvasTcti SK TOV awpaTOi; TOW &yToy rourow; Comp. De Wette, Lehrbucl der christl. Sittenlehre, 262264; Marheineke, System der theolog Moral, pp. 345355. P. 139. a Senec. De Prov. c. 6, 3, quare viri boni quaedam dur patiantur? ut alios pati doceant; nati sunt in examplar. P. 139. b Lucian, De Morte Peregrini, c. 33. ufyekrjaai /SoyXojaa/ roi %sli;otq avrtfi; K. r. X. NOTES [pp. 189143]. 39 P. 139. c Comp. Epictet. Enchir c. 22, ruv Se /8Xiwrv aot X OV > "5 ^ ff * T0 '*' * T*ry/<t/vo */f rainy v T^V ^wpav; see also supra p. 84. P. 139. d EccL IV. 13; IX. 4, 5; X. 4, 20. P. 139. e Comp. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. VIII. 12; ffieron. Adv. Jovin. I. 41 ; etc. 'Baptism of fire', that is, self-destruction in the flames, cha- racterises the mystic and fanatical sect of the Greek (Russian) Church known as the 'Morelshikis', i. e. 'those who sacrifice themselves wholly' (so called in contradistinction to the 'Skopzi' or 'those who sacrifice themselves partially', by emasculation). P. 139. * Just. Mart. Apol. II. 4; Lactant. Instit. III. 18, 'quo niliil sceleratius fieri potest'; Augustin, Civ. Dei, I. 17 27. Comp. De Wette, Lehrb. der christl. Sittenlehre, 263. P. 140. a 1 Sam. XXXI. 4, 5; comp. 2 Sam. I. 9, 10. P. 140. b See supra p. 92. P. 141. a Plat. Theaet. c. 25, p. 176 A, ovV airo\sa^at ra KUKO. %wa- TOV . . . oyr ev ^soii; aura ftpvy'&at K. r. X. P. 141. Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 13, 17 Ss KUKIO, irptg ra XO/TTCC uvfjarrufjiarei e%st Zpov, yi'varai fjisv yap Kai alrr, irwt; Kara T&V rr,i; <f>v<73wg Xoyov nai . . . WK a^pr/VTai; ylverai irpas ra &X* ovSe yap av Taya^ov r t v; comp. De Stoic. Kepugn. c. 35, also cc. 36, 37; Sext. Empir. Pyrrhon. Hypot. HI. 24, 218, the Stoics say, 'God is a breath pervading also what is mis- shaped'. P. 141. c Isai. XLV. 7; comp. Am. IH. 6, 'Shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord has not done it'? P. 141. d Comp. M.Aur. VI. 1, O&STI KaKux; xoiei, wit pka-rtTSTai rt; II. 11, si ri xaK'Sj rp K. r. X.; VIII. 55, ysviKu; fjisv r t KO.KIO. ovSsv fi\anTsi TOV Kfopw; X. 6; XII. 5. P. 142. a Comp. Plut. Adv. Stoic, cc. 1419, where the chief ob- jections against the desirability of moral evil in the world are well stated; comp. also c. 33, 'What can be more contrary to the notions of common sense than to suppose that, under the best possible go- vernment of Zeus (TOW A/os w? svi apiara S/O/KOUVTOS), we should be as wretched as possible'? P. 142. b Or in Hegel's words, 'Was wirklich ist, 1st verniinftig'. P. 143. a Neander 1. c. p. 39, 'ein Hochmuthsschwindel, in welchem sogar behauptet wird, dass selbst Zeus vor dem Guten nichts voraus habe'. P. 143. b Plut. De Stoic. Repugn, c. 13? ovru ro7$ y^o?> ?/ ravra npwflKst KUT ov^ev irpoextpsvotg iffo TOW A/o^; c. 33, 'Zeus and the wise man mutually benefit each other, and he who does not yield to the gods in virtue, is not inferior to them in happiness' etc.; where it is, however, added: 'This is very different from the vain pride of Salmoneus, who called himself Zeus simply because he willed to be like Zeus' (Apollod. I. 9, 7, Ifipiyriis %i wv xat rw Ait' ei-ivov&ai ^s'Xccv . . . ^>.^y^v savrw 40 NOTES [p. 143]. eJvai A/a K. r. X.; Senec. Epist. 48, 11, 'philosophy promises me to make me equal to God; to this I have been summoned; for this I come; ... so we rise to the stars' (sic itur ad astra); Provid. c. 1, 5, 'Between good men and the gods there exists a friendship through the connecting bond of virtue; a friendship I say? nay a relationship and similarity, since the good man differs from God only in respect of time' (quoniam quidem bonus tempore tantum a deo differt); Epist. 41, 4, the sage 'looks upon men from a higher place, from an equal one upon the gods' (ex aequo deos); Epictet. Disp. II. 19, the Stoic 'desires to become a god instead of a man' (^sw el; av^coffou 7rAu/zoDvra ysvsff^ai). P. 143. c Comp. Senec. Epist. 11, 8, 'We should select some good man and place him always before our eyes, that we may live as if he always sees us, and act as if he observes all we do; ... we need a guardian and a guide, . . . someone whom we revere and through whose influence even our secret actions are sanctified . . . Select there- fore Cato' etc.; Epist. 25, 5, 6; Epictet. Enchir. c. 33, 1, 'Be- present to yourself a model and example (TVXOV), whom you follow in your life, whether you are alone or among others' (comp. ibid. 12); Disp. II. 18, etc. Perhaps analogous to this advice is the injunction of Seneca: 'Put on the mind of some great man' (indue magni viri animum; Epist. 67, 17) which bears a remarkable affinity to the admonition of Paul 'Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ' (sv^yaao-^s TOV Kupiov 'lr,vwv X/J/JTOV, Bom. XIII. 14; comp. Gal. III. 27, X^JTOV avMaaa^a; also Ephes. IV. 24; Col. III. 10). P. 143. d Christian teachers admit at least that Christ was "not free from all inward temptation or from all inward allurement to sin", though he never succumbed but remained spotless (comp. Matt. IV. 1 11; Mark I. 13; Luke IV. 113; Hebr. IV. 15, 'we have not an High- priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin' ; etc.) ; so that he was indeed exempt from sin, but not from hereditary sin (De Wette, Lehrb. der christl. Sittenlehre, 49, 50). See infra, the conclusion of this Chapter. P. 143. e See supra p. 103. P. 143. f See infra Chapter V. Seneca, in his description of the vir bonus, attributes to him 'faciem altiorem quam cerni inter humana con- sue vit', and thinks that whoever sees him, must, 'velut numinis occursu obstupefactus', feel prompted silently to pray to him (see supra p. 1 03) ; comp. also Senec. Epist. 41, 4, 5, 'non subibit te ejus veneratio?. .. Vis istuc divina descendit' etc.; after which Seneca introduces this fine simile of the sun and the good man: 'As the rays of the sun touch the earth, but remain in the heights from whence they are emitted; so a great and holy mind, sent down to us that we may become more closely acquainted with the divine, holds intercourse with us, but clings to its origin' (sed haeret origini suae). Compare Goldsmith's lines: NOTES [pp. 144147]. 41 'To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. As some tall cliff etc. P. 144. a 'Der Reflex, welchen die im Schimmer ihres Lichts sich spiegelnde menschliche Vernunft iiber das Menschliche hinausfallen lasst'. P. 144. b Comp. Xenoph. Apol. 15, ips Sa su psv WK t*Ka<?v ('AffoXXwv), av^acoTTwv Ss jroXXai irpogxpnav Inspfyspsn. P. 145. a See F. C. Baur, Das Christliche des Platonismus, pp. 147 154, 'In paganism the divine appertains merely to subjective conception, and thus has always the human as its foundation, . . . the reality of the divine is only imagined, figurative, and subjective' (die Eealitat des Gottlichen ist eine bloss eingebildete, bildliche, subjective). P. 145. b The whole passage in Dante (Purgatorio, III. 34 37) runs thus : 'Matto e chi spera che nostra ragione Possa trascorrer la infinita via, Che tiene una sustanzia in tre persone' 'Foolish is he who hopes that our reason can penetrate the infinite mystery which holds one substance in three persons : be satisfied, human race, with the quid 1 that is, with the demonstration a posteriori, since the proof of propter quod or a priori is impossible to man. P. 146. a Luther's Confession of Faith (1829), 'Christus Sohn Maria geboren, in aller Weise und Gestalt ein rechter Mensch, wie ich selbst bin und alle andere'; comp. Graul, Die Unterscheidungslehren der ver- schiedenen christlichen Bekenntnisse, p. 14. P. 146. b 'The Son . . . begotten from everlasting of the Father . . . took Man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance' ; comp. also Art. XV, 'Christ in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in all things, sin only excepted'. P. 146. c The irspixoopyffi!;. Comp. De Wette, Dogmatik der pro- testantischen Kirche, 64% 64 b . P. 146. d Philipp. II. 58 (see on this passage Br. Bauer 1. c. p. 373); comp. John V. 18; X. 33; XIV. 9; XVII. 5; Col. I. 15; Hebr. I. 3, etc. P. 146. e M. Aur. XII. 27, o yap VTTQ arvfylx TU</>O TU</>6/xavo, iravrwv XaXcTTwraTo?; exhorting the philosopher to show himself 'just, prudent, and godfearing, in simplicity' (</>cXw). P. 147. a M, '. Aur. I. 14, tfta^rauiav Xa/Jsiv itoktrttai; /Vovoftou Kara, /fforijra KCLI tarflopiay S/cu/cov/zsyTjij KOI J3a?i\siai; TtfjiwyTji; iravrcav /iaX/ora trft e\iv- ^spt'av TWV apwiJisvuv; Capitolinus, M. Antonin. Philos. c. 12, cum populo autem non aliter egit quam est actum sub civitate libera; Eutrop. VIII. 11, hie cum omnibus Eomae aequo jure egit, ad nullam insolentiam elatus imperil fastigio; Suidas sub Ma/j/co^, Tov %s yoSv /S/wr>jy /3/ov sv injyopiy roti; 7roXXo?5 'Pw/,ia/o/$ e{3i'w K. r. X. ; Herodian, I. 2, 3 5, naps'tys %s KO.} roTg apyQfj.svQn; Jawrov eirtstK-f} KOU fAirpiw /3a/X/ K. r. X. P. 147. b M. Aur. .IX. 29, prfis TTJV nXarwvo? TroX/re/av eKirt& . . . yap ayrwv TI; fjLSTafiaXkst ; K. r. X.; comp. VIII. 4, or/ oiSev alra. ffonjffoyav, KUV ay 42 NOTES [pp. 147151]. P. 147. c Cornp. Winckler, Der Stoicismus eine Wurzel des Christen- thums, pp. 5860. P. 148. a M. Aur. V. 33, TT/OT/; Se KOI <x$w$ KI HK-TJ Kae a\r/^,sia '11,00; "OXv/xTTov <X7TO x^ v ? slpvolsl-fj? (Hesiod, Works, ver. 180); comp. IV. 32; V. 10; VII. 1; Plut. Adv. Stoic, cc. 14, 19, 33. P. 148. b Eurip. Here. Fur. Ill, 112, sxsex juovov KOU ^->;/za WKTspujriv 'Evvv^ccv civsipwv. P. 148. c Senec. Epist. 75, 15, adspice quam nullura sit nefas sine exemplo etc.; Ep. 14, 4, 5, that long catalogue of cruelties, 'ferrum circa se et ignes habet et catenas et turbam ferarum, . . . carcerem et cruces et eculeos et uncum et adactum per medium hominem ... stipitem' etc. See the spirited sketch of the 'State of Roman Society' in Farrar's Seekers after God, pp. 36 53. P. 148. d 'Avs'xou Ktzi anexov; Epictet. in Gellius, Noct. Att. XV.II 19; Lat. 'Sustine et abstine'. P. 149. a Epictet. Disp. III. 24, XX' tyikei, KUII;; wg TOV A<o$ S/*ovov e$s<, afJLa fjisv /o^Ojtcsvog, apex. S' TW ^ew InQTSTaypevQi;; comp. 1 Cor. XV. 10, mpieeoTepov avruv Travrcov sKOTTiaact, OVK eyw 5, XXa r t fo-pi^ TOU ^eoy avv spot ; etc. P. 150. a Comp. De Wette, Lehrb. der Christl. Sittenlehi-e, 56, im Christenthum lasst sich ein Umcandelbares und stets Oleiches . . . und ein Bewegliches und Mannigfaltiges . . . unterscheiden', etc. Zeller (Vor- trage und Abhandlungen, II. 70 72), though acknowledging no dogma, no worship, no Scriptures, no mission of Christ, nor even a personal God, thinks he may still call himself a Christian, simply because his 'religious life is borne by an historical current which has continued uninter- ruptedly from the beginnings of Christianity to the present time'. But a 'religion' bereft of all those elements is. no development of primitive Christianity, but a perfect transformation. Braasch, a dignitary of the Protestant Church in Jena, declines dogmas that are 'frozen up' and accepts only such which, by metamorphoses organically renewed, preserve their true nature. He distinguishes in each dogma three elements an anthropological, an historical, and a philosophical; and attaches im- portance to the first only, while he declares the other two as indifferent; yet these two alone are distinctively Christian. For instance, in the dogma of hereditary sin, he regards the 'anthropological' experience of man's innate perversity as exclusively essential ; whereas he allows every possible latitude with respect to Adam's disobedience in Paradise and the hereditary effects of his Fall. Yet this is still called by him Christianity and supposed to admit of an ecclesiastical community (comp. A. H. Braasch, 1st ein Zusammenwirken inmrhalb unserer evangelisch-protestantischen Kirche moglich? pp. 12, 13, 1820). P. 150. b Schiller, Die Braut von Messina; V, p. 467, ed. 1847. P. 151. a Neander 1. c. p. 41, 'Das Paradoxe ist das Merkmal des Gottlichen'; 'Eine Eeligion gottlicher Offenbarung muss Paradoxien haben'. NOTES [pp. 152, 153]. 43 P. 152. a Senec. Epist. 68, 6, 9, 'de te apud te male existima; nihil damnavi nisi me; . . . non medicus sed aeger hie habitat'; for, he says, all men are in the same hospital (valetudinario). See supra pp. 136, 137. P. 152. b Epict. Disp. II. 11, avvtiSyyt; rr^ alrw ao^sveiai; K. r. X. P. 152. c Id. Enchir. c. 48. 3, u>$ ex^oov savriv irapafyvkayati KOU sjr/jSoyXov; comp. Disp. II. 1, 'For the purification of the soul and for enabling man to use its powers, he must root out of himself pride (o/V/-) and distrust'; III. 24; IV. 8; also the fine self-exhortation in Enchir. C. 51, ei$ ?ro7ov art xp&vov avaj2ak\f! TO TWV /SsXr/Vrccv a&ovv jjaurov K. T. X.). No less humane than philosophical is his remark in reference to honours obtained by others, when we have obtained none: 'If those honours are a good, you must rejoice that your fellow-man has won them; but if they are no good, you should not complain that they did not fall to your share' (Enchir. c. 25, 1, %aipsiv as $s7, or/ Irujpv avruv eWvos K. T. X.). P. 152. d M, '. Aur. X. 1, 8; comp. V. 10, iraaa 77 r^eripo. jyy*ar<W/; fjLera-rtrKTr,, TTOV yap 6 a^arairruT^t;- I. 17, anoXsmsy^ai %s en Toy-row napa TTJV sp^v airiav K. T. X.; etc. P. 152. e Epict. Enchir. C. 13, KV So'>7? rig eivai run, comp. ibid. C. 22, ay $s typvv {JLSV /JLTJ o^y;; c. 48, 2. P. 152. f Epict. Enchir. c. 11, fjnjbajroTe girt nrfawq stiry ayTo, XX' Zrt 'ATrs^cc^a. P. 152. M. Aur. X. 14, X/ys/ & TOWTO oy *ttr&jMtMft9/cmft aXXa rrs&apx&v ft/fan* Koil syvowv ayT^. P. 153. a See supra pp. 115, 116. P. 153. b M. Aurel. VII. 36, RaetktKW, sv /^sv irparTsiv, KCXK&S $s U James II. 8. P. 153. c M. Aur. VII. 22, /^/ov a&puirov, TO (f)t\s~v KOU P. 153. VI. 6, aptsroi; T^OOTTO^ Toy ap.vvea'&at TO py s P. 153. c XI. 18, en TO svpavsi; aviKTjTov K. T. X. 'Can all antiquity', observes Farrar (1. c. p. 281), 'show anything more close to the spirit of Christian teaching than these nine rules'? See M. Aur. VII. 22, 26; VIII. 29; IX. 20, Toy aXXoy afjLapT^fiaTa eicst $s7 K aTaktmtv ; Capitolin. Vit. M. Aur. Philos. c. 24, aequitatem autem etiam circa captos custo- divit. Comp. Ps. VII. 5; Prov. XX. 22; XXIV. 17, 29; XXV. 21; Job XXXI. 29, 30; Matt. V. 3941, 44; Rom. XII. 17; 1 Thess. V. 15; 1 Pet. HI. 9, etc. P. 153. f Senec. De Const. Sap. c. 14. P. 153. & Comp. Bdhtlingk, Indische Spriiche, p. 111. Similar sen- timents are not rare in Indian writings; e. g. 'What virtue is there in the goodness of the man who is good to his benefactors? he only who is good to those who do him wrong, is called good by the virtuous' ; or, 'Let a man conquer anger with calmness . . . and falsehood with truth'; or, 'Let a man endure reviling with patience; . . . when he is angrily addressed, let him speak kindly, benevolently'; or, 'Hospitality should be 44 NOTES [pp. 154 156]. shown even to an enemy when he comes to your house : a tree does not withdraw its shade even from him who comes to cut it down' (comp. J. Muir, Relig. and Moral Sentiments from Indian writers, pp. 24, 25). P. 154. a Sutra of the Forty-two Sections, translated by S. Beat, in Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, p. 193; Spence Hardy, Legends and Theories of Buddhists, pp. xl, xli, 212; Vassilief, Le Bouddisme, traduit par La Comme, p. 83, One of the oldest of Buddhistic doctrines is: 'Quatre at- tributs principaux distinguent le disciple de Boudda: il n'outrage pas celui qui 1'outrage, il ne repond pas . . . par 1'accusation a 1'ac- cusation' etc. P. 154. b Comp. Spence Hardy 1. c. pp. 212 214. P. 154. c Epict. Disp. I. 19, where, however, the point is so put, that rational beings cannot promote their own true interests without aiding those of the whole (v [JLTJ slq TO KO/VGV co^s'X/^cov y). P. 154. d Plut. Legg. V. 4, p. 731 E; comp. Clc. De Fin. V. 9. A maxim of Publius Syrus is : 'Malus est vocandus qui sua causa est bonus' (Sentent. 391). P. 155. a Epict. Disp. I. 13, OVK avsfy rov a%s\<J)ov rov yavrov, og s%et T&V A/a ff^oyovov K. T. X. ; Enchir. c. 27, yn/^yTjao Zri ov% o \oi%op&v y TVKTUV vfipfai K. r. X. ; c. 42. See Bible Studies, II. p. 320, note b. P. 155. b Thus says Pliny (Nat. Hist. VII. 19 or 18), with an almost in- credible misconception: 'Exit hie animi tenor ... in rigorem quendam torvitatemque naturae duram et inflexibilem, adfectusque humanos adimit'; and he even places Diogenes side by side with the misanthrope Timon. P. 155. c Senec. De Clement. II. 5, 'nulla secta benignior leniorque est, nulla amantior hominum' etc. Comp. Jos. Simpson, Epicteti Ma- nuale, Praef. pp. xxi, xxii. P. 155. d Comp. Eph. VI. 59; Col. III. 22; IV. 1; 1 Tim. VI. 1, 2; Tit. II. 9, 10; 1 Pet. II. 18, 19, etc. L. 155. e Senec. De Benef. III. 22, 1, servus perpetuus mer- cenarius est. P. 155. f Col. IV. 1; Eph. VI. 9. P. 155. S Comp. Farrar 1. c. pp. 5153. P. 155. h Comp. the analogous term 'your masters according to the flesh' (TO% Kara aapna Kvpioi$) in Eph. VI. 5 and Col. III. 22, which, however, implies a different antithesis. P. 155. ' Sen. Epist. 47, vive cum servo clementer, comiter quoque, et in sermonem ilium admitte etc.; De Benef. III. 18 28, corpora ob- noxia sunt et adscripta dominis, mens quidem sui juris, etc. ; De Clement. I. 18; Epict. Disp. I. 13. P. 156. a Sen. De Ira III. 14 16, quanto humanius mitem et patrium animum praestare peccantibus, sed illos non persequi sed revocare etc. P. 156. b Epict. Disp. I. 18, yct\s-no.hsrj olv $si avrotg; . . . XX s7ov rijv ffXavTjv KOI otist nun; afiiyravTai TUV oc/JLapryftaTuv (comp. II. 22 fin. o?); M. Aur. VIII. 8, ava/a^ro/j KCU ci NOTES [pp. 153 158]. 45 irpQ7STi K^gff^tai alruv ; and VI. 27, QVKQVV Sti Te7v; comp. XI. 18. It was also a doctrine of the Cyrenaics (the Hegesiaci) that 'errors ought to be pardoned', since all trespasses arise from a misconception of external circumstances; and that 'we ought not to hate the erring, but teach him better' (Diog. Laert. II. viii. 9, 95) P. 156. c Lev. XIX. 17; comp. Prov. XIX. 17; Matt. XVIII. 15175 2 Thess. III. 14, 15, 'count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother', etc. P. 156. d E. Meier, Morgenlandische Anthologie, p. 154. P. 156. e Comp. Zeller, Vortrage, I. p. 98. P. 157. & Farrar 1. c. p. 181. -P. 157. b See Pressel in Herzog's Eeal-Encyclop. IX. 40, first Ed. P. 157. c Epict. Enchir. c. 46, 2; comp. Disp. III. 21 init., 'after digestion show some change in your ruling faculty'; Enchir. c, 49, where, speaking of the subtle and far-famed precepts of Chrysippus, he observes that not their exposition but their application in life is something great (TOUTO TO /xo'vov espvw e'jr/v); the former requires merely a grammarian, the other is the task of the philosopher; also ib. c. 52, 1, avay/c/oraro TOTTO? eVriv e'v <^>/Xo<70</>n: o Tij$ M. Aur. IX. 16. r, apsrrj KCCI K<XKIO, owr e'v irsi^ei, aXXa evspfilcc. Yet it can easily be understood that a man of M. Aurelius' contemplative and sensitive character should compare philosophy to a mother, and the Court to a step-mother: 'repair often to philosophy', he wrote (V. 12), 'and seek comfort with her through whom the Court appears bearable to you and you to the Court'. P. 158. a M. Aur. XII. 29, airoXaus/v rou >?v, uuvaTrrovra XXo eV aXXw aya^ov, wars prj^s TO /fyja^urarov ^/aanjjaa aTroXs/W/v. P. 158. b VIII. 26, stypoyvvr; oc&pcuTrov, TTOW/V rot, i$ia av^ocoTrou, <^/ov $s KV'&PKKOV svvo/a TT/JO? TO o'/Ao</>yXov; comp. Sen. Epist. 27, 3, sola virtus praestat gaudium perpetuum, securum; see John XV. 11. P. 158. c VI, 7, svt Tspirov Kcxl TrpoaavaTTavov, TU> affo trpa^sug KOivavticfji; fJLsrafiarjsn ent 7rpatv KonwvtKrjv, awv [tvy/Ay @cou. P. 158. d Sen. De Moribus, 44, niliil magnum est in rebus humanis nisi magno animo despicias. P. 158. e See Farrar 1. c. pp. 315, 333; but comp. M. Aur. in. 5, fa 3 TO <f>ai$p r jY K. T. X. P. 158. f Diog. Laert. VII. i. 6, rrj$ rskelat; P. 158. g M. Aur. X. 12. KOU (f><xi$pw K<xi P. 158. h Sen. Epist. 23, 3, 4, disce gaudere, . . . nisi forte tu judicas eum gaudere qui ridet . . . Mihi crede, verum gaudium res severa est. P. 158. } Schiller, Kassandra. Aristotle (Probl. XXX. 1) observes: 'all men of great distinction (ireptTToi) are melancholy' comp. Cic. Tusc% Disp. I. 33, 80, omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse. P. 158. k Comp. M. Aur. I. 17. 46 NOTES [p. 159]. P. 159. a Plin. Epist. X. 98, conquirendi non sunt . . . Sine auctore vero propositi libelli nullo crimine locum habere debent; nam pessimi exempli, nee nostri seculi est; Tertull. Apol. c. 5, quas (leges) Trajanus ex parte frustratus est, vetando inquiri Christianos; comp. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. IV. 8, 9, 26, mentioning the ordinances of Hadrian and Antoninus in favour of the Christians. P. 159. b Comp. Neander, Kirchengeschichte, I. i. pp. 185 sqq., 'ein philosophischer Begriffsfanatismus, der intolerant und verfolgungssuchtig macht'. P. 159. c See supra pp. 123, 124. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, in his Apology to the monarch, complains that the pious are night and day perse- cuted throughout Asia by 'new and strange decrees', allowing shameless informers openly to plunder the property of the innocent (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. IV. 26): those edicts could not be unknown to the Emperor, as they could not have been issued by the Proconsuls on their own res- ponsibility. Melito states indeed the indefinite alternative: 'If these things are done by your orders', and 'But if these unheard-of ordinances have not proceeded from you' ; yet this is a form which in any case was suggested by prudence. And Orosius (VII. 15) observes that during the Parthian war the persecutions in Gaul and Asia were carried out 'by the Emperor's order' (praecepto ejus). Yet strict impartiality compels us to allow that, in some cases at least, the Governors and the mob took the law into their own hands. This may not only be inferred from the whole tenour of Eusebius' detailed account of the persecutions in Lyons and Vienne (Hist. Eccl. V. 1), but can be proved by a clear instance. M. Aurelius had written to the Governor of Lyons, in reply to his enquiries, that those recalcitrant Christians who were Roman citizens should simply be beheaded; yet, even after having received this distinct command, the Governor exposed Attalus of Pergamus a second time to the wild beasts. The same account speaks of 'the collective madness of the rabble, the Governors, and the soldiers', and a preceding narrative mentions violent attacks on Christians .'occasioned by in- surrections in the cities' (Euseb. 1. c. Preface to the fifth Book). Ma- turus and Sanctus, after having been shockingly lacerated by wild beasts, and 'red-hot plates of brass having been fastened to the most tender parts of their body', were 'placed upon an iron chair, where their bodies were roasted'. Blandina, 'her whole body having been torn asunder and pierced' by most excruciating tortures, was bound and suspended on a stake, exposed as food to wild beasts, and finally killed by a bull, be- fore which she was cast in a net. Many were confined in dismal and loathsome prisons, where they usually died from suffocation or exhaustion; after which the bodies were cast to the dogs, the remains being burnt and the ashes thrown into the river Rhone amidst taunts at the Christian belief of resurrection. Would it be just to make M. Aurelius an- swerable for such deeds? Could they have been authorised or approved NOTES [pp. 159, 160]. 47 by a prince whose only fault as a ruler was perhaps want of firmness and severity, and who showed excessive, if not dangerous clemency even to conspirators and traitors? by a prince who expressly prohibited all gladiatorial fights with sharp weapons, and who did not deem it beneath his dignity to order that cushions should be spread under rope-dancers, to protect them from injury in falling? (Capitol. M. Aur. Phil. c. 12; comp. also Sueton. Nero, c. 12). Some well-weighed and on the whole apologetic remarks are offered by S. Long in the 'Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aur. Anton.' pp. 18 22, concluding simply: 'I add that this is quite certain that Antoninus did not derive any of his ethical principles from a religion of which he knew nothing'! Similarly Zeller (Vortrage, I. 105, 106) : 'An christliche Einfliisse auf M. Aurel und seine stoischen Vorganger kann wirklich gar nicht im Ernste gedacht werden'. P. 159. d Plin. Epist. x. 97, 'visa est enim res digna consultatione, maxim e propter periclitantium numerum'; then this large number is more fully specified, upon which follows the complaint that the temples of the gods are already nearly desolate, and that purchasers of victims are becoming very rare. As to the close communion of the early Christians (i; KakovfjisvTj ' Ayanri] Xpiariav&v) we have numerous testimonies; for our purpose it is sufficient to refer to those of their opponents Lucian (De Morte Peregrini, c. 13) and Celsus (Grig. Contr. Cels. L 1). 'The Christians', says the latter, 'form secret associations against the ordinances of the law (irapd ra vtvofuv/tsvci) . . . These associations derive their stability from a common danger, and have a strength even beyond that of oaths' (SuvajKsvijv InrspvpKia; comp. VIII. 17, a^avoyj KCU aTfoppTjrov Koivuviai; . . . av^r,fia; Tertull. Apol. c. 24, crimen laesae maxime Bo- manae religionis; Minuc. Fel. Octav. c. 9, sacraria ista taeterrima impiae coitionis adolescunt, . . . occultis se notis et insignibus noscunt et amant mutuo paene antequam noverint etc. P. 160. a Comp. Hebr. IX. 35, 'not forsaking the assembling ourselves together'; Acts II. 42, etc. Pliny (Epist. X. 97) assured Trajan indeed that, when they met early in the morning on an appointed day, they were only wont to sing a hymn to Christ revered as God (quasi Deo), to pledge themselves by an oath to refrain from all crimes, especially those against property (ne furta, ne latrocinia, ne adulteria committerent, ne fid em fallerent, ne depositum adpellati abnegarent), and then quietly to disperse; but these favourable remarks are, not improbably, regarded as a later Christian interpolation (comp. Br. Bauer, Christus und die Caesaren, pp. 270 272). P. 160. b Plin. 1. c., perseverantes duci jussi; neque enim dubitabam, qualecunque esset quod faterentur. pervicaciam certe et inflexibilem ob- stinationem debere puniri; and so also M. Aur. XI. 3, Kara $i\yv na- potTa&v, supra Notes p. 32 [P. 124 b ]. P. 160. c Comp. Farrar 1. c. pp. 299, 321; see Epict. Disp. II. 9, where Jews and Christians are spoken of promiscuously. 48 NOTES [pp. 160, 161]. P. 160. d See M. Aur. XL 3, and Gataker in loc.; Lucian, De Morte Peregrin, c. 13, KaraQpovovyt TOV . &vrou KOI SKWT$$ avrovg hci&i&eurn 01 TroXXo/; c. 14; Ignat. ap. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. III. 36, 'May I be benefited by those wild beasts that are in readiness for me! . . . Should they perchance be unwilling to devour me, I will force them' etc.; Euseb. 1. c. V. 1, 'Blandina hastened with joy and exultation, as if she were invited to a marriage feast, and not about to be cast to wild beasts'; Oriff. Contr. Gels. VIII. 48, 'The Christians are zealous to struggle unto death (jas'x/ 3 ' ^vrou aycov/Co/^svcov), lest they abjure their faith'; comp. Neander, Kirchengeschichte, I. i. pp. 185 sqq., 'Die Art wie manche wirklich schwarmerisch aufgeregte Christen den Tod suchten, konnte ihn (M. Aurel.) nur in seiner Ansicht bestarken.' That the Cynics and Stoics counted among them similar enthusiasts, is probable, and is proved by the example of Peregrinus; see Lucian 1. c. c. 36. However, many who had joined the Christian sect, when accused, so relates the younger Pliny, denied that they ever had been, or at least were then Christians, prayed to the heathen gods, offered incense and wine to the Emperor's image, and cursed Christ (praeterea maledicerent Christo); Plin. Epist X. 97; comp. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. V. 1, referring to apostasies at the threat of torture; etc. P. 160. e M. Aur. Medit. VI. 44. P. 160. f Ib. XII. 28, fysi oparoi siuiv; comp. II. 11, XX KOI slot &so) KO.I /ie'Xe/ avTo7<; TCOV av^occTrWcov; XII. 36 fin.) <X7r&t ovv fXsw^ KOU yap o P. 160. & Ibid. I. 17; comp. Epictet. Enchir. c. 18, Kopa orav pr, a'/a/ov KSKpa.*ffj K. T. X. P. 160. h Comp. Capitolin. M. Antonin. Philos. c. 13. Epictetus fur- nishes a religious code of some completeness: there are gods; they govern everything well and justly; man must obey them and willingly bear whatever they send ; 'in any case it is his duty to present libations and holocausts and firstfruit offerings in ancestral manner, with a pure mind and not thoughtlessly, neither scantily nor above his means' (Enchir. C. 31, ffTTSV^SIV $1 KO,} ^f'JSlV KCU KTTap^Sa^at KO.ro. TO, TtaTplCC, SKUffTOT! irpovTjKsi Ka^apicg K. T. X.); and he gives precise directions as to the mannei of consulting the oracles (ibid. c. 32); comp. also Disp. IH. 21. P. 161. a Comp. Tacit. Ann. XV. 44, 'odio generis humani convicti'. similarly with respect to the Jews (Hist. V. 5), 'apud ipsos fides ob- stinata . . . sed adversus omnes alios hostile odium'. P. 161. b Matt. XXVII. 24, 'see ye to it'. P. 161. c That is, M. Annaeus Novatus. P. 161. d Acts XVIII. 1217, 'If it were a matter of wrong, . . . ] should bear with you'; and he 'drove them away, for he cared for nom of these things'. P. 161. e Acts XXV. 18, 19, 25; XXVI. 31, 32. P. 161. f Comp. Eom. XIII, 17; see Eph. VI. 5; 1 Cor. VII. 1724 NOTES [pp. 161164]. 49 P. 161. 8" Comp. 1 Cor. VI. 1 6, 'dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints'? etc. See De Wette, Lehrb. der christl. Sittenl. 60, 'Mit dem Staate, besonders dem heidnischen, trat die christliche Gemeinde in eine natiirliche Reibung, . . . sie trat der heidnischen Wissenschaft und Kunst feindlich entgegen; . . . offenbar wollte sie den heidnischen Staat auflosen' etc.; Zetter, Vortrage, I. pp. 101107, 'It is not the bad but the best and most vigorous Emperors who carried out rigid measures against Christianity . . . Those who wished to see the old Eoman state intact were bound to suppress it'; II. 189214. P. 162. a Euseb. Hist. Eccl. IV. 13. The last point is referred to by Tertullian (Apol. c. 5) in stronger terms: 'sicut non palam ab ejusmodi hominibus (i. e. Christianis) poenam dimovit, ita alio modo palam dispersit, adjecta etiam accusatoribus damnatione et quidem te- triore'. It is, however, right to observe that this Rescript is by some attributed to M. Antoninus Pius, by others declared altogether spurious and 'a clumsy forgery'; the arguments adduced for either view seem inadequate and inconclusive. P. 162. b M. . Aur. V. 7, T Yjov, u<rov, co (f>i\s Zsv, K. r. X. P. 162. c Med. IX. 40, sir a. ou Kpetaaw xpya^tai TO/> BJTI ao/ per e\e\&spia$, r t $ta<f>spe<7 l rcci irpoi; rot, fir] siri ao< fJLsra $ov\siai; KOU rairsiv6rr]TO$ ; P. 163. a Comp. Barthelem. Saint-Hilaire, Le Bouddha, p. 289, 'les ceremonies sont demeurees ce qu'elles etaient au debut, aussi faciles que peu couteuses; c'est au coeur et a 1' esprit des fideles que le Bouddhisme pretend exclusivement s'adresser; il dedaigne les pompes exterieures; et le sacrifice ... a completement disparu dans la religion du Tathagata'; p. 297, etc. P. 163. b Comp. Spence Hardy, Legends and Theories of the Bud- dhists, pp. xlv, xlvi, xlix, 178, 181, 213216. P. 163. c Comp. John XIV. 9, 'he who hath seen me hath seen the Father', etc. P. 163. d M. Aur. XII. 28, TOV$ &eou, e' a>v rys ^uva/^sw? CCVTWV SKOUJTQTS xeip&fitxi, SK TQVTUV, oTi T3 sla}, KaTokafJL^dvco KOii a/Soy/fa/. P. 163. e Comp. Xen. Mem. I. iv. 19; IV. iii. 13, M avapsvys swi; av T5 poppas TUV ^suiv fSyg, aXX' eapKy uoi rot. epya aurcov opuvrt aefisa^at KOU Tipav TOW? ^rsovg, Aristot. De Mundo, c. 6; Cic. Tusc. I. 28, 29. P. 164. a Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 31, oy&e/x/av, wg affXco? eiire7v, svvotav l-frfj Ktx.} ccKspatw a7ro\s\oiiraai. P. 164. b Comp. Medit. I. 6. napa AioyvyTov ... TO airiffTTjTiKW ro7<; VTTO TWV reparevofjievwv KOI yorjrwv itspl enu^uv, KOI itsp} SaiftQvwv airoirQfJLirfjt; Kai TWV TO/OWTCOV Xffyo^t/vo/$, c. 16, TO yiTj ttspl TOU$ ^oi$ $eifft$a7fji.ov, also Senec. Frgm. 3440; Augustin. Civ. Dei, VI. 10. P. 164. c Sen. Epist. 115, 5, sed pia et recta voluntate. P. 164. ^ Epict. Disp. III. 21, ispai elan at <f)uvai avrat K<X^ aiirat;, comp. the following words, ^e'ya BUT} TO irpaypa, /AUJT/ACOV SUTIV K. r. X. D 50 NOTES [pp. 165-175]. P. 165. a Eom. II. 14, 15; comp. Bible Stud. H. 311. So many earlier and even recent theologians; e. g. J. Simpson, Epicteti Manuale, Praefat. sub fin, 'adhuc divina in istis relucet et providentia et benignitas, quod in homine a se dilapso imaginem sui non intercidere omnino et aboleri prorsus passus est, sed scintillas quasdam asservavit reliquas' etc. See infra. P. 165. b Comp. Farrar, Seekers after God, pp. vii, 333 335. The five best pagans meant are probably, besides the three mentioned in the text, Pythagoras and Plato (see ibid. p. 182). P. 166. a Neander, Vorlesungen, p. 34, 'Es war ein Streben iiber die Schranken der alien "Welt hinaus, welches der geschichtlichen Ent- wickeltmg in der Ueberwindung der naturgemassen Aufhebung diesei Schranken voraneilte'. P. 167. a See Farrar 1. c. pp. 6, 48, 49, 181, 182, 230, 318320 335, 336. P. 168. a Farrar 1. c. pp. 222, 331; and Christian writers repeatedlj apply to the Gentiles the words of Paul : 'God left not Himself without witness' among them (Acts XIV. 17); etc. P. 168. b Farrar 1. c. p. 257. P. 169. a 1 Cor. XII. 4, 6. P. 170. a Comp. Plut. Adv. Stoic, c. 26. P. 170. b Ps. cxxix. 68. P. 171. a Comp. Buckert, Erbauliches und Beschauliches aus den Morgenland, I. 136. P. 171. b Isai. LI. 1, 2. P. 171. c Jos. Antiq. XVIII. i. 3, uv rs 6 \6yog Kpivag irapslwKsv ayex- SrWV STTQVTKl TY/ yyS/Jt.OVl'X K. T. X. P. 172. a Exod. XX. 16. P. 173. a Comp., however, Brahma Jala Suttana, quoted by Spend Hardy, Leg. and Theor. of Buddh. p. 216. P. 175. a Eom. V. 621; 1 Cor. I. 30; XV. 3, 21, 22; Hebr. H. 9 comp. Matt. XX. 28; XXVI. 28; John VI. 51; X. 15; XV. 13; Kom m. 2325; VIII. 1, 33, 34; 2 Cor. V. 18, 19; Eph. II. 13; Col. I 14, 20; Tit. II. 14; Hebr. IX. 14, 15; X. 10, 28; 1 John I. 7; II. 2 1 Pet. II. 21 24; III. 18; etc.; comp. the eleventh of the Thirty-nin> Articles, 'We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit o our Lord' etc.; De Wette, Dogmatik der Protestantischen Kirche, 54 56, 71. P. 175. b Melanchthon and others endeavoured to lessen the objection by distinguishing between a 'direct' and 'indirect' imputation, and b; other groundless expedients; see De Wette 1. c. 55 l> , 'it is more na tural to found the imputation of hereditary sin upon the actual con sciousness of sin, than to assume a direct imputation of the sin c Adam' which is certainly more 'natural' and more rational, but is i Christian? And similarly Melanchthon ibid., 'peccatum originis non tantur NOTES [pp. 175, 176]. 51 esse imputationem sed in ipsa hominum natura caliginem et pra- vitatem', etc.: but man's inherent depravity is also considered as Adam's guilt. P. 175. c Bom. XIII. 15, 16. P. 175. d Hebr. IX. 22; comp. Lev. XVII. 11; Matt. XXVI. 28; etc. See Comm. on Levit. I. pp. 121 129; II. pp. 2 9. P. 175. e Hebr. IX, X, esp. IX. 7, 1214, 1821; Eph. V. 2, 'Christ hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour'; 1 Cor. V, 7, 'our passover' ; John I. 29, 'the Lamb of God', etc. Christ suffered, says the second of the Thirty-nine Articles, 'to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men'; comp. Artie. XV, 'who by sacrifice of himself once made' etc. P. 175. f Comp. Hebr. VII. 2427; VIII. 13; IX. 1114, 24, 25, 28; X. 1012, 19, 21. The Catholic Church, in regarding the eucharist 'as a sacrifice by which Christ is again and again offered up bloodlessly for the remission of sins, approaches still more closely to the Old Testament in the frequency, but departs from it entirely in the nature, of expiatory sacrifices, as these, except in the one case of extreme po- verty, were never bloodless (Lev. V. 11 13; see Comm. on Lev. I. pp. 253 sqq.). The severity with which the thirty-first of the Thirty- nine Articles stamps these 'Sacrifices of Masses' as 'blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits', may easily be accounted for. P. 176. a Bom. HI. 25, /XOJTJ^/OV, V. 9, euro -nfr opyijg, 1 Thess. I. 10; 1 Tim. U. 6, avr/Xytpov, 1 John II. 2; IV. 10. Comp. Anselm. Cantab., Cur Deus homo sit? Lib. I. c. 13, 'Nihil minus tolerandum est in rerum ordine, quam ut creatura Creatori debitum honorem auferat, non solvat quod aufert . . . Necesse est ergo, ut aut ablatus honor sol- vatur, aut poena sequatur; alioquin aut sibi ipsi Deus Justus non erit, aut ad utrumque impotens erit; quod nefas est vel cogitare'; see De Wette 1. c. 71 73b: also the second of the Thirty-nine Articles. P. 176. b For instance: In what sense could Adam and Eve have been created in the image of God, if they were unable to, resist the first temptation ? Why did the All-merciful expose them to a temptation to which, He knew, they would succumb? Why did He not aid them in resisting a sin which was to be so calamitous to their progeny through all ages? etc. P. 176. c Comp. 1 John HI. 16, 'he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren'; XIII. 15; 1 Pet. II. 22, 'leaving us an example' etc. P. 176. d Comp. John XVIII. 37, 'To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth', etc. P. 176. e John VI. 38; comp. III. 16, 17; V. 30; XVLL 4; Matt. XXVI. 39. Hardly correct, therefore, is the remark: 'It is truly Christian to regard every death of self-sacrifice and devotion as a symbol of pro- 52 NOTES [p. 176]. pitiation, and to hold before ourselves the death of Christ as an example for imitation' (De Wette 1. c. 73 a ): that which is specifically Christian in Christ's death, it is not in man's power either to choose or to reject (comp. John XII. 25; Matt. X. 39); the death of a Cato or Brutus was not 'Christian'. The view referred to is one of the innumerable instances of the process of 'volatilisation' we have pointed out (see supra p. 182); it is supplemented by an opinion equally vague and colourless: 'The transference of another's suffering may be applied to every death of self-sacrifice, since the sum of human ills may be considered as common to all' ; and it culminates in the almost incredible result that the Biblical conception of reward and punishment is meant merely as 'a fit figure' or image (ein schickliches Bild) to denote the peace and uneasiness of the mind without any reality in fact. De Wette, Bibl. Dogmat. 220, note b; Lehrbuch der Christl. Sittenl. 79. See also supra Notes, p. 42. P. 176. f John IV. 34; VI. 38; also X. 17, 18, 'No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself; Phil. II. 8; Hebr. V. 8. P. 176. SMatt. XXVI. 36-44; XXVII. 46, 'Eli, Eli' etc.; Mark XIV. 32 39; Hebr. V. 7, 'he offered up prayers with strong crying and tears'; etc. P. 176. h The stricter doctrine seems to be implied in Rom. IX. 11, 20 24; XI. 5 7, 'if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace' etc. See Calvin, Institt. III. xxi. 5, 'Prae- destinatio qua Deus alios in spem vitae adoptat, alios adjudicat morti aeternae'; XXII. 8; XXIX. 3, 4; Canon. Dordr. c. 1, art. 9, 'electio facta non ex praevisa fide . . . aut alia aliqua bona qualitate et dis- positione . . . sed ad fidem; Formul. Concord, sol. decl. XI. 821, 'fal- sum est et cum verbo Dei pugnat, cum docetur quod noti sola dei miseri- cordia et unicum sanctissimum Christi meritum, verum etiam aliquid in nobis causa sit electionis divinae . . . Non enim tantum antequam ali- quid boni faceremus, verum etiam priusquam nasceremur . . . elegit nos Deus in Christo'. See on the other hand, De Wette, Dogm. der Prot Kirch. 60 a, 'Gott beschloss, diejenigen, von denen er voraussah, dass sie an Christum glauben wiirden, wirklich selig zu machen oder er- wahlte sie zum ewigen Leben'; Graul, Unterscheidungslehren der ver- schiedenen christlichen Bekenntnisse, pp. 80 82. How the qualifications of the decretum as aeternum, yet not absolutum but ordinatum et re- spectivum, and besides particulare and immutabile, are proved or at least supported, tis aught in the works on Protestant dogmas; see infra. P. 176. i Comp. Matt. XX. 16, 'many are called, but few are chosen': XXII. 14; Luke XIII. 2328. P. 176. k Comp. Matt. VIII. 8, 'to be cast into the everlasting fire': XIII. 40, 42; XXV. 41, 46, 'everlasting punishment'; Mark III. 29 'eternal damnation'; IX. 47, 48, 'to be cast into hell fire, where theii worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched'. 'Christ did not die foi NOTES [pp. 177, 178]. 53 all sinners, but only for the elect' (Formula Consensus Helvitica XVI; Graul 1. c. p. 84). Eeimarus says: The Christian theologians consign 'nine-tenths' of their fellow-men to eternal flames (See Strauss, Rei- marus und seine Schutzschrift etc., pp. 265, 266). P. 177. a In order to silence such uncertainties and fears, some have conveniently recommended: 'Listen to the preaching of the Gospel and believe in it, and then be confident that, if you believe and are in Christ, you are elected' (Conf. Helv. II. c. 10, si credas ac sis in Christo, electum te esse). Nor did the dangerous tendency of the doctrine remain unnoticed; for not a few said that, if they are elected, their salvation was certain ; if they are not elected, they could never obtain it ; in either case their own efforts were superfluous; whence the Lutheran Church considers grace as 'resistible' (comp. Acts VII. 51, 'you do always resist th Holy Ghost'), so that man may annul his election (see infra; comp. the sixteenth of the Thirty-nine Articles; De Wette 1. c. 62, 77 b; Graul 1. c. p. 127): the belief of man's complete dependence for good and for evil cannot but paralyze his energy. Comp. Eom. VI. 1, 15, 'shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound'? P. 177. b Wisd. II. 24; comp. Eev. XII. 9, etc. P. 177. c See Comm. on Levit. II. pp. 301 304. Comp. Spinoza, Epist. 74, 5, 'Patitur ergo divina justitia, ut diabolus homines plerosque (rari quippe boni) impune decipiat, in aeternum cruciandos; at minime, homines misere ab ipso diabolo deceptos et circumductos manere im- punes'. P. 177. d 'Fasting and praying' were the Apostles' precept and practice (Acts XTTT. 2, 3; XIV. 23; 1 Cor. VII. 5); and although they seem during Christ's life-time to have abstained from 'mourning', Christ said that the time would come when they should fast (Matt. IX. 14, 15). Comp. however, Matt. XI. 19; Col. H. 16, 17; 1 Tim. IV. 15, 8. P. 177. e See Eom. III. 2131; IV. 125; V. 1, 2; X. 911; Gal. V. 5, 6; Hebr. XL; comp. Matt. X. 32; Mark XVI. 16; Luke XH. 8; John III. 15; Acts VIII. 37, etc. P. 178. a Comp. Eph. II. 8, 'by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast'; John VI. 44, 65, 'Nobody can come to me, except the Father who has sent me draw him'; Acts XIII. 48, 'As many as were ordained to eternal life believed' (sKivrevaav foot r,<jav Teraypsvoi */? Cw^v a/wwov); see II. 47; Eom. III. 24; IV. 16; 2 Tim. I. 9; Tit. HI. 4, 5, etc. P. 178. b Eom. VII. 1425; see 2 Cor. HI. 5, 'not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves' etc. (1 Cor. n. 14); John XV. 5, 'without me you can do nothing'; Phil. II. 13, 'God it is who worketh in you both to will and to do'; and in this sense the Apostle exhorts, 'work out your own salvation'; comp. Gen. VI. 5; VIII. 21; Jer. XVII. 9; Ps. LI. 7. This is the orthodox doctrine of Augustine 54 NOTES [p. 178]. and Luther; comp. Form. Concord, sol. decl. II. 656, 'Credimus quod hominis non renati intellectus, cor et voluntas, in rebus spiritualibus et divinis, ex propriis naturalibus viribus prorsus nihil intelligere, credere . . . velle . . . perficere . . . aut cooperari possint, sed homo ad bonum prorsus corruptus et mortuus sit, ita ut in hominis natura . . . ne scin- tillula quid em spiritualium virium aliqua manserit aut restet' etc.; and p. 661, quoting Luther, 'In spiritualibus et divinis rebus . . . homo est instar statuae salis, imo est similis trunco et lapidi ac statuae vita ca- renti' etc.; the ninth of the Thirty -nine Articles, 'Man is very far gone from original righteousness . . . And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated'; and the tenth Article, 'The condition of man after the Fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works' etc. See De Wette 1. c. 56 a, 77 a, 81, also 60 c, where the point is thus finally statel: 'He who has been saved by his faith in Christ, him God, by His grace, has elected to faith and salvation'. Man's absolute passiveness cannot be more clearly or more strongly expressed. The teaching of Catholicism on most of these questions viz. that Christ's merit effaces only here- ditary sin, not man's actual transgressions, which require personal satis- faction; and that man may, by his moral efforts, qualify himself for the reception of grace, by means of which he obtains the faculty of ful- filling God's commands and thus meriting salvation by good works, since by the first disobedience his powers for good have not been de- stroyed but only weakened this teaching keeps a practical middle course, which no doubt confirms many in their attachment to the Roman Church: but Luther severely condemns these views of 'the old and new Pelagians' (comp. his Confession of Faith of 1529, in Graul 1. c. pp. 15, 37, 40). And yet, with a significant inconsistency, the Lutheran doctrine of re- jection or reprobatio admits an active element, in teaching: 'Deus de- cernit quod eos, qui per verbum vocati, illud repudiant et Spiritui sancto resistunt, et obstinati in contumacia perseverant, indurare, reprobare et aeternae damnationi devovere velit' (Form. Cone. XI. 808; De Wette 1. c. 6 la). Thus the Lutheran creed, evidently recoiling from the ex- treme inferences of an awful tenet, makes damnation conditional on continued and obstinate disbelief (though if belief can only be obtained by the free grace of God, disbelief can on no account be imputed to the guilt of man); and in reference to reprobatio, assumes "predestinating" to be equivalent to "fore-knowing". But Calvin's trenchant and inex- orable logic allows no distinction between the mode of electio and re- probatio. He maintains unequivocally, that disbelief proceeds from an absolute decree of rejection, which determines man's eternal destiny and 'dates from the very creation; and not even Adam's sin does he exclude from this rule (Institt. III. xxii. 11, 'si non possumus rationem assignare, cur suos misericordia dignetur, nisi quoniam ita illi placet, ne- que etiam in aliis reprobandis aliud habebimus quam ejus voluntatem', NOTES [p. 178]. 55 etc.; ibid, xxiil. 8, 'lapsus est primus homo, quia Dominus ita ex- pedire censuerat; cur censuerit, latet'). Yet so inextricably occult is the whole doctrine of predestination, that even Calvin ultimately supposes rejection to be partially attributable to the guilt of man and God's chastising justice (ibid, xxiii. 3, 'peccato vitiati sumus omnes . . . ne ergo Deum iniquitatis insimulent, si aeterno ejus judicio morti destina- ti skit' etc.); and a man of De Wette's clearness and penetration concludes : 'Here we need a pious reserve (sVo^^) and the acknowledgment of a mystery' (I. c. 61, 62 c). The history of dogmas, in all creeds alike, exhibits a constant, though impotent, reaction of common sense and right feeling against superhuman theories. P. 178. c See Bom. VIII. 29, 30, on ou Trpoeyvw, Kat npoupiasv . . . ou s jrpo&piasv, row-Toy? KCXI sxaksasv, KOI o'J? sKoksaev, TOVTOV$ KOI s^iKaiuasv K. T. X.,- comp. Eph. I. 5, 11. P. 178. d Eom. IX. 18, 21; comp. I. 2428; 2 Thess. H. 1012; John XII. 39, 40. The second of the passages quoted in the text is analogous to Sirach's words, 'Some men God has blessed and exalted, . . . but some has He cursed and brought low; ... as the clay is in the potter's hand to fashion it at his pleasure, so man is in the hand of Him that made him' (Sir. XXXIII. 12, 13) implying a transition from the doctrine of the Old to that of the New Testament (comp. Jer. XVIII. 110; see Bible Studies, II. pp. 262, 263). P. 178. e It requires, therefore, no little skill in casuistry to define the precise meaning of such assurances as, 'If we confess our sins, God . . . cleanses us from all unrighteousness' (1 John I. 9), especially as one terrible exception is avowed the sin against 'the Holy Ghost', which 'shall never be forgiven, neither in this world nor in the world to come' (Matt. XII. 31, 32), and which is the more important on ac- count of its vague comprehensiveness (but comp. the sixteenth of the Thirty- nine Articles, 'They are to be condemned which . . . deny the place of forgiveness to such as truly repent'; and again, -Not every deadly sin willingly committed after Baptism is sin against the Holy Ghost and unpardonable'). There are indeed some passages in the N. T. involving the principle of human liberty both in reference to God (James I. 13, 14, 'Let no man say who is tempted, I am tempted of God' etc.; Matt. XXV. 15, Kara ryv May Zvvaptv), to Satan (1 Cor. VII. 5; Eph. VI. 11; James IV. 7, 'resist the devil and he will flee from you'; 1 Pet. V. 9), and to the Holy Ghost (Acts XII. 51; Eph. IV. 30; V. 18; VI. 17; Gal. V. 16); but as they are not so distinct and decisive as the opposite maxims, they have in the formularies of the Church received but subordinate weight, and almost appear as incongruities in their system. Luther declares in his Confession of Faith (1529): 'Herewith I reject and condemn as complete error any doctrine affirming our free will, because it is diametrically opposed to the aid and grace of our Saviour . . . "We have no strength or intelligence to strive after righteousness and 56 NOTES [p. 178]. life, but blinded and fettered, we belong to the Devil and to sin' etc. (comp. Graul 1. c. p. 15, 'Hiermit verwerfe und verdamme ich als eitel Irrthum' etc; see supra note b , p. 54). P. 178. f Koran, Sur. VI. 39, iiUiS idff &L&S . P. 178. Comp. De Wette 1. c. 73, <Der Versohnungstod Jesu ist ein Gegenstand des frommen Glaubens oder der Ahnung, nicht des "VVissens'. 'Die Versohnung durch Christum konnen wir nur durch den Glauben ergreifen'. P. 178. h Comp. Eom. IV. 4, 5, 'To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt; but to him that worketh not, but belie veth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness'; XIV. 23. 'whatever is not of faith is sin'. P. 178. iMark XVI. 16, 'he that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved'; John III. 5, only he who 'is born of water and of the Spirit' can 'enter the kingdom of heaven'; Matt. XXVIII. 19; Eom. VI. 37; Gal. in. 27; 1 Pet. III. 21; also Tit. IU. 5; Hebr. X. 22; Eph. V. 26. Comp. Tertull. De Bapt. c. 4, 'supervenit enim statim spiritus de coelis et aquis superest' etc.; Luther in his Confession of Faith, 'Und dass die Taufe an ihr selbst eine gottliche Ordnung ist, wie sein Evangelium auch ist'; and in his large Catechism, 'Bin ich getauft, so ist mir zu- gesagt, ich solle selig sein und das ewige Leben haben, beide an Seel' und Leib' (Graul 1. c. pp. 18, 85, 135 138); and the English Catechism, describing 'the inward and spiritual grace of baptism' as a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness; comp. also the twenty-fifth and twenty-seventh of the Thirty-nine Articles. P. 178. k John IV. 25, 26; VI. 68, 69; IX. 35 38; X. 2430; XVII. 15; XVIII. 37; Matt. XI. 24; XVI. 1319; XXVI. 63, 64; but Matt. XVI. 20, 'he charged his disciples to tell no man that he was Jesus Christ'; John X. 24, 'How long dost thou make us doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly'. P. 178. ] Matt. XIII. 55, 56; Mark VI. 3; comp. Luke III. 23; IV. 22; John VI. 42. P. 178. m John XVIII. 36; comp. VI. 15. The 'kingdom of God' of which Christ speaks as existing in his own time, is simply the com- munity he was anxious to establish (Matt. XI. 11, 12; XII. 28; Luke XVI. 16, etc.). P. 178. n Comp. Luke I. 3133; John I. 45, 46; VII. 41, 42 ('shall Christ come out of Galilee'? etc.); Matt. XXI. 11: especially as his re- appearance, which he predicted, for the foundation of a wonderful king- dom of piety and happiness within the generation of men then living, did not come to pass (see Matt. XVI. 27, 28; XXIV. 30, 31; XXV. 31 sqq.; Mark IX. 1; Luke IX. 27; comp. Matt. XXVI. 64). The exact scope and meaning of these announcements, which are akin to the Messianic prospects at that time prevailing among the Jews, are uncertain NOTES [p. 179]. 57 (comp. De Wette, Bibl. Dogm. 216218). Comp. also 1 Thess. IV. 15_17; v. 1, 2; 1 Tim. VI. 14; Tit. II. 13; Phil. III. 20, etc. Christ is indeed frequently called 'Son of David' (Matt. IX. 27; XV. 22; XXI. 9, 15, etc.), though never by John; but this seems mainly to denote his Messianic dignity (comp. Matt. XII. 23). P. 179. a John XVII. 5, 24; I. 27, 30; VIII. 58; 1 Cor. II. 7; Col. I. 15, 17; 1 John V. 7. P. 179. b Paul calls Christ ysvo/wvov e'/r yuva/vo^, ysvo'/Ksvov vno VO'/KOV, Gal. IV. 4; comp. supra pp. 145, 146. P. 179. c '0 vns row soy. In John X. 3436, Christ himself takes the term in the natural and ordinary sense (see Matt. V. 45, 48 ; John I. 12; Rom. VIII. 29; Gal. IV. 57). Comp. Matt. III. 17; XI. 27; XIV. 33; XVI. 16; John I. 14, 18, 34; HI. 16, 17, 'His only begotten Son', 36; Hebr. I. 2, 5; X. 29, etc.; also Acts XVII. 31, & wlpl $ upuav. The Hebrews are in the Old Testament called God's 'firstborn son' (Exod. IV. 22, 23), or simply 'His children' (Deut. XIV. 1 ; Hos. H. 1), or His 'house' (Num. XII. 7) ; the theocratic king is specially His 'son' (Ps. II. 7), and so the angels are His 'sons' (Job I. 6; H. 1; XXVIII. 7; comp. Ps. LXXXII. 6). Ecclesiasticus describes the righteous man as 'the child of the Lord' or 'the son of God', and the wise man as the 'friend of God' (II. 13, 18; V. 5; VII. 14, 27, 7$ Kvptov, u/'o^ $eov, </>/Xo &sov). Christ is also 'the Son of man', suggested by j^JN 12 in Dan. VII. 13, as 'in him human virtue appears in perfection^ "and he, the image of God, is the pure prototype of man' (De Wette, Lehrb. der christl. Sittenl. 62). P. 179. d John X. 30, eyco *} 6 irarqp ev scpsv; comp. VIH. 19; XIV. 11, 12; XVII. 11, 22; XVIII. 2124. P. 179. e John VH. 18; VIII. 46; 2 Cor. V. 21; 1 John HI. 3, 5; Hebr. IV. 15; VII. 26, 27; 1 Pet. I. 19; but see supra Notes p. 40 [P. 143 d j. P. 179. f Matt. XL 27; XXVIII. 18; John I. 3, 4; Rom. IX. 5; XIV. 9; Col. I. 1519, 2 Cor. IV. 4, and Hebr. I. 3, 'the image of God'; Phil. II. 911; 1 Cor. VIII. 6; XV. 47, 'the second man is the Lord from heaven'; Eph. I. 20 22; Col. II. 9, 'in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily'; 1 John V. 20, 'the true God'; comp. Hebr. I. 2, 8; 1 Tim. HI. 16; Tit. H. 13; Luke X. 22; John in. 35; XHI. 3; XVII. 2, etc. P. 179. ^Matt. XTX. 17, 'why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God'; XI. 27; John V. 22, 27; VII. 17; comp. 1 Tim. LT. 5, 'There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man (-A/3W7ro;) Christ Jesus'; Eom. V. 15, 'grace, which is by one man (TOU svog av^punrov) Jesus Christ'; I. 3; VI. 4; VIII. 3; IX. 5; Col. I. 15, 17; 1 Cor. VHI. 6; XI. 3, 'the head of Christ is God'; XV. 24, 27; Gal. IV. 4; Eph. I. 17, 20; Phil. II. 11 (but see ver. 7); Hebr. HI. 2; V. 7. Some of the Reformed Churches hold in- 58 NOTES [pp. 179, 180]. deed that 'the Divine attributes ascribed in the Bible to Christ's human nature are not to be taken literally, since a finite nature is incapable of infinite attributes': but against this conception Lutherans raise a strong protest (comp. Graul 1. c. p. 78). P. 179. h Comp. Eph. IV. 46, 'One God and Father of all, who is above all' etc.; see 1 Cor. VIII. 46, etc. P. 179. i The passage 1 John V. 7, 'There are three that bear record in heaven' etc., is acknowledged to be spurious (De Wette 1. c. 267, 'ist anerkannt unacht') ; while the genuineness of the formula of baptism in Matt. XXVIII. 19, 'in the name of the Father' etc., is at least un- certain (De Wette 1. c. . 238: 'die kirchliche Trinitatslehre konnte Christus gar nicht in den Sinn kommen'; 267, 'auch Paulus und Johannes sind noch sehr weit von der kirchlichen Trinitatslehre entfernt'). P. 179, k Comp. Prod. Tim. II. p. 93, 'Numenius praises three gods, and calls the first Father, the second Creator, and the third Creation or Creature (naTspa, KonrjTrjv, and wo/i^a), . . . and he describes the same thing promiscuously as Father, Son, and Offspring' (narspa, eVyovov, and aTroyovov); Porphyr. ap. Cyrill. contr. Julian. VIII, p. 271 A (ed. Spanh.), 'In three substances (wroaTao-s/g), says Plato, is the Divine Being mani- fested: the supreme Grod is the Good, the second is the Framer of the world, and the third the Soul of the universe (raya^o'v, TOV Sypiovpyov, and Tyv TOV KOU/JLOV ^vyrjv); Xenocrat. ap. Clem. Alex. V. p. 604 C. ed. Sylburg, Xenocrates, 'in calling the one the supreme and the other the inferior Zeus (vmxrov and vsarov A /a) points to the Father and the Son.' P. 179. ] John XX. 9; Mark XVI. 11; Luke XXIV. 11; see, however, 1 Cor. XV. 12, 32. Comp. Orig. Contr. Cels. II. 54, 55, 63, 70, 73; V. 14. P. 179. m Matt. XVII. 15; Mark IX. 27; Luke IX. 2835; 1 Pet. UI. 1820, etc. The Eeformed (Calvinist) Church virtually rejects the Descent into hell by taking it figuratively, meaning that 'Christ, before and while he was on the cross, suffered in his soul tortures of hell' (Graul 1. c. p. 79). P. 179. n Matt. V. 18; Gal. III. 10, 13; V. 2, 3; Rom. HI. 20; IV. 15; 2 Cor. III. 3 17, 'the ministration of condemnation' (ver. 9); comp. also Matt. XII. 8, 'the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day'. Most remarkable will ever be Paul's argument in Gal. III. 10 13, and in fact throughout the chapter. Comp. also Bom. VII. 4 14; Eph. II. 1417; Col. II. 1315. P. 179. John XIV. 6; X. 15, 9; XVI. 23; Eph. II. 18, etc.; comp. Hebr. IX. 15; Eom. VIII. 2 sqq.; John VIII. 34 sqq. P. 180. a Mark XVI. 16; John HI. 16, 18; VIII. 24; XH. 48, etc. P. 180. b John in. 36. P. 180. c 2 John 10, 11; 2 Cor. VI. 1416; comp. Deut. XXIII. 7. See also 2 Thess. III. 14, 15, 'have no company with him', after which, however, follows the exhortation, 'yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother'. NOTES [pp. 180, 181]. 59 P. 180. d Matt. XI. 2830; comp. 1 Thess. IV. 13, 'Sorrow not even as others who have no hope' ; Eph. II. 12; 1 Pet. V. 7 ; etc. p. 180. e Prov. xxi. IB, ni:p DW> hnp2 tofen Tpno nyin DIN - T T : -': : - '. r *v T T P. 181. a In his Confession of Faith Luther says: 'Und ausser soldier Christenheit ist kein Heil, noch Vergebung der Siinden, sondern ewiger Tod und Verdammniss; obgleich grosser Schein der Heiligkeit da ist, und viel guter Werk, so ist doch alles verloren' (Graul 1. c. p. 19); Catech. maj. p. 503, 'Quicunque extra Christianitatem sunt, sive Gentiles, sive Turcae, sive Judaei. aut falsi etiam Christiani et hypocritae ... in perpetua manent ira et damnatione' (see De Wette, Dogm. der Prot. Kirche, 58). The thirteenth of the Thirty-nine Articles declares even that all works 'done before the grace of Christ . . . have the nature of sin' ; and the eighteenth accounts those 'accursed that presume to say that man can be saved by the light of Nature'. But innate human kindness suggested mitigating views like this: 'Bene sperandum est de omnibus, neque tern ere reprobis quisquam adnumerandus (Conf. Hdv. II. c. 10). P. 181. b Yet the seventeenth of the Thirty-nine Articles describes the 'godly consideration of Predestination' and Election as 'full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort' ; and similarly the eleventh calls justifi- cation by faith 'a most wholesome Doctrine and very full of comfort'. P. 181. c Matt. XI. 25; comp. 1 Cor. I. 26, 27. P. 181. d Matt. VII. 12; XXII. 3640; John XIII. 34, 35; XV. 10, 12; 1 John in. 11; IV. 7, 12, 16, 1921; 1 Pet. I. 22; etc. Comp. Gal. VI. 10, 'especially unto them that are of the household of faith'; 1 Pet. II. 7, 'love the brotherhood'. P. 181. e Matt. XIII. 11; Mark IV. 11; Luke VIII. 10; comp. also Matt. XIII. 33, 34; Mark IV. 33, 34; John XVI. 12. P. 181. * In the writings of Paul the mention of 'mysteries' is frequent; comp. Rom. XI. 25; XVI. 25; 1 Cor. IV. 1; XV. 51; Eph. I. 9; in. 3, 4, 9; V. 32; Col. I. 26; etc. P. 181. S Mark XVI. 17, 18; comp. also Matt. XVII. 20; Luke XVII. 6, etc. See James V. 14 16, 'the prayer of faith shall save the sick' etc. Comp. Tertull. De Orat. c. 29, 'sola est oratio quae Deum vincit' etc. P. 181. h Comp. even Abr. Carlov, Syst. locor. Theol. (Viteb. 1655 1671), V. 269, with respect to the unbaptised without the Church, timidly indeed, but with an unmistakable bias towards liberality: 'hos Divino judicio relinquimus, TOV; yap Ifco o &so npivsi . . . Misericordiae Divinae immensae praejudicare vel metas ponere nostrum non est' (see De Wette 1. c. 58). P. 181. * De Wette (1. c. 56 a, b) calls this Protestant doctrine 'exag- gerated', as 'it sets down man's feeble power of will as none at all', 'allowing on his part no active co-operation whatever', and wrongs man's fallible insight into spiritual truth in regarding it as absolutely blind; 60 NOTES [pp. 181, 182]. comp. Condi. Trid. sess. VI. c. 5 (De W. 1. c.), 'si quis liberum hominis ar bitrium post Adae peccatum extinctum ese dixerit . . . anathema sit' Aug. Cortf. (ibid.), 'De libero arbitrio decent, quod humana volunta habeat aliquam libertatem ad efficiendam civilem justitiam et deligenda res rationi subjectas', etc.; F. Striegel (ibid.), 'In homine non penitu extincta est quaedam velut scintilla rationis, in qua factus est ad imaginer Dei', etc. P. 181. k Comp. 2 Pet. I. 510; James II. 1426; HI. 1318, et. P. 181. l Comp. 2 Cor. V. 1, 2; Phil. I. 21, 22. P. 182. a John IV. 21; VIII. 32, 36; 2 Cor. III. 1317. P. 182. b John III. 17; comp. XII. 47; also I. 17; Horn. XI. 3: 'that He might have mercy upon all'; 1 Tim. II. 4, 'God our Saviou who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge the truth'. The English Catechism says, on the one hand, 'I believe j God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind; and on tl other hand. 'I believe in the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, and a the elect people of God'. We confess we fail to understand this in portant distinction, considering that, according to the fifth of the Thirty nine Articles, 'the Holy Ghost ... is of one substance, majesty and gloi with the Father and the Son'. P. 182. c Luke XI. 13; comp. Matt. VII. 7, 8; also V. 45, 48; Jol XVI. 23, 24. And so the English Catechism enjoins 'at all times call for God's special grace by diligent prayer'. P. 182. d l Cor. XIII. 113; Col. III. 14; 1 Tim. I. 5; Gal. " 14, 22; VI. 2; Eom. XIII. 815; comp. Gal. V. 6, 'faith which worke by love'; VI. 10; 1 Thess. HI. 12; see James II. 1722, etc.; ai supra p. 99. Augustin (Enchirid. ad Laurent, c. 117) writes: 'Qui rec amat, procul dubio recte credit et sperat; qui vero non amat, inanit credit, etiamsi sint vera quae credit'. P. 182. e See Comm. on Levit. II. p. 120, esp. note 1. P. 182. f .Comp. John XIV. 27, 'Peace I leave with you ... not the world giveth'; Eom. V. 1, 2, 'being justified by faith, we have pea with God' etc., 9, 11; VIII. 24; 2 Cor. V. 18, 19, God 'hath committ unto us the word of reconciliation' etc.; Eph. n. 18; III. 12; Phil. I 7, 'the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep yo hearts and minds'; Col. I. 11, 20; Hebr. IV. 9; 2 Thess. I. 7; Tit. I. in. 7; 1 John V. 14. etc. P. 182. 8' Even the very complex 'Ordo Salutis' elaborated by t Christian Church implies much that is true and edifying in its si cessive stages of Vocatio externa; Vocatio intema (Operationes spiritu Auditio; Illuminatio; Conversio (Poenitentia) ; Justificatio; Sanctifica (Renovatio); Perseverantia (Conservatio), up to the Unio mystica ci Deo, which is defined as the 'conjunctio spiritualis Dei triunius ci homine justificato' (comp. De Wette 1. c. 7684). See, in gener De Wette, Dogmat. der Prot. Kirche, 5284; Bibl. Dogmat. 207 NOTES [pp. 188190]. 61 306; Christl. Sittenlehre, 4080, 127, 128, 158, 200 sqq.; and the corresponding sections in the works of Lutz, Weiss, Biedermann, Martense, Schweizer, Ritschl, Lipsius, and others. P. 188. a The distance of the nearest of the 350,000 catalogued stars, a centauri, which is, however, only observable in the southern hemi- sphere, is computed at 224, 500 earth radii, or about 4 bill. 480,000 mill, geogr. miles; that of the remotest, a aurigae, at 4,484,000 earth radii, or about 89 bill. 680,000 mill, geogr. miles. P' 188. b Comp. Du Bois-Raymond, Culturgeschichte und Natur- wissenschaft, p. 40; Car. Sterne, "Werden und Vergehen, pp. 457 459; M. W. Meyer, Von den ersten und letzten Dingen im Universum, pp. 8 sqq., 'It is certain that the moon has accomplished the task of its existence', etc. P. 189. a Madler places the chief point of gravity near the star Alcyone in the group of the Pleiads. Our sun, possessing a translatory motion of 7 */ 2 geographical miles in the second, directs, therefore, its course at present towards a point in the constellation of Hercules, 'where, on account of this approach, the stars part perceptibly asunder'. It is needless to say, that these details are as yet no more than conjectures. P. 189. b Of the chemical constitution of the sun we know at present sixteen elements, viz. in the order of their probable atomic weight hydrogen, natrium, magnesium, titanium, aluminum, silicium, kalium, calcium, chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, and barium; in the meteorites have been detected sulphur and phosphor ; in the nebular spots, nitrogen; in the comets' nucleus, carbon; in Alderbaran one of those stars with a reddish light, which, like Arcturus, differ in their composition considerably from our sun antimony, tellurium, mercury, and bismuth; or in all twenty-four elements. Of those existing on our earth in larger quantities, there remain but five which have as yet not been found elsewhere, viz. lead, fluorine, iodine, chlorine, and tin (comp. M. W. Meyer, Kraft und Stoff im Universum etc., 1878, pp. 2024). Hydrogen and iron are the chief constituents of the solar atmosphere, as oxygen and nitrogen are the chief constituents in the atmosphere of the earth. P. 190. a We cannot resist the pleasure of quoting the following beautiful observations of A. von Grafe (Sehen and Sehorgan, 1879, pp. 44, 45) 'Die naturwissenschaftlichen Studien, eng verbriidert, richten auf den gemeinsamen Zielpunkt einer grossen Naturkraft ihr Steuer, einer Kraft, welche nach denselben unwandelbaren Gesetzen alle Erscheinungen regiert und zusammenhalt, ob sie das fluthende Meer in seinem weiten Bette hebt, oder die feinen Molekiile in der organischen Zelle ordnet, ob sie die riesigen Himmelskorper in ihre Bahnen zwingt oder die zarte Aetherwelle auf dem Strahlenpfade zu unserer Netzhautgrube leitet. In ihrem Walten weht der Athem des Unverganglichen, und auch wir fiihlen uns inmitten menschlicher Willkiir und Gebrechlichkeit von 62 NOTES [pp. 192196]. hoherem Geiste getrieben, wenn wir unser Sinnen und Trachten, weni wir den heissen Drang der Erkenntniss auf ihr tief nothwendiges, un zerstorbar gleiches "Wirken lenken'. P. 192. a Dante, Inferno, I. 97 99, 'So mischievous and fierce is it nature, that it never satisfies its keen desire, and after the repast i more famished than before'. P. 192. b The hypothesis is that of Olbers, the objection was raise* by Zollner. P. 192. c So Virchow in his earlier works, and others. P. 193. a Job XXVIII. 12, 13, 23, 24. P. 193. b Schiller, Votivtafeln. 'Dich zu fangen, ziehen sie aus mi Netzen und Stangen ; Aber mit Geistestritt schreitest du mitten hir durch.' 'Euer Gegenstand ist der erhabenste freilich im Kaume; Abe] Freunde, im Eaum wohnt das Erhabene nicht.' P. 194. a A shooting star like that described in the text was observe on the 21st of August, 1867, at 8 o'clock in the evening (comp. Dem in Naturforscher, I. 58). The reader will excuse the little anachronisi in the date. P. 194. b The orbit of the August swarm coincides with that of tb great comet of the year 1862; the swarm of the 27th of November 187 moved in the orbit of Biela's comet, etc. P. 194. c See Schiaparelli, Entwurf einer astronomischen Theorie de Sternschnuppen, ed. Georg von Boguslawski; comp. Deutsche Warte I. 526536; Naturforscher, I. 223. P. 195. a Diog. Laert. X. 89. P. 195. b Ibid. 91; comp. Lucret. V. 564590; Cic. De Finil I. 6, 20, 'huic (Epicuro) pedalis fortasse'; Acad. Prior. II. 26, 82 Senec. Quaest. Nat. I. 3, 10; Pint. De Plac. Philos. II. 2022. P. 195. c Ibid. 92, Kara ava^tv ysvsa^ai Zwaer^ai KOU Kara afisar TQiavTys Quays Trspiffraasccg. Yet Epicurus attributes the alternations als( in harmony with the impression of the senses, to the heavenly bodie passing above and below the earth. P. 195. d Lucret. V. 729748. Humphrey does not strictly separat the views of the Cyrenaics from those of the Epicureans. Comp. Lucre. Books V and VI passim. P. 195. e Diog. Laert. 1. c. 105; comp. Lucret. V. 535600; Plu De Plac. Philos. III. 15. P. 195. f Diog. Laert. 1. c. 114, 115; Plut. 1. c. III. 2. P. 196. a See Diog. Laert. II. viii. 3, r,v Is ap^saa^ai KU} ronca KI Xpwcp Kai npoffUKw K. T. X. (comp. Hor. Epist. I. xvii. 23, 24, Omn; Aristippum decuit color et status et res; Tentantem majora, fere prat sentibus aequum). P. 196. b Diog. Laert. II. viii. 6, 85, rsXo$ V 'omtyaive ryv \stc Kivyan si$ eudbrppt avaSe^o^/VTjv. P. 196. c Diog. Laert. II. 87, re'Xo? slvai w ryv ttaraoT*i(UiTtK$v NOTES [pp. 196200]. 63 TTJV sir' avaipsast aXyTj^dvcev, KOI oTov avo^X^ff/av K. T. X.: 89, 90, fiiaac, TS Ka.Ta.VTa.asH; ccvd/ia^ov ffaviay Kai airwiav: X. 136, o/ /JLSV yap (the Cyrenaics) TTJV Kmaarr^arLKr^ (^ovjjv) OVK lyitplvwat, povyv $$ TTJV ev Knf,y8i: comp. Cic. De Fin. I. 137139. P. 196. d Diog. Laert. II. 90, TroXv JK/V TO/ TCCV $v%tKu>v T$ crco^car/- K (i^ova?) afJLsivQvz elvat K. T. X. P. 196. e I&i'd. 93, ^r* s Xa^ T/ s7va/, /OJTS </>/X/av, /oyTff slspyeuiav K. T. X.: 95, TOV Tff <70</>ov sauTOU eWtfa Travra Trpd^siv, ov^eva yap ^ TWV aXXcov eWary? a|/ov aur: 98, rov <77roua?by ^ narptiot; eavTw. P. 196. Ibid. 88, e7vau ^s T^V apsrijv aya^ov, /c^v ouro TWV yevrjTat ... E/ yay9 KOI r, Ttpa^n; aroTro^ enj, aXX' ovv y y^ovy <' alrr/v aipsTT] } aya^o'v. P. 197. a J&i'd. 99, K\8&en rs K<XI p<>i%s{>7sty KOI /V/3ocruX^(7ff/v s'v Kaipu. yap elvai TOVTCOV ala%pw <f>vast , rijq sit avTo7<; ^dfyyg aipofjLsvrjt;, TJ SVSKOC Tfj/; TWV a<f>p6vcav auvo^ys: comp. 93, prfisv TS sJvat (frvvsi 17 /fXov ^ ahxpiv, XX vd/xw ^a/ e^f/ 1 o /ZSVTO; JTrou^aro? oysv T07rov $ia TS 8iriKstfji.e'jct<; fyfjitag na} ^o^ag: in reference to fypwrpis, 91, a^ov /iev e7va/ Xsyouj/v, oy / Jau-r^v e aipeTyv, XX / T a.\iTr t s nsptyivofjLsva : and with regard to friendship ifo'rf. TOV 0/Xov T^5 P. 197. IIsiJ^cxvaTo;: iWd. 94, T^V sl^aifjioviav oXco? a^yvaTov s?va; K. T. X.: (7zc. Tusc. I. 34, 83, 'a malis igitur mors abducit, non a bonis; et quidem hoc a Cyrenaico Hegesia sic copiose disputatur, ut is a rege Ptolemaeo prohibitus esse dicatur ilia in scholis dicere, quod multi iis auditis mortem sibi ipsi consciscerent.' The title of one of Hegesias' famous books was 'Jumifymptb or 'A man who starves him- seh .' P. 197. c Diog. Laert. II. 98, aya^a SI fpwijffn Ka} SiKaioevvyv, KO.KO. Ss Tag svavTia$ s^si/;. P. 197. Ibid. 75, TO Kpure'iv /c; py yTTacfeai TJ^OVWV apiaTov, ov TO P. 197. e Ibid. 72. P. 199. a Comp. 1 Pet. I. 12; see Spiess, Logos Spermatikos, pp. xxv xxvii. P. 199. b Eom. VII. 24, 25; 1 Cor. I. 30. P. 200. a Eurip. Pr. inc. 904, IIs'/^ov psv ^w? ^v^on; ctvty&v To7? /Sou- irpo/Ji.a'&eiv, iro^tsv l/2XaffTOV, T/^ /3''C KKK&V, T/va Sff? /jLaKUpuv Evpstv ^cdx^wv v7rauXav. Comp. Sop/t. Antig. 1023, 1024, yap To/ itaai KOIVQV sari Tovfe/jiapTaven : Philemon ap. Meineke IV. 3, T Ii ffw$ ffovTj/jdv s<7T/v av^/scoTTou (/>u<7/; To avvoXov ^.T.X.: Andoc. II. 5 (Becker, Orator. Attic. I. p. 128), fieyaky $s ^TTOW J TO sari K. T. X.: but PZatf. Sympos. c. XXIV, p. 205 A, co? aXXo eVriv ou sp&yw av^>pcairoi TJ TOV aya^ou: Tim. c. XLI ; p. 86 D, i; fJLsv yap ^/cwv o^s/j AC. T. X. 64 NOTES fpp. 202 205]. P. 202. a Comp. Diog. Laert. X. 9, r, rs Italo-ffl, xaccav ajp&ov SK\I- Trouffcov TCOV a'XXcov, SGOCSI $tafjt.svovffa K. T. X. : Cic. De Fin. I. 7, 25; II. 15, 49; Lactant. Instit. III. 17. P. 203. a Comp. Diog. Laert. X. 37, 'the study of nature contri- butes more than anything else to the tranquillity and happiness of life' ; 98, 115, 116, 'apply yourself to the study of general principles, of the infinite, and of other questions of this kind'; 120, 135, TOVTO. ovv Koii rot. TOVTOH; ffvyysv?] jjisksra ^/aTravro? . . . KOI O^STTOTS ouV vnap OUT' ova/3 SiccTapax&yay: 142 144; Lucret. I. 6279 (Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret In terras oppressa gravi sub religione, Quae caput a coeli regionibus ostendebat etc., vers. 62, 63), 101 (Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum); 931, 932; IV. 6, 7 (artis Eeligionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo) ; II. 37 61 (Hunc igitur terrorem animi tene- brasque necesse est Non radii solis . . . Discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque); III. 14 17 (Nam simul ac ratio tua coepit vociferari Na- turam rerum . . . Diffugiunt animi terrores etc.), 25, 37 40, 87 93, 8281092; V. 8290, 11591638 (esp. vers. 11921195, genus infelix humanum, talia divis Cum tribuit facta atque iras adjunxit acer- bas, etc.), 12161223; VI. 979; Cic. De Fin. I. 63 (omnium rerum natura cognita levamur superstitione, liberamur mortis metu. etc.); IV. 5 (ut pellatur mortis et religionis metus); Virg. Greorg. II. 490 492 (Felix qui potuit etc., supra p. 60); Senec. De Benefic. IV. 19; Pint. Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, c. 8. P. 204. a Diog. Laert. X. 130132; comp. Cic. De Fin. I. 37, 'ut tollatur error omnis imperitorum, intelligaturque ea quae voluptaria, delicata, mollis habeatur disciplina, quam gravis, quam continens, quam severa sit'; 45; Tusc. V. 94. P. 204. b Diog. Laert. 1. c. 144; comp. 127, 130, 'everything which is natural is easily provided, and what is useless is not easily procured'; 144, 'he who is acquainted with the limits of life knows that which removes the pain arising from want, and renders life complete, is easily procurable; so that he has no need of those things which can only be obtained with trouble'; 149. P. 204. c Ibid. 11; comp. Senec. Epist. 18, 9, 'certos habebat dies ille magister voluptatis Epicurus, quibus maligne famem extingueret . . . et quidem gloriatur non toto asse pasci'. P. 204. d Juven. XIV. 316-320, Quantum, Epicure, tibi parvis suf- fecit in hortis etc. (Dryden: 'As much as made wise Epicurus blest, Who in small gardens spacious realms possesst'); comp. XIII. 122, 123, 'non Epicurum Suscipit exigui laetum plantaribus horti.' P. 205. a Lucret. II. 1423, 37 39 (Good's translation); comp. III. 1001 1008 (Deinde animi ingratam naturam pascere semper etc.) ; V. 47, 48 (where among the chief vices are reckoned 'luxus' and 'desidia'); 1115 1117 (Quod si quis vera vitam ratione gubernet, Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parve Aequo animo ; neque enim est unquam penuria NOTES [pp. 205, 206]. 65 parvi; 1118 1133; 1421 1433, especially the sweet idyllical picture vers. 13901409, likewise vers. 921 sqq. the description of the earlier and hardier generations, and the happy simplicity of their lives. We have quoted Lucretius throughout from the edition of Bemays (Lips. 1862). P. 205. b Dioff. Laert. 1. c. 130. P. 205. c Ibid. 128, nyv T^OV^V apxy v Ke " 1*5X05 Xs'yo//?v elvtxi TOU P. 205. d 'Aya^ov TTOCCTOV ira) ovyysviKov, ibid. 129; comp. 11, rqv ^ov^v sl'jat Ts'Xo^: 34, TTJV fJt.sv ijSov^v QIKSMV, rr t v s aXyiySova XXor^ov, 3/' a-v Kpbi&at rat; aipsvsic, KOI </>vys: Cic. De Fin. I. 29, 30,4054 (seeking pleasure and avoiding pain are axioms, which for men with sound natural instincts require no proof); Plut. Adv. Colot. c. 27. P. 205. e Comp. Lucret. II. 172, dux vitae, dia voluptas. P. 205. f Comp. Dioff. Laert. X. 128, 139; Lucret. II. 1719; Plut. Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, c. 3, KQIVW 'Eirinovpoi; rr,v jrav- rog toy Xyo5vro virsJjaipsaiv SITITS^SIKSV: esp. cc. 7, 8, 31; Cic. De Pin. I. 11, 37; Senec. Epist. 66, 45, 'apud Epicurum duo bona sunt, ex quibus summum illud beatumque componitur, ut corpus sine dolore sit, animus sine perturbatione.' Even some sections of the Epicureans them- selves, as the Annicereans, rejected Epicurus' sober notion of pleasure, calling it 'the condition of the dead' (Clem. Alex. II. p. 417 B, -nyv TOW Xyoyvro iTTS^aipsyty a&srouovv, viiepw Karajrajtv affo/caXoyvre^). P. 205. ^ The exoteric school of the Nyaya, regarding the world in reference to sensation, considers beatitude to be reached by the succes- sive departure of 'false notions, fault, activity, birth, and pain' (comp. J. R. Ballantyne, Christianity contrasted with Hindu Philosophy, p. xx); see infra. P. 206. a Senec. De Vit. Beat. cc. 12, 13, 'non aestimant, voluptas ilia Epicuri quam sobria ac sicca sit, ... ad parvum et exile revocatur, et quam nos virtuti legem dicimus, earn ille dicit voluptati'. P. 206. b Diog. Laert. X. 128131, 137, 138, 141 ('no pleasure is intrinsically bad; but the efficient causes of some pleasures bring with them many perturbations of the soul'), 142, 149 ('those desires which do not lead to pain if they are not satisfied, are not necessary; it is easy to impose silence on them when they appear difficult to gratify or likely to produce injury'); Senec. Epist. 85, 18 ('Epicurus quoque judicat, cum virtutem habeat, beatum esse . . . idem negat umquam virtutem esse sine voluptate; ita . . . et sola satis est'); Vit. Beat. c. 12, 3; De Otio, c. 7, 3; comp. Cic. De Pin. I. 32 36, 48, 55; also Hor. Epist. I. ii. 55, Sperne voluptates, nocet empta dolore voluptas. P. 206. c See Diog. Laert. IX. 45, re'Xoc %s slvat TTJV el^fiiav (said Democritus), ou ryv avrqv 080001 ry iJSov^, KO& rp yaXTjvoc^ KOU eara^w~ yj $vy7] Stayst, WTTO py^svot; TapaTTOftsvy $d/2ou K. r. X.: Senec. Epist. 67, 15, 'Occidor, sed fortiter: bene est; audi Epicurum, dicet, "dulce est"; ego tarn honestae rei ac severae numquam molle nomen imponam'; comp. 66 NOTES [pp. 206, 207]. Epist. 12, 11, 'perseverabo Epicurum tibi ingerere, ut . . . sciant, quae optima sunt, esse communia'; Cic. De Fin. I. 61. P. 206. d Diog. Laert. X. 118; Senec. Epist. 66, 18; 67, 15; Gic. Tusc. V. 26, 73; Pint. Non posse suaviter etc. c. 3. P. 207. a Diog. Laert. X. 22; comp. Cic. Tusc. II. 7, 19, 30, 17, 44, 96 98 ('neglige dolorem, inquit Epicurus : quis hoc dicit? idem qui dolorem summum malum; vix satis constanter', etc.); Sen. Epist. 33, 2 ('apud me Epicurus est et fortis, licet manuleatus sit'); 66, 47; 92, 25; Plut. Non posse suaviter etc. cc. 3, 16, 18; M. Aurel. IX. 41. P. 207. b Diog. Laert. X. 120, T% rs avr/T|=-ffW Senec. De Con- stant. Sapient, c. 15, 4; Cic. De Fin. I. 19, 63; Tusc. V. 9, 26, 27. P. 207. c Diog. Laert. X. 134, 135. P. 207. d Plut. Non posse suaviter etc. c. 4, o/ Kv/^vaiVco/, Ka'nzsp SK jjiiai; o/yo^oTj? 'EiriKovpcc KeiriaKOTsi;. P. 207. e lsai. XXII. 13; LVL 12; Luke XII. 19; 1 Cor. XV. 32. P. 207. f Hor. Od. IV. xii. 27, 28; comp. I. xi. 7, 'Carpe diem' etc.; xxvi. 1, 2, 'Musis amicus tristitiam et metus Tradam' etc.; II. xvi. 25 27, 'Laetus in praesens animus quod ultra est Oderit curare, et amara lento Temperet risu'; III. viii. 27, 28, 'Dona praesentis cape laetus horae. et Linque severa'; xxix. 41 43, 'Ille potens sui Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem Dixisse, Vixi'; Sat. II. vi. 96, 97; etc. P. 207. Hor. Epist. I. iv. 15, 16, 'Me pinguem et nitidum bene curata cute vises, Cum ridere voles Epicuri de grege porcum'; Od. I. xxxiv. 1 3, 'Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens, Insanientis dum sapientiae Consultus erro' etc. P. 207. h Comp. Epictet. Disp. I. 20; II. 20; III. 7. P. 207. i Comp. Cic. De Fin. I. 5, 13 sqq.j Tusc. III. 1521, 32 51; Plut. Adversus Coloten; Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum; and De occulte vivendo three treatises expressly directed against the Epicureans and throughout denouncing them for teaching a 'low and beastlike life' (Adv. Colot. c. 2, OTI Zyv aysvv&<; KOI ^ptw^oci; StiaaKovcrtv); for 'inciting men to incessant pleasures, not to virtue', since, in their opinion, virtue affords only empty, vain and fluctuating hopes of en- joyment' (ibid. c. 17; comp. c. 30; Non posse suaviter etc. cc. 2, 3); for 'banishing the pleasures of the mind' (ibid. cc. 9 13); for 'drawing down into the body the powers of thought by carnal lusts, as by leaden weights' (cc. 14, 16); for being utterly indifferent to honour and the safety of their country, since their highest good lies in the belly (c. 16); for caring nothing whatever about the prizes of a noble rivalry in the arts, the sciences, or public life, since they proclaimed the principle, 'Live in obscurity' (Xa&e/S/coja;,- cc. 16, 19; De occulte vivendo, passim) most of which assertions are either entirely unfounded or greatly exag- gerated (comp. Diog. Laert. x. 6; Cic. Tusc. III. 18, 41). NOTES [pp. 208, 209]. 67 P. 208. a Lucre*. II. 713, Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae etc. P. 208. b Diog. Laert. X. 135, CCOCTT? & & s ^ ev CCV^PWKOH;: Lucret. III. 320 322, 'Usque adeo naturarum vestigia linqui Parvola, quae ne- queant ratio depellere nobis, Ut nil impediat dignam dis degere vitam'; Senec. Epist. 25, 4. P. 208. c See supra p. 143; comp. Diog. Laert. 1. c. 121: the Epicureans distinguish two kinds of happiness such as that of the gods, which admits of no increase; and that which admits of the addition or diminution of pleasures; even the former is within the reach of the wise. Comp. Zeller, Philosophic der Griechen, III. 1. p. 427, 'Es ist die gleiche Unendlichkeit der auf sich selbst und ihr Denken be- schrankten Subjektivitat, welche beiden Systemen (the Stoic and the Epicurean) als gemeinsame Voraussetzung zu Grunde liegt, und beide haben diesen Gredanken unter derselben Form, an dem Ideal des Weisen, und grossentheils mit gleichen Ziigen ausgefiihrt' j see ibid. pp. 425 429. P. 208. d Comp. Lucret. II. 1 sqq. P. 208. e Lucret. V. 222 234, 'Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aequumst Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum' etc.; comp. II. 575 580; Plin. Nat. Hist. VII. 1; also c. 50 (51), 'incertum et fragile nimium est hoc munus naturae ... tot periculorum genera, tot morbi . . . totiens invocata morte ut nullum frequentius sit votum; natura vero nihil hominibus brevitate vitae praestitit melius'; c. 53 (54), 'mortes repentinae, hoc est summa vitae felicitas'; 56 (57), 'praecipuum naturae bonum mortem'. P. 208. f Lucret. II. 3, 'Non quia vexari quemquamst jucunda vo- luptas'. P. 209. a Supra p. 64; comp. Diog. Laert. X. 126, TO rfc W^ cWaorov . . . TroXu %s xsi'pwv next o Xsywv K. r. \.- Lucret. V. 987, dulcia lumina vitae. P. 209. b Comp. Lucret. Id. 1070 1074, 'Naturam primum studeat cognoscere rerum, Temporis aeterni quoniam, non unius horae, Ambigitur status' etc.; Senec. Epist. 8, 7, 'philosophiae servias oportet, ut tibi contingat vera libertas'. Epicunis himself wrote 37 books "on Nature" (Diog. Laert. X. 27, 28). P. 209. c Ibid. 6 (nadeiav %s naaav paKapioi <f>svysrs), 77 80, 85, 87, 118120; 'theoretical knowledge of astronomy is utterly useless as regards any influence it can have on happiness' ( 79); 'that which we have in view is not a set of systems and vain opinions, but much rather a life exempt from every kind of disquietude* ( 87); Cic. De Fin. I. 21, 71, 'nullam eruditionem esse duxit, nisi quae beatae vitae disciplinamjuvaret'; 72, 'vivendi artem tantam . . . et fructuosam'; n. 4, 12; Sext. Empir. Adv. Mathem. XI. 169, -n?v (/>/Xocro</uav eve 68 NOTES [pp. 209, 210]. stvat Xoyo/s KCU ^/aXoy/a/zo/V rov sL^at'fjLova /3/ov Trepiitoiovaav. Yet Epicurus was a most voluminous author, having composed more than three hundred original volumes, with hardly any quotation from another writer (Diog. Laert. 1. c. 26), though he was, perhaps justly, charged with a want of exact and systematic erudition (Cic. De Fin. I. 20, 26, 'vellem equidem aut ipse doctrinis fuisset instructior est enim . . . non satis politus iis artibus quas qui tenent eruditi appellantur' etc.; 71, 72; Seoct. Empir. Adv. Mathem. I. 1; Athen. XIII. 588 a, ey/ru/cX/cu nai%st'a$ apv-rjToi; wv; Plut. Non posse suaviter etc. cc. 11, 12); Athen. XIII. 53, o^v avrov KOCI 6 Ti/Jiuv fyrp} TpafjifjLo^i^acfKak^v avaycoyo'rarov Cwovrcov. Comp. Senec. Epist. 11, 8, 9 ; 25, 5; De Otio in. 2, 'Epicurus ait: Non accedet ad rempublicam sapiens nisi si quid intervenerit; Zeno ait: Accedet ad rempublicam, nisi si quid impedierit; Epictet. Disp. I. 23; in. ?. P. 209. d Lucret. V. 1196 1201, 'Nee pietas ullast velatum saepe videri Vertier ad lapidem . . . Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri'. P. 2!0. a Diog. Laert. 1. c. 98 ('the prognostics derived from the stars, like those inferred from animals, simply arise from coincidences'), 1 1 5 ('presages drawn from certain animals originate in a fortuitous com- bination of circumstances'), 119, 120, 133 135, rr t v Is siftappsv-riv . . M elvai, ... TO Be nap 7j/ji.u>y aSsWorov K. r. X.,- Senec. De Vit. Beat. 19, 1; Epist. 24, 22, 23, 'objurgat Epicurus non minus eos qui mortem concupiscunt quam eos qui timent' etc. . . . Lucret. II. 256 262, 'Libera per terras . . . fatis avolsa potestas' etc.; III. 7981, 'Et saepe usque adeo, mortis formidine, vitae Percipit humanos odium lucisque videndae'; V. 114145, 'Eeligione refrenatus ne forte rearis, Terras et solem et coelum . . . Corpore divino debere aetenia manere' etc.; VI. 374 386 (against auguries and divination); Plut. De Stoic. Repugn. c. 34. P. 210. b Diog. Laert. 1. c. 120, 121, 130, 140, 141; Lucret. HI. 5964, 74-77; Cic. Tusc. H. 12, 28; V. 31, 89; Senec. De Constant. c. 16, 1; Epist. 9, 20; 14, 17; 21, 7; 25, 4; Plut. Non posse suaviter etc. c. 15, TO sv jroisTv TJ^IQV sari TOW ndy^siv' comp. Acts XX. 35' Ael. Var. Hist. XIII. 13, eXsys %s (Ptolemaeus Lagi) aftetvov slvai TrXov- T/C/v 77 TrXoyre/v. P. 210. c Comp. Epictet. Disp. III. 7, Soy/iaT/Cwv ra ala%pa, TTO/WV rot. Kuka; comp. II. 20, avrot; spycc Ktxryyopov TWV eavrov ^oy^arcov: I. 23; Cic. De Fin. II. 25, 31, 'nihil in hac praeclara epistola (see supra p. 207) scriptum ab Epicuro congruens et conveniens decretis ejus reperietis; ita redarguitur ipse a sese convincunturque scripta ejus probitate ipsius et moribus'. P. 210. *Diog. Laert. X. 117, 118 (indulgence towards slaves), 121, 'he will propitiate an absolute ruler, when occasion requires, and will humour him for the sake of correcting his habits', and 'friendship NOTES [pp. 210, 211]. 69 is caused by our wants, but it must not be begun on our side' etc.; 'he will be ready even to die for a friend'; 148, etc.; Cic. De Fin. I. 65 70, 'nee hoc oratione solum sed multo magis vita et factis et moribus comprobant . . . quod fit etiam nunc ab Epicuraeis'; see in general ibid. I. 521, 1372; also II. 25, 80, 84, 'et ipse (Epicurus) bonus vir fuit et multi et fuerunt et hodie sunt et in ami- citiis fideles et in omni vita constantes et graves, nee voluptate sed officio consilia moderantes' ; Pint. Adv. Colot. cc. 8, 11, 13. P. 210. e Diog. Laert. X. 9, 10, etc.; Senec. Epist. 11, 8; 25, 5, 'sic fac omnia, tamquam spectet Epicurus' etc. ; comp. the enthusiastic praises bestowed on Epicurus by Lucretius (I. 6.279; III. 113, 1041, 1042; V. 154, 'dicendum est, deus ille fuit, deus' etc.; VI. 18); also Cic. De Fin. I. 20, 65; II. 25, 80; V. 1, 3, 'cujus (Epicuri) imaginem non modo in tabulis . . . sed etiam in poculis et in annulis habent'; Tusc. II. 19, 44; Pint. Adv. Colot. c. 17; Euseb. Praep. Evang. XIV. 5, 3, 4, oe 'EKtKovpeioi . . . jv win) /*ev w</&7?jav 'EiriKWptp svavTia ^s/Jisvoi ovSctfJL&g . . . "EotKS re rj 'ETTiKOiipw liarpi^ iro\t- TSIIX TIV} a\r^st ) ajraavaarora-n;, KOIVOV sva vo5v, fjn'av yvwjtojv fyway K. r. X. P. 210. f Lucret. V. 1239 1455 ('Praemia, delicias quoque vitae fun- ditus ornnis, Carmina, picturas, et daedala signa polire' etc. vers. 1448, 1449). It is difficult to understand how it was possible to impute to the Epicureans indifference to the fine arts and even contempt for their cultivation (comp. Cic. De Fin. I. 21, 72, 'an tempus . . . aut in poetis evolvendis in quibus . . . omnis puerilis est delectatio' etc.; and similarly many others up to our time). Epicurus teaches: 'The wise man surrounds himself with works of art, but is not annoyed if he is unable to do so' (Diog. Laert. X. 121, siKova$ TS avc&f,aeiv el e%oi, abiafopu; eeiv v py o^iti)'. which proves that not possessing treasures of art is felt by him as a privation to be borne with equanimity. Still more decisive is the grand work of Lucretius, which poets like Ovid, Dryden and Byron, and scholars like Causobon and Scaliger, ranked among the finest of poetical productions, and which could not possibly have been written unless artistic culture and encouragement had pre- vailed in the sect. Lucretius himself expresses more than once his pride and ambition to convey his doctrine, as a favourite of the Muses, 'in sweet-sounding verse'. P. 211. a Diog. Laert. X. 150 153, vyrepov %s OVK 7,v sn liKaia, Zrt pi) swtyeptv: comp. Cic. De Fin. I. 25, 'recta et honesta quae sint, ea facere ipsa per se laetitiam, id est, voluptatem*. P. 211. b Epict. Disp. III. 7, jrov^a iari ra Soy^cara, avarpaitriKa TroXeco^ Xy/zavT//ca of*v, ol$s yvvait Trpsirovra K. r. X. P. 211. Comp. e.g. Diog. Laert. 1. c. 152, 'From the moment that a thing declared just by the law is generally recognised as useful for the mutual relations of men, it becomes really just, whether it is universally egarded as such or not' etc. 70 NOTES [pp. 211, 212]. P. 211. d Philodem. De Rhet., quoted by Zeller 1. c. p. 408, M /*ovov ffwe/Sdrcov, aXXa KV Xav^avcojKsv K. -n X. P. 211. e Diog. Laert. X. 132, 138, 140, OVK earn ftfas Zyv avev TOW <f>povifj.w$ KOI /caXw KCU // K. T. X. ; conap. 144, 6 SiKaioi; arapa- tJTQTaTog, 6 S'aS/KO? irkeiuTy; Tapani; yspuv: Lucret. V. 18, 'At bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi'; 43, 44, 'At nisi purgatumst pectus, quae proelia nobis' etc.; Cic. De Fin. I. 50, 57, 62; Tusc. V. 9, 26; Ad Famil. XV. 19, where Cassius writes: 'T^OV^V vero et arapa&'av virtute,' justitia, TW /cXw parari et verum et probabile est . . . et ecqui a nobis <f>i\r;$ovoi vocantur sunt ^/Xo'/caXo/ et (f>i\o$iKaioi omnesque virtutes et colunt et retinent'; Senec. Epist. 85, 18; Epictet. Disp. I. 23, 'for upon this again Epicurus insists very strongly that we should admire and praise nothing that is detached from the essence of the good' (or/ oy $s7 ansairaap-avov ovtisv rijt; TOW ayo&ot/ ova/ OVTS ^>avfjc.a^etv OUT airo P. 212. a Spinoz. Epist. LX, 7, 'credo quod triangulum, siquidem loquendi haberet facultatem, eodem modo diceret, Deum eminenter trian- gularem esse, et circulus, divinam naturam eminenti ratione circularem esse: et hac ratione quilibet sua attributa Deo adscriberet, similemque se Deo redderet, reliquumque ei deforme videretur'. P. 212. b Comp. Zeller, Vortrage und Abhandlungen, I. pp. 10, 11. A Hindoo saying of the same import is thus rendered by Aufrecht (Bliithenlese aus Hindustan, p. 80): 'Wie der Mensch ist auch sein G-ott; Darum ward Gott so oft zum Spott'. P. 212. c Diog. Laert. X. 76, 77, 97, akeiTavp-^roi; liaTr l psia%u KOI sv ry itaay ficcKapioT-^ri: 123, TOV ^eov Cwov a^^apTov KOI paKapiov K. r. X.; 139; comp. Pint. De Stoic. Eepugn. c. 20. P. 212. d Senec. Lud. c. 8, 'EntKOVpeios &eo . . . OVTS avroi; np&yfJia s'xet ri OVTS a'XXo/j napey/ei; De Benef. IV. 4 ('quae maxima Epicuro fe- licitas videtur, nihil agit'), c. 19 (the whole of the remarkable chapter, 'Tu denique, Epicure, deum inermem facis . . . et ne cuiquam metuendus esset, projecisti ilium extra metum . . . Atqui hunc vis videri colere non aliter quam parentem grato, ut opinor, animo . . . Propter majestatem, inquis, ejus eximiam singularemque naturam . . . Nempe hoc facis nullo pretio inductus, nulla spe'); Cic. De Divin. II. 17, 40, 'nihil habens nee sui nee alieni negotii', and the whole section, 'Deos enim ipsos jocandi causa induxit Epicurus perlucidos et perflabiles' etc.; De Nat. Deor. I. 19, 20, 30, 'Epicurum . . . verbis reliquisse deos, re sustulisse'; c. 34, 9496. P. 212. e Lucret. I. 44 49, 'Omnis enim per se divum natura necessest Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur Semota ab nostris rebus sejunctaque longe . . . Nee bene promeritis capitur nee tangitur ira'; II. 646 651, 1093, 1094, 'Namproh sancta deum tranquilla pectora pace, Quae placidum degunt aevom vitamque serenam' etc.; in. 18 25; V. 8190, 146 154, 165 167, 'Quid enim immortalibus atque beatis Gratia nostra queat NOTES [pp. 212, 213]. 71 largirier emolument!, Ut nostra quicquam causa gerere adgrediantur' ? Hor. Sat. I. v. 101 103, 'Namque decs didici securum agere aevum; Nee si quid miri faciat natura' etc. P. 212. f Lucr. III. 1078, 1079, 'Nee nova vivendo procuditur ulla voluptas'; comp. V. 177, 178, 'donee retinebit blanda voluptas'; Euseb. Praep. Evang. I. 8, 9, Zn TO irav as} TO/OUTOV r,v Ktxl sarat TO/OUTOV, Zn o$ev f'vov airors'ksTTai sv rw TTOCVT) irapa TOV rj^rj ysysvyjisvov %pww aireipov. P. 212. Justly no doubt says Plutarch (De occulte Vivendo, c. 4): 'As the light not only makes men mutually distinguishable, but also useful, so popularity procures to the virtues not only fame but a sphere of usefulness'. To this, however, the Epicureans were not quite in- sensible; comp. Lucret. V. 895, 896, 'tuisque Praesidium'; Plut. Adv. Colot. c. 33; Non posse suaviter etc. c. 15 (above alluded to), TO tl nonTv yotov sari TOU Trao^s/y. P. 212. h Epictet. Disp. II. 20, orav avaipsTv ^s\y TIJV QvaiKyv KOtvwviav: comp. Senec. Epist. 68, 10, 'Otium, inquis, commendas mihi? Ad Epi- curaeas voces delaberis'; also Plin. Nat. Hist. XXIX. 4 or 19, 'lam quid em hortorum nomine in ipsa urbe delicias agros villasque possident; primus hoc instituit Athenis Epicurus, oti magister', etc.; Senec. De Brevit. Vit. 14, 2, 'cum Epicure quiescere'; De Otio 1, 4; De Benef. VI. 4. 1; Cic. Tusc. I. 15, 32, 'nemo umquam sine magna spe immortalitatis se pro patria offerret ad mortem'; Plut. Adv. Colot. cc. 3133, etc. P. 213. a Eccl. I. 4 10; III. 14, 15, etc. P. 213. b Comp. Cic. De Fin. I. 21, 72, 'aut se. ut Plato, in musicis, geometria, numeris, astris conteret, quae a falsis initiis profecta vera esse non possunt, et, si essent vera, nihil afferrent, quo jucundius, id est, quo melius viveremus'; Tusc. I. 23, 55, where the Epicureans are contemptu- ously designated 'plebeii philosophi'; De Divin. I. 30, 62. P. 213. c Diog. Laert. X. 31, 32, Kpirr,pia. rrjt; aX^siat; sJvat TJ aly^r,asi<; . . . KOI rag Kpo\r;$siz Kae T 7ra^>y. O/ J' 'EirtKOvpsioi, KOI rat; <f>avrasTiKa<; eirifo\ag TTJS liavoiai;: ibid. 'Every notion proceeds from the senses either directly or in consequence of some analogy or proportion or combination, reasoning always having a share in these operations'; comp. 146, 'If you resist all the senses, you will not even have any- thing left to which you can refer, or by which you may be able to judge of the falsehood of the senses which you condemn'; 50, 51, on the relation between judgment and evidence, TO s $ev$oi; KOU TO ir,[j.aprti- fjisvov sv TU irpw%oaZofJi8vw net SUTIV sTti[j.apTVpr^'ri<7e<j'sOU TJ [ty avrtftapTvpTt]- ^yasa'&cu K. T. X. Comp. Lucret. I. 690 700, 'sensus . . . unde omnia credita pendent' (694); IV. 476, 477, 'Invenies primis ab sensibus esse creatam Notitiam veri, neque sensus posse refelli'; 377 459 (ocular de- lusions admitted), 460 719 (yet the faith in the fidelity of the senses remains unshaken; 'Quae violare fidem quasi sensibus omnia quaerunt Nequiquam' etc.; see vers. 498 504; for arguing against the Academics, 72 NOTES [pp. 212214]. he observes, 'Denique nil sciri siquis putat, id quoque nescit, An sciri possit, quoniam nil scire fatetur', vers. 467, 468); 748, 749, 'quod mente videmus Atque oculis, simili fieri ratione necesse est'; also I. 304 (the general principle: 'Tangere enim et tangi, nisi corpus, nulla potest res') ; Cic. De Fin. I. 22, 64, 'quidquid animo cernimus, id omne oritur a sensibus' etc.; Pint. De Placit. Philos. IV. 8 13, 19; Advers. Colot. cc. 47, 25. Peculiar is Epicurus' conception, in substance borrowed from Democritus, of 'images' (TVTTOI, s"%w\<x, rerum simulacra, spectra) resembling in their form the solid bodies we see, but being surfaces without depth or of an extreme thinness; for 'from the solids there may emanate some particles which preserve the connection, disposition, and motion which they had in the body' ; the production of the images is constant and extremely rapid, being simultaneous with the thought (Diog. Laert. X. 46, 48) ; see this subject very fully treated in Lucret. IV. 26 253, 720819, where even 'simulacra meandi', enabling men to walk, are assumed (vers. 874 904); Cic. Ad Tamil. XV. 16; Qell. V. 16; Macrob. Saturn. VII. 14. Materialistically are also explained the causes of sight, hearing, and smelling: 'something passes from external objects into us, in order to produce in us sight and the knowledge of forms', etc. (Diog. Laert. X. 49 53; Lucret. VI. 921 934). For some objections against this doctrine of the senses see Zeller, Philosophic der Griechen, III. 1. pp. 366, 367. P. 214. a Diog. Laert. 1. c. 65, oaov nore ear/ TO auvrs2vov TWV aro/iwv jr\^og. P. 214. b Lucret. HI. 327, 328. P. 214. c Democritus asserted that the atoms of the soul correspond individually to the atoms of the body (comp. Lucr. III. 370 395) ; see, however, Cic. De Fin. I. 17, 21, Democritaea perpauca mutans, sed ita ut ea quae corrigere vult, mihi quidem depravare videatur; IV. 13. P. 214. d Diog. Laert. 1. c. 63 67, 'the soul is composed of atoms of the most perfect lightness and roundness, atoms wholly different from those of fire' ( 66); see Lucret. I. 112 116, 'Ignoratur enim quae sit natura animai' etc.; HI. 323358, 445473, 485545, 590612, 695 708, 767773, 798803; comp. Cic. Tusc. I. 11, 'Democritum . . . levibus et rotundis corpusculis efficientem animum concursu quodam fortuito . . . nihil est enim apud istos quod non atomorum turba con- ficiat'; c. 18, 'illam vero funditus ejiciamus individuorum corporum levium et rotundorum concursionem fortuitam, quam tamen Democritus concalefactam et spirabilem, id est animalem, esse vult'. P. 214. e The -theory of Lucretius is briefly this. Man has a mind or intellect (animus or mens), the ruler and governor of life (III. 94, 95), and a soul (anima) or vital power. The mind, which is not less an integral part of man himself than the hand or foot, resides 'in the middle portions of the breast' (III. 138 142, 'media regione in pecto- ris'); while the soul is distributed through the whole body, obeys and NOTES [pp. 214, 215]. 73 is moved according to the will and impulse of the mind (vers. 143 146). Both are corporeal, composed of particles, fine and 'exceedingly diminutive, smooth and round' (vers. 161176, 205), of air, heat, aura, and a fourth nameless substance, 'the soul of the soul', more active and more subtle than the rest, and mainly instrumental in distributing sen- sible motions through the members (vers. 320 232, 396 416; with respect to the fourth element : 'Nominis haec expers vis, facta minutis Corporibus, latet atque animae quasi totius ipsa Proporrost anima et dominatur corpore toto' etc.; vers. 270 280). Democritus considered vov; and ^v-^r, identical (Diog. Laert. IX. 44) ; see also Plut. De Placit. Philos. IV. 3 7. "With respect to the point under consideration, the difference between Stoics and Epicureans has well been thus stated: 'According to the Stoics it is the soul which keeps the body together; according to the Epicureans, it is the body which keeps the soul to- gether; the former, therefore, believe the soul to survive the body; the latter find this impossible; Stoicism regards the mind as the power that rules everything extraneous and hence also the body; Epicureanism places the mind on a level with the body, and then makes the one de- pendent on the other' (Zeller 1. c. p. 387): P. 214. f Diog. Laert. X. 124 126, 139, o ^avaro; o8*v irpog was, TO yap avaXu&Jv ava/a&Tjrer, TO $e avat^y/Tovv ovSsv irpo<; r,fJiai;\ 145, KOI oy^ev en Toy airetpw %pww itpoaebsrfa av: comp. Lucret. III. 828, 829, 'Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur'; 836840, 864, 865, 'scire licet nobis nil esse in morte timendum, Nee miserum fieri qui non est posse'; 898, 899, 'Illud in his rebus non addunt, nee tibi earum Jam desiderium rerum super insidet una'; die. De Fin. H. 31, 100, 101. P. 215. a Comp. Ballantyne, Christianity contrasted with Hindu Philosophy, pp. xxiii xxv. Gautama says: 'Desire, aversion, volition, pleasure, pain and knowledge are that whereby we recognise soul (atman)'. 'The criterion of the mind (manas) is the not arising of cognitions (in the soul) simultaneously'. 'The Hindoos believe', observes Colebrooke (Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindoos, 1858, p. 28) T 'that the soul, or conscious life, enters the body through the sagittal suture; lodges in the brain; and may contemplate, through the same opening, the divine perfections. Mind, or the reasoning faculty, is reckoned to be an organ of the body, situated in the heart' (comp. in general, ibid. pp. 165187). P. 215. b Comp. Colebrooke 1. c. pp. 143 164, 'absolute prevention of all three sorts of pain, as an aphorism of the Sanc'hya intimates, is the highest purpose of the soul'; Ballantyne 1. c. pp. xxvii xxx, 'Nature (prakriti) is the state of equipoise of goodness, passion, and darkness', etc. P. 215. c Comp. Colebrooke 1. c. p. 62, where, however, 'the multitude of souls' is differently explained: 'Birth, and death, and the instruments of life are allotted severally' etc. 74 NOTES [pp. 215, 216]. P. 215. d Comp. Lucret. IV. 820 854, where it is maintained that the limbs of the human body were not designed for definite uses, but that, being found useful for certain purposes as the eye for seeing, the foot for walking men employed them so; see Aristot. Phys. II. 8; Goethe, Gesprache mit Eckermann, TIT, 176, the ox has not horns, in order to defend himself, but he defends himself with the horns because he has them. P. 216. a Dwff. Laert. X. 76, 77, o^ev ly Kara ra$ ig apw<; eva- iro\fjipsi$ TCOV avffTpo(f>u>v TOVTCOV sv ry TOV KWJJLOV yavsasi, $s7 ^ofafe/v, KOI ri)v avay/ojv ravryv K<xi mpiobov (rvvTs\a7<&ai: 81, 82, 93, 'sun and moon and stars received originally, by appointment of Fate, an impulse from east to west, and now their movement continues in consequence of their heat;' 97, 'above all things let us not make the deity interpose here' (esp. in the eclipses of the sun and moon, etc.); Lucret. I. 1021 1028; V. 56 58, 'doceo dictis, quo quaeque creata Foedere sint' etc.; 81 90, 'Neve aliqua divom volvi ratione putemus'; 309, 310, 'Nee sanctum numen fati protollere fines Posse neque adversus naturae foedera niti'; 675 677, 'Namque ubi sic fuerunt causarum exordia prima, Atque ita res mundi cecidere ab origine prima . . . jam redeunt ex ordine certo'. P. 216. b Lucret. II. 1090 1092, 'natura videtur Libera continuo do- minis privata superbis, Ipse sua per se sponte omnia dis agere expers' ; III. 980, 981, 'Sed magis in vita divom metus urget inanis Mortalis' etc.; V. 87, 'Et dominos acres adsciscunt'; Diog. Laert. X. 27, 123, 124, 'there are gods, . . . but they are not such as the people in general consider them to be, ... and that man is not impious who rejects the gods be- lieved in by the many, but he who applies to the gods the opinions of the many' ; for people usually attribute to the gods all the good and all the evil that happens to them, 'because they always connect with the gods virtues resembling their own human qualities, while they regard everything else as incompatible with the divine nature'; comp. 10, riji; IJLSV fap Ttp^t; &sou OOVOTTJTO^ . . . a\sKTog y bic&suti;: 133, irsp} ^ecov oj/a Soa?e/v: 134, oi&ev yap araKTWi; &su irpaTTsrai. Comp. also Lucret. V. 146 155, 'Illud item non est ut possis credere, sedes Esse deum sanctas in mundi partibus ullis; Tenuis enim natura deum longeque remota Sensibus . . . Tangere enim non quit quod tangi non licet ip- sum'; Cic. Nat. Deor. I. 16, 41, 43, 115; Plut. Non posse suaviter etc. c. 21. Epicurus wrote books Hept ^scov and He pi oa/onyros, and he inferred the existence of the gods from the universality of the belief, which, he thought, proved a Kpfayipig derived from the apparition of the 'images'. Yet with respect to the immortality of the soul he assumed no such irpfaqifHg (comp. Zeller, 1. c. pp. .392400, and in general pp. 341434.) P. 216. c Comp. Cic. Nat. Deor. I. 8, 18; Plut. De Placit, Philos. II. 3, TOV KoajjLov . . . OUT l//^u^ov OUTS irpwoi'ct NOTES [pp. 216, 217]. 75 Advers. Colot. c. 8, 'he abolishes Providence, yet professes to re- tain piety'; cc. 14, 27; Non posse suaviter etc. c. 20. P. 216. d See supra p. 164. Unobjectionable are the plainly poetical metaphors and allegories of Lucretius (II. 598, 599, 'quam magna deum mater' etc.; 655 660, 'hie siquis mare Neptunum Cereremque vocare Constituit fruges' etc.; III. 976^-1021, where the legends of the sufferings of Tantalus and Sisyphus are thoughtfully interpreted as the tortures inflicted upon the living by vice and superstition). P. 216. e See Lucret. II. 165181; 1101 1104, 'Exercens telum, quod saepe nocentes Praeterit exanimatque indignos inque merentes'; V. 156 234, 195221, 'Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam Na- turam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa' etc. Comp. Orig. Contr. Gels. IV.. 23, 74 88, TO! av^ocoTTw (jtayKOWt iravra ireirotyKsvai K. r. X., 98, 99, 'not for man everything has been made, nor for the lion nor for the eagle nor the dolphin; but in order that this world might be perfect and com- plete as the work of God, all has been appointed, not for mutual pos- session, but rather as a well-organised production and the property of the whole' etc.; also Cic. Nat. Deor. n. 6164; Young, Night Thoughts, I, 'A part how small of the terraqueous globe Is tenanted by man ! The rest waste . . . Such is earth's melancholy map'! P. 217. a Comp. Lucret. I. 329399; 9541020. P. 217. b Lucret. I. 328, Corporibus caecis igitur natura gerit res; comp. V. 187194, 416 431. P. 217. c See supra p. 195. Comp. Diog. Laert. IX. 44; X. 38, 39, ol^sv yi'vsrai SK TOV [JLTJ ovrog, ouSs sit; TO {JLTJ ov t^tsipsrat: 'for were the fact otherwise', he continues, 'then everything would be produced from everything . . . And if that which disappeared were so absolutely des- troyed as to become non-existent, then everything would soon perish . . . But, in truth, the universal whole always was such as it now is, and always will be such'; Lucret. I. 149 211, 'Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam, Quippe ita formido mortalis continet omnes . . . Nam si de nilo fierent, ex omnibu' rebus Omne genus nasci posset, nil semine egeret' etc.; vers. 215 264, 'Hue accedit uti quicque in sua corpora rursum Dissolvat natura neque ad nilum interemat res . . . Haut igitur possunt ad nilum quaeque reverti'; vers. 538 sqq., 'Ergo si solida ac sine inani corpora prima Sunt ita uti docui, sint haec aeterna necessest' etc.; vers. 10211034, 'Nam certe neque consilio primordia rerum Ordine se suo quaeque sagaci mente locarunt' etc.; II. 1105 1143; VI. 387 395 (the innocent killed by lightning), 386422, 760768 (all phe- nomena have natural causes). The atoms are corporeal and solid, void of colour and indeed of all qualities except form, weight, and magnitude; unchangeable, impenetrable, invisible to us, infinite in number and very varied in shape, not infinitely divisible, of the least extent possible, yet not without extent (Itiog. Laert. X. 4145, 5459, 61;. Lucret. I. 504634, esp. 610627, 746758, 790797, 950954, 'solidissima 76 NOTES [p. 217]. material Corpora perpetuo volitare invicta per aevom'; II. 61 16 181 1022; VI. 485487; Cic. De Fin. I. 1720; Pint. De Pla Philos. I. 3, 9, 12, 18, rag ap%cc<; TUV ovrcov acojaara Xo'yw ^sw/JTjra, apa KSVOV, aysvvijTa K. r. X.; comp. also c. 4 (on the origin of the world), (plurality of worlds), 7 (gods and demons), 24 (no creation nor-tot annihilation), 25 (unalterable laws); II. 12 (worlds of different shapes V. 19 ('the Epicureans, who regard the world as uncreated, believe th living beings are produced from the transmutation of matter, and th nothing dies, but everything changes into something else of a differed form'); Advers. Colot. cc. 8, 12 (atoms and the vacuum; no creatic out of nothing), c. 13 (the universe boundless). P. 217. A Diog. Laert. X. 41, 42. P. 217. e Ibid. 45, 74; comp. Lucret. II. 10481089, 'Esse ali< alibi compressus material Qualis hie est' etc. (vers. 1065, 1066); 'Ess alios aliis terrarum in partibus orbis Et varias hominum gentis et saecl ferarum (vers. 1075, 1076). P. 217. Diog. Laert. X. 74, ov$a w s7v<zi ccTroKp&evTa airo TC amtpov K. T. X.,- Lucret. II. 865 1022, 'Nunc ea quae sentire videmu cumque necessest Ex insensilibus tamen omnia confiteare principii constare'; 991 998, 1150 1156, { quae (tellus) cuncta creavit Saecl deditque ferarum ingentia corpora partu . . . Sed genuit tellus eaden quae nunc alit ex se'; V. 780 833, espec. 804 812, 'Hoc ubi quaequ loci regio opportuna dabatur, Crescebant uteri terram radicibus apti etc. Linquitur ut merito maternum nomen adepta Terra sit, e terra quoniac sunt cuncta creata'. The production of perfect organisms by generate aequivoca, chiefly from the warm mud of the earth, was entertained als< by Parmenides, Diogenes of Apollonia, Democritus and Anaxagoras nay even by Aristotle, at least with respect to insects, some mollusc; and fishes. Diodorus of Sicily (I. 10) reports the allegations of the Egyptians that it was in their country that the first men were produced on account of its favourable climate and the peculiar qualities of the Nile. 'That from the beginning living creatures were generated in Egypt, this they endeavour to prove from experience: it is surprising, they say, to see how many and how large mice still originate in the Thebais at certain times; some of them are developed up to the breast and the forefeet, so that they are able to move, while the rest of the body is undeveloped and retains the nature of earth (JJ.SVQWVJI; en Kara ^vfftv rye /SwXou) . . . Even in our time, they maintain, we clearly per- ceive how, after an inundation of the Nile, when the water subsides and the mud begins to dry in the sun, animals are produced, some perfectly developed, others half-developed and still joined together with the earth' ; comp. ibid. c. 7 ; Aetian, Nat. Anim. II. 56, 'I hear that in the Thebais, after a hailstorm, mice appear which are partly still clay, and partly already flesh' (JJLV*;, wv TO psv irti\6<; SUTIV STI, TO e aa/jf 7^77), etc.; also VI. 46; PUn. Nat. Hist. IX. 57, 58 (or 83, 84), 'Verum omnibus his NOTES [pp. 217220]. fidem Nili inundatio adfert omnia excedente miraculo; quippe detegente eo musculi reperiuntur inchoate opere genitalis aquae terraeque, jam parte corporis viventes novissima effigie etiamnum terrena'; Censorin. De Die Natali, c. 4, 'Democrito Abderitae ex aqua limoque primum visum esse homines procreatos ; nee longe secus Epicurus . . . Zenon, principium humano generi ex novo mundo constitutum putavit, primosque homines ex solo adminiculo divini ignis, id est dei providentia genitos' ; Mishn. Chull. IX. 6, 'a mouse half flesh and half earth', HD"IN VSfPP "lEO Wl; Talm. Chull. 126 b , 127 a ; Sanhedr. 91 a , where a disbeliever in Immortality is bidden to go into the field and see how a mouse which is to-day half flesh and half earth, the very next day is entirely flesh ~i2O AD rwyy\ 'fnipn ino 1 ? HDIN yarn -itso van); on Mishn. Chull. IX. 6, 'the production of the mouse from the earth alone, so that one part consists of earth and another of flesh, is a well-known fact, and innumerable people (^nb 1DDD fN) nave seen i* and have as- sured me of it'. P. 217. % Diog. Laert. X. 73; comp. Lucret. II. 10021012, 'Nee sic interemit mors res, ut materiai Corpora conficiat, sed coetum dis- supat ollis; Inde aliis aliud conjungitur, et fit ut omnes Res ita con- vertant formas' etc.; Y. 64155, 235415, 'Scire licet coeli quoque item terraeque fuisse Principiale aliquod tempus clademque futuram' (vers. 245, 246). As regards the almost identical opinions of Democritus on nearly all these points, see Diog. Laert. IX. 44, 45, etc. Comp. also Origen. Contr. Gels. IV. 65, 69. P. 217. h See R. Keim, Celsus' Wahres Wort: Aelteste Streitschrift antiker Weltanschauung gegen das Christenthum vom Jahre 178 nach Christ, etc. Zurich, 1873. P. 218. a See Orig. Contr. Cels. VI. 1, pa\rmv aura irap "EXXiywv 8lpija>ai, KI X U P^"> avaJTaasco KOU eVayysX/a^ ryg TTO ^sov, 17 viov ^eou. P. 218. b The errors have been sufficiently dwelt upon by Cicero, Plutarch, and others; comp. Cic. De Fin. I. 6, Plut. Advers. Colot. cc. 8 10; etc. P. 220. a See Aristot. Phys. II. 8. This passage is indeed a remar- kable anticipation of the principle of the 'survival of the fittest': 'Those creatures, in the formation of which everything happened so as if it were made with a design, were preserved, since chance had formed them suitably; whereas those, which were not so formed, perished, as for instance, according to Empedocles, the bulls with human faces'. For Empedocles also is often numbered among the predecessors of Darwin, on account of his grotesque doctrine, that at first no complete organisms originated, but merely single and detached limbs, as heads without necks, arms without shoulders, till, 'impelled by love', they combined as chance happened to act; whence arose many monstrous creatures, as men with bulls' heads and bulls with men's heads, which, however, soon vanished, in order, after renewed rudimentary experiments, to make room 78 NOTES [pp. 220224]. to a second series of beings capable of living and propagating. The first who attempted to account for the variety of animals by trans- mutation was Anaximander of Milet, who supposed that men had at first the form of fishes, being enclosed in a kind of thorny bark, as the body of the butterfly is enclosed in the larva, or the tortoise in its shell, but that subsequently, when they were able to support themselves, they went ashore, their mail-like envelopment having burst asunder (comp. Plut. Qu. conv. VIII. 8 ; Placit. Philos. V..19; Censorin. De Die Natal. c. 4, 'Anaximander Milesius videri sibi ex aqua terraque calefactis exortos esse sive pisces seu piscibus similia animalia, in his homines concrevisse, fetusque ad pubertatem intus retentos tune demum ruptis illis viros mu- lieresque qui jam se alere possent processisse' ; etc. These singularities, like the similar eccentricities of Xenophanes of Colophon, do not even deserve the rank of an analogy to the scientific hypothesis of trans- * formation or evolution (comp. E. Zeller, Ueber die griechischen Vor- ganger Darwin's, 1878). See also Lucret. V. 854 856, 'Nam quae- cunque vides vesci vitalibus auris, Aut dolus aut virtus aut denique nobilitas est Ex ineunte aevo genus id tutata reservans' etc. P. 220. b Schopenhauer, "Works, ed. Frauenstadt, I. pp. xviii sqq. The .principle of natural selection was, in 1813, enunciated with perfect clearness by Dr. Wells, the originator of that theory of dew formation, which is now generally accepted; and later (before 1858) by Wallace and others. P. 220. c Comp. Eckermann, Gesprache mit Goethe, 1837, in. 339, 353; Goethe's Werke, XL. pp. 488526 (Trincipes de Philosophic Zoo- logique, discutes en Mars 1830 au sein de 1'Academie royale des Sciences par M. Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire'). P. 222. a Darwin (Descent of Man. 1871, I. 152) observes: 'I now admit that I probably attached too much to the action of natural selection or the survival of the fittest; I have altered the fifth edition of the "Origin of Species" so as to confine my remarks to adaptive changes of structure'; also p. 154, 'An unexplained residuum of change, perhaps a large one, must be left to the assumed uniform action of unknown agencies' etc. P. 222. b The regenerating breath of Darwinism has been felt especially by the sciences of zoology and botany, palaeontology, geology and physiology, and even by philosophy and the science of language. P. 224. a See Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871, passim. P. 224. b Comp. Haeckel, Vortrage, I. 8284. P. 224. c Comp. Haeckel, Studien iiber Moneren und andere Protisten, 1872; Perigenesis der Plastidule oder Wellenbewegung der Lebens- theilchen, ein Versuch zur mechanischen Erklarung der elemexitaren Entwickelungs-Vorgange, 1876; Tschermak, Die Einheit der Entwickelung in der Natur, 1876. P. 224. d Haeckel, Vortrage, I. 35. NOTES [pp. 225231]. 79 P. 225. a Comp. Haeckel, Bathybius und die Moneren; etc.; and, on the other hand, D. von Schutz, Das exacte "Wissen der Naturforscher. pp. 103111; Pagenstecher, Ueber die Thiere der Tiefsee, 1879, pp. 17, 20. P. 225. b See Commentary on Genesis, p. 35. P. 225. c Haeckel, Vortrage, I. 35; comp. Aug. Muller, Ueber die erste Enstehung organischer Wesen und deren Spaltung in Arten, 1869. P. 226. a So, e. g., by Wallace and, at least at first, by Darwin. P. 227. a Comp. O. von Linstoio, Kurzgefasste Uebersicht der Ent- wickelungsgeschichte der Menschen und Thiere, etc. 1878, pp. 76 78. P. 228. a Comp. C. G. Reuschle, Philosophic und Naturwissenschaft, pp. 89, 90. P. 229. a See Spence Hardy, Legends and Theories of Buddhists, p. 151. P. 229. b Comp. Darwin, Descent of Man, I. 12. P. 229. c All the numerous genera of animals found as fossils in the various strata of the earth, allow of an easy insertion in the system based upon the animals now living, and often fill up very important gaps in this system. P. 231. a The repetition is the more complete, the more fully, by constant inheritance, the original epitomising development (palingenesis) is preserved ; and it is the less complete, the more extensively, by varied adaptation, the later 'false development' (cenogenesis) is introduced. Comp. Haeckel, Generelle Morphologic der Organismen, Books V and VI; Natiirliche Schopfungsgeschichte, Lect. XII ; Studien zur Gastraea-Theorie^Populare Vortrage, n. 16. 28 30, 'the difference between a second-watch, the hand of which accomplishes its circular course within a minute, and a year-clock the hand of which completes the circle in 365 days, is not so great as the difference between the breathless rapidity of the on- togenesis and the scarcely perceptible advance of the phylogenesis'; pp. 83 96, 123 164; Corns Sterne, Werden und Vergehen, p. 447, who expresses the law thus: 'Every creature has, in its development, virtually to proceed on the same road which its ancestors gradually ac- complished; in this progress it may indeed occasionally, avoiding tortuous paths, take a short cut, yet it is on the whole unable to depart from the slow and long-paved roads'. This most important law was clearly pronounced as early as the beginning of the century, though naturalists failed to draw from it the obvious and grave conclusions. In 1812, Merkel wrote literally: 'The same succession of steps presented by the whole animal kingdom ... is also presented by each of the higher animals in its individual development, since, from the moment of its first origin to the period of its perfection, and both with respect to its inner and its outward organisation, it passes in every essential through all forms which appertain to the animals below it in the scale of organisms during their whole lives' (Joh. Friedr. Merkel, Handbuch 80 NOTES [pp. 231251]. der pathologischen Anatonrie, Leipzig 1812, I. 48; see Virchow, Menschen- und Affenschadel, p. 20; also Danvin, Descent of Man, I. 31 33). A similar view was expressed, even in 1759, by C. Fr. Wolff in his 'Theoria generationis'. P. 231. b Comp. Max Schasler, Ueber materialistische und idealistische Weltanschauung, pp. 30, 31. The general nature of Phylogenesis is sufficiently exhibited by the palaeontological remains; it may, therefore, with some confidence be taken as a basis of comparison with Ontogenesis ; and there is not, as has been objected, a logical fallacy in drawing an inference from the analogy of both. P. 232. a Dante, Paradiso, V. 79, 80, 'Be men, and not silly cattle, lest the Jew among you laugh at you'. P. 232. b Ennius ap. Cic. Nat. Deor. I. 35, 97. P. 234. a See Haeckel, Freie Wissenschaft und freie Lehre, pp. 70, 76; Die heutige Entwickelungslehre im Yerhaltniss zur Gesammt- wissenschaft, pp. 16, 24; etc. P. 234. b So, e. gr., Du Bois-Reynwnd, Culturgeschichte und Natur- wissenschaffc, p. 55: 'Der Darwinismus, dem ich sonst huldige, bleibe dem Gymnasium fern'. P. 236. a See Du Bois-Reymond, Culturgeschichte etc., p. 11; comp. ibid. pp. 12 19, dilating, with too great stress, on the deficiencies of the ancients in physical observation. P. 236. b Biot in Journal des Savants, Paris 1849, p. 500. P. 239. See Comm. on Genes, pp. 1929. P. 141. a Especially the Abasides, Samanides and Ghaznavides in the East, and the Omajads in the West. P. 241. b Comp. A. Dillmann, Der Verfall des Islam, pp. 4, 5. P. 243. a 'Nimmer labt ihn des Baumes Frucht, den er muhsam er- ziehet; Nur der Geschmack geniesst, was die Gelehrsamkeit pflanzt' (Schiller, Votivtafeln, Werke, 1838, I. 414). P. 248. a For instance, the remarkable laws in the diffusion of plants and animals, the conditions of the division of labour, the causes of alternate generation, the origin of the so-called rudimentary organs. P. 249. a 'Art lasst nicht von Art'. Comp. D. v. Schiltz, Das exacte Wissen der Naturforscher, pp. Ill 167. P. 250. a A. Sechi, L'unita delle forze fisiche, 1876. P. 250. b Dante, Paradiso, V. 82 84, 'Do not act like the lamb which leaves the milk of the mother, and, silly and wanton, for its mere pleasure fights against itself.' P. 250. c Especially the relative proportions of the parts of the body, the capacity of the lungs, the form of the skull, the convolutions of the brain, the colour of the skin, and the nature of the hair. P. 251. a The white, yellow, red, brown, and black races, i. e. the Caucasian, Mongolian, American, Malayan, and African. NOTES [pp. 251261]. 81 P. 251. b Dolichocephali and, Brachycephali, with the intermediate type of Mesocephali. P. 251. c Comp. Darwin, Descent of Man, I. 214236, 240 250. Darwin, admitting that 'fertility and sterility are not safe criterions of specific distinctness', and balancing the weight of argument on both sides, is inclined to regard the races of men as 'sub-species' (pp. 227, 228, 232), but justly considers the point 'almost a matter of indifference' (p. 235), since the definition of species or race is extremely vague. On the extinction of the races of man, see ibid. pp. 236240. P. 252. a Schiller, Wallenstein's Tod, II. 4 (Werke, 1838, IV. p. 241). 'Seid ihr nicht wie die Weiber, die bestandig Zuriick nur kommen auf ihr erstes Wort, Wenn man Vernunft gesprochen Stunden lang'? P. 255. a Goethe, Parabase (Werke, H. p. 290). P. 256. a Comp. Du Bois-Reymond, Darwin versus Galiani, 1876. P. 256. b Comp. Du Bois-Reymond, Ueber die Granzen des Natur- erkennens, 1872. P. 256. c Correct conjectures on this point have been made even by Aristarchus and Seleucus, who have therefore been called the Copernicus and Galilei of the ancients. Comp. Plut. Platonicae Quaestiones, 8 ; De Placit. Philosoph. II. 24. P. 257. a Comp. Maimon. Mor. Nev. in. 13, 'We must not believe that all beings exist for the sake of man, but, on the contrary, that all other beings were likewise created with a view to their own existence and not on account of something else'; and the whole of that chapter. P. 258. a We may distinguish a materialism in religion (opposed to theism), in philosophy (opposed to spiritualism or animism), in the physical world (opposed to teleology), in biology (opposed to vitalism), in ethics and art (opposed to idealism). A consistent materialism in all these spheres is rarely, if ever, upheld. Accurately speaking, there are two distinct pairs of opposites, viz. Kealism and Idealism, and Materialism and Spiri- tualism, the two latter being the one-sided extremes of the two former; but neither Realism and Materialism, nor Idealism and Spiritualism are always kept apart, since, as a matter of fact, there is scarcely a ma- terialist who is not virtually a realist, nor a spiritualist who does not start from idealism. P. 261. a Comp. Charles Martins, Du Spitzberg au Sahara etc. Paris 1866, p. 572. P. 261. {) 'Schadliche Wahrheit, ich ziehe sie vor dem niitzlichen Irrthum; Wahrheit heilet den Schmerz, den sie vielleicht uns erregt' (Goethe); in opposition to the maxim: 'Ein Wahn, der mich begliickt, 1st eine Wahrheit werth, Die mich zu Boden driickt'. P. 261. c In the celebrated Ormuzd-yast. for instance, he calls himself: he who is to be consulted; the assembler (i. e. he who created all living beings and gathered them on the earth); the diffuser (he who diffuses the Law and religion); the highest purity; the creator of all boons that F 82 NOTES [pp. 261269]. have a pure origin; reason and endowed with reason (who is capable of imparting intelligence to other beings also); and so on in twenty different appellations, besides many others of minor moment (comp. Spiegel, Avesta, III. 2834). P. 261. d Comp. Dosabhoy Framjee, The Parsees, p. 255, who after quoting with approval Anquetil du Perron's account of Zoroastrianism, adds: 'Ahriman should, however, be taken in an allegorical sense to denote the cause of the temptation under which man often falls into evil'. P. 262. a The astrologer's influence in a Parsee's house is still very considerable, especially in matrimonial matters; comp. Dosabhoy Framjee 1. c. pp. 64, 65, 7881, 'The men generally laugh at the absurdity of this stuff, but the condition of the Parsee females is not yet sufficiently advanced to make them conscious of its folly; the spread of education, now happily commenced, will soon purge away such superstitious trash from among them'. P. 262. b Comp Spiegel, Avesta, II. pp. iii li. P. 263. a Comp. Dosabhoy Framjee 1. c. pp. 257266. P. 263. b Yac.na XIX. 45, 47; Vendidad XVIII. 52, 'Do not turn from the three best things thinking well, speaking well, acting well; turn away from the three evil things thinking badly, speaking badly, acting badly'; etc. P. 264. a See Spiegel, Avesta, III. 185187. P. 264. b Spiegel I. c. pp. 187 189, where the three words are written Humata, HuJchta and Hvarsta. P. 264. c Comp. Khorda-Avesta, LI. 3. P. 265. a Spiegel, Khorda-Avesta, p. 8. P. 266. a Comp. Spiegel 1. c. pp. 19 21. The souls of the departed, the Parsees believe, are conducted to the bridge Cinvat; the good are allowed to pass over it and to enter into Paradise, while the wicked are kept back and thrown into hell. A full account of the entrance and reception of the pious in Paradise in given in Ven didad XIX. 89 107; though this was subsequently greatly enlarged and adorned. The older creed or confession of faith is given in Yagna XIII, XIV, 'I chase away the daevas; I declare to be a Zarathustrian, a persecutor of the daevas, a follower of the doctrine of Ahura' etc.; the later creed is that of Khorda-Avesta XL VI. 28, 'I believe in the purity and indubitable truth of the faith of Mazda-yac,na and in the creator Ormazd' etc. Obligatory also upon the pious is the acknowledgment of Ya$na XXX. 9 XXXI. 3, 'Observe the two perfect works, the holy Scriptures and the Tradition (Avesta and Zend), which Mazda has given to men' etc. P. 268. a Formica rufa and Formica rufescens. P. 269. a The vine-fretter, puceron, or plant-louse. P. 269. b For intance, the more extended division of labour prevailing among the 'leaf-bearing ants' in the forests of Brazils, or the completely NOTES [p. 269]. 83 military organisation of some, the lawlessly piratical habits of other species of the genus Eciton; etc. Comp. Walter Bates, The Na- turalist of the Amazons, 1865; Carl Vogrt, Untersuchungen iiber Thierstaaten ; and Vorlesungen iiber niitzliche und schadliche, verkannte und verlaumdete Thiere; Buchner, Aus dem Geistesleben der Thiere. Well known are the numerous remarks and statements of ancient writers on the wonderful operations of bees and ants. Aristotle calls these animals ffoXm*, and attributes fo them the most varied mental gifts and qualities, though, in comparison to man, only as tynj, eireppaTa and piWiJiaTa, a kind of Tta&iwv -rfkiKia; but he denies to them /3ouX*un/cov, vov$ and avdpyrpK; (comp. Arist. Animal. Hist. I. 1, 15, POV\SVTIKQV $s Qg tart TGCV ccv, Kai /jLvyftys ftev Kai $i$a%7]g ffoXXa /co/vv*r, $s oiSev aXXo Svvarat TrXjyv av'&punog: VIII. 1, 1, 2, wg yap e'v av^co/rw Ts%vir; Kai ao<j)ia Kai cvvseig, OVTU e'v evhig TUV Ccoav for! rig sTspa TOiavrq fyvaiKTj Suva/at? QavspwTaTov ^syrt TO TOIOVTOV eV/ TTJV TWV 7ret/3/cov ijkiKiav /SX/^aff/v, e'v TOVTOH; yap TWV f/.sv vvTepov eeuv suofisvwv SGTIV l^st'v oJov "%vri Kai yirepftctTa' Stafiepsi $w$sv wg SITTSIV TJ ^v^y rf,<; TWV ^tfjpiuv $v%T;g Kara. TOV XP VO * TO-JTOV K. T. X.; IX. 1, 1, evict %s KOIVWVSI Tivog ajjia Kai fJLa^aswg Kal $i$a<7Ka\iag K. T. X.; c. 8. 1, o\ug Se irspi Toug f$iw$ TCCV aXXcov Cwwv ?roXXa av ^eupij^reiri [tiftyfAaTa Tijg av^pwm'vT/g ^carjg). Not all authors were so thoughtfully discriminate in their estimate: Plutarch assigns to animals X6yo$, Xoyiypog, avvsaig, Sidvoia, ay^ivoia, aofiia, and fjLavTiKr, (Plut. De Solert. Anim. cc. 2, 5, /-t^e rd ^ypta \sywpev, slv repav (frpctve'i Kai KUKIOV SiavoeJTat, p-i] $iavos7a'&ai, fjL^s <f>pws7v oXco?, KSKTTj&ai X<xyov, da^syy $e Kai ^oXs^oov KeKTrjy'&ai K. T. X.; cc. 11, 12, 17, 22, nepi ^s/dnjTo? UVTUV Kai fJLavTiKr,g smufjisv: cc. 25, 33, 35 37. Comp. Virg. Georg. I. 186, 380; Aen. IV. 402407; Plin. Nat. Hist. XI. 520 (or 4 22), 30 (or 36), 'rem publicam habent apes, consilia privatim ac duces gregatim, et quod maxume mirum sit, mores habent' ; Aelian, Nat. Anim. IV. 53, elvaibe a\oya fjiev^&a, tfrvffiKijV $s e%siv dp&fj.riTiKyv JJ.TJ ^i^a^svTa: Plat. Sympos. c. 26, p. 207; Celsus ap. Orig. Contr. Gels. IV. 8188. With respect to the ants Plutarch (De Solert. Anim. c. 11) says: 'To describe the economy and thoughtfulness of the ants is impossible, .. . . for there exists in nature nothing so small that mirrors greater or nobler qualities, nay they show, as in a pure drop, the image of every virtue (o3ev yap WTU ftiKpov TJ <f)vvig e%ei pei&vwv KO.} /caXX/ovwv /caroTTTyOOV, aXX* &yirep e'v arayov/ Ka'&apSi nduyg evaariv dpsTrjg eitfyaaig). There are faith- ful attachment and sociability, fortitude and industry, and germs of temperance, prudence and justice in abundance'. The 'intelligent and pious' elephant also excited great admiration, and he was even believed 'to worship the gods' and to be 'beloved by them' (Ael. I. c. VII. 44, TOV TjX/ov v/a^ovT irpaaKwovyiv s\s(j)avTeg, Tag irpofioyKi^ag ev'&v -njg aKTwog wg %sipag dvaTsivovTsg, ev^ev TO; KO.} TU >eu (pikovvTai . . . eks(f>avTig fjisv ouv ^swg npoffKVvwaiv); comp. ibid. IV. 10 (at the new moon, the ele- phants lift up towards it fresh branches, and move them gently, o/ T ov 84 NOTES [pp. 269272]. tKtrrjpiav Ttva ravrr/v ry ^^w irporetvovTai;, Ijrep TOV Tkewv rs KOU slftery ny ^eov ys sJvai alroTi;) 24 ('the elephants understand the language of th< natives'); V. 49 (elephants attend to the burial of the dead, and praj to the gods when dangerously ill); X. 17 (their love of their nativ< country); XI. 15 (they avenge conjugal infidelity). Comp. Cic. De Nat Deor. I. 35; PUn. VIII. 1; Pint. De Solert. Anim. c. 17. The storl was the 'pious bird' (Hebr. PIT DPI; comp. PUn. X. 23 or 32; Ael. Nat Anim. IV. 23; X. 16; XI. 30; Pint. 1. c. c. 4). P. 269. c A definition of instinct recently formulated by Hartmani and others, and extensively adopted, is 'zweckmassiges Handeln ohn Bewusstsein'. P. 269. ^ 'The greatest gift which God in His bounty bestowed at th Creation, that which is most in accordance with His goodness an< which He prizes most highly, was liberty of will, with which the in telligent beings alone were and are endowed' (Dante, Paradise, "V 1924). P. 270. a Comp. Plat. Phaedrus, pp. 244, 245, Nvv $s ra psyHtTa, roc aya^-cov TjfJt.'iv yiyvsra $ia [Aaviag, &e/a ftsvTOi $oeei $i$oftsvy<; . . . Ipirf] I TTO Movawv Kcuroyy] ra Kcti fiervftt, Xa/3ouaa airokrjv KOU afitxrov tivxyv K. T. 5 See Bible Studies I, notes on Num. XXIII. 7 10. P. 270. b Comp. Darwin, Descent of Man, I. 4951. P. 270. c Spinoza already quotes the instance of a canis domesticu and a canis venaticus, which were by practice gradually so trained tha the former learnt to chase, and the latter restrained itself from the pursu: of hares (Spinoza, Ethic. V, Praef.). At present we possess a larg number of similar experiences. P. 270. d Comp. Darwin 1. c. I. 55, 'All the kinds of birds that hav the power of singing exert this power instinctively, but the actual song and even the call-notes, are learnt from their parents or foster-parents these sounds are no more innate than language is in man', etc. P. 272. a The bark of eagerness, of anger, of despair, of joy, and c demand or supplication. P. 272. b See Darwin, Descent of Man, I. 46, 54, and for a full con: parison of the mental powers of man and the lower animals, ibii pp. 34 106, 185213, 'If man had not been his own classifier, h would never have thought of founding a separate order for his own re ception' (p. 191). P. 272. c Huxley (Man's Place in Nature, p. 109) observes: 'I hav endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcatioi wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us i the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; an I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw psychical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest facultit of feeling and intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life Comp. also Virchow, Menschen- und Affenschadel, p. 5, 'If faculties an NOTES [pp. 272276]. 85 their development are considered, we should be far more justified in separating the ants from the group of insects, than man from the group of vertebrates'. P. 272. d Max Midler, Ueber die Kesultate der Sprachwissenschaft, Vorlesung gehalten zu Strassburg, 1872, pp. 28, 29, 'Ich bin iiberzeugt, dass die Sprachwissenschaft allein uns noch in Stand setzen wird, der Evolutionstheorie der Darwinianer ein entschiedenes Halt! entgegen zu rufen, und die Granze scharf zu ziehen, welche den Geist vom Stoff, den Menschen vom Thiere trennt'. P. 273. a Comp. Lucret. V. 10171053, at first speech was imperfect consisting merely of sounds and gestures ('Vocibus et gestu cum balbe significarent', ver. 1020); 'to suppose, therefore, that any one man as- signed names to things, and that men thence learned their first words, is to think absurdly' (desiperet, vers. 10391041). P. 274. a 'Not even from the fundamental forms of neighbouring and in a certain manner similar types, for instance, not even from the originals of the Arian and Shemitic languages, is it possible to construct a type that can be attributed to both as the common parent' (Schleicher, Die Darwinische Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft, 1873, pp. 24, 25). P. 275. a Viz. the isolating, monosyllabic, or radical: the agglutinating, connecting, or terminational: and the modifying, or inflectional. P. 275. b Comp. Schleicher 1. c. pp. 2831, 'the roots are, as it were, the simple language-cells yet unprovided with separate organs for the functions of verb, noun', etc. ; Kuhn und Schleicher, Beitrage zur ver- gleichenden Sprachwissenschaft; Steinthal, Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft, etc.; Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 53 62, 'it is assuredly an error to speak of any language as an art in the sense of its having been ela- borately and methodically formed' (p. 61); etc. P. 275. c Virchow, Menschen- und Affenschadel, 1870, p. 25; see infra p. 86 [P. 277]. P. 276. a See Naturforscher, I. 270. P. 276. b B. Davis, who disposed of the most extensive materials, sets down the average of European skulls at 1835 cubic centimetres, and that of Australian skulls at 1628, so that the difference between the maximum and the minimum in human crania is only 207 cubic centimetres, whereas the difference between Australians' and Gorillas' skulls is 1128, viz. 1628 500; comp. Huxley, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, pp. 76, 77, 'No human cranium belonging to an adult man has yet been observed with a less cubical capacity than 62 cubic inches, while, on the other hand, the most capacious Gorilla skull yet measured has a content of not more than 34 '/ 2 cubic inches'. P. 276. c Comp. Huxley 1. c. pp. 77, note, 78, 'an average European cliild of four years old has a brain twice as large as that of an adult Gorilla'; pp. 94 102, 'it may be doubted whether a healthy human adult brain ever weighed less than 31 or 32 ounces, or that the heaviest 86 NOTES [pp. 276, 277]. Gorilla brain has exceeded 20 ounces'; also Virchow, Menschen- und Affenschadel, p. 25, 'Of all the parts of the head, an ape's brain grows least . . . Even the largest ape retains a child's brain, though its jaws may equal those of an ox'; Darwin, Descent of Man, I. 10, 11, 145148. P. 276. d Comp. Huxley 1. c. p. 103; the proportions in the weight of the brain of the highest and the lowest men are 65 ounces to 32 ounces; and of the lowest man and the highest ape 32 ounces to 20 ounces. P. 277. a That is, those whose nostrils have a narrow partition and look downwards. P. 277. b That is, the hylobates and satyrus, the pongo troglodytes and pongo gorilla. The second group of true Apes are the Platyrrhinae or 'flat-nosed' apes found in the New World and including the howler ape, the capucine, and the tamarin. P. 277. c Comp. Huxley 1. c. pp. 84 94, 'the hind limb of the Gorilla is as truly terminated by a foot as that of man' (p. 91). P. 277. d See Huxley 1. c. pp. 65 (origin and early stages of em- bryonic development), 67 (later stages), 70, 73, 'In whatever proportion of its limbs the Gorilla differs from Man, the other Apes depart still more widely from the Gorilla'; pp. 7476 (on the Pelvis); pp. 78, 81, 84, (dentition), 84 94 (hand and foot), 100, 'So far from the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor, being structures peculiar to and characteristic of man, ... it is precisely these structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the apes: as to convolutions, the brains of the apes exhibit every stage of progress, from the almost smooth brain of the Marmoset to the Orang, and the Orang and the Chimpanzee, which fall but little below man'; p. 102 (cerebral structure in general), 103 (weight of brain), and ibid. the general conclusion stated in the text, and p. 104, 'the structural differences between Man and the Man-like Apes certainly justify our regarding him as constituting a family apart from them; though, in as much as he differs less from them than they do from other families of the same order, there can be no justification for placing him in a distinct order'. P. 277. e But see, on the other hand, Virchow, Menschen- und Affen- schadel, 1870. This lecture of the celebrated physiologist shows already a transition from his earlier and more determinately progressive period to that standpoint of uncertain wavering, which, to the deep regret of his greatest admirers, he has recently adopted (see infra passim); for after a full description of the cranium and the brain, he arrives, most unlogically, to the doubtful result above quoted (supra p. 275): yet after vaguely adding (p. 27) that 'we can at present not ascertain whether it will ever be possible to join together the species Man and the species Ape by actually demonstrating all intermediate links', he questionably NOTES [pp. 279282]. 87 declares (p. 33), that 'a real proof of Man's descent from the Ape has as yet not been supplied, as, for the establishment of this proposition, it is indispensable to point out a distinct species of Apes'. Such a de- mand can only be insisted upon by one who is resolved, under any condition, to reject the theory; for it is obvious that that primary species of Apes must be sought among the extinct species. Nevertheless, he then recommends Darwinism by some fluctuating concessions; it is in- deed, he says, still unproved in every point, but a single discovery in the tropics might change the whole aspect of the question; it is tacitly assumed by the Bible which derives the varied races from one couple, though nobody has .yet observed the change of one race into another, and we cannot decide whether the first man was white or a negro ; yet he admits that the establishment of a possible transition from species to species is a desideratum of science and so on in perplexed vacillation (pp. 3438). P. 279. a Comp. A. Weisbach, Eeise der osterreichischen Fregatte Novara um die Erde, 1867, Divis. II. p. 269: the measurements were carried out by Karl Scherzer and Eduard Schwarz. See also Darwin, Descent of Man, I. pp. 34, 104 106, 'the difference in mental power between the highest ape and the lowest savage is enormous; . . . never- theless, great as it is, it is certainly one of degree, not of kind'; pp. 196206; H. 386 405, 'He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation' (p. 386); Haeckel, Vortrage, I. 31 95; Car. Sterne, Werden und Vergehen, pp. 323341; etc. P. 280. a Comp. Virchow, Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft im modernen Staat, 1877, pp. 2931. P. 280. b Or Dolichocephalus. Of the first man Homo primigenius a recent naturalist gives the following hypothetical description: 'Like the Papua negro, he was probably distinguished by curly, woolly hair, and a dark-brown or blackish colour of the skin. The form of the skull was no doubt longheaded with slanting teeth; his arms lengthy and strong; his legs short and thin. His body was very likely much more fully haired than is the case with men at present; and his gait but half erect, the knees being bent'. P. 280. c Comp. Haeckel 1. c. p. 79, and passim. P. 282. a Goethe hardly prized any of his poetical productions so much as his discovery of the metamorphosis of plants and animals, of the os intermaxillare in men (i. e. of the small bone inserted between the two halves of the upper jaw and bearing the upper incisors), and of the vertebral theory of the skull. Nor was he less proud of his theory of colours which, though now proved to be faulty in the main question of the causes of prismatic colours, successfully elucidated many se- condary points (comp. Joh. Mutter, Handbuch der Physiologic des 88 NOTES [pp. 282291]. Menschen, II. 367 sqq.; see Virchow, Goethe als Naturforscher, pp. 6972). P. 282. b The same view is taken by Johannes Miiller, who remarks: 'Only by means of a plastic imagination working on the clear ideas of active change, Goethe discovered the metamorphosis of plants; and from the same source flowed his progress in comparative anatomy and his most refined and even artistic conception of this science' (Joh. Miiller, Ueber phantastische Gesichtserscheinungen, pp. 134 sqq,; Virchoio 1. c. pp. 73 75 and passim); see also H. Helmholtz, Die Thatsachen der AVahrnehmung, 1879, p. 44, 'Something of the poet's insight, of that insight which led Goethe and Leonardo da Vinci to great scientific ideas also, must ever be possessed by the true man of science. The latter, like the artist, aims at the discovery of new laws, however different their modes of operation'. P. 284. a 'Dass die alte Schwiegermutter Weisheit Das zarte Seelchen Ja nicht beleidige' (Goethe's Werke, 1840, II. 4649). P. 287. a Schiller, Werke, I. p. 428, ed. 1838, 'Feindschaft sei zwischen euch! Noch kommt das Biindniss zu friihe; "Wenn ihr im Suchen euch trennt, wird erst die "Wahrheit erkannt'. Comp. also H. Helmholtz, Die Thatsachen der Wahmehmung, 1879, p. 7, where the common problem is so formulated: 'Was ist Wahrheit in unserem Anschauen und Denken? in welchem Sinne entsprechen unsere Vorstellungen der Wirklichkeit' ? P. 287. b HacJcel, Vortrage, II. 21. P. 288. a Goethe's Faust, p. 78, ed. 1840. P. 290. a Schiller, Votivtafeln, 'Leben gab ihr die Fabel, die Schule hat sie entseelet, Schaffendes Leben aufs neu giebt die Vernunft ihr zuriick'. P. 290. b Comp. HaecJcel, Die heutige Entwickelungslehre im Ver- haltniss zur Gesammtwissenschaft, pp. 14, 15; Vortrage, II. 50. Those who are acquainted with the views of Giordano Bruno will readily ad- mit that a philosophic theory asserting the indissoluble unity of mind and matter, is certainly capable of high poetical beauty. According to that thinker the world-soul, which is the all-working principle, the form of forms, life-breathing nature, the parent of all things, shapes, in artistic creations, every form we see, and all motion is but the expression of an inner life, and of a mutual seeking and avoiding of kindred and hostile souls (see especially the works: 'Of the Causes, the Principle, and the One'; 'Of the Infinite, the Universe, and the Worlds'; 'Heroic Affections', Degli Eroici Furori). If modern Monism is not so ardent and enthu- siastic, it is no less earnest in the search for the living 'One' and 'Infinite'. P. 291. a The Lemurini, Cheiromyini, and Galeopithecini. P. 291. b Huxley, Man's Place in Nature, p. 105; comp. also p. Ill: 'Thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence man has sprung, the best NOTES [pp. 294297]. 89 evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discern in his long progress through the Past, a reasonable ground of faith in his future'; Darwin, Descent of Man, II. 405, 'Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen ... to the very summit of the organic scale, . . . and this . . . may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we must acknowledge that, with all his noble qualities, . . . with his god-like intellect, he still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin'; Virchow, Menschen- und Affenschadel, pp. 37, 38, 'Not as a new dogma but as a torch on the dark path of progressive research, the theory of evolution will bring us rich blessings'; and, 'Morally it affords doubtless a higher satisfaction to think that man, by his own labour, has raised himself from a state of savageness to civilisation and liberty, than to imagine that he, by his own guilt, has sunk from a godlike state of innocence into baseness and sin, from which his own power is unable to release him' ; Zeller, Vortrage und Abhandlungen, II. 57, and many other recent writers. P. 295. a Straws, Alter and Neuer Grlaube, p. 113. P. 295. b A. Sechi, L'unita delle forze fisiche, 1876. P. 296. 3 Pliny, Nat. Hist. II. 1, 'Mundum et hoc quodcumque nomine alio caelum appellare libuit, cujus circumflexu degunt cuncta, numen esse credi par est, aeternum, immensum, neque genitum neque interiturum umquam . . . Sacer est, aeternus, immensus, totus in toto, immo vero ipse totum, infinitus ac finite similis, omnium rerum certus et similis incerto, extra intra cuncta complexus in se idemque rerum naturae opus et rerum ipsa natura'. P. 297. a Even Plato, in his latest work, the Laws, adopts a similar theory, contrary to his earlier conceptions, in assuming, besides the good or godly soul of the world, a bad or ungodly one, to which alone the many imperfections in the world can be attributed (see Plat. Legg. X. pp. 896, Svo2V /lev ys TTOV sXarrov /JLTJ^SV rAco/iev, rr^ TS svepysriSo/; KOI rr t s ravavrta ^vvafJisvTjt; e^spyd^su^ai; pp. 898, 904.) P. 297. b Comp. Cic. Disp. Tusc. I. 28; Nat. Deor. H. 37, 'esse quem- quam qui sibi persuadeat . . . mundum effici ornatissimum et pulcherri- mum ex eorum corporum concursione fortuita? . . . Cur non idem putet, si innumerabiles unius et viginti formae literarum vel aureae, vel quales libet, aliquo conjiciantur, posse ex his in terram excussis annales Ennii, ut deinceps legi possint, effici'? etc.; c. 45; Xenoph. Memor. I. iv. 4 7, 11 14, OVKOVV %OK8i aoi 6 e'f dpxys ifotwv av&pwirov/; eV uHf>s\ei7. alroTi; K. r. X. . . . OVTCO ys GKOTrovpsvcp irdvv BQIKS ravra aofov rivo KOI (/i/XoCcoov TsyrrjfJiaTa K. r. X., Aristot. De Mundo, c. 6, Znep ev vyi KVJ3epvr;TT]G, ev apfjuzri e yvi'0%0; . . . TOVTO &ao$ s'v KCifffjLw K. r. X. P. 297. c Comp. also Kant, Was heisst sich im Denken orientiren? (Berliner Monatsschrift, Octob. 1786, pp. 312 sqq.). 'Ohne einen ver- standigen Urheber anzunehmen, lasst sich, ohne in lauter Ungereimtheiten zu verfallen, wenigstens kein verstandlicher Grrund von der Zweck- 90 NOTES [pp. 297, 298]. massigkeit und Ordnung, die man in so bewunderungswurdigem Grade allenthalben antrifft, angeben'. But, comp. on other hand, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 800 sqq.: 'Ordnung und Zweckmassigkeit in der Natur muss wiederum aus Naturgriinden und nach Naturgesetzen er- klart werden, und hier sind selbst die wildesten Hypothesen, wenn sie nur physisch sind, ertraglicher als eine hyperphysische, das ist die Berufung auf einen gottlichen Urheber, den man zu diesem Beruf voraussetzt', etc. P. 297. d "We may quote some of the older opinions on this point of design. Copernicus (De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Praef.) says: 'I began to be annoyed at seeing that philosophers had agreed upon no more certain principle in the motions of the machinery of a world produced by the best and most precise of all artificers' (ab optimo et regularissimo omnium opifice conditus); Kepler (Tertius interveniens, 1610; Opp. Omn. ed. Frisch, I. 619): 'Nature is fitted to keep order and proportion, which is the work of reason' ; Newton (Princip. ed. 2, p. 482) : 'All such regular movements in the solar system owe their beginning not to me- chanical causes; they could not arise without the design (consilium) of an intelligent Being'; Bacon (De Augment. Scient. III. 4), 'Natural philosophers could find no satisfactory result, unless they finally had recourse to God, and Providence' (nisi postremo ad Deum et providentiam confugerent) ; Leibniz (Opp. philos., instr. I. E. Erdmann, 1840, p. 106): 'The general principles even of physics and mechanics depend on the guidance of a supreme intelligence (d'une intelligence souveraine), and could not be explained without taking it into account'; Lap]ace (Ex- position du Systeme du Monde, 1818, p. 389), with reference to the solar system: 'We may wager four thousand milliards to one that such an arrangement is not the effect of chance ; ... we must, therefore, suppose, that a primary cause has determined the movements of planets'. Also Humboldt (Brief an Varnhagen von Ense), 'Nature, like the history of man, is an harmonious universe, upheld by one Spirit, determind by Di- vine forces and well-designed laws'. P. 298. a Let one illustration suffice. If the mammals, it is pointed out, after the completed segmentation of the yelk, laid their eggs like the birds, these eggs would, on account of their minuteness, be lost by the mother; it is, therefore, expedient that they should be developed to maturity in the maternal womb. If, on the other hand, the young birds developed themselves in the mother's body, they would by their heaviness impede her in flying; it is, therefore, expedient, that birds should lay their eggs. Many similar instances confounding cause and design are constantly quoted (comp. 0. von Linstow., Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschen und Thiere, pp. 108 110; H. Werner, Die Zweckmassigkeit in der Natur, 1878, pp. 10 27). P. 298. b Comp. Lucret. II. 10581063, 'Cum praesertim hie (viz. terrarum orbis) sit natura factus, et ipsa Sponte sua forte offensando ut semina rerum Multimodis temere in cassum frustraque coacta Tandem NOTES [p. 298], 91 .coluerunt' etc.; 834851, 'Multaque turn tellus etiam portenta creare Conatast' etc.; Pint. De Placit. Philos. V. 19 (the views of Anaxi- mander and Empedocles, see supra, Notes pp. 77, 78). Comp. also Darwin, Descent of Man, I. 17 31, where many rudimentary and useless organs in men and animals are enumerated; also p. 153, 'That all organic beings, including man, present many modifications of structure which are of no service to them at present, nor have been formerly, is, I can now see, probable'. It is well known that occasionally animals develope eyes in parts of the body which do not commonly bear them: some snails, the onchidia, have many additional eyes in the back; many conchifera which, with their heads, have lost their eyes, obtain, in compensation, numerous fine green eyes at the exterior border of the large mantle-like skin-fold of the back; several worms, as the fabricia, have an extra pair of eyes in the tail, and others, as the polyophthalmis, possess a pair of eyes in each limb. These facts are taken by the naturalist, no doubt justly, as proofs of an unconscious adaptation to extraneous conditions of life, or as 'the spontaneous products of natural selection in the struggle for life' (Haeckel, Vortrage, II. 161, 162). Yet he would find it difficult to refute the theologian who insists upon these remarkable facts as testi- monies of an all-pervading and pre-conceived plan of creation. It is for this reason probably that Attinghausen refrained from referring to them in his reply to Humphrey. "With greater confidence he might have pointed to the high authority of Helmholtz, who considers the structure of the human eye in many respects as very imperfect, and has observed that 'if an artisan were to deliver to him an optical instrument of such defectiveness as the human eye, he would feel compelled to return it to him' (comp. Car. Sterne, Werden und Vergehen, pp. 338, 339.) Yet, with a prudent reserve of which Attinghausen, in spite of his apparent impulsiveness, occasionally gave surprising proofs, he refrained from raising a discussion the result of which, for his argument, would at best have been in no proportion to its probable vehemence, since the absolute per- fection or fitness of the human organs and especially the eye is an al- most universal dogma (comp. Haeckel 1. c. pp. 123 164, 'Ueber Ur- sprung und Entwickelung der Sinneswerkzeuge'). Many apologetic justifications of the rudimentary organs and other questionable phenomena have been attempted ; see, e. g., H. Werner, Die Zweckmassigkeit in der Natur, pp. 28 35; and on the eye, which he calls Undoubtedly one of the greatest wonders of nature', ibid. pp. 24, 25; comp. also A. v. Qraefe, Sehen und Sehorgan, Vortrag, 1879, p. 44, where the celebrated oculist calls the human eye 'a jewel in creation', especially on account of 'the completeness of its structure', 'the perfection of the means employed for securing the great object', and 'the crystal clearness of its parts'; yet he declines being 'a blind eulogist of nature', and acknowledges that 'the crystal lens is not free from optical irregularities', besides admitting some other smaller defects of structure (pp. 28, 37). 92 NOTES [pp. 299302]. P. 299. a Determined utterances like the following of Moses Mendels- sohn, are frequent in the writings of Jewish and Christian theologians: 'As in the physical world disorders in the parts hurricanes, tempests, earthquakes, or pestilence, dissolve themselves into perfections of the immeasurable whole; thus in the moral world, in the destinies and ex- periences of social man, all temporal defects are subservient to eternal perfections, and sufferings themselves are transformed into mere exercises indispensable for salvation' (Mendelssohn, G-esammelte Schriften, 1843, II. 184). P. 300. a Comp. Cicer. Nat. Deor. II. 14, 45, 'scito . . . omnia alioram causa esse generata ; ut eas fruges atque fructus quos terra gignit animan- tium causa, animantes autem hominum' etc. Interesting both on ac- count of the true and the doubtful views they contain are the following lines of Goethe : 'Zweck sein selbst ist jegliches Thier, vollkommen ent- springt es Aus dem Schooss der Natur und zeugt vollkommene Kinder. Alle Glieder bilden sich aus nach ew'gen Gesetzen, Und die seltenste Form bewahrt im Geheimen das Urbild' (Metamorphose der Thiere; Werke, II. p. 294). Comp. also (Werke, XXXVI. p. 280) : 'Wir denken uns das abgeschlossene Thier als eine kleine Welt, die um ihrer selbst willen und durch sich selbst da ist' ; Eckermann, Gesprache mit Goethe, 1837, I. 353: like Kant, he does not believe 'that the cork-tree grows merely to supply us with corks for our bottles' (expressed by Goethe also in the distich: 'Welche Verehrung verdient der Weltenschopfer, der gnadig, Als er den Korkbaum schuf, gleich auch die Stopsel erfand'); espec. II. 176, 'Man regards himself as the object of the world . . . and when he devours other creatures, he acknowledges his God and praises a bounty that has so paternally provided for him . . . But I adore Him who has endowed the world with such power of generation that, if only the millionth part is called into life, the world teems with creatures, and is armed against warfare, pestilence, flood, and fire. This is my God'. P. 301. a Comp. H. Werner 1. c. pp. 3236. P. 302. a Comp. I. Anselmus Cant., Monologium de Divinitatis essentia, cc. 1 5; Proslogium s. alloquium de Dei existentia, cc. 2, 3 ('at certe bonum id, quo majus cogitari nequit, non potest esse in intellectu solo; si enim quo majus cogitari non potest, in solo intellectu foret, utique eo, quo majus cogitari non poteet, majus cogitari possit, scilicet id quod sit etiam in re', etc. Cartes. Meditatt. de prima philosoph. Medit. 3,5; Mos. Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, oder Vorlesungen iiber das Daseyn Gottes; Hegel, Encyclop. 193 (third ed.); see Fortlage, Darstellung und Kritik der Beweise furs Dasein Gottes, 1840, pp. 13 152. II. Jo. Damascen. De orthod. fide I. 3; Ch. Wolf, De Methodo exist. Dei ex ordine naturae demonstrandi, 1730; Garve, Beweis fur Gottes Daseyn; also Thorn. Aquin. Summa Theol. P. I, Qu. 2, Art. 3, 'Omne quod movetur ab alio movetur' etc.; Leibniz, Opp. ed. Dutens, II. 1. NOTES [pp. 302304]. 93 p. 343, 'Corpus movetur, ergo datur aliquid movens'; see Fortlage 1. c. pp. 153 200. III. W. Derham, Physico-Theology, and Astro-Theology, 1714, 1715; J. Bay, The Wisdom of God in the works of Creation, 1714; Gh. Wolf, Verniinftige Gedanken von den Absichten natiirlicher Dinge, 1723; Jerusalem, Betrachtungen iiber die vornehmsten Wahr- heiten der Religion; especially, Paley, Natural Theology (with Notes by Lord Brougham and Ch. Bell); Brougham, Discourse on Natural Theology; see Fortlage 1. c. pp. 201 330; ibid. pp. 217 236, a sum- mary of Paley's illustrations, and pp. 240 242, objections raised against them. IV. J. Kant, Einzig moglicher Beweisgrund zu einer Demon- stration fur das Daseyn Gottes, 1763; also in Kritik der reinen Ver- nunft, and der Urtheilskraft, 87 and passim; and die Eeligion inner- halb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Preface; Tief trunk, De argumento ex ethico-theologia ad existentiam Dei, 1794. A model of Scholastic playfulness is a proof put forward by Augustine, Anselmus, Duns Scotus, and others, and thus formulated by Thomas Aquinas (1. c. 3): 'Qui negat veritatem esse, concedit veritatem non esse; si enim veritas non est, verum est, veritatem non esse; si autem est aliquid verum, oportet quod veritas sit; Deus autem est ipsa veritas; ergo Deum esse est per se notum'. See Fortlage 1. c. pp. 349 364; and the aesthetic proofs, ibid. pp. 332348. P. 302. b Darwin, Descent of Man, H. 394. P. 302. c Similarly H. Werner, Die Zweckmassigkeit in der Natur, 1878, pp. 27, 28. P. 303. a Nigaristan, or The qualities of the Dervishes, in Hammer, Fundgruben des Orients, II. 107. P. 303. b Comp. C. G. Beuschle, Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft, 1874, pp. 97 119. P. 303. c 'Das gesetzmassige, lebens- und vernunftvolle All'. P. 303. d Strauss, Alter und Neuer Glaube, p. 139, 'Die furchtbaren Kampfe, die wir in der Welt wahrnehmen, dienen grade dazu, den Bestand und den Einklang des Ganzen zu erhalten; und iiberall, sowohl in der Natur wie im Menschen, finden wir einen regelmassigen, ununter- brochenen Stufengang von dem Niedrigen zum Hohern'. P. 304. a Ibid. p. 143, 'It seems audacious and impious (vermessen und ruchlos) on the part of an individual human being to oppose himself so insolently to the Universe from which he arises and to which he owes the trifling share of intelligence he abuses'. P. 304. b Ibid. p. 140, 'nicht mehr angelegt von einer hochsten Ver- nunft, aber angelegt auf die hochste Vernunft'. P. 304. c Compare an analogous theory of Zeller (Vortrage und Ab- handlungen, II. 527550, also pp. 11 23): the world, he says, is not created (entstanden); we can, therefore, not ask at all whether it was created mechanically or teleologically; this distinction applies only to the individual parts of the world, which alone have been formed (die 94 NOTES [pp. 304312]. allein geworden sind), not to the world as a whole. This must, just on account of the laws of necessity that pervade it, be regarded at the same time as the work of Absolute Reason, which, from its nature, can only produce the perfect, although its operations are not guided by teleological designs. 'We are therefore entitled to speak, with Kant and Hegel, of an inner or immanent fitness of the world, and to describe by this term the absolute necessity and perfection of its productions'. It is difficult to see how the whole can be considered separate from its parts, and how the one can be perfect, when the others are essentially imperfect. P. 305. a See Voltaire in Dictionnaire philosophique, Art. Atheisme; Abel Remusat, Foue Koue Ki, p. 138; Saint-Hilaire, Le Bouddhisme, pp. 178 180. P. 306. a Comp. Darwin, Descent of Man, I. 65; II. 394, 395, 'Nu- merous races still exist who have no idea of one or more gods' etc. On the other hand, the supposed universal agreement of mankind in believing in a God has by ancient writers been frequently adduced as a weighty argument for His existence; see Bible Studies, II. 308. 309. P. 307. a Dante, Paradise, V. 6466. 'Let mortals make no jest of the vow that binds them; be faithful'! 'And in engaging yourselves, be not blind like Jephthah at his first offering'. P. 308. a Comp. Lucret. V. 247323, 'Assidue quoniam fluere omnia constat' (ver. 280, i. e. there is an incessant consumption and replacement of particles and force), 825 830, 'Mutat enim mundi naturam totius aetas, Ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet, Nee manet ulla sui similis res, omnia migrant, Omnia commutat natura et vertere cogit' etc.; see Plato, Cratyl. c. XIX, p. 402 A, \eysi TTOU 'HpaK^siTog or; navTK %Wps7 KOU OV^SV fJLSVSl KOU TTOTOCfJiQV pOT] KTTSlKOi^WV TO. OVTCt K. T. X. ; COmp. M. Aurel. II. 17; VI. 36; IX. 9, 21; X. 7; XII. 23. P. 310. a Goethe, Werke, 1840, I. 9698. Goethe has expressed the same ideas in many other forms, both in verse and in prose; as the burden of all may be taken the lines: 'Das Ew'ge regt sich fort in alien: Denn alles muss in Nichts zerfallen, Wenn es im Sein beharren will' (Eins und Alles; Werke, II. p. 288). P. 311. a This result of modern geology, established by Lyell, has already been stated by some of the ancient philosophers, as Anaxagoras and the Pythagorean Ocellus. P. 311. b Compare the lines of Goethe: 'Miisset im Naturbetrachten Immer eins wie alles achten; Nichts ist drinnen, nichts ist draussen: denn was drinnen, das ist aussen'. (Epirrhema; Goethe's Werke, II. 293); or : 'Natur hat weder Kern noch Schale, Alles ist sie mit einemmale' (Allerdings; ibid. p. 304). P. 311. c Comp. Haeckel, Vortrage, I. 168178. P. 312. a Compare Schmick, Ein Wissen fur ein Glauben, pp, 8284. NOTES [pp. 313317]. 95 P. 313. a Comp. I. H. Fichte, Anthropologie; Schmick 1. c. pp. 71 85, etc. See also Plato, Sympos. c. 26, p. 207 D, E, eV iratlaptw 6 a-lrc; \e-fsrai ew$ v icpsafivTr^ ysvyTtxr oJro? pavrot otisrrors ra aira e^ecv e'v avrw o/ito^ o alroi; Ka\s"trat, aXXa v/0 asl ytyvoftsvot;, TO. $s affoXXv?, KO.} Kara rat; Tpi%a$ KO.} aapKa no.} oara KOC} dtpa KCXI ^vfJLirav TO KUfta.' Kai fiij In Ka.ro. TO acedia, aXXa KO,\ Ka.ro. rr]v ^ux^v o/" T/joVo/, T 77^17 /r. T. X. P. 314. a On the remarkable faculty of memory much that is interesting has been written in ancient and modern times; for instance most elo- quently by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. I. 24, 25, 'an imprimi quasi ceram ani- mum putamus et esse memoriam signatarum rerum in mente vestigia?'); comp. Sext. Empir. Adv. Mathem. VII. 228, TJnnurt* Kara eiuo^v re KOI e'fo^Jyv, uairsp Kat B/a ruv TOW Kypw rimwyrj. P. 315. a Brotcninff, La Saisiaz, p. 36; comp. JwZ. Rob. Maier, in J). von Schutz, Das exacte Wissen der Naturforscher, 1878, pp. 213, 214; H. Schmick 1. c. p. 56; also Cicer. Tusc. Disp. I. 20, 'ut facile intelligi possit, animum et videre et audire, non eas partes, quae quasi fenestrae sint animi, quibus tamen sentire nihil queat mens, nisi id agat et adsit'. etc. P. 315. b Darwin, Descent of Man, I. 3; comp., however, ibid. p. 36, 'In what manner the mental powers are first developed in the lowest organisms, is as hopeless an enquiry as how life first originated: these are problems for the distant future, if they are ever to be solved by man'. P. 316. a Darwin, Descent of Man, I. 145. P. 317. a Virchow, Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft im modernen Staat, p. 27. P. 317. b The exceptions alluded to are propagation by means of parthenogenesis, direct self-division, bud-formation change of generation (as medusa and polype), etc.; but they are very numerous. P. 317. c Comp. Darwin, The Variation of animals and plants under Domestication, vol. II.; Haeckel, Vortrage, II. 34 sqq., esp. pp. 72 74, 'Ueber die Wellenzeugung der Lebenstheilchen, oder die Perigenesis der Plastidule'. The violence of the antagonism is exaggerated by Humphrey, as either hypothesis professes to be no more than 'provisional': other theories, as that of Elsberg, combine features of both. Comp. also Professor Allman's Inaugural Address as President of the British As- sociation, read in Sheffield, August 20, 1879. We think it right to ob- serve that the chapter on Soul was in the press before Professor All- man's Address was delivered. As we were, therefore, unable to avail ourselves of bis excellent exposition, we quote in this place a few salient passages proving that he inclines to the cautiousness of Virchow, rather than to the bold generalisations of Attinghausen, yet also to the fluctua- tions of the former. 'We must go back to protoplasm as a naked formless plasma if we would find freed from all non-essential complications the 96 NOTES [pp. 317, 318]. agent to which has been assigned the duty of building up structure and of transforming the energy of lifeless matter into that of the living. To suppose, however, that all protoplasm is identical where no difference cognisable by any means at our disposal can be detected would be an error. Of two particles of protoplasm . . . one can develope only to a jelly-fish, the other only to a man; and the fundamental difference . . . must depend on their hidden molecular constitution . . . The essential phenomena of living beings are not so widely separated from the phe- nomena of lifeless matter as to render it impossible to recognise an analogy between them ... It is quite true that between lifeless and living matter there is a vast difference; ... no one has ever yet built up one particle of living matter out of lifeless elements . . . Yet with all this, . . . there is nothing which precludes a comparison of the pro- perties of living matter with those of lifeless. However, . . . between thought and the physical phenomena of matter there is not only no analogy, but there is no conceivable analogy, and the obvious and con- tinuous path . . . here comes suddenly to an end. The chasm between unconscious life and thought is deep and impassable, and no transitional phenomena can be found by which, as by a bridge, we may span it over . . . But even admitting that every living cell were a conscious and thinking being, are we therefore justified in asserting that its con- sciousness, like its irritability, is a property of the matter of which it is composed? That consciousness is never manifested except in the presence of cerebral matter, or of something like it, there cannot be a question; but this is a very different thing from its being a property of such matter in the sense in which polarity is a property of the magnet, or irritability of protoplasm . . . But have we made in all this one step forward towards an explanation of the phenomena of consciousness or the discovery of its source? Assuredly not. The power of conceiving of a substance different from that of matter is still beyond the limits of human intelligence . . . We are not, however, on that account forced to the conclusion that there is nothing in the universe but matter and force'. These sentences will sufficiently exhibit Dr. Allman's standpoint, both his truly scientific method and his hesitation in consistently ap- plying it. P. 318. a Thus literally Virchow 1. c. p. 12, 'Stellen Sie sich einmal vor, wie sich die Descendenztheorie im Kopfe eines Socialisten dar- stellt' etc.; comp. also H. Ahrens, Die Abwege in der neuen deutschen G-eistesentwickelung etc. 1873, pp. 42, 53: 'The three ideas God, Liberty, and Immortality are the tests of every system of philosophy ; ... in the curriculum of education, it will above all be necessary to prevent any doctrine from gaining access, which imperils those three intimately allied principles; this is demanded by the moral consciousness, nay the very duty of self-preservation, of human society'. Max Schasler, Ueber materialistische und idealistische Weltanschauung, 1879, pp. 3445, NOTES [pp. 318321]. 97 'Our time furnishes only too numerous and too manifest proofs of the justice of the apprehensions, entertained by well-meaning and high- minded men, that the diffusion of the theory of evolution must be attended with the most dangerous consequences for morality and social order', etc. See, on the other hand, Oscar Schmidt, Darwinismus und Social- democratic, Vortrag, 1878; Herm. Muller, Die Hypothese in der Schule. Ein Wort zur Abwehr und Rechtfertigung. 1879. As recently still as 1870, Virchow wrote: 'There is certainly no justification for rejecting the theory of evolution from the moral standpoint; if man is the last of the transformations experienced by the animal kingdom in its individual members, he is at the same time the highest and noblest type; it was therefore an immeasurable progress made by living nature, when the first man was evolved (hervorging) from an animal' (Menschen- und Affenschadel, p. 37; also supra Notes p. 89). But, as in the case of not a few other scholars, advancing years, bringing timidity in their train, have not matured but weakened his views. P. 319. a Comp. Isai. XXXI. 3, 'The Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit' (nn~N^l "l'2). P. 319. b The title of the Tractatus theologico-politicus/'Continens dis- sertatioues aliquot quibus ostenditur, libertatem philosophandi non tantum salva pietate et reipublicae pace posse concedi, sed eandem nisi cum pace reipublicae ipsaque pietate tolli non posse'; comp. ibid. cap. XX, 'Ostenditur, in libera republica unicuique et sentire quae velit, et quae sentiat dicere licere'; esp. 43 46. P. 320. a Comp. Virchow 1. c. p. 7, 'Wir miissen durch unsere Massigung, durch einen gewissen Verzicht auf Liebhabereien und personliche Meinungen es moglich machen, dass die giinstige Stimmung der Nation nicht umschlage'; and he continues, 'We are in danger, by using our liberty too extensively, to imperil the future, and I would express a warning against continuing the arbitrariness of all kinds of personal speculation, which is now prevalent in various branches of natural science'! and similarly passim in the same much-discussed Speech. In opposition herewith, Virchow had, just with respect to the transition of species into species, avowed, in 1858, the opinion which he repeated in 1870: 'There is at present a great blank in our knowledge; are we allowed to fill it up by conjectures? Certainly, for it is only by conjectures that the roads of enquiry in unknown fields are marked out' (Virchow, Vier Reden iiber Leben und Kranksein, 1858 and 1862, p. 31; Menschen- und Affen- schadel, p. 34). P. 321. a Comp. Oscar Schmidt 1. c. p. 34, 'Das Princip der Ent- wickelung ist die Aufhebung des Princips der Gleichheit . . . Der Dar- winismus ist die wissenschaftliche Begriindung der Ungleicheit' ; p. 38, 'Die Socialdemocratie, wo sie sich auf den Darwinismus beruft, hat ihn nicbt verstanden' etc. o 98 NOTES [pp. 321328]. P. 321. b 'The more closely centralised animal body may be described as a cell-monarchy, the less compact vegetable organism as a cell -republic' (Haeckel, Vortrage, II. 36). P. 322. a 'Each microscopic cell', says Briicke, 'is an elementary or- ganism' or 'a being of the first order'. P. 323. a See Haeckel, Studien iiber Moneren und andere Protisten, 1872; Ueber die Wellenzeugung der Lebenstheilchen oder Perigenesis der Plastidule, 1875 (see supra Notes p. 95); Ueber die heutige Ent- wickelungslehre im Verhaltniss zur Gesammtwissenschaft, 1877, pp. 13, 14, 23; T. Tschermak, Die Einheit der Entwickelung in der Natur, 1876, etc. P. 324. a Comp. De Wette, Dogmatik der protestantischen Kirche, 50; and ibid. Joh. Gerh., 'animas eorum, qui ex Adamo et Eva progeniti fuissent, non creatas, neque etiam generatas, sed propagatas ftiisse', etc.; and Hollaz., 'Non generatur anima ex traduce, sive semine foecundo, tamquam principio materiali, sed per traducem, sive mediante semine prolifico, tamquam vehiculo propagator'. P. 325. a Comp. Haeckel, Vortrage, I. 152, 'die empfindlichen Sinnes- organe sind nichts weiter als eigenthiimliche Endausbreitungen der Empfindungsnerven, und die dem Willen gehorchenden Muskelfasern nichts anderes als besondere Endorgane der Bewegungsnerven'. P. 325. b Comp. Carl Vogt, Vorlesungen iiber den Menschen, I. 108: Paul Broca who, during the reign of Napoleon III, had occasion to examine many human skulls of old cemetries, found from century to century a regularly progressive enlargement of their inner dimensions, so that the crania of the present Parisians perceptibly exceed in size those of the Parisians of the twelfth century. P. 326. a Comp. Haeckel, Preie Wissenschaft und freie Lehre, p. 85. P. 326. b See the elaborate argument in Lucret. III. 632 667, to avoid the conclusion that 'one living creature has in its body several souls'. P. 327. a Comp. Haeckel, Vortrage, I. 120127, 173175; II. 3540, 49, etc. P. 327. b Comp. Carl Gegenbaur, Untersuchungen zur vergleichendeu Anatomie der Wirbelthiere; Grundziige der vergleichenden Anatomie; Das Kopfskelet der Selachier, als Grundlage zur Beurtheilung der Genese des Kopfskelets der Wirbelthiere; etc. P. 328. a Koran, XVII. 87; comp. XXII. 6, 8, 'God first fashioned man of clay; He completed His work by breathing into him a part of His own spirit'. P. 328. b Koran, LXXXII. 15. P. 328. c Comp. Senec. Epist. 120, 14, nee domus hoc corpus sed hospitium et quidem breve hospitium; Cic. De Senect. c. 23, Ex vita discede tamquam ex hospitio, non tamquam ex domo; etc. Hebr. XIII. 14, 'for here we have no continuing city' (/te'vouaav 7roX/v); etc. NOTES [pp. 328334]. 99 P. 328. d Comp. Cicer. Tusc. Disp. I. 11, where Atticus says, 'I have great pleasure in the thought that souls, after they leave the body, go to heaven as to a permanent home (in domicilium suum), and even if it should not be so, I should still be very willing to believe it' ; and again, ibid. c. 17, 'I would rather, by Hercules! be mistaken with Plato . . . than be in the right with others'; c. 21. P. 328. e Comp. Yafna XLIV. 6, 7; XXXI. 21, 'Ahura-Mazda created abundance and Immortality to the perfection of the pure' (i. e. he created Immortality in such fulness that the righteous will receive a complete mea- sure of it). It is believed that Immortality existed at first as a prerogative of the earliest men, disappeared afterwards through the wiles of the wicked Agra-maingus, but will be finally restored by the grace of Ahura- Mazda for the felicity of the pure (comp. ibid. XXXI. 6, 14). P. 329. a Koran, Sur. XXIX. 64; comp. LVH. 19; XCIII. 14, 'The future life is better for you than the present'. P. 329. Mishn. Pirke Avoth, IV. 16, -minDt> HDH HTH D^H DI Nun D^iyn ^33. P. 329. c Talm. Bab. Bathr. ll a ; comp. Matt. VII. 1921; Luke XII. 1534; 1 Tim. VI. 19, etc. P. 333. a Koran, Sur. II. 59; V. 37; comp. VI. 48. P. 333. b Ibid. XXXII. 23. This is one of the Mohammedan inter- pretations of the words, intended to refer to the alleged interview be- tween Moses and Mohammed in the sixth heaven, during the Prophet's night visit thither; the common rendering is: 'do not be in doubt as to its being revealed'. The following verse runs thus: '"We have also granted to them priests who should guide them in accordance with our command, since they suffered with fortitude and firmly believed in our P. 333. c Ibid. XXIII. 52; comp. infra. P. 333. d Ibid. V. 70; the verse concludes: 'but most of them are wicked'. P. 333. e Ibid. V. 51. P. 333. f Ibid. V. 53; comp. in. 57, 'Say to the Jews and the Christians : "let us terminate our dissensions; let us adore only one God, and associate with Him no equal" ', etc. P. 333. % Ibid. HI. 79. P. 334. a Ibid. III. 77, 78 ; comp. XXIX. 45, 'We believe in the Book which has been sent to us and in your Scriptures; our God and yours are one'; XLII. 14. P. 334. b This reasoning is acknowledged by some Mohammedan authorities and rejected by others (comp. Sale, Koran, p. 9, note y). It receives indeed some support from several analogous passages (e. g. VII. 162, 'the Lord has led me in the right path, He has taught me a holy religion, the faith of Abraham, who believed in the unity of God and refused to offer incense to idols'; XVI. 124); but taken by itself, 100 NOTES [pp. 334338]. the verse m. 79 can hardly be interpreted otherwise than Humphrey understood it (U>^ f \Uo^)\ j+& 5X0 ^x^). P. 334. c Ibid. XVI. 45, 46. P. 334. d Ibid. HI. 60; comp. XIX. 59. P. 334. e Ibid. V. 48, 50. Comp. XL. 56, 'We gave to Moses the Pentateuch; the Hebrew people inherited it; the light of that Book is the guide of the wise'; etc. P. 334. f Ibid. XXXIII. 7. P. 334. S Ibid. III. 252; comp. IV. 161, etc. P. 334. h Ibid. LVII. 27. P. 334. * Ibid. III. 3746; comp. with respect to Jesus also Sur. IV. 155 157, 'The Jews did not crucify Jesus, a man resembling him was put into his place; God has taken him up t Himself, for He is powerful and wise'; V. 108, 118; XIX. 16; XXI. 91, 'Sing the glory of Mary, who preserved her virginity intact; we breathed upon her our Spirit; she and her son became the wonder of the universe'; XLIII. 57 59, 'The son of Mary is the servant of God; heaven lavished upon him all favours and gave him as an example to the Hebrews'; 63 65 ; LXVI. 12; etc. P. 335. *Ibid. LXL 6; comp. IH. 138, 180; IV. 161. P. 335. b Ibid. IV. 69; V. 19, 116; comp. II. 110, 'God has a son, say the Christians; far from Him be this blasphemy'; IX. 30, 31; XXn. 93; XLIH. 81, 'Tell them, If God had a son, I should be the first to adore him'. P. 336. a Comp. Dosabhoy Framjee, The Parsees, pp. 36, 'Toleration is unknown to the haughty, uncivilised barbarian believers in the Koran, bigotry is the highest virtue demanded of the Mahomedan, and one which secures for him favour in the eyes of his prophet and his God and takes him by the shortest route to a place in heaven', etc.; pp. 29 51, 'Within a hundred years ... the condition of the country was entirely changed: landscapes once fertile had become dreary wastes, and the fields . . . became the pasture grounds of wild animals . . . Wild hordes of robbers . , . traversed every part of the land, perpetrating the most cruel atrocities'. P. 337. a Koran, II. 186, 189. P. 337. b Ibid. II. 257. P. 337. c lbid. V. 99; III. 79; comp. LXIV. 64; VH. 183; XHI. 8; XVI. 126. P. 337. d Ibid. XLV. 13; L. 44. P. 337. e Comp. Spence Hardy, Legends and Theories of Buddhists, p. 189. P. 338. a The indignation of the Wahabites is especially directed against luxury in dress and against the smoking of tobacco or other narcotic plants. The Sunne, obviously contravened in the rich and often gor- geous apparel of the Turks, forbids expressly the wearing of gold and silk; while it allows silver only in moderation. NOTES [pp. 338352]. 101 P. 338. b Comp. Koran HI. 138 ; VH. 156158, 188; XVII. 95; XVIII. 10, 'I am a man like yourself. P. 338. c The scholars prove by various reasons that Mohammed, though he died and was buried, yet did not die like ordinary men. P. 339. a See Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and the Wahabys. The second point, on Keligion, is in the Catechism treated with some confusion and partly intermixed with the first and third points. Islam, or the first part of Eeligion, is sub-divided into five sections viz. the con- fession that there is no other God besides Allah and that Mohammed is His prophet, the performance of the prescribed prayers, distribution of alms, observance of the Ramadhan fasting, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Faith, the second part of Religion, embraces 79 ramifications. Most of these articles of creed are supported by verses from the Koran or by declarations from the earliest traditions. P. 340. * Koran, II. 172. P. 340. b So A. Dillmann, Der Verfall des Islam, pp. 911, and many others. Noteworthy, on the other hand, is the remark of Spinoza (Epist. XLIX, 11), 'Quod autem ad ipsos Turcas et reliquas gentes attinet : si Deum cultu justitiae et caritate erga proximum adorant, eosdem Spiritum Christi habere credo et salvos esse, quidquid de Mahomete et oraculis ex ignorantia persuasum habeant'. P. 345. a Koran, XXXVH. 46; comp. LV. 58. P. 345. b Ibid. VII. 41; XV. 47; XXXVII. 42; XLV. 53. P. 345. c See Koran, II. 23, 45; HI. 13, 15, 127, 128, 163165; IV. 17, 121; VI. 29; VII. 58, 40, 41; IX. 89, 90, 101, 112; X. 911; XIII. 2023, 35; XV. 4548; XTX. 61; XXTC. 64; XXXV. 26, 27, 30; XXXVI. 55, 56; XXXVII. 3947; XXXTX. 21; XLIII. 6972; XLIV. 5157; XLV. 4678; XL VI. 14, 15, XCVIII. 7, 8. P. 345. d Comp. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. L ; Bayle, Dictionnaire bistorique, Art. Mahomet; Muir, Life of Mahomet, II. 141 sqq. P. 347. a Strauss, Alter und Neuer Glaube, pp. 125, 126. P. 349. a Comp. Koran, H. 45, 75 j in. 14; IV. 18; VI. 2931, 69; X. 7, 8; XI. 10, 11; XIH. 25, 35; XIV. 49, 52; LV. 19, 3545. P. 349. b Comp. Mendelssohn, Phaedon, Gesammelte Werke, 1843, H. pp. 177181. P. 350. a Comp. Cicer. De. Finib. H. 25, 81, 'Et tamen jure fortasse, sed tamen non gravissimum est testimonium multitudinis ; in omni enim arte vel studio vel quavis scientia . . . optimum quidque rarissimum est'; Tusc. Disp. I. 12, 'I have all antiquity on my side, which the nearer it is to its origin and divine descent, the more clearly, perhaps, on that account, did it discern the truth in these matters'; c. 16, 'as we are led by nature to think there are gods, ... so by the consent of all nations we are induced to believe that our souls survive'. P. 352. a Strauss 1. c. p. 129. P. 352. b Comp. Lucret. HI. 418827; comp. also IV. 3741. 102 NOTES [pp. 352355]. P. 352. c The contention of Hermes is by no means exaggerated. The. pleas of Plutarch in favour of Immortality are verbally as follows. 1. Those who deny Immortality 'rob the people of great and sweet hopes, and deprive of still higher ones the good and pious, who have a right to expect in the next world the greatest and divinest boons'. 2. One of these expectations is this that 'they will there see those men who here boast of their wealth and power and mock the virtuous, endure their deserved punishment'. 3. 'No one yet of all who have yearned after truth and the knowledge of the Absolute, was in this life able to satisfy his desire completely, because our reason is disturbed and obscured by the misty envelopment of the senses ... In the future existence the soul will find its true life'. 4. We long and firmly expect to meet again in reality the beloved dead, and to be reunited with our affectionate parents and our dear wives. 5. Those who regard death as the be- ginning of another and better life, will, if happy, enjoy in anticipation a still higher delight; while in adversity, they do not so easily despond, because the precious hopes and expectations banish every disharmony from the soul, and cause men, like travellers, to bear calmly and pa- tiently the temporary mischances and inconveniences they may encounter (Plut. Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, cc. 28, 29). P. 353. a See especially Arguments 810, 13, 14, 17, 23, or Lucret. 1. c. vers. 545589, 613631, 677695, 782797 ('Quare, corpus ubi interiit, periisse necessest Confiteare animam distractam in corpore toto') ; comp. vers. 709, 710, the proposition fully stated: 'Quapropter neque natali privata videtur Esse die natura animi nee funeris expers'. Great stress is also laid on the eleventh argument (vers. 590 604), pointing- out man's absolute unconsciousness during a fainting fit, and concluding a fortiori: 'Quid dubitas tandem guin extra prodita corpus Imbecilla foras, in aperto, tegmine dempto' i. e. when after death the body is decayed 'Non modo non omnem possit durare per aevom, Sed minimum quodvis nequeat consistere tempus'? Evidently with reference to Lucretius, Pliny (Nat. Hist. VII. 55 or 56) expresses his strong dissent from the doctrine of Immortality: the very questions on this point are to him 'manium ambages'; and then he says: 'Quod autem corpus animae per se? quae materia? ubi cogitatio illi'? etc.; and he is of opinion, 'pueri- lium ista delenimentorum avidaeque nunquam desinere mortalitatis com- menta sunt'. P. 353. b E. g. Arguments 1, 4, 19. Comp. also Origen, Contra Celsum, IV. 52, 60, 61. P. 353. c Comp. Cicer. Tusc. Disp. I. 11, 24, supra Notes p. 38. P. 354. a Plat. Phaed. c. 15, p. 70 D, ov yap av irov na\iv e'y/yvovTO P. 354. Ibid., ovruffi ytyvsrai iravra, OVK aXXo^sv y SK rcov svavr/cov TO. svavria: p. 71, navra OVTU ylyvsrai, s'f svavTtwv ra svavria npayfJiaTa. P. 355. a 'Ava/S/wjKgff^a/, 1. c. NOTES [pp. 356362.] 103 . P. 356. a Ibid. c. 17, p. 72, ueirep ev KVK\U iraptiovra. P. 357. a Ibid. cc. 31, 32. P. 358. a Ibid. c. 21, faav apa . . . al \l>v%a} KOI irpirspov, itpw slvat iv av^ocoTTou e*$ai, %upi<; ewfJUZTuv, KO.} Qpovyaiv sl^w. Against pre-existence see Lucret. in. 668676, Cur super ante actam aetatem meminisse nequimus, Nee vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus? etc.; and against transmigration ibid. vers. 739 766. P. 358. b BouXara/ or Qpsyarai. P. 358. c AUTO TO faov. P. 358. d Plat. Phaed. cc. 1821. P. 359. a Jer. I. 5 ; Talm. Jevam. 62 a; Joel, Beligionsphilosophie des Sohar, p. 108. Jewish tradition specifies seven things produced before the creation of the world: the Law, Hell, Paradise, God's Throne, the Temple, Repentance, and the name of the Messiah (Pirke Rabbi Eliezer, c. 3); and ten others produced towards the evening of the sixth day, as the rainbow, the manna, the mouth of Balaam's ass, etc. (Mishn. Avoth, V. 6; Targ. Jonath. Num. XXII. 28). P. 360. a Plat. 1. c. C. 23, ; yap S?TI {JLSV -rj ^1^37 Kcxi irpirspov K. T. X. P. 360. b Ibid. cc. 50 sqq. By this reasoning Socrates replies to the curious illustration, brought forward by Cebes, of the old weaver and his garment, which is meant to show that 'each soul wears out many bodies', yet may at last be exhausted and perish itself (c. 37). P. 360. c It is easy to make this clear by many other examples. Thus liberty does not admit the idea of slavery; therefore, when slavery ap- proaches, liberty must either flee and withdraw or perish; that is, though liberty may not become slavery, it is annihilated by slavery or its ap- proach. P. 360. d Comp. Cic. Tusc. Disp. I. 29. P. 361. a Plat. 1. c. cc. 25 sqq. P. 361. b Ibid. cc. 36 sqq. P. 362. a Comp. Plato, Phaedrus, c. XXIV, p. 245, ^vyy naaa a^avaros, TO yap aeiKtvyTov a^dvarov K. T. X.; Cicer. Tusc. Disp. I. 23, 27 (nee vero deus ipse, qui intelligitur a nobis, alio modo intelligi potest nisi mens soluta quaedam et libera . . . omnia sentiens et movens ipsaque praedita motu sempiterno); De Republ. VI. 25. Cicero admires this argument intensely and thinks that all philosophers together who dissent from Plato, and whom he calls 'plebeii philosophi', could never produce anything so 'elegant' or profound. P. 362. b Cicero (Tusc. J. 23) says quite generally: 'Inanimum est enim omne, quod pulsu agitatur externo; quod autem est animal, id motu cietur interiore et suo'. Yet then he associates with the argument the extraneous element of consciousness, and thus entirely changes its nature and scope: 'The soul perceives that it has motion (sentit igitur animus se moveri), and at the same time it gains this perception, it is sensible that it derives that motion from its own power, and not through the 104 NOTES [pp. 363367]. agency of another; and it is impossible that it should ever forsake it- self whereby the animals are of course excluded. P. 363. a Comp. Cicer. Tusc. Disp. I. 32. P. 363. b Plat. Phaedo, c. 63, p. 114, *aXo; yap o /c/v&vvo;, KOU ipy TQiavrct wairep snofisiv savrca. P. 364. a 1 Chr. XV. 32, 'If I have fought with beasts at Ephesus' etc. P. 364. b Koran, XXXVI. 33. P. 364. c Comp. Moses Mendelssohn, Phaedon, pp. 140, 141 (Werke, 1843, vol. II.): 'If our soul is mortal, . . . virtue is without all lustre (Glanz) that makes it Divine in our eyes, . . . and we have been placed here like the beasts (wie das Vieh) to seek fodder and to die ; in a few days it will be utterly indifferent whether I have been an ornament or a disgrace of creation', etc. P. 365 a Mendelssohn 1. c. p. 134, 'Die Begriffe nehmen allezeit ihren Anfang von einer sinnlichen Empfindung, die ohne die sinnlichen Organe unmoglich ist'. P. 365. b Ibid. 1. c. p. 133; comp. p. 144, 'The faculty of thought is formed with the body, grows with it and suffers analogous trans- formations . . . The functions of the brain and the viscera (Eingeweide) are in closest relation to the efficacy of the power of reflection'. P. 366. a Ibid. p. 134, 'Was fur Grand haben wir aber . . . der Natur schlechterdings abzusprechen, die Seele ohne diesen gegliederten Leib denken zu lassen'? P. 366. b 'Blindheit von Blodsinnigen'. P. 366. c Comp. ibid. pp. 121138, 142, 185, 'Das Vermogen zu empfinden ist keine Beschaffenheit des Korpers und seines feinen Baues, sondern hat seine Bestandheit fiir sich*. P. 367. a Ibid. p. 143; comp. p. 146, 'Die Kraft zu denken, ist eine Eigenschaft des Zusammengesetzten und hat ihren Grund in einer feineren Organisation oder Harmonie der Theile'. P. 367. b Ibid. p. 157; comp. p. 159, 'This simple substance, which has no extension, is the most perfect of all thinking substances that are within me, and comprises all notions of which I am conscious in uni- form distinctness, truth and certainty : is that not my soul' ? Mendelssohn, in order to arrive at his 'simple' thinking substance is thus compelled to attribute to 'the other thinking substances of the body' indistinctness, imperfection and uncertainty, as we otherwise, he says, should be ob- liged 'quite unnecessarily' to assume, instead of one rational mind in each human body, a large number of such minds, which needless multi- plication is not likely to have been ordained by the all- wise Creator. After having established, by assertions so arbitrary and playful, a simple and uncompounded principle of thought, the author can easily indulge in the gratifying belief of having rebutted the idea of mind as a com- pound of forces. NOTES [pp. 367372]. 105 P. 367. c He even declares that 'there can be in the whole no manifes- tation of energy, the cause of which does not lie in the constituent parts, and that everything else which does not follow from the qualities of the elements and component parts, as order, symmetry and the like, is ex- clusively traceable to the manner of composition (ibid. pp. 142, 152; comp. p. 155, 'The constituents of the thinking body must possess powers the complex result of which is the faculty of reflection'). P. 368. a Ibid. p. 168, and in the Second Dialogue passim. P. 369. a Ibid. pp. 142, 145. P. 369. b Ibid. pp. 167176, 'As we here below serve the Lord of the universe by developing our faculties, so we shall, under His guardianship, continue in the next life to exercise ourselves in the practice of virtue and wisdom . . . and to realise the long series of Divine schemes, which extends from ourselves to infinitude. To stop at any point on this road, is manifestly opposed to Divine wisdom, goodness and omnipotence" (p. 176.) P. 369 c 'Man sollte bisweilen glauben, das Schicksal der Menschen sei von einer Ursache angeordnet worden, die am 'Bosen Vergniigen ge- funden'. P. 370. a Ibid. pp. 182185. P. 370. b Ibid. p. 149, 'Erdenket einen Lehrbegriff, welcher der menschlichen Gesellschaft so unentbehrlich ist wie die Lehre von Gott, und ich wette, dass er wahr sei'. P. 370. c Wisd. II. 1 sqq.; comp. also Plat. Phaed. cc. 14, 23, uxwep Trvsv/ia 7} Kairvog oyaavceaa&s2aa of^ryra/ ^nxirTOfJLS'JT] K} ov^sv en olSafiov y: Koran, XXIII. 3442; XXXTT. 9-11; XXXVIII. 1618. P. 371. a Dante, Inferno, HE. 9, 'You who enter, leave all hope behind'. P. 371. b See B. Browning, La Saisiaz, p. 31. P. 371. c 'That Sun (Beatrice or TheologjO that at first made my heart burn in love, - had revealed to me, by proving and refuting, the sweet aspect of beautiful truth' (Dante, Paradiso, III. 13). P. 371. d Comp. Wisdom II. 1 III. 5. P. 372. a Here Gregovius was tempted to remind Panini of the view, ably defended by his learned co-religionist and countryman Luzzatto, that the verse to which he alluded (Eccles. XII. 7), like some other passages iu the concluding part of the Book, are later additions designed to conciliate orthodoxy; while Berghorn was on the point of remarking that the verse proves no personal immortality, but affirms merely that 'the spirit, this particle detached for individual existence from the Divine breath diffused in the world, is drawn back again by God and thus reunited with His breath, or the world-soul'; and that, therefore, the verse would have about the same import as the words of the Bundehesh, 'When the body dies here below, it is mingled with the earth, and the soul returns to heaven' (Anguetil du Perron, Bundehesh, p. 384; see 106 NOTES [pp. 373, 374]. Hitzig, Ecclesiast. pp. 215, 216; comp. Ps. CIV. 29; Job XXXIV. 14, 15; also Gen. in. 19; Num. XVI. 22; Isai. XLII. 5; Jer. XXXVIII. 16); or as the lines of Lucretius, a determined disbeliever in personal immortality, 'Cedit enim retro, de terra quod fuit ante, In terras, et quod missumst ex aetheris oris, Id rursum caeli rellatum templa receptant' (Lucr. II. 999 1001; comp. III. 589, Quam prolapsa foras enaret in aeris auras). But both Gregovius and Berghorn kept silence from fear of raising an exegetical controversy. For neither can the interpolation be demonstrated with mathematical cogency; nor is Berghorn's opinion likely to recommend itself to many, as, taken literally, it amounts to the doctrine of emanation and re-absorption, of which there is no trace in the Old Testament. Yet it must be avowed that the former view can, on consideration of the whole subject, not fail to find adherents, and that the latter has at least a negative support in the extreme difficulty of exactly defining what other notion a Hebrew writer can have connected with the words, 'The spirit returns to God who gave it'; unless they be understood in the sense given by Lucretius to his own analogous terms, viz. that man, like all other sentient creatures, has in himself etherial substances (comp. Lucr. II. 991, Denique caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi). P. 373. a Schiller, Werke, 1838, I. 412, 'Vor dem Tode erschrickst Du? Du wiinschest uusterblich zu leben? Lebe im Ganzen! Wenn Du lange dahin bist, es bleibt' 1 P. 373. b 'Im Ganzen resigniren'. Goethe has expressed this idea repeatedly and fully; e. g. 'Eins und Alles: Im Granzenlosen sich zu finden, Wird gem der Einzelne verschwinden, Da lost sich aller Ueber- druss; Statt heissem "Wiinschen, wildem "Wollen, Statt last'gem Fordern, strengem Sollen, Sich aufzugeben ist Genuss' (Werke, II. 287); and Faust says in the moment of his death: 'Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdentagen Nicht in Aeonen untergehn; im Vorgefuhl von solchem Gliick Geniess' ich jetzt den hochsten Augenblick' (Werke XII. 290; Faust, Second Part). P. 373. c Comp. Ernst Hermann, Woher und Wohin? 1877, pp. 30, 31. P. 373. ^ B-iickert. Plato himself, in his Symposion (c. 26, p. 208), expresses a similar idea: 'Everything mortal is preserved, not by its being in all respects the same for ever, as the deity is, but by the thing which departs and grows old leaving behind another new thing, such as it was itself', concluding: ravry ry fi^exvy . . . ^VTJTOV a^ava^iag p.sTe%et, KOV ffufjia KCU raXXa travra, P. 374. a Plin. Nat. Hist. VII. 55 or 56, 'perdit . . . praecipuum naturae bonum, mortem'; Horat. Epist. I. xvi. 79. P. 374. b Browning, La Saisiaz, pp. 33, 34. Further on the con- clusion is reached: 'True, the only facts acknowledged late, are now in- creased to three God is, and the soul is, and, as certain, after death shall be' (p. 56); comp. p. 63, 'God, soul, earth, heaven, hell five facts NOTES [pp. 375380]. 107 now: what is to desiderate'? So says Fancy, who adds a sixth fact: 'Good done here, be there rewarded, evil worked here, there amerced' (p. 65). P. 375. a Comp. E. Sulze, Ueber Biichner's Schrift "Stoff und Kraft" und gegen den Materialismus, 1878, p. 31. P. 378. a For instance, the words 'action' and 'will'; comp. Spinoz. Eth. Ill, Def. 2, 'Nos turn agere dico, quum aliquid in nobis aut extra nos fit, cujus adaequata sumus causa' etc.; wherby human action is converted into a merely logical sequence following from its cause; Eth. II, Prop. 48, Schol., 'Notandum, me per voluntatem affirmandi et negandi facultatem, non autem cupiditatem intelligere; facultatem. inquam, intelligo, qua mens quid verum quidve falsum sit affirmat vel negat, et non cupiditatem qua mens res appetit vel aversatur' so that the will belongs to the category of the intellect. God is denied to have 'intellects', though he has 'idea', which necessitates artificial dis- tinctions (see -infra). 'Good' is identified with 'useful', and 'bad' with 'detrimental' (per malum id intelligam quod certo scimus impedire quo- minus boni alicujus simus compotes, Eth. IV, Defin. 1, 2); and similarly 'virtue' with 'power' (Eth. IV, Defin. 8, 'per virtutem et potentiam idem intelligo'). God's 'power' (potentia) is nothing else than 'his essential activity' (actuosa essentia), so that we can as little conceive His not acting as His not existing (Eth. II, Prop. 3, Schol.). P. 378. b See, for instance, Eth. I, Prop. 17, Schol., 'Porro ut de in- tellectu et voluntate, quos Deo communiter tribuimus, aliquid dicam' etc.; Prop. 32, Coroll. 1, 2, 'Hinc sequitur, Deum non operari ex libertate voluntatis' etc., in connection with which, however, Spinoza's peculiar definition of 'will' must be considered (see the preceding Note). Yet in other passages God is allowed to possess 'perception' (idea sive cognitio) both of His nature and of all that results from this nature with necessity (Eth. II, Proposs. 3, 4, 20) which contradiction is reconciled by the assumption that 'intellect' denotes individual and successive thoughts, but 'perception' an all-comprehending intelligence in repose. P. 378. c Ethic. IV, Praefat., 'Aeternum illud et infinitum ens, quod Deum sen Naturam appellamus, eadem, qua existit, necessitate agit'. Comp. Goethe, Bei Betrachtung von Schiller's Schadei; (Werke, II, 91) : 'Was kann der Mensch im Leben mehr gewinnen Als dass sich Gott- Natur ihm offenbare, Wie sie das Feste lasst zu Geist verrinnen, Wie sie das Geisterzeugte fest bewahre'. P. 380. a I. H. von Kirchmann, Erlauterungen zu Spinoza's philo- sophischen Schriften, pp. vii, 44, 45, 185. P. 380. b As an instance may be taken the notion of 'Substance', which plays so great a part in Spinoza's theories. He defines it: 'Per substantiam intelligo id quod in se est et per se concipitur; hoc est id, cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat' (Eth. I., Defin. 3). What is meant by 'quod in se est'? Every thing 108 NOTES [pp. 380382]. can be conceived both 'by itself and in relation to other objects. Every single thing can, therefore, be 'Substance', and yet there is, according to Spinoza, only one infinite Substance, of which all individual things are modi. But the Substance cannot be imagined without the modi, nor the modi without the Substance: Spinoza's Substance corresponds, therefore, with nothing that exists in reality, but is a mere form or relation of thought; it is convenient for logical conclusions, but it is empty and impalpable. Almost exactly the same applies to the notions Attributum, Modus, Deus, Infinitum. P. 380. c Comp. Erdmann, Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Dar- stellung der Geschichte der neueren Philosophic, I. 2, pp.53 98; Ver- mischte Aufsatze, pp. 118 192, etc. P. 381. a Ethic. IV. 7, 14, 'Vera boni et mali cognitio, quatenus vera, nullum affectum coercere potest, sed tantum quatenus ut affectus con- sideratur'. P. 381. b An analogous instance of Spinoza's sound insight is his view that man, as a rational being, is indeed free and active, but that this freedom of action may be constantly interrupted by passive affections, since man is an integral part of Nature. Spinoza thus escapes the one- sidedness, refuted by experience, of the Stoics, Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and others, who assume an unconditional rule of reason over the impressions. 'It is equally necessary for man', he observes admirably, 'to know the strength and the weakness of his nature, in order to de- termine what reason is able to do for moderating his affections and what not' (comp. Ethic. IV, Prop. 15 17). P. 381. c Comp. Ethic. I, Append.; IV. Praef. etc. This followed naturally from Spinoza's geometrical conception of the world: as we cannot intelligently ask, for what end or purpose the angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles, or for what object the radii of a circle are equal to each other, just as little are we allowed to ask, for what end or object the things are, or the events happen, in the world as they are and as they happen, and not otherwise. P. 381. d Comp. Ethic. I. 32, 'Voluntas non potest vocari causa libera sed tantum necessaria'; II. Propos. 48, 'In mente nulla est absoluta sive libera voluntas, sed mens ad hoc vel illud volendum determinatur a causa, quae etiam ab alia determinata est, et haec iterum ab alia, et sic in infinitum' ; III, Affectuum Definitiones, vi, 'hoc (viz. liberum decretum) fictitium esse demonstravimus'. P. 381. e Comp. Ethic. Ill, Praefat., 'humanas actiones atque appetitus considerabo perinde ac si quaestio de lineis, planis aut de corporibus esset'; Tractat. polit. I. 4, 'sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere . . . sed intelligere, atque adeo humanos affectus . . . non ut humanae na- turae vitia, sed ut proprietates contemplatus sum' etc. P. 382. a Comp. Eth. IV. Praefat., 'Aeternum illud et infinitum ens, quod Deum seu Naturam appellamus'; and Epist. XXI, 'Quod quidam NOTES [pp. 382387]. 109 putant, Tractatum theologico-politicum eo niti quod Deus et natura, per quam massam quandam sive materiam corpoream intelligunt, unum et idem sint, tota errant via': for Oldenburg had written to Spinoza that many readers of that work had taken offence at the opinions 'quae ambigue ibi tradita videntur de Deo et natura, quae duo a te confundi quam plurimi arbitrantur'. See Kirchmann 1. c. pp. 30, 45, 'In one place God is distinguished from the world both as regards thinking and existing; in another place, the world, being a modality of the Substance, is taken as one with God; now the Substance is the opposite of the Modus, and now both are identical: just as the necessity of a particular argument requires it, stress is laid either on the difference or on the unity, and we search in vain for unequivocal distinctness'. P. 382. b Comp. Ethic. I, Propos. 11, 'Deus sive substantia constans infinitis attributis, quorum unumquodque aeternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit, necessario existit'; comp. Definit. 6. Not even Time has been included among the chief attributes, because, by its definition, the Substance is eternal, and therefore lies out of the range of Time. P. 383. a Ethic. II, Propos. 13; V. Prop. 1, 'Prout cogitationes re- rumque ideae ordinantur et concatenantur in mente, ita corporis affectiones seu rerum imagines ad amussim ordinantur et concatenantur in corpore': yet it is difficult to conceive the relation of both being another than that of cause and effect, however distinctly the author intimates by 'prout' and 'ita' a merely external association. P. 383. b These inconsistencies account for ftie fact that, while indeed most scholars regard Spinoza as a Pantheist, some authorities look upon him as an Individualist, others as an Atomist (comp. I. Volkelt, Pantheismus und Individualismus im System Spinoza's, pp. 4 9). P. 383. c That is, something the existence of which is a part of its very nature : this is akin to Anselmus' ontological proof of God's existence (see supra p. 294). In terms borrowed from the Scholastics, Spinoza identifies also the natura naturans and natura naturata (comp. Eth. I, Prop. 29, Schol., where he explains natura naturans as 'id quod in se est et per se concipitur, . . . hoc est Deus', and natura naturata as 'omne quod ex necessitate Dei naturae . . sequitur, hoc est, omnes Dei attributorum modi'). P. 385. a Comp. Num. VI. 26; Talm. Meg. 18 a , 'The blessing of the Lord is peace', ( D ^p D"Dpm HD"|D). P. 386. a See supra pp. 38, 39. P. 386. b Comp. Burnouf, Lotus de la bonne Foi, pp. 800820, espec. pp. 801, 802, 807; Introduction, pp. 88, 89; Spence Hardy, Legends and Theories of the Buddhists, pp. 179183, quoting from the Samanya Phala Suttanta, or the Advantages of the Priesthood; Barthel. Saint-Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Eeligion, pp. 135138. P. 387. a Comp. Ethic. Ill, Propos. 11, 'Quidquid corporis nostri agendi potentiam auget vel minuit, juvat vel coercet, ejusdem rei idea 110 NOTES [pp. 388390]. mentis nostrae cogitandi potentiam auget vel minuit, juvat vel coercet': and ibid. Schol., 'Videmus itaque mentem magnas posse pati mutationes, et jam ad majorem, jam autem ad minorem perfectionem transire, quae quidem passiones nobis explicant affectus laetitiae et tristitiae' ; Propos. 39, Schol., 'Per lonum hie intelligo omne genus laetitiae, . . . per malum autem omne tristitiae genus' etc.; Affectuum Definitiones, ii, iii, 'Laetitia est hominis transitio a minore ad majorem perfectionem', etc.; and Ethic. III. passim; also IV, Propos. 8, 'Cognitio boni et mali nihil aliud est quam laetitiae vel tristitiae affectus, quatenus ejus sumus conscii' ; Propos. 41, 42, esp. 45 Schol., 'Only dark and mournful superstition can forbid cheerfulness ... A wise man uses the things of the world, and enjoys them as much as possible'; Propos. 52, 53. P. 388. a Ethic. IV, Append., cc. 4, 31; comp. V, Propos. 27, De- monstr., 'He who examines the things in this manner (the 'third mode'), attains the highest human perfection and is consequently filled with the greatest joyousness, accompanied by the perception of his own self and his virtues'; Propos. 32, 33, where that mode of knowledge is described as that peculiar 'intellectual love of God' (amor Dei intellectualis), which has become so famous a notion, though it has not seldom been misunder- stood (see infra.) P. 388. b Comp. supra chap. V; Ethic. IV, Propos. 37, Schol. 1, where, however, the idea is not expressed so decidedly as is done by Humphrey. The wise man, Spinoza says, is allowed to use the animals for his ad- vantage, since, as the superior being, he has surely a greater right over the animals than these have over him. However, it cannot be denied that his utterances on this point are harsh: 'legem illam de non mactandis brutis magis vana superstitione et muliebri misericordia quam sana ratione fundatam esse' etc.; comp. Append, cap. 26. P. 388. c Ethic. IV, Prop. 50, 'Commiseratio . . . per se mala et inutilis est'. Spinoza speaks in this passage of the wise man desirous of living conformably to reason, and bound to keep aloof from all sadness, and hence also from compassion. The principle may be faulty for pity is not a sadness that paralyses energy, but is on the contrary mostly a strong incentive to helpful action ,yet it was certainly not prompted by want of feeling, for Spinoza explains : to deliver the -pitied indivi- dual from his distress, is even a dictate of reason ; but 'he who is neither by reason nor by compassion induced to assist others, is justly called inhuman, since he does not seem to resemble a man'. P. 389. a Ps. LXXIH. 28; LXXXIV. 11; XCVII. 12; Isai. XXX. 15; Jerem. VI. 16; comp. Ps. CV. 3; Nehem. VIII. 10, 'the joy of the Lord (nirp nnn) is vour strength'; etc. P. 389. b Comp. Spinoz. Ethic. V. 32, 33. P. 389. c Gal. V. 22, 23; comp. Matt. XXV. 21 ; Hebr. XH. 2; 1 Pet. 1. 8. P. 390. a Acts XVII. 28; 1 John IV. 12, 13; comp. III. 24; John XIV. 20, etc. Comp. Spinoz. Epist. XXI, where, besides quoting Acts NOTES [p. 390]. Ill XVII. 28, he refers to 1 Cor. III. 16, 'Know ye not that you are the Temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you'? XII. 6, 'There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh all in all'; and Eph. I. 23, 'which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all'. See also Ethic. I, Propos. 15, 'Quidquid est in Deo est, et nihil sine Deo esse neque concipi potest'; etc. P. 390. b Comp. Epistol. XXII. 4, where Oldenburg writes: 'Quid de his et similibus dicendum, ut sua constet evangelio et Christianae re- ligioni, cui te favere opinor, veritas' etc. P. 390. c Epistol. XXI. 4, 'De aeterno illo filio Dei, hoc est, Dei aeterna sapientia, quae sese . . . omnium maxime in Christo Jesu mani- festavit, longe aliter sentiendum: nam nemo absque hac ad statum be- atitudinis potest pervenire, utpote quae sola docet, quid verum et falsum, bonum et malum sit'. It will be seen that Spinoza traces beatitude to Divine wisdom, rather than to Christ, whom, he says, "it is not at all necessary to know after the flesh" (ad salutem non esse omnino necesse, Christum secundum carnem noscere) : but Humphrey naturally lays stress upon the person of Christ, as the Incarnation of that Wisdom. Nor would he have been unable speciously to support his view by several other observations made by Spinoza on this point; e. g. Ethic. IV, Propos. 68, Schol., 'patriarchae . . . ducti spiritu Christi, hoc est, Dei idea'; and especially the famous letter to his young friend and pupil Albert Burgh, who had embraced Catholicism and entreated Spinoza to follow his example a letter which shows with what withering satire in- dignation could arm the placid philosopher: 'ubicumque haec (viz. justitia et caritas) reperiuntur, ibi Christus revera est, et ubicumque desunt, deest Christus; solo namque Christi spiritu duci possumus in amorem justitiae et caritatis' (Epist. LXXIV. 4). Comp. also Epist. XLIX, 11, : si Deum cultu justitiae et caritate erga proximum adorent, eosdem Spiritum Christi habere credo et salvos esse'; etc. P. 390. d Epist. XXI. 5, 'non minus absurde mihi loqui vi- dentur' etc. P. 390. e Comp. Prov. XV. 15; XVH. 22; Sir. XXX. 22, 23, 'The gladness of the heart is the life of a man, and the joyfulness of a man prolongs his days; . . . remove sorrow far from thee, for . . . there is no profit therein'; XXXI. 27, 28, 'Wine is as good as life to man . . . for it was made to make man glad'; XXXII. 46: XL. 20; etc. P. 390. f Ps. H. 11; Prov. XXVIII. 14. P. 390. 6 Comp. Talm. Berach. 31 a : in the midst of the high revelries of a nuptial feast one Babbi dashed a costly crystal bowl to pieces; on a similar occasion, another recited a mournful threnody; Besh Lakish is said never during his whole life to have opened his mouth for laughter; etc. P. 390. h Sir. XL. 1 sqq.; 'Great turmoil is created for every man, and a heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they 112 NOTES [p. 391]. go out of their mother's womb till the day that they return to the mother of all things' etc. P. 391. a Midrash Koheleth. P. 391. b Talm. Moed Kat. 25 b tfinff JITON^ N^l D^N 5 ? D3 nmxb ONI nnuob. P. 391. c l Chron. XXIX. 15; comp. Ps. XXXIX. 7; CHI. 15, 16; Job XIV. 1, 2, etc. P. 391. d Talm. Erub. 54 a : Babbi Gideon did not deem it necessary to quote the words which follow, 'In the grave there is no longer any joy; mortals are like the herbs of the field, they sprout and wither in constant change'. P. 391. e This is principally derived from the words of God addressed- to Cain (Gen. IV. 7), which are interpreted to mean, 'If thou art cheerful, God accepts thee' etc.; in opposition to the sentiments of Ecclesiastes (VII. 3, 4, 'Sorrow is better than laughter, for in the sadness of the countenance the heart remains good', etc.); comp. Prov. XIV. 13; XV. 13, etc.; Talm. Shabb. 30 b , 'The Deity reveals Himself to man only in the gladness produced by a good act' (. . . nn*D btf nnD&y -on IFID N'PN . . . nna P. 391. f Talm. Sot 20 a , 'the religious man devoid of intelligence, the cunning evildoer, the bigoted woman, and the stripes of the Phari- sees, are the ruin of the world'; comp. -ibid. 22 b the humorous de- scription of the seven classes of Pharisees. P. 391. & Comp. Talm. Berach. 31 a , 'Prayers should only be said in the cheerful spirit engendered by a good deed' (^ hbvnrb fiDiy fN man bw nriD&y "pno N^N . . . rvoay lino); Mid*. Rabb. Lev. c. 34, 'he who performs a Divine command, should perform it with a joyful heart'. P. 391. h Comp. rnQf JTYEQ ")TOn; and tne nne small Prayer of Solomon ben Gabriol Ol "]K>pDN IDttf. P. 391. i Comp. especially the enthusiastic descriptions of the ceremony of 'drawing water' during the Feast of Tabernacles (nDNlttM n^U nnD^); Mishn. Succ. V. 1, 'he who has not seen this joy, has never seen joy in his life'; also Deut. XVI. 14, "pm nDDtin, efcc - P. 391. k This idea is supported by Biblical passages as Deut. XXVIII. 47, 'because thou didst not serve the Lord thy God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart' ; 1 Chron. XXVIII. 9, etc. P. 391. ] Comp. Maimon. Mor. Nevoch. III. 54, 'The fourth kind is the true human perfection ; it consists in acquiring the intellectual virtues, that is, in conceiving the intelligible things capable of supplying us with sound ideas on metaphysical subjects. This is man's last aim, . . . it appertains to him alone; it is through this perfection that he wins Immortality, and that he is really a human being'. The 'four kinds of perfection' property, physical excellence, morality, and intelligence NOTES [pp. 392394]. 113 are derived from Aristotle (Ethic. Nicom. I. 8.), Nevspr,fjievuv by TCOV aya^wv TptXrj, Koii TOJV psv, &KTQ; Xeyopsvuv, rwv SI, nspi ^Vfflv Kai ffwpa K. r. X. P. 392. a Comp. M. Joel, Zur Genesis der Lehre Spinoza's, p. 51, 'So ist Spinoza nicht bloss bei seinem Gottesbegriff, sondern auch bei seinem Schopfungsbegriff als jiidischer Philosoph, oder doch als Fort- setzer jener jiidischer Denker anzusehen, deren Namen wir hier ofter erwahut haben'. P. 392. b E. ff., Joel, Spinoza's Theologisch-politischer Traktat auf seine Quellen gepriift; Id. Zur Genesis der Lehre Spinoza's; Id. Don Chasdai Creska's Religionsphilosophische Lehre; Loewe, Die Philosophic Fichte's, mit einem Anhang iiber den Gottesbegriff Spinoza's und dessen Schicksal (where numerous passages are brought together purporting to show that the God of Spinoza has individual self-consciousness, and is not merely the aggregate of the thinking souls of men; but the con- clusions, based as they are on the obscurest propositions, are not con- vincing); also Trendelenburg, Historische Beitrage zur Philosophic, II. 59 sqq.; etc. P. 392. c This Platonism, as expounded in the works of Marsilius, Ficinus, Picus de Mirandula, Job. Reuchlin and many others, teaches: God is the one existence, which is all in all, without which nothing can be conceived, and whose existence is also the existence of all individual things; Divine Reason is the source of universal intelligence; there is a direct knowledge which is attained by the immediate contemplation of the supreme Being; Love is the complete union with God, which de- livers man from all earthly love and raises him to the highest bliss. P. 392. d Comp. Ch. Sigwart, Spinoza's neu entdeckter Traktat von Gott, dem Menschen und seiner Gliickseligkeit, pp. 106 sqq. P. 393. a Spinoz. Ethic. II, Propos 7, Schol., 'quod quidam Hebraeorum quasi per nebulam vidisse videntur, qui scilicet statuunt, Deum, Dei intellectum, resque ab ipso intellectas unum et idem esse'. P. 393. b Cogitat. Metaph. II. 5, 6, 'caeterum Peripateticorum dis- tinctionum farraginem non curamus'; comp. Joel, Zur Genesis der Lehre Spinoza's, p. 19. P. 393. c Spinoz. Tract, theol. polit. c. 9, 'Legi etiam et insuper novi nugatores aliquos cabbalistas, quorum insaniam nunquam mirari satis potui'. P. 394. a Comp. Maimon. Mor. Nev. I. 51; II. 20, 21; HI. 13, etc. P. 394. b Comp. Epistol. LXXIV. 15, 'ceterum tractatus theologico- politici fundamentum, quod scilicet Scriptura per solam Scripturam debeat exponi, . . . non tantum supponitur, sed ipsum verum seu firmum esse apodictice demonstratur' etc. P. 394. c Comp. Spinoz. Eth. I, Propos. 18, 'Deus est omnium rerum causa immanens, non vero transiens'; yet this 'causa immanens', which is identical with the 'causa sui' or the Substance and its modi, cannot easily be distinguished from causation in general. 114 NOTES [pp. 395399]. P. 395. a Ethic. Ill, Affect. Defin. 1; IV, Propos. 18, Demonstr., 'cupiditas est ipsa hominis essentia, hoc est conatus, quo homo in suo esse perseverare conatur'. P. 395. b Comp. Ethic. IV, Propos. 21, 22. P. 395. c Ethic. IV, Propos. 18, Schol. P. 395. d Ethic. Ill, Affect. Definit. 24. P. 396. a Ethic. IV, Propos. 37. P. 396. b Ibid. Schol. 1, 'Cupiditatem autem bene faciendi, quae ex eo ingeneratur quod ex rationis ductu vivimus, pietatem voco'. P. 396. c Ibid. Propos. 46, 'amore contra sive generositate compensare'. Comp. Propos. 73, Schol; Append, cap. 11, 'animi non armis sed amore et generositate vincuntur'. P. 396. d Comp. Ethic. IV, Propos. 18, Schol., etc., esp. Prop. 35. E. v. Hartmann (Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, pp. 14, 15) observes: 'It is expedient, with respect to a man of matured mind, who is roused by strong motives, not to urge higher ethical principles for dissuading him from his purposes, but to use those principles at most as auxiliaries, and mainly to appeal from his ill-advised egotism to an egotism more properly to be advised'. P. 396. e Comp. Ethic. IV, Prop. 18, Schol. P. 396. f Ethic. IV, Propos. 72, Schol., 'Quid si homo se perfidia a praesenti mortis periculo posset liberare' etc. P. 397. a Ethic. Ill, Propos. 13, Schol., 'Amor nihil aliud est quam laetitia concomitante idea causae externae' etc.; comp. Proposs. 19 22. P. 397. b Comp. Ethic. IV, Prop. 18, Schol, etc; espec. Propos. 24, 'Ex virtute absolute agere nihil aliud in nobis est, quam ex ductu rationis agere, vivere, suum esse conservare (haec tria idem significant), ex funda- mento proprium utile quaerendi'; Propos. 35, Cor. 2, 'quum maxime unusquisque homo suum sibi utile quaerit, turn maxime homines sunt sibi invicem utiles' etc.; Append, cap. 9. P. 398. a Comp. Epist. XXXVI. 4, 'Neronis verbi gratia matricidium, quatenus aliquid positivum comprehendebat, scelus non erat' etc. See Ethic. I, Appendix. P. 398. b Ethic. I, Append, sub fin. P. 398. c Ethic. IV, Praef., 'Bonum et malum quod attinet, nihil etiam positivum in rebus, in se scilicet consideratis, indicant, nee aliud sunt praeter cogitandi modos seu notiones, quas formamus ex eo quod res ad invicem comparamus'; see ibid. Propos. 73, Schol. P. 399. a Ethic. I, Append, sub fin., 'quia ei non defuit materia ad omnia ex summo nimirum ad infimum perfectionis gradum creanda'. P. 399. b Comp. ibid. IV, Praefat., 'quod vulgo aiunt, naturam ali- quando deficere vel peccare, resque imperfectas producere, inter commenta numero'. P. 399. c Ethic. V, Propos. 35, 36. P. 399. d Ethic. II, Propos. 11, Corol. NOTES [pp. 399 402]. 115 P. 399. * Ibid. Prop. 4, 11, 19 Demonstr. P. 400. a Ethic. IV, Prop. 8; see supra Notes, p. 107; comp. ibid. Prop. 28, 'the highest good of the soul is the knowledge of God, and the highest virtue of the soul is to know God'; V, Propos. 24, 'The better we know the individual things, the better we know God', etc. Another instance is Ethic. V, Prop. 14: 'It is hi the power of the soul to cause all sensations of the body, or the images of all objects, to be associated with God'; here God is nothing but the general Substance, without which no individual observation or conception can exist. P. 400. b Ibid. Propos. 15, 16. P. 400. c Ibid. Propos. 19, 'Qui Deum amat, conari non potest, ut Deus ipsum contra amet'. P. 400. d Ethic. V, Prop. 42, 'Beatitude non est virtutis praemium, sed ipsa virtus', and Spinoza continues: 'nee eadem gaudemus, quia libidines coercemus, sed contra quia eadem gaudemus, ideo libidines coercere possumus'. The last part of the sentence is evident in considering that the laetitia which constitutes the beatitude is the controlled and well-balanced joy. P. 401. a Ethic. V, Prop. 21, 'Mens nihil imaginari potest, neque rerum praeteritarum recordari, nisi durante corpore'. P. 401. b Ethic. V, Prop. 22, 23, 'In Deo tamen datur necessario idea, qua hujus et illius corporis humani essentiam sub aeternitatis specie ex- primit'; and 'Mens humana non potest cum corpore absolute destrui, sed ejus aliquid remanet, quod aeternum est'. P. 402. a See supra pp. 109, 110. P. 402. b So clearly in Ethic. V, Prop. 42, Schol.; the whole passage is significant: 'The ignorant is not only agitated by external causes and in many ways, and never attains true tranquillity of mind, but he lives also without knowledge of himself, of God and external objects, and when his suffering ceases (simulac pati desinit), his existence also ceases ; whereas the wise man, as such, hardly feels an emotion in his mind, but in the natural knowledge of himself, God and external objects, never ceases to be, and always enjoys tranquillity of mind'. P. 402. c Ethic. V, Prop. 41. P. 402. d Comp. Ethic. V, Propos. 40, Schol., 'Our soul, as far a* it is intelligent, is an eternal modus of thinking, which is determined by another eternal modus of thinking; this is again determined by another, and so on without end; so that all together constitute the eternal and infinite intellect'. P. 402. e To show that Attinghausen did not misrepresent Spinoza's views, though, in his usual manner, he carried them perhaps to their extreme consequences, we insert a few sentences from the philosopher's own explanations of the twenty-third Proposition of the fifth Book of his Ethics: 'We attribute existence to the human soul only while the body exists. As, however, that which is conceived with a certain eternal 116 NOTES [pp. 406410]. necessity through God's own essence, is something; this something which belongs to the essence of the soul, will necessarily be immortal . . . It is impossible for us to have any reminiscence of an existence previous to the creation of the body . . . Yet nevertheless we feel and are con- scious that we are eternal. For the soul knows equally the things which it conceives through reflection and those which it remembers . . . The soul can, therefore, be said to last only in so far ... as it involves the real existence of the body, and in so far only it has the power to measure the existence of the things by time, and to conceive them as a duration' (mens igitur nostra eatenus tantum potest dici durare, . . . quatenus actualem corporis existentiam involvit, et eatenus tantum potentiam habet rerum existentiam tempore determinandi, easque sub duratione con- cipiendi). Comp. also Propos. 29 31, 34. P. 406. a Comp. Colebrooke, Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus, edit. 1858, pp. 223, 238; comp. p. 217, 'The omnipotent, omniscient, sentient cause of the universe ... is the ethereal element, from which all things proceed and to which all return. He is the breath in which all beings merge, into which they all rise; he is the light which shines in heaven, . . . everywhere throughout the world, and within the human person'; p. 225, Brahme is omnipotent, capable of every act, without organ or instrument; no motive or special purpose need be assigned for his creation of the universe, beside his will ; 226, 'he himself has no origin, 110 procreator nor maker, for he is eternal, without be- ginning as without end'; p. 238, 'he is one, sole-existent, secondless, entire, without parts, sempiternal, infinite, ineffable, invariable ruler of all, universal soul, truth, wisdom, intelligence, happiness'. These doctrines, in many points indeed Spinozistic, are expounded with wonderful sub- limity, for instance, in the Bhaghavad-Gita (Song of the Deity). P. 407. a Comp. Colebrooke 1. c. p. 242, and in general pp. 208 242. P. 407. b Comp. J. R. Ballantyne, Christianity contrasted with Hindu Philosophy, 1859, pp. xxxi xxxvii. P. 408. a See Colebrooke 1. c. p. 46. P. 409. a Confucius says elsewhere clearly: 'Knowledge, charity, and fortitude are the three jewels resulting from the celestial virtue which pervades the world'; and he adds: 'He who is willing to learn, is not far from knowledge; he who employs well what he has learnt, is not far from charity; he who can blush from a feeling of honour, is not far from fortitude' (Tchong-yong, ch. 20, 8, 10). P. 410. a Comp. for instance, the nine duties of the ruler specified in Confucius' Tchong-yong (ch. 20, 12 15), among which are: to make himself more perfect in virtue, to treat the people like his children, to encourage industry and art, to show urbanity to strangers. P. 410. b Comp. Tchong-yong, ch. 20, 18, 'In order to win the Tao, we require the most extensive study . . . and the determined will to walk in accordance with what we have recognised to be the truth'. NOTES [pp. 410 413]>^_ 117 P. 410. c Tchong-yong, ch. 16. P. 411. a Comp. Plaenckner, Tchong-yong, p. 254, the ming-te is of heavenly origin, a ray of the Divine light, intensified reason, absolute intelligence, highest ennoblement in man, and full consciousness of godly fervour'. P. 411. b Tchong-yong, ch. 12. P. 411. c Ibid. ch. 13, 4, 'Consequently the Tao of the wise includes four symbols, of which I (Confucius) am not yet able strictly to carry out a single one what is required of the son in his duties of reverential obedience to his father, this I am not yet able to fulfil', etc. In ch. 20, 28, five mutual relations of duty are named, viz. ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger brother, and friend and friend. P. 411. d Ibid, ch. 33, 1, 6. Confucius adds: 'High-sounding phrases, splendid words, external pomp, are they to convert the people? Never, never'! P. 411. e Ta-hio, 6. P. 412. a Ta-hio, 4, 5; Tchong-yong, ch. 17, 18; also ch. 31, where the qualities of such a general ruler are specified, concluding, 'Such a one is surely comparable to heaven'; and ch. 32, and Plaenckner in loc. P. 412. b Tchong-yong, ch. 13, where the explanation is added: 'Pro- bity, sincerity, fidelity, and truthfulness, charity and the resolve to treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves this is the result of our inner Tao'; comp. Ta-hio, ch. 10, pp. 276 285 in Plaenckner's translation. P. 412. c See Bible Studies, H. 320. We add again a few other parallels. 'Hear the sum of righteousness, and when thou hast heard, ponder over it: Do not to others what would be repugnant to thyself (Panchatantra III. 104, in Muir's Religious and Moral Sentiments from Indian writers, p. 23). 'Let no man do to another what would be painful to himself; this is the sum of righteousness; the rest is according to inclination' (Mahabharata XIII. 5571; Muir 1. c. p. 24; also Bohtlingk, Indische Spriiche, p. 39). 'As regards refusing and granting, or pleasure and pain, man follows the proper rule in considering the cases his own* (Mahabharata XIII. 5572; Muir 1. c.). P. 412. d Plaenckner 1. c. p. 323; Tchong-yong ch. 20, 'Humanity is the truly human in man; it expands the love of relatives and neighbours into one general principle' etc. P. 412. e Tchong-yong, ch. 25; comp. ch. 28, 'the unwise takes only an interest in that which is of advantage to himself; the man of mean disposition pays attention only to his own concerns'. P. 413. a Tchong-yong, ch. 20, 17, 18; comp. John XIV. 16, 17, 'the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive . . . but we know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you'. The contradistinction of eternal and inward truth is equivalent with that of the transcendent 118 NOTES [pp. 413 416]. and immanent deity. Confucius says, besides: 'If you seek the truth, you seek God; if you find the truth, you have found and understood God' (Plaenckner 1. c. pp. 175, 176). P. 413. b Tchong-yong, ch t 25, 2. P. 413. c Comp. Tchong-yong, ch. 11 (p. 76 of Plaenckner's translation): 'To try to fathom the recondite, the mysterious, the supernatural and enigmatical, only in order to achieve something extraordinary and mar- vellous, to make posterity talk of me and cause it to believe the mira- culous, this is decidedly not my object ... To paint this doctrine of the Tao partially in brilliant colours and thereby to corrupt it, of this I am certainly not capable; for the wise man relies on the eternal and unchangeable truth (the tchong-yong) that is immanent in him'. P. 413. d Comp. Tchong-yong, ch. 21; Plaenckner 1. c. pp. 179182. P. 414. a Tchong-yong, ch. 27, 15; Plaenckner 1. c. pp. 210214. P. 414. b Plaenckner 1. c. p. 186. The Chinese scholar Ko remarks: 'If those who read our books, were to examine what our scholars in all times have written about the holy one, they would, in spite of all prejudices, be compelled to confess that they have commented on things which can only refer to a Divine man, a King, Saviour and. Instructor of mankind' (Plaenckner 1. c. p. 213). P. 414. c Tchong-yong, ch. 29, 4. P. 414. d Ibid. ch. 24. P. 415. a So Plaenckner 1. c. p. 185. P. 415. b Comp. Vendidad XIX. 5154; Ya$na XVII. 26, 28, etc. P. 415. c Comp. E. L. Fischer, Heidenthum und Offenbarung, 1878, pp. 129133. P. 415. d Comp. Geo. Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 403. P. 416. a So in the Leyden Papyrus: Amon is the Absolute, Eternal, Hidden, or Mysterious; Ha is his revelation in nature, especially in the sun; and Ptah the creator of the world through his omnipotence and wisdom (see Lauth, Moses der Ebraer, p. 103; comp. Jamblich. De Myster, VIII. 3, where Osiris occupies the place of Ea). In the Turin Papyrus the Absolute one calls himself the most Holy, the good Spirit, and Judge; or the Father, the good Spirit, and the Holy one (comp. Seyffarth, Theolog. Schriften, p. 17; Fischer 1. c. pp. 289 293). P. 416. b Tchong-yong, ch. 22. P. 416. c In Lao-tse's Tao-Te-King also, Missionaries have discovered Christian dogmas; thus Montucci writes: 'Many passages of the Tao-Te- King speak so clearly of a triune God that, whosoever reads the book, must gain the conviction that the mystery of the holy Trinity was" re- vealed to the Chinese more than five centuries before the advent of Christ' (Plaenckner, Lao-tse's Tao-Te-King, Vorwort, p. xiii; comp. ibid. p. 18, 'The tchang tao, or the Eternal Tao, comprises this Trinity: 1. The Lord of Heaven, the Eternal, the Invisible, the Creator of heaven and earth; 2. The visible Tao, the power of nature, incessantly pro- NOTES [pp. 417426]. 119 ductive, or Nature herself; and 3. The Tao or Divine in man, only comprehended by a pure and passionless mind engendering knowledge and inward bliss'. P. 417. a Ibid. ch. 30; comp. also ch. 32, 1, 'Only he who on earth arrives at the perfect knowledge of truth, will be able to see all in- dividual threads of the great web of the world closely knit together, and to set this forth as the great fundamental law of the world'. P. 417. b Comp. Ibid. ch. 26, 18 ; ch. 27, 13, etc. P. 417. c Ibid. ch. 30, 6; ch. 33, 1, etc. P. 419. a Schopenhauer said: 'Der Optimismus ist eine ruchlose Denkungsart'. P. 420. a Comp. E. von Hartmann, Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, p. 49. P. 421. a Comp. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, I. 366 sqq., 418, 441; Parerga, II. 165, etc. 'All life', he says in the first passage, 'is essentially suffering. While we see even in unintelligent nature, as its innermost character, a constant striving without aim and without rest, this feature appears much more strikingly in considering animals and men. Attempting and striving is man's entire being, wholly comparable to an unquenchable thirst. But the basis of all striving is want, deficiency, and hence pain, to which man thus falls a prey by his very nature and from the beginning. But if, on the other hand, he has no objects of desire, because these are at once removed by too easy gratification, he is seized by a terrible emptiness and ennui, and his individuality and existence themselves become to him an insupportable burden. His life, therefore, oscillates to and fro, like a pendulum, between pain and ennui, which two conditions are indeed life's final constituents' (Sein Leben schwingt also gleich einem Pendel hin und her zwischen dem Schmerz und der Langweile, welche beide in der That dessen letzte Bestandtheile sind). P. 423. a Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Buch IV, 71, fin. (Werke, ed. Frauenstadt, H. 486). P. 423. b Comp. Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille u. Vorst. I. 54, 69. P. 424. a Comp. E. von Hartmann, Phaenomenologie etc., pp. 41 46. P. 424. b Talm. Berach. 5 a , '31 n^DD "llDNH fP"D FID. P. 425. a Talm. 1. c. P. 425. b Talm. Erach. 16 a , i. e. he has obtained the full reward of his merits. P. 425. c Talm. Sanhedr. 101 a . P. 425. d Talm. Taan. 25 a ; Berach. 5 a ; comp. Taan. 23 a , 'What must man do in order to live? Let him die. What must he do in order to die? Let him live'. P. 426. a So Rabba said to his pagan friend Bar Sheshach that the joys of the pious in the next world would be undisturbed by the fear of tyrannical masters. 120 NOTES [pp. 426429]. P. 426. b Talm. Avod. Zar. 65 a . A sad tone of mind was especial]y fostered by the grief felt at the destruction of Jerusalem, after which event many Jews abstained from meat and wine. This austerity was indeed disapproved by some , teachers like Rabbi Jehoshua, yet even he advised : 'If you build a house, leave in it some token of sorrow ; if you have on your table a dainty meal, renounce some part of it ; if you are merry with wine at a wedding feast, strew some ashes on the bride- groom's head, for', he added, 'he who mourns for the desolation of Jerusalem, will enjoy its future glories' (Talm. Bab. Bathr. 60 b ). P. 426. c The Hebrew words are: nJIDD HD 1 ?^ fOlD HD^n, an( * i"ljn; Maimon. Epist., Edit. Amst., 17 a . P. 426. d Comp. also Mendelssohn, Phaedon, p. 183 (vol. II, ed. 1842): 'If we have the hope of Immortality, it will, nay it must be much more important for our felicity if we struggle on earth with adversity, if we learn and practise patience, fortitude and submission to the Divine will, than if we forget ourselves in happiness and abundance' etc. P. 427. a Comp. Strauss, Alter und neuer Glaube, pp. 138 143. P. 428. a Comp. Schopenhauer, Parerga, II. 20; Welt als Wille und Vorst. I. 193; II. 678. To quote one instance only, Schopenhauer de- clares that "Mechanics and astronomy show to us properly how the will of the world acts when, in its lowest phase, it appears merely as gravity, inertness and indifference". This is as if a person offered to show us how the water acts when it burns. Will and inertness are diametrically opposed and exclude each other. But all this, Attinghausen believes, becomes true if Schopenhauer's will is taken in the sense of his own cellular soul, and is applied to the elective affinity of elements as shown by chemistry; see supra p. 323. P. 428. b Hartmann said, therefore, that Schopenhauer's endeavour to use the mortification of the will through ascetism as a means of our final emancipation from life, was mere infatuation and 'an excrescence of Eastern and fanciful mysticism', which does not gain a higher truth by being expressed in the language of modern metaphysics (Hartmann 1. c. p. 46). P. 429 a Hartmann 1. c. p. 43, 'im Uebrigen den wahnsinnigen Narren- tanz des allgemeinen Lebens weiter gehen zu lassen, wie er eben kann und mag'. P. 429. b Hartmann 1. c. pp. 43, 46 sqq. 'The special self is not the universe; in spite of the discontinuity of consciousness, there is a continuity of substance, or at least an indifferent substitution of selves succeeding each other in time, or even an identity of nature in selves separated from each other in space'. How the substance of individual men can continue to exist, when their consciousness has ceased, is one of those dialectic subtleties which Attinghausen would himself have de- tected, if he had not sacrificed his logic, generally so clear and robust, to his eagerness of saving Pessimism by any means whatever. NOTES [pp. 431437]. 121 P. 431. a Comp. Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorsfc. I. 477 483. P. 432. a Schopenhauer makes indeed strenuous efforts to prove that there exists no 'absolute but only a relative Nothing', no nihil negativum, but only a nihil privatimtm, since a Nothing always refers to something which it negatives : that which is, he says, is taken as positive ; its ne- gation is the Nothing; the idea of Nothing presupposes, therefore, the idea of Something. This is true, but it proves that even the Nothing can only exist as the reflection or the reverse of Something; that, there- fore, by itself, the Nothing is a nonentity that has reality neither in actual existence nor in thought; and if even the condition of ecstasy, which does not distinguish between subject and object, is deemed by the philosopher as too positive, what can there be at all which he is able to conceive as positive? (comp. Schopenhauer 1. c. pp. 483486). P. 433. * With such a light irony or banter, with such dialectic fallacies, as is often done, we would not set aside Pessimism. Strauss, for instance, argues (Alt. u. Neu. Glaub. p. 142) : If the world is bad, man's reasoning, which is a part of the world, is also bad; and as the world is by pessimist thinkers pronounced to be bad, it is in reality good which argumentation is vitiated by the same term 'bad' being used in two very different meanings : a reasoning may reveal much that that is bad or painful in the world, yet it need not itself be bad or false; moreover, the 'badness' in man's reasoning may just lie in its being so constituted as to show to him the sad reality in its true light, since, according to the poet, 'Nur der Inthum ist das Leben und das Wissen ist der Tod'. Hence little weight can be attached to the pro- position founded on that conclusion: 'Every true philosophy is neces- sarily optimistic, since it otherwise denies its own right of existence' (1. c.). Not more tenable is the contention of Rosenkranz (Wissenschaft der logischen Idee, I. 329), that 'if laws rule in the world, the omni- potence of Pessimism is an error' : the evil no less than the good, disease no less than health, are subject to definite laws. P. 434. a Goethe's Faust, pp. 56, 57, ed. 1840. P. 434. b Spinoz. Ethic. IV, Prop. 73, Schol., 'perturbate, mutilate et confuse'; see supra Notes p. 109. P. 434. c Ibid. V, Propos. 6, 'Quatenus mens res omnes ut neces- sarias intelligit, eatenus majorem in affectus potentiam habet, seu minus ab iisdem patitur'; comp. the Demonstrat. and Schol. in loc. P. 437. a Not even Schopenhauer denies the possibility of enjoyment, which he divides into three classes, declaring the highest to be the intuitive insight into truth. Yet he teaches that each enjoyment con- sists only in the removal of a privation, or the appeasement of a grief, and is, therefore, but negative in its nature. Spinoza and others con- sider just that pleasure to be the intensest which follows as a relief and contrast after a past suffering; while others still, like Plato, regard pleasure and pain as inseparable, the one succeeding the other immediately 122 NOTES [pp. 443-448]. (Plat. Phaedo, c. 3). Schopenhauer's Pessimism has been praised fron an ethical point of view, because it is not based on the sufferings o: life, but on their source, which, in his opinion, is the antimoral dis- position of the will towards life. But this deliberate and self-willec estrangement from life seems to be even less ethical than aversion to life in consequence of overwhelming trials. P. 443. a 'The arguments against the possibility of a supreme intelligent Being are regarded (by a large portion of the Cingalese) as so con- clusive that any attempt to disprove them would be a mark of extreme folly . . . "We are frequently told that our religion would be an ex- cellent one, if we could leave out of it all that is said about a Creator' (Spence Hardy, Legends and Theories of Buddhists, p. 221). Yet some believe in one Almighty God, while others confer upon the devs divine attributes. P. 443. b The stupas (topes or steles) were at first only mounds of earth, included within circular wooden rails; but later, and especially by the piety of king Asoka, they were faced with stone often beautifully wrought and ornamented, and so designed as to indicate the authority of the monarch of 'the Three Worlds' the World of Men, of Devs, and of Space (comp. Seal, Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, p. 129). P. 444. a See Beat 1. c. pp. 239 244. In a Chinese work of Wong Puh, 'probably a copy of the first records brought from India', and claiming a semi-canonical authority, as belonging to the traditional or smriti class of writings, we read: 'Sakya's pure body is incapable of beginning or end'. Comp. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion, p. 168, 'Le Bouddhisme n'a pas divinise le Bouddha; . . . jamais personne n'a songe a en faire un dieu' which requires modi- fication with respect to later Buddhism; though it is perhaps true that Buddha has received no 'sacrifice of adoration' (yajnd) but only 'com- memorative homage' (puja; comp. Em. Burnouf, Sciences des Religions, p. 23). P. 444. b Comp. Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, II. 426, 'The relic cell was composed of precious stones; in the middle was a Bodhi- tree, likewise of precious stones, on the eastern side of which a bench bore a golden statue of Buddha sitting in that posture in which he at Uruvilva attained the highest knowledge' etc.; ibid. pp. 453, 454, 'As Buddha recognised no god, and himself claimed to be only a mortal, though one highly privileged, he could not establish any divine worship', etc. P. 446. a See Earth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. p. 52, after the translation of the Lalitd-vistara by Foucaux. P. 448. a Comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 391, 392. P. 448. b On the Nirwana see Colebrooke, Essays on the Relig. and Philos. of the Hindus, 1858, pp. 258, 259 (to him the Nirwana is a 'profound' or 'unruffled calm', a 'perfect' or 'imperturbable and unceasing NOTES [p. 448]. 123 apathy', 'not discontinuance of individuality' or 'annihilation', but a state of unmixed or tranquil happiness or ecstasy, ananda, when the soul is in 'a condition of re-union with the Supreme' which seems, on the whole, the correct conception, though the last qualification may give rise to error); Eug. Burnouf, Introduction a 1'histoire du Buddhisme Indien, pp. 18 20 ('le Nirvana est pour les theistes 1'absorption de la vie individuelle en Dieu, et pour les athees 1'absorption de cette vie individuelle dans le neant; mais pour les* uns et pour les autres, le Nirvana est la delivrance, 1'affranchissement supreme', p. 18), 441 (Nirvritti nearly synonymous with Nirwana), 521 ('Qakya vit le bien supreme dans 1'aneantissement complet du principe pensant' which is the 'complete Nirwana'); Barthel. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 132 140, 177 (following and exaggerating Burnouf, 'le Nirvana ou le neant, est une conception monstrueuse, qui revolte la raison'), 394 399; Max Midler, Buddhist Pilgrims, pp. 14, 16, 4454; Ueber den Buddhistischen Nihilismus, Vortrag, 1869; Beal 1. c. pp. 172 188 (observing, that there is a general agreement respecting the Nirwana of the Buddhists in their own works, viz. that it signifies a condition of Best and Peace, or 'the entrance of the soul into Best', a subduing of all wishes and desires, indifference to joy and pain, to good and evil), 250 (translating the Maha-pari-Nirwana Sutra, 'Having destroyed all boastful desires and all unholy attachments, we reach a condition of Best beyond the limit of human knowledge'); Spence Hardy 1. c. pp. 169, 172 174 ('So long as there is attachment to existence upadana , there will be repetition of birth of some form or other of sentient existence . . . When this attach- ment is destroyed, the repetition of birth ceases, as ... the lamp no longer burns when the whole of the oil and the wick is consumed : this cessation of existence is Nirwana' which implies the right view at least indirectly); Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, III. 390 sqq., 'Nirvana, mit welchem Worte die vollstandige Ausloschung und Vernichtung be- zeichnet wird', or 'die vollstandige Vemichtung des Daseins'; Vassilief, Le Boudhisme, pp. vii, viii ('le Nirvana le neant, ou un reve, ou une extase, dans laquelle s'evanouit tout sentiment et jusqu'a la con- science meme de notre personne; 1'instinct s'efforce d'arriver a 1'infini par I'indefini'; or 'sortir ou etre exclu de tout ce qui est du monde'), 93 sqq. ('il semble que par le mot Nirvana tous les Boudhistes n'entendent pas la meme chose'). P. 448. c See supra p. 386. Comp. Burnouf, Lotus, pp. 816 sqq. The saint arrives to the place 'ou il n'y a ni idees ni absence d'idees': this is said to have been taught even by Buddha's Brahmanistic prede- cessors and masters, who are believed to have also expounded the four dhyanas in all essential points. The eight degrees of ecstatic contem- plation are mainly identical with the so-called 'eight deliverances' (vimuJcti), which are frequently mentioned (compare 1. c. pp. 543, 824832). 124 NOTES [pp. 448453]. P. 448. d Seal 1. c. p. 172 observes: 'The figure of a lamp gone out seems to point more to the extinction of personal or individual being, than to the extinction of all being'. P. 449. a Burnouf, Introduction, p. 83, translation of the Sutra of Mandhatri. P. 450. a Except perhaps in Tibet, the Buddhist priesthood has, in spite of its great numbers and riches, never formed an oppressive ' or dangerous hierarchy (comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 298, 299; see, however, pp. 403 405). At present, not a few of the Bhixus engage in commerce or take part in the government (Vassilief 1. c. p. 87). P. 450. b The twelve observances of the ascetic are: 1. To clothe himself only in rags gathered from the roads, heaps of rubbish, or cemeteries. 2. Not to have more than three of these ragged coverings, which he must sow together with his own hand. 3. To wear over such a garment a yellow woollen cloak procured and made in the same manner as the garment: if the materials are new, the raiments, before being worn, must be soiled with mud and dust. 4. To live on alms to be begged in silence with a wooden bowl in his hand. 5. To have no more than one meal in the day. 6. Never to eat after noon. 7. To live in the woods, except during the rainy season, when he may enter a vihara. 8. To protect himself solely with the foliage of the trees. 9. To sit with the back leaning against the stem of a tree. 10. To sleep in the same upright position. 11. To leave his piece of carpet unmoved after having once spread it under a certain tree. 12. To go at least once a month in the night to a cemetery, to meditate on human vanities (comp. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 86, 87, etc). P. 451. a Vassilief 1. c. Introduction. P. 453. a The five Jchandas are called, respectively, rupa, wedana, sannya, sankhara, and winyana; that is, body, sensation, perception, discrimination, and consciousness. The 'organised body' is considered to consist of twenty-eight elements and properties. P. 453. b Comp. Spence Hardy 1. c. pp. xlii, xliii, 162, 163, 211; see ibid. p. 240, Buddha says: 'It should be distinctly known, All this (body, sensation etc.) is not mine; I am not it; it is not to me a Soul'. Yet some, holding heterodox opinions, say that upon death the soul flees happily away like a bird from its cage (ibid. p. 237); and many Buddhists at present believe in the existence of a soul, and regard the statement that Buddha taught there was no self as a misrepresentation (ibid. p. 220). P. 453. c Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 162, 163. The school of the Svabhavikas, still found in Nepal, maintains that nothing exists but Nature, or rather Substance, which is self-existent (svabhavat), having no Creator or Ruler. Buddha is reported to have said that he ab- stained from teaching his disciples a cosmogony, as this knowledge would be of no benefit to them, and all speculation on the subject is NOTES [p. 454]. 125 hopeless. See Spence Hardy 1. c. p. 159. A sketch of the Buddhist universe is given ibid. pp. 8096; the curious views of the production of men and women by 'the apparitional birth', by touch or look, per- fumes or flowers, food or the voice, and of beings not human by pu- tridity or warmth, the wind or the rain, ibid. p. 161. At the dissolution of any given world, the destruction of its elements is considered complete, and another world is created out of nothing. The periodical destruction is successively accomplished by water, fire, and wind : the next in order is by fire (ibid. p. 175). P. 454. a The principle that life is only a tissue of griefs and miseries, and salvation consists in never entering it, is common to the Buddhists and the Brahmans; the difference lies only in the mode of 'deliverance', which is more consistent and nobler in the Buddhist's creed. Yet, as will presently be pointed out, the Buddhist's actual life is not one of 'profound and irremediable sadness', or an 'odious burden' which he is anxious to shake off. P. 454. b The twelve 'Causes of continued Existence' (nid&nas) or of 'the complete Concatenation of Sorrow', begin thus: 'On account of ig- norance merit and demerit are accumulated, on account of merit and demerit the conscious faculty is produced'; and then come, successively, the sensitive, perceptive and reasoning powers, the body, and so on till birth is produced, and 'in consequence of birth follow decay, death, sorrow, weeping, grief, discontent and vexation' (comp. Burnouf, In- troduction, pp. 485 sqq. ; Lotus, pp. 530 544; Spence Hardy 1. c. p. 167; Earth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 127 131, 167, 168). This mutual concatenation of causes, together with the 'Four Sublime Truths' (see infra), forms the oldest and most authentic foundation of Buddha's doctrine. P. 454. c The sutras attribute to Buddha, rightly or wrongly, the following sentiment: 'Every object is empty; no object has a proper substance; all substance is empty; within is emptiness, without is emptiness; personality itself is without substance; all compound things are perishable, and, like the lightning of heaven, pass rapidly away'; or, condensed into one sentence, 'This is transitory, this is misery, this is void' (Earth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 131, 155, 168), the school of Pradjna- paramita professing 'to know nothing and to believe nothing'. P. 454. d Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire (1. c. p. 161) writes: 'Ainsi igno- rance de la notion du bien; egoisme aveugle; meprise absolue sur le devoir; scepticisme a peu pres universel; aversion fanatique de la vie qu'on meconnait; pusillanimite devant ses douleurs; tristesse inconsolable dans un monde que 1'on ne comprend pas; voila deja bien des erreurs; mais le Bouddhisme en commet de bien plus fortes encore', (comp. ibid. pp. 168, 177, 178). It is not too much to say that, almost in every particular, the exact reverse is much nearer the truth, as will be ap- parent from the conversations. 126 NOTES [pp. 454461]. P. 454. e Comp. Farrar, Bampton Lectures, p. 35, etc. P. 455. a Spence Hardy 1. c. pp. xlviii, xlix. P. 455. b See supra p. 429. P. 455. c Comp. Hardy 1. c. pp. 164 166, 'that which transmigrates is not the spirit, the soul, the self; but the conduct and character of the man, something too subtle to be denned or explained'. P. 455. d Comp. Bastian, Reise in Siam, p. 73. P. 456. a Comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 169, 170, 335. Previous to Gautama were twenty-four Buddhas. As characteristics of a great man thirty-two points are specified and very minutely described (comp. Burnouf, Lotus, pp. 553647). P. 456. b John III. 3; Gal. VI. 15; 1 Pet. I. 23, etc. P. 458. a Comp. Vassilief 1. c. I. 5, 18, 19. P. 461. a The 'Four Sublime Truths' are, therefore: grief, the cause of grief, the annihilation of grief, and the way that leads to it. Burnouf (Lotus, p. 517) states them thus: '1. la douleur, condition necessaire de toute existence; 2. la production de 1' existence causee par les passions (indiquante 1'inevitable sujetion des etres aux passions et aux desirs sen- suels qui les attachent fatalement a 1' existence) ; 3. la cessation des pas- sions; et4. le moyen d'arrivera cette cessation' (comp. ibid. pp. 517 538; Introduction, p. 629; Seal, Catena, pp. 155, 160172; Vassilief 1. c. p. 93, 'souffrance, enchainement, renonciation, et le chemin'). P. 461. b Comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 8082; etc. P. 461. c Seal 1. c. pp. 156, 251; comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. p. 84, where the verse is thus rendered: 'Abstention de tout peche, pratique constante de toutes les vertus, domination absolue de son propre coeur, tel est 1'enseignement du Bouddha'. P. 461. d Seal 1. c. p. 158. P. 461. e Comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. pp. 383 sqq., 387 sqq. P. 461. f Seal 1. c. pp. 202, 203; comp. Ps. CXIX. 103, 'How sweet are Thy words unto my palate ! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth' ! XIX. 11, 'sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb', etc. The ac- count of Buddha's addresses generally concludes with the words: 'All the great Bhixus, having heard the words of Buddha, were filled with joy, and departed'. The object of all lessons is stated to be attainment of 'permanence, joy, personality, purity'. Yet it is deemed praiseworthy to subordinate the chase and similar pastimes to the study of the Law and to works of charity; and the priests are forbidden to indulge in dancing, singing and any other music (Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 108, 361). P. 461. 8' To these are joiued five others of minor importance: to ab- stain from meals out of the regular times; from attending dances and theatrical performances; from wearing ornaments and using perfumes; from sleeping in a luxurious bed; and from accepting gold or silver. The ten commands enumerated are those to which alone the clerical novice has to pledge himself, except that the third and the fifth are, in NOTES [pp. 461-464], 127 his case, of greater stringency, being 'not to have any sexual intercourse', and 'not to take any drinks likely to disturb him in his religious duties or reflections'. They were minutely, and often veiy beautifully, deve- loped hi a manner not unlike that of the Talmudists; for instance, the prohib'tion of lying is made to involve backbiting, impropriety of language, and e\ >n empty and frivolous talk. Backbiting is held in abhorrence especially because it tends to cause strife, whereas it is the Buddhist's duty ha every way to promote union and friendship. The language employed should be 'gentle, pleasant to the ear, affectionate, heart- winning, polite, agreeable to others' (comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. pp. 84, 89, 90, 361). P. 461. h Comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. p. 88; see also Burnouf, Lotus, pp. 544 553, where the second virtue is stated to be la perfection de la vertue (de la moralite, des bonnes moeurs, de la bonne conduite)', and the fourth 'la perfection de 1'energie ou de I'effort'. P. 462. a Beat 1. c. pp. 193, 194. P. 462. b Comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. pp. 149 152, 'il n'agit jamais qu'en vue de la remuneration qu'il espere ; il eteint toutes les autres convoitises, maisil garde celle-la' ! and so on in many modifications; see also supra p. 163. P. 462. c Beat 1. c. p. 190; then foUow the words: 'To remain fixed in religious meditation, this is to conquer the Devil'. P. 463. a At the new and the full moon. P. 463. b Barth. Saint-Hil. pp. 8891, 373. King Piyadasi, long after Buddha, issued an edict ordering the whole people to assemble once every year for three days to hear the reading of the Law and to make a general and public confession of their sins: which recalls an analogous command of the Pentateuch (Deut. XXXI. 10 13). P. 463. c Comp. Burnouf, Introduction, p. 198; Barth. Saint-Hil. pp. 144, 145, where, as the testimony of an opponent, the following is valuable: 'La gloire, qui lui (a Bouddha) est propre et que mil ne lui dispute, c'est cette charite sans bornes, dont son ame parait embrasee . . . Sans doute 1'esprit Chretien connait des doctrines plus belles et plus hautes; mais six ou sept siecles avant qu'il ne renouvelle le monde, c'est deja une bien admirable idee que celle d'associer tous les homines, tous les etres, dans une foi commune, et de les confondre dans uue egale estime et dans un egal amour'. P. 463. d Comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 148, 378, 379, etc. P. 464. a Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 9193; comp. Burnouf, In- troduction, p. 21, where the remarkable address is thus summarised: 'Les maisons, ou les enfants honorent leur pere et leur mere, sont aussi saintes que si Brahma, un precepteur spirituelle, le dieu de la famille et le feu domestique se trouvaient au milieu d'elles'. P. 464. b Seal, Catena, p. 199. P. 464. c From Buddha's Dhammapada; comp. Max Muller, Lectures on the Science of Religion, p. 241. 128 NOTES [pp. 464470]. P. 464. d Bbhtlinffk, Indische Spriiche, p. 101. P. 464. e Beal 1. c. p. 203. P. 464. f Ibid. p. 195. P. 464. 6 Ibid. p. 203. P. 464. h Ibid. p. 196. P. 465. a Ibid. p. 193. P. 465. b Ibid. p. 194. P. 465. c Ibid. p. 196; comp. p. 203, 'The state of the perfect equi- librium of the mind is the true standing ground'; p. 201, 'Keep the mind well adjusted (that is, guard it from extremes), and you will be able to acquire reason' : this is illustrated by the example of a lute, the strings of which must neither be fixed too loosely nor too tightly; in the former case they give no sound at all, in the latter case too sharp a sound; they should be tuned to a just medium. P. 465. d Ibid. p. 199. P. 465. e Ibid. p. 197. P. 465. f See Beal 1. c. pp. 239244; comp. also ibid. pp. 398 409, the 'Liturgical Services of the great compassionate Kwan-yin' (saec. VI A. D.), with Imperial Preface of Yung Loh, of the Ming dynasty, written A. D. ]412; especially the confessions of sin, pp. 407, 408. P. 466. a Beal I c. pp.183, 194, 195, 199. Among the eight hundred 'manifest Gates of the Law' are: faith, purity, discretion, benevolence, pity, modesty, self-knowledge, respect (Barth. Saint-Hil. p. 52). 'The Dhamma padam, the Pali work on Buddhist ethics', says Spence Hardy (Eastern Monachism, p. 169), contains 'a collection of precepts that in purity of its ethics could scarcely be equalled from any other heathen author'; or as Knighton (History of Ceylon, p. 77) remarks, 'a code of morality and a list of precepts which, for purity, excellence and wisdom, is only second to that of the Divine Legislator himself. P. 466. b Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. iv, vii. xxiii, 32, 177, 'sa morale est incomplete et vaine en ce qu'elle s'appuie sur une vue tres fausse de la nature de 1'homme et de la vie qu'il mene ici bas'; etc. P. 466. c Spence Hardy 1. c. pp. xiii, 217, 218; comp. ibid. p. 185, 'In the whole story of humanity, there is nothing more cheerless, more depressing, or more afflictive'. P. 466. d Max Mutter, Buddhist Pilgrims, pp. 20, 21, 54, 'hallucinations' not worth noticing. P. 467. a Comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 147, 148. P. 467. b Comp. Spence Hardy 1. c. pp. 220 sqq.; see supra p. 186. P. 467. c Comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 150165. P. 467. d Comp. 1. c. pp. 159, 172, 175, etc. P. 467. e Ibid. pp. 374, 387, 391, 392. P. 468. a Comp. Spence Hardy 1. c. pp. 183185, 211, 212. P. 468. b Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. p. 182. P. 468. c Comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 94, 114119, 145, 146, 285, 399, 400. P. 470. a Comp. Barth. Saint. Hil. 1. c. pp. 78, 110, 181, etc. See supra, Note a of p. 466. NOTES [pp. 470483]. 129 P. 470. b Seal 1. c., Preface. Even Spence Hardy (1. c. p. xiii) observes: 'The system elaborated by Gotama Buddha ... is one of the most wonderful emanations that ever proceeded from man's intellect, unaided by the outward revelation of God*. P. 470. c Comp. Burnouf, Introduction, pp. 462, 478, 520; Max Miiller, Buddhist Pilgrims, p. 53; Seal 1. c. pp. 197, 202, 203, 'The four elements in your body are only names, and therefore without any personal reality'; Earth. Saint. Hil. 1. c. p. 131, etc.; see supra Notes p. 125 (P. 454 e ). P. 470. d See supra pp. 38, 39; comp. Barth. Saint-Hil. 1. c. pp. 387, 392 sqq., etc. P. 475. a See Goethe, West-ostlicher Divan, Werke, IV. p. 264. P. 475. b Comp. Strauss, Reimarus und seine Schutzschrift etc. p. 279. P. 476. a See Plato, Sympos. pp. 208E 212 A; also Phaedr. p. 249; comp. Zeller, Philosophic der Griechen, II. 1, p. 387, 'Seinem wahren "Wesen nach ist der Eros der philosophische Trieb, das Streben nach Darstellung des absolut Schonen, nach Einbildung der Idee in die Endlichkeit durch spekulatives "Wissen und philosophisch.es Leben, und nur als ein Moment in der Entwickelung dieses Triebes ist alle Freude an irgend welchem besonderen Schonen zu betrachten'. P. 478. a Compare Schiller's Drei Worte des Glaubens, und Drei Worte des Wahns. P. 478. b Comp. Zeller 1. c. pp. 439455, 601. P. 479. a Plat. Legg. VII. 10, p. 803 B, C, fan ny rotvvv TO. m-v av^ocoTTCov TT^ay/tara fisya\ri<; fJih JTrouS^ QVK a/a . . , av'&puirov $s (^>r t fju) &sov Tt naiyviw etvai fjiSfir^avyjfjLsvov. Comp. ibid. I. 644 D ; V. 728 D ; X. 903 D, etc. P. 479. b Comp. ibid. V. 739; VII. 807 B; see Kepubl. IX. 592 B. P. 479. c Legg. V. 727, 728, 731; VI. 773; VII. 797; IX 874. P. 479. d Comp. Plat. Legg. X. 896, 898, 904; see Zeller 1. c. pp. 634 637. P. 479. e Plat. Phaed. c. 6 ; see supra Notes p. 9 (P. 70 C ). P. 482. a This may easily be made evident. Man's chief attributes are: Intellect, Morals, Religious sentiment, Imagination, and Character. Now his Intellect is satisfied or trained by the Epicurean's freedom from superstition and Spinoza's love of truth; his Morals by the Monist's general sympathy and the Buddhist's compassion and benevolence; his Religious sentiment by the Biblical peace, a genuine idealism, and the Buddhist's resignation and contentment; his Imagination by the Greek's art or beauty; and his Character by the Stoic's fortitude. One other instinct or faculty, which might seem to have been overlooked, will be pointed out at the conclusion of the chapter. P. 483. a ShaJcesp. Jul. Caesar, V. v. 73 75; comp. Romeo and Juliet, TTT. iii. 115, 'I thought thy disposition better temper'd'. i 130 NOTES [pp. 483494]. P. 483. Olympiodor. c. 6, uo yap avrai itu^a} Xsyovra/ ysvsa'&ai navap- P.WIQI; comp. PZa#. Eep. 401, 403; Phileb. 64, 66. etc.; see Zeller 1. c. pp. 317319. P. 485. a Xenoph. Memor. IV. viii. 11, e^o'/fs/ TOIOVTO^ $7va/ o/ T o v 5*77 aptyToz TS avyp KOU sv^ai/JLOVsurarog. P. 485. b Comp. Spiess, Logos Spermatikos, p. 398. P. 485. c Comp. Col. I. 15; II. 9; Hebr. I. 3, 'the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person', etc. P. 485. d See Matt. IX. 58; XXVIII. 18; 2 Cor. VIII. 9; Philipp. II. 7; comp. Matt. VIII. 20; John 1.3; Kom. XIV. 9; 1 Cor. VIII. 6; Col. I. 16; Hebr. I. 2, etc. P. 485. e Hebr. IV. 15, etc. . P. 485. f John IV. 34; VI. 38; VIII. 50; IX. 4; comp. XVII. 4; XIX. 30. P. 485. S i Pet. II. 22; Acts X. 38. P. 485. h Hebr. VII. 26; comp. 2 Cor. V. 21; 1 John III. 5, etc. P. 486. a Hebr. I. 1, 2. P. 486. b Comp. 1 Cor. XII. P. 487. a Mic. VI. 8, ^ "1DH rnnNl DDt^D nWJJ. P. 487. b Comp, Isai. XXXIII. 15, 16; LVIII. 6, 7; Jer. VII. 5, 6; IX. 22, 23; XXII. 3; Ezek. XVIII. 59; Zechar. VII. 9, 10; VHI. 16, 17; Ps. XV. 1 sqq.; XXIV. 3. 4; XXXIV. 1215; Job XXIX. 1217; esp. XXXI. 140. P. 487. c Eccles. IV. 912. P. 488. a Comp. Talm. Yom. 23 a , 86 a ; Shabb. 88 b ; Ethics of the Fathers, VI; etc. P. 491. a Plat. Theaet. c. 25> p. 176 B, o/*o/cc<n ^ew Kara TO UVTOV o/o/coa/ $e ^I'KCCIOV K<xi oovov fJLSTO. (frpovrjGstog ysvsa&ai. P. 491. Ibid., $10 KOU ireipa&ai %py sv^sv^s sKslas tyevysiv o,rt ra^/jra, (frvyy ^e ofjiotuuig K. r. \. P. 492. a Comp. Neander, Vorlesungen uber Geschichte der Christlichen Ethik, pp. 65, 67. P. 492. b Plat. Theaet. 1. c., &s<j otiapy ou^a^w^ '/KO?, oXX' w$ o7ov TS SiKaivTixTQt;, KOU ovK effTiv uTt3 oftoioTspov ovdsv ^ og v Ty/dcov u ysy-fjrai 0,T1 SlKaMTCtTOi; K. T. \. P. 492. c Comp. Plat. Eep. VI. 508 E; VII. 517 B; Tim. 28 C, TOV /jisy ovv TroirjTyv KOU n/xTspa TOV^S TOV Travrog svpstv TS epyov, KCU evpovTcc sig iravTag a^vvuTov \systv: etc. See on Plato's Ideas in general, Zeller 1. c. pp. 412 457; on the supreme Idea of the Good specially, pp. 448 sqq. P. 494. a Plat. Legg. IV. p. 716 C. P. 494. b Neander 1. c. p. 72, where the author continues: 'Denn es wird hier bezeichnet die demiithige Unterordnung des Greistes unter das gottliche Gresetz in der sittlichen Weltordnung, im Gegensatz gegen die mit dem Wort sfcp'&eii; angedeutete Selbstiiberhebung die Gesinnung, in welcher das Bewusstsein der Abhangigkeit von Gott der Grundton ist*. NOTES [pp. 495500]. 131 P. 495. a Neander 1. c. p. 75; comp. p. 79, 'der Staat kann nicht umnittelbar das Hochste selbst darstellen, sondern 1st nur dazu bestimmt, die Bedingungen fiir die Realisirung aller Giiter der Menschheit und des hochsten Gutes zu sichern, und sie gegen die storende Willkur zu verwahren'. P. 495. b Comp. Plat. Legg. V. p. 739 D, etc. P. 496. a Neander 1. c. p. 83, and in general pp. 57 85. P. 496. b Plat. Phileb. c. 10, p. 20 B, C, /wow mpi re ^owfr KO.} (f>pwr;<Tewg, ov^srepov auro2v sari raya^o'v, aXX' aXXo rt rpirov, srspw pev TOVTWV, apetvov $e apfaTv; c. 11, pp. 21, 22, T/ I' o vvafjKf>oTepog, w Hpwrapxe, e'f apfaiv avftfufoeti; KOIVO<; yewfjisvoi; ; 'HSovTfc \syett; Kai vov KOI (ftpovyasKi; K. T. X. P. 498. a Comp. Schiller, Ueber die aesthetischeErziehung des Menschen, Letter X. P. 498. b Shakesp. Sonnet LIV; Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn. P. 498. c Comp. Plat. Rep. X. p. 607 A; also III. pp. 398 C 401 A; Legg. II. pp. 653, 660; VII. pp. 800, 814, etc. P. 499. a Plat. Rep. II. 377 B, TT/JCOTOV 77 W^v, wg SOIKSV, eV/araTTjTg'ov TO/ ftv'&oirQiQ'?/;, Kai ov JJLSV av /caXov Tro/^uwa/v, syKpirsov, ov ^av ^77, TTO- Kpireov: Legg. H. 656, 658, 668, 671; VII. 797802, 813. However, in his later work, the Laws, Plato admitted that the Comedy teaches us what we should avoid, the Tragedy what we should strive to imitate; yet he did not abandon the control of the state (comp. Legg. VII. 816 D sqq.; XI. 935 D sqq.). See in general, Zeller 1. c. pp. 608615. P. 500. a 'Wer "Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt, der hat Religion; wer diese beiden nicht besitzt, der habe Religion'. P. 500. b Here Wolfram entered upon an exposition of Schiller's theory ; but as his summary has probably little interest for many readers on account of its abstract character, we have omitted it in the text and insert it in this place for the benefit of those to whom a brief account may perhaps not be unwelcome.* 'I must content myself, continued Wolfram, 'with a few general outlines, whereas those Letters as a whole reveal the great poet as one of the acutest and closest of reasoners. Man in his first stage, he explains, is a sensual being; it is his aim to transform himself into a being intellectual and moral; and there exists no other way of making the sensual man rational than by first making him aesthetic. In order to proceed from the passive state of feeling to the active state of reflection * See Schiller, Aesthetische Er- ; courage, as far as we can, the study ziehung des Menschen, Letters j of a work which, we believe, will XXIII XXVII. We have given ever remain the basis of all theo- Schiller's chief ideas in a trans- lation as literal as possible of his retical enquiries into the functions of Art and Aesthetics, and the im- own words ; in doing this we have } portance of which is being more been guided by the wish to en- j and more acknowledged. 132 NOTES [p. 500]. and will, he must pass through the intermediate one of aesthetic freedom. In his physical phase man endures the power of nature; he releases himself from this power in the aesthetic stage; and he rules over it in the moral one; or in other words, both individuals and nations, in order to fulfil their destiny, must advance from Nature, through Art, to Culture'. 'Is that intermediate link indeed indispensable'? asked Gideon. 'Are truth and duty alone and by themselves not strong enough to find ac- cess to the mind of the sensual man'? 'Decidedly', replied "Wolfram; 'truth and duty must absolutely owe their directing force to themselves only. That middle state is in itself of no significance whatever for our intellectual and moral worth. Beauty supplies no result either to our reason or our will. It has no influence on our thoughts or our resolutions but it involves the faculty for both; since the aesthetic frame of mind affords to the sensual man the freedom to discover or to seize the truth by his own energy. It marks his transition from the physical or passive to the intellectual or active condition, be- cause it includes both the one and the other. Comprising the whole of humanity, it involves potentially its individual manifestations. It en- courages every single function, because it favours none exclusively. It enables us to turn with equal readiness to seriousness and play, to repose and motion, to meditation and reception. It stimulates the operations of reason even in the sphere of sensuality, and it prepares and refines the physical man sufficiently to let him develop into an intellectual being merely by the common laws of liberty. This step from the aesthetic to the logical and moral state from beauty to truth and duty is in- finitely more easy than the step from the physical to the aesthetic state from a low and blind existence to one of form and taste. In order to lead the aesthetic man to intelligence and high thoughts, it is only necessary to offer to him great opportunities; whereas in order to bring the sensual man to the same point, his whole nature must be thoroughly changed. 'Every one should strive after the faculty of enlarging his judgment and will into the judgment of our species, of finding the road from his limited existence to an infinite one, and of rising from a condition of in- ward dependence to release and freedom. That invaluable faculty is gained by the rules of beauty, which effect that man at no moment is merely an individual, or stands under the dominion of the natural laws. Form and play Spieltrieb . though without legitimate influence on truth and morality, are allowed to govern in the domains of happiness. Play, in the largest sense of the word, was the existence of the Greek gods, living free from labour and all burdens, free from duty and care ; hence their features show no distinguishable trace of inclination or will, because both are intimately blended'. 'But are the stages you have pointed out', said Gideon, 'really se- parated in the manner described? and if not, would this not prove that the intermediate aesthetic state cannot claim the importance you assign to it' ? NOTES [p. 500]. 133 'It is true', rejoined Wolfram, 'a state of merely savage nature, of purely aesthetic liberty, or of perfect culture, cannot be pointed out in any age or people; it is simply an idea, but an idea plainly illustrated by experience in the minutest details. In actual history the three epochs more or less pass into each other; man was never entirely in the phy- sical state and he never escapes from it completely'; yet in theory those three phases must be kept apart. As long as man, in his earliest or natural condition, views the visible world passively, he is still one with it; and just because he is himself only a cosmic being, the world does not exist for him. Not until, in the aesthetic stage, he separates himself from the world and comprehends it by his contemplation, his indivi- duality becomes distinct, and he recognises a world, because he has ceased to be one with it. Reflection, rescuing him from the compulsion and undivided power of nature, creates in his mind an instantaneous peace, and the form, the image of the Infinite, is mirrored on the fugitive and ever changeful ground of time. "When there is light in man, there is without him no longer darkness; when there is tranquillity in his mind, the storm in the universe is appeased, and the conflicting forces of nature find rest within permanent boundaries"* A slave of nature while he merely feels it, man becomes its lawgiver when he seizes it in his thought. He proves and exercises his liberty by fashioning formless matter. He is delivered from every dread and apprehension, and is shielded from the rage of the elementary powers. With a noble freedom he rises against his gods. "These throw off the ghostly masks with which they terrified his childhood, and surprise him with his own likeness by becoming his conception. The Oriental's divine monster, which governs the world with the blind force of a beast of prey, is in the imagination of the Greeks changed into the gentle lineaments of humanity; the empire of the Titans falls, and the limitless strength is vanquished by the limitless form"'.** 'But have you not', said Gideon with some irritation, as he suspected in Wolfram's last words a covert attack on the Biblical Deity, 'have you not yourself, in these observations, proceeded at once from the material world to that of spirits, and thus tacitly admitted that the intervening stage of beauty or aesthetics is superfluous'? 'I confess', replied Wolfram, 'my imagination has misled me to a bound not in consonance with human nature, and I must, therefore, make again a step backward. Beauty is indeed the work of free per- ception, and with it we enter into the world of ideas, yet without leaving the world of the senses, as we do in the search after truth, which is the pure product of active and objective abstraction. It is in direct and mutual relation to feeling; in the pleasure it affords, action and passion are one. It is indeed form, since we behold it; but at the same time * Letter XXV, p. 79. | ** Ibid. p. 80, 134 NOTES [p. 500]. it is life, because we feel it. It is at once a condition and a deed. Therefore it serves triumphantly to demonstrate that passiveness is not incompatible with action, nor matter with form, nor limitation with in- finitudein fact, that man's physical dependence, which is inevitable, by no means destroys or endangers his moral liberty. Whereas logical reflection excludes feeling while the reflection is carried on, and feeling excludes reflection while the feeling works, the enjoyment of the beautiful, or the aesthetic unity, involves a real combination and interchange of matter and form, and proves the possibility of blending our two natures, and of accomplishing the infinite in our finite existence in a word proves the possibility of the most exalted humanity. Thus the progress from sensual dependence to moral liberty is shown to be feasible, since beauty makes it evident that the latter may well co-exist with the former, and that man, in order to manifest himself as a spirit, need not escape from matter; as, on the other hand, it gives us the guarantee that man is able to rise from the material limits to the absolute, and by his thought and will may oppose himself to sensuality, since he can assert his liberty even in conjunction with the senses. When he has once paved his way from a common to an aesthetic reality, or from the mere consciousness of life to the consciousness of beauty, there can no longer be a question how he may pass from beauty to truth'. 'You admit, it appears', said Gideon, 'that the aesthetic disposition has not its source in morality, and yet you presume that, on its part, it calls forth liberty'. 'Exactly so', rejoined Wolfram ; 'it must be a free gift of nature, because the favour of circumstances alone can unloosen the fetters of the physical state and lead the savage to beauty. Its first symptoms are the delight in mere appearance Schein ,and the desire of adornment and play. The reality of the objects is their own attribute, but the appearance is the work of man, and a mind which finds pleasure in appearance, is no longer rejoiced at that which it receives, but at that which it does; the barriers of animal existence are broken through, and a career is opened which is endless'. 'But are we here not', said Gideon, 'threatened by the very danger which has already been pointed out by Plato and which I cannot consider unfounded the danger of destroying all objective truth and reality, and thus thoroughly uprooting solidity and sincerity of character'? 'That of which I speak', rejoined Wolfram, 'is the aesthetic appearance which is distinct from reality, not the logical one which is often con- founded with it it is that appearance which is admired simply because it is such, and not because it is deemed to be something superior; the former alone is play, whereas the latter is deception. Despising that appearance which cannot imperil truth, means despising the fine arts in general, whose essence is appearance. To the question, therefore, how far appearance is permitted in the moral world, the answer is short and NOTES [pp. 500502]. 135 decisivein so far as the appearance is aesthetic, that is, that genuine and independent appearance which does not claim to represent reality, and which, borrowing no aid from reality, does not require to be re- presented by it. If it is false and simulates reality, or if it is not pure and needs reality for its effects, it is nothing but a base instrument of aesthetic impotence and moral perverseness for producing material ends. But wherever, in an individual or nation, we find the genuine and in- dependent appearance, we may safely expect intelligence and taste, and all the excellence that flows from them. There we shall see the ideal rule over common life, and honour triumph over utility, thought over passion, the dream of immortality over the enjoyment of the hour. In one word' etc. P. 500. c Schiller, Spaziergang, fin. P. 501. a Schiller, Aesthet. Erziehung, Letter XXVII. P. 501. b Comp. Haeckel, Gesammelte populare Vortrage, II. p. 163. P. 502. a At this point Canon Mortimer dwelt eagerly on the relation between Christianity and Art; but as his remarks seemed somewhat to interrupt, or at least to obscure, the progress of the discussion, they are here reported separately. 'The Christian Church', said the Canon, with a side glance at Rabbi Gideon, 'has never failed to recognise the great importance of Art and has imparted to all its branches to architecture, sculpture and painting, to music, lyrical and didactic poetry, and also to the drama an impulse stronger even than that they received from the revival of learning. It is true, neither St. Paul, who in his travels repeatedly passed through lands abounding with master-pieces of Greek art, nor Luther, who had an opportunity of seeing in Eome the choicest productions accumulated, uttered a word of pleasure or commendation with regard to such trea- sures : the critical times in which the lot of those valiant champions was cast, filled their minds with far more momentous thoughts compared to which Art naturally appeared as a mere luxury.* Yet man does not live on bread alone. Indeed, Religion and Art are in their innermost nature closely akin. Both deliver the soul from the limits of time and space, and carry it, on the wings of a heavenly yearning, into unmea- sured distances of eternity and infinitude. Both alike seek, as it were, the Platonic prototypes of all perfection, and hence the highest works of art have at all times proceeded from religious enthusiasm'. 'This is indeed in a certain sense true', interrupted Abington; 'yet Religion and Art can not be considered as co-ordinated ; in this parallel * See, however, Col. III. 16, 'tea- ching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs'; IV. 6, 'let your speech be al way with grace seasoned with salt' ; Eph. V. 19, 'speaking in spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord'. 136 NOTES [p. 502]. relation are Science, Art, and practical Life; but equally over all these Religion extends, as the heaven extends over the earth, and is the eternal guiding star for all human labours. Art is the elevation to a symbolic ideality, Religion to a living reality to God. The one is a dream of the lost Paradise, the other points the way back to it; and while the former employs the aid of restless fancy, the latter works through that faith which permeates all fibres of the soul, solves all enigmas of life, silences all torments of conscience, and diffuses in the heart a peace such as nothing else is capable of bestowing'. 'Who can question these profound principles?' said Canon Mortimer evasively. 'Yet it is undoubted that the Greek philosophers deplored but could not prevent the fact that poets and artists should create a popular religion which survived the speculations of the subtlest thinkers. We may thus understand why Christianity, in its earliest stage, assumed a position negative, if not even hostile to Art: this had helped to convert Religion into idolatry, it had accustomed men to worship the creature instead of the Creator*, and it had kept them in the bonds of earthly and sensual beauty, whereas they were to be trained to find their true home in the invisible realms which had been opened to them. But when Christianity had no longer to apprehend the dangerous influences of paganism, it renounced that unjust aversion, and welcoming Art as a most powerful ally, it strove to strengthen the inward through an outward harmony. It supplied, on its part, to the artist an inexhaustible variety of the highest subjects in the Redeemer's life, passion and glorification, in the typical connections between the Old and the New Covenant, in the labours of the Apostles and the numerous Saints; and it began by pressing into its service spiritual lyrics and song, and made them essential and most effective elements of public worship'. 'Need I remind you', said Panini, 'that music was performed in the Temple of the Hebrews with unequalled grandeur and magnificence'? 'It was not the song of appointed priests,' continued the Canon placidly, 'that was introduced by the Christian Church, but the chant of the whole congregation, which was in unison to be roused to devotion by those solemn strains which impress the feelings more directly and more powerfully than the most fervid words of instruction. More cautious was the Church in reference to the plastic arts. For dreading a relapse into Hellenistic practices, it ventured at first but timid attempts in the form of symbols, such as significant ornaments on tombs and in places of meeting. But gradually Religion and Art entered into closer and closer alliance, which in the Middle Ages amounted almost to a unity, as is testified, for instance, by the religious depth breathing in the pictures at St. Maria Novella in Florence and in the Campo Santo at Pisa; and that amalgamation was, even after the most brilliant advances of art, * Comp. 1 John V. 21, TSKVIU, fyvkdtars savru airci TCCV el%ta\uv. NOTES [p. 502]. 137 manifested in the works of a Leonardo and Rafael and the sublime originality of a Michael Angelo. But alas ! abuse was not avoided, and as once the Apostles felt it their duty to declare war against the idols, so the Reformers against the images, a war which in some countries was unfortunately intensified into a raging fanaticism. Truth and Liberty were the watch- words, no room or thought was left for Beauty. And yet Luther, that whole man, was by no means hostile to Art. He was not only a friend of poetry and music but a creative master in both, and his hymn "Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott", words and melody alike, will elevate and fortify as long as there are devout and generous hearts. While inveighing against Catholic pomp and image worship, he protested no less strongly against the Puritan rigour of the reformed sects. "The Gospel has not come", he said, "to overthrow the arts, but to use them in the service of Him who bestowed them"; and the prohibition of the Old Testament; "Thou shalt not make any likeness or image", he omitted in his Catechism'. Rabbi Gideon muttered an observation of which only the words "usual misconception" were audible. 'He once exclaimed', continued Mortimer, '"I wish I could persuade the rich to the Christian work of having the whole Bible painted inside and outside of the houses before everyone's eyes". Not even Zwinglius and Calvin condemned painting, and as a matter of fact we find im- mediately after the Reformation masters like Diirer, Cranach and Hol- bein. The restoration of the purer faith was not therefore, as is so often asserted by Romanists, the grave of Art; indeed, the Evangelical Church is no unfruitful soil for its growth. It is true, Ecclesiastical art has deteriorated within the last centuries, but most strikingly in the Italian schools, where the secular decline began even before the Reformation. Christianity had everywhere in Europe ceased to be the starting point and foundation of Art; its grandly productive period was closed. There might still remain cause for admiring wonderful colouring or remarkable power and sensual fulness of outline; but hardly any production passed beyond the expression of earthly wellbeing and satisfaction, none rose into a higher and ideal world. The blind strife of sects, and the sterile pietism and frigid rationalism which governed the succeeding ages, scattered or nipped the delicate blossoms of celestial beauty. I repeat, therefore, that the Evangelical Church is surely not inimical to Art, however determined it is to repress its undue prominence in Divine service and to resist an extravagant indulgence in aesthetic forms. But we are guilty of a very strange inconsistency. While our Church admits in its public worship the musical productions of Catholic com- posers and delights in the imposing strains of a Palestrina and Durante, no less than of a Bach, Handel and Graun, why should it frown upon painting, which has the very same object of inspiring and vivifying the feelings through the imagination ? Why should it not allow us to enjoy the 138 NOTES [pp. 502510]. glorious pictures of the brothers Van Eyk, Memling or Martin Schon, although these masters belonged to the Roman confession? For is not the past of the old Church also our own past, and does not the universal language of true Art efface all distinctiveness of creeds? Do we not in our most splendid pictorial Bibles see without offence the illustrations of a Rafael and Overbeck side by side with those of a Durer and Schnorr? And as there is in Borne a papal sepulchre chiseled by the Protestant Thorwaldsen, so Cornelius, the Catholic, designed the finest frescoes for the most powerful Protestant dynasty'. 'The utmost moderation only', said Humphrey, with an evident effort of self-control, 'can render such a practice innocuous'. 'Assuredly', replied Mortimer; 'yet not before the Church has ap- proached nearer to its destination of serving as a centre for all the highest forms of intellectual life, will the arts receive within its pale their due cultivation and rank. They belong to the ministering angels attending the Gospel of Christ as the proclaimer of God's love on earth'. P. 505. a The leading principle is: The summum bonum is absolute deliverance from pain; and this deliverance is attained by an abnegation of all action, good or bad. P. 505. b J". Muir, Religious and Moral Sentiments from Indian Writers, p. 25. P. 506. a Vendid. XVIII. 52. Sleep was originaUy no creation of Ahura, wherefore it befalls men mostly in darkness, or in the time when Agra-mainyus is most powerful (compare Spiegel, A vesta, II. p. xlix). Yet later, a good sleep also was adopted, 'the delight of man and beast' (Vispered, VIII. 16). P. 509. a From the didactic poem Gkdshen Ras; see Gunsburg, Geist des Orients, pp. 153, 166. P. 509. b Zechar. XIV. 9; Isai. XIX. 25. See Bible Studies, H. pp. 242247. P. 510. a Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, ch. XI. U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 3 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY I I