OOK TQ RF ' *■■' AND •]■•(::} READ THEM HECTOR LIBRARY OF THK University of Calieornia. Class 9CIKNI- Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/bookstoreadliowtoOOmacpricli BOOKS TO BEAD AND HOW TO READ THEM BOOKS TO BEAD AND HOW TO READ THEM BY HECTOR MACPHEESON AUTHOR OF ADAM smith' and ' THOMAS CABLYLE ' IN FAMOUS SCOTS SERIKS, AND ' HERBERT SPENCER : THE MAN AND HIS WORK,' ETC. SECOND IMPRBSSION OP THE UNIVERSITY OF WILLIAM BLACKWOOD ANT) SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MCMIV ^fSESflt ■^^, TO JOHN WILSON, Esq., 'EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS,' WHOSE ESTIMABLE QUALITIES AS AN EMPLOYER ARE EQUALLED ONLY BY HIS STERLING VIRTUES AS A FRIEND, PREFACE. The contents of this volume appeared orig- inally as weekly contributions to the 'Edin- burgh Evening News.' The reception accorded to them encourages me to hope that, in their new form, they will be of permanent value to students of the higher problems of life and thought. In dealing with the subject of evolution I have not hesitated to utilise occasional paragraphs from my book on Herbert Spencer. Readers of that work will detect in the following pages a difference of tone in the handling of the ultimate problems of philosophy. In the book on Spencer the conclusions are mainly negative. In this volume I have advanced to a more positive position along the lines of an anti-material- vu Preface istic interpretation of the great evolutionary process. I take this opportunity of expressing to the proprietors of * The Evening News ' my cordial thanks for their kind permission to reproduce these articles. H. M. Edinburgh, Septtmber 1904. Vlll CONTENTS. CHAP. PAOB I. PRELIMINARY 1 II. THE BIBLE 8 III. BIBLICAL CRITICISM .... 17 IV. PHILOSOPHY . . . . . 28 V. PHILOSOPHY {continued) 38 VI. PHILOSOPHY {concluded) 50 VII. science: astronomy .... 63 VIII. science: celestial evolution . 77 IX. science : man and his dwelling-place 89 X. SCIENCE : THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 100 XI. science: the origin of man 110 XII. THE ethical evolution OF MAN 120 XIII. THE development OF MAN AND SOCIETY 132 XIV. THE ELEMENTS OF GREEK CIVILISATION . 142 XV. THE EVOLUTION OF GREEK LITERATURE . 164 Contents XVI. THE EVOLUTION OP PAGAN THOUGHT AND LIFE XVn. THE HEBREWS IN HISTORY . XVIIL THE KEY TO MODERN CIVILISATION XIX. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION XX. THE REFORMATION AS AN EPOCH . XXI. CURRENTS IN MODERN CIVILISATION XXII. CURRENTS OF MODERN THOUGHT . INDEX 248 BOOKS TO EEAD AND HOW TO EEAD THEM. CHAPTEE I. PRELIMINAEY. One of the striking differences between the civilisation of the present and the past con- sists in the manner in which knowledge has been democratised by printing. Before the invention of printing, knowledge was a mono- poly. With the invention of printing, there entered into literature the element of cheap- ness, till now, thanks also to universal edu- cation, the free libraries, and the newspaper press, the humblest member of the community is on an equality with his wealthy neighbour. It is now literally true that knowledge flows I A Books to Read and How to Read them down the streets like a river of water. And yet the popularisation of reading has not been without its drawbacks. In the olden times the scarcity and dearness of books were con- ducive to intellectual concentration. Books of worth were read and re-read till they be- came, so to speak, part of the student's mental being. A good book was a friend to be con- sulted with delightful frequency, a counsellor whose words of wisdom were worthily treas- ured. Nowadays the abundance of books breeds a certain familiarity — the familiarity which one feels towards a casual acquaintance. Books are apt to be treated as club com- panions, good enough to amuse an idle hour, but not bound to the heart with ties of affec- tion and devotion. There are those, however, who are quite alive to the value of books, but who, in the midst of the daily increasing literary output, are in a state of mental bewilderment. They resemble a traveller in a trackless forest im- pressed and overpowered with the magnifi- cence of the scene, but anxiously looking for a beaten track. For the benefit of the dis- tracted reader many suggestions have been Preliminary made. He is told to read only the best books, and for his guidance condensation of the world's best books issue from the press. He takes literature on the homoeopathic principle. The distracted student is pre- sented with what is called one hundred best books. The idea underlying all these sug- gestions is that reading simply means the assimilation of knowledge. This is good, but it is only a part of the process. Know- ledge of isolated facts is better than ignor- ance, but knowledge in the real sense of the term means coherent, systematic knowledge. We have all met people of vast knowledge. Their minds are stuffed with facts, but the facts have not been assimilated ; they lie in the mind in a chaotic state. Why ? Because their reading has been purposeless ; it has never been unified under the guidance of leading ideas. No reading can be profitable which is not done with a serious purpose. The man who reads merely to pass the time, whose temperament leads him to literature for recreation and amusement, instead of to gross forms of pleasure, need not expect to discover the magic key which opens the 3 Books to Read and How to Read them door of the Temple of Knowledge. Why should people read ? Manifestly to gain a knowledge of man and his dwelling-place, to learn the laws of nature and of life, and to develop their faculties and capacities in some- thing like harmony. If this is the end of read- ing, we get a clue to the method of reading. If all knowledge resolves itself into know- ledo^e of nature and of man's relation to nature, knowledge of man, both as regards his nature and capacities, and knowledge of society, obviously the area of reading natur- ally divides itself into well-defined provinces — Theology, Philosophy, Science, Psychology, History, which includes Economics, and Litera- ture, which may be taken to embrace Poetry and Art. But it may be said by readers of rationalistic tendencies — What have we to do with Theology? Have we not been told by Comte that humanity has long since passed through the theological stage, and to study the exploded errors of the past is to waste precious time ? " Let us," say our rationalist friends, " begin with Science ; let our reading have a utilitarian bearing.'' That some such view is very prevalent is plain from the 4 Preliminary little attention which the theological and philosophic sections of public libraries re- ceive at the hands of readers. A little consideration will show that no scheme of reading can be complete which excludes Theology and Philosophy. What is the first problem which confronts the thoughtful lad when he emerges from the barbaric into the reflective stage ? Is it not the problem of existence ? Creeds and theories may rise and decay, but the religious sentiment re- mains for ever. As Spencer remarks, hu- manity can never outgrow the religious sentiment. Its form may change, but in essence it is indestructible. Says Spencer : " However dominant may become the moral sentiment enlisted on behalf of humanity, it can never exclude the sentiment, alone properly called religious, awakened by that which is behind humanity and behind all other things. The child, by wrapping its head in the bed-clothes, may for a moment suppress the consciousness of surrounding darkness, but the consciousness, though rendered less vivid, survives, and imagination persists in occupying itself with that which 5 Books to Read and How to Read tkefu lies beyond perception. No such thing as a ' Religion of Humanity ' can ever do more than temporarily shut out the thought of a Power of which humanity is but a small and fugitive product — a Power which was in the course of ever-changing manifestations before humanity was, and will continue through other manifestations when humanity has ceased to be." Any course of reading which ignores The- ology is bound to have a dwarfing effect upon the character. The student who confines his reading to phenomena, who deliberately averts his gaze from the mysterious side of existence, who refuses to soar to the region of the infinite, may become a learned man, but his mind will assuredly be a prisoner among the prosaic details of secular activity. Professor Seeley has put this aspect well when he says : " The habit of never sufier- ing the mind to dwell on anything great produces often an atheism of the most pitiable and helpless kind. The soul of man lives upon the contemplation of laws or principles ; it is made to be constantly assimilating such sustenance from the universe; this is its 6 Preliminary food ; not by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live. What then must be the moral starvation of the man v^ho, from an excess of caution, turns away from every- thing of the kind, until from want of habit he can no longer see such things, and forgets their very existence, so that for him there is no longer any glory in the universe ? For all beauty or glory is but the presence of law ; and the universe to him has ceased to be a scene of law, and has become an infinite litter of detail, a rubbish-heap of confused particulars, a mere worry and weariness to the imagination. I have been describing the Philistine, the abject slave of details, who worships a humiliated, dissected, and abject deity, a mere Dagon ' fallen flat upon the grundsel-edge and shaming his worshippers.' " If we wish to escape the charge of being Philistines, it is essential that our reading should be wide enough in its sweep to em- brace those great questions which have occupied the minds of the greatest thinkers from Plato to Paul, from Augustine and Calvin to Hegel and Spencer. 7 Books to Read and Hoiv to Read them CHAPTEE II. THE BIBLE. In any serious programme of reading, The- ology must take the first place. With the Bible as the foundation of Theology we must begin. To modern ears the recommendation sounds strange. '* Have we not," it will be said, " known the Bible all our lives ? In school and church the Bible has been thrust upon us till the reading of it has become a weariness. It is associated in our minds with dreary lessons at school, with dreary con- troversies in Church Courts, and to send us to the Bible is to send us back to the house of intellectual bondage just when we hoped to escape into the expansive pastures of secular literature." This view rests upon a narrow conception of the Bible, which is something else than a quarry from which to 8 The Bible dig scriptural texts and theological argu- raents. With the Bible as the battle-ground between the orthodox party and the Higher Critics we are not now concerned. Our interest from the point of view of culture is with the Bible, as, perhaps, the greatest collection of literature which the world has ever seen. The Bible has been so long viewed solely as a theological product that its natural beauties have been obscured. It has been so long looked upon solely as a divine revel- ation that its significance as a human docu- ment, as a revelation of human nature, has been overlooked. It has furthermore been undervalued by the habit of looking upon the Bible as one book instead of a collection of literature extending over centuries. An error at the other extreme is made by those who look upon the Bible as a collection of books having no organic unity. Into this error the Higher Critics are prone to fall. They think they have disposed of the Bible's claim to uniqueness when they have over- thrown the orthodox position as regards authorship and date. Suppose the conten- Books to Read and How to Read them tions of the Higher Critics to be admitted, the fundamental question still remains — How came the Hebrews to be possessed of the unique conceptions of life and destiny which, thread-like, run through the marvellous liter- ature of this people ? From Genesis to Revelation the reader is face to face with the theocratic idea — the idea of a kingdom of God upon earth, an idea fatal to all kinds of injustice, and which inspires poets and prophets in a sublime warfare against un- righteousness in high places. Everything evil goes down before the theocratic idea. Kings and rulers of all kinds are estimated not from the standpoint of heredity, but of righteousness. The Bible in this respect is the most democratic book in the world. Earthly powers and principalities are tolerated only so long as they harmonise with the law of the Lord. In Scotland we pride ourselves on the sturdy heroism of the Reformation heroes and the Covenanting worthies. Whence came their inspiration ? From study of the lives of the great heroes of Israel, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Daniel, and the lO The Bible rest of the noble band who in the early days of humanity, when popular rights were un- known, when in the ancient civilisations the individual was a mere chattel, fought a valiant fight for freedom of conscience, freedom to worship God in their own way, despite the edicts of despotic monarchs. It does not alter the situation to be .told that the Hebrew heroes have only a legendary existence. Legends rest upon ideals : myth- ical heroes are the incarnation of popular ideals, and therefore theocratic and demo- cratic ideals must have dominated the popu- lar mind before they found expression in mythical creations. Looked at thus, the Higher Criticism still leaves unanswered the question — Whence came the unique concep- tions which mark off the literature of Israel from all other literature ? A distinguished writer has put into stately language the views of many who have earnestly read all that has been said for and against the Bible : '' There are some now living who, after passing through all the religious perplexities of their age, after doubt- ing whatever can be doubted, all that the Books to Read and How to Read the^n churches call orthodoxy, and all the super- natural claims that have been made for the Bible, yet believe in the Bible more than ever. They brood on it much more, they learn from it much more than they did when they were afraid to suffer their minds to play upon its contents. Nor do they regard it merely as a historic document, valuable for the light it throws on the growth of religious ideas, but obsolete as a practical manual. They find in it the same intense vitality as in some Greek books, the vitality breathed from one of the small antique States. They find the Jewish society in its hunger for righteousness going deeper into the secrets of practical ethics than the modern world goes, just as they find the modern world surpassed by Athens and Florence in the sense for art." Another thing which has told heavily against the Bible is the manner in which it has come down to us. A competent authority has spoken of this in words which are not a bit too strong. Mr Moulton, in his ' Literary Study of the Bible,' says : " The Bible is the worst printed book in the world. No other monument of ancient or 12 The Bible modern literature suffers the fate of being put before us in a form that makes it im- possible, without strong effort and consider- able training, to take in elements of literary structure which in all other books are con- veyed directly to the eye in a manner impossible to mistake. . . . Let the reader imagine the poems of Wordsworth, the plays of Shakespeare, the essays of Bacon, and the histories of Motley to be bound together in a single volume ; let him suppose the titles of the poems and essays cut out, and the words of speakers and divisions of speeches removed, the whole divided up into sentences of a convenient length for parsing, and again to lessons containing a larger or smaller number of these sentences. If the reader can carry his imagination through these processes, he will have before him a fair parallel to the literary form in which the Bible has come to the modern reader." We owe the literary mutilation of the Bible to the race of theo- logical commentators of the scholastic period, who, as has been well said, swallowed up the literary sense of beauty with minute analysis and exegesis. 13 Books to Read and How to Read them When we change our point of view, when we look at the Bible from the standpoint of national literature, it ranks at once with the great master works of the ancient world. We talk highly and justly of the classics. In the pages of Homer, in Greek dramatists and Roman poets, we find human life mirrored in all its phases, and the weighty problems of Existence — its passion, its pathos, and its tragedy — handled in a manner which, for artistic power, has gained the admiration of the modern world. If we had come to the Bible without theological spectacles, if we had approached it from the human side, the verdict would have been that as literature it moves in a higher plane than even the much- extolled classics. Homer gives no better pictures of primitive times than are given in the patriarchal part of the Bible, and in dealing with the great mysteries of life and death, with the tangled problems of good and evil, sin and suffering, the author of the Book of Job gets nearer to the heart of things, and moves in a higher ethical region, than iEschylus and Sophocles. And what shall we say of the marvellous literary splendour 14 The Bible and variety of the Bible? The Psalms — be the author who he may — with their lyric beauty, their passionate wail over sin and injustice, their triumphant faith in the supremacy of Righteousness ; Isaiah, with its passionate denunciation, its exultant tone, its piercing visions, its magnificent poetic sweep, its faith in a divine ordering of the world ; Jeremiah, with its pitiful wail over national ruin, its trembling faith nearly submerged in pessimistic musing — these strike responsive chords in the heart of humanity deeper than those struck by the great writers of Greece. In the Bible we have lyrics which, as has been well said, Pindar cannot surpass, rhetoric as forcible as that of Demosthenes, and contemplative prose not inferior to Plato's. Moreover, we have in the Hebrews a people " dominated by a passion for righteousness, a people whom ideas of purity, of infinite good, of universal order, of faith in the downfall of all moral evil, moved to a poetic passion as fervid, and speech as musical as when Sappho sang of love, or ^schylus thundered his deep notes of destiny." The reader who desires to study 15 Books to Read and How to Read them the Bible from this point of view cannot do better than begin with Mr Moulton's * Literary Study of the Bible.' Let him leave theological problems alone in the mean- time ; let him give a wide berth to the commentator and the dogmatist ; let him have nothing to say to Higher or Lower Critics. In a word, let the student come to the Bible entirely from the human side, and it will be strange if he does not rise from its pages with the impression that the old Hebrews came nearer to divine inspiration than any other race of mortals who have trod this planet. Biblical Criticism CHAPTER III. BIBLICAL CRITICISM. " A GREAT man," says Hegel, " condemns the world to the task of explaining him." The remark applies to great books as well as to great men. It would be difficult to name any book which has brought forth more attempts at explanation than the Bible. Controversy of all sorts has raged round it, both on the literary and theological sides. On the theological side the controversy has been exceptionally keen. The reason is obvious. For tens who are interested in the Bible as literature, hundreds are inter- ested in it as theology. The human mind is so constructed that while, for a little, it may find interest in the literary handling of life, in the end it goes deeper, and demands not merely a description but an explanation 17 B Books to Read and How to Read them of life. The Bible professes to give such an explanation. For centuries this book held sway over the Western mind by reason of its claims to be an authoritative revelation from heaven to man. For centuries the highest intellects of Europe were employed upon studying this book, expounding it as a philosophy of life and as a rule of ethics. A time came when the authoritative basis of the Bible received a shock. When at the Reformation the weight of authority was shifted from the Church to the in- dividual, there arose a spirit of inquiry, not to say scepticism, which has produced an amount of theological literature which quite appals the average man. What is the average man to do ? In his lonely moments, in his hour of sorrow, he looks around for consola- tion ; he listens intently for the voices of the old celestial messengers, and behold, they are silent. With the Bible discredited, the riddle of life presses upon him with painful insistence. What is he to do ? A German writer has remarked that the wounds which knowledge has caused, knowledge alone can heal. Knowledge about the Bible exists i8 Biblical Criticism in profusion ; but where is the average man to begin ? He finds controversial literature about the Bible divided into two distinct camps, the Orthodox and what is known as the Higher Criticism. With the Orthodox the general reader is fairly familiar. It is summed up in the well-known works of Butler, Paley, Chalmers, Cunningham, the two Hodges (father and son), and many other modern conservative theologians. The general reader is not so much at home with the literature of the Higher Criticism. In the first place, what is the Higher Criti- cism ? It is an attempt to explain the Bible on the principle of evolution. The Bible, according to the Higher Critics, is not an infallible set of utterances dictated by God to certain men in olden times. It is not even an authentic record of the history of the Hebrews. The Bible, it is said, has grown up like other literature. The various portions of Hebrew literature do not neces- sarily belong to the time in which they are said to be written. Further, like other peoples, the Hebrews had no real conception of history in the modern sense. They mixed 19 Books to Read and Hozv to Read them up legend, myth, and history in a most confusing way, and therefore we cannot ac- cept as authentic the account given of the Creation, the Fall, the calling of Abraham, the marvellous details of the Exodus, the wilderness journey, the Mosaic legislation, with its complex system of sacrifice. Till we come to the time of the Prophets, say the Higher Critics, we cannot be sure that we are treading safe, historic ground. Naturally, the earnest student, who desires to study both sides of this momentous subject, desires to make first-hand acquaintance with the exponents of this most revolutionary theory of the Bible. He need not be at a loss for material. By way of introduction, he should begin with the books of the late Eobertson Smith, who was the first to popularise in Scotland the new views. He should then turn to the book of Wellhausen, the famous German writer. Unlike most Germans, Wellhausen is the possessor of a remarkably good literary style, clear, crisp, terse, and fascinating. Next comes Kuenen, the Dutch theologian, whose ' History of Israel ' presents the new views with great 20 Biblical Criticism ability, completeness, and suggestiveness. In those two works the reader will find the Higher Critical views put forth in their ex- tremest form. Wellhausen and Kuenen make no disguise of their real object, which is to bring the literature of Israel to the level of other literature by stripping it of all the miraculous element so as to make it fit in with the principle of secular evolution. It is plain that if the views of the ex- treme section of the Higher Critics were to obtain currency, Judaism and Christianity, in so far as they rest upon special revelation, are doomed ; they are no longer unique re- ligions, but come, like other religions, from man's attempt to form a theory of life and destiny. Those of the clergy who had been smitten by the new views realised that a herculean effort must be made to save the situation, and accordingly we find Robertson Smith in his books, particularly 'The Old Testament in the Jewish Church,' making a bold effort to unite the new ideas with belief in a divine revelation. The attempt led to his removal from his chair in Aberdeen. Since his day the new beliefs have attained 21 Books to Read and How to Read them currency among the clergy, who are no longer in danger of ecclesiastical penalties. In this connection the book of Professor Adam Smith deserves special attention. In that book the reader will find the best that can be said for the position taken up by the religious Higher Critics, namely, that God can speak to man just as easily through myth and legend as through historic fact. Pro- fessor Smith in the main accepts the con- clusions of the extreme school ; his contribu- tion lies in the attempt to preserve the idea of revelation, at the same time making sweep- ing concessions to the school of Wellhausen and Kuenen. In the United States the new school has made rapid progress. Perhaps the most attractive book there on the subject is that by Dr Lyman Abbott, ' The Liter- ature of the Hebrews,' where, from a wider point of view than Professor Smith, the sub- ject is treated on the lines of Wellhausen. Here, too, a great effort is made to preserve the uniqueness of the Hebrews in the sphere of religion. Another British writer who has done much to popularise the Higher Criticism is Dr Driver. He endeavours to break the 22 Biblical Criticism force of the extreme position by the admission that the history of Israel till the time of the Prophets need not have been framed by exilic ecclesiastics, but was simply compiled by them from ancient sources. He even goes the length of making a notable concession to the conservative school. According to Wellhausen, what is called the Levitical legislation was unknown to Israel till after the exile. Driver admits a great difference between the origination and the codification of laws. Those who drew up the Levitical code did not manufacture it deliberately ; they codified and gave authoritative stamp to laws and institutions which extended back to primitive times. On the other hand, Dr Cheyne, the joint editor of the ' Encyclopaedia Biblica,' is disposed to carry the extreme views to their extremest points, regardless of compromise. The wise reader, however, will not be captivated by one side. He will desire to read the views of those who still contend for the authenticity of the Old Testament. One of the best on the orthodox side is the ' Early Religion of Israel,' by Professor 23 Books to Read and How to Read them Robertson of Glasgow. Professor Robertson's book is of special interest from the fact that he knows Oriental life from the personal side, and is able to deal with the subject with a freshness rare in academic circles. The point made by Professor Robertson is that by making the Hebrew religion really begin with the Prophets, the Germans have left un- explained the previous evolution of religion in Israel. The prophets, he points out, make constant reference to great historic personages and historic landmarks, thereby showing that these were well known to the people, and could not simply be a literary framework, manufactured by the exilic priestly class, in order to give their legislative reforms an antique background. From different stand- points the Higher Critics have been attacked. The Archaeologists have made great efforts to show that Wellhausen's summary treat- ment of early Israelite history is not war- ranted by facts, and a bold stand is made for the historic value of the Pentateuch, especi- ally as regards the records of patriarchal times. In Germany Hommel, and in this country Sayce, have worked assiduously in 24 Biblical Criticism this department. The reader who desh'es really solid reading should not miss the writings of the Rev. John Urquhart. They are full of good things. Whether the reader agrees with Mr Urquhart or not, he will find *The New Biblical Guide' quite a mine of information in regard to the history, arch- aeology, and geography of the Bible. The history of Abraham ic and Mosaic times is brought into touch with the history of the old Empires — Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt — and a marvellous flood of light is thereby thrown upon the Scriptural record. In Germany, as well as in England, a strong opposition exists to the Higher Criticism. A recent book by Wilhelm MoUer, *Are the Critics Right ? ' deserves special mention, in- asmuch as the author frankly admits that at one time he was captivated by Well- hausen's theory, and only ceased to be a follower on a growing conviction that the theory did not square with facts. It is not our purpose to pass verdict upon the old or the new theories of the Bible, but simply to indicate to busy readers where to get guidance in the pursuit of their studies. 25 Books to Read and How to Read them On the side of the Higher Criticism the following may be recommended : ' Proleg- omena to the History of Israel/ Wellhausen ; *Eeligion of Israel/ Kuenen ; 'Old Testa- ment in the Jewish Church ' and ' Prophets of Israel/ Robertson Smith ; ' Bible for Young People/ Kuenen and others ; * Pen- tateuch Examined/ Colenso ; ' Development of Theology/ Pfleiderer ; ' Encyclopaedia Biblica/ ' Introduction to the Studies of Holy Scripture/ Briggs ; ' Old Testament History/ H. P. Smith ; ' Introduction to Old Testament Literature/ Driver ; ' Revelation and the Bible/ Horton ; ' Literature of the Ancient Hebrews/ and ' Evolution of Chris- tianity/ Abbott; 'The Century Bible, vol. 1. — Genesis/ Bennett ; ' Modern Preaching and the Old Testament/ G. A. Smith. On the orthodox or conservative side, the student would do well to consult the follow- ing : ' Systematic Theology ' and ' Evangelical Theology,' Hodge, father and son ; ' Historical Theology,' Cunningham ; ' Early History of Israel,' Robertson ; ' The Self Revelation of God,' Harris ; ' Ancient Hebrew Traditions,' Hommel ; ' Higher Criticism and the Monu- 26 Biblical Criticism ments,' Sayce ; * Sanctuary and Sacrifice,' Baxter ; ' Integrity of Scripture/ Smith ; ' Unity of the Bible,' Gibson ; ' Recent Arch- aeology of the Bible,' Nicol ; * Biblical Guide,' Urquhart; 'Are the Critics Right?' Moller ; ' The Bible and the East,' Conder. The con- troversy has brought forth innumerable pamphlets, but the student who desires to get to the root of the subject should keep steadfastly to the principal authorities on both sides, and avoid being entangled by secondary writers. 27 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER IV. PHILOSOPHY. Was it Comte who said that the education of the individual should be a reproduction in miniature of the education of the race ? Theology in one form or another is the starting-point of the race. Man, even at the most primitive stage, is driven by restless curiosity to inquire into the origin and cause of things. Supernatural revelations do not satisfy man's curiosity. Man at the reflective stage yearns for reasons. Theology glides naturally into philosophy. How close is the relation between the two is seen in the manner in which philosophy emerged from theology, even at the period when the human mind was tightly bound in the chains of dogma. Modern philosophy sprang out of theology at a time when reason itself was 28 Philosophy deemed incompetent to deal with the great problems of life. True, at first philosophy- was but a humble servant in the palace of theology. The task of philosophy was not to discover truth, but to systematise truths already revealed. Philosophy arose from her humble position because men like Abelard believed that theological dogmas approached in the proper spirit would prove to be har- monious with reason. Abelard's position was that " a doctrine is not believed because God has said it, but because we are convinced by reason that it is so." The Roman Catholic authorities, hitherto in the belief that phil- osophy — and with them philosophy meant the views of Aristotle — was the handmaid of theology, allowed reason considerable latitude, until it became plain that reason was leading to conclusions which dogma could not endorse. Persecution was resorted to in order to check, and if possible suppress, the rationahsing tendency which threatened to shake the theological foundations of the Church. It is highly important for the student who wishes to have a clear view of philosophy, especially in its modern developments, to study the Books to Read and How to Read them great conflict between the Church of Rome and philosophy in the Middle Ages. The period known as the scholastic period saw the overthrow of the ancient philosophy as represented by Plato and Aristotle, and the opening of the new epoch. With Bruno modern philosophy really begins. In the history of thought, Bruno is a most picturesque figure. His life was a prolonged revolt against the authority of the Church in dogma and of Aristotle in science. In regard to the universe, Bruno anticipated modern science. He was the first to see, or at least to give voice to, the new ideas which followed the overthrow of the ancient astro- nomical theories of the universe. As a phil- osopher, he might be called a poetical Spinozaist. His God was not the anthropo- morphic deity of the Church, but a Being which permeated the Infinities and the Eternities. By the new vision vouchsafed by the Copernican theory, Bruno declared that " men were loosed from the chains of a most narrow dungeon, and set at liberty to rise in a most august empire ; we are removed from presumptuous boundaries and poverty 30 Philosophy to the immeasurable riches of an infinite space." Bruno was moved to ecstasy by the wonder of the Universe as revealed by astronomy. In his eyes nothing is limited. Man is everywhere in contact with a power which is akin to him, and yet which pulsates through the remotest regions of space. " From this infinite all," he says, '* full of beauty and splendour, from the vast worlds which circle above us to the sparkling glow of stars beyond, the conclusion is drawn that there are an infinity of creations, a vast multi- tude which, each in its degree, mirrors forth the splendour, wisdom, and excellence of the divine beauty." In his impassioned mood Bruno described the stars "as those Sons of God who shouted for joy at the creation, the flaming heralds, His ministers, and the ambassadors of His glory, a living mirror of the infinite Deity." He was the first thinker to grasp intellectually and emotionally the conception of the universe as a unity, not the unity which Spinoza taught, which flavoured of the mechanical, but the unity embodied in the Spencerian conception of an Eternal Energy, from which all things pro- 31 Books to Read and How to Read tkem ceed. With Bruno there is but one Reality, and all things are but images of this ultimate fact. He says : '* The heavens are a picture, a book, a mirror wherein man can behold and read the forms and laws of Supreme Good- ness, the plan and total of perfection. From this Reality, this Eternal Spirit, which is One, all being flows ; there is one truth and one goodness penetrating and governing all things. In nature are the thoughts of God. We are surrounded by eternity and by the uniting love." Bruno is a philosopher, though his utterances take poetic shape. He has a theory of God, the Universe, and Man. He must be classed as a Pantheist to whom all distinctions are lost in the All. As a reaction against the dry mechanical views of the scholastic philosophers, the views of Bruno were of immense value, but it was plain that investigation of Nature would have to proceed more modestly if it was to yield up its secret or throw light on the nature and destiny of man. It is only when we come to Francis Bacon that we really breathe the genuine scientific atmosphere. Bacon, impressed with the 32 Philosophy futility of the speculative method, counselled the steady prosaic study of Nature by means of the inductive method. Bacon wanted philosophy to come down from the clouds and become serviceable to man in his daily life. He was a kind of seventeenth century Comte. In so far as Bacon drew men's minds away from barren disputes, he did good work, but his method of induction is now admitted to be defective. He lives more by the spirit of his writings than by any distinct .con- tributions to philosophical thought. What Bacon mainly did was to throw discredit upon the Scholastic philosophy. He turned human thought away from the verbalism, of mere philosophical disquisition, and in this he was ably seconded by Hobbes, who owes his fame in philosophy not to any distinct theoretical contributions, but to the fact that he was the first to deal with the great problems of life from the standpoint of Materialism. Many of his views are far- reaching and suggestive, but he did little or nothing to deal in systematic fashion with philosophy. To Descartes belongs the honour of originating a new method of 33 C Books to Read and How to Read them philosophising, and for doing so he has been called the father of modern philosophy. Scholasticism in the main rested upon au- thority : Philosophy was used not to discover truth, but to act as a buttress to theology. Bacon did much to discredit Scholasticism, but he did not lay the foundations of phil- osophy. As already said, in anticipation of Comte, he confined intellectual activity to practical questions ; he sought not to solve ontological or metaphysical problems, but to bring science into the service of man. Descartes gave philosophy its proper starting- point ; he began with Psychology. To the neglect of Psychology the collapse of ancient philosophy was largely due. Plato and the Greek school generally busied themselves mainly with Cosmology and Theology. Their speculations came into violent collision with Christianity, and whatever psychological elements they contained in the form of Neo- Platonism were quietly absorbed, and the cosmological speculations swept away. Pagan speculations about the world and man could not possibly withstand truths which were supposed to be supernaturally revealed. When Descartes took his stand upon Psy- 34 Philosophy chology he created a new epoch in Philosophy. Philosophy .is rooted in Psychology. The root question from which all other questions spring is this : What is the nature and validity of Knowledge ? Upon Psychology and what is termed Epistemology, rest Cos- mology and Ontology. It is useless to en- deavour to discover the truth about the World and Being until we have discovered the nature and limits of Knowledge. The student should carefully bear in mind that in differences of Psychological theory all differences among philosophers take their rise. From this consideration emerges a guiding principle in the study of Philosophy. The student who reads chronologically will find himself in endless confusion. As he watches philosophers engaged in deadly con- flict, slaughtering one another's theories, he is strongly reminded of the famous battle of the Kilkenny cats, where nothing was left but certain insignificant fragments of the combatants. An indiscriminate study of Philosophy is well calculated to produce a feeling of un- 35 Books to Read and How to Read them certainty, if not scepticism. In fact, a famous writer, George Henry Lewes, wrote a History of Philosophy with the view of showing from the contradictory and chaotic results the futility of all such speculations. What is needed to counteract the sceptical feeling is method in philosophical reading. The method is this : to read not chronologically but logically. If a theory of the World and of Being depends upon a theory of Mind, then obviously the student should begin with the psychological side of Philosophy as set forth in the works of the great master thinkers. Those who desire a wide survey before settling down to a departmental study of philosophy will find the following works of great service : 'History of Philosophy,' George Henry Lewes; * History of Philosophy,' Ueberweg ; * Hand- book of the History of Philosophy,' Schwegler; ' Speculative History of Europe in the Nine- teenth Century,' Morell ; ' Philosophical Classics,' contributed to by distinguished writers, and published by Messrs Blackwood ; * History of Modern Philosophy,' Hoffding ; ' Student's History of Philosophy,' Rogers ; * Scottish Philosophy from Hutcheson to 36 Philosophy Hamilton/ M'Cosh ; ' Cosmic Philosophy,' Fiske; and 'Recent British Philosophy/ Masson. The student who masters these, which are simply a selection from a vast literature, will have laid a good philosophical foundation. 37 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER V. PHILOSOPHY (continued). Two things impressed Immanuel Kant with awe — the starry heavens above and the moral law within. Astronomical and ethical phenomena, awe-inspiring as they are, would have appealed to man in vain had he not been in the possession of that mystery of mysteries — Mind. In the daily hustle and bustle man gets so immersed in the secu- larities of life that he rarely stops to study himself What is this mysterious something in the brain which mirrors the Universe, seeks to understand the Eternal, and to fathom the Infinite ? As Carlyle puts it : " With men of a speculative turn there come seasons, meditative, sweet yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable question : ' Who am I ? ' 38 Philosophy The thing that can say ' I.' The world, with its lone trafficking, retires into the distance ; and, through the paper-hangings and stone- walls and thick -plied tissues of commerce and polity, and all the living and useless in- teguments (of society and a body) wherewith your Existence sits surrounded — the sight reaches forth into the void deep, and you are alone with the universe, and silently com- mune with it, as one mysterious presence with another. * Who am I ? What is this Me? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance — some embodied visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind ? Cogito ergo sum.' " From the dawn of reflective thought till now phil- osophers have grappled w4th the great problem of Mind ; but with the ancient thinkers, especially the Greeks, philosophical thought for a long time paid more attention to Nature as a whole than to Mind as a specialised part of universal phenomena. The tendency among Greek philosophers to indulge in cosmological speculations was checked by Socrates, who brought down philosophy from heaven to earth. But with Socrates the interest in man was more ethical 39 Books to Read and How to Read them than psychological. The first among the Ancients to approach the subject psychologi- cally was Aristotle. His analysis of mental phenomena, though crude, was valuable as pointing to an attempt to apply scientific method to the study of Mind. The Middle Ages, busy with theological problems, devoted little attention to psy- chology, and not till we come to Descartes do we begin to breathe the modern spu-it. He was driven to the subject, as he himself says, by the widespread scepticism of the age. The scholastic theology was losing its hold upon the thoughtful minds of the seven- teenth century, and Descartes was driven elsewhere to seek for a basis of certainty. Unable to find an anchor in the theological and philosophical systems, Descartes deter- mined to search in the mind itself for cer- tainty. He found it in self- consciousness. Hence his famous " Cogito ergo sum : I think, therefore I am." According to this view, Knowledge begins with ideas ; and thus we have the starting-point of a controversy which still continues between those who declare that innate ideas, and those who contend 40 Philosophy that experience, is the starting-point of knowledge. Has the mind ideas independent of experience ? The Intuitionist says " yes " ; the Experientialist says " no." In the hands of Spinoza the innate ideas of Descartes became an all-embracing system of philosophy. Descartes showed that the idea of God was involved in the innate operation of the mind. His philosophy rested upon a duality. Mind and Matter, according to him, were distinct, independent Substances. Spinoza taught that there was only one Substance. Thus at one stroke the psychology of Descartes became transformed in the hands of Spinoza into a system of ontology. A reaction was soon to set in. The English mind, with its strong positive bent, looks with distrust upon far-soaring speculation. Hobbes rushed to the other extreme. He would have nothing to do with speculations which outran ex- perience. He looked outward for certainty, not inward, as Descartes had done. The thoughts of man, says Hobbes, "are every one a representation or appearance of some quality or other accident of a body without us which is commonly called an object. The 41 Books to Read and How to Read them original of them all is that which we call Sense, for there is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first totally or by part been begotten upon the organs of sense." Here we have the historical starting-point of the experiential school. The views which Hobbes put forth found systematic exposition in the works of Locke, who, indeed, has been accused of borrowing them from his great predecessor. Locke, however, in this regard has been ably vin- dicated by Sir James Mackintosh. Locke takes rank as an original thinker, and by his famous essay concerning *' Human Under- standing" initiated practically a new era in psychological thought. Locke, like Hobbes, traced ideas to experience, but his method was not speculative but scientific. He did more than theorise ; he endeavoured to de- scribe the method by which Knowledge was built up by means of experience. Locke, so to speak, aimed at being the historian as well as the philosopher of the mind. He set himself to inquire into the origin, cer- tainty, and extent of human knowledge. 42 Philosophy Regarding the origin of our ideas Locke was quite explicit. He found them to originate in Sensation and Reflection. With Locke the mind is wholly passive in the sphere of Sen- sation ; external objects manifest themselves to the mind through the senses. The know- ledge so obtained is reflected upon by the mind and converted into ideas. By means of his psychological theory Locke struck a blow at the Cartesian and Spinozian views. The ontological speculations which had been based upon innate ideas were shown by Locke to have their origin in experience. The ideas of God, of the Infinite, Locke traced to an empirical origin. He did not mean to throw doubt upon the fundamental truths of the- ology. What he aimed at was to show that they were established not by an appeal to innate ideas, but to reasoning, resting on experience. Closely allied to the question of the nature of knowledge is the question of the validity of knowledge. The fundamental question which Locke had to face was this — If our knowledge of the external world, for instance, comes to the mind through the 43 Books to Read and Hozv to Read them senses and is worked up into ideas by reflec- tion, what is the relation between the objec- tive world of Realities and the subjective world of Ideas? To put it briefly — Can we know things as they are? On the innate theory things are knowable as they are ; the clearness, distinctness, and intuitiveness of the ideas guarantee their trustworthiness. We know things through the medium of ideas, says Descartes, and whatever we find in the ideas must necessarily be true of the things. Locke held that our knowledge of the external world was not reached by in- tuition. The mind, said Locke, does not know things immediately. *'We must not think that our ideas are exactly the images and qualities of something inherent in the object." What, then is the exact nature, say, of our knowledge of Matter ? Locke saw that all the properties of Matter could not exist exactly as they seemed to exist, because many of them are conditioned by the Mind itself Light and heat, he saw, do not exist as properties apart from the Mind. They exist only in relation to the Mind. But if 44 Philosophy Matter is clothed by the Mind with secondary qualities, what guarantee is there that the primary qualities which Locke says we do know are not also conditioned by the Mind ? By excluding the primary qualities of Matter from the conditioning activity of the Mind, Locke landed his experience philosophy in a difficulty, from which Berkeley endeavoured to extricate it by the bold stroke of abolish- ing the Lockian idea of Matter altogether. According to Berkeley, Spirit, not Matter, is the real substance of the Universe. David Hume next came upon the scene, and in reply to Berkeley said that if there is no evidence of a permanent substance Matter, there is just as little evidence of a permanent substance Mind. If what we are conscious of as Matter is only a series of sensations in the mind, then we must con- clude that all we can know of Mind is not a permanent substance, but simply a series of feelings linked together by association. In the hands of Hume, the philosophy of Locke and Berkeley ended in utter scepticism. Locke's theory, like Berkeley's, was formu- 45 Books to Read and How to Read them lated in the interests of theology. Locke hoped to find in causation a stepping-stone to a great first cause ; Hume, by substituting association for causation, knocked the props from theology. By resolving Mind as an entity into a series of feelings linked by association, Hume also knocked the props from psychology. Hume drove theology and philosophy into bankruptcy — that is what constitutes him an epoch-making force in the history of thought. Here, then, is strik- ing corroboration of our remark that all philosophies in the comprehensive meaning of the term are conditioned by psychological theory. Given a certain theory of Mind and its working, and there follows logically certain theories of the World and Being. Starting with the innate ideas of Descartes, Spinoza made the Cartesian psychology the basis of a system of Pantheism in which the World and Man are but manifestations of One Self- Existing Substance. At the other extreme, starting with Experience, Hume, resting on the Lockian psychology, developed a system of philosophical Nihilism in which the world 46 Philosophy of knowledge was disintegrated, reduced to atoms. The condition of scepticism produced by Hume at once roused philosophic thought into activity. The following works may profitably be studied : ' History of Philosophy/ by George Henry Lewes, who gives a popular account of the systems of Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, and, in fact, of all the great thinkers who have dealt systematically with the problems of philosophy. Hoffding's book is invaluable to the student of philosophy. In his essays Huxley expounds the view of Descartes in his usual lively manner ; and a readable volume on Descartes will be found in the Philosophical Classics Series. Spinoza is a stiff philosopher, and needs deep study. The late Principal Caird deals with him in the Philosophical Classics Series, and the late Dr Martineau contributes to the great thinker a volume of considerable toughness. For the general reader it will suffice to recommend Martineau's chapters on * Types of Ethical OF ^ Books to Read and How to Read them Theory/ Arnold and Fronde's Essays, and Pollock's standard book on the subject. On Locke the authorities are as follows : * EnHish Men of Letters Series,' Fowler ; ' Philosophical Classics,' Eraser ; and the late Professor Green, in his introduction to Hume. The reader who exhausts the splendid edition of Berkeley, by Professor Eraser, will need no other guide. Eor students of little leisure. Mill and Huxley may be recommended. Hume has created quite a library of criticism. One of the best books on the relation of Hume to earlier and later thought is Professor Seth's (Pringle- Pattison) book on Scottish Philosophy. Eor lucidity of exposition, simplicity of language, and originality of treatment, the work in question is of immense value. Huxley has expounded Hume in the * English Men of Letters Series,' and Professor Knight in the ' Philosophical Classics.' The late Professor Green's work on Hume is indispensable. A series of articles, entitled ' Has Kant answered Hume ? ' by Dr Hutchison Stirling, should on no account be neglected. In this department Dr Stirling is a master. In the Epoch- 48 Philosophy making Series, Hume is adequately handled by Dr Orr. These are only a sample of the literature which Hume, the great dis- turber of the theological and philosophical peace, called forth. 49 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTEE VI. PHILOSOPHY [concluded). In the previous chapter it was shown that Hume, by his psychological theory, drove philosophy into bankruptcy. In his hands the world of knowledge was disintegrated, reduced to atoms. The effects of Hume's theory on theology were equally disastrous, and on this account opposition to it sprang up among divines as well as among phil- osophers. One of the first to detect the sceptical nature of Hume's philosophy was our own Reid. Reid has never been esti- mated at his real worth. He has been eclipsed by Kant. For the cloud which hung over his reputation, Reid had himself largely to blame. But if the reader will turn to the book by Professor Fraser in the Famous Scots Series, and to Professor Pringle- 50 Philosophy Pattison's ' Scottish Philosophy/ he will find grounds for revising the popular estimate of Reid. Nay more, he will find a remarkably close connection between the answers to Hume of Reid and Kant. Eeid protested against the assumption which lay at the root of Locke's theory, and which formed the starting-point of Hume. Reid declared that the mind was not a blank organism, the passive recipient of the impressions of the senses. According to Reid, the mind is originally endowed with a definite structure and equipment, with which it pro- ceeds to interpret experience. In his view, every perception implies a judgment. We do not, as Locke has it, first collect our isolated impressions and then classify and compare them ; in the very act of perception we are exercising judgment. Now, whence comes this capacity of judging? Clearly not from experience, as without judgment there could be no experience for us. Reid's great claim to the regard of philosophers is that he was the first who detected the only eflPective weapon with which to meet Hume. Strictly speaking, Kant simply founded his 51 Books to Read and How to Read them currency among the clergy, who are no longer in danger of ecclesiastical penalties. In this connection the book of Professor Adam Smith deserves special attention. In that book the reader will find the best that can be said for the position taken up by the religious Higher Critics, namely, that God can speak to man just as easily through myth and legend as through historic fact. Pro- fessor Smith in the main accepts the con- clusions of the extreme school ; his contribu- tion lies in the attempt to preserve the idea of revelation, at the same time making sweep- ing concessions to the school of Wellhausen and Kuenen. In the United States the new school has made rapid progress. Perhaps the most attractive book there on the subject is that by Dr Lyman Abbott, * The Liter- ature of the Hebrews,' where, from a wider point of view than Professor Smith, the sub- ject is treated on the lines of Wellhausen. Here, too, a great effort is made to preserve the uniqueness of the Hebrews in the sphere of religion. Another British writer who has done much to popularise the Higher Criticism is Dr Driver. He endeavours to break the 22 Biblical Criticism force of the extreme position by the admission that the history of Israel till the time of the Prophets need not have been framed by exilic ecclesiastics, but was simply compiled by them from ancient sources. He even goes the length of making a notable concession to the conservative school. According to Wellhausen, what is called the Levitical legislation was unknown to Israel till after the exile. Driver admits a great difference between the origination and the codification of laws. Those who drew up the Levitical code did not manufacture it deliberately ; they codified and gave authoritative stamp to laws and institutions which extended back to primitive times. On the other hand, Dr Cheyne, the joint editor of the * Encyclopaedia Biblica,' is disposed to carry the extreme views to their extremest points, regardless of compromise. The wise reader, however, will not be captivated by one side. He will desire to read the views of those who still contend for the authenticity of the Old Testament. One of the best on the orthodox side is the * Early Religion of Israel,' by Professor 23 Books to Read and How to Read them Robertson of Glasgow. Professor Robertson s book is of special interest from the fact that he knows Oriental life from the personal side, and is able to deal with the subject with a freshness rare in academic circles. The point made by Professor Robertson is that by making the Hebrew religion really begin with the Prophets, the Germans have left un- explained the previous evolution of religion in Israel. The prophets, he points out, make constant reference to great historic personages and historic landmarks, thereby showing that these were well known to the people, and could not simply be a literary framework, manufactured by the exilic priestly class, in order to give their legislative reforms an antique background. From different stand- points the Higher Critics have been attacked. The Archaeologists have made great efforts to show that Wellhausen's summary treat- ment of early Israelite history is not war- ranted by facts, and a bold stand is made for the historic value of the Pentateuch, especi- ally as regards the records of patriarchal times. In Germany Hommel, and in this country Sayce, have w^orked assiduously in 24 Biblical Criticism this department. The reader who desires really solid reading should not miss the writings of the Bev. John Urquhart. They are full of good things. Whether the reader agrees with Mr Urquhart or not, he will find * The New Biblical Guide ' quite a mine of information in regard to the history, arch- aeology, and geography of the Bible. The history of Abraham ic and Mosaic times is brought into touch with the history of the old Empires — Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt — and a marvellous flood of light is thereby thrown upon the Scriptural record. In Germany, as well as in England, a strong opposition exists to the Higher Criticism. A recent book by Wilhelm MoUer, * Are the Critics Bight ? ' deserves special mention, in- asmuch as the author frankly admits that at one time he was captivated by Well- hausen's theory, and only ceased to be a follower on a growing conviction that the theory did not square with facts. It is not our purpose to pass verdict upon the old or the new theories of the Bible, but simply to indicate to busy readers where to get guidance in the pursuit of their studies. 25 Books to Read and How to Read them On the side of the Higher Criticism the following may be recommended : ' Proleg- omena to the History of Israel/ Wellhausen ; * Religion of Israel/ Kuenen ; ' Old Testa- ment in the Jewish Church ' and ' Prophets of Israel/ Robertson Smith ; * Bible for Young People/ Kuenen and others ; * Pen- tateuch Examined/ Colenso ; ' Development of Theology/ Pfleiderer ; ' Encyclopaedia Biblica/ ' Introduction to the Studies of Holy Scripture/ Briggs ; ' Old Testament History/ H. P. Smith ; ' Introduction to Old Testament Literature/ Driver ; ' Revelation and the Bible/ Horton ; * Literature of the Ancient Hebrews/ and ' Evolution of Chris- tianity/ Abbott ; ' The Century Bible, vol. 1. — Genesis/ Bennett ; * Modern Preaching and the Old Testament/ G. A. Smith. On the orthodox or conservative side, the student would do well to consult the follow- ing : ' Systematic Theology ' and * Evangelical Theology,' Hodge, father and son ; ' Historical Theology,' Cunningham ; ' Early History of Israel,' Robertson ; ' The Self Revelation of God,' Harris ; ' Ancient Hebrew Traditions,' Hommel ; ' Higher Criticism and the Monu- 26 Biblical Criticism ments/ Sayce ; * Sanctuary and Sacrifice,' Baxter ; * Integrity of Scripture,' Smith ; ' Unity of the Bible,' Gibson ; ' Recent Arch- aeology of the Bible,' Nicol ; * Biblical Guide,' Urquhart ; ' Are the Critics Right ? ' Moller ; ' The Bible and the East,' Conder. The con- troversy has brought forth innumerable pamphlets, but the student who desires to get to the root of the subject should keep steadfastly to the principal authorities on both sides, and avoid being entangled by secondary writers. 27 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER IV. PHILOSOPHY. Was it Comte who said that the education of the individual should be a reproduction in miniature of the education of the race ? Theology in one form or another is the starting-point of the race. Man, even at the most primitive stage, is driven by restless curiosity to inquire into the origin and cause of things. Supernatural revelations do not satisfy man's curiosity. Man at the reflective stage yearns for reasons. Theology glides naturally into philosophy. How close is the relation between the two is seen in the manner in which philosophy emerged from theology, even at the period when the human mind was tightly bound in the chains of dogma. Modern philosophy sprang out of theology at a time when reason itself was 28 Philosophy deemed incompetent to deal with the great problems of life. True, at first philosophy was but a humble servant in the palace of theology. The task of philosophy was not to discover truth, but to systematise truths already revealed. Philosophy arose from her humble position because men like Abelard believed that theological dogmas approached in the proper spirit would prove to be har- monious with reason. Abelard's position was that " a doctrine is not believed because God has said it, but because we are convinced by reason that it is so." The Roman Catholic authorities, hitherto in the belief that phil- osophy — and with them philosophy meant the views of Aristotle — was the handmaid of theology, allowed reason considerable latitude, until it became plain that reason was leading to conclusions which dogma could not endorse. Persecution was resorted to in order to check, and if possible suppress, the rationalising tendency which threatened to shake the theological foundations of the Church. It is highly important for the student who wishes to have a clear view of philosophy, especially in its modern developments, to study the 29 Books to Read and How to Read them great conflict between the Church of Rome and philosophy in the Middle Ages. The period known as the scholastic period saw the overthrow of the ancient philosophy as represented by Plato and Aristotle, and the opening of the new epoch. With Bruno modern philosophy really begins. In the history of thought, Bruno is a most picturesque figure. His life was a prolonged revolt against the authority of the Church in dogma and of Aristotle in science. In regard to the universe, Bruno anticipated modern science. He was the first to see, or at least to give voice to, the new ideas which followed the overthrow of the ancient astro- nomical theories of the universe. As a phil- osopher, he might be called a poetical Spinozaist. His God was not the anthropo- morphic deity of the Church, but a Being which permeated the Infinities and the Eternities. By the new vision vouchsafed by the Copernican theory, Bruno declared that " men were loosed from the chains of a most narrow dungeon, and set at liberty to rise in a most august empire ; we are removed from presumptuous boundaries and poverty 30 Philosophy to the immeasurable riches of an infinite space." Bruno was moved to ecstasy by the wonder of the Universe as revealed by astronomy. In his eyes nothing is limited. Man is everywhere in contact with a power which is akin to him, and yet which pulsates through the remotest regions of space. ''From this infinite all," he says, ''full of beauty and splendour, from the vast worlds which circle above us to the sparkling glow of stars beyond, the conclusion is drawn that there are an infinity of creations, a vast multi- tude which, each in its degree, mirrors forth the splendour, wisdom, and excellence of the divine beauty." In his impassioned mood Bruno described the stars " as those Sons of God who shouted for joy at the creation, the flaming heralds. His ministers, and the ambassadors of His glory, a living mirror of the infinite Deity." He was the first thinker to grasp intellectually and emotionally the conception of the universe as a unity, not the unity which Spinoza taught, which flavoured of the mechanical, but the unity embodied in the Spencerian conception of an Eternal Energy, from which all things pro- 31 Books to Read and How to Read them ceed. With Bruno there is but one Reality, and all things are but images of this ultimate fact. He says : ''The heavens are a picture, a book, a mirror wherein man can behold and read the forms and laws of Supreme Good- ness, the plan and total of perfection. From this Reality, this Eternal Spirit, which is One, all being flows ; there is one truth and one goodness penetrating and governing all things. In nature are the thoughts of God. We are surrounded by eternity and by the uniting love.'' Bruno is a philosopher, though his utterances take poetic shape. He has a theory of God, the Universe, and Man. He must be classed as a Pantheist to whom all distinctions are lost in the All. As a reaction against the dry mechanical views of the scholastic philosophers, the views of Bruno were of immense value, but it was plain that investigation of Nature would have to proceed more modestly if it was to yield up its secret or throw light on the nature and destiny of man. It is only when we come to Francis Bacon that we really breathe the genuine scientific atmosphere. Bacon, impressed with the 32 Philosophy futility of the speculative method, counselled the steady prosaic study of Nature by means of the inductive method. Bacon wanted philosophy to come down from the clouds and become serviceable to man in his daily life. He was a kind of seventeenth century Comte. In so far as Bacon drew men's minds away from barren disputes, he did good work, but his method of induction is now admitted to be defective. He lives more by the spirit of his writings than by any distinct .con- tributions to philosophical thought. What Bacon mainly did was to throw discredit upon the Scholastic philosophy. He turned human thought away from the verbalism, of mere philosophical disquisition, and in this he was ably seconded by Hobbes, who owes his fame in philosophy not to any distinct theoretical contributions, but to the fact that he was the first to deal with the great problems of life from the standpoint of Materialism. Many of his views are far- reaching and suggestive, but he did little or nothing to deal in systematic fashion with philosophy. To Descartes belongs the honour of originating a new method of Books to Read and How to Read them philosophising, and for doing so he has been called the father of modern philosophy. Scholasticism in the main rested upon au- thority : Philosophy was used not to discover truth, but to act as a buttress to theology. Bacon did much to discredit Scholasticism, but he did not lay the foundations of phil- osophy. As already said, in anticipation of Comte, he confined intellectual activity to practical questions ; he sought not to solve ontological or metaphysical problems, but to bring science into the service of man. Descartes gave philosophy its proper starting- point ; he began with Psychology. To the neglect of Psychology the collapse of ancient philosophy was largely due. Plato and the Greek school generally busied themselves mainly with Cosmology and Theology. Their speculations came into violent collision with Christianity, and whatever psychological elements they contained in the form of Neo- Platonism were quietly absorbed, and the cosmological speculations swept away. Pagan speculations about the world and man could not possibly withstand truths which were supposed to be supernaturally revealed. When Descartes took his stand upon Psy- 34 Philosophy chology he created a new epoch in Philosophy. Philosophy -is rooted in Psychology. The root question from which all other questions spring is this : What is the nature and validity of Knowledge? Upon Psychology and what is termed Epistemology, rest Cos- mology and Ontology. It is useless to en- deavour to discover the truth about the World and Being until we have discovered the nature and limits of Knowledge. The student should carefully bear in mind that in differences of Psychological theory all differences among philosophers take their rise. From this consideration emerges a guiding principle in the study of Philosophy. The student who reads chronologically will find himself in endless confusion. As he watches philosophers engaged in deadly con- flict, slaughtering one another's theories, he is strongly reminded of the famous battle of the Kilkenny cats, where nothing was left but certain insignificant fragments of the combatants. An indiscriminate study of Philosophy is well calculated to produce a feeling of un- 35 Books to Read and How to Read them certainty, if not scepticism. In fact, a famous writer, George Henry Lewes, wrote a History of Philosophy with the view of showing from the contradictory and chaotic results the futility of all such speculations. What is needed to counteract the sceptical feeling is method in philosophical reading. The method is this : to read not chronologically but logically. If a theory of the World and of Being depends upon a theory of Mind, then obviously the student should begin with the psychological side of Philosophy as set forth in the works of the great master thinkers. Those who desire a wide survey before settling down to a departmental study of philosophy will find the following works of great service : ' History of Philosophy,' George Henry Lewes ; ' History of Philosophy,' Ueberweg ; ' Hand- book of the History of Philosophy,' Schwegler; * Speculative History of Europe in the Nine- teenth Century,' Morell ; * Philosophical Classics,' contributed to by distinguished writers, and published by Messrs Blackwood * History of Modern Philosophy,' Hojffding * Student's History of Philosophy,' Rogers ' Scottish Philosophy from Hutcheson to 36 Philosophy Hamilton/ M*Cosh ; ' Cosmic Philosophy,' Fiske ; and * Recent British Philosophy,' Masson. The student who masters these, which are simply a selection from a vast literature, will have laid a good philosophical foundation. 37 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER V. PHILOSOPHY {continued). Two things impressed Immanuel Kant with awe — the starry heavens above and the moral law within. Astronomical and ethical phenomena, awe-inspiring as they are, would have appealed to man in vain had he not been in the possession of that mystery of mysteries — Mind. In the daily hustle and bustle man gets so immersed in the secu- larities of life that he rarely stops to study himself What is this mysterious something in the brain which mirrors the Universe, seeks to understand the Eternal, and to fathom the Infinite ? As Carlyle puts it : " With men of a speculative turn there come seasons, meditative, sweet yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable question : ^ Who am I ? ' 38 Philosophy The thing that can say * I.' The world, with its lone trafficking, retires into the distance ; and, through the paper-hangings and stone- walls and thick -plied tissues of commerce and polity, and all the living and useless in- teguments (of society and a body) wherewith your Existence sits surrounded — the sight reaches forth into the void deep, and you are alone with the universe, and silently com- mune with it, as one mysterious presence with another. 'Who am I? What is this Me? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance — some embodied visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind ? Cogito ergo sum.' " From the dawn of reflective thought till now phil- osophers have grappled with the great problem of Mind ; but with the ancient thinkers, especially the Greeks, philosophical thought for a long time paid more attention to Nature as a whole than to Mind as a specialised part of universal phenomena. The tendency among Greek philosophers to indulge in cosmological speculations was checked by Socrates, who brought down philosophy from heaven to earth. But with Socrates the interest in man w^as more ethical 39 Books to Read and Horn to Read them than psychological. The first among the Ancients to approach the subject psychologi- cally was Aristotle. His analysis of mental phenomena, though crude, was valuable as pointing to an attempt to apply scientific method to the study of Mind. The Middle Ages, busy with theological problems, devoted little attention to ps}^- chology, and not till we come to Descartes do we begin to breathe the modern spirit. He was driven to the subject, as he himself says, by the widespread scepticism of the age. The scholastic theology was losing its hold upon the thoughtful minds of the seven- teenth century, and Descartes was driven elsewhere to seek for a basis of certainty. Unable to find an anchor in the theological and philosophical systems, Descartes deter- mined to search in the mind itself for cer- tainty. He found it in self - consciousness. Hence his famous " Cogito ergo sum : I think, therefore I am." According to this view. Knowledge begins with ideas ; and thus we have the starting-point of a controversy which still continues between those who declare that innate ideas, and those who contend 40 Philosophy that experience, is the starting-point of knowledge. Has the mind ideas independent of experience ? The Intuitionist says " yes " ; the Experientialist says " no." In the hands of Spinoza the innate ideas of Descartes became an all-embracing system of philosophy. Descartes showed that the idea of God was involved in the innate operation of the mind. His philosophy rested upon a duality. Mind and Matter, according to him, were distinct, independent Substances. Spinoza taught that there was only one Substance. Thus at one stroke the psychology of Descartes became transformed in the hands of Spinoza into a system of ontology. A reaction was soon to set in. The English mind, with its strong positive bent, looks with distrust upon far-soaring speculation. Hobbes rushed to the other extreme. He would have nothing to do with speculations which outran ex- perience. He looked outward for certainty, not inward, as Descartes had done. The thoughts of man, says Hobbes, "are every one a representation or appearance of some quality or other accident of a body without us which is commonly called an object. The 41 Books to Read and How to Read them original of them all is that which we call Sense, for there is no conception in a man's mind w^hich hath not at first totally or by part been begotten upon the organs of sense." Here we have the historical starting-point of the experiential school. The views which Hobbes put forth found systematic exposition in the works of Locke, who, indeed, has been accused of borrowing them from his great predecessor. Locke, however, in this regard has been ably vin- dicated by Sir James Mackintosh. Locke takes rank as an original thinker, and by his famous essay concerning ^' Human Under- standing" initiated practically a new era in psychological thought. Locke, like Hobbes, traced ideas to experience, but his method was not speculative but scientific. He did more than theorise ; he endeavoured to de- scribe the method by which Knowledge was built up by means of experience. Locke, so to speak, aimed at being the historian as well as the philosopher of the mind. He set himself to inquire into the origin, cer- tainty, and extent of human knowledge. 42 Philosophy Regarding the origin of our ideas Locke was quite explicit. He found them to originate in Sensation and Reflection. With Locke the mind is wholly passive in the sphere of Sen- sation ; external objects manifest themselves to the mind through the senses. The know- ledge so obtained is reflected upon by the mind and converted into ideas. By means of his psychological theory Locke struck a blow at the Cartesian and Spinozian views. The ontological speculations which had been based upon innate ideas were shown by Locke to have their origin in experience. The ideas of God, of the Infinite, Locke traced to an empirical origin. He did not mean to throw doubt upon the fundamental truths of the- ology. What he aimed at was to show that they were established not by an appeal to' innate ideas, but to reasoning, resting on experience. Closely allied to the question of the nature of knowledge is the question of the validity of knowledge. The fundamental question which Locke had to face was this — If our knowledge of the external world, for instance, comes to the mind through the 43 Books to Read and How io Read them senses and is worked up into ideas by reflec- tion, what is the relation between the objec- tive world of Realities and the subjective world of Ideas ? To put it briefly — Can we know things as they are? On the innate theory things are knowable as they are ; the clearness, distinctness, and intuitiveness of the ideas guarantee their trustworthiness. We know things through the medium of ideas, says Descartes, and whatever we find in the ideas must necessarily be true of the things. Locke held that our knowledge of the external world was not reached by in- tuition. The mind, said Locke, does not know things immediately. *'We must not think that our ideas are exactly the images and qualities of something inherent in the object." What, then is the exact nature, say, of our knowledge of Matter ? Locke saw that all the properties of Matter could not exist exactly as they seemed to exist, because many of them are conditioned by the Mind itself Light and heat, he saw, do not exist as properties apart from the Mind. They exist only in relation to the Mind. But if Philosophy Matter is clothed by the Mind with secondary qualities, what guarantee is there that the primary qualities which Locke says we do know are not also conditioned by the Mind ? By excluding the primary qualities of Matter from the conditioning activity of the Mind, Locke landed his experience philosophy in a difficulty, from which Berkeley endeavoured to extricate it by the bold stroke of abolish- ing the Lockian idea of Matter altogether. According to Berkeley, Spirit, not Matter, is the real substance of the Universe. David Hume next came upon the scene, and in reply to Berkeley said that if there is no evidence of a permanent substance Matter, there is just as little evidence of a permanent substance Mind. If what we are conscious of as Matter is only a series of sensations in the mind, then we must con- clude that all we can know of Mind is not a permanent substance, but simply a series of feelings linked together by association. In the hands of Hume, the philosophy of Locke and Berkeley ended in utter scepticism. Locke's theory, like Berkeley's, was formu- 45 Books to Read a?id How to Read them lated in the interests of theology. Locke hoped to find in causation a stepping-stone to a great first cause ; Hume, by substituting association for causation, knocked the props from theology. By resolving Mind as an entity into a series of feelings linked by association, Hume also knocked the props from psychology. Hume drove theology and philosophy into bankruptcy — that is what constitutes him an epoch-making force in the history of thought. Here, then, is strik- ing corroboration of our remark that all philosophies in the comprehensive meaning of the term are conditioned by psychological theory. Given a certain theory of Mind and its working, and there follows logically certain theories of the World and Being. Starting with the innate ideas of Descartes, Spinoza made the Cartesian psychology the basis of a system of Pantheism in which the World and Man are but manifestations of One Self- Existing Substance. At the other extreme, starting with Experience, Hume, resting on the Lockian psychology, developed a system of philosophical Nihilism in which the world 46 Philosophy of knowledge was disintegrated, reduced to atoms. The condition of scepticism produced by Hume at once roused philosophic thought into activity. The following works may profitably be studied : * History of Philosophy,' by George Henry Lewes, who gives a popular account of the systems of Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, and, in fact, of all the great thinkers who have dealt systematically with the problems of philosophy. Hoffding's book is invaluable to the student of philosophy. In his essays Huxley expounds the view of Descartes in his usual lively manner ; and a readable volume on Descartes will be found in the Philosophical Classics Series. Spinoza is a stiff philosopher, and needs deep study. The late Principal Caird deals with him in the Philosophical Classics Series, and the late Dr Martineau contributes to the great thinker a volume of considerable toughness. For the fifeneral reader it will suffice to recommend Martineau's chapters on ' Types of Ethical I UN ^ O- -THE ,N>VEf ^-f^J Books to Read and How to Read them Theory/ Arnold and Fronde's Essays, and Pollock's standard book on the subject. On Locke the authorities are as follows : ' EnMish Men of Letters Series/ Fowler ; ' Philosophical Classics/ Eraser ; and the late Professor Green, in his introduction to Hume. The reader who exhausts the splendid edition of Berkeley, by Professor Eraser, will need no other guide. Eor students of little leisure, Mill and Huxley may be recommended. Hume has created quite a library of criticism. One of the best books on the relation of Hume to earlier and later thought is Professor Seth's (Pringle- Pattison) book on Scottish Philosophy. Eor lucidity of exposition, simplicity of language, and originality of treatment, the work in question is of immense value. Huxley has expounded Hume in the * English Men of Letters Series,' and Professor Knight in the * Philosophical Classics.' The late Professor Green's work on Hume is indispensable. A series of articles, entitled * Has Kant answered Hume V by Dr Hutchison Stirling, should on no account be neglected. In this department Dr Stirling is a master. In the Epoch- 48 Philosophy making Series, Hume is adequately handled by Dr Orr. These are only a sample of the literature which Hume, the great dis- turber of the theological and philosophical peace, called forth. 49 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER VI. PHILOSOPHY [concluded). In the previous chapter it was shown that Hume, by his psychological theory, drove philosophy into bankruptcy. In his hands the world of knowledge was disintegrated, reduced to atoms. The effects of Hume's theory on theology were equally disastrous, and on this account opposition to it sprang up among divines as well as among phil- osophers. One of the first to detect the sceptical nature of Hume's philosophy was our own Reid. Reid has never been esti- mated at his real worth. He has been eclipsed by Kant. For the cloud which hung over his reputation, Reid had himself largely to blame. But if the reader will turn to the book by Professor Fraser in the Famous Scots Series, and to Professor Pringle- 50 Philosophy Pattison's ' Scottish Philosophy,' he will find grounds for revising the popular estimate of Reid. Nay more, he will find a remarkably close connection between the answers to Hume of Reid and Kant. Reid protested against the assumption which lay at the root of Locke's theory, and which formed the starting-point of Hume. Reid declared that the mind was not a blank organism, the passive recipient of the impressions of the senses. According to Reid, the mind is originally endowed with a definite structure and equipment, with which it pro- ceeds to interpret experience. In his view, every perception implies a judgment. We do not, as Locke has it, first collect our isolated impressions and then classify and compare them ; in the very act of perception we are exercising judgment. Now, whence comes this capacity of judging? Clearly not from experience, as without judgment there could be no experience for us. Reid's great claim to the regard of philosophers is that he was the first who detected the only effective weapon with which to meet Hume. Strictly speaking, Kant simply founded his 51 Books to Read and Hotv to Read them whole system upon the fruitful suggestion of Reid — namely, that before experience itself is possible, before the impressions of sense can even make themselves known, there must exist a self-conscious mind whose structure is not created by experience, but which needs experience to set it to work. In Kant's hands Reid's suggestion was made the ground- work of a huge system composed of two antagonistic portions — one which might be labelled Agnostic and the other Absolute. The student who wishes to pursue the subject beyond where it is left by Professor Fraser in his stimulating volume on Reid, should not omit to peruse Professor Pringle-Pattison's book on Scottish Philosophy. Much has been written about Scottish Philosophy, but to our thinking the cream will be found in that work. In it the reader will find, in language easily understood, a remarkably subtle treat- ment of the relations between the root-ideas of Reid and the Hegelian system as developed out of Kant. It would be out of place here to deal exhaustively with Kant's contributions to philosophy. Suffice it to say that Kant 52 Philosophy hoped to overthrow Hume's sceptical con- clusions by reviving the innate theory in a new form. Instead of innate ideas, Kant claimed for the Mind an innate structure, by means of which it was compelled to think under certain necessary and universal forms. Out of this emerged the Kantian view that reality was not an affair of sense impression but of thought forms. Thus, in regard to knowledge of the material world we are no better oiF than under Hume. Hume tells us that all we know is isolated sense impressions. Kant tells us that these sense impressions are moulded into knowledge by the inherent structure of the mind, but there is no guarantee that knowledge so acquired corre- sponds with reality. Kant then ends with Hume in phenomenalism. We are as far as ever from a knowledge of the world of sense, or of the world beyond sense. In short, Kant from the psychological side brings us back to the agnosticism of Hume. Alive to the sceptical issue of the theory, Kant made an attempt to provide for religion by shifting the basis of certainty from pure reason to the ethical element in man. This did not save 53 Books to Read and How to Read them his theory from inherent weakness. Its fundamental defect lay in its absolute separa- tion between subject and object. In thought it is necessary to distinguish between subject and object, but in fact they cannot be separated. Now Kant made the great mis- take of thinking that because the subject can be distinguished from the object, there- fore mind and matter can be treated as separate entities. Impressions in his view came from a separate entity, the world, and were worked into knowledge by another separate entity, the mind, in harmony with its inherent structure. Kant's mistake was fruitful in serious errors. In the hands of Hegel philosophy got further out of touch with reality. Hegel, dissatisfied with the dualistic and relative nature of Kant's scheme, set himself to convert it into what he called a philosophy of the Absolute. He had the material ready to hand. If, as Kant maintained, knowledge is constituted by thought, if the world is intelligible only to a self, clearly an analysis of the self will yield the laws of the world process. A study of the conscious self re- 54 Philosophy vealed to Hegel a triple movement of thought which in his view was the movement of things. With Kant, knowledge was relative, because in the act of thought we are estab- lishing relations. With Hegel, knowledge is absolute, because in the act of thought we are in presence of the one fundamental and all-embracing reality. If thought is the fundamental reality, clearly a study of the laws of the thought process should give the laws of things. Nature in this view was deducible from the Hegelian system. Hegel's failure at this point was colossal. The attempt to understand Nature not by ex- perience but by speculative methods led to results which in Germany threw discredit up- on the entire Hegelian system. In Scotland and England Hegelianism has had consider- able vogue, through the writing of the two Cairds, the late Professor Green, and Mr R. B. Haldane. Meanwhile, the other side of Kant's philosophy, the agnostic, as opposed to the transcendental, has also had a wide- spread philosophical influence. In Germany the reaction took the form of Materialism. Wearied with the dreamy 55 Books to Read and How to Read them haziness of the speculative method, rising thinkers fell back upon Kant's Agnosticism. They stuck to experience, and relegated to the unknowable all metaphysical inquiries. Lotze made an attempt to mediate between metaphysics and science, but since his day German thought has been devoted more to the psychological than to the ontological side of philosophy. No longer are mind and matter, subject and object, treated on the Kantian introspective method. An attempt is made to discover from the standpoint of experience and experiment the relation be- tween mind and brain. In this connection good work has been done by Weber, Fechner, Wundt, and others. In Scotland and Eng- land the course of development has been somewhat similar. In Scotland Sir William Hamilton, from one side of Kant's philosophy, made an attack on the Hegelian development, and by his doctrine of the relativity of knowledge prepared the way for the later development of the Agnosticism, scientific and philosophical, of Tyndall, Huxley, and Spencer. Hamilton was not a logical thinker. His attempt to combine elements belonging 56 Philosophy to Eeid and Kant brought upon him the strictures of J. S. Mill, who, in his ' Examin- ation of Hamilton's Philosophy,' traversed the whole philosophical area, and raised with great ability the fundamental questions of Hume. Mill's was a great attempt to formu- late a system of philosophy on the psychology of Hume. Mill's conception of the world was that of a collection of facts grasped by the mind by virtue of the law of association — facts existing by no inherent necessity, and resting in the last analysis on the arbitrary and the accidental. In this planet two and two make four, but in another planet two and two may make five. Mill was prevented * from reaching a satisfying philosophical theory of the world and of man because of his defec- tive psychology. The next great name is Spencer. Spencer's ' Synthetic Philosophy ' would have been impossible had he remained at the stage of experientialism represented by Hume and Mill. It is highly significant that Spencer's first work dealt with psychology. Before he could set himself to discover what could be known, he had to determine how 57 Books to Read and How to Read them knowledge originated ; in other words, to determine the capacities of the mind. Mill's failure to give the experience philosophy a cosmical sweep arose from his adoption of the popular notion that nothing can be known to be true which cannot be demonstrated. Now it needs little consideration to show that a process of induction can lead us a very- little way. In fact we cannot proceed to reason at all without making a start from what is not capable of demonstration, namely, personal identity. This belief rests not upon proof, but upon a psychological necessity. Similarly we cannot get into intellectual touch with the Cosmos by a process of in- duction, resting upon the law of association. At the beginning of all reasoning, all classi- fication, is a belief which cannot be proved, which must be accepted as a necessity of thought — namely, the belief in the perma- nence of the constitution of things which we call Nature or objective existence. By start- ing with two intuitive beliefs, by accepting as his fundamental data personal identity and objective existence, Spencer escaped the network of sceptical confusions in which 58 Philosophy Hume and Mill involved themselves in their attempt to give a satisfactory account of the Eofo and Non-Eo^o on the lines of their em- pirical philosophy. The system of Spencer is so vast that more space would be needed than can be spared to give it even in outline, but expositions of the Spencerian philosophy are within the reach of all. In the Spencerian system is to be found the first genuine at- tempt to bring philosophy and science into fruitful alliance. He who would know phil- osophy in its true bearings must get out of the stifling atmosphere of speculation into the ampler air of science. The student who desires to make the ac- quaintance of Kant in the simplest form will find, in addition to the book of Professor Pringle-Pattison, the volume in the Philo- sophical Classics Series of great value. The works on philosophy mentioned in the previous chapter should also be consulted. The student who wishes to devote time and leisure to the study should on no account miss the book on Kant and his system, viewed in relation to 59 Books to Read and How to Read them later developments, by the Master of Balliol, Edward Caird. A very readable volume is that by Friedrich Paulsen, which gives with great fulness the complete system of Kant, along with full biographical details. Liter- ature about Hegel exists in abundance. Dr Hutchison Stirling's famous ' Secret of Hegel ' should not be tackled till simpler expositions are mastered. In an appendix to Schwegler's * Handbook of Philosophy,' Dr Stirling con- tributes an exceedingly lucid account of the Hegelian system ; and Edward Caird to the Philosophical Classics Series contributes a masterly volume on the great philosopher. A very useful book, remarkably well written, is the volume on Hegel in the World Epoch - Makers Series, by Professor Mackintosh. This little book is invaluable to the student, inasmuch as it gives, in addition to a brilliant exposition of the Hegelian system, an historic outline of its numerous critics. For the liter- ature of the German reaction against Hegel the reader may be recommended to Lange's ' History of Materialism ' and to the writings of Lotze. For a sketch and exposition of the new school of Psychology which grew 60 Philosophy out of the scientific reaction, nothing better can be had than Ribot's ' German Psychology/ which deals with the labours of Weber, Fechner, and Wundt. Mr R. B. Haldane's Gifford Lectures, 'The Pathway to Reality,' must on no account be neglected by the student of German philosophy. Mr Haldane's intimate acquaintance with modern scientific thought, especially as regards psychology, makes his book especially valuable. For Enoflish thouofht the works of J. S. Mill are indispensable. Dr Charles Douglas, M.P., has written a book on Mill's philosophy of great value to the student, who should also read W. L. Courtney's little volume in the Great Writers Series. Spencer, like Hegel, has called forth quite a library of controver- sial literature. Expositions of his philosophy, however, are by no means numerous. The best in point of completeness is the exhaustive work in two large volumes entitled ' Cosmic Philosophy,' by John Fiske. More condensed expositions will be found in Hudson's book on ' The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer ' and the present writer's ' Herbert Spencer : The Man and his Work.' On the critical side the 6i Books to Read and How to Read them agnostic movement has been ably handled by- Professor Flint in his ' Agnosticism ; ' Mr Balfour in his ' Philosophic Doubt ' and his * Foundations of Belief;' and by Professor Watson in his ' Comte, Mill, and Spencer.' 63 Astronomy /^V^ OF THE V of . CHAPTER VII. SCIENCE : ASTRONOMY. In one of his books John Stuart Mill expresses a dread of the effects of a purely materialistic civilisation on the rising generation. For the first time in the history of the world children are being educated without real belief in religion, in an atmosphere not favourable to the sentiments of devotion, of poetry, of chivalry. Democracy, with its levelling tendency, encouraged by the decline of re- ligion. Mill evidently thought would have a hardening effect upon the modern mind. Mill's fears have not been ill-founded. Modern civilisation has done much for the economic position of the individual, but it has not enriched his intellectual and spiritual nature. On the intellectual side knowledge 63 Books to Read and How to Read them is now more accessible than ever, but men of thought, of ideas, are remarkably scarce. Into the sphere of the intellect division of labour has entered, and where in other times there existed great comprehensive thinkers, we moderns have to be content with specialists. In regard to the higher nature of man, the emotions which used to be stirred by religion and philosophy are now almost dormant. Must the higher feel- ings of the soul die because theology and philosophy no longer can afford them sus- tenance ? Happily, with the decay of these has arisen science. Science — by which is meant not science as applied to manu- factures, but science as an interpreter of the Universe — appeals in the strongest pos- sible manner to the fundamental feelings of the soul, wonder, reverence, and awe. In the study of Nature Astronomy naturally takes the first place. It is one of Comte's fruitful observations that the phenomena of Nature should be studied in the order of their development, otherwise the mind will get lost in a bewildering mass of details. There are two ways of studying science. 64 Astronomy The one way, which commended itself to Comte, was to study science with a view to the improvement of man's environment. Science, in his view, brought men positive benefit ; not Uke theology and metaphysics, which he believed to be sterile. The other way is to study science for its own sake, for the marvels it unfolds, for the intellectual stimulus it imparts, and the emotional forces it unlocks. So far from science having dis- pensed with theology and philosophy, it will be found that in the last analysis science brings us back to the much-despised theology and philosophy. Science deals with the modes of existence. It can tell us nothing of the nature of existence, and in this region it must give place to theology and philosophy. When studied on the in- tellectual and emotional side science, especi- ally astronomy, is an educational agency of the utmost value. An idea of this may be gained by a com- parison between the stupendous Universe opened up by modern astronomy and the crude hypotheses of pre-Copernican specu- lators. The modern astronomer conceives .^5 B Books to Read and How to Read them the Earth as a small globe in the solar system, an aggregation of eight (or nine) primary planets, twenty -two satellites, five hundred asteroids, along with many comets and meteoric streams, isolated in space. The following description of the solar system is from the pen of Flammarion, the great French astronomer : "We live on the Earth, a float- ing, rolling, whirling globe, the sport of over ten incessant and varied motions ; but we are so small on this globe and so distant from the rest of the Universe that all appears to us motionless and immutable. Night, however, spreads its veil, the stars are lit up in the depths of the heavens, the evening star is resplendent in the west and the Moon pours out in the atmosphere her rosy light. Let us go, let us rush with the velocity of light. In a little more than a second we pass in view of the lunar world, which spreads before us its yawning craters and reveals its alpine and savage valleys. We do not stop. The Sun reappears and permits us to cast a last look at the illuminated Earth, a little inclined globe slowly shrinking in the infinite night. Venus 66 Astronomy approaches, a new earth, equal to ours. . . . We pass sufficiently near the Sun to perceive his tremendous explosions ; but we continue our flight. Here is Mars, with its mediter- raneans with a thousand indentations, its gulfs, its shores, its great rivers (canals), its nations, its strange towns and its active, busy populations. . . . An enormous Colossus, Jupiter, approaches. A thousand worlds would not equal it. What rapidity in its days ! what tumults on its surface ! what storms, what volcanoes, what hurricanes, in its immense atmosphere ! — humanity has not yet appeared on the scene. Let us fly, for ever fly ! This world, as rapid as Jupiter, girdled with a strange ring, is the fantastic planet Saturn. . . . Uranus, Neptune are the last known worlds which we meet in our voyage, but let us fly, for ever fly ! Wan, dishevelled, slow, fatigued, glides before us the wandering comet in the night of its aphelion ; but we still distinguish the Sun like a brilliant star in the midst of the population of the heavens. With the constant velocity of 186,000 miles a second, four hours have sufficed to carry us to the distance of 67 Books to Read and How to Read them Neptune. . . . We fly for four years ! — before reaching the nearest sun." Even in the mid -eighteenth century, it could not be asserted that there was a science of " stellar astronomy." Astronomers observed the stars not for their own sakes, but for perfecting their knowledge of planetary motion. Herschel, whose epitaph claims that ** he broke through the barriers of the skies," first threw open the gate of stellar astronomy by his brilliant discoveries and his attempts to discover the construction of the heavens. To Herschel is due the credit of having scientifically revealed to man infinity and eternity ; he looked further into space than any human being did before him. The labours which he commenced have been carried on by a host of nineteenth -century astronomers, aided with telescope, spectro- scope, and camera. The result has been that we approximately know the size and shape of the Stellar Universe. The tremendous figures set down by the calculations of Gore and Newcomb are too vast for the human mind to grasp. Nevertheless, Seeliger has shown the Universe to be probably a globe 68 Astronomy of stars, flattened at the poles. Although of vast extent, it is probably finite, as Celoria, the Italian astronomer, has actually sounded the Universe and found where the stars begin to thin out. So great is the Universe that light takes at least thousands of years to cross it ; and though it is finite it is probably only one among millions of others, so that space is truly infinite. As Flammarion says : " Whatever be its extent, our Milky Way is but a point in the infinite." When we reflect on these words, they bring home to us the insignificance and nothingness of our little planet. It is only when we measure the great cosmic forces with those with which we are familiar that we feel subdued in awe- struck wonder in presence of an eternal energy. Theology and philosophy have much to say of the Infinite, but it is left to science to give the Infinite vivid shape, to clothe it with reality. Take the follow- ing passage from Mr Gore's 'Visible Uni- verse ' : " Could we speed our flight through space on angel wings beyond the confines of our limited universe to a distance so 69 Books to Read and How to Read them great that the interval which separates us from the remotest fixed star visible in our largest telescopes might be considered as merely a step on our celestial journey, what further creations might not then be revealed to our wondering vision ; systems of a higher order might there be unfolded to our view, compared with which the whole of our visible heavens might appear like a grain of sand on the ocean shore ; systems per- haps stretching out to infinity before us, and reaching at last the glorious * mansions V of the Almighty, the Throne of the Eternal." From a difierent point of view Mr Peck, in his work on the ' Constellations,' gives a glimpse into infinity. *' How great is the unknown ! For the many millions of stars which are revealed to us by means of the most powerful telescope are only as a ' drop in the bucket' to the infinite number which exists throughout the boundless universe. In fact, all the stars which are seen in the heavens, together with our sun, form parts only of one vast and complicated aggregation of orbs, of which there are, in all probability, an endless number scattered throughout the 70 Astronomy depths of infinite space. What, then, must we think when we thus find not only myriads of stars, but myriads of star- clusters, each containing millions of millions of suns — suns which, perhaps, are far more resplendent and rule over hundreds of worlds more spacious than our own. The mind cannot realise the meaning and infinite significance of such a wondrous scene. And further, when we re- flect that very probably each of these worlds revolving round other suns will, at some period or another of their existence, be the abode of intelligent life, a deeper meaning is given to the words of the inspired Psalmist, *When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained ; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him ? ' '' In presence of this panorama of the Im- mensities, humanity, occupied with the things of earth like Bunyan's man with the muck- rake, has no time to gaze upwards. We pride ourselves on our superiority over the ancients, but in the matter of devout contem- plation we fall far behind. On our dull eye 71 Books to Read and How to Read them the magnificent spectacle of the heavens makes little impression. Phenomena which stirred the ancients to worship we pass by unheeded. Here, as elsewhere, familiarity breeds, if not contempt, at least indifference. How true the remark of Emerson — If the stars came out only once in a thousand years, how men would wonder and adore and pre- serve for countless generations the memory of the City of God which they had seen. Books on the subject are innumerable, but guidance is necessary. The first thing the student has to do is to avoid resting upon phrases which carry no clear idea to the mind. The true way to benefit from astronomical books is to get to the root of the fundamental conceptions of the science. Take the matter of distance. We are told that the distance between the sun and the earth is ninety-three million miles. The reader who rests content with the figures will carry away a totally inadequate idea of the vast space between the two bodies. How much more vivid the idea is when he learns that if a train were 72 Astronomy to start to-day and travel towards the sun at the rate of sixty miles an hour and three hundred and sixty -five days in a year, it would take more than one hundred and seventy years to reach the sun. We are further told that light travels this enor- mous distance in eight minutes. And yet at that rate there are suns so far away that their light takes thousands of years to reach us. For the youthful reader or the beginner can be recommended Sir Robert Ball's ' Star Land/ which gives an admirable and lucid exposition of the wonders of the heavens, or Miss Giberne's * Sun, Moon, and Stars,' which gives a view of the celestial phenomena in wonderfully clear and easy language. Larger and more advanced treatises are Ball's ' Story of the Heavens,' Flammarion's 'Popular As- tronomy/ Newcomb's * Popular Astronomy,' Guillemin's 'The Heavens,' and Todd's 'New Astronomy' — all five of which give wonder- fully comprehensive views of the solar and sidereal systems. The student will also de- rive much benefit from the perusal of ' The Expanse of Heaven,' * The Orbs around Us,' 73 Books to Read and How to Read them and other works from the pen of the late R. A. Proctor, which, although slightly out of date in details, give lucid and interesting descriptions of the celestial wonders ; while for those who wish to recoofnise the heavens it is essential to make use of Peck's * Con- stellations and How to Find them,' Maunder's * Astronomy Without a Telescope,' Gore's ' Star Groups,' and Proctor s ' Half- Hours with the Stars.' The advanced student will probably know what to read on his special branch of the science, but the following books may be re- commended : Ball's ' The Earth's Beginning,' W. H. Pickering's ' The Moon,' Elger's ' The Moon,' Young's 'The Sun,' Lowell's 'Mars,' Proctor's ' Saturn,' Ball's ' Story of the Sun,' Lowell's 'The Solar System,' Gore's 'The Worlds of Space ' and ' The Stellar Heavens,' and Serviss's 'Pleasures of the Telescope.' Astrophysics, the new astronomy, is more technical than the older branch of the science, but is lucidly expounded in Miss Gierke's ' Problems in Astrophysics ' and Scheiner's ' Astronomical Spectroscopy,' while the problem of the construction of the heavens 74 Astronomy is described in the works of the three great masters of the subject : Proctor's ' Universe of Stars,' Gore's * Visible Universe,' and Newcomb's * The Stars.' Astronomy, like every other science, tends every year to become more specialised and intricate, and the reader is apt to become confused in the multiplicity of details. In order to have a clear view of the science, he should read Miss Gierke's ' History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Gentury.' Another good way of studying astronomy is to read it biographic- ally. * Tycho Brahe,' by Dreyer, and * Galileo,' by Fahie, are indispensable to all interested in astronomy ; while the life and work of Herschel is admirably described by Sime in his volume on ' Herschel ' in the World's Epoch -Makers Series, and by Miss Gierke in her work, ' The Herschels and Modern Astronomy.' There is also an interesting biography of Kepler in Brewster's ^ Martyrs of Science.' Strange to say, no adequate life of Newton has yet appeared, the only one being Brewster's ' Life,' which cannot be placed beside the magnificent works on Tycho Brahe, Galileo, and Herschel. Shorter biog- Books to Read and How to Read the^n raphies are to be found in Ball's ' Great As- tronomers ' and Morton's * Heroes of Science.' If the student is anxious to pursue the sub- ject further, and to read the lives of the nine- teenth-century astronomers, he cannot do better than peruse Dunkin's * Obituary Notices of Astronomers,' and the admirable obituary notices published yearly by the Royal Astro- nomical Society. Other books worth consult- ing are Lockyer's ' Primer of Astronomy,' Schiaparelli's * Le Stelle Cadenti,' which Lockyer calls the greatest contribution to astronomical literature which the last century produced. Schiaparelli's latest work, *L'As- tronomia nell' Antico Testamento,' has an especial bearing on the astronomy of the Bible. In this volume the great Italian as- tronomer throws much light on the astro- nomical knowledge of the Hebrews, which appears to have been considerable. Schia- parelli shows that some passages in the Bible, especially in Job, Amos, and Ezekiel, indicate that the Hebrews were acquainted with the planets Venus and Saturn, with eclipses, meteoric showers, and other astronomical phenomena. 76 Celestial Evolution CHAPTEE VIII. SCIENCE : CELESTIAL EVOLUTION. The human mind is not content with mere observation of celestial phenomena. From time immemorial astronomers have attempted to look before and after, to read the past history and speculate on the future of the marvellous panorama of the heavens. To Kant is commonly assigned the credit of originating the nebular hypothesis in its present form. It should be stated, however, that a remarkable speculation as to the origin of the solar system was made by our own James Ferguson, who conceived the idea that the matter now forming the sun and planets originally existed in a detached condition throughout space, and that the various particles were drawn together by the force of gravitation to form the celestial 77 Books to Read and How to Read therft bodies. From this it will be seen that Ferguson anticipated the main feature of the theories of Kant and Laplace. In his 'Natural History of the Heavens/ published in 1755, Kant traced the formation of the solar system from the contraction of a vast mass of evenly diffused particles of matter. This theory was unknown to Laplace, who in 1796 propounded his theory of the evolution of the solar system at the close of his popular work, 'The System of the World.' The great French astronomer noticed that in the solar system all the planets revolved round the sun in the same direction, from west to east, and that the satellites of the planets obeyed the same law. He also observed that the sun, moon, and planets rotated on their axes in the same direction as they revolved round the sun. It was plain that this was not the result of chance. But Laplace also noticed that the planets revolved round the sun, and the satellites round their primaries in almost the same plane as the earth moved, the " plane of the ecliptic." This added further evidence to the impossibility that the movements of 78 Celestial Evolution the planets were the result of chance. He expressed his belief that the solar system originated from a great nebula — rather the sun's atmosphere — which was possessed of a motion of rotation. Slowly contracting it now forms the sun, and it threw off various rings which condensed to form the planets and their satellites. Since the days of Laplace five hundred asteroids have been discovered, and they all move in the same direction, and roughly in the same plane. According to Sir Robert Ball, the chances are a million to one that the solar system has not been formed by chance. Since the days of Laplace, however, several motions have been discovered which do not conform to Laplace's theory. The satellites of Uranus and Neptune, for instance, move in planes so much inclined to the ecliptic that their motions may be described as retrograde. Efforts to explain this have been made by Faye, Ligondes, and others, but these new schemes were intended to supersede the Laplacean system, and have completely failed. Although there are a number of drawbacks to the complete acceptance of Laplace's 79 Books to Read and How to Read them hypothesis, no other theory will explain so completely the remarkable congruities in the solar system. Ball, one of the greatest supporters of the nebular hypothesis of Laplace, concludes in his recent work, * The Earth's Beginning' (1901), that we may explain the difficulties of the system of Laplace. According to Ball the researches of Newcomb have shown that the planes of the orbits of the satellites undergo trans- formation which will eventually bring them to coincide with the ecliptic. " The move- ments of the satellites of Uranus and Neptune," he says, " do not disprove the nebular hypothesis. They rather illustrate the fact that the great evolution which has wrought the solar system into its present form has not finished its work." At all events, the nebular hypothesis of Laplace, modified by the results of modern research, may be described as the most probable theory of the evolution of our system. There are two ways of studying celestial evolution — one is to speculate on the history of our solar system; the other is to study the celestial bodies in process of evolution. Bo Celestial Evolution The latter was the method adopted by Herschel in his studies of the evolution of the sun and stars, and is generally followed by modern astronomers. As early as 1791 — five years before Laplace enounced his nebular theory — Herschel had commenced his studies of the development of stars from nebulae. His complete theory, however, was not given to the world until 1811, when he felt justi- fied in announcing that he could trace the development of widely -difiused nebulae into planetary nebulae, and thence into stars. The theory was a stupendous one, and, in a sense, more convincing than that of the French mathematician ; for, while Laplace could merely speculate on the history of our own system, Herschel pointed out the nebulae which were developing into stars, and he compared the heavens to a luxuriant garden, in which every stage of growth was rep- resented. Herschel's theory was considerably hampered by the fact that he was unable to distinguish between actual nebulae, or masses of gas, and star-clusters, too remote to be recognised as such. The supposed resolution into stars of 8x P Books to Read and How to Read them some of the nebulae on which Herschel had laid special stress was called by Olmsted of Yale the signal for the renunciation of the nebular hypothesis. In 1864, however, the spectroscope was turned by Huggins to a planetary nebula in Draco and afterwards to the Orion nebula. The spectrum was one of bright lines, proving conclusively that many of the nebulae were what Herschel supposed them to be, masses of gas, event- ually to condense into suns and planets. The spectroscope proved itself a useful ad- dition to astronomical research in enabling astronomers to read the life -history of the stars. Important stellar observations were made by Huggins and Secchi in the early 'sixties. Huggins aimed at a complete analysis of the spectra of certain stars, while Secchi devoted himself to a spectroscopic survey of the heavens. As a result of his researches Secchi divided the stars into types according to their spectra, in the order wliite, yellow, and red. Secchi considered that the classification represented physical conditions modified and varied by the temperatures of the different stars, but, in the words of 82 Celestial Evolution Schemer, "his ideas as to the connection do not appear to have been very clear." The researches of Secchi, Huggins, Dundr, Donati, Zollner, Vogel, Scheiner, Lockyer, Maunder, Belopolsky, Campbell, Pickering, Keeler, and others, have been wrought into a complete classification of stellar spectra by H. C. Vogel, the director of the Astro- physical Observatory at Potsdam. Vogel was early convinced that " a rational classi- fication of the stars according to their spectra is probably only to be obtained by proceeding from the standpoint that the phase of develop- ment of the particular body is in general mirrored in its spectrum." Vogel's first type — subdivided by him — represented by Bella- trix, Rigel, Sirius, Vega, &c., is characterised by the elements helium and hydrogen. Vogel's second type is represented by Procyon, the Sun, Capella, &c., and is characterised by the metallic elements, such as calcium, iron, &c. His third type consists of Secchi's third and fourth types combined, and he regards it as probable that a solar star may develop into either a star similar to Betelgeux or to 152 Schjellerup, in which stars the tempera- 83 Books to Read and How to Read them ture is so far reduced that chemical com- pounds are formed in their atmosphere. The next stage is that of the dark star, such as the companions of Algol or Spica, or large planets. The elements in a star's spectrum form the safest criterion from which to draw inferences as to its relative age. Helium is typical of the youthful stars and of nebulae, and Mr Gore has recently suggested that the unknown line in the nebular spectrum may be due to radium. The photographs of the heavens obtained by Max Wolf have shown the youthful stars to be in many cases as- sociated with nebulae. Among the dying stars — the red stars, according to Vogel — we recognise many long -period variables, shining with great irregularity and varying with greater. Miss Agnes Gierke remarks that one of these has recently stopped its annual brightenings. " Recurrent maxima," she says, "may, after all, be only flickerings in the socket." Vogel's scheme of celestial evolution is perhaps the most widely accepted, and may be regarded as at least approxi- mately true. The fundamental points of Vogel's theory have been accepted by Hug- 84 Celestial Evolution gins, Duner, Pickering, and Scheiner. Sir Norman Lockyer, however, does not agree with Vogel. The evolution scheme of Lockyer was designed in harmony with the meteoritic hypothesis originally suggested by Proctor. Lockyer s classification was in many ways directly opposed to that of Vogel. His idea was that the nebulae were clouds of meteorites. The researches of Schiaparelli having demon- strated the meteoric nature of comets, Lockyer attempted to extend the analogy to the cometic nature of nebulae, and he propounded the "meteoritic hypothesis'' of the origin of our solar system. The observations of Hug- gins and Keeler, however, have disproved the constitution of the nebulae as conceived by Lockyer. The recent spectroscopic re- searches of the eminent modern astronomers thus confirm the views of Herschel as to the development of nebulae into stars, and the hypothesis advanced by Kant and Laplace of the origin of the solar system. As- tronomers, however, are not content with unravelling the past history of the celestial bodies, but are equally desirous of solving 8s Books to Read and How to Read them the question of their future. The future of the average star is sketched out in the classi- fication of Vogel, and the time is bound to come when our sun's heat will become exhausted and it will roll through space as a dark star. In recent years controversy has raged between the physicists and as- tronomers on one hand and the geologists and biologists on the other regarding the probable duration of the sun s heat ; but the question has assumed a new aspect by the discovery of radium, which, as indicating the presence of an entirely new form of energy in the Universe, is bound to have a re- markable effect on speculative and scientific thought on this particular question. In his work ' The Scenery of the Heavens,' Mr J. E. Gore puts forward a theory of the evolution of the entire stellar Universe. He suggests that the Milky Way is the remains of a vast " vortex ring," which has partially broken up. " After the isolation of this vortex ring in the ether," he says, " its disintegration could of course be causer] only by the mutual attractions of its component members, and from the general appearance of the Milky 86 Celestial Evolution Way it seems highly probable that its present condition is due to gravitation between its members." Thanks to the labours of G. H. Darwin, we are now able to sketch celestial evolution according to ** tidal friction," which supple- ments the nebular hypothesis. By rigorous mathematical calculation, Darwin showed, in 1879, that the evolution of the Moon was unique in the solar system, resulting from the position of the Earth. Owing to its extremely rapid rotation, the primitive earth disrupted and a portion was detached, which now forms the Moon. The theory of tidal friction has recently been extended to the double stars by Dr See, an American astron- omer. Schiaparelli's observations on Mercury and Venus have revealed the surprising fact that these planets turn the same face to the Sun as the Moon does to the Earth. Schiaparelli, Lowell, Ball, and Darwin claim that this form of rotation is due to tidal friction, an idea which can scarcely be op- posed. Lowell indeed predicts the future of our system according to the doctrine that the Earth's rotation is lengthening. He 87 Books to Read and How to Read them says : " We can with scientific confidence look forward to a time when each of the bodies composing the solar system shall turn an unchanging face in perpetuity to the Sun Each will then have reached the end of its evolution, set in the unchanging stare of death. Then the Sun itself will go out, becoming a cold and lifeless mass ; and the solar system will circle unseen, ghost-like, in space, await- ing only the resurrection of another cosmic catastrophe." Some writers doubt whether a dark star can ever be resurrected. But the appearance of new stars in the heavens and their subsequent transformation into gaseous nebulsG lends great probability to the view, held by the great astronomers of the day, that new systems and new suns will arise from the collision of dark stars. In the words of Flammarion, '* Universal death shall never reign." 88 Man and his Dwelling- Place CHAPTER IX. science: man and his dwelling-place. From the dawn of intelligence three great problems have pressed upon man — his own origin, his relation to the Universe, and to the Absolute. Around these three problems inexhaustible curiosity has ever played, and has given birth to theology, philosophy, science, and, in fact, to all forms of literature. In previous chapters we indicated the attempts made by philosophy to solve these problems. In the absence of science, the outcome of speculation was far from satisfactory. What philosophy can do unaided was seen in the speculations of the greatest of the Greeks. Plato's cosmological speculations are puerile in the extreme, and the history of theology in the pre-scientific era is strewn with deplor- able errors. The real value of science in this 89 Books to Read and How to Read them connection is seen when we contrast the conceptions of the Universe and Man with the conceptions which prevailed in the days when philosophy and theology, especially when under the influence of Aristotle, were in the ascendant. Then the earth was viewed as the centre of the Universe. Round it revolved the sun and the heavenly bodies. As has been said : *^ To the Hebrew people the world was flat, and the heavens was a curtain stretched over like the roof of a vast tent, supported by mountain pillars round the borders of the earth. From time to time windows were opened in that roof, through which came the fertilising rains and snows. The celestial luminaries were the adornments of that great curtain which formed the roof of this earthly tabernacle." This conception of the earth passed over from Judaism to Christianity. Along with this conception was another, which extended to comparatively modern times. The earth was supposed to be created within six days. The various species of plants and animals were thought of as special creations, followed by man, whose position was thought of as unique ; 90 Man and his Dwelling-Place between him and the animal a great gulf was fixed. These views were overthrown by three great scientific conceptions, the Copernican theory, Conservation of Energy, and Evolu- tion. The Copernican theory, by taking the earth from its lofty position as the centre of the Universe, further supplemented by Newton's law and the marvels of celestial evolution, created one of the greatest revol- utions in thought in the history of man. Astronomy, in addition to its mind-bewilder- ing revelations, has, by means of the spec- troscope, brought to light a fact about the Universe of the greatest possible philosophic as well as scientific significance. The Uni- verse, it is now seen, is characterised by unity of substance. By means of the spectroscope the elements found in the celestial bodies are found to be identical with those upon the earth. Another equally significant fact is that the forces of Nature are not what they were thought to be, distinct entities, but modifications or transformations of one force. The world of Nature is not what it seems, an assemblage of independent things composed 91 Books to Read and How to Read them of substances with their respective properties. The multiform energies of Nature are re- ducible to one form of energy, protean in its manifestations, and to whose conservation and transformation under appropriate con- ditions all phenomena are due. Thus to the unity of substance of which the Universe is composed has to be added unity of force. Still another unity has to be added, unity of process. To Herbert Spencer belongs the honour of the discovery of this unity. Under the name of evolution, he has shown that the Universe and all that it contains has reached its present stage through a process of evolution from the simple to the complex, through successive differentiations and integrations. According to the Spencerian view, the Universe is a complex unity which, when reduced to its ultimate analysis, is seen to be one fact — the redistribution of Matter and Motion, all phenomena being complex aspects of that one fact. In studying the Earth, man's dwelling-place, science is really engaged in tracing through all phenomena unity of substance, unity of force, and unity of 92 Man and his Dwelling- Place process. Unless the reader comes to science with these conceptions, he will fail entirely to understand the development of the Earth from its primitive nebula stage through the geologic and biologic stages, till we reach the era of humanity, with its marvellous activities and results. The law of evolution holds good from star to soul. The primitive or nebulous stage of the earth can be admirably studied in Spencer's * First Principles,' where also the reader will find a concise account of the agencies which went to the making of the earth geologically. Those who wish to go deeper into the subject, and who desire to get knowledge of the nature of the forces, as well as of the processes of terrestrial evolution, will find it necessary to go to the works of Joule, Mayer, Grove, Helmholtz, Kelvin, and Tyndall, and others, where the constitution of matter is fully discussed from various points of view, mechanical and chemical — works which prepare the student for recent speculations on Radium. One of the most extraordinary features of modern science has been the application of evolution, 93 Books to Read and How to Read them not only to the process of the Universe, but also to its substance. At one time, not long ago, it was taken for granted that the foundation brick of the Universe, so to speak, was the Atom, hard and in- destructible. For some time past in the highest scientific circles dissatisfaction has existed with the atomic theory. Men like Lord Kelvin in Scotland, and Helmholtz in Germany, endeavoured to interpret the Universe in terms of energy rather than of atom. The line of thought suggested by the Spencerian theory of evolution was to view the Universe as the result of a process of development rather than of manufacture. Naturally, it was felt that evolution could not stop at the atom. Out of this feeling sprang the famous attempt of Lord Kelvin to get behind Matter as we know it, to show that Matter is not an ultimate, but is evolved from the Ether. In this view the last word of science is not atom, but energy. The significance of the new discovery lies in the fact that the atom is seen to be a temporary incarnation of energy. Evolution is followed by dis- 94 Man and his Dwelling-Place solution when this energy breaks forth in modes which have at last been discovered. Hitherto no person dreamed of a new source of energy in the atom. The bare idea of the atom in a process of disintegration would have been supposed to have struck at the stabihty of the Cosmos. Yet to this idea radium brings us. The atom is not eternal. All things cosmical are in a state of perpetual flux, alternating between birth and death, growth and decay. We spoke of the three unities in the Universe — unity of substance, of force, and of process. The new views associated with ether and radium point to the identification of substance with force, thus bringing in the Spencerian conception of the Universe as the manifestation of an Infinite and Eternal Energy. So far as the average man is concerned, his interest in the earth is not speculative, but practical. He wants to know not the con- stitution of matter, nor the philosophic results of science, but the history of the earth viewed as his dwelling-place. A vivid con- ception of man s dwelling-place will be found in an admirable book, * The Realm of Nature,' 95 Books to Read and How to Read them by H. R. Mill: "The world as a whole may be compared to a great house. Geology de- scribes its materials, records the process of building and keeps account of the alterations which are always being carried out. Oceano- graphy has to do with the currents of water interchanged between the tropical boilers, fired by the central furnace of the sun, and the polar refrigerators. It explains the arrange- ments by which those rooms most exposed to the furnace are cooled down by iced water, whilst those more remote have their temper- ature raised by copious hot streams. Geology records many past contests between the fur- nace and ice-house in controlling the heating arrangements, and many changes in the direction of the hot and the cold water pipes. Meteorology discusses the still more com- plicated and variable methods of ventilation in use in various rooms, depending as they do on the circulation of water and on the structure of the buildings. Astronomy has something to say as to the arrangements for lighting the great house, explaining how each room is illuminated with a certain bril- liancy for a special time. Astronomy also 96 Man and his Dwelling-Place supplies reasons for the changes in the strength of furnace and refrigerators in the past. Geography concerns itself with the plan of the house so far as it is completed, showing the dominant style of architecture and trac- ing the modifications adopted in the several parts, and gives a general view of all the arrangements.'* Following this scheme the student should have no difficulty, under the guidance of com- petent authorities, in studying the various stages of the process by which man's dwelling- place, with its marvellous phenomena of life, has been gradually evolved by the Infinite and Eternal Energy which manifests itself to us as Matter with all its mysterious potencies. Unless the student becomes a mere scientific dry-as-dust he cannot but have his soul touched to finer issues as he medi- tates upon the ultimate mystery. How shall he define the Infinite and Eternal Energy? If definition is permissible at all in a region where human thought staggers in pitiful fashion, surely we must conceive of the ulti- mate Power in the highest form of existence we know — that of Personality. Afraid of 97 G Books to Read and How to Read them narrow views in this direction the student may take refuge in Goethe's poetic personi- fication of the Infinite Energy — " In Being's floods, in Action's storm I walk and work, above, beneath, Work and weave in endless motion ! Birth and Death, An infinite ocean ; A seizing and giving The fire of living : 'Tis thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the Garment thou scest Him by." For the astronomical view of the subject the reader is referred to Sir Robert Ball's * The Earth's Beginning.' For geological evolution acquaintance should be made with Sir Chas. Ly ell's ' Principles of Geology.' Geikie's works, as representing recent results, should not be neglected, and for a sketch of the science * The Realm of Nature,' by H. S. Mill, will be found valuable. In regard to the speculations about the foundation substance of the earth, the constitution of matter, Dalton on the atomic theory, and Joule, Mayer, Helmholtz, Kelvin, Tait, and 9« Man and his Dwelling- Place Tyndall on the Conservation of Energy, are indispensable. The essays of Huxley and Clifford may also be read with profit, though the question has greatly changed since these thinkers wrote. A recent number of the * Edinburgh Review ' contained an excellent article on Radium, in relation to changed conceptions of Matter. The experienced student will find a mine of thought and information in the remarkable volumes of Mr Merz on scientific thought in the nine- teenth century. 99 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER X. SCIENCE : THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE. In the previous chapter attention was directed mainly to man's dwelling-place. An outline was given of the physical framework, so to speak, of the earth. Only the merest refer- ence, of course, could be made to the sciences — astronomy, physics, and geology — which deal with the evolution and architecture of man's dwelling-place. Brevity of treatment was dictated by the consideration that only a few readers are interested in the abstruse side of science. The average reader is im- patient to get to the appearance of life, when the study of the earth becomes dramatically interesting. The history of what has been well called the great World House is of in- terest to the scientific specialist, but general readers are at once attracted to the history lOO The Evolution of Life of its living inhabitants, especially when the subject leads up to that most exciting of all scientific topics, the origin and development of man. As preliminary to this it may be well, from H. R. Mill's * Eealm of Nature,' to give a bird's-eye view of the great evolu- tionary process : "As the earth, like other members of the solar system, is the result of a slowly unfolding series of changes ; as the continents have by long and gradual degrees come to their present form, and are still undergoing alteration — so also living creatures display a progressive evolution. The classi- fications of plants and of animals are ascend- ing scales, showing in each group a more complex structure, and organs more distinctly set apart for special purposes. . . . When this regular order of succession from lower to higher forms in plants and animals became apparent to biologists, they were convinced that different species had not been created separately in different places, but had gradu- ally developed in the course of ages from a common parent form." The popular revolu- tion on this subject dates from the appearance in 1859 of Darwin's * Origin of Species.' lOI Books to Read and How to Read them This extract, good so far as it goes, omits the great part which Spencer played in this department of evolution. Before Darwin, Spencer laid hold of the law of development, and in his * Principles of Biology ' we have the first really comprehensive attempt to trace the evolution process in organic nature. In that work Spencer traces the evolution of organic forms from what may be called their protoplasmic nebulae to the structural and functional complexities of the highest type of plant and animal life. The key to Spencer's biological work is found in his definition of life as the continuous adjust- ment of inner to outer relations. Given an environment gradually increasing in com- plexity, it follows that, in order to survive and propagate, organisms must in adapting themselves also increase in complexity. Parts of the organisms restrict themselves to certain processes, and thus by specialisa- tion a sort of division of labour takes place, the result of w^hich is to create structural and functional complexities. This process, called " direct equilibration," would be powerless without indirect equilibration, better known I02 The Evolution of Life as Darwin's law of "natural selection" — a law which should not be confounded with the law of evolution, it being at most a brilliant confirmation of Spencer's cosmical generalisation. By means of the struggle for existence everywhere going on among organisms, there is secured the killing -out of the unfit, and the survival and perpetua- tion of organisms characterised by successful variations, which by the law of heredity become structural and functional. Palaeon- tology confirms this by showing that each geological epoch had its own class of organ- isms in correspondence with the environ- ment, thus proving that organic has gone hand in hand with inorganic evolution. Embryology adds further confirmation by showing that the human organism in its evolution from the germ cell summarises the ancestral development in being pro- gress from a state of simplicity to one of complexity. Spencer was fortunate in living at a time when evolution, so to speak, was in the air. Long before his day great thinkers like Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel had en- 103 Books to Read and How to Read them deavoured to conceive of the organic phe- nomena of Nature from the standpoint of gradual development, rather than of special creations. The historic controversy, in which Goethe took such deep interest, between Saint -Hilaire and Cuvier, raged round the question of the origin of species. Saint- Hilaire contended for unity of plan in Nature, while Cuvier defended the doctrine of dis- tinct types of species. Cuvier's defeat was certain when Schwann in 1840, as the out- come of microscopic observation, proclaimed the essential oneness of animal and vegetable structures. Here in living matter, as in the structure of the inorganic universe, we come suddenly to the view now accepted — that of unity of substance. But is there in biology, as in physics and chemistry, unity of process ? Is the evolution of life identical in process with the evolution of the earth itself in being an advance from simplicity to complexity? Unity of substance was put beyond doubt by Schwann's great discovery ; but how was the marvellous diversity of plant and animal form in nature to be ex- plained ? The answer came through the 104 The Evolution of Life labours of Wolff, Von Baer, Lamarck, Spencer, and most conspicuously of Darwin. For the scientist the Darwinian solution of the problem is enough. He deals with the development of life, but the student of a philosophic turn is not satisfied till he gets to origins. He wants to know exactly how this new thing called life fits into the great evolutionary process which he is told is a unity. As has been already shown, the result of latest scientific thought was to reduce all phenomena to unity of sub- stance of force or energy, and of process* How does life stand related to this universal energy ? A quarter of a century ago an attempt was made by a school of scientists of materialistic tendencies to affiliate life to matter and motion. Huxley and Tyndall saw in matter the promise and potency of all life, and even Spencer in the early editions of his * First Principles' and 'Prin- ciples of Biology ' wrote as if life was capable of mechanical interpretation. In later editions Spencer makes the admission that " life cannot be conceived in physico- chemical terms." The attempt to bring los Books to Read and How to Read them living matter within the domain of physics and chemistry has completely failed. Mate- rialism, viewed from the side of philosophy, is utterly discredited. Here, as in dealing with inorganic nature, we are suddenly brought face to face with the great mystery. If the Universe is characterised by unity of Force, and if life can in no way be affiliated to Force viewed from the mechanical side, clearly if the idea of unity is to be preserved our conception of Force must be enlarged to make room for the phenomena of life. We must cease to think of inorganic nature as composed of dead matter. We must, as Spencer says, think of the Universe as in a sense everywhere alive. In this universal life, man and all phenomenal things live, move, and have their being. Here science, when pursued in the proper spirit, touches the deeper feelings of man's nature, and leads to the confines of religion. In the words of Fiske : **The God of the scientific philosopher is still and must ever be the God of the Christian, though freed from the illegitimate formulas by the aid of which theology has io6 The Evolution of Life sought to render Deity comprehensible. What is this wondrous dynamis which mani- fests itself to our consciousness in harmonic activity throughout the length and breadth and depth of the Universe, which guides the stars for countless ages in the paths that never err, and which animates the mole- cules of the dewdrop that gleams for a brief hour on the shaven lawn — whose workings are so resistless that we have naught to do but reverently obey them ; yet so infallible that we can place our unshaken trust in them, yesterday, to-day, and for ever? . . . Here science must ever reverently pause, acknow- ledging the presence of the mystery of mysteries. Here religion must ever hold sway, reminding us that from birth until death we are dependent on a Power on whose eternal decrees we must submit, to whose dispensations we must resign our- selves, and upon whose constancy we may implicitly rely." The religious mind which finds the utter- ances of Science too cold for its impassioned moods need have no hesitation in adopting the language of awestruck adoration : — 107 Books to Read and How to Read them "Thou art, oh God, the life and light Of all this wondrous world we see ; Its glow by day, its smile by night. Are but reflections caught from Thee. Where'er we turn, Thy glories shine, And all things fair and bright are Thine When Day, with farewell beam, delays Among the opening clouds of Even, And we can almost think we gaze Through golden vistas into heaven — Those hues that make the Sun's decline So soft, so radiant. Lord ! are Thine. When Night, with wings of starry gloom, O'ershadows all the earth and skies. Like some dark, beauteous bird, whose plume Is sparkling with unnumbered eyes — That sacred gloom, those fires divine, So grand, so countless. Lord ! are Thine. When youthful Spring around us breathes, Thy spirit warms her fragrant sigh ; And every flower the summer wreathes Is born beneath that kindling eye. Where'er we turn Thy glories shine. And all things fair and bright arc Thine." Books dealing with the evolution of life form quite a library. The judicious reader will not wander through the library in a state of mental confusion, but will pick out io8 The Evolution of Life a few competent guides and devote his at- tention to them. Darwin's book, of course, he will read, also Spencer's 'Biology,' and the volumes of Alfred Russel Wallace. In addition, the works of Haeckel should be studied, and for a good general outline of the subject in lucid language Fiske's chapters in * Cosmic Philosophy ' will be found specially valuable, also his little book * Through Nature to God.' Professor Arthur Thomson writes a really brilliant book on the subject entitled * Animal Life,' and Professor Geddes has dealt in a highly suggestive manner with some aspects of the biological problems raised by Darwin. Huxley, in his own brilliant literary style, makes the whole subject specially attractive. A book of marked suggestiveness is Hinton's 'Life in Nature.' Upon no account should Merz's * History of European Thought' be neglected. These are merely a selection from a huge mass of liter- ature to which Darwin's great work has given birth, but the busy reader who masters them will have a very complete grasp of the doctrine of evolution as applied to the great field of organic Nature. 109 Books to Read and Hozv to Read them CHAPTER XL SCIENCE : THE ORIGIN OF MAN. In dealing with the origin of man we enter a profoundly controversial region. Science and philosophy have long busied themselves with the origin of life, but so long as the discussion stopped short at man it remained for the most part in the academic arena. By his epoch-making work, Darwin shifted the whole subject from the academy to the market-place. If life, from the humblest speck of protoplasm to the most complex forms of organic matter, is subject to the law of evolution, why should man be exempt ? If plants and animals were not specially created, but were the products of a great development process, why should man be excluded from the process and treated as a unique species ? So far as the bodily structure of man is concerned it is difficult no f UNIVERSITY ] The OrigtfCl to resist the arguments of Darwin and his followers. Man's body is shown to agree in all essential particulars with other mammalia. ** Every detail of structure which is common to the mammalia as a class is also found in man, while he only differs from them in such ways and degrees as the various groups of mammals differ from one another." All seems plain sailing till we come to mind. The question which faces the Darwinian is this — By what conceivable theory can con- sciousness, with all its marvellous manifesta- tions, from the humble gropings of a savage to the highest mental activity of a Newton, be affiliated to protoplasmic evolution? Of course the scientist pure and simple need not trouble himself with the question of origins. He may accept consciousness in its most rudimentary form as a fact of Nature, and from that starting-point may proceed psycho- logically to trace the process of mental evol- ution from its simplest to its most complex manifestation. But this is to leave a gap where the Darwinians do not wish a gap. If their theory is to hold the field philoso- phically as well as scientifically, there must III Books to Read and How to Read them be no gap ; man's conscious life must be shown to rise by almost imperceptible gradations from the unconscious life of Nature. Intelli- gence must be explained as the outcome of natural selection. Here is just the difficulty. Natural selection assumes the existence of something to be selected. Given the ex- istence of plants and animals endowed with life, it is not difficult to understand how in the struggle for existence their powers should be developed among those who survive. It is easy to understand the survival of the fittest. What is difficult to understand is the rise of intelligence as we find it in some of the animals, and in its highest form in man, fi:om the keen competition of species whose lives rest on the instinctive and the automatic. Now Darwinism, as interpreted by its lead- ing supporters, implies that mind is simply a highly specialised form of matter, and as such is developed along with the body by natural selection. That means the develop- ment of the conscious from the non-conscious. Is this conceivable ? Not only is it not con- ceivable, but the most authoritative utterances 112 The Origin of Man of psychology are to the effect that mind is something totally distinct from matter ; by no conceivable process can the mental and the material be assimilated. On this point Spencer is quite explicit. In his early editions he leaned to the materialistic theory of mind, but in his later editions he frankly admits that the process known as Consciousness can- not be identified with waves of molecular motion propagated through nerves and nerve centres ; a unit of feeling has nothing in common with a unit of motion. In this view the distinguished psychologist, Professor Hoffding, is at one with Spencer. Observe the inconsistencies into which thinkers like Tyndall and Huxley got when they tried to make Darwinism the foundation of a complete philosophy of man. According to these writers, matter contains in itself " the promise and potency of all kinds of life." Yet both of them admit that matter and mind cannot possibly come under the category of cause and effect. If matter contains in itself " the promise and potency of all kinds of life," clearly mind should be a highly specialised form of matter. Yet both Tyndall and 113 H Books to Read and How to Read them Huxley, when speaking as psychologists and not as scientists, frankly admit that mind cannot be conceived as a product of matter. In the words of Tyndall, "the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable." Pro- fessor Hoffding, whose philosophy has a de- cidedly materialistic tinge, is bound to confess that the identification of matter and con- sciousness is impossible as being contrary to the doctrine of the conservation of energy. He says : "At the point where the material nerve process should be converted into mental activity, a sum of physical energy would disappear without the loss being made good by a corresponding sum of physical energy." Great efforts have been made to get over this difficulty. The latest theory which is identified with German psychologists like Fechner and Wundt is known as psycho-physical parallel- ism, but that theory has been found as un- satisfactory as the famous automatic theory of Huxley and Clifford. Apart from that, the one fatal obstacle to the evolution of mind from matter is the impossibility of 114 The Origin of Man understanding the relation of the mind to experience. Consciousness cannot at one and the same time be the product and the in- terpreter of experience. The mind which has the greatest number of accurate experiences certainly will be the successful survivor in the struggle for existence, but it must begin with something in the shape of intelligence before it can profit by experience ; but the Darwinian theory compels us to believe that intelligence itself is a product of conflicting experiences. We can understand that the process of intellectual evolution is conditioned by the survival of successful mental variations, but mental variations presuppose intelligence of some sort to start with, and therefore it is nonsensical to talk of intelligence being the product of successful mental variations. The outcome of Darwinism is, therefore, quite the opposite of what its expounders intended. They intended to represent life in all its stages to be one unbroken evolutionary pro- cess from elementary forms of matter, which was said to " contain the promise and potency of all kinds of life." Instead of these the admission is made that when the evolutionary 115 Books to Read and How to Read them process reaches man a new factor called Con- sciousness makes its appearance, which cannot be affiliated to Matter. In other words, in- stead of being a monistic, Darwinism is a dualistic theory of existence. The Universe is characterised by Unity of Energy and Unity of Process. Darwinism substitutes for Unity of Energy Unity of Matter, and for Unity of Process substitutes a dual process — material and mental. There must be a serious flaw somewhere. The flaw consists in taking Matter as the starting-point of the evolution process instead of Energy, or as we must name it. Universal Life. The infinite and eternal Energy of which Spencer speaks, and which manifests itself in man as Consciousness, manifests itself in the earlier stages as Matter. This Energy and not Matter con- tains within itself the promise and potency of "all kinds of life" — is in fact the Uni- versal Life in which all things live, move, and have their being. From this point of view evolution, instead of degrading, elevates man. If from one aspect man is con- nected with the animal, from another aspect ii6 The Origin of Man he is linked to the divine. In ' Sartor Resartus,' Carlyle in his vivid poetic style describes man as seen from the standpoint of a true evolution philosophy. " To the eye of vulgar Logic," says Carlyle, "what is man? An omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and Divine Apparition. Bound his mysterious Me there lies, under all those wool -rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), con- textured in the Loom of Heaven, whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in union and division, and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure starry spaces and long Thousands of Years. Deep - hidden is he under that strange garment, amid sounds and colours and forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably overcrowded ; yet it is sky- woven and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in the centre of immensities, in the conflux of eternities ? He feels ; power has been given him to know, to believe ; nay, does not the spirit of love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for 117 Books to Read and How to Read them moments, look through ? Well said Saint Chrysostom with his lips of gold, ' The true Shekinah is man ' ; where else is the God- Presence manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow-man ? " Darwin's books, especially the ' Descent of Man,' should be carefully read, as it contains the germ of all modern controversy on the subject. Dr Wallace is also worth reading. He agrees with Darwin as regards bodily structure, but he refuses to accept natural selection as the cause of man's mental powers. Haeckel, Huxley, and Tyndall fairly represent the Darwin stand- point. Spencer in his ' Psychology ' deals with the evolution of the mental powers in his usual comprehensive style. In fact, before Darwin he had grasped the idea of evolution in the sphere of psychology. Fiske, in his ' Cosmic Philosophy,' treats the subject on the lines of Spencer. In his later books Fiske parts company with the extreme Darwinians, and comes nearer to the Idealists. A good idea of the new German school is ii8 The Origin of Man had from M. Ribot's book. Very effective criticism of the materialistic theory of mind is to be found in the Gifford Lectures of P^:ofessor Ward and Mr R. B. Haldane, and in Professor Pringle-Pattison's 'Man's Place in the Cosmos ' ; ' The Ethical Import of Darwinism,' by an American writer, Pro- fessor Schurman, is a searching criticism of the school of materialistic evolution. The student should not miss a little book by Professor Watson, ' Comte, Mill, and Spencer,' a book which is a perfect mine of suggestive criticism. The student with ample leisure will find minute and detailed handling of the whole subject in Harris's work on Theism. 119 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER XII. THE ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF MAN. The reader who desires to prosecute his studies of man and society with purpose and system must have clear and coherent views on the subject of evolution. A mis- take on this subject has far-reaching conse- quences. A materialistic view of man's origin, especially on the intellectual and ethical side, will affect the student's social, educational, literary, and religious concep- tions of humanity. We have endeavoured to show the futility of the Darwinian attempt to develop intelligence from non- intelligence by natural selection. By no possible mental chemistry can intelligence be educed from a series of impressions falling upon a non - intelligent subject. Before the impressions can come into the I20 The Ethical Evolution of Man category of knowledge, intelligence must exist as the discriminator and classifier of impressions. In philosophy, as in cookery, it is necessary first to catch your hare. The Darwinians have not caught their hare, but the onlooker, misled b}'- the elaborate cooking arrangements, is apt to conclude that the hare is really forthcoming. It is the same with morality as with intelligence. The Darwinians will have nothing to do with morality as a fundamental character- istic of primitive man. According to them the guiding principle of primitive man's conduct was not morality but utility. In the struggle for existence the one standard of success is utility. Is a particular quality useful to the individual or the tribe? If the quality is essential to the welfare of the tribe it gets surrounded by sanctions, and is enforced on the individual by penalties. Actions which are injurious to the tribe are classed as wrong ; actions which make for its well being are classed as right, apart from their immediate utility to Individuals. The individual, for instance, might see no harm in theft. To him theft might have 121 Books to Read and How to Read them considerable utility. But theft to the com- munity is harmful, so it is denounced by the code of the tribe. To this code the individual must conform. Thus from the idea of utility evolves tribal morality, which by a kind of reflex action operates upon the individual, and in him also transforms the purely selfish notion of utility into ethical feeling. In this way morality is a derivative, not a fundamental attribute of humanity. Morality, like intelligence, on the Darwinian theory, is the product of natural selection in the struggle for existence. All this has a plausible sound till we ask this question — What is meant by the struggle for existence ? The struggle for existence is the outcome of man's assertion of his right to live and to develop his powers and faculties to the best advantage. Primitive man, individual and tribal, values utilities, not on their own account, but as aids to him in the assertion of his funda- mental right to live. The area in which this right is recognised is at first very circumscribed. It is bounded by the tribe. Murder and theft within the tribe are classed 122 The Ethical Evolution of Man as wrong, not because of their evil effects, but because they are inconsistent with the law of right. Underlying all tribal customs and laws is the ethical demand upon the individual that he shall do to other members of the tribe as he would be done by. As he expects others to respect his right to life and property, so he must be prepared to respect theirs. Murder and theft within the tribe, therefore, were not classed as wrong because of their evil tribal effects, but because they were a breach of the fundamental rights of the individual. Tribal morality does not exist before individual morality. Certain actions were not classed as wrong because they were injurious ; they were seen to be injurious because they were wrong. Here, then, we come to the important conclusion that mor- ality has its roots, not in utility, but in the individual sense of right. Morality — even primitive morality — like intelligence, is not the product of experience ; it is innate in the individual, and is called forth, not created by experience. The Darwinians have been greatly aided in their advocacy by the old- 123 Books to Read and How to Read them fashioned notion that in the breast of man there exists a faculty called Conscience, whose function it is to classify actions into two kinds, right and wrong. The great differ- ences in the codes of savage and civilised peoples were enough to discredit the old innate theory of morals. But no discredit is attached to the theory that man's sense of morality, like intelligence, while constitu- tionally innate, is conditioned by experience. No one discredits man's intellect because of the errors with which the history of Know- ledge is strewed ; and so it is no discredit to the constitutional morality of man that the evolution of ethics from the savage to the civilised has been marked by contra- dictory theories and practices. The conclusion of the matter seems to be that the capacity for passing moral judgment, so far from being evolved from experience of utility, is, like intelligence, inseparable from human personality. In a word, just as knowledge, even in primitive man, demands as the condition of its evolution the ability to classify ideas into true and false, so society, at the earliest primitive stage, demands 124 The Ethical Evohttion of Man as the primary condition of its evolution, the ability to classify actions as right and wrong. By means of intelligence, however dim, prim- itive man discovers such of the truths of Nature as are pressed upon him by the necessities of his environment ; and so, by the pressure of his social environment, prim- itive man is led to assert his rights and to respect the rights of others. When these rights are respected, the utility of right con- duct is at once evident. Darwinism would never have succeeded so long in imposing its superficial ethical creed upon the world but for the fact that it gave an utterly dis- torted picture of primitive man. Primitive man was pictured as a little higher in intel- ligence than the animal, and considerably lower in brutality. Of morality he had not a spark. Thus we have Huxley, in his essay on the ' Struggle for Existence and its Bearing upon Man,* writing as follows : "" The weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in another way, survived. Life was 125 Books to Read and Hotv to Read them a continuous free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the natural state of existence." That is to say, life both in the animal and human kingdom was a kind of gladiators' show. That such a picture of Nature was accepted as true by an intelligent public, which prided itself upon its freedom from the dogmas of theology, is a terrible instance of the credulity of scepticism. The Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence in the hands of his disciples has been grossly though uncon- sciously caricatured. How gross is the cari- cature the reader will discover by a perusal of a remarkable book by Prince Kropotkin entitled 'Mutual Aid.' Prince Kropotkin, as the result of minute personal study of Nature and searching investigation, has come to the conclusion that the struggle for ex- istence has been vastly exaggerated, and that other important elements in the evolution of animal and human life have been com- pletely overlooked. Prince Kropotkin is far from thinking that the human race at the primitive stage was engaged in incessant 126 The Ethical Evolution of Man war. More influential than ruthless com- petition in primitive times was a sense of human solidarity. "It is the individual recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid, of the close dependency of every one's happiness upon the happiness of all, and of the sense of justice and equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own. Upon this broad and necessary foun- dation the still higher moral feelings are developed." The struggle for existence, with its ferocity and carnage, in obedience to the law of Might, is the keystone of the Darwinian theory of evolution. With the removal of the keystone the structure tumbles to the ground. Such is the credulity and conser- vatism of the so-called sceptic and materialist that it will be some time yet ere the brut- alising creed of Darwinism finds its proper place in the oblivion which awaits all super- stitions. The time is coming when this caricature of evolution will be relegated to obscurity, and its place occupied by a theory 127 Books to Read and Hozv to Read them of evolution which will do justice to the constitutional intelligence and morality of primitive man, and which will place upon the ethical throne of the world the majestic figure of Right. The true theory of evolu- tion views reason and conscience not as pro- ducts of non-intelligence and utility, but as manifestations of the Universal Life, in which both Nature and Humanity have their being and inspiration. In the words of Dr Mar- tineau : "As the forces of Nature are God's causality, and the instincts of the creature His seeming guidance of the blind, so the alternative apprehensions of conscience are the preferential lights of His moral nature ; the first reporting His power, the second His wisdom, the third His righteousness. That it is the same one life which is the ground of all is plain from the intertexture of the whole ; for it is amongst the instinctive im- pulses of the animated world that the prob- lems of ethical experience first arise, and it is through the physical constitution of Nature, and of our own organism in particular, that many of the penalities of the moral law make themselves felt. The causality of the world, 128 The Ethical Evolution of Man therefore, is at the disposal of the all-holy Will ; and whether within us or without us, in the distant stellar spaces or in the self- conscious life of the tempted or aspiring mind, we are in one divine embrace — God over all, blessed for ever." The literature dealing with the ethical evolution of man is volimainous. In his 'Principles of Psychology,' Spencer, by his original theory of the development of moral feelings and sentiments in the race, greatly improved and strengthened the utilitarianism of the Bentham and Mill school. In his * Descent of Man' Darwin approaches the utilitarian theory from the standpoint of natural selection, and in doing so has given rise to quite a library of controversial liter- ature. Dr Russell Wallace, while agreeing with Darwin in the application of natural selection to man viewed from the animal side, contends for spiritual agency in the develop- ment of man's mental powers. His book, * Darwinism,' shows the diflSculties which the theory raises when confronted with the 129 I Books to Read and How to Read them mathematical, musical, and artistic faculties. The second volume of Fiske's * Cosmic Philo- sophy * devotes a suggestive chapter to ethical evolution. A searching criticism is to be found in Schurman s * Ethical Import of Darwinism.' A book which the student should not miss is * The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct,' by an Australian writer, Mr Alexander Sutherland. The late Dr Mar- tineau's books contain perhaps the most effective attacks on Darwinism as applied to ethics from the side of Theism. The chapters devoted to the subject in his * Study of Religion ' and * Seat of Authority in Re- ligion' are models of luminous criticism and literary art. In Germany and England the Hegelians have proved themselves trenchant critics of Darwinian ethics. The theological reader will find in the first book of Hooker's ' Ecclesiastical Polity ' a remarkable disqui- sition upon law as the mode of the divine working — a disquisition which is worth reading in connection with modern theories of ethics. In Hooker's magnificent language, " law hath her seat in the bosom of God, her voice is the harmony of the world, and all things in 130 The Ethical Evolution of Man heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power, both angels and men and creatures of what condition so- ever, though each in different sort of manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy." 131 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER XIII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MAN AND SOCIETY. If the theory of evolution here outlined is correct, there is no such thing as development of mind in its chief aspects, mental and moral, from mechanical origins. Matter and Mind are in reality manifestations of one Universal Life, which in Nature appears to us as matter, and in Man as mind. By means of reason Man becomes aware that he is living in a system of physical relations, the laws of which he can discover and reduce to scientific harmony. The intelligence which he finds in himself he also finds in Nature, and truth is reached when the Reason which exists in Nature is reflected in the mind. When we say that man is an intelligent being, we do not mean that he has the capacity to discover truth by intuition, but 132 The Development of Man and Society that he has the capacity to discover truth by observation and reasoning. Similarly, when we say that man is a moral being, we do not mean that by intuition man can discover right and wrong, but that he has the capacity to pronounce moral judgment under the teaching of experience. In other words, man as man is possessed of two fundamental ideas, the True and the Right ; they are developed, not originated, by experience. An important distinction between intellectual and ethical development falls to be noted. It is conceivable that a solitary thinker might discover many of the laws of Nature ; he might make some advance in intelligence. A solitary thinker could discover no ethical laws ; he could make no advance in morals. This follows from the obvious fact .that moral laws imply a com- munity of human beings possessed of physical and social activities which take the form of rights. If reason governs Nature, if the world of things is under law, how much more likely that reason also governs society, the world of persons ? To the world of things we bring the fundamental idea of the True, 133 Books to Read and How to Read them and to the world of persons the fundamental idea of the Right. Thus the same Power which is manifested in Nature and Society as truth and morality, is manifested in man as reason and conscience. In this view the advance of man in knowledge and ethical sentiment and moral obedience is an advance in the knowledge of the all - embracing Universal Life or God. Man*s chief end, then, in which lies his blessedness, is, on the intellectual side, in the words of Kepler, to think the thoughts of God after Him, and on the moral side to obey the great ethical laws which bind with harmony the race of mortals and link the Finite to the Infinite. The perfect man would be the man whose intellect was wide enough to press the entire universe of thought into one generalisation, and whose moral nature responded at once to the law of love as the great principle of human brotherhood, and the revelation of the divine will in the world of social activity. But between the individual and society there is an intimate correspondence. The development of the individual is con- ditioned by society. A Newton is impossible 134 The Development of Man and Society in a tribe of savages, and therefore if we wish to study the evolution of man as an individual we must trace the process through its various stages — tribal, national, and international. Man's intellectual and ethical evolution, his growth in knowledge and in morality, is largely, if not mainly, dependent upon the particular stage of social evolution which he has reached. In the early stages of society the impulse to discover truth was very faint. The intellect was only stimulated into activ- ity by sheer physical necessity. But when primitive intelligence was once awakened it displayed a restless curiosity. Primitive man was not long in formulating some kind of theory of the Universe and of Society. The important fact to be borne in mind is that through all stages of civilisation, from the tribal to the highest form, the ideas of the True and the Right can be distinctly traced, growing in purity and breadth with the growing purity and breadth of civilisation. Between the mythological theories of primi- tive societies and the scientific theories of the modern mind there is among all diversities a unifying bond. So, too, between the ethical 135 Books to Read and How to Read them codes of primitive and modern times the diversities in practice do not obscure the underlying unity. Society is the creation of man's physical necessities under the guidance of reason and conscience. Individual evolu- tion is impossible unless some degree of pros- perity and leisure is secured, but once these are secured, they become means to higher ends — the discovery of truth, the growth of moral sentiments, and the incarnation of these in the form of art, literature, poetry, &c. Here, then, we have a key to the study of history. To the ordinary man history is a chaos. He can discern no law, no order, no aim. If our theory of evolution is correct, history does reveal law and order, and gives prophetic hints of harmony. The tests of a nation's civilisation are not military prowess and barbaric splendour such as was displayed by the great Eastern Empires : the tests are increase of knowledge, showing itself in a truer insight into man's relations to the Universe and the Unseen Power ; increase of moral feeling, showing itself in more sympathetic relations between man and man, and in development of the artistic faculty 136 The Development of Man and Society by which man gives permanent poetic and literary form to his conceptions of the real, and his visions of the ideal. These tests, moreover, have their seats in human nature itself. Mans consciousness of himself as thinker enables him by means of his intelli- gence to discriminate between truth and error ; his consciousness of himself as doer enables him through his ethical capacity to classify actions as right and wrong ; his consciousness of himself as endowed with sensibility enables him from the standpoint of pleasure and pain to apply the canons of good and evil ; and his consciousness of himself as progressive enables him to apply the canon of perfection. Progress, then, for the individual and the community is deter- mined by increase of knowledge, which enables man clearly to distinguish between truth and error, right and wrong, perfect and imperfect, good and evil. Mankind is thus under a threefold system, physical, intel- lectual, and ethical, and we test civilisations as we test individuals, by their increase of knowledge and obedience to the laws which regulate this threefold system. If progress 137 Books to Read and How to Read them takes its rise in man's attempt to discover the true, to do the right, to reach the perfect, and to enjoy the good, we have in these fundamental ideas which are woven into the texture of man's personality, adequate standards of value by which to test the various civilisations. History thus becomes intelligible. History becomes a record of man's attempt to weave the scattered threads of individual thoughts, passions, and ideals into a great moral cosmos. Alas ! history is too often the record of man's only too success- ful attempts to produce chaos. At what stage does history begin to yield lessons to the modern student? Much is written of primitive man, but the subject is involved in obscurity, and in any case the material is not of much value to the student of evolution in its higher aspects. The student begins to find himself on firm ground where he can study humanity under proper conditions, when he comes to the history of Greece with its immortal literature. Other ancient peoples have also produced literatures, but none can compare with Greece as factors in the world's progress. If we are to have 138 The Development of Man and Society a real insight into ancient modes of life and thought, it is necessary to ponder the great lessons of Greek history, art, and literature. Specially valuable to us moderns is the study of the Greek mind. We live in a practical age. There are those who pride themselves on this characteristic, and in the name of a scientific education would banish the study of the classic masters of antiquity. Such people remind us of Bret Harte's farmer — " Troubled no more with fancies fine Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine." Now, it is just because of our practicability that we need as a counteractive the study of Greek history, literature, and art. To literature and art a purely scientific civilisa- tion is a deadly foe. Unless permeated with a sense of the beautiful, science tends to materialism. Literature and art are viewed not as vehicles of the highest reason, but as recreation for an idle hour; and with this spirit abroad, what wonder that a blight has fallen upon the creative side of the modern mind. There can be no remedy till the modern mind lifts itself above the utili- 139 Books to Read and How to Read them tarian theory of Art and looks upon the Beautiful as one form of the incarnation of the Universal Life. We must come back to the Idealism of Goethe as expressed in one of his poems : — "As all nature's thousand changes But one changeless God proclaim, So in art's wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same. This is Truth, Eternal Reason Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season, Stands for aye in loveliness." As indicated above, we have purposely passed over the evolution of society at its earliest stages. Among competent au- thorities great differences of opinion exist regarding the precise nature of primitive development, particularly as regards the evolution of the family, and early tribal organisations. Every now and then theories on these points are advanced by distinguished writers, only to be discredited by later in- vestigators. The reader who desires to study the subject of social origins is in no lack of material. He will find E. B. Taylor's 140 The Development of Man and Society book, *The Early History of Mankind/ of great value. His work on * Primitive Cul- ture' should not be overlooked, while his little book, 'Anthropology/ is a perfect mine of information to the busy reader. On the origin of the family the well-known works of M'Lennan and Morgan deal exhaustively with the subject. Spencer, in * Principles of Sociology,' deals with family and social evolution in his usual comprehensive style, and an American writer, Ward, has written a book called 'Dynamic Sociology,' which contains many pregnant suggestions and in- teresting sketches of man's early development. In a little book, ' Physics and Politics,' by Walter Bagehot, the reader will find a line of speculation absolutely fresh and attractive. An invaluable writer is Maine, whose works on 'Village Communities' and 'Early Law' are luminous contributions to a difficult problem. These, of course, are simply a selection from a vast literature. When the reader has mastered it he will be prepared to tackle recent French and German writers, who have devoted themselves to the difficult sub- ject of social evolution in the prehistoric period. 141 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER XIV. THE ELEMENTS OF GREEK CIVILISATION. One of the things that strike the student of history is the fact that ancient civilisa- tions were rooted in rehgion. Rehgion was not, as it is with moderns, a thing apart from their daily life. In ancient times there was really no distinction between things sacred and secular. After we pass the primitive stage of ancestor worship and fetishism, when we come to people in an advanced state like the Assyrians, Baby- lonians, and Egyptians, we find society firmly rooted in religious sentiments, customs, and institutions. The tribal gods gave place to national gods, with temples, cults, and priests. These are the natural outgrowth of primi- tive man s theory of the Universe. In his mind the powers, which cause the various 142 The Elements of Greek Civilisation phenomena which bring him good and evil, are like himself swayed by passions. When evil comes it is a sign that some particular god is offended, and immediately the whole machinery of worship and propitiation is put in motion. This can only be done by the priesthood, which, as the medium between heaven and earth, becomes invested with a supernatural sacredness. Moreover, as the priests also consult the gods by oracles as well as propitiate them by sacrifices, they ultimately get political as well as spiritual power into their hands. Here we have the explanation of the stationariness of ancient civilisations like Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt. Religion permitted of no ideas or practices which ran counter to the will of the gods as interpreted by the sacerdotal class. Beyond a certain point those great ancient Empires showed no progress in re- ligious ideas, in literature, in art, and science. Their splendour was barbaric, and had for its natural outcome slavery of the conquered and the degradation of the people themselves. How did Greece escape the fate of the other civilisations of ancient times? How 143 Books to Read and How to Read them comes it that we can trace in her history a gradual development in all departments of mental activity, in religion from the poly- theism of Homer to the grand, stern theism of the dramatists and philosophers? This is a question of great importance to the student of Greek history. If he finds the answer he has the key to the evolution of Greek civilisation. Some thinkers tell us that the Greeks had a genius for progress. This is no explanation. We want to discover the causes which enabled Greece to escape the religious despotism, the political stagna- tion, the mental sterility, which overtook other ancient civilisations. Greece escaped the fate of the great ancient Empires because, owing to her geographical position, she could never become a colossal Empire, ruled over by a central and despotic authority. With- out centralisation priestly despotism is im- possible. Instead of one colossal governing centre with its kingly and priestly despotism crushing out all individuality by means of a uniform code of political and religious laws, customs, and rites, Greece formed a group of self-governing communities, with their 144 The Elements of Greek Civilisation local gods, temples, and rites. The result was that the religious spirit developed nat- urally. The priest was not the infallible mediator and dictator between heaven and earth : he was simply the representative of the people, and was compelled to progress with the progress of the community. The priestly class did not, as in the other ancient civilisations, hold the key of knowledge. In those civilisations the priests were a separate and exclusive class ; in Greece the sacerdotal caste system was not acknowledged. The effects of this were far-reaching. The Greek mind was enabled to progess un- hindered from the polytheism of Homer s poems to the theism of -^schylus, Plato, and Aristotle. In the Greek religion there is no breach of continuity. Through the mythologies of primitive Greece, the the- ologies of the later poets, and the specula- tions of the philosophers, one desire breathes — a desire of the Greek mind to link itself with the Infinite. In early times, as in the Homeric poems, mythology has not much to do with religion as we understand it — with a desire to live a holy life. Religion 145 K Books to Read and How to Read them was valued as a means of warding off evil, and of having vengeance upon a foe. But by the time we reach the great dramatists we find religion linked with morality. The old mythologies are used in the interests of morality. Purified of their unclean elements they become vehicles for teach- ing high ethical lessons, which compare with those taught by the Hebrew prophets. Thus it was that, freed from priestly despotism, the mythological element of the Greek religion gradually gave way before the spirit of inquiry. The Greeks, by natural evolution, followed the dictates of reason. Under the influence of reason the Greeks passed from the chaotic supernaturalism of the mythologies to the scientific view of nature. *' Happy," says Euripides, "is he who has learned to search into causes and who discerns the deathless and ageless order of nature, whence it arose, the how and tne why." The moral, like the physical order, was under fixed laws. It is a long stride from the lawlessness of the Homeric deities to the "ministers of justice" of the great dramatists. 146 The Elements of Greek Civilisation Both on the physical and moral sides the Greek mind made great strides, just because, in consequence of geographical con- ditions, it escaped the fate of the ancient Empires — that of political centralisation — with its accompanying uniformity of gods, cults, and, above all, its priestly caste, with its veto upon all intellectual activity. The unique development of Greece, religiously and politically, was specially favourable to Art. This has been well put by Mr J. M. Robertson in his misnamed book, 'Introduction to English Politics.' "The culture history of Greece, like the political, connects really from the first with the physical conditions. The disrupted character of the mainland, the diffusion of the people through the ^gean Isles, the spreading of colonies on east and west^ set up a multi- tude of separate city-states, no one of which could decisively or long dominate the rest. These democratic and equal communities reacted on each other, especially those so placed as to be seafaring. Their separate- ness developed a multitudinous mythology ; even the gods generally recognised being 147 Books to Read and How to Read them worshipped with endless local particularities, while most districts had their special deities. For each and all of these were required temples, altars, statues, sacred vessels, which would be paid for by the public, or the temple revenues, or by rich devotees ; and the countless myths, multiplied on all hands because of the absence of anything like a general priestly organisation, were an endless appeal to the imitative arts. Nature, too, had freely supplied the ideal medium for sculpture and for the finest architecture — pure marble. And as the political divided- ness of Hellendom prevented even an ap- proach to organisation among the scattered and independent priests, so the priesthood had no power and no thought of imposing artistic limitations on the shapers of the art objects given to their temples. In addition to all this, the local patriotism of the countless communities was constantly expressed in statues to their local heroes, statesmen, and athletes. And in such a world of sculpture, formative art must needs flourish wherever it could ornament life." Contrast all this with the stagnation of 148 The Elements of Greek Civilisation art in Egypt, which, as Professor Butcher well puts it, "was heavy with the incubus of an all-powerful priesthood." Tried by the standard of the True and the Perfect, Greece blossomed forth in a manner quite unique. Starting with a puerile mythology, the Greek mind reached a religion which in many respects equalled that of the Hebrews, and a stage of perfection in Art which — in sculpture and dramatic literature — has never been rivalled. The weakness of Greek civilisation lay on the side of ethics and economics. Living in the era of militarism, Greece found her main outlet for energy in war, which on the moral nature has an inevitable hardening and debasing effect. Under the influence of greed and racial hatreds, glorified under the names of religion and patriotism, the Greeks lived in a state of chronic warfare, either fighting a foreign foe or fighting among themselves. While war was held in the highest honour, industrial labour was held in the greatest contempt. As a consequence slavery, as we see from the political writings of Aristotle, was viewed 149 Books to Read and How to Read them as the natural state of the lower orders. Following this there could be no such thing as distribution of wealth among the people. In Greece, as in ancient nations generally, the function of the many was to minister to the pleasures of the few. Even the democracies of Greece were in reality oli- garchies of well-to-do freemen, maintained in comfort by the labour of slaves. The result was political feuds, class hatred, and a debased slave population. Greece, morally, in her highest stage of intellectual evolution never reached a high standard. Even her rulers, freed as they were from religious superstitions, never allowed reason to carry them into the regions of politico -economic science. Their views of national wellbeing were those of the old barbaric monarchies. Like the Scottish Highlanders, they regarded trade as unworthy of a freeman, and phil- osophers inveighed against commerce as destroying the purity of national customs. Instead of resting on peaceful industry and commerce, Greece tried to combine democracy and militarism. She failed because she en- deavoured to combine two incongruous ele- 150 The Elements of Greek Civilisation ments — democratic constitutions and a military regime. In a warlike epoch a democratic community resting upon slavery, and devoting its resources to militarism, could not hope to resist the encroachment of a world-wide Power. Greece fell a prey to Rome. The influence of Greece, unlike the in- fluence of the old barbaric Empires, did not die with her humiliation. Like Israel, Greece conquered her conquerors. Her litera- ture and her art have given her a fame in- finitely greater than anything that military glory can bestow. Modern science and philosophy owe to Greece an incalculable stimulus, while even the Christian religion owes her intellectual framework largely to the marvellous speculative genius of the old Greek thinkers. In addition, Greece, as the torchbearer of freedom, will ever occupy a high place as a pioneer of civilisation. Renan has reminded us that nations which are fitted to play a part in universal history must die first that the world may live through them. Thus it was with the Jews, who, in order to make the religious con- 151 Books to Read and How to Read them quest of the world, must disappear as a nation. " They lost a material city ; they opened a region of the spiritual Jerusalem." So, too, it was with Greece. In the words of Professor Butcher : "As a people she ceased to be when her freedom was over- thrown at Chaeronea; the page of her history was to all appearance closed. Yet from that moment she was to enter on a larger life, and in the end empire." The standard work on Greece is, of course, Grote's History, but it demands more leisure than the ordinary reader can command. A very good insight into the elements of Greek civilisation is had from Professor Butcher's *Some Aspects of the Greek Genius,' and for the social side of ancient Greece a useful authority is MahafFy, who deals in compre- hensive fashion with the varied aspects of Greek life. For the political and economic side of the subject, Mr J. M. Robertson's * Introduction to English Politics ' is a mine of information and suggestiveness. Freeman on the political side is valuable, particularly 152 The Elements of Greek Civilisation his little book * Greater Greece and Greater Britain.' The reader will find in a small book, ' The State of Man Before Christianity/ a clear and concise summary of the chief points in ancient civilisation, including Greece. One book the student should on no account miss — namely, a collection of early essays by Sir George Trevelyan, entitled * Ladies in Parliament and Other Pieces/ The title does not suggest Greece, but among the other pieces is a sketch of Greek life un- surpassed for brilliancy. From this sketch the reader will get a better insight into Greek civilisation than from the most pon- derous volumes ever written on the subject. The reader would do well to begin his studies of Greece with Sir George Trevelyan's masterly sketch, in its way a work of genius. 153 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER XV. THE EVOLUTION OF GREEK LITERATURE. If we would understand the literature of Greece we must keep distinctly before the mind the fact to which attention has been called, that ancient civilisations were rooted in religion. The ancient, like the modern mind, underneath all its secular activities, was occupied with three great problems — God, the Universe, and Man. The moderns have applied to the problems the principle of the division of labour. Questions dealing with God we relegate to theology and philo- sophy, questions dealing with the Universe we relegate to Science, and questions dealing with man to literature. With the ancients, and notably with the Greeks, there were no such sharp divisions. The Universe and 154 The Evolution of Greek Literature Man were viewed in close relation to Deity — so close that the natural was o'ershadowed by the supernatural. In the absence of a scientific conception of the Universe the Greeks attributed the phenomena of Nature to deities, gods and goddesses, the result being a fantastic kind of theology, or rather mythology, quite puzzling to the modern mind. Underlying all these fantastic creations we can trace in the literature of the Greeks a gradual evolution of the great fundamental intuitions of the mind — the True, the Right, the Perfect, and the Good. Homer's poems are mainly valued for their vivid and fascin- ating pictures of early Greek times, and those who read Homer usually read him simply from literary motives. But if Homer is to be of real service to us, if his works are to be viewed as something more than mere in- tellectual recreation, we must study them to discover how far they reveal the attitude of the Greek mind of his time to the deeper problems of life. Homer assuredly did not write for purposes of recreation ; he was no idle singer of an empty day. Homer was a poet with a mission. His works have 155 Books to Read and Hoiv to Read them been called the Bible of the Greeks, and the term is by no means ill-chosen. In the previous chapter it was shown that the pro- gress of Greece was largely furthered by the fact that there was no central despotic authority. Greece was a group of free communities, held together by the slenderest political ties — so slender that the ease by which they were snapped in the later days revealed the weakness of Greece on the national side. What Homer did for Greece by his poems was to create a spiritual unity which helped greatly to compensate for the absence of political unity. And how was this ejffected ? Not unlike the way in which the spiritual unity of the Hebrew nation was effected — by the concentration of the popular mind on the great historic, or supposed historic event, around which were woven the reliofious beliefs of the people, and the identification of their beliefs with the doings of national heroes. What would the history of Israel be without the Exodus, without Moses, and the dramatic incidents of the wilderness journey, and the conquest of Canaan ? Those great events 156 The Evolution of Greek Literature stamped themselves on the national mind, and to them some of the noblest outbursts of Hebrew literature owe their inspiration. What the Exodus was to the Hebrews, Troy was to Greece. In the hands of Homer, the great events associated with Troy were so utilised as to give to the early history a religious background. Literature was no mere secular pursuit. It was used to cele- brate the deeds of gods as well as men ; and although the deeds of the Homeric gods in the main were repulsive to modern minds, yet if we read Homer carefully we shall find shining through the polytheism of the poems gleams of insight into the great moral laws of the Universe. Homer s poems, especially the Iliad, as has been well said, " are the canons regulating the Hellenic mental development, in all things spiritual, in faith and custom, worship and religion, civil and domestic life, poetry, art, and science." As literature these poems have the note of everlastingness, because they deal, not as modern poetry does, with single aspects of life, but with the manifold religious beliefs 157 Books to Read and How to Read them and customs, with the corresponding ethical codes which grow out of primitive man's conceptions of the supernatural in relation to man. Homer never theologised, but he contains matter upon which later thinkers theologised ; he never philosophised, but in his poems are the germs of later speculations ; he never discourses on literature, but in his pages are found the inspiration of some of the best work of the Greek dramatists ; he never discourses on Art, and yet it was in the effort to incarnate in sculpture his literary delineation of the gods that Greek art secured its greatest triumphs. Phidias is said to have been inspired in the creation of his colossal image of Zeus in Olympia, the greatest work of his genius, by the magnifi- cent lines in the Iliad : — " Then beneath his raven eyebrows, Zeus Kronion gave the nod ; And the locks ambrosial started From the temples of the god ; Huge Olympus reeled beneath him, Eoot and summit, rock and sod." The student will not understand Homer aright who does not view him in his many- 158 The Evolution of Greek Literature sided activity. He is at once a supreme artist in delineating life ; he is the creator of Hellenic religion ; he inspires Hellenic art and literature ; and in his poems are found the germs of the great religious and ethical interpretations of man and his destiny, which blossomed later in the dramas of ^schylus and Sophocles. This mode of looking at Homer is impossible if we read him super- ficially as a pagan poet, who amused his con- temporaries with the story of Troy mixed with fantastic and demoralising stories of the gods. In Homer we trace a consciousness of moral law, of a Power higher than the gods and goddesses, of sin, of retribution, of the grandeur of heroism, the beauty of the simple affections and the sacredness of truth and righteousness. In Hesiod, on the other hand, we have no poetry of the heroic, but the poetry of ordinary prosaic life. Hesiod deals with the real, not the ideal : and those who associ- ate paganism with all things evil will be astonished at the high tone of Hesiod in dealing with the ethical side of life. Take the following : — 159 Books to Read and How to Read them " He wounds himself that aims another's wound, His evil counsels on himself rebound ; Zeus at his awful pleasure looks from high With all-decerning and all-knowing eye ; Nor hidden from its ken what injured right Within the city wall eludes the light. Or ! if evil wait the righteous deed, If thus the wicked gain the righteous meed. Then may not I nor yet my son remain In this our generation just in vain ; But sure my hope, not this pure heav'n approves, Not this His work who vengeful lightning loves." Hesiod deals with the strange tangled web of life in which good and evil are so inter- mingled that justice seems almost a vanishing quantity. And yet in spite of the tangle Hesiod never lost sight of the great moral laws of the universe. It is when we come to Pindar, -^schylus, and Sophocles that the idea of moral govern- ment shines forth with a clearness which re- minds us of the Hebrew prophets. In those great writers we have clear recognition of a number of ideas which, when detached from their mythological setting, are found in har- mony with the best thought of all the ages. The dramatists recognise in life a divine ele- ment which is fatal to all self-seeking on the 1 60 The Evolution of Greek Literature part of individuals and communities. Trans- gression is met with penalty in a form at times of heart-striking tragedy. The arbi- trary doings of the gods have disappeared, and instead we have the supremacy of the Right. Take the following from ^schylus : — " A haughty spirit blossoming bears a crop Of sin, and reaps a harvest of despair. Look on those things, pride's just avengenient, think On Athens and on Hellas ; fear to slight The parent bounty of the gods, lest they Rob you of much, while greed still gapes for more. Jove is the chastiser of high-vaunting thoughts, And heavily falls his judgment on the ground." Where will we find a more vivid idea of the retributive element of life than in the verdict of the avenging Nemeses, when in the case of Orestes they raise their supplica- tion to Zeus and Destiny : — " Mighty Fates, divinely guiding Human fortunes to their end. Send this man with Jove presiding Whither Justice points the way. Words of bitter hatred duly Pay with bitter words : for thus With loud triumphant shouting Justice pays the sinner's debt. i6i L Books to Read and How to Read them Blood for blood and blow for blow, Thou shalt reap as thou did'st sow ; Age to age with hoary wisdom Speaketh thus to men." In ^schylus we are far away from the arbitrary rule of contending gods. Zeus reigns supreme in accordance with moral law. Man is not in the clutches of iron necessity. Room is left in the great tragedies of ^schylus and Sophocles for repentance, and the play of all human virtues on the basis of free-will and responsibility. It is impossible here to attempt an ex- haustive analysis of the Greek dramas, either from the literary or the ethical side. All that can be attempted is a few hints to the reader in the matter of leading ideas. The student will peruse Greek literature in vain if he does not carry with him certain guiding thoughts. Arnold has been much attacked for his famous definition of poetry as a criticism of life. His formula, if not absolutely correct, has great merit as a guiding principle. Arnold did not mean that the poet was consciously a critic. What he meant was that in the act of delineating life 162 The Evolution of Greek Literature in its many-sided aspects, the poet supplies the reader unconsciously not only with material of thought, but also with principles by which the material is to be interpreted. Homer's poems are not only pictures of early Greek life; they represent stages in the evolution of Greek thought in regard to the three great subjects — God, the Universe, and Man. In Homer the relation between God and man is mainly an arbitrary one. The laws of Nature are used by the gods as means of helping or punishing mortals. Not that the great moral laws are neglected, but they are left in the background. In ^schylus we get a stage further on the road to truth. The gods are absorbed in one supreme deity, Zeus, who makes for righteousness. Right and wrong, remorse and retribution, are represented by beings who fulfil the will of Zeus. In the background is the awful figure of Fate, and in so far as man is represented as in the toils of a dark Necessity, we do not reach in iEschylus quite the true inter- pretation of the ethical side of nature. In Sophocles we get nearer the truth. Instead of the personification of the ethical powers 163 Books to Read and Hozv to Read them employed by ^schylus, we have ethical laws resting on the natural basis of the human mind and conscience. Zeus rules mortals through moral principles. Good and evil do not come upon mortals through supernatural channels or through Fate ; they spring natur- ally from men's temperament and actions. Sin brings punishment as naturally as the harvest comes from the seed. Whatsoever mortals sow that shall they also reap. The Greek dramatists grasped what may be called the scientific view of morality, as distinguished from the mythological. But a danger lurks in this view. With the decay of mythological conceptions the supernatural was apt to decay also ; and among the edu- cated Greeks, as with us, the belief in the natural was apt to crush out the thought of the supernatural. The true view, of course, is that the natural itself, when rigorously analysed, is found to be simply a manifesta- tion of the supernatural ; but this view was beyond the grasp of the Greeks, as it is beyond the grasp of many thinking men to-day. In the dramas of Euripides we find the natural coming to the front, and the 164 The Evolution of Greek Literature supernatural, which was confounded with the mythological, growing fainter. The tendency is to identify the natural with the secular ; and once this identification takes place there is no room for the religious sentiment of Homer and iEschylus, nor for the deep meaning of tragedy as expounded in the great dramatists. Thus when we come to Euripides we feel ourselves in a diflPerent atmosphere — more human, but with a loss of the nobler, the dignified, the heroic elements, which only thrive when the super- natural touches the natural. Explain it as we may, the fact remains that absorption in the secular is fatal to the higher forms of poetry, which draws its inspiration from the ideal. Religion has ever been the parent of art. With this thought in our minds we come to understand why the Greek creative genius declined with the decline of the ideal, or religious, element in Greek life. We come to understand how the rise of scientific modes of thinking, and the rise of philosophic schools in Greece, by giving the death-blow to the old religion, proved fatal to creative genius. Science and philosophy have done great 165 Books to Read and How to Read them things for the world, but in their atmosphere the ideal does not readily thrive. The true conditions for a higher form of creative energy will not be found until in some way, out of the results of scientific and philosophic re- search, there develops a new view of the supernatural, — a view which shall afford re- conciliation of the real and the ideal, a view which, while giving the greatest possible scope to the scientific spirit, shall yet leave an outlet for those emotions which only inade- quately found outlet in the old mythologies. Books on Greek literature form quite a library, but a judicious reader will avoid mediocre works, and will seek out the best translators, expounders, and critics. Homer has had many translators in prose and verse. The spirit of Homer is best preserved in the prose renderings of the ' Iliad,' by Andrew Lang, and of the * Odyssey,' by Lang and Butcher. The late Professor Blackie's trans- lation of ^schylus still holds the field, and for Sophocles the reader would do well to consult Professor Plumptre's book. Among i66 The Evolution of Greek Literature metrical translations the old Elizabethan, Chapman, produced a work whose rugged grandeur well represents the original. In- numerable are the expounders and critics of Greek literature. Professors Jebb and Butchers works are indispensable to the reader. One book, perhaps a little old- fashioned, but full of luminous suggestions and wide views, which we highly recommend, is Bunsen's ' God in History.' Symond's * Studies of the Greek Poets' should upon no account be neglected. The essays are stimulating in the highest degree. In the sphere of the Greek drama the Germans have done good work. Schlegel's * Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature' contain much fruitful thinking. Goethe, with his instinctive insight into all things Greek, deserves careful study. Hegel deals with the Greek drama and literature in his usual masterly and penetrative style. 167 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER XVI. THE EVOLUTION OF PAGAN THOUGHT AND LIFE. It has been shown that the creative genius of Greek literature began to decline with the decline of religious belief Literature in its highest form is only possible when it gives expression to the spiritual unity of a people. So long as the Greek mind was at the mythological stage it possessed what may be called spiritual unity. That is to say, the conception which the Greeks entertained of the deity or deities of the universe and of man had a certain coherence, and were so universally held as to shape the national life and to give to the national literature a re- markable completeness. With the growth of intelligence belief in the old mythology was impossible. The dramatists, as we saw in i68 The Evolution of Pagan Thought and Life the previous chapter, endeavoured to seize the truths which underlay the old mythology, and in this they were successful in an aston- ishing degree. But the time was sure to come when the intellect of Greece would be hopelessly divorced from the national religion. When that time came there was an end to the spiritual unity of Greece. The moment men of thought turned their attention to the mythological conceptions upon which the spiritual unity of Greece rested, and, for that matter, of Rome also, the death -knell of Paganism was struck. Dissatisfied with current notions, philosophers set themselves to discover some universal cosmic principle which would take the place of the deities of popular belief In their search the great thinkers of Greece and Rome were diligently employed. Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Em- pedocles, Plato, Aristotle, in Greece, and Lucretius in Rome — those great thinkers scorned delights and lived laborious days in the effort to form a more satisfactory concep- tion of the origin of things than they could find in the current mythology. It is a his- i6g Books to Read and How to Read them torical fact that decay of religious belief has a hurtful effect on morals. Morality, which at the mythological stage is identified with the will of the gods, is apt to disappear with the disappearance of the gods. As great as the problem of the origin of the universe is the problem of the foundation of morality. Thus w^e find Socrates making it his life- mission to discover in human nature the foundation of morality. His discussion of the good, his attempts to define justice, his analysis of virtue and vice — what were they but attempts to find in the natural instead of the supernatural the root of ethics? In Plato and Aristotle, though in different ways, we trace the same aim, namely, that of reach- ing a new theory of the universe and man which should take the place of the old mythology. Great as was the work done by the philosophers from Plato to Marcus Aurelius, their influence reached the masses only as a destructive force. Their specula- tions tended to destroy existing belief with- out putting anything in their place. In truth, only a small educated section was directly af- fected by the speculations of the philosophers. 170 The B volution of Pagan Thought and Life The one palpable result was the destruc- tion of the spiritual unity of Paganism, and ultimately in Greece and Rome the decay of national feeling. If nothing can be known of the gods, and if, as with the Sophists and Epicureans, pleasure is the end of life, nothing was left of the intense feeling of solidarity which enabled both Greece and Rome at crises in their history to rise to heroic heights. In such an atmosphere creative literature could not flourish ; intel- lectual energy expended itself in criticism, which ended frequently in scepticism. Loss of religious belief in the ancient, brought the same result as in the modern world — decay of moral vigour, a feeling of intellectual helplessness in presence of life's mysteries, ending in moods alternating between stoicism and pessimism. Through the writing of the Roman thinkers and poets the vein of mel- ancholy is distinctly traceable. Take the following from Lucretius : " When they gazed for a few years of a life there is in- deed no life ; speedily fulfilling their doom, they vanish away like a smoke, convinced of that only which each hath met in his own 171 Books to Read and How to Read them experience, as they were buffeted about to and fro. Vainly doth each boast to have discovered the whole. The eye cannot be- hold it, nor the ear hear it, nor the mind of man comprehend it. With death there is ever blending wail of infants newly born into light. And no night hath ever followed day, no morning dawned on night but hath heard the mingled sounds of the feeble infant wailings and of lamentations that follow the dead and the black funeral train." The pessimism which grew out of the luxurious life of Paganism is well described in the fol- lowing lines of Matthew Arnold : — " In his cool hall with haggard eyes The Eoman noble lay ; He drove abroad in furious guise, Along the Appian Way. He made a feast, drank fast and fierce, And crowned his hair with flowers — No easier nor no quicker passed The impracticable hours." Meanwhile, any ethical influence the old religion had was disappearing. The marvel is that the mythologies of Paganism, with their low type of gods and goddesses, could 172 The Evohition of Pagan Thought and Life ever have possessed any ethical influence. In his remarkable work, *The History of Intellectual Development,' Dr Beattie Crozier gives the true explanation : " The morality of the early Greeks and Romans, although linked to Polytheism, which in the end must bring it to stagnation or corruption, was by reason of exceptional circumstances for a time raised above itself into a world-historic grandeur and significance. This was due mainly to the pressure put on these peoples by an all-absorbing patriotism; and the struggle of the infant States to maintain their independence, and even their very ex- istence, in the face of threatening and relent- less foes, had the efiect of counteracting for the time being the corroding and deteriorat- ing influence of Polytheism; and the way it operated was by compelling the morality of the gods to take the colour and form for the time being of the virtues needed for the wellbeing of the people, instead of, as in ordinary times, the morality of the people taking its form and colour from the morality of the gods." It was just when, as the result of war both in Greece and Rome, riches in- 173 Books to Read and How to Read the^n creased to a luxurious extent, and when slavery had demoralised the communities, that the evils of Paganism became increas- ingly manifest. Those who had ceased to believe in the gods could always in a cynical way justify their debased conduct by a reference to the domestic immorality of the gods and goddesses, while those who be- lieved the old religion could seriously assert that they were simply imitating the national deities. It is not too much to say that the ancient civilisations fell through moral cor- ruption fostered by an inherently corrupt religion. It is not enough to trace the decline and fall of Greece and Rome to political and economic causes, to the love of war, and to a false system of wealth accumulation resting on slave labour. These were after all second- ary causes. The primary cause was a de- based system of religion which in the day of national prosperity led to scepticism in the higher classes, corruption of morals in all classes, with a corresponding increase of selfishness, which made slavery possible, and gross pleasure - hunting in the absence of 174 The Evolution of Pagan Thought and Life elevating pursuits a necessity. The decay of Pagan civilisations was inevitable, in spite of the attempts of a few great thinkers and poets to give it a high ethical type. Isolated thinkers spoke words of wisdom, but in the absence of an enthusiasm for humanity they were idle words carried down the wind. Tlie thinkers had not the courage to denounce the popular religion. They winked at the gross immoralities sanctioned by religion. Truth was only for the philosophic few ; superstition was good enough for the many. In such a case hideous demoralisation was the natural consequence of a universal law — namely, that man becomes assimilated to the object worshipped. The gods of Greece and Rome when worshipped naturally had a corrupting influence on the worshippers ; and the end of the long process was seen in Rome at the time of the long peace, when war had ceased over the world and ancient civilisation had reached its highest point. This period was called by the Court poets a golden age. Writing of it the late Pro- fessor Seely says : " Except to Court poets the age did not seem golden to those who 175 Books to Read and How to Read them lived in it. . . . If morality depended on law, or happiness could be measured by comfort, this would have been the most glorious era in the history of mankind. It was, in fact, one of the meanest and foulest." With the debasement of religion came the debasement of literature, the debasement of morality, the debasement of society. Rome, with Greece, had failed to solve the problem of civilisation. What Rome did was to bring in an era of peace, to break down those racial barriers which made world-wide civilisation impossible, and by the principle of toleration allowed room for the growth of new ideas, new sentiments, and new principles of action, which, taking their rise in obscurity, started civilisation on a new path. Philosophy had been tried and had failed. Reason was powerless in the face of national corruption. The evils wrought by an impure religion could only be got rid of by a pure religion. What was needed to give civilisation a fresh start was not reason, but a new and higher spiritual unity. Man had once more to reach a new conception of God, the Universe, and Man as a preliminary 176 The Evohition of Pagan Thought and Life to progress in the realisation of the ideals which had inspired the great thinkers and poets of antiquity. Greece in the sphere of art and letters had contributed a noble share to the cause of human progress ; Rome, on the side of law and order, supplied the frame- work of an enduring civilisation ; but from a despised people — the Hebrews — came a force which in the spheres of religion and ethics so elevated the standard of morality as to make possible the regeneration of humanity. The reader who wishes, in brief compass, to get a luminous view of Pagan thought and life cannot do better than read Dr Beattie Crozier s ' Intellectual Development of Europe,' particularly the section dealing with Pagan- ism. An admirable bird's-eye view is given in a suggestive little book, ' The State of Man Before Christianity.' Mahaffy's * Greek Life and Thought ' throws great light on the subject. Blackwoods' ' Ancient Classics ' will be found quite a mine of suggestive infor- mation. The distinguished French author, M. Pressense, has an enlightening book, OF THE *^^ UNIVERSITY 1 Books to Read and Hoiv to Read them 'The Ancient World and Christianity/ in which a vivid picture is given of Pagan life. Nothing in the way of summaries can take the place of the monumental work of Gibbon, but the busy man can hardly find time for a work of such colossal proportions. Lecky's ' History of Europeans Morals ' deals very efiectively with the social and ethical sides of Paganism. To Roman literature the two volumes by Sellar will be found a competent guide. Translations of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus by Lang are valuable as throwing light upon the heroic efforts of the Stoics to raise the standard of Pagan ethics. Trans- lations of Juvenal, Horace, and Tacitus are essential as throwing light on the state of society in Rome, its amusements and its corruption. So numerous are works on Greece and Rome that the reader need have no difficulty in gaining an insight into the working of Paganism in all departments of the ancient world. 178 The Hebrews in History CHAPTER XVII. THE HEBREWS IN HISTORY. In concluding the study of Paganism, it was seen that while Greece and Rome had made great contributions to progress, they failed to lay the foundation of an enduring civilisa- tion. On the moral side Paganism proved a miserable failure. When the spiritual unity of Paganism was broken the evil influence of idolatry became manifest. Man is a worshipping animal, and as he becomes assimilated to the object worshipped it is easy to see how the worship of the Pagan deities tended to individual and social cor- ruption. In an age when science was un- known and when moral philosophy was studied only by the few, a new and higher form of civilisation was only possible by the substitution of purer objects of worship than 179 Books to Read and Hoiv to Read the77i those of Greece and Rome. It is a law of history that man's intellectual and moral position is determined by his conception of the Power behind the Universe. Knowledg-e naturally splits into three divisions — know- ledge of God, of Man, and of the Universe. The determining factor in civilisation is the first-named — knowledge of God. The con- ceptions which men form of the mysterious Power upon which all things hang, of which man and nature are manifestations, determine the relations between man and man — deter- mine, in a word, individual and social ethics. Knowledge, however imperfect, is a unity ; and when, as in prehistoric times, that unity is unbroken by scepticism, a remarkably high individual and social development may take place. When civilisation progresses men's beliefs in the gods undergo a change, under the influence of deeper thought, and the spiritual unity is broken. The moral energy of the people becomes weakened. The gods, instead of being identified with high ideals, become exaggerations of human weaknesses and vices. Scepticism gives birth to cynicism, and cynicism breeds immorality, the end of 1 80 The Hebrews in History which is social and national corruption. Where is the remedy to be found ? How can civilisation get a fresh start ? Only in one way — by the presentation to the mind of nobler objects of worship. Men are led in the path of progress not by abstract reason but by the emotions, not by the cold in- ductions of science but by hearty devotion to ideals. We live, as Wordsworth has it, by admiration. Find out what men and nations admire, discover what they worship, and you will find the key to their intellectual and moral status and development. Clearly, then, the first step in the salvation of civilisa- tion lay in securing for mankind a pure form of worship ; the immoral gods of Paganism must give place to moral gods. Moreover, belief in a plurality of gods, which had much to do with the immoral element in Paganism, must give place to the conception of unity. Progress was impossible unless a pure Mono- theism could be substituted for an impure Polytheism. Of course we shall be reminded of the fact, made apparent in our exposition of the views of the great Greek thinkers and poets, that i8i Books to Read and How to Read them the best minds of Paganism had reached Monotheism. That was not enough. What was needed was that the people as a whole should get saturated with Monotheism ; that a new form of national life should spring up, the unity of which was belief in one holy God, whose face was sternly set against idolatry with all its impure accompaniments. From an obscure people, the Hebrews, came the impulse which raised civilisation out of the corruption into which it had fallen, and gave the world a new start on the road to moral progress. It is not necessary here to deal with the Higher Critical views of Hebrew literature. For our present purpose it matters not whether we view Hebrew literature, as represented by the Bible, as historically reliable or as containing legendary matter. Legends rest upon ideals ; mythical heroes are the incarnation of the ideals which must have dominated the popular mind be- fore they found their way into the national literature. The fact to be noted is that among the Hebrews the evolution of beliefs about the Power behind all things pursued a course very different from that of Greece and 182 The Hebrews in History Rome. We are told by critics of the Well- hausen school that the idea of God developed among the Hebrews in the same way as it did among other peoples, in being a develop- ment from Fetishism to Monotheism. It is taken for granted that the evolution of ideas about the gods is always from primitive superstition in an ascending scale ever higher and truer, to the idea of a holy and righteous God. No such orderly evolu- tion existed. Startling as it may seem, the truth is that men's ideas of the heavenly Powers are purer in the earlier than in the intermediate stage. We see this in the cases of Greece and Rome, where the hideous, characters given to the gods in the days of civilisation contrast very badly with primitive beliefs. Suppose we grant with the Higher Critics that Israel's idea of God conformed to the law of evolution. Suppose we grant with Kuenen that to the prophets we owe the monotheistic idea, and that not till the Exile were the people purged of their Polytheism. Suppose all this, the crucial question still remains — How came the Hebrews to escape the law of degeneration 183 Books to Read and How to Read them which had such fatal effects in Greece and Rome ? Plato held almost as high views of God as Isaiah. How came Isaiah's sublime conception of God to penetrate the minds of the people as a whole, while Plato's remained the solitary speculations of a solitary thinker ? In other words, How came an obscure race, with no capacity for abstract thought, to get saturated with conceptions which Greek thinkers reached with difficulty ? How came the Hebrews to go on developing their idea of Deity, and along with that a correspond- ingly higher ethical code, while the Pagans were degrading their ideas of Deity, and sinking to a lower ethical level ? These questions are independent of any theories of the Bible. The unique phenomena can only be accounted for on the supposition that the Hebrews passed through an ex- ceptional set of experiences, and were sur- rounded by a special environment. We can guess the nature of those exceptional experiences and circumstances. It is clear that if the knowledge of the true God, the embodiment of justice and holiness, and of a corresponding ethical code, was to be- 184 The Hebrews in History come the universal possession of the human race, a race would need to be sought which in isolation from the Pagan nations could preserve and develop that knowledge free from contamination. This is precisely what we find expressed in Hebrew literature re- garding the experiences of Israel. In that literature we find a constant conflict between the popular fondness for Pagan ideas and forms of worship and the leaders of the people, whose supreme aim was to preserve the isolation which was essential to the growth of what Kuenen calls ethical Mono- theism. We are told by Kuenen and his followers that the high ideas of the prophets never became popularised till after the Exile, and that success was due mainly to the priestly cult as elaborated in the book of Leviticus. For our present purpose it matters not whether Leviticus, with its sacrificial cult, was enacted in the wilderness or was established after the Exile. We have still to ask why the sacrificial system tended to popularise among the Hebrews elevated con- ceptions of the justice and holiness of God, while the same sacrificial system among 1 8s Books to Read and How to Read them Pagan peoples tended to low views of God and a debased morality ? It is customary for the Higher Critics to extol the Hebrew prophets at the ex- pense of the priesthood. The fashion has long been in that direction. One reason is that the prophets strike dramatic atti- tudes and give utterance to thoughts which for sublimity of conception and sublimity of expression tower high above all the litera- ture of the world. But let the student calmly sit down and study the Levitical system, and he will be astonished to find that the dry and forbidding details of Leviticus were more admirably adapted to inoculate the people with higher views of man's relation to God than anything to be found in the priestly arrangements of any other people. In their anxiety to re- duce the sacrificial system of the Jews to the level of the Pagan cults, the Higher Critics leave out of account several import- ant considerations. The sacrificial system of Paganism rested on the idea that costly oJBPerings were necessary to propitiate the offended deities. " Thousands of cattle, costly 1 86 The Hebrews in History incense, prisoners taken captive in war, some- times the child of the worshipper, were offered as sacrifices." By this means it was hoped to appease the wrath of the gods. In the Jewish system the value of sacrifice was never measured by its costliness, and no attempt was made to appease the wrath of an avenging deity. A bullock, a lamb, a goat, a pair of doves, a sheaf of wheat — these and not costly offerings were ordained in the priestly ritual. The Jewish sacrificial system marked itself off completely from Pagan rites in being not so much pro- pitiatory as symbolical. The sacrifices rep- resented the worshippers' experiences. The sin - offering was an acknowledgment of sin ; the burnt -offering symbolised consecration ; the peace-offering represented joy fulness and thankfulness. In the Jewish system sacri- fices were used as a means of impressing the worshipper with the idea of holiness and with a desire to escape from sin. In Paganism sacrifices were used as means of escaping not from sin but from penalty, and the idea of holiness was entirely absent. The extreme section of the Higher Critics 187 Books to Read and How to Read them have not yet explained the remarkable con- trast between the Jewish and Pagan sacri- ficial systems. The prophets as well as the priests had a distinct and unique mission in the Jewish nation. The work of the prophets was to announce true ideas of God, and to denounce idolatry. The work of the priests was to create institutions which would popularise the prophetic idea, and make idolatry impossible. This was of the highest consequence for humanity as well as for the Jewish people, because, if idolatry again got a hold, the world would be drawn back into the abominations of Paganism. The effect of the prophetic and priestly regimes — which the higher critics are apt to treat as if they were antagonistic — was to burn into the hearts and minds of the Jews belief in one God, the Creator of the heaven and earth, the embodiment of holiness, the foe of all im- purity, the righteous One who inhabits eternity and the praises thereof. And then just when a pure Theism was stamped upon the minds of the Jews their national system was broken up, and they were scattered i88 The Hebrews in History among the nations as pioneers of Theism. To the Jews the destruction of their in- dividuality as a nation was a calamity of the first magnitude. To humanity it was a blessing as far-reaching in its issues as momentous in its essence. It meant the death - knell of Paganism. The world had at last got rid of a demoralising system of worship and a debasing code of ethics. In the words of Renan, the Jews '*lost a material city, they opened a region of the spiritual Jerusalem." 189 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER XVIII. THE KEY TO MODERN CIVILISATION. In the two leading nations of antiquity, Greece and Rome, civilisation ended in dis- astrous failure. It was shown how closely the degeneracy of those two great nations was connected with Paganism. It was further pointed out that no hope of progress for humanity was possible except by the sub- stitution of a pure religion for the impure religions of the ancient world. From the Hebrews, as was shown, came the germ of a religion which was destined to give civilisation a new start. It would take too long to detail the various stages by which Judaism developed into Christianity. Suffice it to say that to Christianity the modern world owes the new start of humanity along the path of civilisation. It is foreign to our 190 The Key to Modern Civilisation purpose to discuss the various theories which have been advanced to explain the genesis and power of the Christian rehgion, from the cynical Gibbon to the sentimental Renan and the rationalist Strauss. One remark may be permitted. It has been our lot to read an immense amount of literature on this subject, and with no bias in the orthodox direction we are bound to admit that no theory has yet appeared which from purely natural causes explains the remarkable life and marvellous influence of the Founder of Christianity. Consider what the Galilean peasant under- took. In the words of Horace Bushnell, " Contrary to every religious prejudice of His nation and even of His time, contrary to the comparatively narrow and exclusive religion of Moses itself, Christ undertook to organise a Kingdom of God on earth. Upon this single fact has been erected a complete argument for his extra - human character ; going into a formal review of all the great founders of States and most celebrated law- givers, the great heroes and defenders of nations, all the wise kings and statesmen, 191 Books to Read and Hozv, to Read them all the philosophers, all the prophet-founders of religion, and discovering as a fact that no such thought as this, or nearly proximate to this, had ever been taken up by any living character in history. To Jesus alone, the simple Galilean carpenter, it happened otherwise ; that having never seen a map of the world in His whole life, or heard the name of half the great nations on it. He undertook, coming out of His shop, a scheme much vaster and more difficult than that of Alexander. The thought of a universal Kingdom, cemented in God — why, the im- mense Roman Empire of His day, constructed by so many ages of war and conquest, is a bauble in comparison. And yet the rustic tradesman of Galilee propounds even this for His errand, and that in a way of assurance so simple and quiet as if the immense reach of his plans were in fact a matter to Him of no consideration." As astonishing as the prodigious conception of Christ is the pro- digious success of His conception. As the author of * Ecce Homo ' says : " It is not more certain that Christ presented Himself to men as the founder, legislator, and judge 192 The Key to Modern Civilisatio7i of a divine society than it is certain that men have accepted Him in these characters, that the divine society has been founded, that it has lasted nearly two thousand years, that it has extended over a large and the most highly -civilised portion of the earth's surface, and that it continues full of vigour at the present day." How are we to account for the rapid spread of Christianity in the ancient world? Gibbon's theory need not be analysed. It was the theory of a man who by training and temperament was quite incapable of penetrating to the secret of Christianity. The true explanation of the rapid spread of Christianity lies in the fact that it presented to the minds of men disgusted with the immoral deities of Paganism an object of worship in which were incarnated the highest conceivable ethical elements. For the de- grading gods of Paganism Christ substituted a Father in Heaven, all-wise, all-holy, all- just, all -merciful. And for the degrading theories of man which in Paganism resulted in slavery and all kinds of cruel debase- ments, Christ substituted the idea of human 193 N Books to Read and How to Read them brotherhood. The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man were not mere abstract theories, as in some of the specula- tions of Plato ; they were incorporated into daily life and became vitalising elements in civilisation. In a word, Christianity gave civilisation a new start by presenting mankind with ideals exactly suited to their emotional needs, their mental status, and their social require- ments. Mankind, as we have had occasion to remark, are moved by ideals. They must worship and they must imitate the objects worshipped. Civilisation took a new turn when mankind was provided with a higher object of worship than was afforded under Paganism, and with a magnetic example of a holy life lived among the lower strata of society, instead of a series of academic ethical rules only suited for philosophers, who looked upon the common people as rabble fit only for slavery. Christianity triumphed because it brought hope to the slave, cheered the down - trodden, and promised peace and rest to the weary and heavy laden. Christianity triumphed be- 194 The Key to Modern Civilisation cause to men, tired of the immoralities of the existing religions, it spoke of a God of purity, and to men who had exhausted all that pleasure could give, it revealed the secret of blessedness. Christianity triumphed because to men weary of the cold, cheerless creed of Stoicism it offered a code of ethics touched with the highest emotions — love to God and love to man. A wide reading of the history of the ancient world at the time of its decay forces upon the mind the truth that not only was Christianity the salvation of humanity, but by no other con- ceivable agency could humanity be saved. Modern civilisation took its rise in Christ- ianity. It would take too long to show how Christianity purified the social life of the ancient world, and how, when Rome fell, it tamed the barbarian and laid the foundations of Modern Europe. True, Christianity fell from its primitive purity. In contact with the world it became contaminated with its old enemy. Paganism. How far it fell can best be seen by comparing the Christianity of the New Testament with the Christianity of the Church of the Middle Ages. Paganism 195 Books to Read and How to Read them flourished in the guise of Roman Catholicism ; and though the ethical spirit was never entirely absent, the Church came more and more to wield despotic sway over the minds and hearts of men until it ended in an obstructive force, which threatened to put a stop to the progress of humanity. It would be foolish to deny the great civilising influence of the Church of the Middle Ages, and it would be equally foolish to deny its capacity for producing men of saintly lives. But it was plain that a return to the Christianity of Christ was necessary if religion was not to prove a great obstacle to progress. Christianity under the guidance of the Romish Church made no provision for the natural expansion of the mind of man, nor for the new industrial epoch which was rising out of the feudalism of the Middle Ages. In some way or other religion, if it was to be helpful to man, must make room for the intellectual and industrial laws of civilisation. Individual liberty was at stake. Could the Church be purified so as to bring it into line with the requirements of the new era? Men like Erasmus thought it could. 196 The Key to Modern Civilisation Men like Luther and Calvin thought it could not. Out of this sprang the Reformation, which in its revolt from Rome received great help from the revival of intellectualism known as the Renaissance. In dealing with a wide subject like modern civilisation only a few brief hints are possible. The reader will do well to start with Guizot's ' Civilisation.' This book gives a very luminous and comprehensive survey of the forces which, after the fall of Rome, went to the building up of the great European States. Comte's great work on Positivism contains a magnificent chapter on the Middle Ages — a chapter which for com- pactness of information, lucidity of treatment, suggestiveness of thought, and panoramic view is unrivalled in modern historical litera- ture. In dealing with Rome, the decay of Paganism, and the rise of Christianity, Gibbon of course holds the field. Bryce's *Holy Roman Empire' still holds a high position. Though nothing has been said on the economic side of modern civilisa- 197 Books to Read and How to Read them tion, the omission is due not to neglect, but to the impossibility in brief space of touching all the many - sided phases of human activity. The reader will find in Cunningham's * Western Civilisation ' a key to the economic side of the subject. Mr J. M. Robertson has also a valuable chapter on the economic factors in modern States in his book ' Introduction to English Politics.' In * Herbert Spencer : The Man and His Work,' by the present writer, will be found a chapter on the " Economic Evolution of Society." Those who are specially interested in the religious side of civilisation will find in the writings of the French author, Pres- sense, a remarkably vivid picture of the ancient world under both Paganism and Christianity. In regard to the extraordin- ary influence of the Founder of Christianity, Bushnell's ' Nature and the Supernatural ' deserves careful study. * Ecce Homo ' must also be recommended ; also a suggestive little volume by Lyman Abbot, * The Evolution of Christianity.' Lecky's ' History of European Morals ' is also indispensable to the student. A very remarkable condensed history of 198 The Key to Modern Civilisation civilisation, ancient and modern, is based upon Ducoudray's * Histoire Sommaire de la Civilisation.' In regard to the influences which operated upon primitive Christianity quite a theological library exists. Fair- bairn's ' Christ in Modern Theology ' gives an admirable bird's-eye view of the Greek and Roman processes of thought, which, in addition to its original elements, transformed Christianity into a highly complex system of theology. In the same direction the writings of Edward Hatch are of great value. So voluminous is the literature deal- ing with the evolution of theology that the reader with access to an ordinary catalogue will have no difficulty in finding his way. 199 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER XIX. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION. Christianity, as represented by the Church of Rome, instead of being a progressive, had become an obstructive force. This was due to the fact that in the hands of Roman Catholicism Christianity lost its primitive purity, and instead of being a religion of humanity it became, like Judaism and Pagan- ism, a purely sectional cult. It was plain that whenever the Church proclaimed itself to be the sole mediator between earth and heaven, whenever the Church claimed to be the final authority not only on religion but on everything pertaining to human life, — whenever, in short, the Church struck the note of infallibility, — it was driven to exercise despotic sway over man and society. It was one thing to declare the supremacy of 200 The Renaissance and the Reformation the Church over the world : it was quite another thing to secure supremacy. The Church stooped to conquer. She conquered by allowing herself largely to become as- similated to the world. Pagan practices which she could not extirpate the Church quietly took over and gave them Christian baptism. Thus it came to pass that the Church of the Middle Ages was a curious mixture of Christian sentiment and Pagan superstition and ceremonies. In order to maintain the hold of this kind of paganised Christianity, it was necessary that Rome should repress everything in the shape of intellectual activity which had not the sanction of the Church. Roman Catholicism had taken all knowledge under her care. With the aid of Aristotle she had formulated a theory of the Universe, and any thinker who dared to dispute that theory was ruth- lessly put down. The ideal of the Church was a noble one. It was to bring the world within the sphere of the Church, but in arrogating to itself infallibility it stopped intellectual progress. The mixture of Paganism with a degenerate 20 1 Books to Read and How to Read them Christianity was only too well calculated to keep the people in moral and mental bondage. The remarkable fact is that from the highest elements in Paganism came the blow which was to prepare the way not only for the Reformation proper — that is, the return to the purity and simplicity of primitive Chris- tianity — but also for intellectual liberation as represented by the Renaissance. This period of intellectual revival has been well described by a French historian : " Although during the Middle Ages humanity had not lost its intellectual life, still the name of the Renaissance has been adopted to designate the revival of art and letters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Princes and people, nobles and monks, knights and burghers, seemed all seized with ardent thirst for knowledge, and admiration for art." The Renaissance was brought about by an event which was highly unlikely to promote the intellectual life of humanity. Just as the fall of Jerusalem brought about the dispersion of the Jews, so the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, brought about the dispersion of the Greeks, and rendered the literature of the 202 The Renaissance and the Reformation ancient world accessible to the modern world. Large numbers of Greeks fled to France and Italy, carrying with them the literary treasures of Greece and Rome. Those treasures came as a revelation to minds which had been saturated with the scholasticism of the Roman Catholic Church. Contact with the masterpieces of ancient literature gave a new intellectual appetite to the minds of men. The human side of life came once more to the front, and appropriately the new movement was called Humanism. The movement manifested itself in many direc- tions. Plato dethroned Aristotle, and the science and literature of the ancients took the place of theological disquisitions. It is possible that the new movement would have been confined to a select few but for two important developments, which made the basis of modern civilisation strong and broad compared with the weak and narrow founda- tion upon which ancient civilisation rested. About the time of the revival of learning came the invention of printing and the rise of science in the strict sense of the term. The Greeks had dabbled in science, but, with 203 Books to Read and How to Read them the exception of Hipparchus, it was more speculative than practical, and was entirely confined to a few philosophers. Science entered upon a glorious career when the true system of the Universe was discovered by Copernicus. His labours, carried forward and completed by Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Kepler, and Huyghens, led to the discovery of the law of gravitation by Isaac Newton, thereby completely freeing the mind from the despotic sway of the old scholasticism, and striking a blow at the Roman Catholic Church on the intellectual side from which it never recovered. From the impulse given by ancient thought sprang the movement of the fifteenth -century mind in the direction of literature and historical studies, medicine, and numerous other side branches of secular life. Outside of the Church sprang a school of writers, like Machiavelli and Guicciardini, who, ignoring the theocratic principles of Roman Catholicism, sought in Greek and Roman sources the key to political action and State policy. The poets, like Tasso and Ariosto, though taking their subjects from the feudalism of the time, showed strong 204 The Renaissance and the Reformation traces of the rising enthusiasm for Pagan ideals. Painting, which drew much of its inspiration from rehgious sources, also felt the influence of the Humanist movement. Christian subjects were often treated in the style of the Greek. It has been well said the painters of the Renaissance *' painted Christian figures like heathen deities." Titian, for instance, passed with the greatest freedom from saints to mythological divinities, from Holy Families to Venus and Adonis. The Flemish school worked powerfully in the Humanist direction by bringing within the sphere of art the common side of life — a side far removed from the theological and super- natural. Perhaps more detrimental to the influence of the Church than direct imitation of the ancients was the spirit of scepticism which men of letters like Montaigne caught from the study of the old world. Montaigne has been called the Horace of the French Ren- aissance, a kind of intellectual Epicurean, who turned his back upon the Church, its ideals and its methods. The Church might have made a bold defence against these dis- 205 Books to Read and How to Read them integrating influences but for the fact that its leaders themselves became impregnated with Pagan ideas, and what was worse, with Pagan ethics. Roman Catholicism might for some time longer have claimed to be infallible in the region of truth, the keeper of the human mind, but for the fact that its claim to be infallible in the region of morals, the keeper of the human conscience, was so utterly at variance with reality. Goethe somewhere gives expression to the view that Luther spoiled the work of Erasmus. By that Goethe meant that the great work of liberation should have been allowed to develop slowly under the influence of the Humanist methods of reformers like Erasmus, instead of being mixed up with theological controversies involving racial hat- reds and national animosities. This is to overlook the fact that the work of liberation was twofold — not merely to free the mind, but also the conscience of humanity. The ideal of the Church on the ethical side was a noble one — that of tutoring the human conscience ; and despotism might have been pardoned had not the Church in its later 206 The Renaissance and the Reformation days made a travesty of its own ideal and turned its leadership into sheer mockery. On this subject no enthusiastic help could come from the Humanists. Erasmus was a man of noble aims, but utterly lacking in moral fibre. He was terribly at ease in Zion, and men of that stamp are not the stufi" of which martyrs are made. Moreover, Erasmus was a specimen of the best of the Humanists. Humanism, as a rule, made for Paganism in life as well as in thought, and under no circumstances could the Humanists be imagined leading an attack against the Church solely from the moral side. Besides, a purely intellectual move- ment never yet warmed the blood of average humanity. Scepticism is purely destructive. Scepticism had destroyed Paganism, but Scepticism could put nothing in its place. Scepticism might in the end have destroyed Roman Catholicism, but what was needed was not the destruction of modern as ancient civilisation had been destroyed, by the de- struction of religion, but the preservation of civilisation by the reintroduction of primi- tive Christianity. The remedy would need 207 Books to Read and How to Read them to be twofold, just as the disease was two- fold, moral as well as intellectual. The Humanists did a great work in mak- ing war against the Church in the name of intellect. Luther did a greater work in making war against the Church in the name of conscience. We might sum up Luther's life - work in the pithy sentences of an American writer : " Luther led a revolt which in its issue freed half Europe from the Roman Court. He made the quarrel a moral question. No man, he said, could sell a licence from God to commit sin. If the Pope said otherwise, the Pope was a liar, and no vicegerent of God. He showed that the spiritual life, with all its aspira- tions, struggles, and victories, was open to man without help from Pope or priest. Luther won the leadership of the new age when, against all the pomp and power of Emperor and Pope, he planted himself on the truth as he saw the truth : ' Here I stand ; I cannot do otherwise. God help me.' '^ It was characteristic of the Reforma- tion begun by Luther that it did not confine itself to religion. In the hands of Calvin, 208 The Renaissance and the Reformation the great constructive genius of the move- ment, Protestantism became an all-embracing life- system, which dominated the modern mind for three hundred years, and which is associated with the industrial, social, and political development of Europe. An under- standing of modern development in all its branches, material, moral, philosophical, scien- tific and literary, depends upon clear in- sight into the great vitalising forces which Protestantism set in motion at the time of the Reformation. In studying the Renaissance no better guide can be had than J. A. Symonds, who has written a history of the movement in Italy in seven volumes. The movement was remarkable for the patronage which it re- ceived from the Italian Princes and the Popes of the period. Giovanni di Medici, who as Pope under the name of Leo X., presided over the Humanist movement, and was a generous patron of science and art. The lesser Italian Princes had their Court poets, philosophers, and artists. The name 209 O Books to Read and How to Read them of Erasmus must ever be connected with the Renaissance. Numerous biographies of Erasmus have been written, and in Froude's * Short Studies on Great Subjects ' a good account is given of the work done by- Erasmus and Luther. Froude also devotes much attention in his essays to the corrupt state of the Roman Cathohc Church at the time of the Reformation. In dealing with the subject his ' History of England ' is of great value. Numerous lives of Luther have been written, and no reader who is interested in these matters need be at a loss to get an insight into the world-wide movement. It should not be forgotten how much the Reformation owed to other movements of a secular nature associated with the sixteenth century. In his * History of Civilisation' Guizot treats very suggestively of the social and political and national forces which were at work breaking down the Imperialism of the Romish Church. The economic forces which were driving Europe out of the Feudal into the Industrial epoch demanded for their successful issue just the virtues which Protest- antism fostered — virtues which were incom- 2IO The Renaissance and the Reformation patible with the monastic and ascetic ideals of Romanism. In Buckle's ' History of Civil- isation' many fruitful thoughts are to be found, and in the same category must be ranked Lecky's ' History of Rationalism/ No student of the movement should neglect Motley's great work on the war between Spain and Holland — a war which was in reality a contest for the leadership of Europe between Roman Catholicism and Protest- antism. Of course the part which Knox played in Scotland is known to every schoolboy. 211 Books to Read and How to Read them CHAPTER XX. THE REFORMATION AS AN EPOCH. In coming to the study of history, moderns are apt to be the slaves of phrases. A word, for instance, like "despotism" conjures up to people living under a democratic regime the ideas of numberless evils, religious, social, and political. It must not be forgotten that at certain stages of civilisation despotism may have a beneficial influence. Thus after the break-up of the Roman Empire two despot- isms mainly beneficial sprang up — the Church and Feudalism. During the reign of anarchy it was surely a matter of necessity that some power should arise which, by imposing unani- mity of belief, would at least bring the vast region of religion under the reign of order. Likewise in a time of social and political anarchy it was surely a necessity that mili- 212 The Reformation as an Epoch tarism should organise itself in the form of Feudalism, so as to bring the vast region of social life under the reign of order, thereby allowing the genius of commerce and industry to take root and develop. The evil influence of the Roman Catholic Church and Feudalism lay in the fact that when they got society into their grip they erected barriers to progress. Out of this, as we saw, grew the Renaissance and the Reformation. In the previous chapter these were dealt with, but the reader should not forget that a similar movement for freedom proceeded in the industrial sphere in the contest waged against Feudalism. Between the religious and the politico-economic revolu- tion there is a close connection. The Refor- mation took its rise from the widely-spread feeling that man as man had certain rights in the sphere of religion, with which no power on earth could interfere. Man's rela- tion to his Maker, it was said, was an individual affair. Man claimed the right of approach to God without the mediatorship of an ecclesiastical organisation. In other words, man demanded freedom of worship 213 Books to Read and How to Read them without paying toll to the Church. In the same way with the rise of towns. Men in- sisted upon their right to the fruits of their labour without paying toll to the feudal lords. At the root of all the contests between the feudal lords and the town dwellers was the demand that no longer should the individual be subordinated to despotic rulers, that the individual had certain rights with which no political power, King or knight, could meddle. Notice that both demands, that for religious and for industrial — and for that matter politi- cal — freedom were met in the same despotic spirit by the Church and Feudalism. The religious man who claimed to dissent from the Church was treated as a heretic, and the labourer who claimed to work for himself and hold by the fruits of his labour was treated as a rebel. Now what is particularly neces- sary for the student to notice is the close connection between the two revolutions — the religious and the economic, or as it afterwards became, the political. The rise of the Free Cities — that is the rise of industrial com- munities who had wrested economic and political rights from the feudal lords — gave 214 The Reformation as an Epoch a great impetus to the struggle with Rome for religious rights. Many attempts had been made to break the power of Rome, but they failed because behind them were no popular forces. Reformers sprang up, but their influence ceased with their death, and the same thing would have happened to the Wycliff movement but for the fact that by his time communities were springing up, based upon a certain amount of industrial and political freedom, which threw the weight of their influence on the side of the religious movement. The cause of the Reformation and the cause of the Free Cities were in reality one. Wonder has often been ex- pressed at the comparatively limited area of the Reformation. Wonder is lessened when it is noticed that in countries where the development of Free Cities was arrested, where the communities were still at the stage of political serfdom, the development of the Reformation was also arrested. Spain and Italy clung to the Church, because the spirit of freedom was too weak among the people to enable them to give effect to the movement for religious freedom. Scotland, England, Ger- 215 Books to Read and How to Read them many, Switzerland, Holland, triumphed in the struggle, because long before the Reforma- tion they had passed from the feudal stage. The value of the political and industrial aid which the Reformation received is made plain when it is considered that the Free Cities looked upon the Church also as an antagonist. The Church, it was seen, ran counter to the economical tendencies of the new industrial epoch. It is noteworthy that Luther began his crusade against the Church by inveighing against her unscrupulous methods of raising money, and Wycliff too denounced the Church for her temporal exactions, which amounted "to five times as much as the taxes levied by the King." We must not, therefore, look upon the Reformation as an isolated event. It was rather the dramatic form taken by a number of forces — religious, economical, social, political — which refused any longer to be held in check by a form of civilisation resting upon despotism represented by the Church of Rome and Feudalism. The Church had done her work. Out of the chaos produced by the fall of Rome she had for centuries organised 216 The Reformation as an Epoch society, despotically, it is true, but still organised it on lines of order. Feudalism had contributed to the same end. The time was now ripe when the communities, which had been so long tutored by these two powers, should go their own way, and organise themselves on lines of individual, social, economic, political, and national freedom. The Reformation, we must remember, was not a narrow religious movement. At the root of it lay principles destined to form the foundation of a higher and purer civilisa- tion than had ever been seen in the history of the world. It is necessary at the same time to avoid the errors of those writers who view the Reformation mainly as a secular upheaval, in which the religious element was simply used as a means of social and political agitation. No doubt, as in the case of Henry VIII., the Reforma- tion was used to promote sordid ends, but it must not be forgotten that man is pre-eminently a religious being. He needs at the root of all his strivings to bring himself into some kind of harmony with 217 Books to Read and How to Read them the Power in which he lives, moves, and has his being. All civilisations in the past have rested on religion, and it was because religion, as represented by the Roman Catholic Church, failed to satisfy the six- teenth century, that the expanding mind of the time rose in revolt. It was natural, therefore, that out of the contest with Rome should grow an attempt to give the doctrines of Christianity a new setting. Calvin, not Luther, was the great con- structive thinker of the movement. Luther had set the heather on fire. Calvin did not possess the inflammatory genius of Luther. He was essentially a thinker, and it is to his writings we must turn to learn the fundamental theological conceptions of the Reformation. Calvin met the claim of the Roman Catholic Church to wield despotic sway over the mind of man by a declaration which contains the germs of that individualism which has proved to be the salt of modern civilisation. This is likely to be disputed on the ground that after all Protestantism in the hands of Calvinism 218 The Reformation as an Epoch simply exchanged one authority for another — an infallible Pope for an unfallible Book. Between the two things there is a funda- mental difference. The Romanist authority, by leaving no room for anything but abject acceptance of Papal decrees, crushes in- dividualism in the bud ; the Protestant authority, by making a book the standard, sends the individual in critical mood to the standard by which he judges alike the lives of his rulers and the teachings of his Church. Protestantism, by admitting, even in elementary form, the right of private judgment, favoured the extension of the principle to all spheres of activity. When the Reformers won the battle of religious liberty they sowed the seeds of progress, of which we in these latter days have reaped the harvest. Protestantism, as ex- pounded by Calvin, supplied the wants of thinking men who needed a better life- system than had been supplied by Roman Catholicism. Protestantism at one time was the con- trolling force in modern civilisation. That 219 Books to Read and How to Read them was when it was developed into a com- prehensive life -system by Calvin. In op- position to Romanism, Calvinism elaborated a marvellous system, which rested on a systematic handling of the three great con- ceptions — God, man, and the world. To put it more academically, Calvinism, as a religion, carried with it a cosmology, an anthropology, and a soteriology — a theory of the Universe of man, and of the methods by which man and his evil nature could be transformed. Calvinism supplied principles which, when applied in the political sphere, laid the foundation of liberty with its great progressive doctrine of the rights of man. At all points Calvinism confronted Romanism. As Dr Fairbairn puts it, "The Roman in- fallibility was confronted by the infallibility of the Verum Dei ; the authority of tradition by the authority of reasoned yet Scriptural doctrine ; salvation through the Church by salvation through Christ ; the efficacy of the Sacraments by the efficacy of the Spirit ; the power of the priesthood by the power of the ever-present Christ." In addition to The Reformation as an Epoch its creed was the heroic temper which Calvinism fostered. As Michelet says, "If in any part of Europe blood and tortures were required, a man to be burned or broken on the wheel, that man was at Geneva ready to depart, giving thanks to God and singing psalms to Him." During its prime Calvinism and heroism were syn- onymous. Protestantism as a life -system proved defective. Constructed during the great struggle, its doctrines were framed out of antagonism to Romanism rather than from a comprehensive survey of thought and life. Its conflict with Rome partook largely of a moral conflict. Consequently conscience occupied a dominating place in the Reformed sect. Moreover, as literature and art, which owed their revival to the Renaissance, had been largely paganised in the hands of Roman Catholicism, Protestant- ism treated these factors as aliens. In other words, Protestantism, as was witnessed in the extreme form under Puritanism, took too narrow a view of the great emancipating movement which it initiated. The result was 221 I Books to Read and How to Read them an intellectual and aesthetic revolt, which may be termed a second Renaissance. In addition to the works referred to in the previous chapter, the following will be found useful for the Reformation period. An admirable little book is Seebohm's 'Protestant Revolution,' in Modern Epochs Series. The late Principal TuUoch's book, 'Leaders of the Reformation,' still holds the field in its own particular line, while for the theological side of the subject Cunning- ham's ' Theology of the Reformers ' is in- forming, though dry. The late Professor Hastie's recently published Croall Lectures should on no account be omitted. The volume is a valuable contribution, distin- guished by luminous views and compre- hensive outlook. Dr Kuyper, the Dutch statesman and theologian, has a book on Calvinism of the greatest possible value. The secular side of the Reformation can be studied in the books previously mentioned, and in works like Cunningham's * Growth of Industry and Commerce.' 222 Currents in Modern Civilisation CHAPTER XXL CURRENTS IN MODERN CIVILISATION. The student who endeavours to understand the evolution of modern civihsation is apt to lose sight of the main currents in the midst of endless bewildering eddies. In- tellectual order emerges when the student keeps clearly before his mind the fact that modern civilisation takes its rise from two main springs — the break-up of the great powers upon which the Middle Ages rested — Feudalism and Roman Catholicism. As was shown, those two powers had outlived their usefulness. They pressed unduly on individual and religious liberty, and in the end provoked a revolt which led from a variety of causes to the break-up of the feudal system and the rise of nationalities on the one hand, and on the other to the 223 Books to Read and How to Read them rise of the Protestant Churches in the battle for religious freedom. Out of the rise of nationalities and the rapid development of commerce and industry sprang a disturbing element, which even yet gives a chaotic appearance to modern civilisation. Among the growing nationalities began a furious struggle for supremacy, which drew its in- spiration from two beliefs — namely, that national greatness was only possible through territorial expansion, which again was sup- posed to be the indispensable condition of commercial and industrial greatness. Out of these beliefs grew war, under the watch- word of the balance of power. To dynastic and economic causes of war has to be added another, the religious, growing out of the struggle in the national arena between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Per- haps the clearest view of this side of the subject is to be had in brief compass in Seeley's 'Expansion of England.' Out of the chaos of bhnd strivings Political Economy emerged. Adam Smith, gathering up the scattered rays of truth of his prede- cessors in his ' Wealth of Nations/ presented 224 Currents in Modern Civilisation in full - orbed form the science of wealth production and distribution, thereby laying the foundation of a universal system of economics, which will ultimately weld the nations of the earth into one common brotherhood resting upon peaceful industry. The student desirous of finding a clue to the evolution of the modern commercial and industrial system must make a careful study of the 'Wealth of Nations/ With that work in his hand he will have no difficulty in threading his way through the economic problems which date from the break-up of the old feudal system. From the other main spring — the Reformation — are still flowing cur- rents which afibct modern thought and life. As was pointed out in the previous chapter, the Reformation, from the nature of the case, took the form of a protest against Romanism. Like Romanism, Protestantism made the mistake of taking too narrow a view of life, and of making too free of the idea of in- fallibility. Protestantism aspired to take the place of Romanism as a life - system. All phases of thought and activity were included in its sway, and made subject to its direct 225 p Books to Read and How to Read them authority. Not content with claiming for the individual liberty of worship, Protestant- ism became a vast system of thought, in which philosophy and science were incorpor- ated. The result was that on all subjects, including things secular, Protestantism took up a dictatorial attitude. A sharp line of demarcation was drawn between secular and sacred, between nature and grace, and phases of thought and life which did not come directly under the category of grace were relegated to the realm of the unregenerate. The evil effect of this narrow outlook was seen in the Puritan reign in England and the Covenanting reign in Scotland. The assumption that the Bible was a complete revelation of man's relation to God and the Universe, while making for saintliness of character and heroism in action, was fatal to the expansion of the mind in the direction of philosophy, science, and literature. In Scotland, by way of reaction, came the Humanist movement under Hutcheson, end- ing in the long reign of Moderatism. In England, philosophy, science, and literature generally developed as alien factors outside 226 Cttrrents in Modern Civilisation of the Church. From Shakespeare — who was largely Pagan in his ideas — down through the eighteenth century, essayists and poets went their own way writing and treating of life in the spirit of naturalism, almost un- touched by the spirit of the Church, which every now and again raised its voice against the ungodliness of the time. The key to the thought of the eighteenth century is found in the fact that it was mainly a reaction against the spirit and the ideals of the Church. Wearied of the turmoil of war and the clash and strife of contending religious sects, the men of the eighteenth century yearned for things which could not be had under the reign of the saints — for a social order in which would rule common - sense, good breeding, conversational charm, culture, and the pursuit of truth by secular methods. Out of the eighteenth -century temperament developed slowly but surely the idea that truth for human guidance could be secured by other than supernatural methods. Reason rather than revelation was the watchword. Thus, side by side with Protestantism grew up a great rival, which we may call Natural- 227 Books to Read and How to Read them ism, which carried the principle of liberty of thought farther than Protestantism did, even to the extent of rejection of the spiritual authority upon which Protestantism rested. Then again the same principle of individual- ism which broke up the feudal despotism was being invoked to break up the monarchical regime^ which was fast becoming a despotism too grevious, especially in France, to be borne. Naturalism was not long in developing into a life -system, and becoming a formidable rival to Protestantism. In England the transition was gradual. Locke was not anti- Protestant, but he sowed the seeds of a political philosophy, the harvest of which was reaped in France. The political econo- mists of the eighteenth century were not markedly anti-Protestant, but they theorised upon life in a spirit of sheer naturalism, ignoring entirely supernatural ideals. Locke, on the philosophical side, meant to help the cause of Protestantism, but his crusade against innate ideas played into the hands of the anti- Christian thinkers of France. If we turn to the general literature and poetry of the eighteenth century, we note a great 228 Currents in Modern Civilisation decline and fall from the fervid Protestant- ism of the previous century. In eighteenth century politics, economics, philosophy, science, and literature were germinal ideas, which were antagonistic to supernaturalism in re- ligion and to the phase of supernaturalism in politics known as the divine right of kings — ideas which only needed to be passionately adopted by a logical people and woven into a life-system, a creed, in order to bring about a revolution of the most far-reaching kind. The French Revolution drew its inspira- tion largely from English sources. What was the dominant note of English literature in the eighteenth century ? Was it not the all-sufficiency of man apart from supernatural aid? God was thought of as a monarch who had given the charge of the Universe into the hands of Second Causes — a monarch who reigned but did not govern. Man was endowed with reason, by the unaided light of which humanity was able to proceed on the pathway of perfectability. External nature, too, was viewed in a mechanical way. Thus, wherever we look, whether in the science, the philosophy, the religion, the 229 Books to Read and How to Read them poetry, the general literature of the eight- eenth century, we are struck with the same phenomena — the aloofness of Deity, a me- chanical view of the Universe, and the self-sufficiency and self-complacency of man. In the writings of Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and the other members of the band of Scottish Humanists, as in the works of the English Deists and in the poetry of Pope, we are confronted with the same life- system — developed with great thoroughness by David Hume — only requiring to be logically applied by French thinkers to issue in full- blown Materialism. The French Revolution will always remain a conspicuous landmark in modern history. To it the student must turn if he would have a comprehensive grasp of nineteenth-century thought in all its bearings. The French Revolution was not only a great political and social upheaval, — it was fundamentally the application to modern conditions of a new conception of man and his relation to God and the universe. The transition from the Deis tic to the Material- istic conception of life was made uncon- sciously by Voltaire and Rousseau. They 230 Currents in Modern Civilisation were Deists, but in the hands of the extrem- ists Deism was swallowed up in Materialism. In Holbach's ' System of Nature ' we have the materialistic conception of life worked out logically with an all-embracing cosmo- logical, anthropological, and sociological creed. In the famous 'Encyclopedia of Science,' Diderot and his colleagues confronted the Protestant theory of life at all points. For God they substituted Nature. For this the English Deists had paved the way by leav- ing God with nothing to do. He reigned but did not govern. Why, then, said the Materialists, not abolish the supernatural figurehead altogether? Nature was viewed not as a divine creation, but as a piece of mechanism ; man, not as a special creation, but as the product of molecular forces ; mind, not as a manifestation within limits of the Infinite, but as a development from animal sensations and instincts ; morality, as embodied in conscience, not as the voice of God within the soul, but as a social expedient based on self-interest ; religion, not as the connecting-link between the divine and the human, but as a product of super- 231 Books to Read and How to Read them stition and emotional hallucination ; and government, not as a necessary condition of an imperfect humanity, but as an ingenious device of despotic kings and designing priests to keep the people in political and intellectual slavery. Thus did Naturalism challenge Protestantism, or to be more cor- rect, Supernaturalism, for the guidance of the world. The French Revolution, in the eyes of mankind, seemed to be the outcome of the new theory of life, and in the carnival of diabolism Naturalism fell into dis- credit. Reaction followed with great swift- ness. Out of the reaction developed several attempts to formulate new conceptions of life — attempts which in all spheres of thought powerfully affected, and still affect, the main current of modern civilisation. The literature dealing with the period is voluminous. Ordinary histories are not of much value to the reader who desires to follow the course of intellectual evolution. In ordinary histories he will find events 232 I UNIVERSITY B Currents in Modern Civilisation dealt with chronologically, but without the interpreting key. Mere record of events does not satisfy the craving for causes. The student would do well to read and re-read Leslie Stephen's ' History of Thought in the Eighteenth Century.' In that great work the reader has put into his hands the threads of the various influences which make up the tangled skein of modern life and thought. Taine's ' History of English Liter- ature' is a vigorous and suggestive survey of the periods treated of, and contains many luminous hints. Buckle, of course, is always informing and inspiring. His bold views and large generalisations are most helpful to the student. No reader will understand the French Revolution in its fundamental aspects who does not digest the writings of Mr John Morley. With the touch of a philosophic historian, fully equipped on the critical and expository side, Mr Morley makes the revolutionary period, in its many-sided manifestations, start into coherent life. The student who would get to the root of the Revolution must take Mr Morley as his 233 Books to Read and How to Read thern guide. For the political and economic side detailed treatment is to be found in the works of De Tocqueville and Taine. Having mastered the books named, the student will be in a position to pursue his studies of the B/evolution in all directions. 234 Currents of Modern Thought CHAPTER XXII. CURRENTS OF MODERN THOUGHT. In the previous chapter it was stated that Naturalism, or, as it has been called, Mate- rialism, the life -system of the eighteenth century, was brought into discredit by the French Revolution. As George Henry Lewes puts it : " The reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth century was less a reaction against a doctrine proved to be incompetent than against a doctrine believed to be a source of frightful immorality. The reaction was vigorous, because it was animated by the horror which agitated Europe at the excesses of the French Revolution. As- sociated in men's minds with the saturnalia of the Terror, the philosophical opinions of Condorcet, Diderot, and Cabanis were held responsible for the crimes of the Convention, 235 Books to Read and How to Read them and what might be true in those opinions was flung aside with what was false without discrimination, without analysis, in fierce, impetuous disgust. Every opinion which had what was called a taint of Materialism, or seemed to point in that direction, was de- nounced as an opinion necessarily leading to the destruction of all religion, morality, and government." Naturally thinkers looked around for a set of first principles which would give repose to the mind of man, and at the same time give stability to the social system. In politics, the writings of Burke, who, with prophetic eye, saw the harvest which was bound to grow out of the intel- lectual seed so energetically sown by the Materialists, came to the front. In this country Burke's writings did much to create and sustain the Conservative re- action against the Revolution. In France arose systems of thought whose first prin- ciples were directed against the life-system of Naturalism. Against that system the Roman Catholic section, headed by De Maistre ; the Royalists, inspired by Chateau- briand; and the Metaphysicians, stimulated 236 Currents of Modern Thought by the Eclectic School of Cousin, united their forces. The Eclectic School was short- lived. Its life-system was a patch-work. Germany supplied a really coherent system of thought by which to confront Materialism. We find Goethe from the poetic side giving voice to the German reaction. Writing of the system of Holbach, he said : *' The Mate- rialist theory which reduces all things to matter and motion appeared to me so grey, so Cimmerian, and so dead, that we shuddered at it as a ghost." The Germans — Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel — endeavoured to lift the human mind out of the material- istic slough of despond by constructing a life-system from the spiritual instead of the material side. They attacked Materialism in the citadel. Instead of making Matter they made Spirit the ultimate fact. They inter- preted Spirit not in the deistic but in the pantheistic sense. The Germans substituted for Materialism Transcendentalism, with a cosmology and psychology of its own. The Transcendentalists brought order out of con- fusion by erecting upon the ruins of Mate- rialism a system of thought which embraced 237 Books to Read and How to Read them the three great determining factors — God, the Universe, and Man. The interpreters of the German reaction in this country were Coleridge and Carlyle, whose writings can only be understood when viewed as part and parcel of the great re- action against the doctrines of the Revolution. In one of his essays John Stuart Mill in a nutshell puts the whole matter. " The German -Coleridgian doctrine expresses the revolt of the human mind against the phil- osophy of the eighteenth century. It is ontological because that was experimental, conservative because that was innovative, religious because that was abstract and metaphysical, poetic because that was matter- of-fact and prosaic." In the writings of Wordsworth, Southey, and the Lake school generally, we can distinctly trace the effects of the Revolution. In Scotland the reaction was also felt, and expressed itself in the decline of the Moderate and the rise of the Evangelical school ; and in philosophy we can trace the influence of the Revolution in the writings of Sir William Hamilton, with his distinctly anti-materialistic bias. Out of 238 Currents of Modern Thought the Revolution grew in Germany the phil- osophy of the Absolute, with its tendency to absolutism in politics, as opposed to what was supposed to be the anarchy of democracy. Out of the Revolution grew, too, in Germany, the poetry of Romanticism, with its glorifica- tion of the past — a kind of poetry which greatly affected Scott, and potently influ- enced Scotland through his immortal novels. Thus in religion, in philosophy, in poetry, and in politics — in fact, through the entire mental and social activity of Europe — the influence of the French Revolution, with the life-system from which it drew its inspiration, made itself felt. But the materialistic school was crushed, not killed. With the peace of 1815 the old despotism, against which the Revolution was directed, reappeared under the form of the Holy Alliance. Under the evils of present despotism the people forgot the evils of past anarchy. Ideas, religious and philosophic, and political institutions, resting upon the principle of authority, which immediately after the Revolution were looked upon as houses of refuge from the great storm, were by the Holy Alliance used as 239 Books to Read and How to Read them prisons for the free spirit of man. Religion, in the form of Established Churches, was seen in alliance with political despotism ; philosophy, as was witnessed in the case of Hegel, made the State omnipotent at the expense of the individual ; and even poetry, as in the case of some representatives of the Lake school, was used in the interests of unreasoning authority. By way of reaction against the new des- potism there sprang into vitality the old revolutionary spirit represented in religion by sceptics of the aggressive type of the Paine school, and of the avowed though non- aggressive type of the Benthamites. In politics there emerged Bentham and his followers, with their utilitarian theory of man and society. The new movement in the sphere of pure philosophy was incarnated in the two Mills, father and son, and in poetry the spirit of revolt found represen- tatives in Byron and Shelley. The phil- osopher of the new epoch was John Stuart Mill. With a keen feeling for completeness, he set himself to formulate a theory of man, of mind, of society, — in short, to give the 240 Currents of Modern Thought old Kevolution doctrines a deeper interpre- tation and a new setting. His works in spirit breathe the life -system of the old Naturalism, which he purified of its intel- lectual superficiality and political fanaticism. Meanwhile a new factor appeared upon the scene, a factor destined to modify in all directions the entire system of nineteenth- century thought — namely, the theory of Evolution, associated with the names of Darwin and Spencer. It was inevitable that the ideas associated with the new theory of man's origin should react upon the old theories of man identified with theology and philosophy. The effect of Evolution in the first instance was to give strong support to the Naturalistic conception of life. Various attempts from the religious side were made to deal with it, extending from the Broad Church method of making concessions to the Roman Catholic and ultra - Protestant method of denunciation. In philosophy Evolution greatly modified the Utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, while by way of reaction it called into activity the German school, who Qi^ce more came to the front and attempted 2.41 <\ Books to Read and How to Read them to do for the end what they had done for the beginning of the nineteenth century — champion beUef in the spiritual side of humanity. In this direction also worked the late Dr Martineau, whose writings will ever remain a tribute to the English school of philosophy. It is not necessary to dwell upon science and philosophy, as previous chapters deal at great length with these topics. Suffice it to indicate briefly the effect of the doctrine of Evolution on modern literature. The watchwords of the scientific movement were cosmic emotion, awakened by what Carlyle calls the Immensities and Eternities revealed by science ; heredity and environ- ment, linking the individual with the race, the present with the past ; the reign of law and belief in the gradual improvement of mankind. In Shelley and Byron we can trace the beginnings of the influence of science upon poetry. In Tennyson and Browning the influence is marked, and in America we note the same influence in Emerson and Whitman. The novels of George Eliot are saturated with the evolu- 242 Currents of Modern Thought tion philosophy. In her works the basis of tragedy is the egoistic pursuit of happiness in conflict with the great social laws of life, the incompatibility of temperament with environment, and the fateful influence of heredity. In Browning, too, we find the scientific spirit, but in both Browning and Tennyson we are conscious of a revolt against the materialistic tendency of science — a revolt which is in progress also in the higher spheres of philosophy. The tendency of to-day among all classes of thinkers, theologians, philosophers, and poets, is towards a spiritual interpretation of evolution, a deeper reading of the cosmi- cal process, which by scientific extremists was treated as synonymous with Material- ism. Meanwhile, modern thought in all spheres is in a state of chaos. We want a theory, a life-sysl m, which shall gather up into a full -orbed whole the disconnected truths of religion, philosophy, science, ethics, poetry, and art. Protestantism, if it is to recover its lost supremacy, must do for the modern epoch what Roman Catholicism did for the mediaeval — gather up and present to 243 Books to Read and How to Read them the world a system of belief which shall find room for all phases of human development, a life -system which shall abolish the old dualism of sacred and secular, and treat all truths as aspects of the one great revelation of the Infinite through nature, man, history, and society. Truths, wherever discovered, must be treated as divine, whether in theology, philosophy, science, or in the writ- ings of dramatists and novelists. The dis- tinction between sacred truths and secular truths must be abolished by any religious theory which hopes to interpret to the modern mind the three great problems — God, the Universe, and Man. The term revelation must no longer be restricted to the idea of God ; it must be stretched so as to include the Universe and Man. Theology and philosophy deal with the revelation of God; science deals with the revelation of the Universe ; and literature, including psy- chology, history, sociology, literature, poetry, and fiction, deal with the revelation of Man. In this way culture and religion, long divorced, will be reunited. That this view is at last being grasped by thoughtful theo- 244 Currents of Modern Thought logians is plain from the address delivered recently by the Rev. H. Van Dyke, Professor of Literature at Princeton University. In the words of Professor Dyke : " It is not necessary to name God in order to revere and obey Him. I find the same truth to life in * King Lear ' as in the drama of Job, and the same sublime, patient faith, though the one ends happily and the other sadly. The Book of Ruth is no more and no less Christian, to my mind, than Tennysons *Dora.' There is the same religion in the 'Heart of Mid -Lothian' as in the Book of Esther. The parable of the Rich Man lives again in 'Romola.' In *Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' St Paul's text, 'The flesh lusteth against the Spirit,' is burned deep into the heart. I read in Shakespeare the majesty of the moral law, in Victor Hugo the sacred- ness of childhood, in Goethe the glory of renunciation, in Wordsworth the joy of humility, in Tennyson the triumph of im- mortal love, in Browning the courage of faith in God, in Thackeray the ugliness of hypocrisy and the beauty of forgiveness, in George Eliot the supremacy of duty, in 245 Books to Read and How to Read them Dickens the divinity of kindness, and in Ruskin the dignity of service. Irving teaches me the lesson of simple-hearted cheerfulness, Hawthorne shows me the hatefulness of sin and the power of penitence, Longfellow gives me the soft music of tranquil hope and earnest endeavour, Lowell makes me feel that we must give ourselves to our fellow- men if we would bless them, and Whittier sings to me of human brotherhood and Divine Fatherhood. Are not these Christian lessons ? Name half a dozen of the great English novels at random — ' Henry Esmond,' ' David Copper- field,' * The Cloister and the Hearth,' ' Lorna Doone,' *Romola,' 'The Scarlet Letter' — and who shall dare to deny that there is in these books an atmosphere which breathes of the vital truths and the brightest ideals of Christianity ? " Viewed thus, we begin to see the full meaning of the grand utterance of Carlyle : "Hast thou well considered all that lies in this immeasurable froth - ocean we name Literature ? Fragments of a genuine Church- homiletic lie scattered there, which time will assort : nay, fractions even of a liturgy could 246 Currents of Modern Thought I point out. But thou as yet standest in no Temple ; joinest in no Psalm worship ; feelest well that, where there is no ministering Priest, the people perish ? Be of comfort I Thou art not alone, if thou have Faith. Neither say that thou hast now no symbol of the Godlike ; is not Immensity a Temple ; is not Man's History and Men's History a perpetual Evangel ? Listen, and for organ- music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning Stars sing together." 247 INDEX. Abbott, Dr Lyman, 22. Abelard, 29. Absolute, 52. Absolute, philosophy of, 239. Adonis, Venus and, 205, ^gean Isles, 147. ^schylus, 14, 15, 145, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165. Agnostic, 52. Agnosticism, 56. Alexander, 192. America, 242. Anaximander, 169. Archaeologists, 24. Ariosto, 204. Aristotle, 29, 30, 40, 90, 145, 149, 169, 170, 201, 203. Arnold, Matthew, 162. Assyria, 25, 143. Assyrians, 142. Athens, 12, 161. Augustine, 7. Aurelius, Marcus, 170. Babylon, 25. Babylonia, 143. Babylonians, 142. Bacon, 13, 32. Ball, Sir Robert, 79, 80, 87. Belopolsky, 83. Bentham, 241. Benthamites, 240. Berkeley, 45. Book of Job, 14, 245. Book of Leviticus, 185. Book of Ruth, 245. Brahe, Tycho, 204. Bret Harte, 139. Broad Church, 241. BroM^ning, 242, 243, 245. Bruno, 30, 32. Bunyan, 71. Burke, 236. Bushnell, Horace, 191. Butcher, Professor, 149, 152. Butler, 19. Byron, 240, 242. Cabanis, 235. Cairds, the two, 55. Calvin and Calvinism, 7, 197, 218, 219, 220, 221. Campbell (astronomer), 83. Carlyle, 38, 117, 238, 242, 246. Cartesian theory, 43. Celoria, 69. Chaeronea, 152. Chalmers, 19. Chateaubriand, 236. Cheyne, Dr, 23. Christianity, various. Chrysostom, Saint, 118. Churches, Established, 240. Cities, free, 214, 215, 216. Clerke, Miss Agnes, 84. CliflFord, automatic theory of, 114. * Cloister and the Hearth,' 246. Coleridge, 238. Comte, 4, 28, 33, 34, 64, 65. 34$ Index Condorcet, 235. Constantinople, 202. Convention, the, 235. Copernican theory, 30, 91. Copernicus, 204. Cousin, 237. Couvier, 104. Covenanting in Scotland, 226. Criticism, Higher, 11, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 183, 186, 187. Critics, Higher, 9. Crozier, Dr Beattie, 173. Cunningham, 19. Darwin, G. H., 87. Darwin and Darwinism, 101, 102, 103, 105, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 120, 121, 123, 126, 127, 241. ♦ David Copperfield,' 246. De Maistre, 236. Deists and Deism, 231. Descartes, 33, 34, 40, 41, 44, 46. Dickens, 246. Diderot, 231. Driver, Dr, 22. Dunati, 83. Dun^r, 83, 85. Eastern empires, 136. *Ecce Homo,' 192. Eclectic school, 237. Economy, political, 224. Egypt, 25, 143, 149. Egyptians, 142. Eliot, George, 242, 245. Emerson, 72, 242. Empedocles, 169. ♦ Encyclopaedia Biblica,' 23. England, 25, 56, 215, 226, 228. English school of philosophy, 240. Epicureans, 171, 205. Epistemology, 35. Erasmus, 196, 206. ' Esmond ' (Thackeray's), 246. Euripides, 146, 164. Europe, 195, 220, 235, 239. Evangelical school, 238. Evolution, 91, 241. Exile, the, 185. Experientialist, the, 41. Fairbairn, Dr, 220. Faye, 79. Fechner, 56, 114. Ferguson, James, 77, 78. Fetishism, 183. Feudalism, 212, 213, 214, 216, 223. Fichte, 237. Fiske, 106. Flammarion, 66, 69, 88. Flemish school of art, 205. Florence, 12. France, 203, 228. Eraser, Professor Campbell, 50, 52. French Revolution, 229, 230, 232, 235, 236, 238, 239, 241. Galileo, 204. Geneva, 221. German - Coleridgian doctrine, 238. German school of philosophy, 241. Germany, 25, 47, 55, 237, 239. Gibbon, 191, 193. Goethe, 98, 103, 104, 140, 206, 237 245. Gore, Mr J. E., 68, 84, 86. Gore's 'Visible Universe,' 69. Greece and the Greeks, 15, 138, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 155, 156, 157, 164, 165, 168, 169, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 190, 202, 203. Greek art, 158, 159. Greek books, 12. Greek civilisation, 149. Greek dramatists, 14, 158, 164. Greek genius, 165. Greek history, 139. Greek literature, 162, 168. Greek mind, 147, 149, 168, Greek poets, 181.. 249 Index Greek religion, 145, 146, 159. Greek thinkers, 151, 163, 181, 184. Green, Professor, 55. Grove, Mr, 93. Guieciardini, 204. Haldane, Mr R. B., 55. Hamilton, Sir William, 56, 238. 'Hamilton's Philosophy, Exam- ination of (J. S. Mill), 57. Hawthorne, 246. ' Heart of Mid-Lothian,' 245. Hebrew literature, 19, 22, 157, 182, 185. Hebrew prophets, 23, 160, 186. Hebrews, 10, 11, 15, 16, 19, 22, 149, 156, 157, 177, 182, 183, 184, 190. Hegel, 7, 17, 54, 55, 103, 237, 240. Hegelian system, 52, 55. Hellas, 161. Helleudom, 148. Helmholtz, 93, 94. Henry VIII., 217. Heraclitus, 169. Heroes of Israel, 10. Heroes of Scottish Reformation, 10. Herschel, 68, 81, 82, 85. Hesiod, 159. Highlanders, Scottish, 150. Hilaire, Saint, 104. Hipparchus, 204. ' History of Israel,' 20. Hobbes, 33, 41, 42, 126. Hodges (father and sou), 19. Hotfding, 113, 114. Holbach's 'System of Nature,' 231, 237. Holland, 216. Holy Alliance, 239. Homer, 14, 144, 155, 156, 158, 159, 165. Homeric deities, 146, 157. Homeric poems, 145, 157, 163. Hommel, 24. Huggins, 82, 83, 85. Hugo, Victor, 245. Humanism, 203. Humanist movement, 205, 206, 207, 208, 226, 230. Humanist movement under Hutcheson, 226, 230. ' Humanity, Religion of,' 6. Hume, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 53, 57, 59, 230. Huxley, 56, 105, 114, 125. Huyghens, 204, Iliad, 158. Intuitionist, the, 41. Irving, Washington, 246. Isaiah, 184. Israel, 10, 151, 156, 185. Israel, early religion of, 23. Italy, 203, 215. 'Jekyll and Hyde,' 245. Jerusalem, 202. Jewish sacrificial system, 187, 188. Jewish society, 12. Jewish Theism, 188, 189. Jews, 151, 186, 189, 202. Job, Book of, 14. Joule (law of evolution), 93. Jove, 161. Judaism, 21, 90, 190, 200. Kant, 38, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 64, 77, 78, 85, 237. Keeler, 83, 85. Kelvin, Lord, 93, 94. Kepler, 134, 204. ' King Lear,' 245. Kropotkin, Prince, 126. Kuenen, 20, 21, 22, 183, 185. Lake school, 238, 240. Lamarck, 105. Laplace, 78, 79, 80, 81, 85. Levitical legislation, 23, 186. Lewes, 235. Ligonde, 79. Locke, 42, 43, 44, 45, 51, 228. Lockj'^er, 83. Longfellow, 246. 'Lorna Doone,' 246, 250 Index Lotze, 56. Lowell (astronomer), 87. Lowell, Russell, 246. Lucretius, 169, 171. Luther, 206, 208, 216, 218. Machiavelli, 204. Mackintosh, Sir James, 42. Martineau, Dr, 128, 242, Materialism, 83, 55, 230, 231, 235, 236, 237, 243. Maunder (astronomer), 83. Mayer, 93. Metaphysicians, 236. Michelet, 220. Middle Ages, 30, 40, 202, 223. Middle Ages, church of, 195, 196, 201. Mill, H. R. ('The Realm of Nature'), 96, 101. Mill, John Stuart, 57, 58, 59, 63, 238, 240. Mills (father and son), 240. Moderate school, 226, 238. Moller, Wilhelm, 25. Monotheism, 181, 182, 183, 185. Montaigne, 205. Motley, 13. Mr Moulton's 'Literary Study of the Bible,' 12, 16. Naturalism, 227, 232, 235, 236, 241. Nemeses, 161. Neo-Platonism, 34. Newcomb, 68, 80. Newton, Sir Isaac, 91, 111, 204. Nineteenth - century thought, 241. Olmsted (astronomer), 82. Orestes, 161. Orthodox criticism, 19. Pagan civilisations, 175. Pagan cults, 186. Pagan ideals, 205, 206. Pagan rites, 187. Pagan superstition, 201. Paganism, 169, 171, 172, 174, 179, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 193, 194, 195, 200, 201, 202, 207. Paine school, 240. Paley, 19. Pantheism, 46. Paul, Saint, 7. Peck, Mr ('Constellations'), 70. Phidias, 158. Pickering, Professor, 83, 85. Pindar, 160. Plato, 7, 30, 34, 89, 145, 169, 170, 184, 194. Polytheism, 173, 181, 183. Pringle - Pattison, Professor, ('Scottish Philosophy'), 51, 52. Protestantism, 209, 218, 219, 221, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 232, 243. Psychology, 35. Puritanism, 221, 226. Pythagoras, 169. Reformation, 18, 202, 209, 213, 215, 216, 217, 218, 225. Reformation heroes, 10, 219. Reid (philosopher), 50, 51, 52, 57. Renaissance, 197, 202, 205, 213, 221. Renaissance, French, 205. Renan, 189, 191. Robertson, J. M. ('Introduction to English Politics '), 147. Robertson, Professor, 24. Roman Catholicism, 30, 196, 200, 201, 203, 204, 206, 207, 213, 216, 218, 220, 221, 223, 224, 225, 243. Roman Empire, 192, 212. Roman poets, 14. Roman thinkers and poets, 171. Romans, 173. Romanticism, 239. Rome, 151, 169, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 183, 184, 190, 203, 215. ' Romola,' 245, 246. Rousseau, 230, 251 Index Royalists, French, 236. Ruskin, 246. Sappho, 15. Sayce, 24. • Scarlet Letter, The, ' 246. Scepticism, 207. Scheiner (astronomer), 83, 85. Schelling, 103, 237. Schiaparelli (astronomer), 87. Scholastic philosophy, 33, 34. Schwann, 104. Scotland, 47, 56, 215, 226, 238, 239. Scott, 239. Secchi (astronomer), 82, 83. See (astronomer), 87. Seeley, Professor, 6, 175, 224. Seeliger (astronomer), 69. Shakespeare, 13, 227, 245. Shelley, 240, 242. Smith, Adam, 22, 224, 230. Smith, Professor Robertson, 20, 21. Socrates, 39, 170. Sophists, the, 171. Sophocles, 14, 159, 160, 162. Southey, 238. Spain, 215. Spencer, Herbert, 5, 7, 31, 56, 57, 58, 59, 92, 93, 102, 103, 105, 106, 113, 116, 241. Spinoza, 31, 41, 43, 46. Strauss, 191. Supernaturalism, 232. Switzerland, 216. Tasso 204. Tennyson, 242, 243, 245. Terror, the French, 235. Thackeray, 245. Thalcs, 169. Theism of the Jews, 188, 189. Titian, 205. Transcendentalism, 237. Troy, 157, 159. Tyndall, Professor, 56, 93, 105, 113, 114. Urquhart, Rev. John, 25. Utilitarianism, 241. Van Dyke, Rev. 245. Verum Dei, 220. 'Visible Universe,' Mr Gore's, 69. Vogel (astronomer), 84, 85, 86. Voltaire, 230. Von Baer, 105. « Wealth of Nations,' 22. 224, 225. Wellhausen, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 183. Whitman, Walt, 242. Whittier, 246. Wolf, Max (astronomer), 84. Wolff, 105. Wordsworth, 13, 181, 238, 245. Wundt, 56, 114. Wycliff, 215, 216. Zeus, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164. Zollner (astronomer), 83. V -^^AR^ THE UNIVERSITY OF PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONa Catalogue of Messrs Blackwood & Sons' Publications PERIODS OF EUROPEAN LITERATURE: A Complete and Continuous History op the Subject. Edited by Pbofkssor SAINTS- BURY. In 12 crown 8vo vols., each 5s. net. I. THE DARK AGES. By Professor W. P. Ker. II. THE FLOURISHING OP ROMANCE AND THE RISE OP ALLEGORY. (12th and 13th Centuries.) By GEORGE SAINTS- BURY, M.A., Hon. 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