UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 THOMPSON, Joseph Parrish, scholar, b. in 
 Philadelphia, Pa., 7 Aug., 1819; d. in Berlin, 
 Germany, 20 Sept., 1879. He was graduated at 
 Yale in 1838, studied theology for a few months in 
 Andover seminary, and then at Yale from 1839 till 
 1840, when he was ordained as a Congregational 
 minister. He was pastor of the Chapel street 
 church in New Haven from that time till 1845, 
 and during this period was one of the founders of 
 the " New Englander." From 1845 till his resig- 
 nation in 1871 he had charge of the Broadway 
 tabernacle in New York city. Dr. Thompson de- 
 I voted much time to the study of Egyptology, in 
 | "which he attained high rank. In 1852-'3 he visited 
 Palestine, Egypt, and other eastern countries, and 
 from that time he published continual contribu- 
 tions to this branch of learning in periodicals, the 
 transactions of societies, and cyclopaedias. He 
 lectured on Egyptology in Andover seminary in 
 1871, and in 1872=!H_*>ide,d in Berlin, Germany, 
 occupied in oriental studies, took an active part in 
 the social, political, and scientific discussions, and 
 was a member of various foreign societies, before 
 which he delivered addresses, and contributed es- 
 says to their publications. These have been issued 
 under the title of " American-Coinmejits on Euro- 
 pean Questions" (New York, 1884). In 1875 Dr. 
 Thompson went to England to explain at public 
 meetings "the attitude of Germauy in-cegard to 
 Ultrarnontanism," for which service he was re- 
 warded by the thanks of thejifijmjan_government, 
 expressed in person by Prince Bismarck, and Dr. 
 Thompson originated the plan of the Albany Con- 
 gregationalist convention in 1852, and was a mana- 
 ger of the American Congregational union and the 
 American home missionary society. He also aided 
 in establishing the New York ^Independent." 
 Harvard gave him the degree of DTD? in 1856, 
 and the University of New York that of LL. D. 
 in 1868. He published " Memoir of Timothy 
 Dwight " (New Haven, 1844) ; " Lectures to Young 
 Men " (New York, 1846) : " Hints to Employers " 
 (1847) ; " Memoir of David Hale " (1850) ; " Foster 
 on Missions, with a Preliminary Essay" (1850); 
 " Stray Meditations " (1852 ; revised ed., entitled 
 " The Believer's Refuge," 1857) ; "The Invaluable 
 Possession " (1856) ; " Egypt, Past and Present " 
 -(Boston, 1856): "The Early Witnesses" (1857); 
 " Memoir of Rev. David T. Stoddard " (New York, 
 1858) ; " The Christian Graces " (1859) ; " The Col- 
 lege as a Religious Institution " (1859) ; " Love 
 ^nd Penalty" (1860); "Bryant Gray" (1863); 
 " Christianity and Emancipation " (1863) ; " The 
 Holy Comforter" (1866); "Man in Genesis and 
 Geology" (1869); "Theology of Christ, from His 
 Own Words" (1870); "Home Worship" (1871); 
 " Church and State in the United States " (1874) ; 
 " Jesus of Nazareth : His Life, for the Young " 
 (1875) ; " The UnitedJatates^a^ a Nation," ' lectures 
 (1877); and "The Workman: his False Friends
 
 From 
 
 MRS. .1. P. THOMPSON, 
 
 55 Hillhouse Avenue, 
 
 3{F.W H/1YHN, CONN.
 
 AMERICAN COMMENTS ON EUROPEAN 
 
 QUESTIONS, INTERNATIONAL 
 
 AND RELIGIOUS 
 
 JOSEPH P. THOMPSON 
 
 FORMERLY OF NEW YORK, AND AFTERWARD OF BERLIN 
 
 BOSTON 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street 
 
 (2T&e Rtoerg'ite $re?& Camfcritijje 
 
 1884
 
 Copyright, 1SS4, 
 Br MM. E. 0. TIIOMPSOX. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 Tu Kiffrslrlf Prttt, 
 Elctrotypl and rrinted by II 0. Houghton & Co.
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE. 
 
 , 
 
 THE author of the Essays here brought together re- 
 sided in Berlin from the time when his health broke 
 ^down in 1871 until his death in 1879. In leaving New 
 York he had expected to lead the life of a scholar, and to 
 2 prosecute the study of Egyptian antiquities in their rela- 
 * tion to the Bible, amid all the advantages which are of- 
 o= fered in the libraries, museums, and lecture-rooms of the 
 
 eg German capital. But his dominant interest in civil and 
 
 religious liberty, and in all social movements which in- 
 \i volved the discussion of fundamental principles, forbade 
 *r> him to be a recluse ; and he responded, notwithstand- 
 g ing the prolonged physical sufferings by which he was 
 
 hindered, to frequent calls for speeches and essays in 
 
 , different countries where exciting questions were under 
 
 <> discussion, and where he believed that the voice of an 
 
 M> 
 
 American familiar with European affairs might help on 
 -* the deliberations of the friends of human progress. 
 Many of his addresses were widely distributed in differ- 
 ent languages. Some of them have permanent value. 
 In this belief, they are offered to those who love and 
 honor the name of a fearless, eloquent, and enlightened 
 
 453361
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 advocate of Christian liberty in Church and State. In 
 addition to the addresses several essays are here given, 
 in which the author shoves his high estimate of scientific 
 researches, while he steadily upholds the doctrines of 
 the Christian faith.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL . . 1 
 
 II. PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY 33 
 
 III. THE ARMAMENT OF GERMANY 92 
 
 IV. THE INTERCOURSE OF CHRISTIAN WITH NON-CHRISTIAN 
 
 PEOPLES 104 
 
 V. CONCERNING TREATIES AS MATTER OF THE LAW OF NA- 
 TIONS 132 
 
 VI. ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 151 
 
 VII. THE RIGHT OF WAR INDEMNITY 168 
 
 VIII. SHALL ENGLAND SIDE WITH RUSSIA? .... 175 
 
 IX. WHAT is SCIENCE ? 186 
 
 X. WHAT is RELIGION? 219 
 
 XL CHRIST, THE CHURCH, AND THE CREED .... 247 
 
 XII. LUCRETIUS OR PAUL 257 
 
 XIII. FINAL CAUSE; A CRITIQUE OF THE FAILURE OF PALEY 
 
 AND THE FALLACY OF HUME 300 
 
 INDEX . 331
 
 COMMENTS OF AN AMERICAN ON EURO- 
 PEAN QUESTIONS. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 1 
 
 (From the Princeton Review, May, 1878.) 
 
 THE stirring events at Rome and Constantinople in 
 the opening of the current year set loose again the 
 tongues of the Gumming school of prophets, which had 
 been silent since 1871, and the "times" of Daniel, the 
 seals, trumpets, and vials of the Apocalypse, the beast 
 and the false prophet, the dragon and the scarlet woman, 
 Babylon and Armageddon, the mystic 666, were for the 
 hundredth time paraded as witnesses for the imminent 
 destruction of the world by the second advent of Christ. 
 And, indeed, never before in our time had Christ's 
 warning of the coming judgment such pregnant signs 
 as in these days of widespread commercial depression 
 and bankruptcy, of war, tumult, and suspicion ; " wars 
 and commotions, nation against nation, kingdom against 
 kingdom, distress of Cations with perplexity, the sea and 
 the waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for fear 
 and for looking after those things which are coming on 
 the earth." But the Europe which has survived all the 
 
 1 Throughout this article, the term Europe is used exclusively for 
 the European continent; Great Britain, with its insular poeition and 
 distinctive civilization, being left out of account.
 
 2 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 political commotions consequent upon the French Revo- 
 lution, and all the fortunes of war from Austerlitz and 
 Jena to Waterloo and Sedan in the west, and from Silis- 
 tria to Sebastopol and to Plevna in the east, and that 
 has twice survived the humiliation of the papacy, in 
 the enforced captivity of Pius VII., and the fictitious 
 captivity of Pius IX., is not easily to be shaken by 
 forebodings of destruction to religion or the state. Events 
 which have stirred the enthusiasm of prophecy call rather 
 for the sober judgment of philosophy. 
 
 Through all the changes of governments, nations, dy- 
 nasties, institutions, powers, which this eventful century 
 has brought to pass in Europe, two factors have remained 
 constant, the Church and Civil Society. The relations 
 of these to each other ; their several gains, losses, modifi- 
 cations, conflicts ; their mutual influences, perils, tenden- 
 cies, hopes ; and the general drift of Europe, Christian 
 and social are matter of profound philosophic thought, 
 as affecting the future of mankind. Setting aside theo- 
 ries and prejudices, we shall find that convulsions which 
 to the prophetic pessimist had threatened the dissolution 
 of European society, and the end, not only of " Anti- 
 christ," but of the Christian dispensation itself, were but 
 the throwing down of the scaffolding behind which 
 Providence had been shaping a new moral and social 
 order. A study of what has fallen and of what has 
 arisen in the place of this, will be a surer guide to the 
 future of society and religion in Europe than any inter- 
 pretation of Biblical prophecies that lacks their inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 To the philosophic observer the most telling evidence 
 of the advance of Europe in the past fifty years is given 
 in the disappearance of absolutism and the rise of consti- 
 tutional governments, with a popular element more or 
 leas pronounced. Absolutism has vanished from the
 
 RISE OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 3 
 
 map of Europe, with the exception of Russia, which re- 
 mains more Asiastic than European. In the Congress of 
 Vienna (1815), which attempted to adjust the map of 
 Europe to the " balance of power," Great Britain was 
 the only one of the great powers which could with any 
 propriety be said to give the people a voice in the gov- 
 ernment ; and even in Great Britain, at that period, 
 popular representation in parliament was very limited. 
 Austria, Prussia, and Russia were absolute governments. 
 France had indeed the form of a constitution as with 
 various fluctuations she had had since 1791. l But the 
 term " constitution," as used on the continent of Europe 
 during the reaction which followed the Napoleonic wars, 
 should not be taken as synonymous with an active repre- 
 sentative government of the people. On the 4th June, 
 1814, Louis XVIII. had promulgated his Charte Consti- 
 tutionelle ; but this constitution, by the restrictions upon 
 suffrage, conceded the franchise to only 80,000 in a popu- 
 lation of 30,000,000 ; and these could vote only for elec- 
 toral colleges which chose the deputies to the Chamber ; 
 and the presidents of these colleges were appointed by 
 the king. The peers and the judges were created by the 
 king, and could be removed only by his will. In the 
 short interval before the return of Napoleon from Elba, 
 the king had already shown himself as absolute a Bour- 
 bon as if no charter had existed. 
 
 Of the three smaller powers represented in the Con- 
 gress of Vienna, Sweden had had a diet since 1809; but 
 the government was largely vested in the king and the 
 council of state. In Spain the Cortes had proclaimed a 
 liberal constitution in March, 1812. But almost the 
 
 1 See the Constitutions of 14th September, 1791, 24th June, 1793, 
 22d August, 1795, 13th December, 1799, and the Senatus-consulte of 
 the 18th May, 1804. Prussia received a constitution in January, 
 1850; Austria, her "Fundamental Law" in December, 1867.
 
 4 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 first act of Ferdinand VII., in resuming the throne, was 
 to promulgate a decree (May 4, 1814) abolishing the 
 Cortes and all their acts ; and soon after the constitution 
 was publicly burned. Portugal, the eighth of the powers 
 which sat at Vienna as 'the arbiters of Europe, did not 
 have the form of a constitution till 1826. 
 
 Among the continental powers in that memorable 
 Congress of 1815 which marks the beginning of the 
 European cycle now just closed the secondary power 
 of Sweden was the only one which had a constitutional 
 government representing the interests of the people. In 
 the proposed congress at Berlin in 1878, for the readjust- 
 ment of the Eastern Question, every power to be repre- 
 sented, Turkey included, is a constitutional government, 
 with the solitary exception of Russia. In that fact lies 
 the political progress of Europe from Waterloo to Plevna. 
 That one fact chronicles the revolutions of France from 
 kingdom to kingdom, to republic, to empire, to commune, 
 to republic ; the vicissitudes of Spain under dynasties, 
 domestic and foreign, republican manifestoes and civil 
 war ; the emancipation of Italy, and her unification in 
 Rome through the overthrow of the temporal power of 
 the Pope ; the insurrections of 1848 in Germany ; the 
 abortive insurrection of Hungary ; and the subsequent 
 humiliation of Austria, and her reconstruction after Ko- 
 niggriitz. That fact is the biography of Stein, of Thiers, 
 of Prim, of Cavour, of Deak, of Bismarck. Much more is 
 it the chronicle of Mazzini and Kossuth, of Victor Hugo 
 and Karl Blind, and of the thousands of nameless pa- 
 triots who, in the struggle for popular freedom, suffered 
 in the dungeons of Florence, Rome, Naples, Venice, and 
 the fortresses of Austria, Germany, and France, or toiled 
 in exile in England and America some of whom are 
 now honored in the parliaments of Versailles, Buda-Pesth, 
 Rome, Berlin, though to most liberty came only with
 
 VANISHING CLAIM OF "DIVINE RIGHT." 5 
 
 death. Forty years ago Silvio Pellico's story of his im- 
 prisonment moved the civilized world to horror of Aus- 
 trian despotism in Lombardy. Even in Spain, so famil- 
 iar with the cruelties of political and clerical absolutism, 
 this refinement of tyranny was spoken of with a shudder. 
 To-day both Italy and Austria are free to develop them- 
 selves under parliamentary institutions, and the name of 
 Silvio Pellico adorns a street in the heart of Milan, 
 adjoining the grand " Gallery of Victor Emmanuel." 
 When in 1815 at Paris the sovereigns of Russia, Prus- 
 sia, and Austria signed that memorable convention, the 
 " Holy Alliance," by which they declared their purpose 
 of governing according to " the sublime truths taught by 
 the eternal religion of the Holy Saviour," they spoke of 
 themselves as " delegated by Providence to govern three 
 branches of the same family, Austria, Prussia, and Rus- 
 sia," and declared that " looking upon themselves, with 
 regard to their subjects and their armies, as fathers of a 
 family, they will govern them in that spirit of brother- 
 hood with which they are animated for the protection of 
 religion, peace, and justice." 
 
 This pompous declamation was put forth after the 
 downfall of the first Napoleon, when " legitimacy " was 
 made the salvation of Europe. Since the overthrow of 
 the third Napoleon there has existed an unwritten com- 
 pact between the Emperors of Russia, Germany, and 
 Austria, providing for- a certain community of interest 
 and of action in the affairs of Europe ; yet not even the 
 Czar of all the Russias would have the audacity to-day 
 to proclaim himself, in the ear of Europe, the vicegerent 
 of Providence for establishing the political and moral 
 order of the continent. It is far more likely that the 
 Czar will be compelled to follow the Sultan in granting 
 parliamentary institutions and political reforms. He is 
 perhaps even more sensitive to the opinions of the press
 
 6 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 and of parties, and more apprehensive of popular demon- 
 strations, than are the sovereigns of constitutional states. 
 Come what may, in the modification of civil society in 
 Europe, personal absolutism is at an end, from the Bay 
 of Biscay to the Sea of Marmora. Hereditary sov- 
 ereigns may cling to the fiction of " divine right," and, 
 like the King of Prussia, may crown themselves in token 
 of a direct commission from heaven ; a usurper may take 
 advantage of some popular commotion to install a des- 
 potism ; but the principle of constitutional government 
 and popular representation are too deeply planted to be 
 displaced by any personal ruler, however cunning or 
 bold. A Louis XIV., a Frederick the Great, a Napo- 
 leon Bonaparte, is no longer a possibility to European 
 society. " L'Etat c'est moi," is as obsolete as the fa- 
 mous bull " Unam sanctam," which declared that " every 
 human creature is subject to the Roman Pope, and that 
 none can be saved who doth not so believe." 
 
 It would be a rash inference from the repudiation of 
 absolutism, that society in Europe is tending to republi- 
 canism. Outside of Switzerland and France there can 
 hardly be said to be in any country of Europe a strong 
 popular movement toward a republic ; and in France it 
 is too soon to determine whether the republic is defin- 
 itively established by the national will, or is a temporary 
 expedient between the rivalries of monarchical and im- 
 perial factions. Hitherto, the experience of republican- 
 ism in France has not been of a character to recommend 
 the republic as a model to other nations of Europe. 
 And, unhappily, the United States have utterly lost in 
 Europe that influence for republican institutions which 
 was so potent in the first half of the century. A costly 
 civil war, heavy taxation, official corruption, high prices, 
 the depression of industry and trade, the strifes of par- 
 ties and classes, and, worst of all, a weakness for evading
 
 VANISHING POWER OF THE PAPACY. 7 
 
 and repudiating debts, have estranged the liberals of Eu- 
 rope from the American republic, and have dispelled the 
 illusion of the common people, that America was the 
 paradise of the workingman. In countries which have 
 already secured general suffrage, a popular legislature, 
 and a responsible ministry, the liberals would have little 
 to gain by substituting for the orderly succession of a 
 constitutional sovereign the quadrennial strife of parties 
 for a change in the executive head of the government. 
 Liberal progress must lie rather in the reform of laws 
 and of local institutions, than in substituting the name of 
 a republic for the reality of a representative government. 
 And as for the masses, who are chiefly concerned about 
 wages and taxes, the social democracy they crave is as 
 far removed from a republic as is republicanism from ab- 
 solutism. The one point made sure, the displacement 
 of absolutism by popular constitutional government, 
 names and forms are of secondary consequence to the 
 future of free institutions in Europe. 
 
 Now that absolutism in the state no longer blocks the 
 stream of progress, the drift of Europe is strongly to- 
 ward the emancipation of civil society from ecclesiasti- 
 cal control. Autocracy had always in the papacy either 
 a jealous rival or a vigorous ally ; and in either case the 
 effect upon popular liberty was the same. If the papacy 
 was jealous of a prince, it was that the Pope coveted a 
 more absolute power over prince and people ; if the pa- 
 pacy upheld a prince, it was that spiritual despotism 
 might be strengthened through political absolutism. An 
 immediate effect of the abolition of the temporal power 
 of the Pope is that the head of the Roman Church no 
 longer takes rank with sovereigns in discussing and de- 
 termining the political affairs of Europe. No Catholic 
 power, even, now thinks of inviting the Pope to send a 
 legate to a conference upon the Eastern Question, nor of
 
 8 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 looking to Rome for advice, much less for authority, 
 upon any question of a political character. 
 
 To an absolute sovereign a strong alliance with the 
 Pope could be worth an array for keeping his people in 
 subjection ; but a constitutional sovereign finds it more 
 important to court the favor of his people, even by for- 
 feiting the good-will of the papacy. This was the hon- 
 est choice of Victor Emmanuel, and the nation ratified 
 it by a homage to his memory never exceeded in the 
 obsequies of a king. Since by the syllabus and the as- 
 sumption of infallibility, Pius IX. set the papacy in an- 
 tagonism to all that distinguishes modern society, there 
 has been a marked disposition, even in Catholic coun- 
 tries, to free political society from ecclesiastical control. 
 This is shown in measures for the suppression or regula- 
 tion of monasteries and ecclesiastical corporations, for 
 withdrawing education from clerical influence, and for 
 bringing the church under allegiance to the state. The 
 Italian clings to the church of his fathers, and would not 
 have this shorn of its glories ; he is proud of the papacy 
 as a symbol of the world-supremacy of Rome ; yet he 
 will suffer no meddling of priests in politics, and no dic- 
 tation from the Vatican to the Quirinal. This curtail- 
 ment of clerical interference in political affairs is not due 
 to any abatement of political pretensions on the part of 
 the Catholic hierarchy. Indeed, the Vatican Council 
 enhanced these pretensions to a degree that necessitated 
 a conflict of sovereignty with every government which 
 would have its own authority respected by its subjects ; 
 and the proclamation of the infallibility of the Pope 
 stripped every official of the church of the last remnant 
 of personal independence, and transformed him into an 
 agent of the papal will for subjecting governments and 
 peoples. To the state, as a " moral person," bound to 
 follow justice and right, a certain ethical guidance from
 
 DECLINE OF PRIVILEGED ORDERS. 9 
 
 the teachers of religion is normal and needful. In times 
 of national peril this influence has been most salutary in 
 the United States ; and there it has almost always been 
 a leading power for freedom, integrity, and humanity. 
 So long as the Roman Catholic Church shall stand, there 
 will be thousands of its adherents in every land who will 
 blindly obey the priest in politics and at the polls. 
 Even in a republic this is one of the perversities of free- 
 dom itself. But clerical control in political affairs is 
 henceforth doomed in Europe by the same causes which 
 have banished absolutism from the state. 
 
 The relative decline of privileged orders and class pre- 
 rogatives in the scale of European society, if less marked, 
 is hardly less significant than the overthrow of absolut- 
 ism and of clerical domination. Princes and preroga- 
 tives still hold their place in books of heraldry and court 
 calendars ; but in critical times it is the word of a minis- 
 ter, the vote of a parliament, the result of an election, * 
 that Europe waits to hear. Peoples are more than 
 princes, parties than potentates. Since the French Rev- 
 olution leveled all social distinctions, the attempt has 
 been made again and again to reinstate in France an 
 aristocracy either of birth as under the monarchy, or of 
 preferment as under the empire ; but, notwithstanding a 
 Frenchman's innate affection for a title or a bit of rib- 
 bon, there is a charm in the motto " Liberty, Equality, 
 Fraternity," which no prerogative can lay. Any aris- 
 tocracy that may be built up in France can be but a 
 children's card-house against the popular institution of 
 the ballot-box. In Germany the cheapness of a " von " 
 has long been matter of ridicule; and the fortunes of 
 war and the creation of the empire have so reduced the 
 number of petty princes, that there are scarcely enough 
 of these remaining to supply royal families with eligible 
 suitors. Two of this class, with little beyond their titles
 
 10 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 to recommend them, were married in February at Ber- 
 lin to princesses of the imperial family. The occasion 
 brought together the aristocracy of Germany ; and the 
 visible splendors of the festival, the popular regard for 
 the emperor and the crown prince, and the amiable qual- 
 ities of the princesses, drew the eyes of the capital and 
 of Germany with a curious sympathy toward this royal 
 spectacle ; yet all the while people were thinking and 
 talking of what Bismarck should say the next day in 
 parliament upon the Eastern Question, in answer to an 
 interpellation by the orator of the people. The princes 
 serve for ornament something to be gazed at ; the 
 parliament is looked to when anything is to be done. 
 
 In the struggle of the sixteenth century with the pa- 
 pacy, Luther looked to princes for countenance and sup- 
 port, and it was the league of princes that at last secured 
 the Reformation to Germany. But in the struggle of 
 to-day with Ultramontanism, the Emperor of Germany 
 has looked not to a confederation of princes against 
 Rome, but to his ministers and to parliament. The 
 scales are turned. Bureaucracy and patronage in Prus- 
 sia are yielding to direct representation and local auton- 
 omy. In Italy rank and title still serve to tickle the 
 national vanity ; but the spectre of the republic stands 
 behind the aristocracy, ready to advance at any moment 
 when the prerogative of birth should be asserted against 
 the rights of manhood. Even in Spain nobility has been 
 cheapened by the intrigues of factions, and in Austria 
 by the jealousy of Hungary. Whatever the form of 
 society, there must be some provision for the natural 
 love of distinction and display. Democracies are not ex- 
 empt from this infirmity of human nature. But Euro- 
 pean society has already reached a point where the table 
 of affairs is provided and ordered by governments pur- 
 veyor to the people, though sovereigns and princes may
 
 TENDENCY TOWARD NATIONAL UNITY. 11 
 
 be retained to do the honors, or as lay figures to lend a 
 historic costume to the feast. 
 
 This brings into prominence the drift of European so- 
 ciety toward national unity. As the map of Europe was 
 settled by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the central 
 belt from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, between 
 the seventh and the twentieth degrees of east longitude, 
 was divided into forty-eight distinct sovereignties for 
 Germany and Italy alone. Of these, eight belonged to 
 Italy and forty to Germany, including Austria. Seven 
 different titles of sovereignty were represented in Ger- 
 many: kaiser, king, elector, grand duke, duke, prince, 
 landgrave, and city ; in Italy, king, pope, grand duke, 
 duke, and the little republic of San Marino. These 
 divisions gave occasion to unhappy domestic rivalries and 
 contentions, and to mischievous foreign alliances. Ger- 
 many and Italy were always open to invasion, and could 
 at any time be made the battle-ground of Europe, through 
 the alienation of petty states from each other, and the im- 
 possibility of a truly national sentiment under such ter- 
 ritorial and political restrictions. Now this belt is occu- 
 pied by two great nations, a united Germany, a united 
 Italy, each based upon representative institutions, and 
 pursuing with undivided aim its own industrial and po- 
 litical development, and the harmony of the two guaran- 
 teeing the peace and order of Europe. In Italy the 
 national unity is simple and absolute. There is a single 
 parliament representing the whole people, and all minor 
 sovereignties have disappeared before the one constitu- 
 tional king. In Germany, though the unity of the peo- 
 ple is real and cordial, finding its appropriate expression 
 through the " Reichstag," yet the unity of the empire is 
 a bit of complicated patchwork. The " Bundesrath," 
 which has both an initiative and a determinative voice 
 upon measures of parliament, represent twenty-five local
 
 12 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 sovereignties ; and the empire embraces four kingdoms 
 and sundry duchies which still keep up their own interior 
 administration. But the centripetal force of the empire 
 preponderates more and more year by year, and the Ger- 
 man people have become a nation with the consciousness 
 of a new life upon their own soil and a new function in 
 the politics of Europe. At the same time the humilia- 
 tion of France through personal misrule has brought out 
 a fresh assertion of the national spirit, which is the most 
 hopeful sign of vitality and growth which France has 
 given since her first revolution. This rise of nationality 
 in Europe marks the advance of the people from subjec- 
 tion to sovereignty. Political Europe is no longer a 
 group of sovereigns, with territories and subjects as ap- 
 pendages to their rank and power ; it is a family of na- 
 tions whose organic life finds expression through the 
 state. Even the stringent military service which so many 
 states now exact serves as a badge of citizenship, and 
 enhances the life of the nation by the cost of its defense. 
 The soldier's calling, which by turns has been the badge 
 of feudal servitude, of despotic rule, of mercenary sub- 
 jection, is now the mark of national unity and equality 
 in burdens which the state imposes upon itself through 
 the forms of law, and, with honest though mistaken mo- 
 tives, for the common weal. In the fact that war is no 
 longer the game of princes but the defense of nations, 
 Europe finds hope of peace. 
 
 That we have not sooner introduced popular education 
 as a token of progress in European society is due to the 
 fact that this is both cause and effect ; and the contrasts 
 of education upon the continent of Europe leave one in 
 perplexity as to how far public education has stimulated 
 political and social progress, and how far this progress, 
 resulting from other causes, has encouraged public edu- 
 cation. Americans of wide reading and travel no longer
 
 POPULAR EDUCATION ADVANCING. 13 
 
 harbor the illusion once the stock of Fourth of July 
 oratory that monarchs fear the spread of intelligence 
 among their subjects, and that republics alone favor the 
 general diffusion of knowledge. But so long as politicians 
 in the United States who aspire to the presidency indulge 
 in such idle boasting, it is worth while to show how idle 
 and pernicious it is. To-day nearly all the monarchies 
 of Europe are in advance of the United States, in requir- 
 ing that every district within their dominions shall main- 
 tain at least one public school, and in making the attend- 
 ance of children at school obligatory up to a certain age, 
 and through a prescribed course of study. 1 The cen- 
 tury has not seen a sovereign more impregnated with the 
 vice of absolutism, more averse to conceding a constitu- 
 tional government, more set in the notion of personal 
 government by divine right, than Frederick William III. 
 of Prussia. He was one of the signers, if not the framer, 
 of the "Holy Alliance" one of the famous "three 
 kings," who, though they made an ostentation of laying 
 their crowns at the feet of Christ, were far from approv- 
 ing themselves to history as " the wise men " of their 
 time. But after the bitter humiliations which Prussia 
 had suffered from Napoleon, Frederick William III. 
 looked for recovery to the intellectual elevation of the 
 nation, and openly said, " Though we have lost territory, 
 power, and prestige, still we must strive to regain what 
 we have lost by acquiring intellectual and moral power ; 
 and, therefore, it is my strong desire and will to rehabil- 
 itate the nation by devoting the most earnest attention 
 to the education of the masses of my people." Univer- 
 
 1 Attendance upon the primary school, or its equivalent in pri- 
 vate education, is compulsory in Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Den- 
 mark, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Those who have not access to 
 the school laws of these several states will find an excellent sum- 
 mary in the Cyclopaedia of Education, by Kiddle and Schem.
 
 14 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 sal and obligatory schooling and universal and obligatory 
 military service have made Prussia the leader of Ger- 
 many, and Germany the arbiter of Europe. The theory 
 that the citizen exists primarily for the state, and there- 
 fore the state must see to it that he is duly trained for all 
 the services and duties which the government may exact 
 of him, has made of political society in Prussia an intel- 
 ligent machine, highly organized and wondrously effect- 
 ive, but still a machine, in which the care bestowed upon 
 each particular part is made subservient to the working 
 of the whole. The introduction of parliamentary institu- 
 tions with popular suffrage, within the past thirty years, 
 has given a new impetus to the education of the masses 
 in Prussia, by enhancing their political importance ; but 
 it should not be forgotten that the theory of an absolute 
 sovereign " educating the masses of his people " for the 
 service of the state wrought out a more thorough and 
 universal system of popular education than has been se- 
 cured in the United States under the republican theory 
 of the personal importance of the individual citizen. 
 
 Another popular illusion in the United States concern- 
 ing education is worth correcting here, the assumption 
 that education is the one panacea for the evils of society, 
 the one qualification for active participation in govern- 
 ment. That an average number of voters can be more 
 relied upon to vote intelligently if they can inform them- 
 selves by reading than if obliged to take all opinions at 
 second hand will readily be granted ; yet the intelligence 
 of a voter may depend quite as much upon what he 
 reads as upon the fact that he can read at all. Hence 
 there was little to be hoped for from general public edu- 
 cation in Austria, when, by the concordat with the Pope 
 in 1855, the whole system of instruction was placed un- 
 der the supervision and control of the clergy of the Ro- 
 man Catholic Church. So, if the " workingtnan " in the
 
 KNOWLEDGE BRINGS POLITICAL VIGOR. 15 
 
 United States reads only newspapers and pamphlets 
 which teach that capital is his enemy, that a division 
 of property is his right, and that it is the duty of the 
 state to provide him with money, land, and home ; or 
 if the " granger " at the West reads only that banks, 
 railways, and other corporations are oppressors of the 
 farmer, and that government is bound to see that his 
 produce is conveyed to market at rates below cost, his 
 loans obtained below the normal rate of interest, and his 
 debts paid in a " legal tender " below par ; then to 
 what extent has reading made him an intelligent voter, 
 or lifted him above the Austrian or the Spaniard whose 
 tuition is in the hands of his priest ? But though we 
 cannot deify education as the " savior of society," or 
 find an exact measure of the intelligence and prosperity 
 of a country in the percentage of its population who can 
 read and write, nevertheless there is in popular education 
 this grand element of hope for the future of society : that 
 by reading, a broad free avenue is opened for the diffu- 
 sion of knowledge, and knowledge, like light and air, 
 once set free, diffuses itself. Hence the increase of pop- 
 ular education in Europe is both a sign and a promise of 
 the renovation of political society. It may still be true 
 in Austria, in France, in Spain, and even in Italy, that 
 the apathy induced by long periods of repression, the 
 stagnation of thought and inquiry within the Catholic 
 Church by dogma and authority, and the limitations im- 
 posed upon the press by tyranny, tradition, or timidity, 
 have caused the tangible fruits of popular education to fall 
 below the legal provision made for it ; yet every new dis- 
 closure of the popular will, and notably just now in 
 France and Italy, shows that knowledge is spreading it- 
 self by its own light, and that light carries health and 
 vigor to political society. 
 
 For the old notion that ease and security in govern-
 
 16 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 ment demanded that the people should be kept in igno- 
 rance has succeeded the doctrine that the enlightenment 
 of the people is the true support and defense of the state. 
 Every government in Europe has openly declared for 
 popular education as an obligation of the state to its citi- 
 zens. Even the government of Turkey thirty years ago 
 gave official encouragement to the schools of the various 
 religious communities agglomerated within the empire, 
 and in 1869 made a spasmodic effort to establish a gen- 
 eral school system. And though this, like so many re- 
 forms in Turkey, has hardly gone beyond a project on 
 paper, the bare project was a concession to the principle 
 of popular education as the preserver and not the peril 
 of the state. And Russia, too, within the last decade, 
 has attempted to give universality to that system of pri- 
 mary instruction which had hitherto prevailed chiefly in 
 great cities and in favored central districts. This acces- 
 sion of the Russian government to the promoters of pop- 
 ular education by the state encourages the hope that the 
 Czar is preparing a constitutional government for his 
 subjects by preparing them to appreciate and administer 
 a representative system. 
 
 Leaving Turkey out of the question, with the exception 
 of Belgium, France, Holland, and Russia, every state in 
 Europe now makes attendance upon the primary school 
 or its equivalent in private education obligatory 
 upon all children within a fixed term of years. The zeal 
 of Austria for general education was quickened by the 
 disaster of Koniggratz, which led to the reorganization 
 of the empire, of the military system, and every depart- 
 ment of the public service. The control of the clergy 
 over the public schools was greatly abated, and primary 
 instruction was made compulsory between the ages of six 
 and fourteen. In Denmark, the compulsory school age 
 is from seven to thirteen, and attendance is enforced by
 
 COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 17 
 
 fines. All Germany has now followed the example of 
 Prussia in making the school obligatory. In Greece, 
 school attendance is obligatory from five to twelve ; in 
 Italy, from six to fourteen, enforced by fine. In Portu- 
 gal, " every year the study commission publishes a list of 
 all children of school age. The names of those parents 
 who fail to have their children registered are read by the 
 minister from the pulpit, and a list of them is nailed to the 
 church door. Upon repeated offenses, fines are imposed. 
 In the same manner, regular attendance is enforced." l In 
 Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, attendance on the pri- 
 mary school is compulsory ; and the Russian government 
 has lately applied the system of compulsory attendance 
 to the schools of St. Petersburg by way of experiment. 
 
 In Italy, the transition from the political tyranny of 
 Bourbon, Hapsburg, and Pope to the constitutional gov- 
 ernment of Victor Emmanuel has been so recent and rapid 
 that the system of compulsory education has not yet 
 brought forth its legitimate results, has not indeed been 
 thoroughly set in order. Recent statistics show that in 
 Italy there are in the schools but 70 in 1,000 of the whole 
 population, whereas in Denmark there are 135 in 1,000, 
 in Germany 152, and in Switzerland 155. France, which 
 has not adopted the compulsory system, nevertheless has 
 at school 131 in 1,000 of her population, a marvelous in- 
 crease since forty-five years ago. M. Guizot broached 
 the scheme of public primary schools under the direction 
 of the state. There are now in France upwards of 50,000 
 such schools, with more than three and a half million 
 scholars. 
 
 In those countries where a school age is not fixed and 
 made obligatory by law, it is made obligatory upon com- 
 munes, corresponding to a school district in New England, 
 to establish primary schools either at the cost of local tax- 
 
 1 Kiddle and Schem, Cyclopaedia. 
 2
 
 18 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 ation or by grants from the public treasury. And thus 
 everywhere in Europe it is settled that the education of 
 the people is a care of the state, and a primary education 
 is brought within the reach of all, and in many states 
 enjoined upon all. Thus, with absolutism abolished, cler- 
 icalism curbed, caste and privilege curtailed, and edu- 
 cation established, the cause of the people is fast being 
 identified with European society. 
 
 Apart from schools, the democracy of Europe have had 
 a training by experience which has both enlightened and 
 sobered them. They have learned that society cannot 
 be reconstructed in a day ; that, while political equality 
 may be secured by law, social equality is a thing impos- 
 sible to the nature of man ; that reform is better than 
 revolution ; that theories of socialism and pronuncia- 
 mentos of democracy cannot avail against the laws of 
 trade and of labor that grow out of the wants of society, 
 and that represent not organized forces to be controlled 
 by authority, nor the collective will of the community to 
 be determined by the majority, but only the statistical 
 agglomeration of myriads of individual wills ; in a word, 
 the people are learning that liberty is a growth requiring 
 time and care, and due regard to soil and climate and sur- 
 rounding conditions ; that it may even grow best around 
 and upon the whole framework of society, till it shall be 
 strong enough to drop this and stand alone. In some 
 conditions, liberty will thrive best if grafted into the old 
 stock, drawing from this a vigor, tone, and flavor which 
 one could not hope for by uprooting the old and planting 
 anew. 
 
 Such is the better part of the education which the de- 
 mocracy of Europe have been learning since 1848. Few 
 of the German revolutionists of that day would care to 
 change the present order of things in Germany, where 
 progress is assured under law, and the voice of the people
 
 INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS. 19 
 
 is becoming more potent in parliament. Few of the Ital- 
 ian republicans of that time would care to overthrow the 
 constitutional monarchy, if this shall continue to be ad- 
 ministered in the good faith of Victor Emmanuel. The 
 Paris commune did not represent the true democracy of 
 France ; and the elections of 1877 showed how the peo- 
 ple have been sobered to a respect for order as the guar- 
 anty of liberty. Upon such a basis of experience popular 
 education may erect a social structure that shall be en- 
 during. 
 
 Parallel with the liberation of political society and the 
 advance of popular education, the continent of Europe 
 has witnessed also that industrial progress, and the conse- 
 quent equalization of opportunity to the workingman, 
 which in the last half century have been so remarkable 
 in England and the United States. This enormous ma- 
 terial development has not indeed been to the masses of 
 society an unmixed good. Later on we shall show wherein 
 the material civilization which the nineteenth century 
 boasts of necessity entails upon society evils hardly 
 known to the Middle Ages. Every new application of 
 science to the arts of life, every new invention substitut- 
 ing machinery for manual labor, must bear hard upon 
 classes of workmen until society shall have increased its 
 demand for the products of the new manufacture, and the 
 workmen shall have learned to earn more with the ma- 
 chine than they once earned without it, or shall have 
 taken up new occupations no less profitable than the old. 
 But notwithstanding these drawbacks, the material prog- 
 ress of modern times has brought its most substantial 
 benefits to the masses of society, and has tended espe- 
 cially to equalize their condition in respect of the comforts 
 of life and of opportunities for advancement. With in- 
 dustry, prudence, and sobriety, the wages of the working- 
 man enable him to share the comforts and enjoyments
 
 20 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 that were once possible only to the rich ; while the in- 
 creased facilities of education, travel, and other means of 
 culture raise his children to a par with the nobility of 
 former times in the means of personal improvement. 
 The science of political economy, which concerns itself 
 with the material prosperity of the nation, and seeks to 
 enhance the comforts of society and of all its members, is 
 a constant witness for the consideration which human life 
 has attained in the view of philosophy and of the state. 
 The abolition of slavery and serfdom ; the growth of co- 
 operation and arbitration between capital and labor ; the 
 care of legislation for health, safety, and comfort in mines 
 and factories, and in the dwellings of laborers; the sensi- 
 tiveness of governments to taxing the necessaries of life 
 or laying burdens upon the common people ; the stupen- 
 dous scale upon which governments and people encourage 
 competitive expositions of industry and trade these all 
 show that labor, much more than the man, whom labor 
 represents, has come to a position of influence, and even 
 of honor in society, hardly dreamed of a century ago. 
 "Industrial development" and "social amelioration," 
 once the watchwords of a few philanthropists and re- 
 formers, are now incorporated into the legislation of every 
 civilized people. 
 
 That astute critic of society, H. Taine, has character- 
 ized this altered state of things in his comparison of old 
 Italy with the new. 1 
 
 " Three quarters of the labor of humanity is now done by ma- 
 chinery, and the number of machines, like the perfectibility of 
 processes, is constantly increasing. Manual labor diminishes in 
 the same ratio, and consequently the number of thinking beings 
 increases. We are accordingly exempt from the scourge which 
 destroyed the Greek and Roman world that is to say, the re- 
 duction of nine tenths of the human race to the condition of 
 
 1 Taine's Italy : Florence and Venice, chap. vi.
 
 TAINE ON MACHINERY. 21 
 
 beasts of burden, overtasked and perishing, their destruction or 
 gradual debasement allowing only a small number of the elite in 
 each state to subsist. Almost all of the republics of Greece, and 
 of ancient and modern Italy, have perished for want of citizens. 
 At the present day, the machinery now substituted for subjects 
 and slaves prepares multitudes of intelligent beings. 
 
 " In addition to this, the experimental and progressive sci- 
 ences, having finally embraced in their domain moral and politi- 
 cal affairs, and daily penetrating into education, transform the 
 idea entertained by men of society and of life ; from a militant 
 brute who regards others as prey and their prosperity a danger, 
 they transform him into a pacific being, who considers others as 
 auxiliaries and their prosperity as an advantage. Every blade 
 of wheat produced and every yard of cloth manufactured in 
 England diminishes so much the more the price I pay for my 
 wheat and for my cloth. It is for my interest, therefore, not 
 only not to kill the Englishman who produces the wheat or 
 manufactures the cloth, but to encourage him to produce and 
 manufacture twice as much more. 
 
 " Never has human civilization encountered similar conditions. 
 For this reason it is to be hoped that the civilization now exist- 
 ing, more solidly based than others, will not decay and melt 
 away like the civilizations which have preceded it." 1 
 
 The facts thus far presented would seem to indicate 
 that political society in Europe is already beyond the 
 drifting period, and has reached a stable if not a finished 
 state of order, freedom, and equity ; that it is no longer 
 a privileged artificial construction, but a human institu- 
 tion reposing upon the rights and liberties of the people. 
 With constitutional government, parliamentary repre- 
 sentation, popular suffrage, religious liberty, universal 
 education, the enfranchisement of labor, equality of 
 
 1 This does not hold absolutely. The whole civilized world is 
 now suffering from over-production, and of course work and wages 
 decline with the falling off in demand. Men can only eat and wear 
 so much, and too much makes waste and trouble. Still, the drift of 
 M. Taine's argument is sound.
 
 22 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 rights and of opportunity even woman having an un- 
 impeded " right to labor," to teach, and to talk what 
 is wanting to that which in America has always been 
 held up as the ideal of democratic society? Alas for 
 that ideal, when each successive step towards its realiza- 
 tion seems to put farther off that perfection of humanity 
 which social theorists had promised through revolution 
 and reform ! One specific after another has been admin- 
 istered to the body politic, constitution, parliament, 
 education, suffrage, liberty, have all been tried, yet 
 the pessimist finds only symptoms of deterioration that 
 threaten decay and dissolution. That European society 
 is far from sound, that it has yet chronic evils to contend 
 with, and occasionally exhibits violent and alarming 
 symptoms, lies upon the surface. This is indeed a sign 
 of the crisis through which political society everywhere 
 is passing. But there is nothing in all this to qualify 
 the view that the general drift of Europe is toward a 
 better state of things, social and Christian. Some of the 
 evils which remain, formidable as they are, it is within 
 the power of society itself to throw off, or at least to 
 hold in check, by its own action. Others belong to the 
 ineffaceable elements and conditions of human existence, 
 and these society can but hope to mitigate, though to 
 keep them under control may demand an incessant war- 
 fare for its own life. 
 
 It is a great advance to have secured freedom of con- 
 science and have liberated civil society from priestly 
 domination. But how free the human mind from that 
 tendency to superstition, that love of religious mystery, 
 which shows itself even in cultivated circles and in the 
 most enlightened times which, for instance, for the 
 miracles of the Middle Ages would substitute the fanta- 
 sies of modern spiritualism ? It is a great advance to 
 have secured freedom of scientific thought to have
 
 SUPERSTITION AND SKEPTICISM. 23 
 
 readied an age in which Secchi, as Director of the Ob- 
 servatory of the Roman College, could openly teach, as 
 in harmony with religion, the very doctrines of nature 
 for which Galileo was condemned. But with this tri- 
 umph over dogmatism and bigotry, how to deliver the 
 human mind from that skepticism which, in its reaction 
 from superstition, is a tendency hardly less fatal to the 
 search for truth ? 
 
 Now, these two tendencies, superstition and skepti- 
 cism, divide in almost equal proportions the masses of 
 European society. With the spread of general intelli- 
 gence in the community, Roman Catholicism seems to 
 address itself more and more boldly to the element of 
 superstition in human nature, and to demand of its ad- 
 herents a more absolute submission of reason and will to 
 dogma and priestcraft. It was in the very face of peo- 
 ples who were thought to have come to their majority 
 by the institution of constitutional government and 'popu- 
 lar education, that the first ecumenical council since the 
 Reformation heedless of the progress of three hundred 
 years put forth dogmas more arbitrary and absurd 
 than those which drove Luther to revolt. And the same 
 pontificate which promulgated the immaculate concep- 
 tion of the Virgin, the infallibility of the Pope, -and put 
 its ban upon modern society and the state, received an 
 unprecedented homage of gifts and pilgrimages from 
 lands reputed to be free and enlightened, and witnessed 
 also the revival of superstition and imposture on the stu- 
 pendous scale of the pilgrimages to Lourdes, La Salette, 
 and Marpingen. 
 
 On the other hand, the infidelity of the eighteenth 
 century had died of inanition, as all purely negative 
 skepticism must. The spirit of inquiry cannot long 
 sustain itself upon wwbelief. In some lands that era of 
 infidelity was succeeded by an earnest revival of the
 
 24 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 religious spirit under various forms from Methodism to 
 mysticism. But the progress of physical research has 
 revived the skeptical tendency in the form of material- 
 ism. And the materialism of a school of evolutionists is 
 more dangerous than the infidelity of the Encyclope- 
 dists, in that it does profess to meet the yearning of the 
 human spirit for the Why and Wherefore of things, and 
 in denying a personal God does not leave the universe an 
 utter blank, but finds in Nature enough to originate and 
 to satisfy beings that are no longer conscious and ac- 
 countable spirits, but agglomerated and dissolvable mole- 
 cules. A most ominous tendency in European society is 
 that of higher minds to dissociate philosophic and scien- 
 tific thought, and of common minds to dissociate social 
 reform from religion, as something quite outside alike of 
 the intellectual and the practical in human life. And 
 this calamity is heightened by the absence of any intelli- 
 gent and persuasive religious zeal, whether in the univer- 
 sity, the church, or the family. 
 
 With such indifferentism in the mass of its constitu- 
 ency, Protestant Christianity is feebly aroused against 
 superstition and materialism. Now that the Turk is 
 down, there is no place for a conflict of true and false re- 
 ligions, as when the Teutonic knights subdued the pagan 
 Prussians, or the knights of Castile and Aragon drove out 
 the Moors from Spain. Now that Protestantism and 
 Catholicism have settled into their equalized positions 
 with princes and peoples, the battle of the Reformation, 
 as between a true and a false Christianity, cannot be re- 
 newed. Sects find too little encouragement, either from 
 the laws or from the tastes and habits of the people, to 
 stir the zeal of denominational propagandist!! in European 
 society. And so it has come to pass that Christianity, 
 which should be the leader of society in ever-broadening 
 lines of light, liberty, and love, seems to stand apart as a
 
 RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE. 25 
 
 spectator of the contest between superstition and materi- 
 alism for the control of the newly-emancipated peoples. 
 
 In Germany, it may be hoped that this indifferentism 
 is but a passing phenomenon. Till within a few years the 
 dogmas and usages of the national church were made ob- 
 ligatory in domestic and official relations, and even en- 
 forced by the police. The tyranny of ecclesiasticism over 
 opinion engendered in the hearts of multitudes a hatred 
 of the church. By degrees a legal emancipation from 
 forms will reconcile many to the faith. At bottom there 
 is in the hearts of the German people a sentiment of re- 
 ligion, which often shows itself in contradiction to a spec- 
 ulative skepticism, and which skeptics themselves allow, 
 by separating faith from philosophy and making religion 
 purely a matter of feeling. This sentiment, under wise 
 direction, may yet be set in action against the current of 
 materialism. 
 
 In the political philosophy of De Tocqueville, there is 
 in democracy a logical tendency to pantheism. This he 
 would counteract by reviving the principle of authority 
 as this is impersonated in the Roman Catholic Church. 
 Forty years ago, in reflecting upon the relations of mod- 
 ern society to religion, he had the sagacity to write that 
 " our posterity [here having France especially in view] 
 will tend more and more to a division into only two parts 
 some relinquishing Christianity entirely, and others re- 
 turning to the Church of Rome." l Sooner, perhaps, 
 than De Tocqueville anticipated, ultramontanism and 
 materialism have seemed to verify his prediction. Rely- 
 ing upon the superstitious element in human nature, ul- 
 tramontanism works the machinery of democracy for the 
 restoration of spiritual despotism. And no combination 
 more potent for the destruction of liberty could be de- 
 vised than the infallibility of the head of the church 
 1 Democracy in America, vol. ii. book i. chap. vi.
 
 26 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 backed by a plSbiscltum that invention of Napoleon for 
 using the hands of the democracy to forge the chains of 
 the empire. While superstition would crush society from 
 above, materialism would explode it from beneath. The 
 scientific materialism which serves the evolutionist as a 
 speculative theory of the universe becomes in the common 
 mind a social materialism for the practice of life. And 
 such materialism is not only hostile to this or that insti- 
 tution of society, but would reduce society itself to anar- 
 chy by taking away those supreme motives without which 
 it is impossible for human society to hold together re- 
 sponsibility and hope. Without responsibility in the in- 
 dividual and in the whole, responsibility to authority, to 
 law, to justice, civil society is an impossibility ; and the 
 atomic theory of man, which denies personality and re- 
 solves consciousness and conscience into mere physical or 
 phenomenal experiences, leaves no place for responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 Without hope, which is essentially a moral sentiment, 
 society would stagnate, and man revert to the troglodytes 
 from which the evolutionists would have us believe that 
 he sprang. But hope is impossible to a mere equation of 
 chemical elements subject to inexorable piiysical laws. 
 To some extent, superstition and materialism will coun- 
 teract each other in their effects upon the masses ; but the 
 just-budding liberty of Europe will be crushed between 
 them, unless the gospel of Christ shall intervene with its 
 wise and benignant authority on the one hand, and its 
 large and loving liberty on the other. 
 
 However serious may be the perils to society from su- 
 perstition and materialism, the source of these mischiefs 
 lies in human nature ; and society, in its organic capacity, 
 can do nothing against them except by legal restraints 
 upon imposture and fanatical excesses, and by a wise 
 combination of ethics with physics in the training of the
 
 STANDING ARMIES. 27 
 
 public schools. History teaches that forms of supersti- 
 tion and skepticism pass away with time ; and though we 
 may not hope to eradicate the spirit of either which, 
 indeed, at bottom is one and the same we may be con- 
 fident that each succeeding form of superstition, each re- 
 curring phase of skepticism, though as threatening as the 
 giant shadows of the Alpine mists, will melt as the day 
 advances, or vanish when we cease to put our own doubts 
 and fears between them and the sun. 
 
 But there is one peril to European society more formid- 
 able than these, which society has imposed upon itself, 
 and now hugs in the delusion that its safety lies in this 
 very danger. The one common curse and woe of the 
 leading nations of Europe is the military system, which 
 maintains enormous standing armies and holds every man 
 directly or indirectly to duty as a soldier. In every great 
 state, the army on a peace establishment is reckoned by 
 hundreds of thousands, in war by millions ; the military 
 appropriations form the largest item of the yearly budg- 
 et ; science and invention are taxed for the production 
 of more effective implements of war ; agriculture, indus- 
 try, trade, are crippled by the withdrawal of young men 
 in their prime from the field, the factory, the shop, to the 
 barrack and the camp ; the training of the family and the 
 school must be surrendered to the discipline of arms ; and 
 the one lesson of law and of morals drilled into every man 
 is that to be ready to fight is the first duty of the citizen, 
 and to make every man fight is the first right of the 
 state. 1 Germany set the example of universal compul- 
 
 1 As an offset to this, it must be admitted that to boorish young men, 
 such as miners and field hands, the army serves as a school train- 
 ing them in habits of cleanliness, order, obedience, and expanding 
 their knowledge of men and of the world. And it must further be 
 admitted that the cost of suppressing the rebellion in the United 
 States, through the lack of trained and efficient troops at the first,
 
 28 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 sory military service, and Sadowa and Sedan are mem- 
 orable witnesses to its efficiency. Germany pleads her 
 geographical position as the necessity for adhering to this 
 system, and for maintaining her large standing army. 
 But France might plead her geographical position, open 
 to invasion from Germany and England. Italy is vul- 
 nerable on the side of Austria and of France ; Austria on 
 the side of Italy, of Germany, and now of Russia or her 
 satellites on the Lower Danube. Every nation uses the 
 argument of Germany and pleads her example. Every 
 nation is expending more and more upon its armament, 
 and is increasing its public debt. Statesmen are at their 
 wits' end to secure a revenue without aggravating the 
 people; yet none dare nor will propose a congress for mu- 
 tual disarmament, in the interest of national prosperity 
 and of international peace. But unless this shall be ef- 
 fected, then, before the close of the century, Europe will 
 witness one of three things universal bankruptcy, spo- 
 radic revolutions against taxes and conscription, or a gen- 
 eral war to relieve popular discontent, give occupation to 
 armies, and win reprisals for filling bankrupt treasuries. 
 Whichever of these ways society shall enter upon, the 
 end is anarchy or despotism, alike the ruin of free insti- 
 tutions. Mons. P. Broca, in reminding the French sci- 
 entists of the troglodytes as their first progenitors in the 
 arts of life, said : " Barbarous no doubt they were, but 
 are not we also barbarous in some degree, we who can 
 only settle our differences on the battle-field. They were 
 not acquainted with electricity or steam, they had neither 
 metals nor gunpowder; but wretched as they were, and 
 with only weapons of stone, they carried on against na- 
 ture no mean struggle ; and the progress they slowly ef- 
 
 exceeded the cost of a standing army for a generation. Still a largo 
 standing army is a constant burden to society, a temptation to war, 
 and a danger to liberty.
 
 REPRESSION OF INDIVIDUALS. 29 
 
 fected with such efforts prepared the soil on which civil- 
 ization WHS hereafter destined to flourish." 1 But the 
 civilization for which those scarcely human beings con- 
 tended against nature now employs its highest intellect- 
 ual and material forces in fighting against man ! 
 
 But the most formidable prospect to European society 
 is the tendency of democratic civilization to crush the in- 
 dividual in the effort to raise the masses. The Ameri- 
 can doctrine has been, Give every man liberty, education, 
 and the opportunity to rise, and there will be universal 
 contentment and prosperity. This doctrine seemed 
 sound and sufficient so long as there was plenty of land, 
 plenty of work, plenty of trade, and plenty of money. 
 But now that years of stringency in the money market 
 and the labor market have made land a burden and trade 
 a loss and work a drudgery, it is recognized that individ- 
 ual freedom and universal equality do not create a para- 
 dise. Worst of all, the equality of the many presses 
 down the liberty of the individual. One man being " as 
 good as another," each man finds that the liberty and 
 equality which make him of so much more account to 
 himself make him of less account to society. He is but 
 a single atom among millions of like atoms, and his 
 neighbors have no scruple about jostling him out of 
 place or even crushing him out of existence. The democ- 
 racy which made its chief boast the emancipation of the 
 individual from the " paternal care " of government, and 
 asked only freedom for every man to make his own way, 
 now turns about and offers to surrender all individuality 
 to centralized power in the state, invoking government 
 to supply work, to fix its hours and its wages, to create 
 trade and money, to furnish capital and abolish interest, 
 and instead of levying taxes to pay them in the form of 
 
 1 Address to the French Association for the Advancement of the 
 Sciences, at the Havre Congress, 1877.
 
 30 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 largesses. Democracy has insisted upon the right of 
 every man to the fruits of his own labor, enterprise, 
 skill, or luck. But now the individual who has laid up 
 capital must divide with the many, and the workingman 
 is no longer at liberty to make his own terms for hours 
 and wages, but shall be allowed to work only upon such 
 conditions as the many have prescribed. In seeking the 
 elevation of the masses, democratic civilization has in- 
 cited vastly more aspirants for higher places than it can 
 create places to be filled. It has overlooked the un- 
 changeable law of nature, that society can exist only on 
 the condition of subordinate places and a division of 
 classes. No legislation, nor education, nor combination 
 can alter this law. Though all the operatives may be 
 equally competent to run the factory, there is room for 
 but one superintendent at a time ; that every poor man 
 may have cheap coal, somebody must mine it ; if cities 
 are to be kept healthy, somebody must sweep the streets. 
 In digging away old institutions in order to " level up " 
 a mound upon which all society shall stand on an equal 
 footing, there is danger of digging a pit into which many 
 shall fall deeper than ever before. In Europe this dan- 
 ger is greater than in the United States. 
 
 " The magnitude of states, the development of industry, the 
 organization of the sciences, in consolidating the edifice, prove 
 detrimental to the individuals who live in it, every man finding 
 himself belittled through the enormous extension of the system 
 in which he is comprised. Societies, in order to become more 
 stable, have become too large, and most of them, in order the 
 better to resist foreign attack, have too greatly subordinated 
 themselves to their governments. 
 
 " Moreover, in order to become efficacious, industry has be- 
 come too subdivided, and man, transformed into a drudge, be- 
 comes a revolving wheel. It is sad to see a hundred thousand 
 families employing their arms and thirty superior men expend-
 
 POPULAh VIEW OF GOVERNMENT. 81 
 
 ing their genius in efforts to increase the lustre of a piece of 
 muslin. 
 
 " For these evils there are palliatives, perhaps, but no reme- 
 dies, for they are produced and maintained through the very 
 structure of the society, of the industry, and of the science upon 
 which we live. The same sap produces on the one hand the 
 fruit, and on the other the poison ; whoever desires to taste one 
 must drink the other." l 
 
 The mischiefs of contemporary civilization in depress- 
 ing the individual by attempting to raise the masses, 
 and in spreading discontent by fostering expectations 
 which society cannot fulfill and the realization of which 
 would render civil society impossible, are more serious 
 and imminent in Europe than in America. By the tra- 
 dition of centuries, and by experiences yet fresh in the 
 memory of the present generation, the masses in Europe 
 impute all their grievances to the oppressions of govern- 
 ment. Their experiment in self-government is too re- 
 cent to have weaned them from this prejudice. To the 
 workingman in Europe, the government is still what the 
 rain-doctor is to the African at once the author of all 
 mischiefs, and the only possible deliverance from them. 
 The u hard times " are charged upon the government, 
 and the remedy is to be found in surrendering all power 
 to the " social democrats." This feeling is aggravated by 
 the ill-timed attempts of governments to repress social- 
 istic discussion by force of the police a course which 
 is sure to provoke a day of reckoning. It will be long 
 before the commonalty of Europe outgrow their heredi- 
 tary suspicion of the officers of law as their natural ene- 
 mies. For evils inherent in democratic civilization no 
 remedy has been found by any political philosopher, 
 nor even by any lady novelist who has yet appeared. 
 Happily in the United States there is yet hope that all 
 
 1 Taine's Italy : Florence and Venice, book iv. chap. vi.
 
 82 THE DRIFT OF EUROPE, CHRISTIAN AND SOCIAL. 
 
 social mischiefs as they arise will be palliated by the 
 sober second thought of the people, and by a speedy 
 change of times. But in Europe every social evil is 
 made more formidable by the attempt to organize the 
 masses for a political action which would be destructive 
 of society itself, as communism in France and social de- 
 mocracy in Germany. In the last resort, society must 
 and will save itself from anarchy even by military des- 
 potism. The United States may yet save to mankind 
 the principles of political liberty and legal equality by 
 demonstrating that these do not deprive a people of com- 
 mon sense and common honesty.
 
 II. 
 
 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 1 
 
 (From the British Quarterly Review, 1875.) 
 
 AT the meeting held in St. James's Hall, London, on 
 the 27th of January, 1874, it was resolved, " That this 
 meeting unreservedly acknowledges it to be the duty 
 and right of nations to uphold civil and religious liberty, 
 and therefore deeply sympathizes with the people of 
 Germany in their determination to resist the policy of 
 the ultramontane portion of the Church of Rome ; " and 
 at the responsive meeting held in the Rath-Haus at Ber- 
 lin, on the 7th of February, this expression of sympathy 
 from England to Germany was construed as " a pledge 
 that the two nations will in the future stand firmly to- 
 gether in the manly struggle for the civil and religious 
 freedom of peoples." Both these resolutions assume 
 that, in the recent measures for counteracting ultramon- 
 tanism, the government of Germany, and especially that 
 of Prussia, is upholding civil and religious liberty, and 
 contending for the rights and liberties of the people ; 
 
 1 Ultramontanism : England's Sympathy with Germany, as ex- 
 pressed at the Public Meeting held in London on January 27th, 1874; 
 and Germany's Response; with the Ecclesiastical Laivs of Prussia, Sfc. 
 Edited by the Rev. G. R. Badenoch, LL. D. 
 
 La Liberte Religieuse en Europe depuis 1870. Par E. de Pres- 
 sense. 
 
 The Vatican Decrees, in their bearing on Civil Allegiance: a Politi- 
 cal Expostulation. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M. P. 
 3
 
 34 PAP ARC HY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 and therefore that the ecclesiastical conflict in Germany 
 is of common concern for Christendom, and notably for 
 free nations such as England and the United States in 
 one word, this is a case of the solidarity of modern so- 
 ciety. If this assumption is true, the question, why 
 should England be called upon to sympathize with a 
 great successful military power like Germany in her in- 
 ternal conflicts, is already answered : for the real ques- 
 tion is not whether Germany is great or small, strong or 
 weak, but is she just and right;? No nation is great 
 enough or strong enough to disregard the judgment of 
 mankind and the verdict of history upon her actions. 
 The highest military power must stand before the moral 
 tribunal of just men. Moreover, the conflict in Ger- 
 many is not one of numerical nor of military strength, 
 but of moral forces which group themselves respectively 
 about two essentially antagonistic and irreconcilable 
 ideas, the universal supremacy of the Pope, and the 
 independent sovereignty of the nation. In this view the 
 conflict is historical ; it was necessary ; it is a conflict of 
 fundamental political and ethical principles ; and it can 
 admit of no compromise. To comprehend it and to 
 measure it there is need of a calm intelligence to be ex- 
 ercised in investigating facts and in evolving principles, 
 without regard to national or ecclesiastical theories and 
 prejudices on the one hand, or to claims of sentiment 
 and of sympathy on the other. 
 
 In the current statements of this conflict far too much 
 prominence has been given to the Roman Catholic 
 Church, and even to the Pope himself, as one of the 
 contending parties. It is not the Roman Catholic Church 
 in faith, order, or worship, that is in question, but the 
 attitude of the hierarchy of that church toward certain 
 laws and measures of civil government, and the relative 
 sanctity of the civil and the ecclesiastical oath. It is not
 
 BISMARCK'S STATEMENT OF THE ISSUE. 85 
 
 the Pope as the head of the Latin church that is as- 
 sailed, nor Pius* IX. in his proper personality, or in his 
 administration of church affairs, but the assumption of 
 the Pope to define the functions of the state, and to en- 
 join his will upon all rulers in Christendom, on the 
 ground that " every one who has been baptized belongs 
 to the Pope in some way or other." 1 Though Pope and 
 Emperor are in open controversy, and the one is the rep- 
 resentative of the Romish Church, the other of an evan- 
 gelical dynasty, yet when stripped of all personal and 
 doctrinal elements, the contest remains, in its whole sub- 
 stance and strength, as the historical and inevitable con- 
 flict between the claims of ecclesiastical prerogative and 
 the sphere and scope of civil power. 
 
 In his speech of March 10, 1873, in the Prussian 
 House of Lords, Prince Bismarck defined the position in 
 the following terms : 
 
 " In my opinion, the question with which we are occupied is 
 falsified, and the light in which we view it is likewise false, 
 when it is represented as a question of church or of confession. 
 It is really a political question ; it has nothing to do with the 
 struggle of an evangelical dynasty against the Catholic Church 
 though some would persuade our Catholic fellow-citizens 
 that this is the issue ; it does not enter into the strife between 
 faith and unbelief; it is concerned only with the immemorial 
 conflict of authority, old as the human race, the conflict be- 
 tween kingship and priestism [Konig-thum und Priester-thum, 
 royalty and hierarchy] ; that contest of power which is older far 
 than the appearing of our Redeemer in the world ; that contest 
 of power in which Agamemnon lay at Aulis with his seers, 
 which there cost him his daughter, and hindered the departure 
 of the Greeks ; that contest of power which, under the name of 
 the wars of the popes with the emperors, filled the history of 
 the Middle Ages, down to the disintegration of the German 
 empire. ... In my view it is a falsifying of politics and of his- 
 
 1 Letter of Pius IX. to the Emperor William, August 7, 1873.
 
 36 PAPARCUY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 tory when one regards His Holiness the Pope exclusively as the 
 high-priest of a confession, or the Catholic Church chiefly as a 
 representative of churchdom. The papacy has ever been a 
 political power which, with the greatest audacity and with most 
 momentous consequences, has interfered in the affairs of this 
 world ; which has striven after such encroachment, and held 
 this in view as its programme. That programme is well under- 
 stood. The goal which, like the Frenchman's dream of an un- 
 broken Rhine boundary, floats before the papal power, the pro- 
 gramme which, in the time of the mediaeval emperors, was near 
 its realization, is the subjection of the civil power to the ecclesi- 
 astical ; a high political aim, an endeavor which, however, is as 
 old as humanity, since there have always been either shrewd 
 men or actual priests who have put forth the pretension that 
 the will of God was more intimately known to them than to 
 their fellows, and that upon the ground of this pretension they 
 had the right to rule their fellows ; and that this position is 
 the basis of the papal pretension to sovereignty is well known." 
 
 That position and that pretension are indeed the his- 
 torical ground of the present conflict in Germany be- 
 tween the civil government and the Roman hierarchy. 
 The old battle for sovereignty between the civil and the 
 ecclesiastical power, left by the " Holy Roman Empire " 
 as an inheritance to the Germany of the Reformation, 
 was again left as a drawn game or an armed truce at 
 the Peace of Westphalia ; and through the culmination 
 of two forces then evolved ultramontanism now en- 
 throned in the Vatican, and nationalism now realized 
 in the Empire of Germany and the Kingdom of Italy 
 is at length precipitated to what should be its final issue 
 between Paparchy and Nationality. For a historical 
 date of this contest for supremacy in Germany, it is 
 enough for our present purpose to take the bull of Greg- 
 ory VII. excommunicating Henry IV. (Beate Petre, 
 Apoitolorum Princeps, etc.) A. D. 1075. 1 
 
 1 Magnum Bulkrium Romanum, i. pp. 27-29. See also in Eisen- 
 schmidt, Komisches Bullarium, i. pp. 9-16.
 
 CANOSSA. 37 
 
 Bismarck, who has the rare faculty of compressing a 
 principle, a history, a philosophy, into a proverb for the 
 people, in his speech of May, 1872, in the imperial Par- 
 liament, after the Pope had declined to receive Cardinal 
 Hohenlohe as the ambassador of Germany, in answer to 
 an interpellation as to the intentions of the government 
 toward the Pope, said pithily, " We are not going to Ca- 
 nossa, either bodily or spiritually." Henry III. had won 
 the right of nominating the Pope, and had made German 
 authority supreme at Rome ; Gregory VII. summoned 
 his son before the papal court at Rome, to answer for of- 
 fenses against the church. The scales of power had al- 
 ready turned. From that independence of control which 
 the Pope had claimed as necessary to his functions as 
 " the common Father of the Faithful," it was an easy 
 step to that universal supremacy which he asserted as 
 the vicegerent of God. Henry IV., smocked and bare- 
 foot in the snow, imploring absolution of the pitiless Hil- 
 debrand, may represent only the personal humiliation of 
 a weak and vacillating sovereign, who had alienated both 
 princes and people from the empire which his father had 
 raised to the height of its power. In this view, the inci- 
 dent of Canossa is of no more significance to the present 
 ecclesiastical conflict in Germany than the deposition of 
 three rival Italian popes by Henry III. ; for though the 
 contests of personal power between the popes and the 
 emperors of the Middle Ages affected by turns the pre- 
 ponderance of the church and of the state, that which 
 concerns this discussion is the cotiflict of principles, or of 
 claims put forward under the guise of principles. 
 
 But the struggle between Gregory VII. and Henry 
 IV. had this universal significance, that the Pope then 
 gave a concrete practical expression to the doctrine that, 
 as the vicar of God, and intrusted with the keys of 
 heaven and hell, the Roman pontiff has supreme and
 
 38 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 indisputable dominion over all the rulers of this world. 
 In a second bull of excommunication against Henry IV. 
 (A. D. 1080), Gregory invokes the apostles, Peter and 
 Paul, in these words : 
 
 " Now, I beseech you, most holy fathers and princes, cause 
 that all the world may understand and know that if ye are able 
 to bind and loose in heaven, ye are able upon earth to give and 
 to take away empires, kingdoms, principalities, marquisates, 
 duchies, countships, and the possessions of all men, according to 
 the deserts of each. Often, indeed, have ye taken away patri- 
 archates, primacies, archbishoprics, and bishoprics, from the evil 
 and unworthy, and have bestowed these upon men of true piety. 
 If, then, ye judge spiritual things, what must not be believed of 
 your power over worldly things ? And if ye judge the angels 
 who rule over all proud princes, what can ye not do to their 
 slaves ? " l 
 
 The pontiff thus reinforces his own authority by all 
 the hierarchies of heaven, and, as the successor of Peter, 
 assumes to wield upon earth the invisible powers and dig- 
 nities attributed to the apostle in his beatified state. 
 Gregory would have the world believe that all things in 
 heaven were at his beck to enforce his excommunications 
 on earth, and with this array he divests Henry of his 
 crown, absolves his subjects from their allegiance, and 
 threatens with excommunication any and all who shall 
 acknowledge Henry's authority. It is not the act alone, 
 but the ground and the manner of this papal utterance 
 
 1 " Agile nunc, quaeso, Patres et Principcs Sanctissimi, ut omnis 
 Mundus intelligat et cognoscat, quia si potestis in ccclo ligare et sol- 
 vere, potestis in terra Imperia, Regna, Principatus, Marchias, Duca- 
 tus, Comitatus, et omnium hominum possessiones pro meritis tollere 
 unicuique et concedere. Vos enim Patriarcliatus, Primatus, Archi- 
 episcopatus, Episcopatus, frequenter tulistis pravis et indignis, et re- 
 ligiosis viris dedistis. Si enim spiritualia judicatis, quid de saeculari- 
 bus non posse credendum est ? et si Angelos dominantes omnibus 
 superbis Principibus judicabitis, quid de illorurn servis facere potes- 
 tis?"
 
 THE USURPATION OF BILDE BRAND. 89 
 
 that stamps it as the historical precedent of the present 
 struggle between the Pope and the Emperor of Germany. 
 It is of this very bull of Gregory VII. that Mr. Bryce 
 has said : " Doctrines such as these strike equally at all 
 temporal governments, nor were the Innocents and Bon- 
 ifaces of later days slow to apply them so." 1 But Greg- 
 ory did not content himself with words. By denying to 
 the civil power and to secular patrons the right of ecclesi- 
 astical investiture, and threatening with his anathema 
 any ecclesiastic who should acknowledge a temporal or 
 laical right of patronage or of confirmation in his bene- 
 fice, Gregory not only severed the papacy from all de- 
 pendence on the empire, but provided the elements of 
 revolution within the empire itself. He aimed at the 
 centralization of spiritual power in the person of the 
 Pope, but would also retain in every abbey, in every 
 cathedral chapter, in every bishopric, a fulcrum for the 
 leverage of the spiritual power against the temporal. 
 
 The shrewdness and firmness of Hildebrand in grasp- 
 ing the independence of the papal see, and in asserting 
 the bishopric of Rome to be universal and absolute, pre- 
 pared the way for the audacity of Innocent III. in claim- 
 ing to be the arbiter of Christendom in all disputes 
 among princes and peoples a claim of virtual supremacy 
 in temporal affairs, by the plea that it was " his province 
 to judge where sin is committed, and his duty to prevent 
 all public scandals." Already had Gregory VII. con- 
 ceived the comparison of the apostolic and royal dignities 
 to the sun and moon as the chief lights that rule the 
 world ; but Innocent pressed this analogy to the relative 
 position of these powers. Writing to the Emperor of 
 Constantinople, he says : 
 
 "Thou shouldest know that God created two lights in the 
 firmament, the sun and the moon that is, he created two dig- 
 1 The Holy Roman Empire, 4th ed. p. 161. Gladstone, p. 41.
 
 40 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 nities, the papal authority and the kingly power. But the for- 
 mer, which is set over the days, t. ., the spiritual things, is the 
 greater ; that set over the things of the flesh is the smaller ; and 
 there is the same difference between popes and kings as there is 
 between the sun and the moon." 
 
 And in plain prose Innocent made the civil power as 
 truly a reflection of the spiritual, and its tributary, as is 
 the moon of the sun. Englishmen must ever blush to re- 
 member how audaciously this subordination of the King 
 to the Pope was paraded by Innocent, in the bull in which 
 he accepts the submission and vassalage of King John, 
 and vouchsafes to England the protectorate of Rome. 
 In that bill the pontiff declares that both kingship and 
 priesthood are established within the church to the 
 end that the kingdom may be sacerdotal and the priest- 
 hood royal ; that as every knee must bow to Christ, of 
 things in heaven and things on earth, and things under 
 the earth, so should all obey and serve the vicar of Christ 
 on earth that there may be one fold and one shepherd ; 
 and hence temporal kings are not to be acknowledged as 
 having rightful authority, unless they study to serve with 
 true devotion this representative of Christ's kingly and 
 priestly power. 1 
 
 Audacious as were these assumptions of Innocent III., 
 they were capped by the more audacious acts of Gregory 
 IX. and Innocent IV. in excommunicating Frederic II., 
 
 1 " Rex Regnm et Dominus dominantium, Jesus Christus, Sacer- 
 dos in aeternum secundum ordinem Melchizedek, ita Rcgnum et Sac- 
 erdotium in Ecclesia stabilivit, ut sacerdotale sit Regnum et Sacer- 
 dotium sit regale, sicut in Epistola Putrus et Moyses in lege testantur ; 
 ununi praeficiens universis, quern sutim in terris Vicarium ordinavit; 
 ut sicut ei flectitur oinne genu ecelcstium, terrestrium, et etiain in- 
 fernortim, ita illi omnes obediant et intendant, ut sit unum ovile et 
 unus Pastor. Hunc itaque Reges sa?culi propter Deum adeo vener- 
 antur, ut non rcputent, se rite regnare, nisi studeant ei devote ser- 
 vire." EibenscLuiidt, i. 25.
 
 HISTORIC PARALLELS. 41 
 
 and in finally deposing him from his imperial and kingly 
 authority by decree of the General Council of Lyons 
 (A. D. 1245). The life-long struggle of Frederic with the 
 papacy, covering more than thirty years and the reigns 
 of four popes, like the struggle of Henry IV., rises 
 above the incidents of personal ambition and official ri- 
 valry to the dignity of a conflict of principles, a contest of 
 the spiritual and temporal powers which, then personified 
 respectively in Pope and Emperor, are no less hostile and 
 vigorous to-day, though the Pope is stripped of all tem- 
 poral sovereignty, and the empire, stripped of the titles 
 " Holy " and " Roman," is confined within the boundaries 
 of Germany proper, and rests upon a representative con- 
 stitution -and universal suffrage. Indeed, in reading the 
 controversy between Frederic II. and Gregory IX., 1 one 
 can almost imagine himself reading the correspondence 
 of the Emperor William of Germany with Pius IX., and 
 finds enough to justify the saying of the emperor in his 
 letter of February 18th to Earl Russell, that the duty is 
 devolved upon him of "leading the nation once more in 
 the war maintained in former times, for centuries long, 
 by the German emperors, against a power whose domina- 
 tion has never in any country been found compatible with 
 the freedom and the welfare of nations." Though Pius 
 IX. cannot wield against the present Emperor of Ger- 
 many the weapon of excommunication that his prede- 
 cessors used so often and so effectively against Frederic 
 II., 2 yet he has found a substitute in apostolical denuncia- 
 
 1 See in Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen und ihrer 
 Zeit. b. iii. pp. 416-444. 
 
 2 For the titles and the substance of these numerous bulls, the 
 reader is referred to the admirable compendium of Dr. A. Potthast, 
 Regesta Poniijicum Romanorum, a prize work of the Berlin Acad- 
 emy, in which every official document of the popes, from A. D. 1198 
 to 1304, is catalogued in the order of its date, and is cited by its title, 
 with a summary of its contents and a reference to historical sources.
 
 42 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 tions that are just as telling with the mass of German ad- 
 herents of the papacy. In effect, Gregory's greater ex- 
 communication went no farther in inciting the Catholic 
 hierarchy and laity of Germany to a contemptuous disre- 
 gard of their emperor and his laws than do the denuncia- 
 tions of Pius IX., though, of course, the language of ex- 
 communication was more formal and precise. Gregory 
 absolved all subjects of Frederic from their oath of alle- 
 giance, threatened with the papal interdict any city, 
 castle, villa, or neighborhood that should harbor him, for- 
 bidding the celebration, either publicly or privately, of 
 any offices of religion during his stay ; threatened with 
 excommunication all who should assist Frederic, either 
 with or without arms ; and enjoined it upon all patriarchs, 
 archbishops, and bishops in Germany, without delay, to 
 proclaim this excommunication and anathema with ring- 
 ing of bells and illuminations in all cities, castles, and vil- 
 lages throughout their dioceses. 1 This open, high-handed 
 attempt of the Pope to incite in Germany an insurrection 
 of the spiritual power against the temporal is feebly im- 
 itated in the warning of Pius IX. to the Emperor Wil- 
 liam, that " the measures of his government against the 
 religion of Jesus Christ have no other effect than that of 
 undermining his majesty's own throne." But the Pope 
 of to-day uses the weapons at his command with the same 
 arrogance as the haughtiest of his predecessors used the 
 thunders of excommunication ; and the Emperor com- 
 plains that leaders of the Romish Church in Germany 
 are organizing rebellion against the state : 
 
 "To my deep sorrow, a portion of my Catholic subjects have 
 organized for the past two years a political party which endeav- 
 ors to disturb, by intrigues hostile to the state, the religious 
 peace which has existed in Prussia for centuries. Leading 
 Catholic priests have, unfortunately, not only approved this 
 
 1 See in Eisenschmidt, i. pp. 35-39.
 
 INNOCENT IV. 43 
 
 movement, but joined in it to the extent of open revolt against 
 existing laws." 
 
 It is the same old endeavor of the papacy, unaltered in 
 spirit or intent by all the changed conditions of society. 
 
 From the excommunication of Frederic, so haughtily 
 proclaimed by Gregory IX., it was but a step to his 
 deposition by Innocent IV. a logical step in the line 
 of papal assumption. In presence of the 140 prelates 
 assembled in the Council of Lyons, and assuming the as- 
 sent of the council, without even condescending to take 
 their suffrages, the Pope delivered this solemn judgment, 
 " to be had in everlasting remembrance : " 
 
 " Reciting the offenses of Frederic against the church, and the 
 fatherly admonitions and ecclesiastical censures through which 
 it had been sought to reclaim him, Innocent declares ' that the 
 Emperor had imitated the obduracy of Pharaoh, and had stopped 
 his ears like a viper ; * 'that he had wrested from the church its 
 possessions, and oppressed the clergy with taxes, and brought 
 their office into contempt; while to show his own contempt for 
 the papal excommunication, he had openly consorted with here- 
 tics ; ' most of all and this is the last specification, as being 
 worst of all ' he had built neither churches nor cloisters, but 
 had rather persecuted and destroyed them.' Then, by virtue of 
 his authority as the vicegerent of Jesus Christ, and as empow- 
 ered by Him, in the person of the apostle Peter, to bind or loose 
 upon earth, Innocent declares ' that because of his iniquities the 
 emperor has been set aside by God from the sovereignty of 
 which he has proved himself so unworthy, and is stripped of all 
 his honors and dignities, which judgment the apostolic see doth 
 now pronounce and enforce, absolving all from their oath of al- 
 legiance to him, threatening with excommunication all who shall 
 in any way acknowledge or uphold him as emperor or as king ; 
 and summoning the electors of the empire to choose at once a 
 successor to its now deposed and anathematized head." 2 
 
 1 " Pharaonis imitatus dtiritiam et obdurans more aspidis, aures 
 suas monita despexit." 
 
 3 Nos itaque super praemissis, et compluribus aliis ejus nefandis
 
 44 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 What gives to this act a universal interest is the as- 
 sumption upon which it was grounded, that the Pope is 
 the representative upon earth of Jesus Christ, and is era- 
 powered to interpret and to enforce the will of God 
 against all temporal rulers, in the supreme and sole in- 
 terest of the Catholic Church. The papacy, at first de- 
 pendent upon the empire, then coordinate with it, grad- 
 ually achieved its independence of the temporal power ; 
 next exercised its spiritual sovereignty in opposition to 
 civil powers upon their own soil ; and finally asserted its 
 absolute suzerainty, by Divine appointment, even to the 
 extent of dethroning kings and emperors, and of parcel- 
 ing out their power and their territory as fiefs of the 
 Holy See. It only remained for Boniface VIII., in his 
 famous bull " Unam Sanctam" to declare it for the 
 teaching of the gospel, that 
 
 " The Pope has two swords, the spiritual and the temporal ; 
 the one to be wielded by the church, the other for the church ; 
 the one by the priesthood, the other by kings and soldiers, but 
 this only on the hint or the sufferance of the priest. One 
 sword, however, must be under the other, and the temporal au- 
 thority must be subject to the spiritual power. As saith the 
 Apostle, ' there is no power but of God : the powers that be 
 are ordered (t. e., set in order) of God ; ' but they would not be 
 in order unless one sword were under the other, and also unless 
 
 excessibus cum fratribus nostris, et sacro Concilio deliberatione prie- 
 habita diligenti, curn Jesu Christi vices licet immeriti tencamua in 
 terris, nobisque in B. Petri Apostoli persona sit dictum ; quod cumque 
 ligaveris super terram, etc. memoratum Principeni qui se imperio, 
 et Regnis, omnique honore, ac dignitate reddidit tarn indignum, 
 quippe propter suas iniquitates a Deo ne regnet vel imperet, est ab- 
 jectus suis ligatum peccatis, et abjectum, omnique honore, et digni- 
 tate privatum a Domino ostendimus, denunciatnus, ac nihilominus 
 sententiando privamus." Here follow the absolution of subjects from 
 the oath of allegiance, the denunciation of allies and supporters, and 
 the decree for the election of a new emperor. T. i. p. 87; Eisen- 
 schmidt, i. pp. 39-52.
 
 BONIFACE VIII. 45 
 
 the lower could be lifted by tbe other. If the temporal power 
 goes astray, then must it be rectified by the spiritual ; if such a 
 power ill-treats those that are under it, it has a judge in the 
 higher spiritual power ; but this which is highest of all can be 
 judged by God only, not by any man, as saith the Apostle ; he 
 that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of 
 no man. . . . Wherefore do we declare, proclaim, decree, and 
 determine hereby that every human creature is subject to the 
 Roman Pope, and that none can be saved who doth not so be- 
 lieve." 
 
 Small credit is due to Pius IX. and the Vatican Coun- 
 cil for having formulated the syllabus and infallibility 
 as dogmas of the church ; for here we have, almost six 
 centuries before, all the anathemas of the one, and all 
 the arrogance of the other. These reminiscences will 
 suffice to establish our first point : that the controversy 
 now waged between the imperial government and the 
 Roman hierarchy in Germany is deeply rooted in the 
 historical incompatibility of the pretensions of the pa- 
 pacy with the autonomy of the state. Much as England 
 is beholden to precedents, she has largely outgrown her 
 historical antecedents, while her insular position and her 
 world-wide commercial intercourse have helped her free 
 development ; whereas Germany is still a land of tradi- 
 tions, forms, and usages a land in which " that which 
 hath been is now, and that which is to be hath already 
 been." It would be impossible to reproduce in England 
 the ecclesiastical quarrels of Henry VIII., or to revive 
 the severities of Elizabeth against the Catholics ; but in 
 Germany the seeds of the old quarrel between the tem- 
 poral and spiritual powers still live, and Germany is 
 compelled to do to-day what England sought to do in 
 1581, by the bill " to restrain her majesty's subjects in 
 their due obedience." And with the same literal truth 
 it may be said of Germany,
 
 46 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 " A sort of hypocrites, Jesuits, and fragrant friars have come 
 into the realm, to stir up sedition. . . . When fair means have 
 done no good, and behind our tolerance there come in these em- 
 issaries of rebellion and sedition, it is time to look more strictly 
 to them. They have been encouraged so far by the lenity of 
 the laws. We must show them, that as the Pope's curses do 
 not hurt us, so his blessings cannot save them. We must make 
 laws to restrain these people, and we must prepare force to re- 
 sist violence which may be offered here or abroad." 1 
 
 This ready analogy introduces our second point : that 
 the present ecclesiastical conflict in Germany was inevi- 
 table. The heritage of the empire of the Middle Ages, 
 it takes up the unfinished conflict of the Reformation, 
 under the necessary conditions of modern society. Philip 
 the Fair of France had met the towering impudence of 
 Boniface with ridicule and contempt. The Pope had 
 written to him, " Know thou, that thou art subject to 
 us both in spiritual and in temporal things ; " had denied 
 him the disposal of ecclesiastical offices and benefices, 
 and required him, in case of vacancy, to guard the reve- 
 nues of the same for successors duly appointed, adding, 
 " Whoever shall otherwise believe and do, the same shall 
 be deemed a heretic." To this Philip answered, 
 
 " Philip, by the grace of God, King of France, to Boniface, 
 who gives himself out for Pope, little or no greeting ! Know 
 thou, O supreme fool, that in temporal things we are not sub- 
 ject to any one ; that the disposal of vacant churches and bene- 
 fices belongs to us of royal right ; that the revenues of the same 
 belong to us ; that all our bestowments of the same, past or to 
 come, are valid, and shall stand, and that we will manfully de- 
 fend their possessors. If any think otherwise, we will take 
 them for fools and idiots." 2 
 
 1 Speech of Sir Walter Mildmay, D' Ewes' Journals, 1580, 1581, 
 quoted by Froude, Hist. vol. xi. ch. xxviii. 
 
 2 Eisenschmidt, i. 104, 105.
 
 ULTRAMONTANISM IN FRANCE. 47 
 
 In this scornful defiance Philip had all France at his 
 back ; and the anathemas and excommunications that 
 Boniface heaped upon him were met by protests from all 
 the estates of the realm. To-day, one sees in France 
 ultramontanism triumphant over the old Gallican inde- 
 pendence, and hears an archbishop, who had contested 
 the proclamation of infallibility, now requiring his clergy 
 to accept the dogma, with the implicit obedience of the 
 soldier to his superior. In May, 1872, E. de Pressense' 
 wrote in the " Revue des Deux Mondes : " 
 
 " Before the proclamation of the infallibility of the Holy Fa- 
 ther there existed in France a liberal Catholicism ; this accepted 
 modern society, and that separation of powers which is its es- 
 sential condition. Such a Catholicism, no doubt, exists in the 
 minds and hearts of individuals, but its partisans cannot speak 
 as heretofore ; they are condemned to silence or to ambigui- 
 ties ; the encyclical of the infallible Pope no longer permits 
 extenuating commentaries. It is certain that the doctrine of 
 the later encyclicals tends to destroy completely the distinction 
 between civil society and religious society. The ultramontane 
 reaction which has commenced under our eyes is the putting in 
 operation of that which was decided upon at the Council of the 
 Vatican ; this is the real campaign of the interior which Rome 
 has now begun." 
 
 How much this pregnant phrase signifies, Pressense' 
 tells us in these words : 
 
 " France enfeebled, is exposed to a new peril, no less grave 
 than those she has gone through with. The foreigner has 
 seized her provinces ; and now come those who would have her 
 abandon her moral patrimony, that most incontestable fruit of 
 the glorious movement of 1789 the lay character of the mod- 
 ern state. The French Revolution has had no result more sure 
 than the secularization of social society. But it is in France, 
 after her disasters, that ultramontanism has found the most 
 favorable ground for engaging in the contest against modern 
 society."
 
 48 PAPARCnY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 This contrast of the subservient French Catholicism of 
 to-day with the defiant Gallicanism of Philip the Fair, 
 or even with St. Louis IX.'s milder assertion of the inde- 
 pendence of the king and the national church, shows 
 how far from dead, either in letter or in spirit, are the 
 pretensions of Rome to the universal control of society in 
 temporal as in spiritual affairs ; and the picture which 
 this intelligent and impartial witness gives of the origin 
 and the endeavor of the ultramontane reaction in France, 
 should be seriously pondered by all who imagine that in 
 Germany Bismarck has got up a quarrel with the Rom- 
 ish Church for political ends of his own. " Whence has 
 arisen that formidable agitation which troubles all states 
 if not from the Council of the Vatican ? . . . Papal in- 
 fallibility is nothing but the speaking-trumpet (le porte- 
 voix) of the Society of Jesus, for fulminating its anath- 
 emas against all liberty, civil and religious." 1 It is 
 Rome that has opened in every land " a campaign of the 
 interior," a contest with society itself, in the bosom of 
 Germany, of Austria, of France, of Italy, of Brazil, of 
 Switzerland, and of England as well, where a " Catholic 
 first and an Englishman afterwards," is the cry of the 
 Ultramontanes ! 
 
 But to return to the logical development of this irre- 
 pressible conflict. After the bold resistance of Philip of 
 France to papal domination, Germany so far recovered 
 from the blow inflicted upon Frederic II. and his house, 
 that in 1338 the imperial electors assembled at Rhense 
 resolved to maintain the honor and dignity of the empire 
 against the encroachments of Rome, and refused to sub- 
 mit their choice of emperor to be ratified by the Holy 
 See. Emperor no less than pope held his office by di- 
 vine right ; but this gain to civil independence was igno- 
 
 1 E. <le Pressense", La Liberte Reliyieuse en Europe depuis 1870, 
 pp. 443, 444. See, also, Gladstone, p. 11.
 
 CONTEST OF POPE AND EMPEROR. 49 
 
 miniously bartered away in the next century by the 
 Hapsburg Frederic III., for the sanction of the court of 
 Rome. And so the contest between the dual powers of 
 Pope and Kaiser, now rival, now reconciled, each claim- 
 ing to be independent of the other by the same divine 
 prerogative, yet each dependent upon the other for hu- 
 man recognition and support ; each by turns exercising 
 over the other an authority well-nigh exclusive, yet each 
 professing to act only within its distinctive sphere, and 
 to concede to the other, though with changeful and con- 
 tested boundaries, its appropriate functions and powers ; 
 both struggling for the highest dominion within their 
 reach, and neither yielding save on compulsion ; this 
 contest between will as law and faith as authority, that 
 lies in the very dualism of man's nature as belonging to 
 the temporal and the spiritual, and in the duality of 
 spheres and institutions as adapted to these, continued 
 to vibrate from the throne to the altar, and from the 
 altar to the throne, till the Reformation gave to both 
 powers a shock that compelled each to look to its own 
 foundations, regardless of the fate of the other. 
 
 Already the scandal of the great schism had shaken 
 the reverence of princes and people for the Holy See, 
 and had accustomed men to look upon the papacy more 
 in the light of a rival and intriguing political power than 
 of a supreme spiritual sovereignty. And now the dis- 
 graceful exposures of nepotism and profligacy at Rome, 
 and of venality in the disposal of the most sacred rights 
 and offices of the church, and also of the pardoning 
 grace of the gospel itself, had roused Germany to a re- 
 volt against the authority of the Pope even in spiritual 
 things. The old contests of Rome with the personal 
 spirit and strength of individual German emperors paled 
 before this new struggle with the conscience of the na- 
 tion, stirred with the most vital concerns of the church,
 
 50 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 of the faith, of the soul itself. Here was the personal 
 soul, armed with faith in a personal God, resisting any 
 intervention between itself and its Maker other than the 
 mediation of Christ as taught in the Gospels, and con- 
 firmed by spiritual experience. 
 
 With the Reformation, in its doctrines, its measures, 
 its results, we have here nothing to do. From its begin- 
 ning with the Theses of Luther against Tetzel, to its 
 termination with the Catholic restoration and the relig- 
 ious Peace of Westphalia, it concerns us only as a new 
 epoch in the time-worn conflict of the temporal and 
 spiritual powers. 
 
 Had the Reformation been allowed to have its way as 
 a revolt of the people against corruption and tyranny in 
 the church, and finally against the Roman curia as the 
 fountain of this corruption and the centre of this tyr- 
 anny, it could hardly have stopped short of its logical 
 issue in the separation of church and state, and in the 
 repudiation by both of the authority of Rome. In that 
 event the papacy might have been finally driven from its 
 position of spiritual dictatorship in temporal affairs. 
 But, as it proved, the papacy not only survived the pop- 
 ular revolution that at first threatened to sweep it away, 
 but regained much of the territory that it seemed to 
 have lost, expanded its activity into new regions of con- 
 quest, and consolidated its spiritual power within the 
 church in determined hostility to society itself; for 
 Rome, like Russia, knows well how to bide her time, 
 if she seems to recede, it is only to recuperate her forces, 
 and since she never loses sight of her goal, she counts 
 upon time and opportunity to make even defeats and 
 hostile treaties conduct her to it. 
 
 The causes of the halting of the Reformation were 
 threefold : first, the necessity felt by the reformers them- 
 selves of making alliances with princes in order to se-
 
 THE REFORMATION. 51 
 
 cure to Protestantism a footing as a political power ; 
 second, the fear of political revolutions, which led other 
 princes to form a league with the Pope for the preserva- 
 tion of their own dominions ; and, finally, that tendency 
 in human nature, and especially in communities of men, 
 to a reaction from an intense and exciting public move- 
 ment a tendency sure to be favored by the excesses of 
 enthusiasts in the movement itself. All these causes 
 combined to modify and restrain the Reformation in 
 Germany, the spring of the whole movement; Luther 
 required the aid of powerful nobles and princes ; Charles 
 V., who had first thought to play with Luther against 
 the Pope, and who tantalized the Protestant princes 
 with promises of reform, at length made pact with Leo 
 X. to put down heresy in Germany if the Pope would 
 support him in Italy against France ; and the excesses at 
 Minister and the peasants' war made all men desirous of 
 more quiet times. But the definitive close of the Refor- 
 mation in Germany when Protestantism passed from 
 the condition of a movement against Rome into one of 
 the orders of society dates from the Peace of West- 
 phalia in 1648, after a civil war between Protestants and 
 Catholics had desolated the land for thirty years. And 
 it is at this point that we take up again the thread of 
 the relation of the papacy to the civil power. 
 
 The Peace of Westphalia was in reality nothing but 
 an armed truce between powers, neither of which could 
 boast a victory, but which must stop fighting if they 
 would save their existence. It established a modus vi- 
 vendi, upon the basis of confessional toleration, but it 
 neither dissolved church and state, relegating each to 
 its distinct and independent sphere, nor defined the au- 
 thority of each in relation to the other, but left the 
 ecclesiastical and civil powers to adjust themselves by 
 traditions, treaties, concordats, and incongruous mixtures
 
 52 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 of civil and canon law. As before the Reformation, 
 princes continued to juggle or to joust with popes ac- 
 cording to their political interests. With the fate of 
 such puppets we have here nothing to do ; but from the 
 chaos of the Reformation there emerged two hostile prin- 
 ciples whose fate involves to-day the fate of our modern 
 civilization. A compromise between principles of ethics 
 or systems of politics which are irreconcilable in their 
 own nature entails a conflict upon after generations. 
 Sooner or later, such a compromise must be broken, and 
 where the compromise is between a free movement that 
 trusts to light and evidence and a hide-bound system 
 that insists upon precedent and form, it is the tendency 
 of the latter having a sort of hereditary compactness 
 suited to aggression to push itself and grow, till its 
 encroachments compel the former to arouse to self-de- 
 fense. Now at the period of the Reformation we find 
 the old notion of a universal paparchy incorporated in 
 the order of the Jesuits " who claimed for the church 
 an unlimited supremacy over the state, and made the 
 existence of a government, and the allegiance paid to it, 
 to depend on the application of its power to the interests 
 of the Catholic Church." 1 On the other hand, the 
 struggles in Germany for religious life and for political 
 rights had begun to develop that sentiment of nationality 
 which shapes the political divisions and orders the politi- 
 cal life of the modern state. The first of these principles 
 has culminated at Rome in the dogma of infallibility ; 
 the second has culminated in Germany in the realization 
 of a true integral union and political life of the nation, 
 and again also in the kingdom of Italy ; and these antag- 
 onistic principles have coine to an inevitable collision, 
 whose focus is in Germany. 
 
 1 Rarike, History of the Popes, part ii. bk. vi., " Ecclesiastico- 
 Political Theory."
 
 NATIONALITY AND ECCLESIASTIC1SM. 53 
 
 It may be alleged, however, that from an early day a 
 national life was developed in France and in Spain in 
 subordination to the papal supremacy. But as to France, 
 the sentiment of nationality was there nurtured by the 
 earlier Gallicanism of her clergy, episcopal against pa- 
 pal supremacy, and the volcanic eruption of national- 
 ism in her revolution overwhelmed the Roman hierarchy 
 as hostile to the state. Moreover, France, however pas- 
 sionate in her own nationalism, has not respected nation- 
 ality as the unit of state organization ; but by invasion 
 and intervention, by lust of conquest or of control, has 
 violated in others the self-same principle which she as- 
 serted for her own political existence. At the present, 
 in the chaos of the forms of national life in France, one 
 sees how far the life itself has been depressed through 
 that Catholic training which now substitutes pilgrimages 
 for patriotism. And who would think of quoting Spain, 
 the field of provincial rivalries, for an illustration of the 
 modern idea of the nation as the normal unit of the po- 
 litical state? Spain, in the days of her prosperity, the 
 creature of the papacy for exterminating the Protestant 
 heresy by the Inquisition and the Armada ; now, in her 
 adversity, a warning of what the paparchy would make 
 of any and every nation. 
 
 By the nation, in the conception of political philoso- 
 phy, is meant a people of like spirit, language, and aims, 
 united in one political body, upon the same soil and un- 
 der the same institutions. Fiore, in his " Nouveau Droit 
 International," defines a nation by " communaut du 
 sang, de langue, d'aptitude, et une affinit^ de vie civile, 
 de temperament, de vocation." Mr. David Dudley 
 Field, in his " International Code," says, " A nation is a 
 people permanently occupying a definite territory, hav- 
 ing a common government, peculiar to themselves, for 
 the administration of justice and the preservation of in-
 
 54 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 ternal order, and capable of maintaining relations with 
 all other governments." This body, whatever the politi- 
 cal form under which it is organized as a state, possesses 
 in its own nature the supreme attribute of sovereignty, 
 and this sovereignty of the nation is independent, com- 
 plete, and absolute. " It is suprema potestas ; it is sub- 
 ject to no external control, but its action is in correspond- 
 ence with its own determination. It is inalienable ; it 
 is indivisible ; it is irresponsible to any external author- 
 ity ; it is comprehensive of the whole political order. In 
 its own sovereignty, and in its own free spirit, the polit- 
 ical people is to mould its own political life, and to em- 
 body in it its own ideal, and to apprehend in it its own 
 aim." 1 This is the conception of the nation which mod- 
 ern society has evolved, and by which the political map 
 of Europe is now to be constructed, in contradistinction 
 to the " Holy Roman Empire," the " Holy Alliance," 
 and the notion of the " balance of power." Upon no 
 condition can such a nation admit a power that is not in 
 and of itself, yet claims to be above itself, and by an in- 
 fallible authority from God to supervise, to condemn, or 
 to resist its laws. The conflict between nationality and 
 paparchy was inevitable, and is irreconcilable. One or 
 the other must go under. Had Bismarck brought on 
 this conflict for some passing policy, he might incur the 
 censure of history. But Bismarck did not originate it in 
 Austria, in Switzerland, in Brazil, nor yet in Germany. 
 As Mr. Seward with slavery, he had the sagacity to see 
 that the conflict was " irrepressible ; " but with more 
 boldness than Seward he seized the enemy by the throat, 
 and will not let him go. This is no forced collision, no 
 politician's quarrel. 
 
 A comparison of the territorial and numerical strength 
 of the Romish Church in Europe with what it was at the 
 1 Mulford, The Nation, cbap. viii.
 
 TERRITORIAL DIVISIONS OF THE CHURCH. 55 
 
 Peace of Westphalia will show that there is as much 
 call to-day for resistance to her devices and encroach- 
 ments as there was at the era of the Reformation ; 
 that Rome has not changed with the times, nor learned 
 to abate one whit of her pretensions, nor lost an^ of her 
 old penchant for political conspiracies. Unfortunately 
 the materials are scanty for a close and accurate compar- 
 ison, especially in the statistics of population two hun- 
 dred and fifty years ago. 
 
 If we examine the map of Europe at the beginning of 
 the sixteenth century, from an ecclesiastical point of 
 view, we find the whole continent, and the British Isles 
 as well, divided into ecclesiastical provinces, and these 
 again into archbishoprics and bishoprics, the only marks 
 of diversity being toward the East, where dioceses of 
 the Greek and Armenian churches displace the Roman 
 Catholic. The boundary lines are those of provinces and 
 dioceses, and the map is dotted all over with symbols 
 that distinguish sees and cloisters. 1 And these territo- 
 rial divisions were far from being conventional, for the 
 mere convenience of ecclesiastical administration ; they 
 often represented principalities and powers having a 
 vested inheritance in the soil, and a voice in political 
 affairs. Indeed, throughout Germany the bishops had 
 become more conspicuous as secular princes than as ec- 
 clesiastical superintendents, and in this character they 
 had a relative independence of the Roman curia, which 
 sometimes made them quite serviceable to the Emperor 
 in his quarrels with the Pope, though the ecclesiastical 
 instinct commonly guided them to Rome. 
 
 1 The ecclesiastical cartography of Europe, in successive centuries, 
 is by no means complete. Enough has been done, however, by Von 
 Spruner, in his New Historical Atlas, published by Perthes, in 
 Gotha, to furnish the more prominent data for such a comparison as 
 is here attempted. See also "\Viltsch, Kirchliche Geographic und 
 Statistik ; Neher, Kirchliche Geographic^ and C. v. H. Aloys, Katho- 
 lische Kirche.
 
 56 PAPARCUY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 Sixty years later the map of Europe shows us the to- 
 kens of Roman Catholic occupation well-nigh effaced in 
 the northern and middle countries of the continent; 
 bishoprics and cloisters, either sequestered by the state 
 or appropriated to another faith ; Protestants having a 
 recognized and legal existence in France ; and the Refor- 
 mation gaining head even in the peninsulas of Spain and 
 Italy. Protestantism was now at its height just, in- 
 deed, turning to the ebb, while the flood-tide of the coun- 
 ter-Reformation, destined to overflow so much of the re- 
 formed territory, was already setting in. It is impossi- 
 ble to give with accuracy the popular strength of the 
 Protestant and the Romish elements, for there are no 
 census returns of that period by which to estimate the 
 two confessions ; and the rule acceded to at the Peace of 
 Augsburg, cujus regio ejm religio that each state 
 should follow the religion of its head would, of course, 
 disfavor any discrimination in matters of faith among 
 subjects of the same government. But, taking only the 
 broad territorial view, we find all Scandinavia Prot- 
 estant ; all Northern Germany, not excepting the chief 
 cities and towns of Polish Prussia, to-day the seat of 
 ultramontanism ; nor the Rhine provinces, nor that very 
 Paderborn in Westphalia where to-day the Roman hie- 
 rarchy openly defies the Prussian government ; we find 
 Protestantism strong in Bavaria, where to-day the Ultra- 
 montanes threaten to control the King and the Parlia- 
 ment, and to disband the German Empire ; we find 
 Protestantism prevalent in Bohemia and in Hungary, 
 and almost universal in Austria, where " all the colleges 
 of the land were filled with Protestants ; and it was 
 said to be ascertained that not more, perhaps, than the 
 thirtieth part of the population had remained Catholic." a 
 The condensed summary which Ranke gives of the tri- 
 
 1 Ranke.
 
 \ TRIUMPHS OF PROTESTANTISM. 67 
 
 umphs of Protestantism is marked by his characteristic 
 clearness, thoroughness, and candor: 
 
 " In short, from east to west, and from north to south, 
 throughout all Germany, Protestantism had unquestionably the 
 preponderance. The nobility were attached to it from the very 
 first ; the body of public functionaries, already in those days 
 numerous and important, was trained up in the new doctrine ; 
 the common people would hear no more of certain articles, 
 such, for instance, as purgatory, or of certain ceremonies, such 
 as the pilgrimages ; not a man durst come forward with holy 
 relics. . . . The confiscation of church property was energeti- 
 cally carried on. ... Protestant opinions had triumphed in 
 the universities and educational establishments. The teachers 
 in Germany were all almost without exception Protestant ; the 
 whole body of the rising generation sat at their feet, and im- 
 bibed a hatred of the Pope with the first rudiments of learning. 
 Such was the state of things in the north and east of Europe ; 
 in many places Catholicism was entirely exploded, in all it was 
 subdued and despoiled. While it was struggling to defend it- 
 self, the Calviuistic system, an enemy still more formidable than 
 Lutheranism, rose against it in the west and south. . . . Prot- 
 estantism embraced the whole range of the Latin church ; it 
 had laid hold on a vast majority of the higher classes, and of 
 the minds that took part in public life ; whole nations clung to 
 it with enthusiasm, and states had been remodeled by it." l 
 
 For a moment the fear seems to have been entertained 
 at Rome that all would be lost; at least if we must 
 understand the Venetian ambassador to the curia, Paolo 
 Tiepolo, in his report on Rome in the times of Pius IV. 
 and V., to reflect the rumors and apprehensions current 
 during his sojourn at the capital ; and this was his testi- 
 mony : 
 
 " Speaking only of those nations of Europe which not only 
 used to obey the Pope but also followed in every particular the 
 
 1 Ranke, History of the Popes, bk. v., " First Period of Counter- 
 Reformation."
 
 58 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 rites and usages of the Roman church, celebrating public wor- 
 ship too in the Latin language, it is notorious that England, 
 Scotland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and, in a word, all 
 the countries of the north, are alienated from it. Germany is 
 almost wholly lost, Bohemia and Poland are in a great degree 
 infected, the low countries of Flanders are so corrupted that, 
 notwithstanding all the efforts of the Duke of Alva to remedy 
 the evil, they will hardly ever return to their original healthy 
 condition ; and lastly France, by means of these morbid humors, 
 is all replete with confusion, so that it appears nothing remains 
 to the Pope intact and secure but Spain and Italy, with some 
 few islands, and with those countries possessed by your Serenity 
 in Dalmatia and in Greece." 1 
 
 But in the middle of the seventeenth century the ec- 
 clesiastical map shows us not only Italy, Spain, and Por- 
 tugal as dependencies of Rome, and France a strong 
 Catholic power, though tolerating Protestantism within 
 her bosom, but Bavaria, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Po- 
 land, and several of the minor states of Germany, restored 
 to their allegiance to the curia, and that territorial pre- 
 ponderance secured to the Romish Church which it has 
 retained to this day. The reforms in practice and in dis- 
 cipline which the Council of Trent had introduced, to- 
 gether with the rigor of dogma which it had enjoined, the 
 tact and resolution of Pope Paul IV., the dissensions 
 among Protestant princes and the leaders of the reform, 
 the league of Catholic princes with one another and with 
 the Pope for mutual defense and help, and the exhaus- 
 tion consequent upon long years of war, had all contrib- 
 uted to this result. " In Germany the reaction had 
 been measureless. Protestantism was repulsed with as 
 much energy as it had before swept onwards. Preach- 
 ing and doctrine contributed to this, but infinitely more 
 was done by policy, commands, and open violence." 2 
 
 1 Quoted by Ranke. a Ranke, ut tup.
 
 COUNCIL OF TRENT. 59 
 
 But with this period, as with that from Hildebrand to 
 the Reformation, we are concerned only as its results af- 
 fected the hereditary struggle between the spiritual and 
 temporal powers, and this especially with reference to 
 Germany. If for a moment papal authority reeled under 
 the strange, wild blows of popular revolt, so different from 
 a passage-at-arms with an emperor, it gradually recovered 
 itself, and opposed to the reform not only the personal 
 prerogative of the Pope as the vicar of Christ, but this 
 authority organized more compactly and firmly in the 
 church itself, which now presented one solid, united 
 front. In the Council of Trent the extreme view of 
 papal authority prevailed, Pope Pius IV. overriding the 
 remonstrance of the Emperor and of France, and not the 
 unity of the church alone, but the unity and supremacy 
 of her authority in her divinely constituted head, being 
 the principle that ruled in all its decrees. Those decrees 
 themselves were to be interpreted by the Pope, and the 
 extent of reforms was reserved for his decision. 
 
 Again and again in the council was it asserted that 
 the authority of the Pope was indisputable and invio- 
 lable ; and that by appointment of God he was above all 
 emperors and kings. If Pius IV. was too sagacious to 
 hazard the newly-recovered powers of the curia by reviv- 
 ing openly the struggle with temporal princes for perma- 
 nent sovereignty over their subjects, he did not hesitate 
 to seize the occasion of the council for making his sov- 
 ereignty more immediate and absolute over the entire hie- 
 rarchy, the bishops being severally sworn to obey the 
 decrees of Trent and to obey the Pope as their master. 
 But the claim of universal jurisdiction was not one whit 
 abated, though held in abeyance for its opportunity. 
 We see it again enforced by Clement VIII., when in 
 presence of the assembled cardinals and a multitude of 
 spectators before St. Peter's, King Henry VI. of France,
 
 60 PAPARCIIY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 in the person of his ambassador, prostrated himself at 
 the feet of the Pope to receive the absolution that should 
 confirm him in his throne ; and this claim was pressed 
 with the old shameless impudence by Paul V., with his 
 fanatical assertion of " the power of the keys," and by 
 Gregory XV. with his magnificent ambition to subdue 
 the world to the church. 
 
 On the other side, the political convulsions and the 
 politico-religious wars of the Reformation had secured to 
 the Protestant princes of Germany a degree of territorial 
 independence and of personal sovereignty which relieved 
 them in part of vassalage to the empire, and prepared the 
 way for that distinctive state and national development 
 which marks our modern civilization. Thus arose the 
 principle of an independent nationality as the successor 
 of the Holy Roman Empire which was now reduced 
 practically to a German kingdom in contesting the 
 claim of a universal paparchy. The Peace of Westphalia 
 may be said to have crystallized these two forces into per- 
 manent antagonism. The war brought nothing to an 
 end excepting the resources of the country, and the peace 
 established nothing beyond the somewhat vague admis- 
 sion of the equality of confessions, or the recognition by 
 each party of the right of the other to exist. Against 
 this recognition Innocent X. protested, demanding the 
 restitution of all Catholic rights, privileges, and posses- 
 sions, as these had stood before the Reformation, that is, 
 he would efface all the conquests of Protestantism by a 
 stroke of the pen, refusing to concede to Protestants any- 
 thing of ecclesiastical possessions or to enter into treaty 
 with Protestant princes. The Peace of Westphalia he 
 declared to be null and void, vacating it by his absolute 
 prerogative. 1 Against this, however, the parties to the 
 
 1 The bull " Zelo domus Dei," dated November 26, 1648, published 
 January 3, 1651 : " Ipso jure nulla, irrita, invalida, iniqua, injusta,
 
 PEACE OF WESTPHALIA. 61 
 
 peace had provided, declaring beforehand that no regard 
 should be had to any one, whether of ecclesiastical or po- 
 litical station, within or without the empire, who should 
 oppose its articles. 1 
 
 So stood the powers, civil and ecclesiastical, in 1648 
 on the one hand, the idea of the state as an independent, 
 self-sufficient organism, which 1 brings within its scope all 
 the functions and interests of society, judicial, political, 
 industrial, educational, and religious ; on the other hand, 
 the idea of the church as centred in Rome, and from 
 that seat of inalienable and indivisible authority issuing 
 to the faithful in every land laws paramount to all tem- 
 poral authority whatsoever, and holding such authority 
 under control and rebuke by virtue of a divine preroga- 
 tive. The first idea, so counter to tradition, to prejudice, 
 and to usage, had for its development but little adventi- 
 tious help, and must rely mainly upon the slowly-matur- 
 ing processes of time ; whereas the second, for its support 
 and propagation, used the order of Jesuits, which had 
 arisen for this very purpose, and which had already .been 
 a chief agent in restoring to the Pope so large a portion 
 of the spoils of the Reformation. Jesuitism is the des- 
 potism of intolerance. The Reformation had assailed 
 the Catholic unity ; Jesuitism would resist the Reforma- 
 tion by intensifying that unity through the subordination 
 of all persons, parties, interests to the head of the church. 
 Protestantism in Germany had contended for spiritual 
 
 damnata, reprobata, inania, viribusque et effectu vacua, otnnino 
 fuisse, esse, et perpetuo fore. . . . Articulos przefatos aliaque 
 prsemissa, potestatis plentitudine penitus damnamus, reprobamus 
 . . . cassamus, annullamus, viribusque et effectu irritanius, vacua- 
 mus." 
 
 1 "Non attenta cujusvis seu Ecclesiastici seu Politici, intra vel 
 extra Iinperium, quocunque tempore interposita contradictione vel 
 protestatione, qua? otunes inanes et nihil vigore horum declarantur." 
 See in Gieseler, iv. 1, note 18.
 
 62 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 freedom ; Jesuitism insisted upon the annihilation of self- 
 will, and its absorption in the will of a superior, who 
 should be reverenced, not on the ground of his wisdom 
 or his goodness, but as the official representative of God. 
 Protestantism had revived reason as a judge in matters 
 of faith ; Jesuitism made diversity of belief a sin, and 
 would enforce dogma by authority. Protestantism made 
 much of conscience as a criterion of duty ; Jesuitism made 
 of religion a power, the triumph of which was the end to 
 be had always in view, and which must be secured by 
 any and every means, even by the sacrifice of conscience 
 itself. 1 The principles of Jesuitism are wholly irreconcil- 
 able with the modern conception of society and of the 
 state, and must come into collision with that theory of 
 national autonomy whose germ was in the Protestant 
 factors of the Peace of Westphalia. To the realization of 
 its grand and startling conception of a universal paparchy, 
 Jesuitism brought the discipline of an army and the mis- 
 sionary zeal of the Apostolic age. It sought to control 
 all orders and functionaries within the Catholic Church, 
 to control people and princes through education and di- 
 plomacy, and to win over the pagan world by baptism and 
 the sign of the cross. 
 
 The spirit of liberty is essentially unproselytizing ; it 
 trusts to liberty, light, and truth. But Jesuitism means 
 propagandism ; and hence, while the spirit of national lib- 
 erty awakened at the Reformation has advanced only by 
 natural causes against traditional hindrances and political 
 jealousies, the spirit of Jesuitism has maintained unrest- 
 ing and unswerving activity, and under all changes and 
 conditions has kept in view the putting all things under 
 the feet of the Pope, and then, that the Pope himself 
 
 1 E. de Pressense*, La Libert^ Religieuse en Europe, p. 1 1 ; see, also, 
 Der Jesuiten Orden, von D. Johannes Huber, and GeacJtichte der 
 neusten Jesuitenumtriebe in Deutchland, von Wolfgang Munzel.
 
 INCREASE OF PROTESTANTS. 63 
 
 should also be subject unto the power that put all things 
 under him, that this order may be all in all. The na- 
 tional element has had upon its side those industrial and 
 economical causes and laws which, under the free spirit 
 of Protestantism, further the growth and prosperity of a 
 nation. Thus, within our own century, there has been 
 in Prussia a perceptible growth of the Protestant popula- 
 tion. On the authority of Hassel, in the year 1817 there 
 were in Prussia 6,370,480 Protestants, and 4,023,513 
 Catholics ; 1 by the census of 1867, the Protestants or 
 Evangelicals in Prussia numbered 15,596,380, the Catho- 
 lics 7,950,753. Various causes, such as war, emigration, 
 and the like, may have contributed to change the ratio 
 between the Protestant and Catholic populations, but the 
 relative increase of the former is a marked fact of the 
 past fifty years. Yet Prussia has been preeminent for 
 adhering with fidelity to the principle of confessional 
 equality. There Catholics have had equal rights with 
 Protestants, and larger donations from the public treas- 
 ury. 
 
 This freedom of worship and this favoritism of support 
 accorded to the Catholics have of late years been im- 
 proved by a remarkable activity in the multiplication of 
 religious orders, foundations, and institutions in Prussia, 
 especially under the lead of the Jesuits and their mis- 
 sions. In Prussia, between the years 1852 and 1861, 
 the number of convents increased from 79 to 185, at the 
 rate of 15 per cent, yearly. 2 About the same period 
 there was a marked increase of convents in other coun- 
 
 1 Handbuch der neusten Erdbeschreibung, von Gaspari Hassel, 
 und Cannabich; bearbeitet von D. G. Hassel, 1819. By the same 
 authority, in 1817, the Roman Catholics of Europe numbered 
 95,000,000, including Greek and Armenian adherents; the Prot- 
 estants 47,000,000, the Greek Church in Europe 32,000,000, the 
 Mohammedans 3,600,000, and the Jews 2,060,000. 
 
 a Ilausner, Vergleichende Statislik von Europa, 1865.
 
 64 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 tries of Europe. In France, for instance, there were 
 4,750 in 1862, against 2,592 in 1847, an increase of 137 
 every year. In Belgium in 1859 there were 994, against 
 430 in 1830. Throughout Germany during this period 
 the number of these ecclesiastical orders had so increased 
 that there was a member of some order for every 481 
 Catholics in the population ; and it was a fact of much 
 significance that the superiors of most of these orders, 
 having absolute authority over the membership, were 
 foreigners, residing either at Rome or in France, and 
 naturally hostile to German ideas and to German unity. 
 The facility with which these orders were multiplied in 
 Prussia, and the privilege accorded them of establishing 
 separate schools for the training of priests, apart from 
 the universities with their rigorous examinations, a 
 privilege contrary to the whole educational policy of 
 Prussia, shows with what fidelity the Prussian gov- 
 ernment had adhered to the Pact of Westphalia ; how 
 even more than just Prussia had been in securing to her 
 Catholic subjects the full measure of liberty accorded to 
 Protestants. In Prussia for a century there have been 
 no " Catholic disabilities." Jews and dissenters have 
 labored under disabilities, legal and political ; for the 
 Peace of Westphalia secured confessional equality only 
 to Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, and the Reformed 
 or Calvinists ; and notwithstanding the famous saying of 
 Frederic the .Great, that " in Prussia every man shall get 
 to heaven after his own fashion," dissenters from these 
 three recognized confessions have had no help from the 
 state, but rather hindrance, in their heavenward pil- 
 grimage. But Roman Catholics have had only help 
 recognition, money, privilege, place, power; they have 
 been satisfied with their position, and have made good 
 use of their opportunities. 
 
 For more than fifty years past the greater part of the
 
 BISMARCK AS A STATESMAN. 65 
 
 Lutherans and the Reformed in Prussia have been com- 
 bined in one church, known as the Evangelical this 
 and the Roman Catholic being the privileged churches, 
 with the exclusive countenance and support of the state ; 
 and of this countenance in the way of official dignity and 
 consideration, and this support in the way of substantial 
 endowments and grants, during this century the Romish 
 Church has had the lion's share. 
 
 Meantime the idea of nationality had been slowly 
 crystallizing itself out of the ferment of wars, revolu- 
 tions, compacts, and policies which the Napoleonic era 
 had stirred in the whole continent. Prussia had suf- 
 fered under long humiliation; Germany had been di- 
 vided into hostile camps ; poets, visionaries, revolution- 
 ists, socialists, diplomatists had made abortive attempts 
 at German unity now under the fiction of a republic, 
 and again under the hardly less fictitious shadow of an 
 empire. But at length the man arose who could divine 
 the true solution of the problem who had the courage 
 to attempt this, and the sagacity to accomplish it. 
 Prince Bismarck is one of those rare men who combine 
 prescience and providence in respect of events with an 
 intuition of men and of motives, and an executive will 
 equal to any emergency. It may be questioned whether 
 he has a policy, either in the higher sense of a pro- 
 nounced system of administration, or in the inferior sense 
 of expediency in management. His state-craft is not of 
 the order so much approved in England and in the 
 United States, that works by a definite programme or 
 platform of ideas and measures ; nor of the fashion of 
 France, that seeks to govern by a theory without regard 
 to facts ; but with a keen outlook upon events, and a 
 foresight of tendencies, he is quick to seize or to shape 
 whatever may serve his immediate purpose, and resolute 
 to bring both men and things within the scope of his 
 5
 
 66 PAP ARC HY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 plan without prematurely unveiling it. This habit of 
 using events, men, occasions for his underlying purpose, 
 causes him sometimes to appear variable in his methods 
 and in his relations to parties now conservative, now 
 liberal ; now conciliating the Catholic hierarchy, and 
 now ruling it with an iron hand. But this mutability is 
 only the eddying on the surface ; the deep undercurrent 
 moves steadily onward. The key to Bismarck's pol- 
 itics is given in these words devotion to the unity of 
 Germany as the supreme good of Germany herself, and 
 as the best guarantee of the peace and prosperity of 
 Europe. Bismarck saw that the ideal of one Germanic 
 nation the dream of her poets, the aspiration of her 
 patriots, the vague longing of her people was not to 
 be attained through any combination of German poli- 
 tics, as these stood when he came into power. No arti- 
 ficial bund, no conventional empire, could make a united 
 Germany. It was necessary first to remove from Ger- 
 many the incubus of Austrian supremacy a domina- 
 tion narrow, selfish, bigoted in proportion as it was weak, 
 and, in a measure, alien ; and next it was necessary to 
 emancipate Germany from the traditional superiority of 
 France, and to secure her against the dread of French 
 invasion. To this end he saw that the first requisite was 
 strength the actual material strength of arms, and the 
 moral strength that comes by victory. Reversing the 
 motto, " in union is strength," he sought union by 
 strength ; first strong, then united and free. Germany 
 must have a leader strong enough to inspire her confi- 
 dence, to hold her adversaries in check, and to command 
 the respect of all European powers. And this leader 
 could be found only in Prussia ; Prussia reacting from 
 the humiliations of more than half a century, to emulate 
 the days of the great Frederic ; Prussia, organized into a 
 camp, and drilled to her last man ; Prussia, equipped
 
 WARS OF 1866 AND 1870. 67 
 
 with the best weapons, officered by the best generals, 
 and, above all, led by the soldier-king, who had the con- 
 fidence and affection of the truly national army which he 
 had done so much to form and to discipline. 
 
 Whether Bismarck planned, provoked, or precipitated 
 the wars with Austria and with France, must, perhaps 
 forever, lie buried with the mysteries of diplomacy ; it is 
 enough that the displacement of these two powers was 
 necessary to his conception of a united Germany ; that 
 he foresaw the contingency of these conflicts, was on the 
 alert for both, and was prepared at every point when the 
 moment came. And with each stroke of victory he 
 made a stride for unity, creating the North German 
 Bund out of the triumphs of Kb'niggratz, and annealing 
 the German empire in the furnace in which the dross of 
 the French empire was consumed. 
 
 The question of religion did not enter at all into the 
 wars of 1866 and 1870. These were wars for German 
 nationality to free Germany from foreign dictation, 
 and to combine all the states into one nation. Though 
 the constitution of the German empire, like the constitu- 
 tion of the United States, expressly reserves to the sev- 
 eral states certain prescriptive rights, and though the 
 imperial government at Berlin, like the national gov- 
 ernment at Washington, is a government of limited 
 powers, yet there is now a G-ermany, with its emperor, 
 its parliament, its army, its navy, its postal service, its 
 code and courts, its diplomatic corps, its national policy 
 a constitutional empire with an hereditary sovereign 
 in the person of the King of Prussia ; an empire with a 
 population of forty-one millions, in the heart of Europe, 
 capable of defending itself against any enemy without, 
 and of dictating peace to its neighbors. In a word, here 
 is the idea of nationality realized in a people of one lan- 
 guage, one country, one government, one policy, one des- 
 tiny.
 
 68 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 The German empire, as such, has no religion. Its 
 constitution has no provision concerning churches or con- 
 fessions these are left under the jurisdiction of local 
 laws in the several states. And yet the creation of this 
 empire has been the occasion of an ecclesiastical contro- 
 versy in Prussia, that seems almost to threaten a relig- 
 ious war. This state of things, however, was not planned 
 by Bismarck, and does not seem to have been appre- 
 hended by him, until the ultramontanes had openly 
 manifested their hostility to the empire. Perhaps the 
 severity of his measures is due, in part, to the fact, that 
 he awoke a little too late to the real and pressing danger 
 of the case; yet even should we allow the criticism of 
 Von Arnim and his friends upon Bismarck's earlier indif- 
 ference or leniency toward the usurpations of Rome, we 
 must still concede to the chancellor the merit of sin- 
 cerity in his consideration for the German Catholic bish- 
 ops down to the time of their concerted hostility to the 
 German empire. We incline, however, to the opinion 
 that Bismarck's sagacity was not at fault in declining 
 Von Arnim's counsel, but that upon broader grounds he 
 was reluctant to enter the arena of politico-ecclesiastical 
 strife ; and it is an open secret that the emperor sought 
 to avert such a strife by any means consistent with the 
 dignity and authority of the state. In any case the 
 contest began on the other side. While the principle of 
 Nationality was striding toward its consummation in 
 Germany, the principle of the Paparchy, as embodied in 
 Jesuitism, had already triumphed at Rome, in the pro- 
 mulgation of infallibility and the indorsement of the syl- 
 labus ; the one subjugating the Catholic hierarchy to the 
 absolute will of the Pope, the other setting the papacy 
 in open and irreconcilable hostility to modern society. 
 Between this usurping paparchy and the nationality al- 
 most simultaneously perfected in Germany and in Italy,
 
 THE VON ARNIM CORRESPONDENCE. 69 
 
 a collision was inevitable. Bismarck did nothing to 
 bring it on, and could do nothing to avert it. The times 
 and tendencies were stronger than he. The truce of 
 Westphalia was at an end ; the unsettled conflict must 
 break out anew ; the battle between the spiritual and 
 temporal powers must be fought over upon the soil of 
 the Reformation. So far was Bismarck from crippling 
 the Roman hierarchy in Germany as a means of resist- 
 ing papal usurpation, that at first he sought rather to 
 strengthen the hierarchy in its relations with the Prus- 
 sian state. This fact the publication of the Von Arnim 
 correspondence has fully revealed. Before the meeting 
 of the Vatican Council, the bishops of Germany assem- 
 bled at Fulda the tomb of the Holy Boniface and 
 issued a pastoral, in which they virtually repudiated the 
 programme attributed to the ultramontanes : 
 
 " A general council never did and never can establish a 
 dogma not contained in Scripture, nor in the apostolical tradi- 
 tions. A general council never did and never can proclaim 
 doctrines in contradiction to the principles of justice, to the 
 rights of the state and its authorities, to culture and the true 
 interests of science, or to the legitimate freedom and well-being 
 of nations. Neither need any one fear that the general coun- 
 cil will thoughtlessly and hastily frame resolutions which need- 
 lessly would put it in antagonism to existing circumstances, 
 and to the wants of the present times ; or that, in the manner 
 of enthusiasts, it would endeavor to transplant into the present 
 times, views, customs, and institutions of times gone by." 
 
 The government of Bavaria early took alarm at the 
 prognostic signs of the Vatican Council, and the theo- 
 logical faculty of Munich reported to the government 
 that the syllabus, if accepted by the council, either in 
 its original negative form or in the positive redaction of 
 Father Schrader, must lead to serious changes in the re- 
 lations between the church and the state. Count Von
 
 70 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 Arnim, who represented Prussia at Rome during the 
 council, was of the same opinion, and recommended to 
 his government some active intervention in the council, 
 or a remonstrance with the Pope in person ; but Bis- 
 marck steadily refused to meddle with the council, or to 
 attempt a moral coercion in respect to any of its deci- 
 sions, and adhered to the policy of sustaining the Ger- 
 man bishops in the opposition to ultramontanism, which 
 they had foreshadowed at Fulda. When these bishops 
 all succumbed to the ultramontane majority in the 
 council, and came back to Germany to proclaim infalli- 
 bility as a dogma, and to carry out the teachings of the 
 syllabus, it was not Bismarck but THEY that had 
 changed. Nevertheless, they would have been allowed 
 in peace to hold the new dogmas, had they not set out to 
 use these, and suffered themselves to be used, as instru- 
 ments against the lawful authority of the state, and es- 
 pecially against the empire, so soon as this came into 
 form. 1 
 
 From the moment that the victory of Koniggriitz ex- 
 pelled Austria from the field of German politics, and 
 placed a Protestant power at the head of a new German 
 confederation, the ultramontanes began to show their 
 hostility to Prussian ascendency and to the scheme of a 
 Germanic empire. So bitter, intense, and powerful was 
 that hostility in Bavaria, that her government came 
 within one of refusing to join the Northern States in the 
 war with France. 2 
 
 Ultramontanism was already a political power organ- 
 ized to uphold the paparchy, even at the cost of the 
 Fatherland. The proclamation of Napoleon at the open- 
 ing of the war showed that he counted upon the neutral- 
 
 1 See note on Count Von Arnim, at the end of this article. 
 a It was literally by a bare majority of one, that the Bavarian 
 House voted to make common cause with the rest of Germany.
 
 ULTRAMONTANE HOSTILITY. 71 
 
 ity, if not the cooperation, of the South German States ; 
 and the ultramontane press gave him reason to suppose 
 that he could depend upon the sympathy of those states 
 with Catholic France against Protestant Prussia. The 
 peril of that internal discord which had so often made 
 Germany the battlefield of Europe, led Bismarck to urge 
 at Versailles the consummation of German unity, while 
 the fires of patriotism were aglow with victory ; but this 
 empire at once became the mark of ultramontane hate 
 through the press, the pulpit, and the party of the Centre 
 in Parliament 1 a hatred now organized in the " Catho- 
 lic Unions," that set the church above the state. But 
 in assailing the empire they touched the apple of Bis- 
 marck's eye, since both his policy and his patriotism sub- 
 ordinate Prussia itself to Germany. His view is broad 
 enough for an empire. 
 
 Now, this feature of Bismarck's politics is distasteful 
 to Prussians of the "old line." The bureaucratic sys- 
 tem, in which day by day and year by year each subor- 
 dinate officer worked out his prescribed details, and gov- 
 ernment went on like an automatic machine, was to these 
 high conservatives the perfection of the state ; and they 
 were at first scandalized at the notion of an imperial 
 chancellor who would govern not by red-tape but by 
 personal ideas and forces, would make of government a 
 living power animated and pervaded with his own spirit, 
 would assert strength of will against the stolid routine 
 of facts and precedents, would set the larger interests 
 of Germany above the traditions of Prussia, would re- 
 model the Prussian Foreign Office, the Ministries of War 
 and of Marine, and even the interior economies of Prus- 
 sia, to meet the new conditions of the empire ; and, worst 
 
 1 For proof of the hostility of the ultramontanes to the empire, 
 see Geschichte der neusten Jesuitenumtriebe in Deutschland, von Wolf- 
 gang Menzel.
 
 72 PAPARCUY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 of all, who would even invoke the fickle and perilous sup- 
 port of the people and the press. " Baggage-master " is 
 the title given on American railways to the official who 
 superintends the luggage-vans and sees that all luggage 
 is duly ticketed and cared for, and fitly delivered ; but 
 " baggage-swasAer " is the epithet he sometimes receives 
 when, in the hurry of quitting one station for the next, 
 he pitches out luggage in a promiscuous manner, careless 
 of damage to trunks or to toes. So, when this new mas- 
 ter took things in hand, in the hurry of movement from 
 Diippel to Koniggratz, from Koniggratz to Sedan, from 
 Sedan to Paris, it was HO wonder that old-fashioned, 
 slow-coach conservatives were startled at the way in 
 which the luggage of traditions and precedents was tossed 
 about ; and certainly a good deal of lumber and trump- 
 ery was smashed as the new imperial train got under 
 way. But ready as Bismarck was and is to bend or 
 break everything to his own quick, imperious, and reso- 
 lute will, he did not lay hands upon the Roman hierar- 
 chy until they had assailed the empire with intrigue, 
 and had defied the laws. If now he has pitched them 
 over with seeming violence, it is because the train must 
 move on ; and this train of events is impelled by a power 
 higher than the chancellor, higher and stronger than any 
 man. 
 
 The time has fully come when the question must be 
 settled for the whole future of society, Whether each 
 nation shall make its own laws, rule its own subjects, de- 
 termine its own policy, subject only to the law of justice 
 within and to the comity of nations from without, or 
 whether an ecclesiastical power shall be recognized as 
 higher than all governments, and competent to dictate, 
 to revise, and even to annul their acts by the personal 
 will of a man who claims to be the infallible medium 
 and expounder of the will of God ? To understand the
 
 THE POWER OF THE POPE. 73 
 
 question as it lies in Germany, one has but to ask him- 
 self whether the Parliament of Great Britain and the 
 Congress of the United States shall pause on the eve of 
 every act to inquire, Will this be approved or allowed by 
 the Pope of Rome ? 
 
 Some affect to think that there is no longer reason to 
 fear the aggressions of Rome ; that Bismarck exaggerated 
 the danger to Germany from ultramontanism, and ap- 
 pealed to political fears and religious prejudices to cover 
 his ambitious designs ; that he, in fact, restored the pa- 
 pacy to vitality, and converted infallibility from a theo- 
 logical juggle into a political weapon, by the consequence 
 he gave to what he himself has pithily styled, " The 
 Church of the Vatican." But in reality the personal 
 power of the Pope within the Romish Church was never 
 so immediate nor so absolute as it is to-day. Wherever 
 the movement of modern society has unhinged the Roman 
 Catholic Church from the state, it has thrown the hierar- 
 chy into personal dependence upon the Pope. The bishop 
 who can no longer fall back upon a powerful prince or 
 patron to support his independence receives implicitly 
 the mandates of Rome. And the doctrine that the Pope 
 is the supreme and infallible autocrat of the church and 
 of the world, which in the Middle Ages was the ambi- 
 tious assumption of individual pontiffs, is now obligatory 
 as a dogma of the church upon every true Catholic. All 
 faith and all authority are centred in him, and the whole 
 hierarchy hangs upon him, and is the instrument of his 
 will. Ten years ago, speaking as for the Pope, Dr. 
 Manning put into his mouth these words : 
 
 " I acknowledge no civil power ; I am the subject of no 
 prince ; and I claim more than this I claim to be the su- 
 preme judge and director of the consciences of men, of the 
 peasant that tills the fields and of the prince that sits upon the 
 throne ; of the household that live in the shade of privacy and
 
 74 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 the legislator that make laws for kingdoms ; I am the sole, last 
 supreme judge of what is right and wrong." 1 
 
 If, ten years ago, this seemed a rhetorical extrava- 
 gance, to-day one must accept Dr. Manning's testimony 
 that " the Holy See is ultramontane, the whole episco- 
 pate is ultramontane, the whole priesthood, the whole 
 body of the faithful throughout all nations, excepting 
 only a handful here and there, of rationalistic or liberal 
 Catholics all are ultramontanes. Ultramontanism is 
 Popery, and Popery is Catholicism." 2 
 
 This compact, unified power, seeking always its own 
 supremacy, is ready in France to ally itself with legiti- 
 mists or imperialists ; in Germany, with social democrats 
 or with Polish revolutionists ; in Spain, to bless the Car- 
 list banditti ; in the United States, to work by free 
 schools or against them ; and in every land, whether 
 through the laws, behind the laws, under the laws, or 
 over the laws, to seize its own opportunity. 
 
 The conflict, which we have seen to be historical and 
 inevitable, involves the profoundest political and ethical 
 principles, and admits of no evasion or compromise. 
 There are three theories of the constitution of human so- 
 ciety in relation to government and religion, or to state 
 and church. The first is the theory that, inasmuch as 
 the divine is superior to the human, the spiritual to the 
 physical, the eternal to the temporal, all the institu- 
 tions of society should be ordered and controlled with 
 respect to man as a religious being that is, the church 
 should direct human society not only in matters of faith 
 and morals, but in education, in laws, in government. 
 This was the theory of Rome in the Middle Ages, and it 
 is now revived in the syllabus. The second theory is, 
 
 1 Sermon in the Pro- Cathedral, Kensington, Tablet, October 9, 
 1864. 
 a Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects.
 
 CONFLICTING THEORIES OF SOCIETY. 75 
 
 that man exists for the state ; that the state has a de- 
 mand upon the subject for his supreme allegiance, and 
 should train and govern him for its own service alike in 
 peace and in war ; and, therefore, all the interests of soci- 
 ety, material, political, educational, religious, must be 
 subjected to the rule of the state. This was the theory 
 evolved by the Protestant states of the Reformation, and 
 which has since obtained in Germany. 
 
 The third theory is, that man is the true centre about 
 which all else should revolve ; that both state and church 
 should exist for man, be administered by his will, and 
 in such way as shall best promote his welfare. This is 
 the view of civil society in the United States, and is, to 
 a growing extent, the practical condition of society in 
 England. 
 
 The first two of these systems have come into collision 
 in Germany. We have no sympathy with either as a 
 system for modern society, but in the conflict between 
 the two we plant ourselves unhesitatingly on the side of 
 the second, upon grounds of Scripture, of reason, and of 
 experience ; the more freely, that in Germany the theory 
 of state supremacy and state supervision does not meddle 
 at all with the dogmas of the church, nor with modes of 
 worship ; does not interfere in the least with confessional 
 freedom ; but only insists that the allegiance which is 
 demanded of every subject shall be rendered by priest as 
 well as laic, that the obedience to law which is required 
 of every citizen shall be rendered by the highest ecclesi- 
 astic as well as by the meanest boor, and that the scien- 
 tific preparation exacted of every servant of the govern- 
 ment shall be made also by the clergy under its pay. 
 
 The contending systems bring the paparchy into open 
 conflict with the ruling power in the state ; but underly- 
 ing the latter is also the nation just waking to the con- 
 sciousness of a new life. Now, as between these two the
 
 76 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 teachings of Christ and the Apostles leave us but one 
 choice. The New Testament requires that the Christian 
 shall be a loyal subject of the government under which 
 he lives. " Let every soul be subject unto the higher 
 powers. For there is no power but of God : the powers 
 that be are ordained of God : whosoever therefore resist- 
 eth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God." 1 Such 
 is the general principle; and there are also special in- 
 junctions which may be recommended to the Pope as suc- 
 cessor of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, in preparing 
 his next instructions for the faithful in Germany. The 
 first is from Peter : " Submit yourselves to every ordi- 
 nance of man [i. e., every institution of government 
 among men, avOpwiriir) /cnW] for the Lord's sake : whether 
 it be to the king, as supreme ; or unto governors, as unto 
 them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil 
 doers, and for the praise of them that do well. As free 
 [t. e., be loyal, not in the servile spirit of fear, but in the 
 free spirit of Christian love], and not using your liberty 
 for a cloak of maliciousness [not making your privileges 
 in the church a cover for Jesuitical plottings against the 
 state]. Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear 
 God. Honor the king." 2 The second is from the in- 
 structions of Paul to Titus for the regulation of the faith- 
 ful in Crete: " Put them in mind to be subject to princi- 
 palities and powers, to obey magistrates." 3 Like all the 
 injunctions of the Bible, these precepts are given in 
 broad general terms, without the limitations and qualifi- 
 cations of ethical philosophy ; but it is enough that some 
 of them were given under the bloody rule of Nero. Now 
 
 1 Romans xiii. 1, 2. The Apostle here lays down the broad doc- 
 trine of the sovereignty of the existing government, the government 
 de facto is the government de jure this as opposed to anarchy. 
 He does not here consider the abstract right of revolution. 
 
 1 1 Peter ii. 13-18. 8 Titus iii. 1.
 
 CONSCIENCE, ITS NATURE AND ITS SPHERE. 77 
 
 it is impossible to find in the New Testament any injunc- 
 tions of obedience to organized ecclesiastical power, 1 like 
 those here given of obedience to civil government. It is 
 not ecclesiastical authority, nor a corporate ecclesiastical 
 institution, but the personal God and the individual con- 
 science in its direct personal relations with God, which is 
 set over against an unrighteous demand of the civil au- 
 thority in that crucial motto of Peter, " We ought to 
 obey God rather than men ; " 2 and in the teaching of 
 Christ, " Render unto Caesar the things which are Cae- 
 sar's, and unto God the things which are God's." Of 
 conscience as an ecclesiastical corporation, or of con- 
 science as an imputed or a vicarious faculty, determined 
 and exercised by one for another, the ethics of the New 
 Testament have no knowledge. Peter knew of a con- 
 science within himself that should obey God rather than 
 man, but he never demanded a conscience in others that 
 should obey himself officially, or his ecclesiastical succes- 
 sors, rather than submit to " the king as supreme." This 
 discrimination between conscience as a personal faculty 
 by which each soul determines for itself questions of 
 right and duty, and conscience as an obligation imposed 
 by external authority, is vital in a case of collision be- 
 tween the civil and the ecclesiastical powers. The civil 
 government cannot claim to rule the conscience. The 
 subject has the right to protest in conscience against 
 what he deems an unjust or an immoral law; has the 
 right to decline to obey what he deems an unrighteous 
 law, and to accept and suffer the penalty of disobedience. 
 Society must recognize this right as one that may be nec- 
 essary to its own deliverance from an unjust law or a 
 
 1 No scholar would think of quoting as parallel Heb. xiii. 17, 
 which reads strictly, " Follow your leaders," with a dutiful respect 
 and deference to their teaching and example. 
 
 2 Acts v. 29.
 
 78 PAPARCUY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 tyrannical government; society cannot afford to ignore 
 that protesting conscience which has made patriots glori- 
 ous and martyrs immortal; which has displayed such 
 moral heroism and effected such wholesome reform ; 
 least of all could Germany afford to obliterate that right 
 of a protesting conscience which Luther consecrated to 
 her emancipation, when he said, " Jfier stehe ich ! Ich 
 kann nicht anders ; Gott hilf mir" 
 
 Shakespeare, as ever, has here given us the finest 
 philosophical distinction in the fewest possible words. 
 " Every subject's duty is the king's ; but every subject's 
 soul is his own." l Conscience and Christianity make 
 loyalty to government a duty ; yet, as between soul and 
 state, there can be no question that a man must be loyal 
 to his own soul at whatever cost. The personal con- 
 science, even when deluded, should be treated with ten- 
 derness ; and though society must protect itself against 
 a fanaticized conscience, it should not assail the faculty 
 to remedy its morbid conditions. But a factitious con- 
 science which puts forward obligation to an ecclesiastical 
 authority within the state or without it as higher than al- 
 legiance to the state, society cannot afford to parley with, 
 nor to recognize as entitled to any concession. Such an 
 antagonistic sovereignty would annihilate social order. 
 
 Here reason stands by the New Testament in teaching 
 that, in a collision between the state and any organized 
 ecclesiastical power, the higher allegiance is due to the 
 state. Some form of civil government is indispensable 
 to the existence of human society. Without this all is 
 anarchy. But there is no form of church organization 
 the maintenance of which is essential to human society, 
 however important religion as a soul-faith may be to 
 social order ; and the assertion of sovereignty in affairs 
 for an ecclesiastical authority is a constant menace to 
 1 King Henry V., act IV. scene 1.
 
 SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE. 79 
 
 that organic condition of society which we call the state. 
 The claim of a divine prerogative vested in a person or a 
 power apart from the constituted government to super- 
 vise that government and its laws, to define the limits of 
 obedience, and to absolve subjects from allegiance, is 
 destructive of all order and authority in the state, and 
 must reduce society to anarchy. The instinct of self- 
 preservation is for the civil power against the clerical. 
 
 Experience justifies this teaching of Scripture and of 
 reason. The worst tyranny the world has seen, the 
 most atrocious persecutions that history records, have 
 sprung from ecclesiastical power, or from the temporal 
 power as wielded by and for the spiritual. The civil 
 power tyrannizes or persecutes from motives of interest 
 or expediency ; but the ecclesiastical adds to these that 
 most terrible weapon of cruelty the claim of a divine 
 warrant for extirpating its enemies as the enemies of 
 God. Who would not rather take his chances as a 
 Christian under the bloody Diocletian, than as a Chris- 
 tian reformer under the remorseless Alva ? No inquisi- 
 tion was ever invented in the service of the civil power 
 alone. 
 
 Upon every ground, then, of Scripture, of reason, of 
 society, of history, and of humanity, we are moved to 
 side with the civil against the ecclesiastical power, in a 
 conflict for sovereignty within the state. The harshest 
 measures of the civil power in resisting ecclesiastical en- 
 croachment are a far less evil than is the bare possibility 
 of ecclesiastical supremacy over the state. In the state, 
 or rather in the community as ordered through the state, 
 there is always a tendency to reaction from severe meas- 
 ures when the danger that provoked these is over. The 
 state justifies its severities by the plea of self-protection. 
 But the ecclesiastical power justifies its persecutions by 
 the pleas of protecting and propagating the faith, and of
 
 80 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 executing a divine prerogative of judgment and such 
 motives suffer no modification nor relaxation. Formu- 
 lated in the doctrine of infallibility, and incarnated in 
 the person of the Pope, they are forever irreconcilable 
 with the autonomy of the nation, and can rest only with 
 the destruction of modern society. It is at this point 
 that Prussia has planted herself in opposition to the pa- 
 parchy; and though her own theory of church and state 
 is far from perfect, and her ecclesiastical legislation in 
 some particulars is not to be commended, yet in resisting 
 ecclesiastical encroachment upon civil rights, she is 
 maintaining the cause of nationalism, and defending in- 
 terests common to society throughout Christendom. 
 
 The contest between Protestantism and Romanism, in 
 respect of faith and discipline, may be safely left to the 
 pulpit, the university, and the press. With such mat- 
 ters the recent ecclesiastical legislation of Prussia has 
 nothing to do. Protestantism would but weaken itself, 
 and would confess the weakness of its own principles and 
 position, by invoking the arm of the state to protect it 
 against the spread of the Roman Catholic Church ; and 
 the Prussian government would weaken itself by espous- 
 ing Protestantism as against Catholicism through its 
 Ministry of Worship, or by legislating against any partic- 
 ular sect or confession. In laws affecting the rights, the 
 duties, the liberties of subjects, no government can show 
 ecclesiastical favoritism without weakening the tie of al- 
 legiance to itself. This the Prussian government has not 
 done. Its recent legislation was not Protestant in its 
 motive, but political. Protestantism would be too nar- 
 row a basis for the defense of the state and the nation 
 against the paparchy. This is of no less moment for the 
 unbeliever and the Jew. Rightly considered, the Prus- 
 sian ecclesiastical laws are a defense of Catholics them- 
 selves, in the freedom of their faith and worship, against
 
 CHURCH AND STATE IN PRUSSIA. 81 
 
 a Roman dictation that would destroy their independence 
 as Germans, and obliterate their consciousness of nation- 
 ality. As Mr. Gladstone has pithily said, " Individual 
 servitude, however abject, will not satisfy the party now 
 dominant in the Latin Church : the state must also be a 
 slave." 
 
 But why not determine the contest in Prussia by the 
 immediate separation of church and state which to an 
 English nonconformist and to an American Christian of 
 whatever name would be its ready and proper solution ? 
 Because the people do not wish that solution ; are not 
 ready for it ; really stand in dread of it. Trained as the 
 Prussians are to dependence upon a state provision for 
 religion, accustomed to the impartial support of both the 
 Evangelical and the Roman Catholic churches from the 
 public treasury, and constitutionally averse to sudden 
 and radical changes, they have no desire to dissolve 
 the connection between church and state. The Roman 
 Catholics are not willing to relinquish the revenues they 
 derive from the state, nor the hope of political ascend- 
 ency in some change of the ministry ; and Protestants 
 fear to dissolve the existing relation of the church to the 
 state, lest, on the one hand, rationalism or socialism 
 should control a large proportion of the parochial prop- 
 erty of the Evangelical Church ; and, on the other hand, 
 Romanism should become too formidable through wealth 
 and organization no longer subject to state control. No 
 statesman would venture to force a dissolution of church 
 and state in the present state of public opinion. Ca- 
 vour's maxim, " A free church in a free state," does not 
 mean that the church should be free to conspire against 
 the state. Tenacious as we are of church independence, 
 and confident as we are of the resources of liberty in a 
 fair and open field, we will not blind ourselves to the 
 
 1 The Vatican Decrees, p. 40; also p. 32. 
 6
 
 82 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 fact that Germany, threatened with the revengeful ha- 
 tred of France, with the envy of Austria, with the jeal- 
 ousy of Russia, and having at Rome an implacable en- 
 emy who teaches millions of her subjects that to disobey 
 her laws is their duty to God that, thus circum- 
 stanced, the new composite empire of Germany is in a 
 very different condition for experiments of " the largest 
 liberty " from England in her insular position, or the 
 United States beyond the Atlantic. Moreover, " let not 
 him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that 
 putteth it off," and the United States may yet learn 
 that, to cope with the political schemes and encroach- 
 ments of the Roman hierarchy, liberty must equip herself 
 once more as for the final conflict with slavery. 
 
 We must therefore judge Prussian legislation not by 
 English theory nor by American practice, but by the 
 condition of Prussia herself. And what is that condi- 
 tion? In respect of intellectual freedom (Freiheit des 
 Geistes), Prussia is in advance of England and the 
 United States, especially in the sphere of theology. 
 Here she knows nothing of that tyranny of the press and 
 of public opinion, which, in more democratic communi- 
 ties, satisfies the craving of human nature for some form 
 of arbitrary power. But in respect of freedom of politi- 
 cal action, and of that institutional freedom which has 
 grown old in England, and with which the United States 
 were born, Germany until a very recent period has stood 
 where England was two hundred and fifty years ago. 
 The reason of this tardiness of development in Germany 
 is fitly expressed by Mr. Freeman : " On the Teutonic 
 mainland, the old Teutonic freedom, with its free assem- 
 blies, national and local, gradually died out before the 
 encroachments of a brood of petty princes. In the Teu- 
 tonic island it has changed its form from age to age ; it 
 has lived through many storms, and it has withstood the
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL LA WS OF PRUSSIA. 83 
 
 attacks of many enemies, but it has never utterly died 
 out." l Keeping this distinction in view, one must judge 
 the recent ecclesiastical legislation of Prussia by the 
 England of Elizabeth's time, as to its motive and neces- 
 sity, and as to the theory of state control in church 
 affairs though there has been nothing in Prussia so 
 arbitrary nor so severe as the Act of Uniformity, and no 
 attempt to coerce any man in respect of his faith. This 
 will help us to account for a legislation which we could 
 not at all points defend : the exigency is one in which, 
 as in time of rebellion, the preservation of the larger lib- 
 erty of society requires the seeming or temporary restric- 
 tion of the liberty of the individual and the particular. 
 
 It is not necessary here to enter upon a minute exami- 
 nation of the new ecclesiastical laws. 2 The policy that 
 dictated them, the principle that underlies them, and the 
 spirit that animates them are more relevant to this dis- 
 cussion than are forms of expression or modes of execu- 
 tion. Now the motive of these laws is not to restrain 
 the liberty of conscience, of faith, or of worship ; not to 
 interdict, nor to control the Roman Catholic Church as a 
 religious confession and communion ; not to enforce uni- 
 formity of belief or of worship, nor to exalt one church 
 above another, nor to interfere in any wise with the in- 
 terior spiritual discipline of the churches ; but their sole 
 purpose is to defend the nation against the political ac- 
 tion of a hierarchy that would destroy both its unity and 
 its sovereignty. The hierarchy excommunicated Catholic 
 teachers for refusing to teach in the state-schools the in- 
 
 1 The Growth of the English Constitution, p. 18. 
 
 2 In illustration of the legislative policy of Prussia respecting 
 church affairs, the reader may refer to the recent ecclesiastical faws, 
 and to an exposition of the same, contained in the volume named 
 at the head of this article, entitled Ultramontanism : England's 
 Sympathy with Germany.
 
 84 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 fallibility of the Pope as an article of faith ; the govern- 
 ment hereupon withdrew from the clergy the old privi- 
 lege of supervising the confessional teaching in the pub- 
 lic schools ; and when the bishops were contumacious 
 against this just and reasonable measure, the government 
 insisted that, as beneficiaries of the state, the bishops 
 should give proofs of their loyalty. Finding that semina- 
 ries for the training of priests, supported by grants from 
 government, were controlled by ultramontanes from Italy, 
 and used for denationalizing the priesthood and making 
 them partisans of Rome against the state, the government 
 now requires of the clergy, as of all officials in the bureaux 
 of state, a preparatory training in a state gymnasium and 
 university, i. e., a good literary and scientific education ; 
 and also, as preliminary to induction into the clerical 
 office, it requires evidence of such education, of good 
 character, and of loyalty to the state. To guard against 
 abuses of power the ecclesiastical reformatories are placed 
 under state inspection. It is forbidden to use church dis- 
 cipline for political ends, or for the injury of any one in 
 his person, his property, or his liberty ; and for the pro- 
 tection of the inferior clergy, there is a right of appeal to 
 a state tribunal against the oppressions of ecclesiastical 
 power. One may also withdraw from a church without 
 censure or damage by notifying the proper authorities. 
 Such is the general scope of these laws. Many of their 
 provisions are directly for the protection and the enlarge- 
 ment of liberty ; and of the code, as a whole, it must be 
 said, though some of its demands and penalties are much 
 too stringent for our times, yet its plea of political neces- 
 sity is sound and sincere. 
 
 Roman Catholics are barred from complaining of this 
 legislation ; first, because laws concerning the clergy, sim- 
 ilar to those of Prussia, have long existed in Oldenburg 
 and in other German States by compact with the Pope,
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL LAWS OF PRUSSIA. 85 
 
 and what the papacy has assented to in one part of Ger- 
 many cannot be " against God and the church " in an- 
 other ; and, secondly, as Archbishop Manning knows 
 well enough, should temporal power be restored to the 
 Pope, no teacher or preacher would be allowed within 
 the Papal States except under far more stringent condi- 
 tions from the Holy See, and any departure from those 
 conditions would be visited with penalties far more severe 
 than those of Prussian law. But the precedents and 
 animus of Roman Catholic legislation, though it should 
 shame Romanists into silence touching " the persecution " 
 in Prussia, could furnish no apology for religious perse- 
 cution, if such there were. Religious persecution there 
 is none, though political proscription and penalty are in- 
 flicted in ways that violate the English and American 
 sense of religious liberty. As patron and paymaster of 
 the church the Prussian government has the legal right 
 to make regulations for the education and the induction 
 of the clergy, precisely as the Parliament of Great Brit- 
 ain has reasserted its right to legislate for the Church of 
 England, to regulate public worship within the church, 
 and to create a judge of ecclesiastical causes. Indeed it 
 may be fairly said, that the Public Worship Bill comes 
 much nearer than the Prussian ecclesiastical laws to 
 trenching upon private judgment and liberty of con- 
 science. The Prussian laws do not touch the Roman 
 Church in its worship or its internal economy ; they deal 
 with the church only at points where it comes into ex- 
 ternal relations with the state ; they provide that the 
 clergy whom the state supports shall be Germans by 
 birth, shall.be intelligently and liberally educated, and 
 shall be loyal to the government. Upon the Prussian 
 system of church and state a system by which the 
 Roman hierarchy have largely profited, and which they 
 still desire to retain these laws are strictly defensible.
 
 86 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 It is to be regretted that the penalties of crimin.il of- 
 fenses must needs be applied for the enforcement of such 
 wholesome regulations. We do not fancy the imprison- 
 ment of bishops for the technical offense of adhering to 
 old concessions and usages against laws made since their 
 own induction into office. Yet we would not waste much 
 sympathy upon men who cling to the revenues of their 
 office, but refuse to comply with the reasonable condi- 
 tions upon which those revenues are granted ; men who 
 assail the laws and government of their country, at the 
 dictum of a foreign potentate, and fight the hand that 
 feeds them. 
 
 For the principle at stake we wish Prince Bismarck 
 well through with the controversy which the ultramon- 
 tanes have forced upon him, which the times demand of 
 him, and in which he is the representative of social or- 
 der and civil liberty. We have sometimes suspected 
 that he had not taken into account the pertinacity of 
 religious stubbornness, especially when the will has as- 
 sumed the office of conscience. The violent declaration 
 of the Catholic Union at Mayence against the German 
 empire, and the attempt upon his life, engendered in 
 this atmosphere of religious hate, 1 show how earnest is 
 the power with which he is contending. The cause of 
 nationality is in his hands, and he cannot falter. To 
 compromise would be to fail. The nation cannot ask 
 consent of the Pope to be. When Austria, Catholic in 
 court and people, attempted a wholesome reform of her 
 
 1 " And blessed shall he be that doth revolt 
 From his allegiance to an heretic ; 
 And meritorious shall that hand be called, 
 Canonized, and worship'd as a saint, 
 That takes away by any secret course 
 Thy hateful life." 
 
 Cardinal Pandulph, the Pope's Legate, to King John. King 
 John, act III. scene 1.
 
 BISMARCK AND ANDRASSY. 87 
 
 school-laws, the Pope anathematized the movement, and 
 required his bishops to resist it as a crime against the 
 church. In his reply of May 9, 1873, Count Andrassy 
 expressed his regret that " the encyclical should have 
 pronounced a condemnation of things that belong to the 
 sovereign domain of state legislation ; " and he added, 
 " if the clergy do not obey the laws which have been 
 enacted and sanctioned, the government will consider it- 
 self bound to protect the rights of the state, and is con- 
 vinced it will be able to compel respect for the law." 
 Could the Austrian minister have done less ? But the 
 note of Count Andrassy contains the very principles of 
 Bismarck's legislation, and the ultramontanes may yet 
 drive Austria into the Prussian measures of defense. 
 For a nation to allow such interference with its internal 
 legislation would be to vacate sovereignty. The old 
 historical struggle for supremacy has reached its last 
 stage, a struggle between paparchy and nationality, the 
 syllabus and society. Inevitable, fundamental, the con- 
 flict must now be uncompromising and final. Happily, 
 Prince Bismarck has found a way to the end, by vacat- 
 ing the sees of recusant bishops, and turning over the 
 administration of affairs to the congregations acting un- 
 der advisement from the state. The process may be 
 slow, but it will be sure ; the result, a Catholic Church 
 in Germany that is not of Rome ; a German Catholic 
 Church, privileged, though not established, by the state, 
 and so far popularized as to effect within the church it- 
 self the triumph of nationality over paparchy. To that 
 triumph all Christian nations should give their sympa- 
 thy, 
 
 "And from the mouth of England 
 
 Add thus much more, that no Italian priest 
 
 Shall tithe or toll in our dominions ; 
 
 But as we under heaven are supreme head, 
 
 So under him, that great supremacy
 
 88 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 Where we do reign, we will alone uphold, 
 Without the assistance of a mortal hand : 
 So tell the Pope : all reverence set apart 
 To him and his usurp'd authority." l 
 
 NOTE. The publication of official letters, written by 
 Von Arnim from Rome during the council, was the first 
 open step in that diplomatic quarrel which has given to 
 the count such an unenviable notoriety. Von Arnim is 
 one of the most gifted, accomplished, versatile, and brill- 
 iant men that the Prussian diplomatic school has pro- 
 duced ; and three years ago his advance by gradual pre- 
 ferment to the highest post in the empire seemed assured. 
 But he sacrificed his opportunity through pride of opinion 
 and an imperious will that would brook no contradiction 
 nor restraint. Admitting that he had a clearer insight 
 than Bismarck into affairs at Rome, and that the policy 
 he then urged has been justified by subsequent events, 
 this surely would be no disparagement to Bismarck's 
 sagacity. Von Arniin was sent to Rome on purpose to 
 ferret out the intentions of the ultramontanes, and to 
 suggest measures for thwarting them. But when he had 
 advised Bismarck of the tendencies at Rome and had 
 proffered his suggestions, his responsibility for the policy 
 of his government was at an end, and his duty was to 
 carry out the instructions sent from the Foreign Office. 
 Though Von Arnim's counsel was not followed in all 
 particulars, his ability was recognized, and he was re- 
 warded by being sent to Paris upon the delicate and re- 
 sponsible mission of representing the new German empire 
 directly after the war. Here again he seems to have had 
 a policy that he thought wiser than the policy at Berlin, 
 to have attempted to dictate to the chancellor, then to 
 
 1 King John, act III. scene 1.
 
 ?UE VON ARNIM CONTROVERSY. 89 
 
 have appealed to the king against the policy of the chan- 
 cellor, and finally to have acted upon his own responsi- 
 bility, regardless of the views of the Foreign Office. For 
 this he was rebuked no doubt in terms somewhat irri- 
 tating to one of his haughty spirit and was finally re- 
 called. 
 
 He now sought to make political capital for himself 
 out of his differences with the chancellor. It was discov- 
 ered that important papers were missing from the ar- 
 chives of the embassy at Paris, and the publication of 
 Von Arnim's letters from Rome gave rise to the suspi- 
 cion that a similar misuse would be made of the Paris 
 correspondence. Of some of these missing papers Von 
 Arnira declared himself ignorant ; a few he restored, but 
 others he retained, on the plea that these were private 
 papers, necessary to his own vindication, and he refused 
 to admit any claim of the Foreign Office, either upon the 
 papers or upon himself as their custodian. 
 
 With regard to semi-official papers, a margin of dis- 
 cretion must be conceded to an ambassador. The prac- 
 tice of the English Foreign Office is to number these in 
 the regular order of correspondence, but to indorse them 
 " separate," so that they do not enter into the archives 
 of the embassy. But in the case of Von Arnim, the 
 papers being duly registered, it could not be left to him 
 alone to decide upon their character. The Foreign Office 
 was clearly a, party in the case. Had he frankly sub- 
 mitted the papers to a court, agreeing to abide by its 
 decision, there would have been an end of the matter ; 
 but, after fruitless negotiations, the Foreign Office had 
 no resource but to bring the affair to the notice of the 
 judiciary. From that point all the steps were by 
 the order of the court, and in conformity to the laws. 
 The domiciliary visits, the imprisonment of Von Arnim 
 without bail, and without an open hearing, were con-
 
 90 PAPARCHY AND NATIONALITY. 
 
 trary to English procedure ; but, stern and absolute as 
 the Prussian code and its executors may appear, the 
 Prussian courts may be trusted to administer the law im- 
 partially, without personal or political bias. 
 
 Whatever may be the final judgment upon Von Ar- 
 nim's action, thus much has been gained for the future 
 of diplomacy in Germany. Persons connected with the 
 diplomatic service are admonished to be upon their guard 
 against official indiscretions, and are reminded of their 
 amenability to their superiors and to the laws. The dis- 
 graceful practice of publishing diplomatic papers for 
 personal ends a practice that might easily disturb the 
 peace of nations has received a salutary check. And, 
 best of all, the power of the law to deal with all offenses, 
 without respect of persons, is triumphantly vindicated. 
 Bismarck has demonstrated that the law can reach an 
 archbishop or an ambassador, as well as an assassin. 
 
 But to return to the Von Arnim correspondence from 
 Rome ; it is not so clear that in this the count was wiser 
 than his chief. He may have been warped by influences 
 around him, and have shared the excitements and pas- 
 sions of the hour ; whereas Bismarck could survey the 
 whole field of Germany and of Europe. As yet there 
 was no German empire ; and Bismarck was true to Prus- 
 sian traditions in pledging support to the bishops in their 
 loyalty to their own government. This whole matter is 
 put at rest by the testimony of the eminent Bavarian 
 statesman who now represents Germany at Paris. 
 
 Prince Hohenlohe, in a speech at Kulmbach last Oc- 
 tober, returning thanks for his election to the Reichstag, 
 said, 
 
 " Great astonishment had frequently been expressed, that a 
 statesman of such acuteuess as Prince Bismarck did not see the 
 approach of the conflict with the church, and did not betimes 
 make preparations for it. He gladly embraced the opportunity
 
 PRINCE HOHENLOHE'S SPEECH. 91 
 
 of stating that he did not share this view. In April, 18C7, he 
 himself (Prince Hohetilohe, then being prime minister of Bava- 
 ria) issued his circular to the foreign powers, giving a warning 
 which was not listened to ; and some months afterwards he had 
 an opportunity of frequently and fully discussing the matter 
 with Count Bismarck. He knew, therefore, with what earnest 
 and ever-increasing anxiety the chancellor beheld the approach 
 of the conflict, the importance of which he did not underrate. 
 At that time namely, in September, 1869 he himself had 
 received the refusal of Austria and France to take any action ; 
 and in view of this refusal of the two chief Catholic powers, 
 what could have been done by Bismarck, the chancellor of the 
 mainly Protestant North German Confederation, and himself, 
 the minister president of comparatively small Bavaria, to pre- 
 vent that concentration of ecclesiastical power which afterwards 
 found expression in the council by the definition of the dogma 
 of papal infallibility ? " 
 
 This testimony vindicates Bismarck upon every point 
 raised, either by the ultramontanes or by Von Arnim, 
 whom they have taken into their alliance. It shows 
 that he foresaw the evil that ultramontanism was pre- 
 paring for Europe ; that he sought to save the Catholic 
 Church in Germany from the clutches of the Jesuits, 
 and to avert a collision between the church and the state ; 
 and not till the hierarchy assailed the empire did he strike 
 the blow so long deferred.
 
 III. 
 
 THE ARMAMENT OF GERMANY. 
 
 (Read before the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of 
 Nations, at its meeting at the Hague, September, 1875.) 
 
 THE following questions were put forth by the Gen- 
 eral Secretary, touching a proportionate reduction in the 
 armaments of European nations. 
 
 1. What is the armament, by land and sea, of the 
 nation to which you belong, and what, also, according to 
 your information, are the armaments of the other Euro- 
 pean nations ? 
 
 2. What proportion of such armament, in the case of 
 each nation, do you consider necessary to its internal 
 security ? 
 
 3. What proportion do you consider necessary to its 
 external security ? 
 
 4. Do you consider it desirable that there should be a 
 proportionate reduction in the armaments of European 
 nations, and whatever may be your opinion, will you 
 give the reasons for it? 
 
 5. Is a proportionate reduction practicable ; and, if so, 
 to what extent ? 
 
 6. By what methods may such a reduction be accom- 
 plished ? 
 
 As a resident of Berlin, I have prepared a brief reply 
 to these questions with regard to Germany ; and though 
 I cannot presume to speak with the authority of an offi-
 
 STRENGTH OF THE GERMAN ARMY. 93 
 
 cial statement, nor to represent adequately the tone of 
 German sentiment and the demands of German national- 
 ity, in military affairs, I shall hope to speak in candid 
 sympathy with the national life of Germany, while giv- 
 ing the judgment of an impartial observer upon the prac- 
 ticability of reducing her armament. 
 
 The total fighting force of the German empire may be 
 estimated roundly at 1,700,000 men ; this includes the 
 navy and the two classes of reserves of the army, the 
 Landwehr and the Landsturm. The standing army in 
 time of peace, consists of 438,881 men, and 96,875 horses, 
 at a yearly cost of 359,434,000 reichsmarks ; being about 
 an average of 900 reichsmarks, or 300 thalers per man. 
 This army is organized with 469 battalions of infantry, 
 465 squadrons of cavalry, 300 campaign batteries, 29 
 battalions of fort artillery, 18 battalions of pioneers, and 
 18 battalions of service corps. No attempt is made to 
 classify the men by race or religion ; and it is the uni- 
 form opinion of officers, that in spite of the present fer- 
 vor of ecclesiastical differences in some sections, Catholics 
 and Protestants would fight side by side, with equal zeal, 
 against a foreign foe, so overpowering is the sentiment 
 of loyalty to the fatherland and the strength of army 
 discipline and esprit de corps. 
 
 This standing army of the German empire is an in- 
 crease upon the sum total of the standing armies of the 
 several states that now compose the empire, as these 
 stood before the war with France in 1870 ; and the num- 
 ber of the army and the yearly appropriation for its sup- 
 port were fixed, at the last session of parliament, for the 
 term of seven years just overlapping the septennate of 
 Marshal Macmahon. The increase of the standing force 
 of the country was urged by the necessity Germany is 
 under of maintaining her newly-acquired boundaries, her 
 national unity, and her independent position in Europe ;
 
 94 THE ARMAMENT OF GERMANY. 
 
 and also by a vague apprehension of impending danger. 
 The appropriation for the term of seven years was voted 
 against what some would make the strict construction 
 of the constitution under the pressure of public opin- 
 ion, which demanded some permanent guarantee of 
 peace. By the constitution the duration of any one par- 
 liament is limited to three years, and each parliament 
 has absolute control over the supplies and subsidies of 
 the empire during the term of its own existence. The 
 government had sought to withdraw the army appropria- 
 tion from the chances of the yearly budget ; not leaving 
 it open to be canvassed at every session of parliament, 
 but having it definitively fixed as to amount, for an in- 
 definite term of years. This would have been equivalent 
 to a vote of unlimited confidence. Now, there was no 
 unwillingness of the majority to repose this confidence in 
 the government; but many scrupled at assuming to bind 
 future parliaments by forestalling their prerogative ; and 
 others, like the English Commons of old, were jealous for 
 the hard-won right of controlling the purse-strings. But 
 the great financial and industrial interests of the country 
 insisted that its military defenses should not be exposed 
 to the whims and fluctuations of parliamentai*y majori- 
 ties ; and on demand of the press and the people, the 
 army estimates were voted finally for seven years, as a 
 compromise between government and parliament. Com- 
 merce and Industry said, Give us security, and we will 
 pay the cost. 
 
 At the same time new regulations were made for the 
 reserves, so that directly upon being called out, these 
 will be incorporated with the regular army, and even the 
 landsturm, ordinarily reserved for a last defense against 
 actual invasion, may now be moved from place to place, 
 and not kept simply each detachment for the protection 
 of its own district. Hence, in case the new rule of war
 
 IS THIS ARMAMENT NEEDED? 95 
 
 concerning combatants and non-combatants, proposed at 
 Brussels and to be revived at St. Petersburg, should be 
 adopted by the Great Powers, Germany, when threatened 
 with invasion, could enroll in the regular army her entire 
 population capable of bearing arms, and among men un- 
 der fifty-five would have neither non-combatants nor 
 irregulars. These reserves are made up of men who 
 have had the discipline of the army in their youth, and 
 are of course far superior in training to a volunteer mi- 
 litia. 
 
 The standing army of Germany is constantly kept up 
 to the highest point of drill, and by field manoeuvres is 
 made familiar with the operations of war. It is in readi- 
 ness to be put in motion on the shortest notice ; and the 
 exigencies of the military service are studied in the con- 
 struction of railways and other public works. From all 
 this it is evident that Germany is doing nothing, and in- 
 tending nothing, toward a proportionate reduction of her 
 army in the interest of peace. 
 
 Yet it would be wrong to infer that the Germans are 
 a belligerent nation and preparing for a career of impe- 
 rial conquest. The people are decidedly averse to wars 
 of ambition or of invasion, and the government is not 
 likely to seek occasion for a foreign war ; though if dan- 
 ger threatens from without, both people and government 
 will do energetically whatever the interests and the safety 
 of Germany may seem to require. 
 
 So far the first question : the armament of Germany 
 is upwards of 400,000 men equipped for war, with every 
 facility for arming, at short notice, at least four times 
 that number, trained to the use of arms. 
 
 The second question is, What proportion of such ar- 
 mament is necessary to the internal security of the na- 
 tion ? Of course a foreigner can only guess at a reply ; 
 but I would say at a venture, that, in the absence of any
 
 96 THE ARMAMENT OF GERMANY. 
 
 foreign intervention to provoke dissension among her 
 people, one tenth of her present army say 40,000 men 
 should suffice for the internal security of the Ger- 
 man empire. I know this estimate will be received with 
 incredulity by the average German citizen, and with 
 amusement by German statesmen and military men ; but 
 it is really a complimentary recognition of their growth 
 in self-government, for a citizen of the United States who 
 has lived among them for years, to say that forty million 
 Germans could now be trusted to govern themselves 
 with as little military force as forty million Americans 
 require for their internal security. The Germans are 
 not belligerent among themselves ; they are not addicted 
 to insurrection ; they are exceedingly well trained in the 
 habit of obedience to the laws ; they have now an outlet 
 for political fermentation in free constitutional parlia- 
 ments, imperial and local; and the traditions of the 
 Thirty Years' War, and the lingering effects of that war 
 in retarding the political and industrial development of 
 the nation, have induced a chronic aversion to civil war 
 as a remedy for any evils, real or imaginary. Even the 
 excitements of church politics in the past three years 
 have not roused a spirit of martial combat. The people 
 do not need to be governed by awe of a military force, 
 and a very small army should suffice for any extraordi- 
 nary emergency of the public peace. Indeed, the inter- 
 nal dangers and disturbances of Germany would lose 
 much of their importance, save for the apprehension of 
 foreign dangers that might give to any domestic disquiet 
 a purely factitious consequence. 
 
 To the third question, What proportion of the arma- 
 ment of Germany is necessary to'her external security ? 
 I answer, the WHOLE of it, every man, every horse, every 
 ship, every gun, as matters now are with respect to ar- 
 mament upon the continent of Europe. If Europe is to
 
 NEED OF RETRENCHMENT. 97 
 
 live in the constant expectation of war, and in a state 
 of enormous and incessant preparation for war, then Ger- 
 many must be, and will be, armed as she is. The states- 
 manship of every continental people is now largely de- 
 voted to the means of national defense ; to the strength- 
 ening of fortifications and the efficient organization of 
 the army ; the diplomacy of every nation is on the alert 
 for the probabilities of war ; the interior economy of 
 every nation is taxed more and more for the military 
 branch of the public service ; the inventive genius of 
 every people is occupied with the improvement of weap- 
 ons of destruction. Lying in the centre of Europe, with 
 powerful neighbors upon all sides, who are emulating 
 her own military system, Germany must keep up that 
 system to the highest point of efficiency and of readiness, 
 for her own external security. Alone she cannot, dare 
 not, set the example of reducing her armament or slight- 
 ing her preparations for war. 
 
 Till revenge, jealousy, ambition shall be disarmed 
 throughout Europe, Germany must have her body-guard 
 of 400,000 men, her life-guard of 1,700,000. Whenever 
 you urge upon her statesmen the policy of reducing her 
 armament, the answer is, " Give us another geographical 
 position." No other country is so exposed to be simul- 
 taneously attacked by formidable powers upon all sides. 
 No other country so needs a wall of fire to be to her 
 what the channel is to England, the ocean to the United 
 States. 
 
 Nevertheless, in answer to the fourth question, it is 
 most desirable that there should be an early reduction in 
 the armament of Germany, upon a scale of proportion 
 with other nations, that should keep all relatively in 
 the same position as at present for maintaining their ex- 
 ternal security. For this opinion there are two weighty 
 reasons. (1.) The enormous drain of a universal nrili- 
 7
 
 98 THE ARMAMENT OF GERMANY. 
 
 tary conscription upon the industrial life and resources 
 of the nation ; and (2.) The fact that a large standing 
 army is a temptation to war, and is liable to seek occa- 
 sion for war, to justify its own existence. 
 
 In one view, no doubt, the maintenance of a large, 
 well-equipped army, by any country, favors peaceable re- 
 lations with other nations. However restless and bellig- 
 erent a nation may be, it will hesitate to attack another 
 that is known to be always ready for vigorous and de- 
 cisive warfare. A nation well armed may count upon a 
 certain immunity from insult or attack from abroad. 
 But there are limits to the restraint that one nation can 
 impose upon others by exhibiting the strength of its ar- 
 mament. That very armament may be taken for a men- 
 ace or a taunt ; it may excite jealousy or fear, and 
 provoke combinations for its overthrow : or the spirit of 
 bravado, which in human nature answers to the crowing 
 propensity in the cock, may excite two military nations 
 to peck at each other for a fight that shall determine 
 which is master of the walk. The history of war shows 
 that a great standing army incites as much warfare as it 
 forefends. The nations that are now vieing with each 
 other in their military systems, and in the inventions 
 and munitions of war, will hardly rest satisfied till ac- 
 tual collision in the field shall have settled the question 
 of superiority. Hence the external security of each na- 
 tion would be better assured by a proportionate reduction 
 of the armaments of all. 
 
 That the internal peace and prosperity of each nation 
 demand such a reduction of its own armament, is too 
 obvious for argument. The drain of a large army upon 
 the resources of a country is constant and depleting. In 
 Austria the army consumes 19.83 per cent, of the whole 
 income of the state ; in Germany 26.14 per cent. ; in 
 Russia 36.33 ; in Italy 17.92 ; in France, with the navy,
 
 EFFECTS OF MILITARY SERVICE. 99 
 
 30.91 ; in Great Britain 30.95 ; in Denmark 28.24 ; in 
 Sweden 82.15 ; in Norway 29.17 ; in the Netherlands 
 27.23 : making for these ten states an average of 28.01 
 per cent, of income consumed in arming against each 
 other. But this is not all. It is one of the common- 
 places of political economy, that the soldier, while con- 
 suming yearly the fruits of the labor of others, and at 
 their cost, adds nothing to the productive resources of 
 the country, unless by the fortune of war he may annex 
 something to her territory. And furthermore, the term 
 of compulsory military service, as in Germany, comes to 
 young men at a time when it seriously interferes with 
 their training for other occupations in life. Many a 
 young man will testify, " I might have been other than 
 I am, or been in business for myself, but just as I was 
 getting forward, I had to go into the army, and in my 
 three years of service I lost not only my place, but what 
 qualification for business I had previously acquired, lost 
 my opportunity of advancement, and now must begin 
 again at the bottom of the ladder." Thus the army 
 service becomes to many a serious obstacle to business, 
 to marriage, to all that men cherish for themselves in 
 life, and to that free development of the individual which 
 tends to the highest mean of national good. This is felt 
 seriously by many in Germany, who nevertheless submit 
 to the present military system as a political necessity, 
 and would defend it from motives of patriotism. 
 
 But it should be said with equal frankness, on the 
 other hand, that for many, also, the course of obligatory 
 military service is a salutary discipline, and has an ele- 
 vating influence. This is true, for example, of the more 
 ignorant of the peasantry and of the mining population, 
 who gain in the army notions of order, of cleanliness, 
 and of regularity, to which they were strangers ; and 
 who, by coming in contact with men of a higher grade,
 
 100 THE ARMAMENT OF GERMANY. 
 
 and by moving from place to place, undergo a civilizing 
 process that is much to their advantage in after life. As 
 to officers, it will be admitted that there is no higher 
 school of men and manners than that provided in the 
 Prussian army. Loyalty to king and country, culture in 
 literature and science, chivalry and magnanimity of 
 mien, though not without a certain pride of caste, place 
 these officers among the picked men of the kingdom. 
 
 As a rule, the people of Germany are proud of their 
 army, recognizing the great services it has done for the 
 nation, and being also identified with it by many per- 
 sonal ties. By the constitution of the empire, personal 
 military service is made obligatory upon every citizen, 
 and by act of parliament it is unlawful for the press to 
 call in question this fundamental organic provision, or to 
 cast reproach upon the nation's defense. The people ac- 
 quiesce in a seeming necessity, but they groan under the 
 taxes, and the personal and domestic privations, to which 
 this system subjects them ; and should a long peace make 
 the necessity of the military system less obvious and im- 
 perative, the murmurs of tax-payers would soon become 
 audible, and might even grow formidable. 
 
 And in this lies the risk of a large army being urged 
 on to war by a popular clamor against its costly inertia. 
 That a distinctive war party exists in Germany, I see no 
 evidence ; nor do I imagine that any statesman would 
 venture to advocate a policy of war, as the key to his 
 administration. Among younger officers, zealous for 
 chivalrous exploits and impatient for promotion, there is 
 often talk of war as approaching or desirable ; but as a 
 rule, old and experienced officers are slow to plunge their 
 country into war possibly a school of politicians may 
 fancy that to take the initiative in a foreign war, when 
 the aspect is threatening, is the surest road to victory, 
 safety, and peace. But there is no party in Germany
 
 ARBITRATION. 101 
 
 that openly avows this policy, nor could such a party or 
 policy find favor with the people, except in some mani- 
 fest emergency. 
 
 But a protracted peace must tend to undermine the 
 conviction that a great standing army is a necessity of 
 the state ; and history warns us that burdensome taxa- 
 tion for the support of an army may provoke popular 
 revolt, and then such revolt be pleaded as a pretext for 
 a great standing army as an internal police. There are 
 no present signs of such a peril to Germany ; but the 
 peril lies in the very provision made to guard against it. 
 Upon all these grounds, therefore, a reduction of the ar- 
 mament should recommend itself to statesmen. 
 
 This leads to the concluding questions, Nos. 5 and 6, 
 which, for brevity, may be treated as one : " Is a pro- 
 portionate reduction practicable ; and, if so, to what ex- 
 tent? And by what methods may such a reduction be 
 accomplished ? " A reduction is practicable only upon 
 the condition that some other expedient than war be 
 clearly set before the people, that shall give an equal as- 
 surance that the interests and honor of the nation shall 
 be faithfully preserved. The only expedient capable of 
 this is arbitration. But to induce a military nation to 
 have recourse to arbitration as a substitute for war, con- 
 fidence must first be inspired in arbitration as practicable 
 and equitable ; and such confidence will be of compara- 
 tively slow growth, as the result of experience. Arbi- 
 tration is not likely to be accepted at wholesale, as an 
 abstract principle, but can be recommended in detail, by 
 clear and tangible cases. 
 
 Now there are two classes of cases which can be hope- 
 fully recommended to all nations as matter for arbitra- 
 tion. 
 
 (1.) Disputes concerning territory or property. The 
 first of these are in a certain sense international, since 
 questions of boundary affect the whole community of
 
 102 THE ARMAMENT OF GERMANY. 
 
 nations. Hence, with special propriety, such cases could 
 come before an international tribunal. 
 
 Experience has shown that the forcible settlement of 
 boundary leaves cause of rankling, dispute, and retalia- 
 tion in the future, and thus becomes a costly and uncer- 
 tain mode of settlement: while the example of great 
 nations testifies that, in such cases, arbitration would be 
 accepted with dignity and satisfaction. 
 
 As to property, we have reached an age of civilization 
 when a war risking thousands of lives and the morals of 
 
 o 
 
 a nation, simply for money, could hai'dly justify itself to 
 the moral sense of Christendom ; and now that the whole 
 resources of commerce and banking are available for the 
 peaceful adjustment of such disputes, arbitration is their 
 obvious remedy. 
 
 (2.) Questions affecting persons. By the comity of 
 nations, or by special treaties, many questions concern- 
 ing persons are already provided for by peaceable meth- 
 ods. As a rule, questions concerning ambassadors, emi- 
 grants, refugees, criminals, neutrals, are disposed of by 
 some specific agreement or by public international law. 
 A principle so widely accepted might well be extended 
 to cover all manner of cases concerning persons. 
 
 There would then remain only a class of questions ly- 
 ing within the vague region of national honor. But the 
 more practical and substantial questions being already 
 provided for on terms of peace, and the habit being es- 
 tablished of adjusting these peaceably, the class of prob- 
 lematical questions would diminish in number, and by 
 degrees would come to be referred to the same category 
 of arbitration. Step by step this grand consummation 
 may be gained. 
 
 A growing help in this direction is the influence of in- 
 ternational congresses for the advancement of knowledge 
 and the improvement of society. 1 know it has been 
 wittily said that every great international exhibition has
 
 INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS. 103 
 
 been followed by a great war. Yet it were vain to deny 
 that the intercourse promoted by such occasions favors a 
 peaceable disposition among the nations. In the recent 
 Geographical Congress of Paris, a German geologist, 
 whose name is honored throughout the scientific world, 
 presided over one of the sessions, with the same apparent 
 welcome that was accorded to every representative of 
 foreign nations ; German travelers recounted to admiring 
 audiences their explorations in Africa ; German authori- 
 ties were quoted with commendation ; and prizes were 
 awarded to German societies and savans, with the hearty 
 courtesy and impartiality that marked the whole pro- 
 ceedings ; and when, in that vast concourse, one heard 
 the Russian, the German, the Hollander, the Swede, the 
 Belgian, the Englishman, the Frenchman, the Italian, 
 the Hungarian, each in his own tongue pay tribute to 
 the commonwealth of science ; when one heard the vice- 
 admiral of France, president of the congress, instance 
 its assembling as one of the conquests and tokens of 
 peace, and saw the marshal-president of France and the 
 heir to the throne of Russia assisting at the congress 
 with the persona] interest and attention of its more ac- 
 tive members, one could not but feel a loftier inspiration 
 for humanity, the pulse of that inner life, which not 
 all the savage surgery of war has been able to exhaust 
 nor permanently to enfeeble. 
 
 The Geographical Congress taught that the physical 
 globe belongs to man, for community of exploration, of 
 discovery, of development, of utilization, for the behoof 
 of human society. In this it was our fit auxiliary. But 
 this association teaches the higher lesson that human so- 
 ciety itself belongs to man; a community of nations, 
 girded with the armament of justice, ordered and per- 
 fected by equal and universal law arbitrating the 
 claims of every member and conserving the welfare of 
 the whole.
 
 IV. 
 
 THE INTERCOURSE OF CHRISTIAN WITH NON- 
 CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 (Presented at the Conference of the " Association for the Reform and Codifica- 
 tion of the Law of Nations," at Bremen, September, 187C.) 
 
 IF by the '''Reform of the Law of Nations," in the 
 title of the association, is meant not only the rectification 
 of errors and abuses, but an intelligential advance in 
 principles and methods in the ever-widening field of na- 
 tional intercourse, then, in no department of our work 
 could there arise a question at once so urgent and so 
 comprehensive as that of the principles which should gov- 
 ern the intercourse of Christian with non-Christian peo- 
 ples. This is indeed a question of reforming the law of 
 nations, in the literal sense of forming it anew. It 
 covers all the methods and aims contemplated by this 
 association, philosophic, philanthropic, and practical. 
 Since I proposed this topic to the favor of the council, 
 three months ago, three events of no common significance 
 have occurred to give it point and urgency. 
 
 (1.) At the very moment when the people of the 
 United States were celebrating the centennial of an inde- 
 pendence based upon the natural rights of men, and were 
 exhibiting the progress of the world in the arts of peace, 
 a frightful outbreak of Indian cruelty and revenge raised 
 anew the question of the treatment of aborigines by a 
 Christian nation, in respect of territory, possessions, and 
 protection.
 
 TURKISH MASSACRES. 105 
 
 (2.) The brutality reported of the Turks in Bulgaria 
 raised throughout Europe a cry for the intervention of 
 the Christian Powers, upon grounds of humanity and re- 
 ligion, thus bringing the fervor of humane impulse and 
 of religious enthusiasm into one of the most confused 
 problems of international law. 
 
 As a side-light upon this problem it is worth recalling, 
 that just seventy years ago Napoleon wrote to his brother 
 Joseph concerning the insurrection in his Neapolitan 
 kingdom, " I am glad to see that a village of the insur- 
 gents has been burnt. 1 . . . You should order two or 
 three of the large villages that have behaved the worst 
 to be pillaged ; it will be an example, and will restore to 
 your troops their gayety and desire for action." 2 Burn- 
 ing, pillaging, shooting, hanging, Napoleon justified by 
 the laws of war ; saying " there is nothing sacred after a 
 conquest." 3 But we must remember that it was one of 
 his mottoes, that " What a nation most hates is another 
 nation." 4 It is a long advance from the sangfroid with 
 which Napoleon ordered such severities in Naples, to the 
 shudder with which Europe reads of them in Bulgaria ; 
 yet we cannot forget how recently an English commander 
 whom none would charge with inhumanity ordered the 
 burning of Ashantee villages as a punishment and a 
 warning. The same retribution has been inflicted just 
 now in Dahomey. These hints will suffice to show how 
 far Christendom yet is from unanimity as to what consti- 
 tutes brutality in war, or what measure of brutality 
 would justify protest and intervention in the name of 
 humanity. 
 
 (3.) In pleasing contrast with these aggravating events, 
 
 1 Letter to Joseph, April 21, 1806. 
 a Letter to Joseph, July 30, 1806. 
 8 Letter to Joseph, March 31, 1806. 
 4 Letter to Joseph, August 9, 1806.
 
 106 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 appeared at the same time an invitation from the King 
 of the Belgians, for a congress of African travelers and 
 explorers to meet at Brussels and take the initiative for 
 the civilization of equatorial Africa by a system of scien- 
 tific stations and commissarial depositories to be estab- 
 lished under an international commission; that is to 
 say, the opening of the vast interior of Africa to inter- 
 course with the civilized world should not be left to the 
 enterprise of travelers, the caprice of adventurers, the 
 cupidity of monopolies, nor the rivalry of separate na- 
 tions, but should be made the common cause of Christen- 
 dom, under well-ascertained principles of international 
 law, regulating the approaches of civilized peoples to the 
 rude tribes of the Nile, the Niger, and the Congo. 
 
 At the opening of this unique conference, on the 13th 
 of September, his majesty said, " Le sujet que nous re"- 
 unit aujourd'hui est de ceux qui mdritent au premier 
 chef d'occuper les amis de I'humanitd. Ouvrir a la civi- 
 lisation la setile parti de notre globe ou elle n'ait point 
 encore pe'ne'tre, percer les tdnebres qui enveloppent des 
 populations entieres, c'est, si j'ose le dire, une croisade 
 digne de ce siecle de progres ; et je suis heureux de con- 
 stater combien le sentiment public est favorable a son 
 accomplissement." He invited the conference to discuss 
 and determine u les voies a suivre, les moyens a employer 
 pour planter definitivement 1'^tendard de la civilisation 
 sur le sol de 1'Afrique centrale ; " and he suggested the 
 following points as worthy of special attention : 
 
 1. " Designation. precise des bases d'ope'ration a acque*- 
 rir sur la cQte de Zanzibar et pr(>s de Tembouchure du 
 Congo, soit par conventions avec les chefs, soit par achats 
 ou locations a regler avec les particuliers. 
 
 2. " Designation des routes <\ ouvrir successivement 
 
 o 
 
 vers l'intrieur et des stations hospitalieres, scientifiques 
 et pacificatrices a organiser comme moyen d'abolir 1'escla-
 
 THE OPENING OF AFRICA. 107 
 
 vage, et d'etablir la Concorde entre lea chefs, de leur pro- 
 curer des arbitres j nates, de'sintc'resse's, etc. 
 
 3. " Creation, Toeuvre dtant bien definie, d'un comite 
 international et central, et des comite's nationaux pour 
 en poursuivre 1'exdcution, chacun en ce qui le concernera, 
 en exposer le but au public de tons les pays et faire au 
 sentiment charitable un appel qu'aucune bonne cause ne 
 lui a jamais address^ en vain." 
 
 In proposing my theme to the council, I had barely 
 anticipated these noble wishes of his majesty the King of 
 the Belgians. 
 
 The framing of regulations for a closer intercourse 
 with non-Christian peoples is the fit work of an associa- 
 tion for the reform of the law of nations ; and it is with 
 the hope and the request that the present conference 
 will appoint a commission to give effect to this sugges- 
 tion, that I venture to submit an essay toward principles 
 of international law, to govern the intercourse of Chris- 
 tian with non-Christian peoples. 
 
 This classification is the best that the subject admits 
 of. One could not say " pagan " peoples, since not only 
 are Mohammedans the fiercest of iconoclasts, but the 
 Chinese and Japanese, who fall within the category of 
 " non-Christian " peoples, resent such epithets as " pa- 
 gan " or " heathen." Neither could one classify these 
 last as " uncivilized ; " since China and Japan have a 
 fair title among civilized nations. But inasmuch as 
 modern international law was born of Christian senti- 
 ment in Grotins, and now obtains throughout Christen- 
 dom, the division is fair between Christian and non- 
 Christian peoples. Moreover, since all authorities agree 
 that international law can take effect only between com- 
 munities organized as nations or states, ancl since roving 
 hordes and societies united sceleris causa are not recog- 
 nized as states, I have purposely avoided the terms
 
 108 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 " state " and " nation," and have used " peoples " as in- 
 cluding tribes, because my object is to ascertain the 
 principles that should govern Christian nations that 
 do acknowledge a law among themselves in their inter- 
 course with all sorts and conditions of men, whether 
 within the family of nations or still without its pale. 
 
 In this view the theme is broader and deeper at 
 once more comprehensive and more radical than that 
 which the Institute of International Law last year sub- 
 mitted to a commission, viz. : " The Applicability of the 
 European Law of Nations to the Nations of the East ; " 
 a topic which is ably discussed by Sir Travers Twiss, 
 in the "Law Magazine and Review" for May, 1876, 
 with special relation to African slave states. That in- 
 quiry has reference to the ripeness of the nations of the 
 East for admission into the general community of Inter- 
 national Law. Turkey was formally received into that 
 community by the treaty of Paris of 1856, the seventh 
 article of which declares that " the Sublime Porte is ad- 
 mitted to participate in the advantages of the public law 
 and concert of Europe ; " and this association numbers 
 among its vice-presidents distinguished representatives of 
 Turkey, Egypt, and Japan. 
 
 But my inquiry has reference to the ripeness of Chris- 
 tian nations for some concert of principles that shall gov- 
 ern their intercourse with all non-Christian peoples ; not 
 how far such peoples are qualified to accept the law of 
 nations as it is, but whether Christian nations can agree 
 upon certain just and equal rules of dealing with non- 
 Christian peoples under all circumstances and conditions 
 of intercourse with them. In other words, in what form 
 shall Christian peoples put the law of nations before 
 non-Christian peoples whom they would educate up to its 
 level, and finally win to its authority ? This question 
 I shall not presume to answer to the extent of formu-
 
 PRINCIPLES OF ACTION. 
 
 lating principles as rules of action, but shall content my- 
 self with an essay toward such principles. 
 
 The subject divides itself into five categories. 
 
 1. Territory. Upon what principles should Christian 
 nations deal with non-Christian peoples in the acquisition 
 of territory found in their occupation ? 
 
 2. Commerce. What principles should regulate the 
 commercial intercourse of Christian with non-Christian 
 peoples ? 
 
 3. Humanity. How far may Christian nations inter- 
 fere in the affairs of non-Christian peoples to regulate or 
 restrain their doings in the interest of humanity ? 
 
 4. Public peace and order. To what extent may 
 Christian nations undertake the police of the world, with 
 a view to public safety and order ? 
 
 5. Religion. To what extent and upon what grounds 
 may Christian nations interfere with non-Christian peo- 
 ples in matters of religion ? 
 
 Under each of these heads I will briefly state the law 
 of nations as it is, and point out particulars in which 
 improvement or advancement seems to be called for ; 
 ending with a summary of the principles upon which 
 such reform should be based. 
 
 I. OF TERRITORY. In countries so organized and ad- 
 vanced as Turkey, China, and Japan, the acquisition by 
 foreigners of a right of domicile and of title to land is 
 obviously within the scope of treaty negotiation, though 
 it may happen, as with the opening of the five ports 
 in China in 1842, that the privilege of residence, prop- 
 erty, and commerce is first extorted by force of arms. 
 But in countries held by aboriginal tribes, or by sparse 
 and feeble communities, the policy of territorial acquisi- 
 tion has varied with the notions, the temperament, the 
 opportunities of discoverers or colonists from abroad. 
 There is indeed a semblance of international law to reg-
 
 110 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 ulate such acquisition. The Pope would not now pre- 
 sume to parcel out heathen nations as the spoil of their 
 Christian conquerors ; Queen Victoria would not renew 
 the commission of Queen Elizabeth to Sir Humphrey 
 Gilbert, " to discover such remote heathen and barbarous 
 lands, countries, and territories, not actually possessed 
 by any Christian prince or people, and to hold, occupy, 
 and enjoy the same, with all their commodities, jurisdic- 
 tions, and royalties ; " nor would the Puritan or the Fifth 
 Monarchy Man now plead the Hebrew conquest of Ca- 
 naan as a divine warrant for exterminating the heathen 
 or reducing them to slavery. Still, in acquiring the 
 territory of aborigines, civilized men have too often put 
 policy and power before justice, and have overlooked the 
 idea of any right or title of the aborigines to the soil they 
 occupie.d. And even where there is a disposition to do 
 justly by the aborigines, two principles, each having the 
 authority of great names in public law, come into con- 
 flict, and require to be reconciled by more clear and pos- 
 itive rules. 
 
 The first principle is that occupation or actual posses- 
 sion creates a presumptive right of property in the soil. 
 If there be a precedence among rights, then it would 
 seem that long-time occupation should give the first claim 
 to territory : that, however valid the right of discovery 
 may be against subsequent explorers, or other nations 
 within the concert of public law, this can have no force 
 vgainst the right of occupation in aborigines actually in 
 possession, the presumption being that a country al- 
 ready inhabited when brought to our knowledge belongs 
 to the people who inhabit it. And in the case of aborig- 
 ines without a history, this presumptive title runs back 
 of the memory of man. Calvo says, " Up to a certain 
 point, usucaption and prescription are even more neces-
 
 WHAT IS OCCUPATION? Ill 
 
 sary between sovereign states than between individuals." 1 
 And is there not also a certain right of usucaption and 
 prescription in the savage man, in the aboriginal tribe, 
 which " sovereign states " are bound to respect ? The 
 starting point in all dealings with aborigines concerning 
 territory must be the recognition in them of some sort 
 of right to the territory upon which they are found. And 
 this right must be to the civilized man a mean of jus- 
 tice. 
 
 But this obvious principle is qualified by another, 
 which is sometimes pushed so far as quite to overlay the 
 primordial right of occupation. What is occupation ? 
 No one would dispute that "a state in the lawful posses- 
 sion of a territory has an exclusive right of property 
 therein " 2 [dominium eminens} ; but can nomadic tribes 
 have an exclusive right of ownership and domain over 
 the vast territories they roam for pasturage and the 
 chase ? Every right supposes a corresponding duty ; 
 and since the earth as a whole belongs to mankind as a 
 whole, and its products and resources are needed for the 
 sustentation and development of the human race, the 
 right of occupation in any portion of territory carries 
 with it the obligation to serviceable occupation. Hence 
 Calvo, in arguing the "-legitimate and incontestable title" 
 of the United States to dominion over all the lands once 
 occupied by Indian tribes along the frontier of the origi- 
 nal colonies, says, " The Indians were but ' half-sover- 
 eigns ' \_mi-souveraines~\ , and never in reality had more 
 than a bare right of occupation." 3 And Vattel is even 
 more positive : " The peoples of the vast countries of 
 
 1 " L'usucapion et la prescription sont meme, jusqu'a un certain 
 point, plus necessaire entre Etats souverains qu'entre particuliers." 
 Le Droit International, tome I., v. 173. 
 
 2 Pliillimore, Comm. on International Law, III., iv. 
 8 Le Droit International, II. 55.
 
 112 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 North America wandered over them [les parcouraient~\ 
 rather than inhabited them ; " and he lays down this 
 principle : " Those who still adhere to this sort of idle 
 life usurp more land than they would need with honest 
 labor, and cannot complain if other nations, more labori- 
 ous and too confined, come and occupy a part of it." l 
 But even this sweeping principle reserves to wild tribes 
 certain rights of possession ; they are not to be exter- 
 minated nor enslaved, but simply restricted to so much 
 laud as " they are in a condition to inhabit and to culti- 
 vate." While insisting upon the right of colonists "to 
 restrict savages to narrower limits," Vattel recommends 
 conciliation rather than conquest. " One cannot but 
 laud," he says, " the moderation of the English Puritans, 
 who first established themselves in New England. Al- 
 though provided with a charter from their sovereign, 
 they purchased of the savages the land they wanted to 
 occupy. This praiseworthy example was followed by 
 William Penn, and the colony of Quakers which he 
 conducted into Pennsylvania." 2 
 
 The principle that the earth belongs to the human 
 family for use and improvement was strongly put by 
 Great Britain in her contest with Spain for the freedom 
 of Nootka Sound (1790). Great Britain held that " the 
 earth is the common inheritance of mankind, of which 
 each individual and each nation has a right to appropri- 
 ate a share, by occupation and cultivation." 3 Dr. Arnold 
 pushed this doctrine to the extreme that only labor can 
 create aright of property in the soil. u So much does 
 the right of property go along with labor, that civilized 
 nations have never scrupled to take possession of coun- 
 tries inhabited only by tribes of savages countries 
 
 1 Vattel, Droit des Gens, t. I. 1. i. evil. 81. 
 a Droit des Gens, 8. c. xviii. 209. 
 Wheaton, pt. II. 6. IV.
 
 SERVICEABLE OCCUPATION. 113 
 
 which have been hunted over but never subdued or 
 cultivated." l This doctrine was much canvassed in 
 England, in the New Zealand question of thirty years 
 ago. 3 It contains an element of substantial truth, and, 
 in one aspect is humane as proffering relief for over- 
 crowded and starving populations. But it is also a doc- 
 trine especially liable to abuse. It should be applied 
 with caution and conciliation, and never pressed to the 
 destruction of the right of aborigines to subsist, as best 
 they may, upon the territory which they and their fathers, 
 from time immemorial, have occupied. What is service- 
 able occupation ? What is the standard of cultivation, 
 and who shall fix this and enforce it ? If my neighbor 
 suflei's his land to become a nursery of weeds overrun- 
 ning my premises, or a marsh distilling pestilence, I have 
 just cause of complaint ; but I have no right to insist 
 that he shall use a subsoil plough and the best chemical 
 fertilizers, in order to make his land most serviceable to 
 the community, under pain of confiscation if he let it lie 
 waste. Agrarianism and Communism would seize upon 
 all private estates under the plea of making these more 
 serviceable to mankind ; yet such estates may be of the 
 highest benefit as a means of culture and taste, and the 
 basis of a cultivated class that lifts society and the state 
 to a higher level of civilization. 
 
 1 Dr. Arnold seems to have borrowed his doctrine from Cicero. 
 " Sunt autem privata nulla natura ; sed aut veteri occupatione, ut qui 
 quondam in vacua venerunt ; aut victoria, ut qui bello potiti sunt ; 
 aut lege, pactione, couditione, sorte ; ex quo fit, ut ager Arpinas 
 Arpinatum dictatur, Tusculanus, Tusculanorum ; similisque est pri- 
 vatarum possessionum descriptio : ex quo, quia suum cujusque fit, 
 eorum, quae natura fuerant cominunia, quod cuique obtigit, id quis- 
 que teneat ; eo si qui sibi plus appetet, violabit jus humanas socie- 
 tatis." De Officiis, lib. i. cap. 7. 
 
 2 The New Zealand Question and the Rights of Aborigines, by 
 L. A. Chamerovzow.
 
 114 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 We must take heed not to enforce against aborigines 
 a doctrine that might subvert the foundations of thrift 
 and order in the best civilized states. My right to live 
 and to improve the earth after my own fashion does not 
 convey the right to oust or exterminate my neighbor, 
 nor to compel him to get his living after my fashion, 
 however superior this may be to his own. It may be 
 the law of nature that savage tribes must become civil- 
 ized or die out ; but has a Christian nation the preroga- 
 tive of enforcing or accelerating this law, by fire and 
 sword ? 
 
 It may aid in the adjustment of the two principles 
 now stated, if we keep in mind that rude and even no- 
 madic tribes do often have some notion of territorial lim- 
 its and of public law, and also that they are amenable 
 to other influences than force and fear. The desert of 
 Arabia Petrsea, for example, is parceled out among differ- 
 ent tribes by lines, which, though marked by no natural 
 features, are as sharply defined as the boundaries between 
 any civilized nations. Arrived at Akaba on my journey 
 northward from Mount Sinai to Petra, I must there 
 change camels and escort, for I had come within the 
 domain of the renowned Sheikh Husein. I found him 
 seated in the midst of his men of war armed with their 
 matchlocks, knives, and spears. He, however, refused 
 to furnish us an escort to Petra, on the ground that the 
 adjacent tribes were at war. As our party was large 
 and well armed we offered to take the risk, if he would 
 give us a guide. Drawing himself up to his full height, 
 he answered, " You are now in my territory, under my 
 protection. If I permit you to go into danger and one 
 of you is robbed or killed, your consul at Cairo will send 
 word to your country ; and by and by, after one, two, 
 three years, the big ships will come to Egypt, to Con- 
 stantinople, and the Sultan and the Khedive will send
 
 COMMERCE. 115 
 
 soldiers to seize me, and " here lie drew his hand rap- 
 idly across his neck to signify that he would lose his 
 head ! Never was I so impressed with the omnipresence 
 and majesty of that public law that holds even the 
 Bedouins under its sway, and makes its presence felt in 
 the silence of the desert. Mohammed AH had taught 
 that lesson. 
 
 But the roving tribes of the wilderness, the savages of 
 Africa and of the Pacific, are susceptible to other ap- 
 proaches than by force and fear. We have but to re- 
 member that they are men, and we shall find them open 
 to kindness, to vanity, to cupidity, and also to justice. 
 The Indians, who were capable of making a treaty with 
 the United States for reserved land, might have been in- 
 duced to concede the privilege of scientific exploration, 
 and that any mines found in their territory might be 
 worked, on condition of paying a percentage to their 
 tribes. In that case, the gold-hunting in the Black Hills, 
 instead of being resented by them as a usurpation and a 
 robbery, would have been welcomed as a source of wealth 
 without toil. These are men of like passions with our- 
 selves ; and it is worth trying whether their right of oc- 
 cupation cannot be reconciled with the world's right of 
 discovery and advancement. There may still be circum- 
 stances in which the two principles must come to strife ; 
 but it is the duty of Christian nations, first of all, to deal 
 with non-Christian peoples as men having human rights, 
 and, most of all, to show that they mean to be, and seek 
 to be, just. In the manner advised by the King of the 
 Belgians they should advance civilization through con- 
 cord with native chiefs, and just and disinterested arbi- 
 tration. 
 
 II. COMMERCE. Wheaton wrote thirty years ago, 
 " The injustice and mischief of admitting that nations 
 have a right to use force, for the express purpose of
 
 116 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 retarding the civilization and diminishing the prosperity 
 of their inoffensive neighbors, are too revolting to allow 
 such a right to be inserted in the international code." 1 
 Bnt is it not time to ask whether nations have a right to 
 use force for the purpose of advancing the civilization 
 and enhancing the prosperity of less favored peoples? 
 Is commerce, as the van-guard of our Christian civiliza- 
 tion, to be quartered upon reluctant peoples by the rifle 
 and the gunboat ? We may well ask ourselves whether 
 a civilization that puts on the horrid front of war, and 
 goes on its mission bristling with cannon, is after all so 
 much better than barbarism in the sum total of human 
 happiness, as to justify an armed crusade to carry its 
 commerce and arts through the world ? Whether hu- 
 manity would be much the gainer if the whole world 
 should be civilized up to the point where each nation 
 should exhaust its resources and inventions upon improv- 
 ing and multiplying agents for the destruction of human 
 life, and in every land every youth should be taken from 
 the plow, the shop, the school, and trained to the art 
 of war. Should it not shame Christian nations to make 
 their first impression upon ruder peoples through supe- 
 rior powers of destruction, and by a commerce that sends 
 fire and slaughter to prepare the way for opium and 
 rum ? 
 
 There is a right of commerce. The same principle 
 that warrants mankind in reclaiming the earth for their 
 needs, entitles them to share in the products of different 
 climates and soils as means of comfort and enjoyment. 
 But this right, like that of colonial settlement, should 
 be asserted in the spirit of peace and good-will, and for 
 the broad interests of humanity. The commerce of the 
 Christian world with non-Christian peoples, looking be- 
 yond present economical advantages, should stimulate 
 1 Wheaton, Elements of International Laic, pt. II. c. 1.
 
 THE OPIUM TRADE. 117 
 
 such peoples to a higher development of their natural 
 resources, and a higher improvement in the arts of life. 
 Hence any traffic that would tend to corrupt and destroy 
 inferior peoples should be discountenanced by the law of 
 nations, at least to the extent that no person engaging 
 in such traffic should have the protection of his govern- 
 ment in any conflict or difficulty arising out of the traffic. 
 Such a measure was proposed in 1858 concerning the 
 opium trade, by the plenipotentiary of the United States 
 to China. In a letter to Lord Elgin, Mr. W. B. Reed 
 suggested that the two governments should unite " in 
 urging upon the Chinese authorities the active and thor- 
 ough suppression of the trade by seizure and confisca- 
 tion, with assurances that no assistance, direct or indi- 
 rect, shall be given to parties, English or American, seek- 
 ing to evade or resist the process." 1 By the laws of war 
 certain articles are liable to be seized and confiscated as 
 contraband of war. It is time that the law of nations 
 should brand certain kinds of traffic as contraband of 
 peace, contraband of civilization, and outlawed from the 
 protection of public law. If the accidental introduction 
 of contagious diseases by civilized man among the abo- 
 rigines of the Pacific is deplored as a scandal to Chris- 
 tendom, if the traffic in human flesh is declared piracy by 
 the law of nations, 2 then surely any traffic in immoral- 
 ities, to the destruction of a weaker people, should be put 
 under the ban of Christendom. 
 
 How to open commerce with barbarous tribes is some- 
 times a difficult problem ; and there is need on this point 
 of concert among Christian nations, lest ill-advised action 
 on the part of one should prejudice the interests of all. 
 As a rule it might be said that this should be left to the 
 
 1 British Opium Policy, by F. S. Turner, p. 92. 
 
 2 In 1820 the Congress of the United States declared the slave- 
 trade to be piracy, to be punished with death.
 
 118 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 private enterprise of trade. But it has happened, and 
 will happen again, that injudicious or unscrupulous trad- 
 ers will bring on a collision with tribes ignorant of the 
 customs of trade, by awakening the prejudices or fears 
 of the people, or the jealousy of their rulers. A trader 
 is robbed or murdered, his government steps in to avenge 
 the wrong, and a cruel war ends in a treaty of commerce 
 under which the vanquished are restive until the oppor- 
 tunity comes for their revenge. When at last the opium 
 traffic was forced upon China, the Emperor Tao Kwang 
 said, " Gainseeking and corrupt men will for profit and 
 sensuality defeat my wishes ; but nothing will induce me 
 to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my peo- 
 ple." 1 Though there are no mails nor telegraphs, the 
 suspicion has gone abroad among non-Christian peoples 
 that the advent of Christian commerce means encroach- 
 ment, usurpation, fraud, wrong * perhaps, by and by, 
 armed dominion and extirpation. I would not impugn 
 the duty of a government to look after the safety and 
 lives of its subjects in all parts of the world to hold 
 the very hair of the head sacred from injury or insult. 
 But in these times of incessant emigration and locomo- 
 tion, if Christian governments would not be in incessant 
 war with the ruder tribes of men, they should pause to 
 inquire into the right and wrong of their own subjects 
 before they threaten and strike their assailants. As hu- 
 man nature is, offenses must come ; and I would not pre- 
 tend that it is possible wholly to dispense with force and 
 terror in dealing with barbarous tribes. Yet the sad 
 lesson of Ashantee and Dahomey may be a commentary 
 upon the old policy of putting force first, and commerce 
 and justice afterwards. Patience might sometimes win 
 a surer conquest than precipitate action. I cannot for- 
 get that not many years ago one needed a passport for 
 1 British Opium Policy, by F. S. Turner, p. 120.
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY. 119 
 
 every petty state of Europe ; that luggage was searched 
 at every frontier ; that on entering Tuscany, Rome, Na- 
 ples, one had to secrete his Bible and the " Times ; " that 
 English political works were seized at the Russian cus- 
 tom-house ; that republican pamphlets or newspapers 
 made the traveler liable to arrest in Austria as a suspi- 
 cious person ; that even now the innocent through trav- 
 eler from Berlin to Paris or London is roused at mid- 
 night, and compelled to go into a pen under guard, while 
 his hand-bag is examined, lest he should turn pedler in 
 Belgium ; and that we cannot get out of this hospitable 
 city of Bremen without being examined at the douane as 
 if our purpose were to smuggle free goods to foreign 
 parts ; and remembering these blights on our own in- 
 tercourse, we should have forbearance with our weaker 
 brethren of Ashantee and Dahomey, whose methods of 
 challenging the persons and goods of foreigners are 
 rougher than ours, but are part of the same system. The 
 tariff stretched along the Atlantic coast to keep out the 
 goods of England, France, and Germany may be as pre- 
 posterous, and in the view of political economy as bar- 
 barous, as the hawser stretched across the Niger ; but it 
 is not proposed to force the tariff by gunboats and iron- 
 clads. Let not Christian powers do to the weak what 
 they would not dare attempt with the strong. 
 
 Once more, with respect to commerce, when this is 
 opened in any new quarter of the globe it should be for 
 the common behoof of mankind. That priority of dis- 
 covery, or actual colonization, should secure to a nation 
 certain commercial privileges by way of recompense for 
 its outlay and risks, lies in the very reason of things. 
 To deny this would be to take away one great stimulus 
 to geographical discovery and commercial enterprise. 
 But such special privilege, like copyright or patent-right, 
 should be for a limited period, by way of reimbursement
 
 120 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 for toil and skill laid out ; it should never be suffered to 
 grow to a permanent monopoly. This is the age of the 
 solidarity of nations ; and though the nation, like the 
 individual, must care first for self in order to be capable 
 of caring for mankind, yet each nation should look upon 
 the prosperity of every other with a favor next to its 
 own. A good example of this international comity in 
 commerce was given by the United States in their treaty 
 with China in 1845. Having secured certain extraordi- 
 nary concessions beyond those made to England, such 
 as the erection of hospitals, chapels, and cemeteries at 
 the five ports, and permission to ships of war to visit any 
 part of the coasts of China, the United States stipu- 
 lated that the same privileges should be extended to all 
 nations. In this spirit should the pioneers of commerce 
 prepare the way for the unification of humanity. 1 
 
 III. HUMANITY. The law of nations has long ago 
 settled the right of governments, severally or collectively, 
 to interfere in the affairs of other peoples, " where the 
 general interests of humanity are infringed by the ex- 
 cesses of a barbarous and despotic government." 2 The 
 
 1 The ablest writers regard the system of international law as 
 open to amendment, especially so far as it is based upon customs 
 now antiquated. In this view Dr. Bluntsehli has sought to formu- 
 late all recognized usages and principles in his able work, Dan Mo- 
 derne Vo'lkerrccht der civilisirten Staaten als Rechtsbuch darnestellt. 
 Professor Sheldon Amos believes the advance in the law of nations 
 will be in "the influence of well-ascertained ethical principles and 
 formal convention " as compared with customary usages. See his 
 edition of Manning's Commentaries on the Law of Nations (p. 85). 
 In this useful work the question is well put, How far " what shall be 
 the practice of states " shall be dependent upon "what has been the 
 practice of states " under the usages of "a less civilized period." 
 The same powers that keep the law of the past are competent to 
 make the law of the future. This they should not leave to prece- 
 dent nor to accident. 
 
 8 Wheaton, pt. II. c. 1.
 
 PRINCIPLE OF HUMANITY. 121 
 
 eight contracting Powers to the treaty of Paris in 1814 
 agreed to take measures for the suppression of the slave- 
 trade, as " a scourge which has so long desolated Africa, 
 degraded Europe, and afflicted humanity." By the 
 treaty of London, July 6, 1827, France, Great Britain, 
 and Russia interfered in the affairs of Greece, as much in 
 the interest of humanity as of the repose of Europe. 1 
 The pirate is treated as hostis humani generis. 
 
 The principle here is plain ; inhumanity tends to bar- 
 barize the human race and so make the world unfit for 
 the abode of man ; and the ties of brotherhood in the hu- 
 man family oblige the strong to care for the weak, the 
 free for the oppressed, all for each, and each for all. But 
 this principle should not be pressed to the extreme of 
 armed interference except in the last resort, when the 
 wrongs inflicted on the helpless outrage humanity, and 
 protest and remonstrance have been used in vain. That 
 the outrages committed by the Turks in Bulgaria in 
 May, 1876, call for such intervention on the part of 
 Christian powers, the spontaneous outburst of public 
 sentiment throughout Christendom, the accord of press, 
 politicians, and people clearly shows. After every 
 abatement is made for the rumors and exaggerations of 
 war, and every allowance for the excesses of a panic, of 
 religious hatred, and of an irregular soldiery, the report 
 of the American consul-general at Constantinople is a 
 tale of horrors that summons the Christian powers to 
 deal resolutely with Turkey, in the name of outraged 
 humanity and of public law. Mr. Eugene Schuyler is a 
 gentleman of large experience in affairs, of mature judg- 
 ment, of a candid and resolute spirit. He knows both 
 Slavic and Oriental tongues and the habits of Slavic and 
 Oriental peoples. Neither he nor his nation has the re- 
 motest possible interest in the political affairs of Turkey. 
 1 Wheaton, pt. II. c. 1.
 
 122 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 Purely in the interest of truth and humanity he has trav- 
 ersed the desolated region of Bulgaria, and his report to 
 the American minister is the result of careful personal 
 investigation. I allow myself to quote just enough of 
 the horrible story to make clear the summons of interna- 
 tional duty. The first extract relates to the town of 
 Panagurishta (Otlujc-kui). 
 
 " Four hundred buildings, including the bazaar and the lar- 
 gest and best houses, were burned. Both churches were com- 
 pletely destroyed, and almost leveled to the ground. In one an 
 old man was violated on the altar and afterwards burned alive. 
 Two of the schools were burned, the third looking like a pri- 
 vate house escaped. From the numerous statements made 
 to me, hardly a woman in the town escaped violation and brutal 
 treatment. The ruffians attacked children of eight and old 
 women of eighty, sparing neither age nor sex. 
 
 " Old men had their eyes torn out and their limbs cut off, and 
 were there left to die, unless some more charitably-disposed 
 man gave them the final thrust. Pregnant women were ripped 
 open and the unborn babes carried triumphantly on the points 
 of bayonets and sabres, while little children were made to bear 
 the dripping heads of their comrades. This scene of rapine, 
 lust, and murder was continued for three days, when the sur- 
 vivors were made to bury the bodies of the dead. The perpe- 
 trators of these atrocities were chiefly regular troops com- 
 manded by Hafiz Pacha. 
 
 " While pillage reigned supreme at Kopriahtitsa and lust at 
 Panagurishta, at Batak the Turks seemed to have no stronger 
 passion than the thirst for blood. This village surrendered 
 without firing a shot, after a promise of safety, to the Bashi- 
 Bazouks, under the command of Ahmed Aga of Burutina, a 
 chief of the rural police. Despite his promise, the few arms 
 once surrendered, Ahmed Aga ordered the destruction of the 
 village and the indiscriminate slaughter of the inhabitants, 
 about a hundred young girls being reserved to satisfy the lust 
 of the conqueror before they, too, should be killed. I saw their 
 bones, some with the flesh still clinging to them, on the hollow
 
 ATROCITIES IN BULGARIA. 123 
 
 on the hillside, where the dogs were gnawing them. Not a 
 house is uow standing in the midst of this lovely valley. The 
 saw- mil Is for the town had a large trade iu timber and sawn 
 boards which lined the rapid little river are all burned, and 
 of the 8,000 inhabitants not 2,000 are known to survive. Fully 
 6,000 persons, a very large proportion of them women and 
 children, perished here, and their bones whiten the ruins or 
 their putrid bodies infect the air. The sight of Batuk is enough 
 to verify all that has been said about the acts of the Turks in 
 repressing the Bulgarian insurrection. And yet I saw it three 
 months after the massacre. On every side were human bones, 
 skulls, ribs, heads of girls still adorned with braids of long hair, 
 and even complete skeletons still encased in clothing. Here 
 was a house the floor of which was white with the ashes and 
 charred bones of thirty persons burned alive there. Here was 
 the spot where the village notable, Traudafil, was spitted on a 
 pike and then roasted, and where he is now buried ; there was 
 a foul hole full of decomposing bodies ; here a mill-dam filled 
 with swollen corpses ; here the school-house where two hundred 
 women and children, who had taken refuge there, were burned 
 alive, and here the church and churchyard where fully a thou- 
 sand half-decayed forms were still to be seen, filling the inclo- 
 sure in a heap several feet high, arms, feet, and heads protruding 
 from the stones which had vainly been thrown there to hide 
 them, and poisoning all the air." 
 
 Unfortunately for the interests of humanity, the same 
 treaty of Paris that admitted Turkey to the concert of 
 European public law stipulated, in its ninth article, 
 that the Firman of reforms an$ obligations then issued 
 by the Porte " cannot, in any case, give to the said 
 [contracting] Powers the right to interfere, either collec- 
 tively or separately, in the relations of his majesty the 
 Sultan with his subjects, nor in the internal administration 
 of his empire." But surely Turkey, who has broken all 
 her pledges, could not be allowed the benefit of this pro- 
 vision to cover such atrocities. Back of the relation of
 
 124 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 individuals to a particular nation lies their relation to the 
 human family, and when this is outraged, mankind have 
 a common interest and a common right in demanding 
 redress. No plea of " domestic relations " can avail 
 against an interference to shield humanity from outrage. 
 Even though the offending Power have no status in the 
 family of nations, its victims belong to the family of 
 man, and as such have a claim to intervention. 
 
 The case of Bulgaria should be made exemplary ; 
 whether by compelling Turkey to renounce her domin- 
 ion, or to restore the desolated district, recompense the 
 survivors, and punish the perpetrators of the outrages, 
 would be for the Powers to determine. What concerns 
 this association is that whatever is done in the premises 
 should be done not through the prejudice of race or re- 
 ligion, nor through the mere impulse of humanity as a 
 sporadic feeling, but upon principles of law that shall be 
 at once a precedent and a restraint. We must not dic- 
 tate to Turkey what we would not also dictate to Spain, 
 in the event of a political or religious persecution, or of 
 outrages in Cuba ; what we would not dictate to the 
 United States, to England, to Russia, in the event of 
 their violating humanity in feebler tribes. Public law 
 must be law to the Powers that give it, as well as to the 
 peoples on whom they impose it. 
 
 IV. PUBLIC PEACE AND ORDER. The right of in- 
 terference " where the interests and safety of other 
 powers are immediately affected by the internal transac- 
 tions of a particular state," 1 has perhaps been much 
 more insisted upon, and much oftener practiced, than 
 any other form of intervention. The interference of the 
 Great Powers in Naples in 1820, in Spain in 1822, in 
 Greece in 1827, in Belgium in 1830, was justified upon 
 the ground of public peace and order. The preamble to 
 1 Wheaton, pt. II. c. 1.
 
 PRINCIPLE OF PUBLIC ORDER. 125 
 
 the treaty of France, Great Britain, and Russia for inter- 
 vention in Greece sets forth that the Powers are " pene- 
 trated with the necessity of putting an end to the san- 
 guinary contest, which, by delivering np the Greek 
 provinces and the isles of the Archipelago to all the dis- 
 orders of anarchy, produces daily fresh impediments to 
 the commerce of the European states and gives occasion 
 to piracies, which not only expose the subjects of the 
 high contracting parties to considerable losses, but, be- 
 sides, render necessary burdensome measures of protec- 
 tion and repression." There can be no question of the 
 right, nay, the obligation of Christian nations to do all 
 in their power to preserve the peace of the world. Nei- 
 ther can it be questioned that as self-preservation is the 
 first instinct of the individual, so the right of self-preser- 
 vation is the first law of nations. But the danger that 
 threatens a nation must be direct and imminent to justify 
 its interference in the affairs of a neighbor, and the en- 
 deavor to preserve the public peace and order should 
 never be to the prejudice of liberty or right. It is 
 within recent history that both these pleas have been 
 used by arbitrary governments as a pretext for suppress- 
 ing neighboring revolutions that were grounded in jus- 
 tice. The now exploded doctrine of " the balance of 
 power" was liable to the same perversion. But the 
 us;ige of Christian powers in Europe as to intervention 
 for public order may serve as a guide to their duty in 
 this direction toward non-Christian peoples. 
 
 It has been fitly said that "justice is the common con- 
 cern of mankind." Much rather is it their supreme 
 duty ; and Christian nations, that themselves profess to 
 be governed by justice, are under obligation to realize 
 the noble saying of Savigny concerning the law of na- 
 tions, that " its first and unavoidable vocation is to make 
 the idea of right supreme and controlling \_herrschend zu
 
 126 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 macheri] in the visible world." 1 A notable example 
 was given in the union of British and American squad- 
 rons for the police of the coast of Africa against the slave 
 trade. To the United States belongs the honor of first 
 effectually suppressing piracy in the Mediterranean. 
 The time is ripe for a concerted movement in advance ; 
 for a union of Christian powers to make impossible such 
 outbreaks of violence, rapine, and cruelty as in recent 
 years have brought savagery into direct conflict with civ- 
 ilization. The horrors of Syria and Bulgaria, the bloody 
 massacres of China and Africa, should be forestalled by 
 the certainty of swift and decisive retribution. By their 
 own example of arbitration, Christian powers can gain 
 the right of control over the sanguinary passions of non- 
 Christian peoples. Happy will it be when armaments 
 shall serve only for the police of the world, and the one 
 use of war shall be as a menace for restraining war ! 
 
 V. RELIGION. The law and usage of Christian na- 
 tions concerning intervention upon religious grounds, I 
 do not scruple to say, call for a thorough revision to 
 meet the conditions of the nineteenth century. In the 
 Middle Ages the present condition of the Christian peo- 
 ples of Turkey would have roused all Europe to a cru- 
 sade for the expulsion of Mohammedan rule. Three 
 centuries ago, the atrocities in Bulgaria, exceeding even 
 those in Bohemia, would have brought Gustavus Adol- 
 phus like a whirlwind of retribution from the north. 
 Two centuries ago Cromwell and the Great Elector 
 would have made persecution quail by the threat of their 
 swords. Not only is the time for such intervention gone 
 by, but the interests both of society and of religion 
 should forbid its return. Such intervention implies not 
 only that the state makes religion its concern, but also 
 makes itself the champion of some specific faith or form. 
 1 System des Rbmischen Rechts, b. I. cap. ii. p. 9, 25.
 
 RELIGIOUS INTERVENTION. 127 
 
 Four centuries ago it was civilization itself that, under 
 the banner of the cross, on the plains of Hungary, con- 
 tested with the Turks the fate of Europe. There was 
 then no state of Europe that was not in and of the 
 church. The very existence of civilized society was 
 identified with the maintenance of the Christian faith. 
 To-day, in the nations of Europe foremost in the learning 
 and arts of modern civilization, it is openly proclaimed in 
 the name of science that the Christian faith is an anti- 
 quated superstition, and the church a hindrance to en- 
 lightened progress. 
 
 When, at the Reformation, Christianity itself was di- 
 vided into hostile camps, church interests were still so 
 closely bound up with the state that the civil powers 
 almost of necessity took sides in the conflict of faiths. 
 But these are the days of mutual toleration, of parity of 
 confessions, of religious freedom and the rights of con- 
 science. How is it then longer possible for a state to in- 
 tervene for any particular form or faith in religion, with- 
 out going back upon those very principles that have 
 brought the state and religion to their present position of 
 intelligent freedom ? Just now there is a cry for inter- 
 vention on behalf of the oppressed Christians in Turkey. 
 One sympathizes with the feeling that profnpts that cry, 
 but we are after the law and philosophy of such inter- 
 vention. Analyze the cry, and what does it mean? Let 
 us suppose that English evangelicals and German pietists 
 join in the demand that Turkey shall cease to molest her 
 Christian subjects. Might not Turkey reply, " You are 
 the very parties who in your own countries invoke the 
 civil power against the Jesuits. Now these Christians 
 are to Turkey what you conceive the ultramontanes to 
 be to England and Germany an element of danger to 
 the state." Sir Robert Phillimore gives an apt quota- 
 tion from Bolingbroke, a propos of the queen's media-
 
 128 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 tion for French Protestants in 1764. " He saw that if 
 Queen Anne demanded too much of France for Protest- 
 ants, France might retort with demands for Irish Ro- 
 man Catholics." * Happily the day has gone by when 
 either country would have much to fear from the recrim- 
 inations of the other ; but the keen-sighted Bolingbroke 
 perceived that religious intervention could only be justi- 
 fied on the principle of reciprocal equality of practice. 
 Are, then, those who demand intervention in Turkey on 
 behalf of Christians, as such, prepared to meet the logical 
 and equitable consequences of this demand ? Are the 
 Protestants of England and Germany willing that their 
 governments should interfere to exact from Turkey the 
 same freedom and protection for Jesuits and ultramon- 
 tane propagandists which they desire for Protestant mis- 
 sionaries and their disciples? Are Spain and Austria 
 ready to insist upon the same rights for Protestant and 
 Greek Christians that they would demand for Roman 
 Catholics ? Is Russia prepared to become the champion 
 of Roman Catholics and Protestants in Turkey ? Un- 
 less all Christian powers are prepared to act in concert 
 in demanding religious equality in Turkey without re- 
 gard to faith, then intervention would resolve itself into 
 each foreign government becoming the champion of a 
 particular sect, and thus transferring to Turkey the re- 
 ligious rivalries of Christendom. Protestant missiona- 
 ries in Turkey do not hesitate to say they have a better 
 assurance of religious liberty under the Turkish govern- 
 ment, bad as it is, than they could hope for under certain 
 forms of Christian rule that might follow in its stead. 
 
 Again, in demanding of non-Christian peoples freedom 
 and protection for Christians, as such, are Christian na- 
 tions ready to allow Turks and Chinese, who may come to 
 reside among them, absolute immunity in all the customs 
 1 Bolingbroke's Letters, iv. 121, 171, 172, 459.
 
 INTERVENTION ON RELIGIOUS GROUNDS. 129 
 
 and practices sanctioned by their religions, however ab- 
 horrent to the manners and morals of Christian commu- 
 nities ? If not, then upon what ground can the interven- 
 tion of governments in matters of religion be advocated, 
 save that each government should constitute itself the 
 champion of some specific form of faith, thus arming 
 faiths anew for conflict in Christendom, and making 
 Christianity a scandal among non-Christian peoples ? 
 
 In the present stage of the religious question the fol- 
 lowing principles alone seern tenable. 
 
 1. Any government may by treaty insist that its own 
 subjects residing among another people shall have the 
 free exercise of their religious faith and worship ; being 
 ready on its own part to guarantee the same right to sub- 
 jects of the other party to the treaty. 
 
 2. Any power or powers may interfere in behalf of 
 religion in any state by which said intervention is in- 
 voked. Sir James Mackintosh says, "Whatever a na- 
 tion may lawfully defend for itself, it may defend for 
 another people, if called upon to interpose." Hence, if a 
 people attacked on account of their religion invoke for- 
 eign aid, it is in the discretion of the power thus invoked 
 to grant such aid. But by parity of reasoning, no power 
 should interfere in another country in a matter wherein 
 it would not suffer itself to be interfered with. A nation 
 should always be ready to give as much as it asks, and 
 no nation should take what it would not give. 
 
 3. The Christian powers have the right to unite in de- 
 manding of all peoples the absolute freedom of religion. 
 This, as a right of conscience, is one of the prime rights of 
 humanity, and in insisting upon this there is no savor of 
 zeal for any particular form of worship or of faith. The 
 powers have a right to interfere for religious freedom as 
 a naked human right ; but to give justice and efficacy to 
 such intervention, they must themselves furnish an irre- 
 
 9
 
 130 INTERCOURSE WITH NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 proachable example of impartiality in religion. Any 
 single nation may make itself the champion of universal 
 religious freedom ; and the more enlightened nations are 
 under the same obligation to forbid tyranny over con- 
 science as to forbid the slave-trade. 
 
 4. If religious persecution arises among any people, it 
 is not only the right but the duty of Christian nations to 
 interfere for its immediate suppression ; but this purely 
 and solely upon grounds of humanity, and with no refer- 
 ence whatever to the creed or worship that is assailed by 
 violence. Christian nations should be as forward to res- 
 cue a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, a fetish-worshiper from 
 outrage and torture, as the disciple of any form of the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 5. Aside from these principles, there is no riglit, and 
 can be no law of intervention in the affairs of another 
 people, on behalf of any class of religionists nor of any 
 faith or worship as such. 
 
 I speak here only of intervention by governments, 
 which must hold themselves aloof from any partisanship 
 in faiths. But there remains the potency of public sen- 
 timent that moral intervention which is more effica- 
 cious than the force of arms. The sword of Cromwell is 
 broken ; the magic of his name is gone ; but Milton's 
 mighty invocation, "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered 
 saints ! " still rings the knell of persecution. The words 
 of an English statesman out of Parliament may be more 
 quoted and more feared than the policy of ministers, the 
 acts of Parliament, or the movements of fleets. 
 
 It remains only to sum up, in few words, the princi- 
 ples that should govern the whole intercourse of Chris- 
 tian with non-Christian peoples. 
 
 1. That intercourse should not be left to accident or 
 caprice, but conducted upon the well-defined basis of 
 law.
 
 FOUR GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 131 
 
 2. It should be based upon the recognition of all peo- 
 ples as members of the human family, and entitled to 
 the treatment and the benefits that belong to men as 
 men. 
 
 8. It should recognize and express the obligation of 
 higher and more favored peoples to protect the weak 
 and elevate the low. 
 
 4. From first to last it should be pervaded by the 
 spirit of justice and make justice its rule and end. No 
 nation should ever do to a weak and inferior people what 
 it would not dare suggest to a strong and equal people. 
 It is a hundred years since Dr. Johnson wrote, " There is 
 reason to expect that as the world is more enlightened, 
 policy and morality will at last be reconciled, and that 
 nations will learn not to do what they would not suffer." 1 
 Judged by that standard what progress has the world 
 made in enlightenment since Johnson's day ? We may 
 not forget that Christian nations are responsible to man- 
 kind and to posterity for the impressiop they give to 
 non-Christian peoples of Christianity and civilization. 
 It is in the hope that something may be done to elevate 
 the intercourse between these ever-approaching sections 
 of the human family, that I respectfully request the asso- 
 ciation to appoint a commission to suggest rules and 
 measures toward that end. That such a commission 
 might issue in an international Parliament to proclaim 
 the laws of civilized intercourse, the good auspices at 
 Brussels, and other signs of the times, give reason to ex- 
 pect. 
 
 1 " Thoughts on Transactions relating to the Falkland Islands.' 
 Works, vol. xii. pp. 123, 124.
 
 V. 
 
 CONCERNING TREATIES AS MATTER OF THE LAW 
 OF NATIONS. 
 
 (Prepared for the " Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of 
 Nations," at ita Conference in Antwerp, August, 1877.) 
 
 AMONG the sources of the law of nations some writers 
 assign to treaties the highest value, others the lowest. 
 Grotius, in his enumeration, puts treaties after usages, 
 and last in the series, as matter of international law, 
 ipsa natura, leges divince mores, et pacta, though this 
 may represent the order of time and of thought, and not 
 the gradation of value. Heffter, one of the most scien- 
 tific and exact expounders of the law of nations, allows 
 to treaties no obligation beyond the directly contracting 
 parties, and, even in their widest agreement in funda- 
 mentals, no application beyond the attestation of a com- 
 mon accord in the consciousness and conception of right. 
 " Ausserdem ist freilich jeder internationale Vertrag nur 
 fur die daran Betheiligten verbindlich, und selbst eine 
 Vielheit von Vertragen, die denselben Grundsatz prokla- 
 miren oder zur Grundlage haben, aber unter verschie- 
 denen Machten geschlossen sind, kann an und fur sich 
 Anderen oder gegen Andere kein Recht zur Anwendung 
 desselben Grundsatzes gewahren, sondern nur zur Be- 
 glaubigung eines damit einverstandenen allgemeinen 
 Kechtsbewusstseins dienen." l 
 
 Much to the same effect is Bluntschli's position, that 
 1 Das Europaische Vblkerrecht der Gegentvart. Einleitung, 9.
 
 VIEWS OF HEFFTER, BLUNTSCHL1, AND CALVO. 133 
 
 treaties do not in the first instance establish a rule of law, 
 but only recognize and sanction a course of action accord- 
 ing to legal principles which derive from other sources 
 their binding force and authority. 1 Many other writers, 
 among whom may be mentioned Manning and Philli- 
 more, rate treaties chiefly " as evidence of the customary 
 law of nations," and not as an independent and authori- 
 tative source of international law. Wheaton says, how- 
 ever, " an almost perpetual succession of treaties, estab- 
 lishing a particular rule, will go very far towards proving 
 what the law of nations is on a disputed point." 
 
 Calvo, on the other hand, would raise treaties from the 
 position of attesting witnesses to the matter of interna- 
 tional law, to that of original and incontestable sources 
 of the law itself. He looks upon treaties as not only 
 enunciating or confirming rules and principles already 
 recognized in practice, but as often introducing within 
 the domain of international law the fruitful germ of new 
 ideas, and thus preparing the way for the higher devel- 
 opment of the comity of nations. " Le droit interna- 
 tional a sa source principale dans les traite's par lesquels 
 les Etats fixent et de*terminent leurs relations aussi bien 
 en temps de guerre qu'en temps de paix. De meme que 
 la loi juridique est en general la manifestation du droit, 
 les traite's conclus entre les nations sont la manifestation 
 la plus efficace et la plus le'gitime du droit international. 
 . . . Quelquefois les traite's affirment les principes du 
 droit de gens ge'ne'ralement reconnus, ou dtablissent des 
 rdgles particulieres entre les contractants ; d'autres fois 
 encore ils tranchent des questions douteuses ou apportent 
 dans les relations Internationales le germ fdcond de nou- 
 velles idees. Dans tous les cas, et quelle que soit la na- 
 
 1 Das moderne Vb'lkerrecht der civilisirlen Staaten, b. i. 12. 
 Manning, Comm. on the Law of Nations, chap. iii. Phillimore, 
 Comm. upon International Law, part I. chap. 6.
 
 134 TREATIES AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. 
 
 ture ou la port^e de leurs stipulations, les trait^s sont in- 
 contestablement la source la plus importante et la plus 
 irrecusable du droit international." l 
 
 Kent likewise says of treaties, " By positive engage- 
 ments of this kind, a new class of rights and duties is 
 created, which forms the conventional law of nations, and 
 constitutes the most diffusive, and generally, the most 
 important, branch of public jurisprudence." 2 
 
 This seeming divergence of authorities upon the value 
 of treaties *as matter of the law of nations is owing 
 largely to the fact that different treaties, and sometimes 
 portions of the same treaty, are characterized by quite 
 different features the one sort conventional and stip- 
 ulatory, the other ethical and declaratory. Now, the 
 conventional in a treaty may be in its very nature local 
 and limited, like stipulations concerning territory or 
 commerce ; but the ethical concerns public right and the 
 welfare of mankind. Hence though the conventional can 
 be adduced simply as evidence of usage in the law of 
 nations, the ethical may express a principle of universal 
 obligation and of humanizing progress. Keeping in view 
 this distinction, we shall be able rightly to estimate the 
 proportionate value of the matter of treaties to the law 
 of nations, and shall find reasons for concurring in the 
 opinion of one of our colleagues (Professor Sheldon 
 Amos), that the ethical in treaties must eventually over- 
 balance the prescriptive authority of custom. " Though 
 the customary usages of states in their mutual intercourse 
 must always be held to afford evidence of implied assent, 
 and continue to be a main basis of the structure of the 
 law of nations, yet there are several circumstances in 
 modern society which seem to indicate that the region of 
 their influence will become increasingly restricted as com- 
 
 1 Calvo, Droit International, i. 19. 
 
 2 Commentaries on International Law, chap. 2.
 
 ETHICS SUPERIOR TO CUSTOM. 135 
 
 pared with that of well ascertained ethical principles and 
 formal convention." l 
 
 Indeed the main hope of the codification and reform of 
 the law of nations lies in this assurance. If, as Heffter 
 has so nicely expressed it, international law betokens 
 and measures the common legal consciousness that is, 
 the consciousness of a common obligation to right 
 among the nations, then must we base the permanence 
 of the law of nations upon its adaptation to the advance 
 of human society in morals and civilization. This adap- 
 tation must be shown in practical rules which are ac- 
 cepted as just and useful, and in ethical principles which 
 are felt to be right ; and it can be most fitly manifested 
 through formal conventions which are enforced by the 
 universal sense of moral obligation. International law 
 should represent the solidarity of nations in interests, 
 which are material and temporal, and in responsibili- 
 ties, which are human and moral. 
 
 However distant this ideal may seem, every sound dis- 
 criminating statement of the essential matter of inter- 
 national law is a step towards its realization. What, 
 then, at the present stage of political society, is the 
 proper estimate of treaties as matter of the law of na- 
 tions ? 
 
 I. No treaty can be of perpetual obligation in and of 
 itself. A treaty quoad treaty is of a friable texture,- 
 however durable in substance may be the several items 
 that are cast in this particular* mould. The instability of 
 human nature forbids the hope that any treaty will con- 
 tinue to be held sacred merely because the original con- 
 tracting parties regarded it as just and wise. The mo- 
 rale of a nation or a government in its corporate capacity 
 is apt to be below the average of its better citizens ; and 
 history, unhappily, has made us too familiar with breaches 
 1 Note to Manning's Commentaries, chap. 2.
 
 136 TREATIES AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. 
 
 of faith between high contracting powers. But aside 
 from this, the circumstances of nations so change with 
 time that it is sometimes impossible or morally inexpe- 
 dient for one or other of the parties to a treaty to fulfill 
 obligations entered into by foregoing generations. Quite 
 often, too, a treaty embodies concessions or pledges ex- 
 torted by war, or conditions and expedients of temporary 
 service, which cannot be permanently wise and good. 
 Hence it would be absurd to put all treaties upon record 
 as integral parts of the law of nations, and of like force 
 and value in determining international rights and obliga- 
 tions. 
 
 II. No treaty is in form obligatory upon any but the 
 states which have subscribed it as parties to the covenant. 
 In this respect a treaty between states resembles a con- 
 tract between private individuals. But though the for- 
 mal authority of a treaty is thus restricted by the nature 
 of the instrument, its contents may furnish important 
 matter for the public law of nations. A treaty between 
 two or more Powers may, for the first time, formulate 
 certain principles, as for instance concerning extradi- 
 tion, arbitration, naturalization, allegiance, the ameliora- 
 tion of war, the rights and duties of neutrals, which 
 principles, upon being enunciated, commend themselves 
 to the moral consciousness of mankind, and claim univer- 
 sal recognition. Thus the inner spirit of a treaty may 
 awake a sense of obligation far beyond the limits of its 
 formal authority. True, this wider obligation is due to 
 the principles and not to the treaty ; yet the principles 
 gain a certain prominence and weight by virtue of the 
 treaty ; and when several of the more enlightened gov- 
 ernments embody the same ethical principles in succes- 
 sive treaties, then such treaties serve not only to attest 
 the usage of nations, but give to the principles a certain 
 sanction as matter of international law. " Audi in den
 
 VALUE OF TREATIES. 137 
 
 Vertriigen, welche zuniichst nur unter einzelnen Staaten 
 abgescli lessen worden sind, sind daher manche Bestirn- 
 rnungen zu finden, welche ihrem Wesen nach Rechtsge- 
 setze und keineswegs blosse Vertragsartikel sind, welche 
 die nothwendige Rechtsordnung, nicht die Convenienz 
 der contrahirenden Staaten dartstellen." l 
 
 Sometimes when a principle or rule is introduced into 
 a treaty for the first time, the parties to the treaty avow 
 that this is intended as a precedent, to be thereafter in- 
 corporated into the law of nations. In such a case other 
 Powers feel bound in their own interest to take notice of 
 the declaration. Thus, in the treaty of Washington of 
 1871, the governments of the United States and of Great 
 Britain laid down three rules by which " a neutral gov- 
 ernment is bound." At the same time they agreed to 
 bring these rules to the notice of other maritime Powers, 
 and to invite their assent to the same. 
 
 III. No treaty can be valid as matter of international 
 law which contains stipulations contrary to the natural 
 rights of man, or to the just rights and integral welfare 
 of states not parties to the treaty ; or which would form 
 the contracting parties into an alliance against the law- 
 ful existence and well-being of other states. Phillimore 
 lays down the rule that " no treaty between two or more 
 nations can affect the general principles of international 
 law prejudicially to the interest of other nations not par- 
 ties to such covenant." 2 This rule, however, in its 
 broad terms, could hardly be maintained ; since it would 
 create a perpetual barrier to the amendment of the law 
 of nations. There are " general principles of interna- 
 tional law " which have become antiquated by the prog- 
 ress of society, but which it might still be for " the inter- 
 est " of particular nations to maintain. Or it might be 
 
 1 Bluntschli, Das moderne Volkerrecht. Einleitung, p. 5. 
 
 2 Commentaries, part I. chap. 6.
 
 138 TREATIES AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. 
 
 for the "interest" of certain nations to adhere to usages 
 proscribed by modern civilization such as the slave- 
 trade and privateering at which the law of nations 
 once connived. Hence the mere fact that a treaty would 
 "affect prejudicially" some customary material "inter- 
 est of other nations not parties to the covenant," cannot 
 make such treaty void in international law. The treaty 
 may be the required medium (or introducing a whole- 
 some reform into the law of nations. 
 
 But it is quite otherwise when a treaty would infringe 
 upon the essential rights of man, or the lawful existence 
 and just liberties of states which are not parties to the 
 covenant. No covenant of powers or numbers can make 
 injustice valid. 
 
 It is conceivable that states might be justified in com- 
 bining by treaty to coerce, subdue, and even politically 
 to annihilate, a people so addicted to foray, pillage, 
 piracy, the slave-trade, as to be an incorrigible pest to 
 human society. Where it is clear beyond dispute that 
 the pestiferous tribe or state can neither be curbed nor 
 reformed, and its evil courses can no longer be endured, 
 then a convention of states for the destruction of this 
 public malefactor would violate no principle of the law 
 of nations, and no natural right nor proper interest of 
 mankind. But a convention of states to force upon a 
 state, not a party to the covenant, laws and usages of 
 their own, or some immoral or hurtful traffic, or to par- 
 tition among themselves the territory and population of 
 a foreign state because its institutions and usages were 
 not congenial to their own such a convention, though 
 signed by all the Powers save its victim, could contribute 
 nothing to the matter of international law, but, on the 
 contrary, would be ipso facto void before that common 
 consciousness of right from which the law of nations de- 
 rives its highest sanction. No treaty could be valid that
 
 SECRET CLAUSES. 139 
 
 should have for its purpose the suppression of the natu- 
 ral rights of man, such as personal liberty, the posses- 
 sion of property, the inviolability of home, freedom of 
 conscience, or that should form a league against the 
 normal existence of an inoffensive state. No treaty could 
 be valid in international law that should have for its ob- 
 ject the propagation of any form of religious faith to the 
 destruction or injury of others, as of Protestant against 
 Catholic, Catholic against Protestant, either or both 
 against Jewish, Mohammedan, or Pagan. The so-called 
 " Holy Alliance " of 1815, in so far as it brought Cath- 
 olic Austria, Orthodox Russia, and Protestant Prussia, 
 to vow together that the precepts of their common Chris- 
 tianity should be the sole guide of their political action 
 at home and abroad, was an advance in the international 
 spirit of justice and fraternity. But inasmuch as the 
 allied Powers declared the precepts of their " holy relig- 
 ion " to be " the sole means of consolidating human in- 
 stitutions and of remedying their imperfections," the 
 treaty was dogmatically exclusive, and might be made 
 fanatically hostile toward non-Christian peoples ; and 
 hence can have no place nor authority as matter of the 
 law of nations. Leaving each nation to its own internal 
 code of morals and its own sources of right, Moses, 
 Confucius, Christ, Mohammed, the law of nations ad- 
 mits to the benefits of its code all who are willing to 
 abide by the rule of right as developed in the common 
 consciousness of mankind. 
 
 IV. A treaty containing secret clauses which nullify 
 its open professions can have no authority in the law of 
 nations. Cases may arise as during the Thirty Years' 
 War in Germany in which, for their own preservation 
 or for some common cause, states can rightfully form a 
 secret alliance, offensive and defensive. But when a 
 treaty, defining the relations or intentions of the contract-
 
 140 TREATIES AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. 
 
 ing Powers toward other Powers or to the general wel- 
 fare, is openly promulgated to inspire public confidence, 
 and said treaty is found afterwards to contain secret 
 clauses which contravene its open declarations, such 
 treaty, being of the nature of a fraudulent contract, is 
 ipso facto void. 
 
 The negative view of treaties as matter of the law of 
 nations being exhausted in the four preceding proposi- 
 tions, a few words will suffice to set forth their positive 
 value. 
 
 I. Whatever stipulations in a treaty tend to facilitate 
 the peaceful intercourse of nations, upon the assured 
 basis of their coordinate and correlative rights, are of 
 permanent account in the law of nations. Of this char- 
 acter are arrangements for the interchange of ambassa- 
 dors and consuls ; for reciprocal trade ; for the mutual 
 enjoyment and protection of the commerce. of the seas. 
 
 II. All treaty stipulations for the common protection 
 of human society against vice or crime, for the advance- 
 ment of knowledge and the furtherance of mutual good- 
 will, belong to the law of nations. Such are treaties for 
 the extradition of criminals other than political offenders ; 
 international patent and copyright laws ; rules of expa- 
 triation, naturalization, and the like. 
 
 III. Treaties made in the interest of humanity, and 
 having in view the solidarity of nations in the higher 
 civilization, are of the greatest value and promise to the 
 law of nations. Of this sort are stipulations for sup- 
 pressing piracy and the slave-trade; for restricting the 
 occasions of war and mitigating its severities ; for re- 
 specting the obligations of humanity in the movements 
 of armies and upon the field of battle ; and above all, 
 for substituting arbitration and the moral reason for the 
 verdict of the sword. 
 
 Whatever may be the origin of treaties such as these,
 
 SANCTITY OF TREATIES. 141 
 
 how insignificant or how imposing soever the number 
 and rank of their signataries, their subject-matter is the 
 very stuff the law of nations is made of ; and the treaty 
 that contains such elements and seals such promises car- 
 ries within itself the authority of the moral consciousness 
 of mankind, demanding universal assent to its principles 
 and aims. 
 
 But the most essential point concerning treaties as 
 matter of the law of nations is that the sanctity of the 
 treaty shall be inviolable except by methods provided in 
 the treaty itself or by the consensus gentium, for amend- 
 ing or abrogating the terms of the convention. Unless 
 this point shall be assured, the making of treaties must 
 degenerate to a solemn farce, and the law of nations to a 
 name to conjure by in the game of diplomacy. The law 
 of nations as a working power is strictly coextensive 
 with the sense of honor or good faith among the nations. 
 Burke, in his philippic against the East India Company 
 for its breach of faith with Hyder Ali, denounced the 
 men " who either would sign no convention, or whom no 
 treaty and no signature could bind," as " the determined 
 enemies of human intercourse itself." 1 And surely the 
 reciprocal intercourse of governments and peoples would 
 be impossible, should it come to be understood that 
 treaties can be broken with impunity, at the will of 
 either of the contracting powers, either with or without 
 notice to the others. Yet there are recent indications 
 that the civilized world is unconsciously drifting toward 
 such a wreck of international faith. Now it is this faith 
 " which holds the moral elements of the world together," 
 and hence the utmost vigilance must be used against 
 whatever tends to weaken or disparage it. The question 
 whether the intercourse of nations shall be ruled by law 
 or by force is simply the question between faith and mis- 
 1 Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts.
 
 142 TREATIES AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. 
 
 trust. Honor and faith mean law ; suspicion and fear 
 mean force. 
 
 The comity of this association forbids the criticism of 
 particular acts of nations which have entered into the 
 concert of international law, nor would such criticism be 
 pertinent to the object of this paper. But a calm state- 
 ment of the present phases of treaty obligations is indis- 
 pensable to a legal estimate of the treaties themselves. 
 One notable example will suffice to illustrate the state of 
 the question. 
 
 The treaty of Paris of 1856, with the declaration an- 
 nexed to it, was hailed as a permanent settlement not 
 only of the Eastern Question, but of the outstanding ac- 
 counts of the civilized world upon all questions involved 
 in the conduct of war. By abolishing privateering, de- 
 fining blockade, and establishing the immunity of all 
 goods not contraband of war, the declaration sought " to 
 settle once for all a uniform doctrine " of maritime law, 
 and in lieu of heterogeneous and contested usages, " to 
 introduce in this respect fixed principles into interna- 
 tional relations." The gain to commerce and humanity 
 from these rules was immense,; and the fact that in addi- 
 tion to the seven Powers which signed the declaration, 
 about forty states have given in their adherence to its 
 principles, would seem to make that declaration a final 
 authority in international law. The rules of the declara- 
 tion are still respected, both by belligerents and by neu- 
 trals ; yet the treaty of Paris is already regarded in 
 some quarters as an antiquated document, having no vi- 
 tal force ! Besides the broadly human principles of the 
 declaration, the treaty itself marked a new era in the 
 law of nations, by incorporating an express provision for 
 mediation as a guarantee against a renewal of war upon 
 the so-called " Eastern Question." 
 
 " Art. 8. S'il survenait, eutre la Sublime-Porte et
 
 THE EASTERN QUESTION. 143 
 
 1'nne ou plusieurs des autres puissances signataires, un 
 dissentiment qui menac.&t le maintien do leurs relations, 
 la Sublime- Porte et chacune de ces puissances, avant de 
 recourir a 1'einploi de la force, mettront lea autres parties 
 contractantes en niesure de pre'venir cette extrlmitl par 
 leur action m&liatrice." Cognate to this was the provis- 
 ion of art. 29 concerning intervention in Servia. " Au- 
 cune intervention amide ne pourra avoir lieu en Servio 
 sans un accord prdalable entre les hautes puissances con- 
 tractantes." By these provisions mediation, hitherto 
 but an occasional expedient under emergencies, was ex- 
 alted to a definitive place of obligation and authority 
 in the law of nations. Unfortunately, however, for the 
 permanent force of the treaty of Paris in international 
 law, the treaty itself contained two provisions that were 
 almost sure to work its disruption. 
 
 In the first place, Turkey, which as yet had given 
 small proof of either disposition or ability to conform to 
 the law of nations as observed in western Europe, was 
 admitted to an equal status in the concert of Europe, 
 and the most emphatic pledges were given by the other 
 six parties to the treaty " to respect the independence 
 and the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire." 
 14 Leurs Majestes s'engagent, chacune de son cold, & re- 
 specter 1'independance et 1'inte'grite' territoriale de 1'em- 
 pire Ottoman, garantissent en commun la stricte observa- 
 tion de cet engagement, et considdreront, en consequence, 
 tout acte de nature a y porter atteinte comme une ques- 
 tion d'inte'ret ge'ne'ral." (Art. 7.) 
 
 Not content with this sweeping obligation to cherish 
 and defend the youngest member of the European con- 
 cert, the Powers seem to have made Turkey the pet of 
 their confidence. Though the firman of the Sultan 
 promising to his subjects civil and administrative re- 
 forms, without distinction of race or religion, was the
 
 144 TREATIES AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. 
 
 ground upon which Turkey was admitted to the concert 
 of Europe, yet the Powers disclaimed any right of mix- 
 ing themselves in affairs between the Sultan and his 
 subjects, and pledged themselves that, in the event of 
 any threatening disturbance in the principalities of the 
 Ottoman empire, there should be no armed intervention 
 without a previous agreement among the Powers, and 
 then only at the instance of the Sublime Porte itself. 
 " II est bien entendu qu'elle ne saurait, en aucun cas, 
 donner le droit aux dites puissances de s'immiscer soit 
 collectivement, soit se'pare'ment, dans les rapports de Sa 
 Majeste* le sultan avec ses sujets, ni dans ['administration 
 inte'rieure de son empire." (Art. 9.) " Si le repos intd- 
 rieur des Principality's se trouvait menace* on compromis, 
 la Sublime-Porte s'entendra avec les autres puissances 
 contractantes surs les mesures.a prendre pour maintenir 
 ou re'tablir 1'ordre Idgal. Une intervention amide ne 
 pourra avoir lieu sans un accord prdalable entre ces puis- 
 sances." (Art. 27.) One might have foreseen that such 
 wholesale guarantees to an untried order of things would 
 tend to precipitate the catastrophe which has now ren- 
 dered them null. But our concern is not with the un- 
 wisdom of certain stipulations of the treaty of Paris, but 
 with the preservation of that public faith upon which all 
 treaties must depend. 
 
 A second suicidal element in the treaty of Paris was 
 the neutralization of the Black Sea, which restrained 
 Russia and Turkey from converting its shores into a 
 naval arsenal. The eleventh and thirteenth articles of 
 the treaty were especially humiliating to Russia, and 
 were dictated more by the exasperations of recent war 
 than by the necessities of lasting peace. It might have 
 been foreseen that upon regaining the consciousness of 
 strength, Russia would refuse to be hampered by such 
 conditions. Accordingly, in 1870, the Russian court
 
 NATIONAL SENSE OF JUSTICE. 145 
 
 notified the Powers that " His imperial majesty cannot 
 any longer hold himself bound by the stipulations of the 
 treaty of 30th March, 1856, as far UK they restrict his 
 sovereign rights in the Black Sea." Here again our con- 
 cern is not with the stipulation itself, but with the man- 
 ner in which it was repudiated, as this affects the public 
 faith. So keenly was this felt that when the signatary 
 Powers to the treaty of Paris agreed at London in Janu- 
 ary, 1871, to condone the act of Russia, they put forth 
 the solemn and earnest declaration that "it is an essen- 
 tial principle of the law of nations that no Power can re- 
 lease itself from the engagements of a treaty, nor modify 
 any of its stipulations, save with the assent of the con- 
 tracting parties, by means of an amicable understand- 
 ing." It is at this point that we must make a resolute 
 stand, if faith between nations is to be maintained, and 
 treaties and laws are to have any value above the paper 
 on which they are written. It may sometimes be al- 
 lowed to sovereigns or judges in individual states to set 
 aside a local law as obsolete, though it has not been re- 
 pealed. But no such discretion can be conceded to any 
 one of the signers of a treaty, since a treaty is a contract 
 the parties to which must be held together by mutual 
 faith and mutual respect. 
 
 To maintain this faith the first resource is the moral 
 sentiment of just men. The sense of justice is becoming 
 more and more potent in civilized communities, and in 
 none could it be disregarded with impunity. But this 
 sentiment, which is already a latent bond of union among 
 civilized peoples, requires to be developed and unified in 
 some intelligent and practical plan of action, for estab- 
 lishing the law of nations upon the common ground of 
 right, and maintaining it by the inviolableness of public 
 faith. The present perplexity of the public mind in re- 
 spect to treaties and their obligations is opportune for 
 10
 
 146 TREATIES AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. 
 
 some concerted movement in behalf of international 
 faith. The treaty of Paris illustrates both the negative 
 and the positive value of treaties to the law of nations ; 
 it embodies the conventional and the ethical, the transi- 
 tory and the permanent ; it points out mistakes to be 
 avoided and obligations to be fulfilled. The conservation 
 of the Ottoman empire, the neutralization of the Black 
 Sea, the pacification of the Provinces, were all contingent 
 upon circumstances that could not be foreseen nor con- 
 trolled ; and hence a treaty guaranteeing these things 
 could not be of permanent force quoad treaty. On the 
 other hand, this treaty contains principles of such wisdom 
 and justice, and its declaration gives rules of such ob- 
 vious utility, that the essence of the treaty will be incor- 
 porated with the law of nations, whatever may become 
 of the form of this particular covenant. Moreover, the 
 treaty anticipates the difficulties or failures that might 
 occur in carrying out its stipulations, and provides for 
 remedying these by mediation and the concert of the 
 Powers a principle of the highest moment to the peace 
 of the world and the moral advance of nations. Yet this 
 treaty has suffered a sudden and somewhat ignominious 
 collapse. The signataries hardly seem to know whether 
 or not it still exists ; if they would invoke it on some 
 points, they would ignore it on others. Some accuse one 
 party, some another, of having violated the clauses touch- 
 ing mediation and intervention ; some hold that the pro- 
 vision for mediation was practically met by the confer- 
 ence at Constantinople, others that it was violated by a 
 preliminary conference from which one of the signataries 
 was excluded. In this hopeless confusion, that which 
 should most concern us is the collapse of international 
 faith, without which, as we have seen, international law 
 is but a figment. In a few months the great Powers of 
 Europe will be summoned to form a new treaty of peace,
 
 INTERNATIONAL FAITH. 147 
 
 supplanting or supplementing the treaty of Paris. But 
 we want no more of specific treaties if they are so easily 
 to go the way of that. What the law of nations does 
 require is a broad international compact of accepted prin- 
 ciples, with adequate guarantees of international faith. 
 
 Is this notion visionary ? On the contrary it is di- 
 rectly practical, and might soon be realized if men would 
 set resolutely about it. True, we can hardly look to 
 governments to take the initiative in such a self-abne- 
 gating reform. Yet governments are quick to feel the 
 pulse of public sentiment, and sooner or later they must 
 give formal and authoritative expression to the spirit of 
 the age. Notwithstanding the din of warlike preparation, 
 the governments of Europe are heartily averse to war. 
 The sentiments of all statesmen are expressed in these 
 words of a distinguished general : " Happy will be the 
 time when states shall no longer be in a position which 
 requires them to expend the greater part of their income 
 in protecting their existence ; but when parties and peo- 
 ples shall have convinced themselves that even a success- 
 ful campaign costs more than it brings, since it can be no 
 gain to purchase material good with the lives of men." 
 That happy time will come when states shall have learned 
 to Took upon each other with mutual confidence instead 
 of presumptive suspicion ; and this again will be when 
 treaties which pledge their signataries to mediation or to 
 concert of moral action shall be held inviolable, and the at- 
 tempt to set aside a treaty by any other than the rational 
 and moral methods therein described shall be followed 
 by a declaration of war on the part of the other signata- 
 ries against the offender. In other words, a rational and 
 moral adjudication of international disputes being pre- 
 scribed by a compact of the Powers, let war be reserved 
 as the penalty for a breach of international faith. Thus 
 honor, confidence, and peace, would grow to be the normal
 
 148 TREATIES AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. 
 
 condition of things, and every government would gladly 
 reduce its armament. Hence the consummation aimed at 
 through a lasting compact of good faith, so far from be- 
 ing a restriction upon governments, would greatly aug- 
 ment their internal strength and authority. The effort 
 after public faith in the law of nations should begin in 
 confidence in individual governments faith in their 
 good intentions ; and it should be conducted, not in the 
 spirit of adverse criticism upon governments, but with 
 cordial trust in these real bulwarks of the social order of 
 the world. 
 
 The direct and obvious steps toward a permanent in- 
 ternational faith are these four. 
 
 1. Since so many permanent ethical points of union 
 among nations are to be found in treaties to which all 
 leading Powers from time to time have given their as- 
 sent, these points, omitting whatever is local and conven- 
 tional, should be codified, and formulated scientifically, 
 with a view to being laid before the governments for 
 specific recognition. If it were in the power of this as- 
 sociation to employ a trained jurist to devote his whole 
 time to this preparatory work, the office would be worthy 
 of the beneficence of a Peabody and the capacity of a 
 John Stuart Mill. The materials for such a codification 
 are already at hand in the valuable collections of treaties 
 and other diplomatic documents in the English, French, 
 and German languages. 
 
 2. Since, with the single exception of Russia, all the 
 Powers now acting in the Concert of Nations have a par- 
 liamentary form of government, candidates for a seat in 
 any parliament should be required to pledge themselves 
 to consult and cooperate with the governments of other 
 countries, in guaranteeing the mutual faith of nations, 
 and the moral order of human society. The sense of 
 justice, the desire of peace, and the interests of trade and
 
 FOUR POSSIBLE STEPS. 149 
 
 finance, are strong enough in all civilized peoples to se- 
 cure this legitimate action of the parliamentary powers. 
 Wisdom and courage patiently applied to this line of di- 
 rection will surely tell. The constitutional makers of 
 law in each nation will be employed to secure the sanc- 
 tion of law for all nations in their common interests. 
 The dangers of popular vehemence and of official usurpa- 
 tion are alike guarded against at each step of this calm 
 and logical procedure. The people of each country sim- 
 ply demand that their rulers shall be in earnest in estab- 
 lishing the relations of the country with all others upon 
 the firm basis of justice and peace. The President of the 
 United States has openly committed himself to such a 
 pacific policy. 
 
 3. A commission composed of deputies from each of 
 the governments shall elaborate and approve the projet 
 of a convention, to be ratified by the several Powers. 
 Upon the approval of its labors the commission shall ex- 
 pire, and there shall be nothing of the nature of a per- 
 manent tribunal above the several governments, but on 
 the request of any three of the signataries, the govern- 
 ments shall send deputies to a new commission for the 
 revision or expansion of the covenant, any changes in 
 the same to be determined in a certain fixed and equable 
 ratio. This avoids the error of Kant, James Mill and 
 others, in attempting to constitute a permanent congress 
 or tribunal. It respects throughout the individuality of 
 each nation, and seeks to rule by faith rather than by 
 forms. 
 
 4. If a party to the treaty, refusing the prescribed 
 methods of complaint and consultation for its amend- 
 ment, shall openly and defiantly violate the covenant, 
 said government shall be declared without the pale of na- 
 tions, and subject to the penalty of war. 
 
 When faith is thus made more noble than force, the
 
 150 TREATIES AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. 
 
 law of nations shall have fulfilled its function of choos- 
 ing the good in each nation, that by combining the good 
 from all, it may overwhelm the evil that lingers in any. 
 No scheme of international law could provide effectually 
 against misunderstanding, caprice, jealousy, rivalry, am- 
 bition, and the occasional outbreak of war. Such evils 
 will always be incident to human organizations ; but it 
 is believed that the scheme here presented would reduce 
 the risk to a minimum. The point of weakness in most 
 plans for securing the observance of the law of nations 
 is that they propose an impracticable tribunal, with no 
 power to enforce its decisions. But this scheme leaves 
 the sovereignty of each nation intact ; provides how a 
 deliberative convention of the Powers shall be summoned 
 upon an emergency ; and recognizing that persistent vio- 
 lence can be repressed only by force, it reserves the mil- 
 itary power as a police for punishing any infraction of 
 the public peace, any violation of the public faith. In 
 the nature of the case the scheme is tentative and imper- 
 fect ; but if it shall serve as a help or a hint to others 
 who are studying the same problem, the writer will be 
 more than recompensed.
 
 VI. 
 
 ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 (Prepared for the Conference of the " Association for the Reform and Codifica- 
 tion of the Law of Nations," held at Antwerp, August 28, 1877.) 
 
 THE chief moment of the question of an international 
 la,w of copyright lies in the reciprocal relations of the 
 book trade in Germany, Great Britain, and the United 
 States, as established by law, custom, or courtesy. This 
 section of the report will be devoted exclusively to those 
 countries ; and will comprise : 
 
 I. The law of copyright in each country for the pro- 
 tection of its native authors. 
 
 II. The laws or conventions of each country concern- 
 ing foreign authors, as to reprint or original publication. 
 
 III. A digest of the principles and rules of copyright 
 common to the three countries. 
 
 IV. Suggestions for concerted legislation for bringing 
 the law of copyright in the three countries into accord, 
 for the rights of authors and the interests of literature. 
 
 I. The protection of native authors. 
 
 A. GERMANY. The law of copyright in Germany has 
 been greatly simplified by the acts of the Imperial Par- 
 liament codifying the independent laws and the mutual 
 conventions of the several German states on copyright, 
 as these stood prior to 1871. The constitution of the 
 German empire (art. IV. 6) provides for the protection 
 of intellectual property by the empire, through appro- 
 priate legislation. This protection is assured equally to
 
 152 ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 authors in all parts of Germany, by the copyright law of 
 the North German Union of June 11, 1870. This law, 
 which covers literary works, artistic designs, musical and 
 dramatic compositions, is now incorporated into the stat- 
 ute book of the empire, and has the same force in Hesse, 
 Baden, Wiirtemberg, Bavaria, and Elsass-Lothringen, as 
 in the states of the former North German Union. The 
 Act of Parliament of January 11, 1876, having more 
 special reference to works of art, photographs, patterns 
 and models, completes the legislation of the German em- 
 pire for the protection of original intellectual productions 
 within its bounds. The principal points established by 
 this legislation are the following : 
 
 (1.) The original work of an author, artist, or com- 
 poser, is entitled to legal protection, and this upon the 
 ground that it is an original or independent product of 
 intellectual labor. It has been much disputed among 
 German jurists whether the right of an author in his 
 work is of the nature of an Eigenthum ; that is, a per- 
 sonal, exclusive, and indefeasible right in the substance 
 of the thing itself, or is simply a Vermb'gensrecht, 
 which may be created or at least determined by law, in 
 which the personality of the author is a less vital element 
 than the mere legal notion of property. An intellectual 
 Eigenthum inheres in one, a material Vermogen belongs 
 to him. However, the distinction is more one of words 
 than of fact. Singularly enough the phraseology of the 
 German constitution recognizes the author's right in the 
 creations of his intellect as an Eigenthum, while the Acts 
 of Parliament for the protection of this right treat it 
 rather as a Vermogen. Among the prerogatives of the 
 imperial government the constitution specifies (art. IV. 
 6), " der Schutz des geistigen Eigenthums" the pro- 
 tection of intellectual Eigenthum. But the Act of June 
 11, 1S70 is entitled, " Gesetz betreffend das Urheberrecht
 
 COPYRIGHT IN GERMANY. 153 
 
 an Schriftwerken," etc. ; and this term Urheberrec\\t 
 the right of the creator, originator, author is substi- 
 tuted for Eigenthum through the entire act. The same 
 is true of the Act of Parliament of January 11, 1876. 
 The substitution of this " right of the producer " for the 
 self-existent intellectual proprietorship recognized by the 
 constitution, was apparently made for a purpose ; and in 
 an action for violation of copyright, no doubt the courts 
 would follow the phraseology of the laws rather than that 
 of the constitution. 
 
 In either case, however, it is clearly recognized that 
 the author has a right of property in his work as his own 
 intellectual labor. The property does not lie merely in 
 the material form in which his work appears, but in the 
 thought and labor which that form embodies. The first 
 article of the law of June 11, 1870, declares that the right 
 to multiply a manuscript by mechanical means belongs 
 exclusively to the author of the same. And the law pro- 
 vides also, in principle, that the right of the author passes 
 over to his heirs, but may be transferred to others by 
 contract or other disposition. 
 
 (2.) Any and every mechanical reproduction of a 
 work, in whole or in part, even by writing in lieu of 
 printing, without consent of the author, is forbidden. 
 The author alone has the right to give his work to the 
 public, and by the same right can withhold, alter, con- 
 trol it. 
 
 (3.) Under certain limitations as to time, notification, 
 etc., the author of an original work, or the translator of 
 a work from a dead language into a living tongue, is 
 protected against the publication of a translation of his 
 work, in the same manner as if this were a reprint of the 
 work itself. 
 
 (4.) The protection of the author against the reprint- 
 ing of his work without his consent is guaranteed during
 
 154 ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 his lifetime and for thirty years after his death. The 
 prohibition of the publication of translations holds good 
 for five years after the first appearance of the original 
 work, or of a translation sanctioned by the author him- 
 self. 
 
 These principles, covering the right of property in in- 
 tellectual productions, the protection of that right against 
 infringement, and the duration of copyright, fairly rep- 
 resent the German law, so far as this concerns native au- 
 thors. The details must be looked for in the Acts of 
 Parliament already cited. 1 
 
 B. GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 (1.) The Act of Parliament of July 1, 1842, expressly 
 declares " that all copyright shall be deemed personal 
 property, and shall be transmissible by bequest, or, in 
 case of intestacy, shall be subject to the same law of dis- 
 tribution as other personal property, and in Scotland 
 shall be deemed to be personal and movable estate." 
 (5 and 6 Viet. c. 45, 25.) Here the fact of property 
 in the original creations of intellect is fully recognized, 
 and the legal denomination of such property is distinctly 
 fixed. The English law of copyright is uniform through- 
 out the " British Dominions," which term includes " all 
 parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ire- 
 land, the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, all parts of the 
 East and West Indies, and all the colonies, settlements, 
 and possessions of the crown which now are or hereafter 
 may be acquired." 
 
 (2.) The law of Great Britain, like that of Germany, 
 
 i 
 
 See O. Dambach, Die Gesetzgtbung des norddeutschen Bundes, 
 betreffend das Urheberrecht an Schriftwerken, Abbildunyen, etc. 1871. 
 
 W. Endemann, Das Gesetz betreffend das Urheberrecht an Schrifl- 
 werken, etc. 1871. 
 
 R. Klostermann, Das Urheberrecht an Schrift-und Kunstwerken, 
 etc. 1876.
 
 COPYRIGHT IN GREAT BRITAIN. 155 
 
 makes the copyright cover every part or division of a 
 work equally with the work as a whole ; and treats the 
 multiplication in any form for circulation of copies of any 
 work, in whole or in part, without the consent of the 
 holder of the copyright, as an infringement of said right. 
 
 (3.) The English law requires that " the proprietor- 
 ship in the copyright of books, and assignments thereof, 
 and in dramatic and musical pieces, whether in manu- 
 script or otherwise, and licenses affecting such copyright, 
 shall be registered in an official book kept for this pur- 
 pose at the hall of the stationers' company." 
 
 (4.) The English law provides that the copyright in a 
 book shall endure for a period of not less than forty-two 
 years ; that is to say, for the natural life of the author 
 and for a further time of seven years from the date of 
 his death ; " provided always, that if the said term of 
 seven years shall expire before the end of forty-two years 
 from the first publication of such book, the copyright 
 shall in that case endure for such period of forty-two 
 years." 
 
 (5.) The English law has a peculiar provision for com- 
 pulsory publication. The statutes do not place copyright 
 upon abstract grounds of personal and indefeasible right 
 in the author. Before the statute of Queen Anne it was 
 held at common law that an author had a right of prop- 
 erty in his works in perpetuity ; but the statutes relating 
 to copyright were enacted avowedly with a view " to af- 
 ford greater encouragement to the production of literary 
 works of lasting benefit to the world." (See 5 and 6 
 Viet. c. 45, 1, and the titles of preceding acts cited 
 therein.) Hence the statutes of copyright, while osten- 
 sibly conferring upon the author a privilege by way of a 
 motive to labor for the public benefit, practically curtailed 
 a right by virtue of which he had been master of his 
 own time, talents, and productions.
 
 156 ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 In this view of securing to the world the benefit of in- 
 tellectual labor, the law of 1842 enacts " that it shall be 
 lawful for the judicial committee of her majesty's privy 
 council, on complaint made to them that the proprietor 
 of the copyright in any book, after the death of its au- 
 thor, has refused to republish or to allow the republica- 
 tion of the same, and that by reason of such refusal such 
 book may be withheld from the public, to grant a license 
 to such complainant to publish such book, in such man- 
 ner and subject to such conditions as they may think fit, 
 and that it shall be lawful for such complainant to pub- 
 lish such book according to such license." (5 and 6 Viet. 
 c. 45, 5.) This provision is obviously liable to abuse. 
 If, for example, an author had published a book which 
 his heirs were willing to let die as unworthy of his name 
 or injurious to his reputation or the reputation of' others, 
 or to the public morals, or because of a change in the 
 author's views and beliefs, as from the Protestant to 
 the Roman Catholic faith and vice versa, then some 
 huckstering publisher, trading upon the supposed popu- 
 larity of the book, might obtain a license to violate the 
 most sacred feelings of a family, and the presumable 
 wishes of the deceased author himself. The very excel- 
 lence of the purpose of this provision calls for uncommon 
 care in its application. 
 
 (6.) The English law guards rigorously against the 
 importation into the British dominions of foreign re- 
 prints, not authorized by the holder of the copyright, of 
 any work first published under copyright in any part of 
 the British dominions. 
 
 These several specifications contain what is most im- 
 portant to the purpose of this report, in the English law 
 of copyright in behalf of native authors. 
 
 C. THE UNITED STATES. The provisions of the law 
 of copyright in the United States may be concisely 
 stated as follows :
 
 COPYRIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES. 157 
 
 (1.) The constitution of the United States declares 
 (art. I. sec. 8, 8) that the " Congress shall have power 
 to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by se- 
 curing, for limited times, to authors and inventors the 
 exclusive right to their respective writings and discover- 
 ies." Here the English notion of benefit to mankind is 
 avowedly put forward as a motive for securing the rights 
 of authors. Before the Revolution, an American author 
 in either of the colonies would have had his rights under 
 the common law as regulated and limited by the statutes 
 of Parliament. 
 
 Under the confederation particular states enacted laws 
 of copyright. Connecticut and Virginia by preamble de- 
 clared that " it is perfectly agreeable to the principles of 
 natural justice and equity that every author should be 
 secured in receiving the profits that may arise from the 
 sale of his works ; " and Massachusetts went so far as to 
 say that such security to authors of the fruits of their 
 study and industry " is one of the natural rights of all 
 men, there being no property more peculiarly a man's 
 own than that which is produced by the labor of his 
 mind." 
 
 The law of the United States, as approved July 8, 
 1870, under the revision of the statutes, does not define 
 the nature of the right secured to authors, other than 
 that it makes copyright an assignable property, and holds 
 a manuscript to be inviolable. It secures to the author, 
 his executors, administrators, or assigns, the sole liberty 
 of printing, reprinting, publishing his works. 
 
 (2.) The copyright is valid for the term of twenty- 
 eight years, with the privilege of renewal for the further 
 term of fourteen years. These two terms are together 
 equal to the English minimum of forty-two years. 
 
 II. Laws or conventions concerning foreign authors, 
 as to reprinting or original publication.
 
 158 ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 A. GERMANY. 
 
 (1.) Before the constitution of the German empire, 
 separate states of Germany had entered into conventions 
 with foreign states for the reciprocal protection of the 
 rights of authors. Such a convention was concluded be- 
 tween Prussia and Great Britain May 13, 1846, and be- 
 tween Prussia and France August 2, 1862 ; several of 
 the minor states of Germany shared in the engagements 
 of these treaties. The general principle of these conven- 
 tions is that of exact reciprocity. For example : an Eng- 
 lish author shall be admitted to the same protection in 
 Germany which the laws secure to a German author, it 
 being stipulated that a German author shall in turn re- 
 ceive in England the same protection with a British sub- 
 ject. The single qualification is, that the foreign author 
 shall not enjoy a longer term of copyright than is ac- 
 corded to him in his native country. Thus the copyright 
 of an English book would be respected in Germany for 
 the term of seven years after the death of the author, as 
 fixed by English law, and not for thirty years after his 
 decease, as fixed by German law. 
 
 (2.) Since the constitution of the empire, the guaran- 
 tee of copyright to foreigners has been lifted out of the 
 sphere of literary conventions into that of parliamentary 
 legislation. The conventions of the German states with 
 France were dissolved by the war of 1870, but by the 
 treaty of peace of May 10, 1871 (art. 11), and the sup- 
 plementary convention of December 11, 1871 (art. 18), 
 an international copyright was arranged between the 
 German empire and France upon the basis of the former 
 conventions. 
 
 The statute of June 11, 1870 closes with the general 
 provision ( 61) that the works of a foreign author shall 
 be under the protection of this law of copyright if issued 
 by a publisher who has his business establishment within
 
 COPYRIGHT TO FOREIGNERS. 159 
 
 the bounds of the German empire. This article, while 
 it secures to the foreign author a reasonable protection, 
 makes the profits of the manufacture and publication of 
 his works inure to the benefit of German industry. The 
 protection guaranteed to foreign authors through Ger- 
 man publishers is absolute and universal, without respect 
 to treaties of reciprocity. 
 
 B. GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 (1.) During the present reign the Parliament of Great 
 Britain has ratified conventions with several countries for 
 an international copyright (e. g. with Prussia in 1848, 
 and with France in 1852) ; and by a declaration of prin- 
 ciples in the form of an act, by which the way is opened 
 for similar conventions with all existing states. 
 
 The Act of July 31, 1838 (1 and 2 Viet. c. 59), en- 
 titled " An act for securing to authors, in certain cases, 
 the benefit of international copyright," secured " protec- 
 tion within her majesty's dominions to the authors of 
 books first published in foreign countries, and their as- 
 signs, in cases where protection shall be afforded in such 
 foreign countries to the authors of books first published 
 in her majesty's dominions, and their assigns." The 
 term for such copyright was to be fixed by an order in 
 council, but must not exceed the term for which British 
 authors are secured by law. This act was repealed by 
 the Act of May 10, 1844 (7 and 8 Viet. c. 12), and the 
 authorization of copyright to works first published in for- 
 eign countries was renewed, with a more extended ap- 
 plication to works of art, musical and dramatical composi- 
 tions, etc. By this act it was provided, " That no such 
 order in council shall have any effect unless it shall be 
 therein stated, as the ground for issuing the same, that 
 due protection has been secured by the foreign power so 
 named in such order in council, for the benefit of parties 
 interested in works first published in the dominions of 
 her majesty similar to those compromised in such order."
 
 160 ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 The Act of May 28, 1852 (15 Viet. c. 12), " to enable 
 her majesty to carry into effect a convention with France 
 on the subject of copyright," protects the foreign author 
 for a term of five years against unauthorized translations. 
 
 This legislation of Great Britain fixes the principle 
 that wherever a convention of literary reciprocity exists 
 between Great Britain and a foreign power, the subject 
 of such power, or the author who first publishes his works 
 within the dominion of such power, shall enjoy in Great 
 Britain the privilege of copyright " for a period equal to 
 the term of copyright which authors, inventors, design- 
 ers, engravers, and makers of the like works respectively 
 first published in the United Kingdom are by law enti- 
 tled to." 
 
 (2.) Aside from conventions and legislation, the de- 
 cision of the Court of Appeal in the case of Low v. 
 Routledge appears to settle the point, that an alien friend 
 can avail himself of the British law of copyright, by 
 taking up his residence in any part of the British domin- 
 ions for a brief period covering the actual date of the 
 publication of his work either there or in any other part 
 of the British dominions ; and by complying with certain 
 formalities as to registration, etc. The legislative and 
 judicial action of Great Britain for the past forty years 
 has greatly favored international copyright. 
 
 C. THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 (1.) The law of copyright in the United States pro- 
 tects the author equally if he is a citizen of the United 
 States, or simply " resident therein." Hence any person 
 of foreign birth, without being naturalized, may obtain a 
 copyright for his works in the United States, in the same 
 way and upon the same terms with a native author, pro- 
 vided he is resident in the country. 
 
 (2.) The United States have no provision, either by 
 convention or by law, for securing copyright to an alien 
 who is non-resident.
 
 SUMMARY AND SUGGESTIONS. 161 
 
 (3.) By the courtesy of leading American publishers 
 toward each other, in the best interest of the book-trade, 
 and through their spontaneous sense of what is just and 
 honorable toward authors, any foreign author of repute 
 is enabled to make in advance exclusive arrangements 
 with an American publisher, by which he receives the 
 same royalty that he would receive if he were a citizen 
 of the United States. Some English authors have even 
 felt that this law of courtesy yielded them a larger re- 
 turn than they should have had under an international 
 law of copyright. 
 
 III. Principles and rules of copyright common to the 
 three countries now under review. 
 
 (1.) Germany, Great Britain, and the United States 
 agree in according to the author a right of property in 
 his works, which, for a specified term, is exclusive and in- 
 violable. 
 
 (2.) In each of these countries this right endures for 
 not less than thirty years, this being the term fixed in 
 Germany for the continuance of the copyright in a book 
 after the death of the author, an event which might 
 occur in the very year of publication. In Great Britain 
 the copyright in a book can in no case become void within 
 a period of less than forty-two years ; in the United 
 States it may be extended to that period, by renewal. 
 
 (3.) In Germany and in Great Britain very fair pro- 
 visions exist for securing a copyright to alien authors : in 
 the United States such provisions exist by law for aliens 
 resident in the country ; for others they exist only by 
 the honor and courtesy of American publishers. 
 
 IV. Suggestions for bringing into accord the laws of 
 copyright in Germany, Great Britain, and the United 
 States for the mutual advantage 8f alien authors. 
 
 Since in each of these countries the principle of copy- 
 right is established by legislation and by judicial deci- 
 11
 
 162 ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 sions, it would be superfluous here to argue the right of 
 property in intellectual labor. There is indeed a school 
 of political economists who oppose copyright as a form 
 of monopoly, prejudicial to the interests of society as a 
 whole. An American writer of this school goes so far as 
 to say, " the word property is only^ applicable to material 
 substances ; " though he contradicts this materialistic no- 
 tion of property when he adds, " a person's ideas or 
 thoughts are his intellectual property only so long as 
 they remain unuttered and unknown to others." But 
 the property which he calls " intellectual " does not lie 
 in the intellect, which is the creative power, but in the 
 concrete product of intellectual power and activity em- 
 bodied thought. Hence the right of property in intellect- 
 ual products cannot be extinguished by the self-same act 
 which creates the property ; namely, the clothing such 
 products with an outward form, whether the ideas be 
 embodied in a book or in a machine of iron. 
 
 Dr. Noah Webster has defined this right with his ac- 
 customed clearness. " The labor of inventing, making, 
 or producing anything constitutes one of the highest and 
 most indefeasible titles to property. No right or title to 
 a thing can be so perfect as that which is created by a 
 man's own labor and invention. The exclusive right of 
 a man to his literary productions, and to the use of them 
 for his own profit, is entire and perfect, since the facul- 
 ties employed and labor bestowed are entirely and per- 
 fectly his own." There is no analogy whatever between 
 copyright and a protective tariff. Free trade, while it 
 enables the consumer to choose in the markets of the 
 world the cheapest or the best, at the same time secures 
 to the producer a return for his labor in proportion to 
 the extent of the market. Hence free trade stimulates 
 production by opening to the producer the widest possi- 
 ble area for the sale of his products, and enabling him by
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN BRAIN WORK. 163 
 
 large sales at small profits to realize more than by the 
 limited sales under the factitious prices of a protective 
 tariff. Thus the community is benefited with a corre- 
 sponding benefit to the producer. Moreover, under the 
 freest laws of trade trade-marks are respected and pro- 
 tected by law. But free trade in books would interdict 
 production ; since the abolition of copyright would take 
 away that powerful incentive to production which is 
 given in the prospect of a fair return for the outlay of 
 time and labor. However cheaply the manufacturer of 
 material products may put his goods upon the market, he 
 still reserves to himself a margin of profit ; and then the 
 freer the sales the better he is remunerated. If, through 
 excess of competition or of production, the selling price 
 falls below the cost, he stops manufacturing and waits 
 for better times. But if copyright is denied, the mind, 
 which is the true manufacturer, receives no return. The 
 publisher, or rival publishers, may increase their receipts 
 by wide, cheap sales in an open market. But there re- 
 mains no pecuniary incentive to authorship, and by and 
 by the whole community must suffer through the wrong 
 done to authors. This method of multiplying cheap 
 books will end in few books being made. 
 
 To abolish copyright would be to deny to the highest 
 and most beneficial form of labor, the labor of the brain, 
 that which is conceded as a natural right to the common- 
 est labor of the hand, a share in the profits of its own 
 time and toil. But the principle of copyright, founded 
 in natural justice, is not likely to be set aside by the cry 
 of monopoly. And besides, the sense of justice is in civ- 
 ilized communities too far advanced to permit a man to 
 be deprived of any natural right simply because he is a 
 foreigner. The laws, conventions, and legal decisions 
 cited above show that in neither of the three countries 
 under consideration is there any prejudice against remu-
 
 164 O.V INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 nerating an author of foreign birth ; since in one form or 
 another an alien friend resident in Germany, Great Brit- 
 ain, or the United States, can secure for his works first 
 published within the country the same protection of 
 copyright which is accorded to a native author. Hence 
 a formal declaration of international copyright between 
 these three countries is reduced to a question of expe- 
 diency. The chief hindrances to such an arrangement 
 have arisen in the United States ; and, setting aside the 
 limited school of political economists above refei'red to, 
 the objections raised to an international copyright are in 
 part selfish, in part sentimental. For many years there 
 has existed in the United States an " International Copy- 
 right Association," representing the most eminent names 
 in American literature ; and it is believed that American 
 authors, with the cosmopolitan spirit that should mark 
 the guild of letters, almost without exception desire that 
 the works of foreign authors should enjoy in the United 
 States the same privileges and protection which are ac- 
 corded to their own. Partly by the instrumentality of 
 this association, and partly through other agencies, the 
 subject of international copyright has been five times in- 
 troduced into the Congress of the United States in the 
 last forty years, though without any practical result. 
 For some time past the association has suspended its 
 activity, and its secretary writes in a tone of discourage- 
 ment : " The present phase of the subject in this coun- 
 try is, as it was always, and will be : authors in favor of 
 the law ; publishers (almost universally) opposed to it ; 
 the public indifferent." So far as publishers are con- 
 cerned this statement appears too sweeping. The com- 
 prehensive article by Mr. C. E. Appleton, in the " Fort- 
 nightly Review " for February, 1877, on " American 
 Efforts after International Copyright " gives several in- 
 stances of the activity of leading publishers in the United
 
 OPPOSITION TO INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 165 
 
 States in behalf of such a measure. The leading oppo- 
 nents of international copyright, as Mr. Appleton clearly 
 shows, are : 
 
 (1.) The smaller publishers and the booksellers who 
 are not publishers. These fancy that an international 
 copyright would play into the hands of a few leading 
 firms having special facilities of communication with the 
 foreign market, and would secure to them a monopoly in 
 the works of foreign authors. The case of such objectors 
 is not made out. But if it were, the plea is one of self- 
 interest based upon injustice. Why should the reading 
 public support the bookseller by cheating the author ? 
 As the general public would not, for the sake of cheap- 
 ness, knowingly encourage an importer in defrauding the 
 revenue, neither would they knowingly encourage a pub- 
 lisher in defrauding an author. They require simply to 
 understand the case in order to right it. 
 
 (2.) But here comes in the second class of objectors, 
 who argue that an international copyright would restrict 
 the diffusion of knowledge, and so far prejudice the well- 
 being of mankind. But this objection, if of any force, 
 lies equally against all copyright, and not merely against 
 the extension of copyright to foreign authors. Now, it 
 has been shown above that to abolish copyright would be 
 to restrict production, and consequently to deprive soci- 
 ety of many of the best fruits of mental labor. In every 
 other sort of manufacture the cost of production is cov- 
 ered in the price of the article. The producer, so to 
 speak, is represented in and recompensed by, the thing 
 produced. But in the book, as material, it is the pub- 
 lisher and not the author who is so represented and rec- 
 ompensed. The author's right calls for a separate and 
 distinct recognition. No man who would not steal a 
 book from the shelves of a library or a publisher would 
 knowingly rob the author of the product of his labor.
 
 160 ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 The small percentage allowed to authors the reading 
 public would not grudge in the cost of books. 
 
 Moreover, a publisher whose editions were covered by 
 copyright would have an inducement to extend his sales 
 by various and cheap editions, so that in the end the dif- 
 fusion of knowledge and the facility of acquiring knowl- 
 edge would be greatly increased by the proper nurture 
 of authorship. And in no event can philanthropy to the 
 general be rooted in injustice to the individual. Here, 
 as before, to understand the case is to right it. Where 
 governments would lead in such an enlightened step, pub- 
 lic sentiment would assuredly follow. 
 
 Since Germany, Great Britain, and the United States 
 are so far agreed in the fundamental principles of copy- 
 right, a very simple act by the Parliament of each coun- 
 try, declaring that all rights of property in original works 
 secured by law to its own citizens shall be in like manner 
 secured to the citizens of every other country the laws of 
 which secure reciprocal rights to alien authors, would 
 substantially settle the whole question. Indeed, since 
 Germany and Great Britain are virtually upon this 
 ground, such an act by the Congress of the United 
 States would determine a copyright in common between 
 these Powers. There is reason to believe that a judicious 
 presentation of the case would secure the recommenda- 
 tion of such a measure to Congress by the President in 
 his annual message. The settlement of the question by 
 such a declarative act of the several governments, upon 
 the sole condition of reciprocity, would be fair and final. 
 Yet, in order to conciliate jealous and rival interests, it 
 might be found expedient at the first to concede the 
 point established in German law, and contended for by 
 some American publishers, that as a condition of copy- 
 right to a foreign author his book must be printed in the 
 country granting such copyright. Also, as a means of
 
 A SIMPLE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM. 167 
 
 encouraging competition and thereby promoting cheap- 
 ness, and extent of circulation, it might be open to any 
 one to reprint a foreign work, upon binding himself to 
 pay the author ten per cent, upon the retail price of all 
 copies of such reprint that shall be sold. The duration 
 of copyright to foreigners should be fixed at the same 
 time for all countries. But the details of the law could 
 be soon adjusted, if there were a concerted movement to 
 press the law itself. To give expression to the ripened 
 feeling on this subject, this association might appropri- 
 ately memorialize the several governments to appoint 
 each an equal number of members of a joint commission 
 to determine and report a reciprocal law of international 
 copyright, said law to take effect directly upon being 
 enacted by each of the consulting Powers.
 
 VII. 
 THE RIGHT OF WAR INDEMNITY. 
 
 (Remarks at the Conference of the " Association for the Reform and Codifi- 
 cation of the Law of Nations," held at Frankfort on the Main, August 20th, 
 1878.) 
 
 THE author proposed the following Resolution : 
 Resolved, That a committee be appointed to report at 
 the next annual conference upon the question, By what 
 right, and under what conditions, may an aggressive Power 
 claim a war indemnity in the event of conquest? And he 
 sustained this resolution by the following considerations. 
 
 The cost of modern warfare has given rise to enormous 
 exactions by the conquering Power, under the name of 
 Indemnity. In justification of these exactions it is al- 
 leged, (1) That the right of the conqueror to subsist his 
 army from territory actually conquered, implies the right 
 to reimburse himself for all the expenses of the war, by 
 levying a contribution from the nation which has surren- 
 dered to his arms ; (2) That by crippling the resources 
 of the vanquished nation, and causing it to feel as severely 
 as possible the costs and penalties of war, the conqueror 
 secures a guarantee of peace which is better than the 
 pledges of a treaty. 
 
 These pleas have more foundation in usage than in 
 principle or right. They make no account of the causes 
 or the motives of war ; no discrimination between just 
 and unjust wars, wars of justifiable invasion or of nee-
 
 VIEWS OF IIEFFTER AND BLUNTSCIIU. 169 
 
 essary defense, and wars of sheer conquest and spoliation. 
 But mere usage can no longer be held to justify in war 
 any act or procedure which is tainted with injustice. In 
 this all authorities agree. The proverb that war silences 
 law is reversed, and law now rules war, and aims to sup- 
 press it. Says Heffter : " The property of a nation at war 
 lying within the territory of the enemy, by the old law 
 of nations, was subjected like other booty to the right of 
 appropriation by seizure. But this position the modern 
 law of nations cannot allow." Modern states indeed at- 
 tempt to reach the same end under the names " reprisal " 
 and " confiscation ; " but Heffter does not hesitate to say 
 that "this so-called confiscation in fact shields common 
 robbery." l As to pecuniary exactions by an invading 
 power within the territory of the enemy, Bluntschli says : a 
 " In earlier warfare, the exaction of contributions in 
 money was wont to be justified by the consideration that 
 by paying such a contribution cities and communities 
 were redeemed from the fear of pillage or disturbance. 
 But the laws of civilized warfare no longer recognize a 
 right of loot or of wanton disturbance. Hence there exists 
 no warrant for a ransom from such a right . . . The 
 sense of justice in the Europe of to-day can no longer be 
 reconciled with such remains of an old barbarian mode of 
 warfare." 
 
 Now, is not the modern claim of war indemnity a 
 heritage from the old barbarian right of conquest and 
 spoliation ? Where, at least, in the law of nations, shall 
 we find a justification of the indiscriminate levying of in- 
 demnity by a conqueror, in face of the humane and hon- 
 orable restrictions imposed upon war in recent times ? 
 
 1 Dr. August Wilhelm Ileffter, Das Europ&ische Volkerrecht der 
 Gegenwart, b. ii. 140. 
 
 2 Dr. J. C. Bluntschli, Das moderne Volkerrecht der civilisirten 
 Staaten, b. viii. 654.
 
 170 THE EIGHT OF WAR INDEMNITY. 
 
 The practice alone cannot justify the act. And the prin- 
 ciple of indemnity being allowed, as a penalty for wan- 
 tonly aggressive war and a restraint upon the lust of 
 conquest, what shall hinder the prospect of an indemnifi- 
 cation to be reckoned by milliards, from acting as an in- 
 centive to war ? There is danger that the materialism 
 of the times will devise a substitute for wars of spoliation 
 under cover of indemnity, and that war shall become a 
 commercial speculation on the part of greater states to 
 maintain their armies at the cost of their weaker neigh- 
 bors. This mercenary use of war was pushed to an ex- 
 treme by Napoleon. Conquest opened the door to cupid- 
 ity, and cupidity incited to further conquest. The ex- 
 actions of Napoleon from the several states of Italy, from 
 the Netherlands, from Wiirtemberg, Baden, Swabia, 
 Franconia, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, Austria, Portugal, 
 exactions in the name of the French republic and of 
 his own sovereignty, in the twelve years from 1796 to 
 1808, reached to many milliards of francs. These "in- 
 demnities " read in history like the ransoms extorted by 
 a chief of banditti. " Dearly," says Calvo, " has France 
 expiated these abusive exactions " (first by the indemnity 
 of seven hundred million francs in 1815, and next by five 
 milliards in 1871). " One can understand how up to a 
 certain point a victorious power may claim to indemnify 
 itself from a vanquished foe for the expenses which the 
 war has brought, at least when that Power did not pro- 
 voke the war. But it is quite another thing to put forth 
 demands out of all proportion to any reasonable calcula- 
 tion : demands fitted rather to ruin the country upon 
 which they are imposed, and to prolong the evils of war 
 after the actual cessation of hostilities. Is there not here 
 a place for a moderating and conciliatory intervention ? 
 Why should not such a liquidation of accounts be sub-
 
 GERMAN AND RUSSIAN CLAIMS. 171 
 
 mitted to a disinterested, equitable, impartial arbitra- 
 tion ? " i 
 
 The conditions of indemnity are not determined by 
 clear, precise, equitable rules of international law. The 
 committee which I propose may be able to suggest some 
 feasible solution of a question, which, in its newer aspects, 
 is either ignored by writers on the law of nations, or 
 is treated with too much of political partisanship. My 
 resolution is limited to a single point the right of an 
 aggressive Power to indemnity in the event of conquest. 
 This point will be made clear by a recent example. In 
 1870, France declared war against Prussia, and the war 
 involved the whole of Germany. Germany being victo- 
 rious, exacted from France an enormous indemnity. But 
 though the form and amount of the indemnity caused 
 much discussion, I am not aware that a single French 
 publicist protested against the claim of indemnity, it be- 
 ing conceded that the French emperor had declared the 
 war. 
 
 In 1877, Russia made war on Turkey. Whatever the 
 offenses of Turkey, she had given no special provocation 
 to Russia as an individual power. Yet Russia having 
 conquered Turkey was allowed by the Congress of Berlin 
 to recompense herself with a large accession of territory 
 in Asia, including a coveted port which Russia had not 
 captured, and whose inhabitants protested against her 
 sovereignty. Russia has demanded also an enormous in- 
 demnity in money, sufficient to cripple the resources of 
 Turkey for fifty years to come. This demand was shoved 
 aside by the congress, but may hereafter be made a pre- 
 text for war. 
 
 One sees at a glance an important difference between 
 
 1 M. Charles Calvo. Le Droit Internationale. T. ii. liv. 6, 910. 
 Calvo gives important statistics of indemnity as tempting the greed 
 of conquerors.
 
 172 THE RIGHT OF WAR INDEMNITY. 
 
 the cases of Germany and Russia. If an aggressive 
 Power is allowed to indemnify itself equally with a 
 Power which had repelled and conquered its invader, 
 then indemnity, instead of being a restraint upon war, 
 may be an incentive to war. Such an anomaly cannot 
 fairly represent the law of nations. If it does, then the 
 law calls loudly for reform. 
 
 As a further argument for such a committee as I pro- 
 pose, I would suggest the following theses : 
 
 1. Wars of mere conquest, ambition, or revenge, are no 
 longer sanctioned by the law of nations. 
 
 2. Aggressive war can be justified only in the follow- 
 ing cases : 
 
 (a.) To recover territory seized and appropriated by 
 an enemy. 
 
 (6.) To suppress the turbulence of a neighbor who is 
 constantly disturbing the peace of the frontier, and whom 
 no treaty can bind. 
 
 (<?.) To deliver an oppressed people or race invoking 
 succor, and having a just claim for such intervention. 
 
 3. It shall not be permitted to convert a justifiable 
 war of invasion or intervention into such a war of con- 
 quest as would be forbidden ab initio by the law of na- 
 tions, nor, under cover of indemnity, to reap the fruits of 
 unlawful spoliation. 
 
 4. To guard against cruel and crushing exactions, and 
 the cupidity of conquest, whenever the indemnity assessed 
 by the conqueror is deemed excessive by the conquered 
 party, said indemnity should be submitted to the arbitra- 
 tion of three neutral and impartial powers, whose award 
 shall be final. 
 
 Indemnity as now exacted is extortion by force. It 
 is a claim derived from conquest. But, as Halleck has 
 pointed out, " conquest expresses, not a rigid, but a fact, 
 from which rights are derived. 'The rights of conquest
 
 ARBITRATION BACKED BY POWER. 173 
 
 are derived from force alone. They begin with posses- 
 sion, and end with the loss of possession." l Rights so 
 capricious in their origin are especially liable to abuse in 
 their application. Now, it is an important office of the 
 law of nations to mitigate the evils of war, to restrain its 
 excesses, and to reduce the occasions for recourse to arms. 
 If the levying of indemnity by an aggressive power has 
 in it any element of injustice or unreason, the exposure 
 of this must lead to its abolition. The sentiment of jus- 
 tice among civilized nations is quick to rally around any 
 authority which is competent to assert the right ; and 
 events are sometimes quick to ratify a principle of right 
 or a measure of reform. Of this the Congress of Berlin 
 is a notable example. It has been a standing objection 
 to schemes of arbitration that they propose an impracti- 
 cable tribunal with no power to enforce its decisions. In 
 my paper " Concerning Treaties," submitted to this asso- 
 ciation at Antwerp, I showed that to obviate this objec- 
 tion, " treaties which pledge their signataries to media- 
 tion or to concert of moral action should be held inviola- 
 ble ; and the attempt to set aside such a treaty by any 
 other than the rational and moral methods therein pre- 
 scribed should be followed by a threat of war on the 
 part of the other signataries against the offender." Thus 
 arbitration would be backed by power. 
 
 Now the Paris treaty of 1856 provides for mediation 
 and advises arbitration ; and the London Convention of 
 1871 declared that " it is an essential principle of the law 
 of nations that no power can release itself from the en- 
 gagements of a treaty, nor modify any of its stipulations, 
 save with the assent of the contracting parties, by means 
 of an amicable understanding." The treaty of San Stef- 
 ano would have annulled the treaty of Paris without the 
 assent of the contracting parties ; but the British govern- 
 1 Halleck's International Law, chap, xxxiii. 23.
 
 174 TUE RIGHT OF WAR INDEMNITY. 
 
 ment refused to take part in a congress upon the Eastern 
 Question except upon the basis of the treaty of 1856, and 
 showed a determination to maintain the faith of treaties 
 by force of arms. This tested my doctrine of " arbitra- 
 tion backed by power." To that act we owe it that the 
 Congress of Berlin was convened " conformably to the 
 stipulations of the treaty of Paris ; " and that treaty, and 
 the treaty of London of March 13, 1871, " are maintained 
 in all such of their provisions as are not abrogated or 
 modified by the treaty of Berlin." Thus the great Pow- 
 ers of Europe are solemnly pledged to the continuity of 
 the law of nations, and to the duty of an amicable con- 
 sultation under any and every treaty which is their joint 
 work, and requires their joint sanction to modify its stip- 
 ulations. The Congress of Berlin began with this great 
 triumph of international law, and ended with this great 
 hope for future peace by arbitration. In like manner we 
 may look to see the question of indemnity, and other 
 vexed questions arising out of war, and indeed the ques- 
 tion of war itself, determined before a high tribunal of 
 the Powers, whose sword is sheathed at its side.
 
 VIII. 
 SHALL ENGLAND SIDE WITH RUSSIA. 
 
 (A letter to the "Committee of the Peace Society," London, December 22, 1876.) 
 
 HONORED AND DEAR FKIENDS, As one of the 
 "Friends" to whom your address of November 24, 1876, 
 was kindly sent, I desire to express my cordial approval 
 of that able and timely paper, and to pledge my personal 
 devotion to its principles and aims. Every sentiment of 
 the address, and even every word of its clear and forcible 
 utterances, commends itself to my judgment and to my 
 moral feelings. Were I an Englishman, I should lose no 
 opportunity for echoing and enforcing the exhortation 
 that " on no pretext ought this Christian nation again to 
 enter into partnership for purposes of war with Moham- 
 medan fanaticism ; " that " never again should English 
 blood and treasure be poured forth to uphold the most 
 execrable system of government under the sun," " to 
 perpetuate and consolidate the Turkish dominion in Eu- 
 rope, and to rivet the yoke of Mohammedan oppression 
 on the necks of the groaning millions of the Christian 
 subjects of the Porte." 
 
 But were I an Englishman I should also go farther, 
 and say what England most needs to utter, and Europe 
 needs to hear. I should say, " As an Englishman I hate 
 oppression, and above all, tyranny over conscience and 
 thought. I hate this because it is oppression, and there- ' 
 fore hate it under every name and form Mohammedan 
 or Christian, Turk, Servian, or Russian. I denounce
 
 176 SHALL ENGLAND SIDE WITH RUSSIA. 
 
 Turkey for her breach of faith, her intolerance and 
 cruelty ; and for the same reasons I denounce Russia 
 also ; and I refuse to be the ally of either in a war, 
 which, whoever may triumph, can end only in prolonging 
 the rule of bigotry and absolutism. Turkey and Russia 
 were both signatories to the treaty of Paris of 1856 ; 
 they both are treating its provisions with contempt and 
 defiance ; and therefore, in the interest of peace, honor, 
 and humanity, England should exercise her prerogative 
 for the rebuke and restraint of both." The statesman 
 who should have the breadth and courage to take this 
 position would draw around him the fusing elements of 
 popular feeling, would shape these into one solid national 
 sentiment, and lead a new and nobler departure for the 
 cause of peace and humanity. It is because I recognize 
 in your honored secretary the qualities for such a leader- 
 ship, and in your own body the moral force to win such 
 a position and hold it, that I venture to express my sur- 
 prise and regret at finding in your address rebuke and 
 condemnation for but one of the actual or intending bel- 
 ligerents in the East, and my hope that the Peace Society 
 will yet seize this great opportunity for rising above the 
 passing questions of English policy, and proclaiming the 
 principles that England should assert and maintain for 
 the peace and order of Europe. 
 
 If the position of England on the Eastern Question 
 were merely a matter of English policy, of course I, as a 
 stranger, would not presume to meddle with it. But I 
 have no apology to offer for speaking on behalf of relig- 
 ious liberty at a crisis when this is outraged on one side 
 and threatened on the other. I should be false to my 
 own English ancestry if I did not put the rights of con- 
 science above all other rights of the individual, and did 
 not contend for these rights in others as if they were my 
 own. Those rights so persistently outraged in Turkey
 
 TURKISH INTOLERANCE. Ill 
 
 by Mohammedan fanaticism are now threatened with 
 the bigotry of the Greek Church and the intolerance of 
 the Russian ecclesiastical code, if Russia shall be allowed 
 to occupy Turkish territory or to direct the administra- 
 tion of Turkish provinces. If, for the cause of religious 
 liberty and the interests of peace and humanity, Eng- 
 land, at all hazards, must free herself of complicity with 
 the perfidy and intolerance of the Turkish government, 
 how can she ally herself with the military antagonist of 
 Turkey, whose perfidy in respect of the treaty of Paris is 
 no less patent, and whose intolerance is no less stringent 
 and hardly less cruel ? Or how can England give way 
 to Russian ascendency in Turkey without first demand- 
 ing of Russia the same guarantees for religious liberty 
 which Russia professes to demand of the government of 
 the Porte ? 
 
 The indignation and abhorrence so justly roused 
 against Turkey in England are due to two causes : the 
 perfidy of Turkey toward the Powers which had ad- 
 mitted her to the concert of Europe, and her intolerance 
 and inhumanity toward her Christian subjects. In view 
 of the Hatti' Huma'ioun of February, 1856, in which the 
 Sublime Porte pledged to its Christian subjects certain 
 privileges and immunities, religious and political, the 
 congress of Paris, in March, 1856, admitted Turkey to 
 an equal status among the contracting Powers; at the 
 same time declaring [art. IX.] : " It is clearly understood 
 that it [the Hatti' Humaioun] cannot, in any case, give 
 to the said Powers the right to interfere, either collec- 
 tively or separately, in the relations of his majesty the 
 Sultan with his subjects, nor in the internal administra- 
 tion of his empire." One cannot but marvel now at the 
 easy confidence of the Powers in binding themselves by 
 such a clause. But Turkey cannot be allowed to screen 
 herself behind it, for she has deliberately and shamefully 
 12
 
 178 SHALL ENGLAND SIDE WITH RUSSIA. 
 
 violated her own pledges upon which this declaration 
 was based. The same may be said of the engagement of 
 the Powers [art. VII.], " to respect the independence 
 and the territorial integrity of the Ottoman empire." 
 By her own perfidy Turkey has forfeited all claim to the 
 joint protection pledged in that article. But does the vi- 
 olation of faith by Turkey warrant each and every of the 
 signing Powers in repudiating for itself the treaty of 
 Paris as null and void ? By no means. By article VII. 
 the Powers " guarantee in common the strict observance 
 of that engagement; and will, in consequence, consider any 
 act tending to its violation as a question of general inter- 
 est." Article VIII. provides : " If there should arise be- 
 tween the Sublime Porte and one or more of the other 
 signing Powers any misunderstanding which might endan- 
 ger the maintenance of their relations, the Sublime Porte 
 and each of such Powers, before having recourse to the use 
 of force, shall afford the other contracting parties the op- 
 portunity of preventing such an extremity by means of 
 their mediation." And in the special treaty of 15th 
 April, 1856, between Great Britain, Austria, and France, 
 " the high contracting parties guarantee jointly and sev- 
 erally the independence and the integrity of the Ottoman 
 empire recorded in the treaty concluded at Paris on the 
 30th March, 1856. Any infraction of the stipulations of 
 the said treaty will be considered by the Powers signing 
 the present treaty as a casus belli" Here every contin- 
 gency is anticipated by provisions for joint action, for 
 consultation in common, or for mediation. Hence the 
 faithlessness of Turkey so far from absolving the other 
 Powers severally from the obligations of the treaty of 
 Paris, or warranting any one of those Powers to threaten 
 Turkey with force, in the first instance really sum- 
 mons those Powers to meet together under that treaty, 
 and to deal with Turkey for her breach of faith. There
 
 RUSSIAN OFFENSES. 179 
 
 were seven signntaries to the treaty of Paris. If the 
 perfidy of one could absolve the remaining six not only 
 from obligations to the delinquent Power, but from en- 
 gagements with each other solemnly entered into as a 
 provision against any such delinquent, then why go 
 through the farce of making a treaty ? What hope is 
 there for the peace of Europe if a treaty having an ex- 
 press provision for mediation can be torn into shreds and 
 thrown away at the will of either of the signataries, and 
 then disowned by the rest ? 
 
 But Russia has violated the treaty of Paris no less fla- 
 grantly than has Turkey. Article XXVIII. of that 
 treaty placed the rights and immunities of Servia " un- 
 der the collective guarantee of the contracting Powers ; " 
 and art. XXIX. declares that " no armed intervention 
 can take place in Servia without previous agreement be- 
 tween the high contracting Powers." No doubt the 
 grievances of Servia were great. In other circumstances 
 these might have justified her in an act of revolution, 
 which, however, I suppose the Peace Society would 
 hardly sanction. But though I believe in the right of 
 armed resistance to oppression, I cannot see that Servia 
 was called to that last and desperate resort. Servia, as a 
 recognized principality, had her independent and national 
 administration, as well as full liberty of worship, of leg- 
 islation, of commerce, and of navigation. She was un- 
 der the care of friendly and powerful guardians, to whom 
 she could appeal to compel Turkey to fulfill the stipula- 
 tions of the treaty of Paris. But Servia herself dis- 
 carded that treaty ; and without being attacked by Tur- 
 key plunged into a war that has desolated her territory, 
 brought misery to tens of thousands, and threatened the 
 peace of Europe. Has then the Peace Society no word 
 of censure for Servia as well as for Turkey ? 
 
 But was this the act of Servia alone ? It is notorious
 
 180 SHALL ENGLAND SIDE WITH RUSSIA. 
 
 that Russia poured supplies of men and material into 
 Servia, organized her armies, and inspired her counsels ; 
 and though all this was unofficial, Prince Bismarck has 
 not hesitated to speak openly of " the sort of war that 
 Russia carried on in Servia." Russia could have re- 
 strained Servia ; could have repressed hostilities, and have 
 convened, upon equal terms, all her co-signataries to the 
 treaty of Paris. But she chose to regard that treaty as 
 practically annulled. 
 
 The course of Russia in Servia is the natural sequence 
 of her own breach of faith in 1870. By art. XIII. of 
 the treaty of Paris it was agreed that " the Black Sea 
 being neutralized, his majesty the Emperor of all the 
 Russias and his imperial majesty the Sultan engage not 
 to establish or to maintain upon that coast any military- 
 maritime arsenal." In 1870, taking advantage of the 
 war between Germany and France and the general pre- 
 occupations of Europe, Prince Gortschakoff sent out the 
 following note, under date of October 31st : " His impe- 
 rial majesty cannot any longer hold himself bound by 
 the stipulations of the treaty of 30th March, 1856 as far 
 as they restrict his sovereign rights in the Black Sea." 
 That was indeed an imperial way of disposing of a 
 treaty ! Has Turkey committed any breach of faith 
 more defiant ? The thing being done, the treaty of Lon- 
 don of 13th March, 1871 was made to conform to it ; but 
 for that act of Russia in 1870 there is but one word, and 
 that word is perfidy. And now shall England, incensed 
 at the perfidy of Turkey, condone the perfidy of Russia, 
 and commit the dearest interests of religious liberty and 
 the destiny of eastern Europe to a Power that no treaty 
 nor convention can bind ? I love to think of England as 
 caring for honor. There never can be peace in Europe 
 until honor is held sacred between the nations. Your 
 address closes with an eloquent appeal " that the Powers
 
 INTOLERANCE OF TURKEY. 181 
 
 of the civilized world should devise, and by mutual agree- 
 ment establish, some settled form of international juris- 
 diction." But the basis of such agreement must be honor. 
 Now the treaty of Paris did contain a mutual agree- 
 ment for " mediation." Is there then no rebuke for a 
 Power that has openly trampled on that agreement, and 
 violated the express provisions of the treaty where these 
 seemed against its own " sovereign rights ? " Is perfidy 
 a crime only in a Mussulman ? Never was it so impor- 
 tant that England should speak out boldly for honor. 
 Let the friends of peace insist now upon this, and they 
 will soon have the peoples of Christendom on their side. 
 
 The other ground of indignation at Turkey is her fa- 
 natical intolerance, which has driven her to inhuman ex- 
 cesses against her subjects not of the Moslem faith. This 
 century has witnessed nothing more noble than the up- 
 rising of the English people in behalf of the oppressed 
 Christians of the East. These must be rescued from the 
 intolerance of their Turkish masters. But intolerance 
 is the thing to be guarded against, and in delivering the 
 lamb from the vulture we must not put it into the talons 
 of the. eagle, though this be the nobler bird. How then 
 does Russia stand on this same count of intolerance and 
 inhumanity ? I shall not go back to her intervention to 
 crush the liberties of Hungary, to her subjugation of Po- 
 land, to her proscription of Mohammedan tribes brought 
 under by conquest. It is alleged that the spirit of the 
 Russian government is more mild and liberal than for- 
 merly, and we have to do with the Russia of to-day. I 
 go back then but six years. In 1870 the Swiss Evangel- 
 ical Alliance issued a " protest and appeal against the 
 fanatical outrages of Russian ecclesiastics in the East Sea 
 Provinces, in Poland, and in Lithuania, upon Protes- 
 tants, Catholics, and Israelites." On June 23d of the 
 same year a deputation led by Monod, De Pressense", and
 
 182 SHALL ENGLAND SIDE WITH RUSSIA. 
 
 others had audience of the emperor of Russia at Stutt- 
 gart, and laid before his majesty the grievances of his 
 Lutheran, Catholic, and Jewish subjects. His majesty 
 deplored the facts which the deputation stated, promised 
 to do what he could personally to relieve the sufferers, 
 but added that he could not interfere with the laws of 
 the empire or of the church. The following are speci- 
 mens of these laws, not from the dark ages, but from the 
 Russian penal code of May, 1846. 
 
 " Whoever shall abandon the orthodox confession for 
 another Christian confession shall be handed over to the 
 ecclesiastical authority to be exhorted and enlightened, 
 and that he may be dealt with after the rules of the 
 church." What sort of dealing this would be may be 
 inferred from the next article. " Whoever shall solicit 
 another to secede from the orthodox to another Chris- 
 tian confession, shall be sentenced to loss of civil rights, 
 banishment to Tobolsk or Tomsk, or to corporal punish- 
 ment and penal servitude for one or two years." 
 
 The poor Lutherans of Liefland were cajoled, by false 
 promises, into joining the Greek Church. Finding 
 themselves deceived, they attempted to return to their 
 old faith, but these penalties were visited upon them. 
 Wives who had not gone over with their husbands to 
 the Greek Church were threatened with divorce ; chil- 
 dren were compelled with violence to be baptized and 
 confirmed. In 1871 the British Evangelical Alliance 
 issued a powerful appeal " on behalf of the Lutherans 
 of the Baltic provinces of Russia, and against their per- 
 secution by the Orthodox Greek Church of that empire." 
 I wish that appeal might go with your address into the 
 hands of every Englishman. On the 14th July, 1871, a 
 strong deputation of English, Americans, French, Swedes, 
 Swiss, Belgians, Germans (among the latter Professor 
 Tischendorf who had procured for the emperor the Sina-
 
 INTOLERANCE OF RUSSIA. 183 
 
 itic Codex), sought an audience of the emperor of Rus- 
 sia, to renew the plea of the Evangelical Alliance for his 
 persecuted subjects. Prince GortscliakofT threw dust in 
 the eyes of this deputation, and the emperor declined to 
 receive it because he could not yield to outward pressure 
 in the internal administration of his empire, precisely 
 the reason that the Sultan gives for declining the inter- 
 vention of foreign powers. 
 
 Affairs in Liefland were smoothed over, but the Dra- 
 conian laws remain, and are by no means a dead letter. 
 In April, 1872, a respectful application was made to the 
 government at St. Petersburg for permission to circulate 
 in Russian Armenia the Armenian version of the Bi- 
 ble, published at Constantinople, and freely circulated 
 in Turkey. Copies sent to Russia had been confiscated 
 at the custom-houses on the border ; and after twenty 
 months' delay, the request that Russian Armenians, like 
 the Turkish Armenians, should be allowed the Bible in 
 their own tongue, was refused by the Russian govern- 
 ment. Baffled in the request for Bibles, an Armenian 
 teacher at Tiflis requested a visit from the missionaries 
 who were laboring among his people at Constantinople. 
 Two American missionaries going into Russian Armenia 
 upon this sacred errand were expelled by the authorities. 
 This was in February, 1873. In 1875 an agent of the 
 Bible Society at Erivan, Russia, was put under arrest 
 and banished from the country. 
 
 When Russia speaks of the " oppressed Christians " in 
 Turkey, she means Christians of the Greek Church and 
 of the Slavic race. What Russia thinks of the liberty of 
 Roman Catholics, let Poland testify ; what sort of toler- 
 ation she would grant to Protestant missionaries and 
 converts, let Armenia witness. But religious freedom 
 knows no distinction of creed or race. And the question 
 for Europe, and especially for England, to consider is
 
 184 SHALL ENGLAND SIDE WITH RUSSIA. 
 
 whether the Greek Church in Turkey, notoriously am- 
 bitious to rule at Constantinople, shall be armed with 
 Russian battalions or a Russian police to enforce her big- 
 otry against Jews, Moslems, Armenians, Catholics, and 
 Protestants. Is it said the Greek Church can be re- 
 formed ? Then let her reform. But do not gird her 
 with the sword of Russia during the process of reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 It is not easy to penetrate the veil of Russian atroci- 
 ties ; but here are specimens of what Russia has done 
 upon the soil of Turkey, warnings of what she would do 
 if she should be put in occupation of Turkish territory, 
 or into the administration of Turkish provinces. In 
 April, 1870, one Medet, a native of Alexandropol, Russia, 
 went to Kars, in Turkish Armenia, to reside. He there 
 attended an evangelical service, with which the Turkish 
 authorities did not interfere. But as a Russian subject, 
 Medet was brought before the Russian consul, flogged, 
 imprisoned, and released only upon giving his oath that 
 he would never again go to the service. In this very 
 year, 1876, another Russian of Alexandropol, who had 
 gone to Erzeroom, in Turkish Armenia, to take up his 
 abode, was forced by the Russian consul to return to 
 Russia because he had identified himself with the Prot- 
 estant movement tolerated in Turkey! American mis- 
 sionaries long resident in Turkey have openly testified 
 that " they have been mainly indebted to Russian influ- 
 ences for the persecutions that have attended their labors 
 for the last forty years." One of these missionaries 
 writes me, " What are we to apprehend in the event of 
 Russian rule in Turkey but just that which now exists 
 over the Russian border ? The point to be emphasized 
 is the vital importance of guarantees for religious free- 
 dom, in the English and American sense of the word, 
 whatever arrangements may be made, and whoever may
 
 TUE DUTY OF ENGLAND. 185 
 
 rule in any part of Turkey." I feel confident that every 
 friend of peace and of religious liberty in England would 
 respond to this appeal. 
 
 The danger is that Russia and Turkey will yet go to 
 war. In that case Russia will find the conquest of Tur- 
 key no easy task; and Germany, which has not been 
 forward in expressions of sympathy or measures of relief 
 for the unhappy Bulgarians, will step in where England 
 ought to stand as the arbiter of peace and of provinces. 
 
 It is agreed on all sides that England cannot now fight 
 for Turkey. But can she side with Russia ? What then 
 becomes of that faith between nations upon which must 
 rest our hope of arbitration in lieu of war ? Shall the 
 partner who in 1870 broke faith with the co-signataries of 
 united Europe, and who, though pledged to mediation, 
 has connived at war, now have the confidence and sanc- 
 tion of English honor ? Shall England side with Russia ? 
 Where then is the hope of religious liberty, if Muscovite 
 intolerance can have the confidence and support of Eng- 
 lish freedom ? I cannot doubt that England will let the 
 world know that she stands firm and true for the faith 
 of treaties, for freedom of conscience, and the rights of 
 man.
 
 IX. 
 
 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 (From the British Quarterly, January, 1879.) 
 
 THE strife over science and religion would be greatly 
 restricted by a rigorous and binding definition of the 
 terms in dispute. Scientific theory and theological dogma 
 would go on contending ; but that which is true in 
 science and that which is true in religion can never come 
 in collision, and the demarcation of each would make 
 their harmony apparent almost without discussion. To 
 determine specific points in controversy between modern 
 naturism and the Christian faith will be comparatively 
 easy when the whole field of controversy shall have been 
 circumscribed by- logical definitions. The definition of 
 science and the definition of religion must form the exact 
 limits by which every question .between them must be 
 measured, and every line of argument must be tested and 
 adjusted. But, first of all, a word should be given to the 
 characteristics and functions of definition. 
 
 A definition should be framed with reference to the 
 thing defined, and not to any use to which either the 
 term or the definition may be applied in some wider 
 statement or system of thought. It should include every- 
 thing that is essential, and exclude everything that is not 
 essential, to a conception of the thing defined. In other 
 words, the thing should be defined as it is an und far 
 sick " in itself, by itself, for its own sake." Arch- 
 bishop Thomson has concisely stated the rules of defini-
 
 A TRUE DEFINITION. 187 
 
 tion. " A definition must recount the essential attributes 
 of the thing defined ; the definition must not contain the 
 name of the thing defined ; a definition must be precisely 
 adequate to the species defined ; a definition must not be 
 expressed in obscure or figurative or ambiguous language ; 
 a definition must not be negative where it can be affirm- 
 ative." 1 To these rules, so obvious in themselves, may 
 be added the following : (1.) A definition must not be 
 framed to fit a theory. Things must be defined as they 
 are, and generalization, or theory, must proceed from 
 things as logically defined. (2.) A definition must not 
 beg the question with regard to any dispute concerning 
 the thing defined. For example, a school of physicists, 
 nowadays, atte.mpt to restrict the term science to knowl- 
 edge founded upon observation and experience, to the 
 empirical in contrast with the intuitional and the specula- 
 tive. Hence they refuse to philosophy or metaphysics a 
 place among the sciences. To meet this narrow position, 
 Avenarius, for instance, would limit the term philosophy 
 by the empirical character of its objects, the. sole aim of 
 philosophy being to combine in one notion all the special 
 experimental sciences. 2 Of course, if science is knowl- 
 edge gained by experience, and if philosophy has to do 
 only with facts of experience, then philosophy is a science 
 by the very terms of the definition. But as toward the 
 objection raised by some physicists against philosophy, 
 such a definition begs the question, and hence contributes 
 nothing to the reconciliation of science with philosophy. 
 If philosophy is truly entitled to be called a science, then 
 the supposed definition of science is too arbitrarily exclu- 
 sive, and the definition of philosophy framed to meet it 
 is unphilosophically limited. So great a master of phi- 
 
 1 An Outline of the Laws of Thought, 57. 
 
 8 Vierteljahrsschrift fur icissenschaflliche Philosophic. R. Avena- 
 rius. Erstes Heft, pp. 1-14.
 
 188 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 losophy and of English style as Coleridge speaks of 
 " Shakespeare's deep and accurate science in mental phi- 
 losophy." Some German writers have attempted to draw 
 the distinction between Philosophic and Wissenschaft so 
 sharply as to exclude philosophy from the category of the 
 sciences ; but in the constitution of a German university 
 the philosophical faculty includes the physical or experi- 
 mental sciences along with philology, history, and meta- 
 physics. If physicists object to such a classification, their 
 objection is not to be overruled by a petitio prineipii in 
 the definition of philosophy. Any such device vitiates a 
 definition as the basis of an argument. (3.) A defini- 
 tion should not employ terms in a strained or unusual 
 meaning, nor should it coin new terms, where words in 
 common use would suffice for clearness and precision. If 
 an essayist defines the principal terms of his thesis by 
 some strange or forced meaning, he will be sure to mis- 
 lead his readers, who will lose sight of his distinctions, 
 and carry along in their reading the customary meaning 
 of his words ; and he will also be in danger of misleading 
 himself, by unconsciously using his forced terms in their 
 old meaning, to the prejudice or perversion of his logic. 
 If, again, he coins new terms for old and familiar things, 
 for the sake of maintaining some novel proposition con- 
 cerning them, he can at most make out but a technical 
 proof of this abnormal proposition as with an algebraic 
 formula, in which all the terms should represent arbitrary 
 and unknown quantities. He cannot hope to establish 
 in the minds of his readers the conviction of an absolute 
 and universal truth. 
 
 One who writes a philosophical or a scientific treatise 
 should frame his definitions upon the principles now indi- 
 cated, and must be held strictly to the meaning he has 
 himself assigned to the leading terms which he employs 
 in his discussion. To write without careful definitions
 
 THE WAR OF WORDS. 189 
 
 upon a subject in the treatment of which precision of 
 language is of the very essence of truth is simply to play 
 upon words, or rather upon the ignorance or credulity of 
 the reader. An essay published in the interest of peace 
 maintained that honor is a false, cruel, pagan principle of 
 action ; that a Christian people should expunge honor 
 from their code, and act only in view of what is just, 
 true, and right. Now, had the essayist looked into his 
 dictionary, he would have found that, according to the 
 usage of the best writers, honor is defined to be " a nice 
 sense of what is right, just, and true, with a course of 
 life corresponding thereto ; " in short, honor is the sum 
 and essence of all the virtues by which this writer would 
 supplant it. Shenstone would have taught him that 
 " true honor is to honesty what the court of chancery is 
 to common law ; " Shakespeare, that in woman, honor is 
 the equivalent of chastity ; and Wordsworth, 
 " Say, what is honor ? 'T is the finest sense 
 Of justice which the human mind can frame." 
 
 There is indeed a conventional notion of honor which 
 fashion has imposed, as, for instance, in the so-called 
 " code of honor" which regulates the. duel. Such honor 
 has shown itself false, cruel, unchristian, and this code is 
 fast being banished from civilized society. But to em- 
 ploy this perversion of honor for a tirade against honor 
 as a principle of conduct is a fault in philosophy that 
 necessitates a failure in rhetoric. Both would have been 
 avoided by a careful definition of the thing to be dis- 
 cussed under the term honor. 
 
 How much of all controversy in philosophy and theol- 
 ogy has been a mere war of words ! How many volumes 
 of such controversy might have been spared, had the dis- 
 putants respected logic and the dictionary ! Precision is 
 of the first importance where the most vital interests of 
 man are in dispute his knowledge and his faith. Hence
 
 190 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 a clear definition of the terms science and religion a 
 definition framed strictly according to the rules already 
 laid down should be the starting-point of every com- 
 parison between them ; and however much the argument 
 may be extended, the definition should hold it firmly as in 
 the jaws of a vise. This care in defining the terms of the 
 discussion is the more necessary because, in the contro- 
 versy that has of late arisen between science and religion, 
 these terms have been used with much vagueness, and 
 some physicists have rushed into this controversy without 
 even attempting to define the things about which they 
 were contending. Dr. John W. Draper has written what 
 he calls a " History of the Conflict between Religion and 
 Science ; " l but in a volume of nearly four hundred pages 
 there is no attempt at a precise statement of the things 
 in conflict, nor of the grounds of the controversy. His 
 conception of religion seems to be " a quiescent, immo- 
 bile faith " (p. 364), as represented by the Roman Cath- 
 olic Church ; his conception of science that " it relies on 
 a practical interrogation of nature" (p. 33). On one 
 page he tells us that " science is in its nature progres- 
 sive ; but faith is in its nature unchangeable, stationary " 
 (preface, p. vii.) ; on another, that " it is not given to 
 religions to endure forever. They necessarily undergo 
 transformation with the intellectual development of man " 
 (p. 328). Faith, which on one page of Draper's history 
 stands " quiescent and immobile," on another is subject 
 to the same law of transformation and development with 
 the intellect of man. The triumphs of science, he tells 
 us, "are solid and enduring " (p. 365) ; but could any- 
 thing be more fluctuating than have been the sciences of 
 astronomy, geology, physiology, chemistry, heat, light, 
 magnetism, though every new change of doctrine has 
 
 1 One of the volumes of the International Scientific Series.
 
 VIEWS OF DRAPER AND HAECKEL. 191 
 
 been put forth under the warrant of " a practical interro- 
 gation of nature " ? A work written in such a vague 
 slipshod style as this of Draper has no value for the phil-- 
 osophical inquirer, and can only mystify the common 
 reader. The author is guilty of that which he charges 
 upon the teachers of religion, assuming to speak with 
 the authority of truth, he imposes upon the u blind faith " 
 of the ignorant. Such a book shuns the test of definition, 
 since, with any clear conception of either science or re- 
 ligion, it could never have been written. 
 
 Professor Ernst Haeckel has published what he styles 
 the " History of Creation," 1 with the avowed object of 
 setting aside the religious conception of a personal Crea- 
 tor by the monistic conception of natural laws or forces 
 as the cause of all things. Yet instead of defining with 
 scientific precision such pregnant terms as " nature " and 
 " religion," he seeks to put us off with puerile declama- 
 tion. " Science, as an objective result of sensuous expe- 
 rience and of the striving of human reason after knowl- 
 edge, has nothing to do with the subjective ideas of faith, 
 which are preached by a single man as the direct inspira- 
 tions or revelations of the Creator, and then believed in 
 by the dependent multitude " (chap. xxiv.). As if there 
 were no objective realities to faith, no knowledge as its 
 ground-work, no religion apart from a professed revela- 
 tion, no faith in any human soul except as this is im- 
 posed by some pretentious teacher, no religious thought 
 or feeling in any great mind from Plato and Socrates to 
 Leibnitz and Stuart Mill ! Haeckel says again, with 
 emphasis, " Where faith commences, science ends. Both 
 these arts of the human mind must be strictly kept apart 
 from each other. Faith has its origin in the poetic im- 
 agination ; knowledge, on the other hand, originates in 
 the reasoning intelligence of man " (chap. i.). As if it 
 
 1 Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte. Von Ernst Haeckel. Jena.
 
 192 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 were an " art of the poetic imagination " to accept the 
 report of a scientific explorer or investigator concerning 
 his discoveries upon simple faith in his testimony, with 
 no " sensuous experience " whatever ! As if a faitli 
 worthy to be brought into contrast with science did not, 
 at least, suppose itself to rest upon a basis of knowledge, 
 and bring its subject-matter to the test of " the reasoning 
 intelligence ! " Borrowing a poetic figure from the faith 
 which he most contemns, Haeckel says, " Seience has to 
 pluck the blessed fruits from the tree of knowledge, un- 
 concerned whether these conquests trench upon the poet- 
 ical imaginings of faith or not " (chap. i.). But this, 
 forsooth, is no forbearance on the part of science, and 
 marks no such sharp discrimination between knowledge 
 and faith as the author has asserted in the formula, 
 " Where faitli commences, science ends." So far is this 
 from being true, that at some point science must merge 
 its knowledge of details in a belief in laws, forces, prin- 
 ciples. What science is there which does not summon 
 us to the exercise of faith, in order to its own comple- 
 tion ? Not mathematics, which tasks " the poetic imag- 
 ination " to conceive of lines, forms, figures, which have, 
 and can have, no corresponding realities. Not astronomy, 
 surely, for though this is perhaps of all sciences the best 
 attested by observation, yet the Copernican theory of the 
 earth's motion cannot be asserted as the absolute truth of 
 knowledge, but only as the highest attainable probabil- 
 ity hitherto offered to faith. The theory accounts for so 
 many phenomena, it is confirmed by such a multitude of 
 observations, and reduces the unsolved difficulties to such 
 a minimum, that there remains no reasonable ground of 
 doubt that the earth revolves upon its own axis and 
 moves round the sun. 
 
 " Astronomy ventures itself upon the approval of mankind 
 through the practical realization of its theories of motion, though
 
 ATOMS AND FORCE. 193 
 
 it knows absolutely nothing concerning the first impulse of mo- 
 tion, and is utterly ignorant of the inner essence of the so-called 
 powers with which it works so boldly and successfully, and 
 which are only presented under happy mathematical images." J 
 
 Now these mathematical forms are but ideals of th 
 imagination pure abstractions. We can build up a 
 universe upon them with as much confidence as we tread 
 upon the solid ground ; but we cannot see them, handle 
 them, nor make them in any way the " objects of sensu- 
 ous experience." We do not arrive at these mathemati- 
 cal conceptions through " the interrogation of nature." 
 The most perfect instrument for the investigation of 
 physics is not itself physical, but a product of the imag- 
 ination. And imagination from time to time devises new 
 terms and powers for the solution of problems in physics. 
 Kant laid down the proposition that " in each particular 
 natural science only so much of science proper could be 
 found as there was of mathematics to be found in it." 2 
 To meet the more recent advances of science, Du Bois- 
 Reymond proposes to substitute for mathematics the me- 
 chanical force or action of atoms. 3 But here again we 
 are in the region of the ideal, since we know neither 
 " atom " nor " force." This simple and elementary terra 
 force is as much misused and abused as any word in the 
 whole vocabulary of science. " We have, as yet, abso- 
 lutely no proof whatever that force proper has objective 
 existence. In all probability there is no such thing as 
 force, any more than there is such a thing as sound, or 
 light, which* are mere names for physical impressions pro- 
 
 1 Wohrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit. Von Wilhelm Forster, Pro- 
 fessor und Director der Konigliehen Sternwarte in Berlin. The true 
 place of probability in science and logic will be discussed in a subse- 
 quent article. 
 
 2 Vorrede zu den MetapTiysifchen A nfangs-gr linden der Naturwissen- 
 scltaft. 
 
 8 Ueber die Grenzen der Naturerkennens. 
 13
 
 104 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 duccd upon special nerves by the energy of undulatory 
 motions of certain media." 1 Gravitation, force, monad, 
 ether, and the like, are not things that we know by sen- 
 suous experience, but names upon which we hang our 
 faith. So far from it being true that " where faith be- 
 gins, science ends," there could no more be a science 
 without faith than there could be extension without 
 space. Yet it is by such superficial, meaningless, un- 
 tenable assertions, put forth with an air of scientific dog- 
 matism, that Haeckel and Draper startle the timid and 
 impose upon the credulous. 
 
 A much more respectable authority than these, Pro- 
 fessor John Tyndall, recognizes "the immovable basis of 
 the religious sentiment in the nature of man," and would 
 have men of science regard the religions of the world as 
 " the forms of a force, mischievous, if permitted to in- 
 trude on the region of knowledge, over which it holds no 
 command ; but capable of being guided to noble issues 
 in the region of emotion, which is its proper and elevated 
 sphere." 2 It is now the fashion of a school of physicists 
 in England to speak flippantly of religion as a matter of 
 feeling without warrant of reason, of faith as fancy, and 
 science alone as knowledge ; and their use of the terms 
 science and knowledge gives to this distinction an air of 
 plausibility. But is this exclusive, almost professional, 
 appropriation of such words as science and knowledge 
 warranted by etymology and usage ? There is wisdom 
 and propriety in changing the terminology of science to 
 meet the advancing conditions of knowledge. Sciences 
 may be subdivided, new classifications may be made, and 
 a new nomenclature adopted to mark these distinctions. 
 It is the prerogative of men of science to make such divi- 
 
 1 The Unseen Universe. By B. Stewart and P. G. Tait. Third 
 edition, 97. 
 
 u Address before the British Association at Belfast, p. 60.
 
 KNOWLEDGE, THE CONVICTION OF CEHTAINTY. 195 
 
 sions and classifications within the realm of science, and 
 to promulgate these as the laws of their peculiar king- 
 dom. Whether philosophy should be sharply discrimi- 
 nated from science, or at least the exact sciences should 
 be kept distinct from philosophy, is a question of words 
 which the masters of philosophy and of science are com- 
 petent to determine. But knowledge is not a term that 
 can be thus seized, tethered, and impounded within the 
 pale of any school or sect. This is the common property 
 of mankind, since in every human mind there is a some- 
 thing that answers to what we call knowledge, and in 
 every language there is a word to denote that thing. 
 The physicist might as well think to confine the atmos- 
 phere within the receiver of his air-pump, the chemist to 
 compress the rivers into his retort, as to monopolize the 
 term knowledge by the limitations of his particular 
 science. To define science by knowledge is only to 
 change the term without identifying the thing. Since 
 sdo means to know in the widest signification of the 
 word, to say science is knowledge, and knowledge is 
 science, is like knocking two billiard balls of equal size 
 and color back and forth against each other, without 
 ever driving either into the pocket : there is nothing 
 gained or lost on either side. " Science is knowledge," 
 is a toying with words which contributes nothing to pre- 
 ciseness of meaning, to the understanding of things. All 
 men mean something when they talk of knowledge, and 
 this common thought or element in the minds of men 
 which differences knowledge from everything else must 
 lie at the basis of our definition of the word. That sin- 
 gle element is the conviction of certainty. 
 
 So long as one has the least doubt of a fact, he cannot 
 be said to know it as a fact. What one guesses to be 
 the truth, he does not know as true. What one esti- 
 mates as having the highest degree of probability, he
 
 196 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 does not know to be real. What one imagines to be the 
 solution of a phenomenon or a problem for example, 
 the atom in physics, the molecule in chemistry he yet 
 does not know to exist. Only when the mind has at- 
 tained to the conviction of certainty can it properly be 
 said to know. This conviction may be arrived at in very 
 different ways. It may be a spontaneous state of the 
 mind itself, which is not capable of being analyzed, and 
 for which no logical reason can be assigned. It may be 
 the result of a mathematical calculation or demonstration 
 which leaves no room for doubt. Or it may be based 
 solely upon the testimony of others. Thus we know at 
 last the long-sought, much-disputed sources of the Nile 
 and the Congo. We know from Livingstone, Cameron, 
 and Stanley, that the continent of Africa can be crossed 
 from coast to coast, and also to what extent Africa is in- 
 habited. From the scientific reports of the voyage of the 
 Challenger, we already know much of the form and char- 
 acter of the bed of the Atlantic. We are fast reducing 
 the physical geography of the globe to certainty, but we 
 do not yet know whether the North Pole is surrounded 
 by an open sea or an impenetrable barrier of ice. The 
 testimony of explorers is conflicting, and though Nares 
 has pronounced the Pole inaccessible, new expeditions 
 are organizing a final attack upon this hitherto unyield- 
 ing mystery. Whatever knowledge explorers shall gain 
 by observation and experience will become the common 
 property of mankind through their testimony, which will 
 be accepted as a sufficient basis of certainty. The dif- 
 ference between observation and testimony lies not in 
 the degree of conviction, but in the mode by which it is 
 attained. The conviction of certainty is perhaps more 
 commonly derived from observation and experience, and 
 some physicists would limit the term knowledge abso- 
 lutely to that which is gained through the experience of
 
 MORAL CERTAINTY. 197 
 
 physical phenomena. But the nice distinction of Kant 
 is here of much importance. " Admitting that all our 
 knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that 
 all knowledge likewise arises out of experience." 1 
 
 Knowledge is the assurance of certainty, without regard 
 to the way in which this assurance is attained. This as- 
 surance may be premature, excessive, or even altogether 
 mistaken, having no warrant in fact, and no adequate 
 ground in reason. Nevertheless, as regards the concep- 
 tion of reality and the ground of action, this conviction 
 of certainty gives to him who possesses it the confidence 
 of knowledge. Where the conviction of certainty con- 
 cerning a fact or truth is common to the mass of man- 
 kind, then such fact or truth becomes an article of uni- 
 versal knowledge. 
 
 O 
 
 Though we use the term moral certainty to denote the 
 highest degree of probability, yet, strictly speaking, cer- 
 tainty expresses a fact or truth established beyond ques- 
 tion. "Probability and certainty are two states of mind, 
 and not two modes of the reality. The reality is one and 
 the same, but our knowledge of it may be probable or 
 certain. Probability has more or less of doubt, and ad- 
 mits of degrees. Certainty excludes doubt, and admits 
 neither of increase nor diminution." 2 But knowledge, 
 which begins in the conviction of certainty, may be in- 
 creased or modified through familiarity with the object, 
 and in matters of detail without affecting the basis of 
 certainty. Suppose a Londoner has for years resided in 
 Berlin. Before going there he had the conviction of cer- 
 tainty of the existence of such a city, otherwise he would 
 not have gone. A residence of years has modified his 
 notions of Berlin in some things and enlarged them in 
 others ; but it has not strengthened by one iota his pre- 
 
 
 
 1 Kr'itik der reinen Vernuft. Einleitung, i. 
 
 2 Fleming, Vocabulary of Philosophy.
 
 198 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 vious conviction of the certainty that there is such a 
 place. In matters of detail he may now know Berlin 
 better than he knows the London of to-day, with its 
 rapid changes. Indeed, after a few years lie might not 
 know London in such particulars ; yet he could never 
 lose his conviction of the certainty that London exists. 
 The degrees of which knowledge admits without disturb- 
 ing the fundamental conviction of certainty are neatly 
 expressed in German by the terms Kenntniss and Er- 
 kenntniss. Kenntniss is the simple, obvious knowledge 
 of an object as such ; Er-kenntniss is the discerning, dis- 
 criminating, qualifying knowledge, in which the object, 
 through characteristics and details, is distinguished from 
 others, and fixed in the scale of knowledge in a position 
 of its own. Kenntniss can be communicated as a matter 
 of fact or of information : but Er-kenntniss is always the 
 product of one's own mental activity. Hence they who 
 would limit knowledge to that which the mind becomes 
 assured of through the observation of nature would de- 
 prive knowledge itself of that higher assurance which 
 comes of the criticism of facts, phenomena, impressions, 
 in the crucible of thought. 
 
 " Though the phenomena of nature are all consistent with each 
 other, we have to deal not only witli these, hut with the hypoth- 
 eses which have been invented to systematize them ; and it by 
 no means follows that because one set of observers have labored 
 with all sincerity to reduce to order one group of phenomena, 
 the hypotheses which they have formed will be consistent with 
 those by which a second set of observers have explained a dif- 
 ferent set of phenomena. Hence the operation of fusing two 
 sciences into one generally involves much criticism of established 
 methods, and the explosion of many pieces of fancied knowledge 
 which may have been long held in scientific reputation." * 
 
 Science itself would be the chief loser if physicists 
 1 Nature, vol. xv. p. 389. Article on Helmholtz.
 
 KENNTNISS AND ER-KENNTNISS. 199 
 
 should succeed in restricting the term knowledge to that 
 which is ascertained by observation of nature. However 
 extensive and minute may be the facts accumulated by 
 observation in any given department of nature, and how- 
 ever valuable the knowledge of such facts may be for 
 practical uses as, for instance, the facts observed and 
 tabulated in meteorology yet these serve only as mate- 
 rials towards a science, until they are colligated in prin- 
 ciples or laws. But this colligation of facts is the dis- 
 tinctive aim of science ; till this is accomplished, the 
 observation of phenomena remains at the level of empiri- 
 cism, and cannot claim the dignity of science. How 
 serious then would be the defect, how lamentable the 
 failure of science, if the principles and laws under which 
 its recorded observations are finally colligated could not 
 command that assurance of certainty which is the first 
 rudiment of knowledge. And of what avail would be 
 all the knowledges {Kenntnisse) derived from outward 
 phenomena, if these could not be compared, sifted, classi- 
 fied, and finally elevated into that higher appreciative 
 knowledge (Er-kenntniss) which is a possession of the 
 mind itself ? 
 
 This region of Er-kenntniss Mr. Herbert Spencer rec- 
 ognizes as the proper home of science. " Science is sim- 
 ply a higher development of common knowledge." But 
 development is more than observation or experiment, 
 more than the accumulation and classification of facts, 
 more than the sensible impressions received from external 
 nature. It is a product of the self-activity of the mind, 
 sifting, eliminating, combining the knowledges which are 
 conveyed to it by observation. Hence, as Herbert Spen- 
 cer further says, " the sciences severally germinate out 
 of the experiences of daily life ; insensibly as they grow 
 they draw in remoter, more numerous, and more complex 
 experiences ; and among these they ascertain laws of de-
 
 200 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 pendence like those which make up our knowledge of the 
 most familiar objects." l Now these " laws of depend- 
 ence " in spheres remote from physical inspection are in- 
 tellectual conceptions, by which the mind seeks to clas- 
 sify and to account for phenomena brought to notice or 
 suggested by experience. But Mr. Spencer does not hesi- 
 tate to claim for these, when duly tested, the same convic- 
 tion of certainty that comes of the testimony of the senses. 
 
 " As certainly as the perception of an object lying in our path 
 warns us against stumbling over it, so certainly do these more 
 complicated and subtle perceptions, which constitute science, 
 warn us against stumbling over intervening obstacles in the pur- 
 suit of our distant ends. Thus, being one in origin and func- 
 tion, the simplest forms of cognition and the most complex must 
 
 be dealt with alike." 2 
 t 
 
 Now it were a great mistake to suppose that this higher 
 knowledge, this complex conception, is the apex of a 
 pyramid, to which one mounts by successive layers of 
 solid facts. Quite commonly the conception is first 
 formed as an image within the mind itself it is a crea- 
 tion of the imagination in the higher regions of abstract 
 thought, which is then tested by observation or by math- 
 ematical calculation, and thus the conception grows to 
 the assurance of certainty ; the apex of the pyramid 
 being at first the shapely scaffolding which imagina- 
 tion has framed to be filled up with materials gathered 
 from the wide regions of observation, and which can only 
 be brought into one orderly, harmonious, and enduring 
 structure because the scaffolding is there. Indeed, as in 
 the science of pure mathematics, the structure reared 
 within the mind which has no corresponding reality 
 in the outward world of physics may be more sure, 
 
 1 First Principles of a New System of Philosophy. By Herbert 
 Spencer. Part i. chap. 1. 
 
 2 Ibid.
 
 MATHEMATICAL CERTAINTY. 201 
 
 exact, and permanent than a pyramid of stone. If, a8 
 some suppose, the great pyramid was designed to furnish 
 a standard of lineal measure and of the heavenly motions, 
 not even this huge mass of stone, that has outlasted so 
 many ages, dynasties, and peoples, can give a conviction 
 of certainty to be compared with that ideal structure of 
 mathematics by which it is shaped and built. In this 
 case it is the pyramid which is the phenomenal appear- 
 ance, the mental ideal which is the substantial reality. 
 
 In his anxiety to secure a scientific basis for philoso- 
 phy, Avenarius makes the concession that " the objects 
 which should form the contents of a science must be ac- 
 tually given by experience. Otherwise one has to do with 
 merely phantom objects and a phantom science." 1 But 
 in fact this is often reversed, and the physical appearance 
 is the phantom, while the spiritual creation, though this 
 may be purely a thing of the imagination, produces the 
 impression and power of reality. One sees this, for ex- 
 ample, in Shakespeare's " Hamlet," a spiritual creation 
 so fine, so lofty, so subtile, that not even the classic rep- 
 resentations of Booth, Irving, Salvini, or Ludwig, can 
 give to it that effect of reality which the scholar feels as 
 he reads the play meditatively in his library. No man 
 of culture can read alone the ghost-scene, especially at 
 " the witching time of night," and not feel a mysterious 
 super-sensible power taking hold of his inmost being, 
 shaking his science and his skepticism, and producing a 
 momentary conviction of the reality of a spirit-world. 
 But the attempt to realize that scene upon the stage 
 scatters this momentary allegiance to a spirit-power, and 
 makes him feel that the supernatural is a delusion. Here 
 it is the physical apparition, the thing of observation, the 
 ghost seen and heard, that is felt to be an unreality, an 
 invention, a Schein, a sham. This is the sole point of 
 
 1 Vifrleljahrsschrift fur wissenschaflliche Philosophic, vol. i. p. 6.
 
 202 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 this illustration. It would be absurd to assert the ap 
 pearance of ghosts as an article of knowledge, or even to 
 rest the existence of disembodied spirits upon so slender 
 a basis as the felt presence of the supersensible which is 
 awakened by the creation of the dramatist, though the 
 native susceptibility of the mind to such conceptions is 
 an argument for some corresponding reality in the un- 
 seen universe. The witch of Endor may have been a 
 clever sorceress, the " weird sisters " of the heath expert 
 jugglers. With mirrors and chemicals we may be able 
 to reproduce their spectres ; yet after we have suborned 
 science to a masquerade, that she may tear off the mask 
 of sorcery, it still remains that we hear the voice of Sam- 
 uel and see the smile of Banquo behind the scenes. We 
 have dispelled the ocular illusion, but there remains a 
 suggestion of reality in that which is invisible. This ex- 
 perience, familiar to minds accustomed to introspection, 
 reverses the distinction which some physicists would 
 draw between images of the mind as phantoms, and 
 physical phenomena as realities. Sometimes the physi- 
 cal appearance may be scattered as a phantom, while the 
 mental image makes an abiding impression of reality 
 the " airy nothing " takes on " a local habitation and a 
 name." To return, for a moment, to mathematics. This 
 field-marshal of the sciences, which prescribes to each 
 particular science its laws of organization and its grade 
 in the general system of knowledge, wields an impalpa- 
 ble wand of theory. Itself the most exact and certain of 
 all the sciences, and supplying to the physical sciences 
 forms, measures, quantities, equations, formulas ; yet 
 mathematics is not built upon the observation and induc- 
 tion of physical facts, but springs from that" spontaneity 
 of initiative " which is the creative faculty of the mind. 
 What is the differential and integral calculus but a 
 pure invention of this creative power for gauging the
 
 THE TRUTH OF MATHEMATICAL ABSTRACTIONS. 203 
 
 physical universe and caging this within the immaterial 
 but invincible barriers of abstract thought? An acknowl- 
 edged master in the science of mathematics, the discov- 
 erer of the " Dialytic Method of Elimination," 1 says of 
 the algebraical forms called qualities : " These are not 
 properly speaking geometrical forms, although capable 
 of being embodied in them, but rather schemes of pro- 
 cesses and of operations for forming, for calling into ex- 
 istence, as it were, algebraic quantities." Here is a most 
 subtile abstraction. The algebraic " quantity " itself may 
 be purely imaginary, but behind this is conjured up the 
 quantic, the merest shadow of a shade, and this quantic 
 is conceived of as capable of calling quantities into exist- 
 ence. Yet upon such unsubstantial forms as these the 
 mind can rest in the assurance of certainty at every step ; 
 with these it can weigh and measure the solid globe ; by 
 these it can mount to the stars. To this abstract knowl- 
 edge external nature must conform, " complementing and 
 substantiating theory by visible and palpable experience." 
 The mathematician, says Sylvester, " has to train and in- 
 ure himself to a habit of internal and impersonal reflec- 
 tion and elaboration of abstract thought." But it is in 
 this region of abstractions, and not in the outer physical 
 world, that the mathematician finds his certainties ; and 
 back of all his knowledges, and the most sure of all, lies 
 his thought-power. For the one thing that every man 
 knows with the conviction of absolute certainty (and pos- 
 sibly the only thing he does absolutely know .?) is himself 
 asknou'er. If one does not know this, he cannot know any- 
 thing ; and it may well be doubted whether one can know 
 anything else with the same absolute certainty with which 
 he knows that he is. No amount of negation can impair 
 this certainty. Augustine has pointed out the self-con- 
 tradiction of a universal skepticism, in that " he who 
 1 Professor Sylvester, of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
 
 204 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 doubts is certain that he doubts." And Thomas Aquinas, 
 with diacritical nicety, has said, " He who denies that 
 truth is, at the same time concedes that truth is ; since, 
 if truth is not, it is true that truth is not." l Only by 
 confidence in himself as knower can one know any object 
 outside of himself. " The light by which we see in this 
 world comes out from the soul of the observer. Nay, 
 the powers of this busy brain are miraculous and illimit- 
 able. Therein are the rules and formulas by which the 
 whole empire of matter is worked." 2 The Ego, which 
 is consciousness come to itself, is the one fundamental fact 
 of universal knowledge. What consciousness is and 
 
 O 
 
 whence it arises, what the Ego is and how recognized 
 and defined, are questions beyond the scope of the pres- 
 ent article. We introduce the Ego here with reference 
 simply to the definition of knowledge, and thus of science. 
 It might be, as Spinoza taught, that " the object of that 
 idea which constitutes the human mind, is body that 
 is, a certain mode of extension existing in reality and 
 nothing else ; " 8 and that " the mind does not know it- 
 self except in so far as it perceives ideas of affections of 
 the body " 4 (so finely did the great Dutch philosopher 
 of the seventeenth century, by pure metaphysical ab- 
 straction, anticipate the Darwinian theory of the evolu- 
 tion of consciousness by cerebral excitation through the 
 instrumentality of the -eensorium). Or it might be, as 
 Kant held, that the Ego (Jc-A) " cannot even be called a 
 
 1 " Etiam qui negat veritatem esse, concedit veritatem esse ; si 
 enim veritas non est, veruiu est veritatem non esse." Thomas 
 Aquinas, Sum. Theol. 
 
 2 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Success. 
 
 8 " Objoctum idese humanam mentem constituents, est corpus, sive 
 certus extensionis modus, actu existens, et nihil aliud." Eth.\\. 
 prop. 13. 
 
 4 " Mens se ipsam non cognoscit, nisi quatenus corporis affectionum 
 ideas percipit." Elh. ii. prop. 23.
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 205 
 
 conception, but is merely the consciousness which accom- 
 panies all conceptions a simple representation which 
 in itself is totally void of contents ; " 1 or, as he other- 
 wise puts it, the pure, original, unchangeable self-con- 
 sciousness, that is the Ego, is simply a " transcendental 
 apperception " which does not carry within itself the 
 conception of a distinct substance, or self-substantiality. 
 This " transcendental unity of self-consciousness," Hegel 
 illustrates by an analogy from mathematics : 
 
 " In geometry you are told to conceive the circumference of a 
 circle as formed of au infinite number of infinitely small 
 straight lines. In other words, characteristics which the un- 
 derstanding holds to be totally different, the straight line and 
 the curve, are expressly declared to be identical. Another 
 transcendent of the same kind is the self-consciousness, which is 
 identical with itself, and infinite in itself, as distinguished from 
 the ordinary consciousness which derives its character from 
 finite materials. That unity of self-consciousness, however, 
 Kant calls transcendental only ; and he meant thereby that the 
 unity was only in our minds, and did not attach to the objects 
 apart from our knowledge of them." 2 
 
 Again ; in direct opposition to the view of Kant that 
 the Ego represents pure apperception with no content of 
 real conception, it might be, as Hegel maintains, that " in 
 the Ego there is a variety of contents, derived both from 
 within and from without, and according to the nature of 
 these contents our state may be described as perception, 
 or conception, or reminiscence. . . . / is the vacuum or 
 receptacle for anything and everything ; for which every- 
 thing is, and which stores up everything in itself." ; 
 
 1 " Von der Paralogismen der reinen Vernunft ; erstes Hauptstiick 
 des zweiten Buchs der transcendentalen Dialektik." 
 
 2 Encyclopadie den philosophischen Wisaenschaften, 42. See the 
 translation of Mr. Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 75. 
 
 8 Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 40.
 
 206 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 Or the Ego might be presented in the abstract concept 
 of Lotze : 
 
 " Selfhood, the substance of all personality, does not rest upon 
 a contrast, completed or in process, of the Ego with a non-Ego, 
 but consists in au immediate being-in-and-of-itself (Fiirsichsein) 
 which conversely forms the ground of the possibility of that 
 contrast, at the point where itself emerges. Self-consciousness 
 is the actualization of this being-in-and-of-itself through the me- 
 dium of conception, and this also is in no way necessarily de- 
 pendent upon the discrimination of the Ego from a substantial 
 non-Ego set over against it." l 
 
 And still further ; the very opposite extreme of cer- 
 tain physiologists might be accepted, which represents 
 the Ego to be nothing more than a succession of impres- 
 sions upon the brain, or an on-going chain of sensations. 
 
 But whichever of these views, or whatever modifi- 
 cation or combination of them be taken for true, they 
 all are comprehended within the brief formula THE 
 EGO IS CONSCIOUSNESS COME TO ITSELF. If the EgO be 
 an immediate, intuitive conception, emerging from that 
 vague background which some writers call swft-conscious- 
 ness, then in this self-recognition consciousness comes to 
 itself, as one awaking from a swoon is said to come to 
 himself. If the Ego is simply a feeling or sensation, or 
 a chain of impressions, then, as the point at which the 
 spark flashes makes visible the electricity engendered in 
 a whole battery of Leyden jars, so the Ego is the point 
 of manifestation at which the feeling or impression cul- 
 minates in consciousness come to itself. And so of all 
 intermediate stages in the definition of the Ego. It has 
 been remarked of the child, that in the earlier manifes- 
 tations of consciousness he speaks of himself in the third 
 person possibly in imitation of the mother and nurse, 
 who always speak to him in the third person (What ails 
 1 Hermann Lotze, Mikrokosmus, vol. iii. p. 575.
 
 PERSONALITY. 207 
 
 baby ? What will Charlie have ?) ; but of a sudden he 
 comes to himself \ and says I think, / feel. Consciousness 
 has evolved itself as Ego. 
 
 The Germans have a neat expression for the clearing 
 up of consciousness through the certainty of conviction. 
 Ich linjetz mit mir im Reinen " At last I have cleared 
 up myself to myself ; " like Milton's " The mind 
 through all her powers irradiate ; all mist from thence 
 purge and disperse." But Jevons goes even further, 
 and maintains that certainty can be predicted only of an 
 actual present consciousness and of a correct logical infer 
 ence ; that is, of certain states and acts of the Ego. 
 
 " We can never recur too often to the trutli that our knowl- 
 edge of the laws and future events of the external world is only 
 probable. The mind itself is quite capable of possessing certain 
 knowledge, and it is well, to discriminate carefully between what 
 we can and cannot know with certainty. In the first place, 
 whatever feeling is actually present to the mind is certainly 
 known to that mind. If I see blue sky, I may be quite sure 
 that I do experience the sensation of blueness. Whatever I do 
 feel, I do feel beyond all doubt. We are, indeed, very likely to 
 confuse what we really feel with what we are inclined to associ- 
 ate with it, or infer inductively from it ; but the whole of our 
 consciousness, as far as it is the result of pure intuition and free 
 from inference, is certain knowledge beyond all doubt." 1 
 
 It is sufficient to our present purpose that the Ego is 
 (1) a fact of absolute knowledge ; (2) a fact of univer- 
 sal knowledge ; (3) not a fact of physical experience. 
 
 1. That the Ego is a fact of absolute knowledge re- 
 quires no proof and indeed admits of none. There is 
 nothing that a man asserts with such absolute certainty 
 as the fact that he is, he knoivs, he feels, he thinks, he 
 wills. And, indeed, if one should take it upon him to 
 
 1 Principles of Science. By W. Stanley Jevons. Second edition, 
 chap. xi. p. 235.
 
 208 WHAT IS SCIENCE r 
 
 deny consciousness of the Ego, the more stoutly he should 
 deny himself the more vehemently would he invoke us 
 to believe in him and in his denials. " I who speak to 
 you am conscious that I have no consciousness of being 
 I!" 
 
 2. That the Ego is a fact of universal knowledge 
 that every other man has the consciousness of the Ego as 
 truly as I have, is plain (a) from language. Every 
 language has some term or terras to represent I and me, 
 he and him. " Now language is the work of thought, 
 and hence all that is expressed in language must be uni- 
 versal." 1 (i) From the notion of possession. In every 
 human being there exists the notion that something be- 
 longs to him in distinction from all others. In asserting 
 the right of property, he asserts the consciousness of the 
 Ego. (c) From history and tradition. Among all peo- 
 ples there exist in history or tradition names of heroes, 
 sages, poets, kings, that represent individuals, persons ; 
 and the history or tradition becomes nothing if stripped 
 of that conception. Indeed, so universal is the conscious- 
 ness of the Ego, that mankind clothe even myths with 
 personality, to give them character or force. No amount 
 of historical criticism will ever destroy men's faith in the 
 personality of Homer, Romulus and Remus, King Arthur, 
 William Tell. Having resolved the man into a myth, 
 we at once make the myth a person, an Ego to the imag- 
 ination. (cZ) The universal conviction of the Ego is 
 shown by laws and penalties. These are enacted because 
 in every case of crime or wrong the human mind directly 
 ascribes the act to a person as the wrong-doer ; and he in 
 distinction from all physical things and from all other 
 persons is to be held accountable, because he is a con- 
 scious Ego. If he is shown to be an idiot or insane, then 
 the criminality of his action is lost in the clouding of the 
 Ego as to the character of the act. 
 
 1 Logic of Heyel, p. 82.
 
 NATURE OF THE EGO. 209 
 
 3. The Ego is not a fact of physical experience. 
 Though physical experiences may lead up to it, though 
 the Ego may be the flash of electric light from the chain 
 of sensations, yet it is not itself a sensation. The Ego is 
 conscious of the physical experiences as his experiences. 
 This is equally true whether the non-Ego is given in the 
 same instant and in the same mode with the Ego, or the 
 Ego is discriminated from the non-Ego by a process of 
 reflective analysis, or the Ego becomes directly conscious 
 of the non-Ego as distinct from itself. 
 
 We have seen that the one fact of knowledge which 
 
 O 
 
 is absolute, fundamental, and universal, the knowledge 
 which must attend all other knowledges, and without 
 which there could be no other, this consciousness of the 
 Ego as a knower, is not, either as to its nature or as to 
 its origin, knowledge in the sense to which a recent 
 school of physicists would limit that term. Hence the 
 oppugnation between science and philosophy, or science 
 and religion, if any there be, cannot lie in the distinction 
 between knowledge and opinion or belief. Neither are 
 the terms science in the sense of exact science or of 
 physical science and knowledge strictly interchange- 
 able. 
 
 We are now prepared for a nearer view of the contents 
 of the term science. Knowledge is the conviction of cer- 
 tainty. The Ego is that be it person, substance, mode, 
 fact, condition, manifestation, result, or what not THAT 
 in which this conviction of certainty is given, felt, record- 
 ed. Sensations are not knowledge ; these may be tenta- 
 tive, deceptive, even negative. Sensations are the media 
 through which the Ego receives impressions of the outer 
 world. The Ego being conscious of sensations, through 
 these sensations is cognizant of external phenomena ; and 
 by weighing, analyzing, comparing, combining these im- 
 pressions and experiences, it attains to that conviction of 
 
 ii
 
 210 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 certainty which, in respect of the outer world or nature, 
 is the scientific equivalent for fact or knowledge. Hence 
 Whewell has laid down these aphorisms as preliminary 
 to a definition of science. 
 
 "1. The senses place before us the characters of the 
 book of nature ; but these convey no knowledge to us till 
 we have discovered the alphabet by which they are to be 
 read. 
 
 " 2. TJie alphabet, by means of which we interpret phe- 
 nomena, consists of the ideas existing in our own minds ; 
 for these give to the phenomena that coherence and signifi- 
 cance which is not an object of sense. 
 
 " 3. The two processes by which science is constructed 
 are the explication of conceptions, and the colligation of 
 facts. 
 
 " Knowledge requires us to possess both facts and ideas. Every 
 step in our knowledge consists in applying the ideas and concep- 
 tions furnished by our minds to the facts which observation and 
 experiment offer to us. When our conceptions are clear and 
 distinct, when our facts are certain and sufficiently numerous, 
 and when the conceptions, being suited to the nature of the facts, 
 are applied to them so as to produce an exact and universal ac- 
 cordance, we attain knowledge of a precise and comprehensive 
 kind, which we may term science." l 
 
 Such is the testimony of a master in physics to the 
 office of the ideal in conception in bringing into scientific 
 order that which lies in consciousness as matter of expe- 
 rience. Also, from the purely philosophical side, Hegel 
 found the union of reflection with experience essential to 
 the construction of a science. In the introduction to his 
 " Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences," Hegel de- 
 fines philosophy as " a peculiar mode of thought a 
 
 1 Novum Organon Renovatum, pp. 5, 27. In selecting these aph- 
 orisms, we have changed the numerical order of Dr. Whewell, for 
 the sake of convenience of arrangement.
 
 HEGEL'S DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY. 211 
 
 mode through which thought becomes discriminating and 
 comprehensive knowledge." In other words, philosophic 
 thought is reflective and speculative thinking. In science 
 this reflective and speculative thought is employed in in- 
 vestigating the facts of experience and in evolving the 
 laws which these suggest. 
 
 " The principle of experience involves the infinitely weighty 
 condition * that in order to take in a subject-matter and hold this 
 for true, the man himself must be in contact with it : more pre- 
 cisely, he must find such subject-matter in union and combina- 
 tion with the certainty of his own self. lie must himself be in 
 contact with it, be it only by his outward senses, or rather with 
 his deeper spirit his essential self-consciousness." a 
 
 Hence Hegel would assert for speculative philosophy 
 the maxim, Nihil est in sensu quod non f merit in intel- 
 lectu the converse of sensationalism. This is true in 
 the meaning that nothing outward can have reality for us 
 till it is attested in consciousness and shaped in thought. 
 Though we may not give existence to the outer world, 
 nor even preconceive it as to its constituents, yet nothing 
 can be known to us as existing in sense until we have 
 somehow shaped it as reality in our minds. " No less 
 than empiricism, philosophy only recognizes what is, hav- 
 ing nothing to do with what merely ought to be, and 
 what is thus confessed not to exist. . . . Empiricism la- 
 bors under a delusion if it supposes that while analyzing 
 the objects, it leaves them as they were : it really trans- 
 forms the concrete into an abstract." 3 Thus science 
 must use the materials and methods of philosophy in the 
 very attempt to build up a barrier between itself and 
 philosophy. We must see if we cannot help science to a 
 
 1 Bestimmung=. deter minatio, constitutio that which is fixed or 
 defined in the nature of the subject ; hence, a requisite condition. 
 
 2 Hegel, Encyclopedia, Einleitung, 57. 
 
 3 Encyclopaedia, p. 538. See Wallace, Logic of Hegel, p. 65.
 
 212 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 better standing-place to a truer knowledge of herself 
 and her means of knowing. In mind alone can be had 
 that conviction of certainty which is the assurance of 
 knowledge ; by mind, the objective facts of nature, as as- 
 certained through the senses, must be tested and set in 
 order ; and the master-architect is the Ego. 
 
 Some of the most liberal and advanced thinkers in 
 physical science have openly recognized the truth that 
 although science must gather her materials from nature, 
 she must lay her foundations, not in nature but in mind. 
 This homage of science to mind was a striking feature of 
 the fiftieth meeting of the German Association of Natu- 
 ralists and Physicians, at Munich, in September, 1877. 
 Professor Haeckel, who surpasses Huxley in facility of 
 assumption and audacity of assertion, read a paper in 
 which he assumed that evolution and the monistic philos- 
 ophy are established in science, and asserted that " who- 
 ever to-day still asks for proofs of the theory of descent 
 [i. e. the descent of man from the ape], proves by that 
 only his own want of knowledge or reason." Haeckel even 
 went so far as to argue that this doctrine of evolution 
 should be taught in the common schools as a fixed branch 
 of knowledge. 1 Haeckel, however, has but small influ- 
 ence in scientific circles in Germany ; and the modesty 
 of true science appeared in the subsequent addresses of 
 Professor C. von Nageli, 2 of Munich, and Professor II. 
 Virchow, 8 of Berlin, which distinctly recognize the reflec- 
 tive action of mind in bringing within the category of 
 knowledges the facts of nature observed by the senses. 
 Says Niigeli : " The solution of the question, In what way 
 
 1 Die heutiye Enlwickelunydehre im Verhtiltnisse zur Gesammtuissen- 
 schaft. 
 
 2 Ucber die Grenzen des Naturerkenncns. 
 
 8 Die Freiheit der Wissenscluift im modernen Staat. All these ad- 
 dresses were well translated in Nature, Nos. 414-423.
 
 NAGELI ON MATHEMATICAL CERTAINTY. 213 
 
 and how far may I know and understand nature ? is evi- 
 dently determined by three different things, namely, by 
 the answers to three questions : (1) The condition and 
 capacity of the Ego ; (2) the condition and accessibility 
 of nature ; and (3) the demands which we make of 
 knowledge." He makes the correctness of knowledge 
 depend not merely upon the correctness of the senses in 
 observation, but equally upon the fidelity of that finer in- 
 ternal sense through the mediation of which the mind 
 partakes in these observations of the bodily organs ; and 
 " by conclusions from facts which were recognized by the 
 senses we arrive at facts equally certain, which can no 
 longer be perceived by the senses." Having defined the 
 limitations of the senses and of the Ego, Nageli comes to 
 mathematics as the one certainty in the domain of knowl- 
 edge a science, 
 
 " perfectly clear to us because it is the product of our own mind. 
 We can understand real things with certainty, as far as we find 
 mathematical ideas, number, magnitude, and everything which 
 mathematics deduces from these realized in them. Natural 
 knowledge, therefore, consists in our applying mathematical 
 methods to natural phenomena. To understand a natural event 
 means nothing else, as it were, than to repeat it in thought, to 
 reproduce it in our mind." 
 
 Here is the distinct admission of one of the most care- 
 ful physicists that our knowledge of nature is not merely 
 a sense perception, but an innerly-accordant conception 
 (die inner e Vermittelung} of the mind itself. In respect 
 of outward nature, " we can know only the finite ; but 
 we can know all the finite which comes within reach of 
 our sensual perception." But on the other hand, as Na- 
 geli teaches, "we know mental life only from our subjec- 
 tive experiences." He does not qualify the term knowl- 
 edge in respect of these inner experiences, nor limit 
 knowledge to the objective world of sense. " We know
 
 214 WHAT IS SCIENCE t 
 
 that we draw conclusions, that we remember, that we 
 feel pleasure and pain." It is this conscious, this know- 
 ing Ego, which measures and compares the results of 
 sense-perception, and thus brings nature within the pur- 
 view of knowledge the assurance of certainty. 
 
 Virchow, while adhering strongly to the objective side 
 of science, recognizes the utility of that speculative 
 method "which sets problems, and finds the tasks to 
 which modern investigation is to be applied, and which 
 anticipatively formulates a series of doctrines which are 
 still to be proved, and the truth of which must yet be 
 found, but which in the mean time may be taught with 
 a certain amount of probability, in order to fill certain 
 gaps in knowledge." In natural science, no less than in 
 the church, Virchow finds the three phases which attach 
 themselves to all systems of human knowledge " ob- 
 jective and subjective knowledge, and the intermediate 
 phase of belief. 
 
 Still more pronounced on this point is Professor Challis, 
 F. R. S., of the University of Cambridge, who says : 
 
 "Physical science, when complete, rests not on experiment 
 alone, but on experiment combined with reasoning. . . . Em- 
 pirical philosophy is only a step towards true and ultimate philos- 
 ophy,- and physical science is really advanced only so far as the 
 physical laws discovered and formulated by means of experi- 
 ment are shown by mathematical reasoning to be consequences 
 of ulterior intelligible principles. The perfection of physical 
 science consists in giving reasons for physical laws." 1 
 
 Hence the mere observation of nature cannot monopolize 
 the term knowledge, nor indeed claim to be. knowledge 
 at all until certified by the scrutiny of the rational and 
 judicial Ego. And this carries us back to the great 
 founder of physics, who believed equally in metaphysics. 
 
 1 Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, vol. xii. No. 
 45, pp. 2, 11.
 
 ARISTOTLE'S CONCEPTION OF SCIENCE. 215 
 
 Aristotle 1 made science well-nigh the equivalent of 
 art (Tc'xn;), in which term he included both the method- 
 ical handling of facts and the theoretical development of 
 principles and causes ; or rather, with Aristotle, art was 
 a stage intermediate between experience and the wisdom 
 of true science. 
 
 "Experience is the knowledge of particulars, art is the 
 knowledge of the universal. The artist is wiser than the mere 
 experiencer ; his knowledge stands nearer to wisdom, because 
 he comprehends also the grounds or reasons of things, which 
 the experiencer does not. The experiencer knows only the 
 What, not the Wherefore, but the artist knows also the Where- 
 fore and the Cause. . . . Wisdom is the science of certain, t. e. 
 ascertained, causes and beginnings." 
 
 The union of experience with art in Aristotle's meaning 
 constitutes science according to our modern idea the 
 knowledge of particulars upon a given subject acquired 
 by experience, then generalized by the art-faculty of the 
 mind into principles and laws. It remains for philosophy, 
 the higher wisdom, to rise into the sphere of origin and 
 cause. " All science," says Bluntschli, " is the work 
 and acquisition of individual mental labor of thought. 
 The active spirit in the individual man seeks and arrives 
 at truth by unfolding self-consciousness, by observing 
 carefully outward circumstances and studying the proc- 
 esses of the mind itself." 2 This is in strict accordance 
 with what Humboldt says in the introduction to his 
 " Cosmos." " Science does not present itself to man un- 
 til mind conquers matter in striving to subject the result 
 of experimental investigation to rational combinations. 
 Science is the labor of mind applied to nature ; but the 
 external world has no real existence for us beyond the 
 
 1 Metaphysics, lib. i. c. 1 . 
 
 2 Bluntschli, Politik als Wissenschaft, lib. v. c. 6 ; Lehre von mtfd- 
 ernen Staat, vol. iii. p. 263.
 
 216 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 image reflected within ourselves through the medium of 
 the senses." Humboldt discriminates also between a 
 merely empirical knowledge of external nature and true 
 science, in which observation is under the constant scru- 
 tiny of reason. 
 
 " Empiricism originates in isolated views, which are subse- 
 quently grouped according to their analogy or dissimilarity. 
 To direct observation succeeds, although long afterward, the 
 wish to prosecute experiments, that is to say, to evoke phenom- 
 ena under different determined conditions. The rational ex- 
 perimentalist does not proceed at hazard, but acts under the 
 guidance of hypotheses founded on a half indistinct and more or 
 less just intuition of the connection existing among natural ob- 
 jects or forces. That which has been conquered by observation, 
 or by means of experiments, leads, by analysis and induction, 
 to the discovery of empirical laws." 
 
 Science can be attained only " by subjecting isolated ob- 
 servations to the process of thought ; " and the " ' Cos- 
 mos' is based upon a rational empiricism, that is to say, 
 upon the results of the facts registered by science, and 
 tested by the operations of the intellect." 
 
 This comprehensive view of Humboldt gives color to 
 the saying of an eminent philosophical naturalist : " All 
 true science of nature is philosophy, and all true philoso- 
 phy is natural science." With more exactness it may be 
 affirmed that science requires the unifying process of phi- 
 losophy, and philosophy requires the scientific basis of 
 experience ; and if any distinction be made between phi- 
 losophy and science, it should lie in the relative propor- 
 tions in which the two factors, speculation and experi- 
 ence, which are common to both, are combined in 
 either. Zeller goes further, and finds the distinction of 
 philosophical science from other sciences in this : that 
 " every other science has in view the exploration of some 
 one particular domain, whereas philosophy has its eye
 
 SCIENTIA SCIENTIARUM. 'Ill 
 
 upon the totality of existences as a whole, strives to com- 
 prehend the particular in its relation to the whole and to 
 the laws of the whole, and thus to establish the coher- 
 ence of all knowledge." l But is it not true also of each 
 science that it seeks to gather the facts that lie within its 
 domain into one systematic whole, and then to articulate 
 this unit of particular knowledge with that aggregate of 
 knowledges which constitutes the universe ? And is not 
 philosophy rather the highest of sciences scientia scien- 
 tiarum in that whereas a science concerns itself with 
 investigating and unifying experiences, philosophy or sci- 
 ence takes the sciences themselves as data for its general- 
 izations? Science is not merely knowledge, but knowl- 
 edges comprehended by the judging faculty, and set in 
 orderly relation to laws or principles. The recorded ob- 
 servation of facts or experiences does not alone constitute 
 a science. This furnishes material out of which " reflec- 
 tive and speculative thinking " may construct a science. 
 Thus the patient, wide-spread, long-continued record of 
 observations concerning the weather may indicate the 
 laws of wind, rain, heat, storms, and the systemization of 
 phenomena apparently so variable will by and by erect 
 meteorology into a proper science. On the other hand, 
 an abstract theory, however perfect in its parts and com- 
 plete in the adjustment of those parts to a system, can- 
 not alone constitute a science. Even in pure mathe- 
 matics the a, 6, <?, z, y, and z of an algebraic formula, 
 and the lines and angles of geometrical figures for the 
 purposes of demonstration, are conceived of as objective 
 realities. Though in nature there is no such thing as an 
 absolutely straight line, nor two lines strictly parallel, 
 nor a perfect square or circle ; yet reason does not build 
 the vast and orderly system of the higher mathematics 
 
 1 Dr. E. Zeller, Die Philosophic der Griechen. Vierte Auflage. Em-, 
 leitung, vol. i. pp. 6, 7.
 
 218 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 
 
 upon abstract nonentities, but upon ideal entities which, 
 for the time being, the mind clothes with reality. Yet 
 an hypothesis, though springing from the imagination 
 like Kepler's notion of the harmony of the spheres 
 may lead to the discovery or detection of facts which will 
 serve as links for binding facts, before unexplained, into 
 the chain of laws. Hence it is that facts and laws, or 
 the knowledge of phenomena and the systematic adjust- 
 ment of phenomena in their relations to each other and 
 to underlying causes, forces, or principles, must combine 
 in order to constitute a science. 
 
 Science is the summation and colligation of all the 
 knowledges pertaining to a given subject-matter, and the 
 formulation of these in abstract general conceptions. 
 
 Under this category stand the physical sciences, meta- 
 physics, logic, and religion itself.
 
 X. 
 
 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 (From the British Quarterly, October, 1879.) 
 
 IN Professor Max Miiller's " Lectures on the Science 
 of Religion," 1 the best part of the book is its title. This 
 suggests that religion may be treated scientifically, after 
 the same method of induction and classification which 
 has been applied so successfully to the study of language, 
 and which is in use in the physical sciences. Indeed, 
 Miiller would associate comparative theology with com- 
 parative philology not only in method, but also in mate- 
 rial. He finds " the outward framework of the incipient 
 religions of antiquity " in a few words such as names 
 of the Deity, and in certain spiritual and technical terms 
 which were substantially the same among all earlier 
 peoples. "If we look at this simple manifestation of re- 
 ligion, we see at once why religion, during those early 
 ages of which we are here speaking, may really and truly 
 be called a sacred dialect of human speech ; how, at all 
 events, early religion and early language are most inti- 
 mately connected, religion depending entirely for its out- 
 ward expression on the more or less adequate resources 
 of language." 2 But while finding in words the key to 
 religions, Miiller furnishes no terms by which to define 
 
 1 Introduction to the Science of Religion. Four Lectures delivered 
 at the Royal Institution. By F. Max Miiller, M. A. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 153.
 
 220 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 or describe religion. His nearest approach to this is a 
 formula which would cause physicists peremptorily to re- 
 ject religion from the category of science. " As there is 
 a faculty of speech, independent of all the historical 
 forms of language, so there is a faculty of faith in man 
 independent of all historical religions ; . . . that faculty 
 which, independent of, nay, in spite of sense and rea- 
 son (!), enables man to apprehend the Infinite under dif- 
 ferent names and under varying disguises. ... In Ger- 
 man we can distinguish that third faculty by the name 
 of Vernunft) as opposed to Verstand, reason, and Sinne, 
 sense. In English I know no better name for it than 
 the faculty of faith, though it will have to be guarded by 
 careful definition, in order to confine it to those objects 
 only which cannot be supplied either by the evidence of 
 the senses or by the evidence of reason. No simply his- 
 torical fact can ever fall under the cognizance of faith." l 
 
 The phrase we have italicized above would bar the 
 claim of religion to a place among the sciences ; for 
 though the physical sciences themselves employ "faith as 
 a prelude and guide to discovery, science could never ad- 
 mit an hypothetical belief in " spite of sense and reason." 
 And, on the other hand, the Christian faith does rest 
 throughout upon the " simply historical facts " that Je- 
 sus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified 
 under Pontius Pilate, was buried, and rose from the 
 dead. 
 
 By the " science of religion " Miiller intends what is 
 better styled " comparative theology." Now, to theol- 
 ogy, as the logical statement and systematic arrangement 
 of the facts and doctrines within its province, the title of 
 a science is commonly conceded ; and the comparison of 
 different systems of religious belief and worship, by dis- 
 covering resemblances in conceptions, in terms, and in 
 1 Introduction to the Science of Reliyion, pp. 16, 17.
 
 COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY. 221 
 
 usages and forms, and by classifying these systematically 
 under general principles, may create a science say, if 
 there be not a contradiction in the terms the science of 
 beliefs. Since the faculty of believing, equally with the 
 faculty of knowing, is a native quality of the human 
 mind, not only must this faculty itself fall within the 
 categories of psychology, but the objects of belief must 
 be capable of being reduced to some form of logical state- 
 ment and classification. But theology and comparative 
 theology are themselves but outward forms or expres- 
 sions of the religious idea or sentiment. In religion we 
 have to do with a conception, a feeling, a state of mind, 
 which is common to mankind ; and the essence of re- 
 ligion lies at the back of all forms of theology and of 
 worship. What, then, is this universal phenomenon of 
 the human spirit? this which experience and history 
 testify, through all migrations and mixtures of races, 
 through all fluctuations of social and political institu- 
 tions, through all systems of philosophy and theology, 
 and through all developments of science and art, is the 
 one ti*ansmigratory soul, forever inspiring human thought, 
 forever influencing human life ? 
 
 It is said of Comte that, towards the close of life, he 
 openly confessed that " the human rnind could not rest 
 satisfied (ne pent se passer) without a belief in indepen- 
 dent wills which interfere in the events of the world." 
 Of this concession Comte's biographer says : " Never 
 was there an avowal more fatal to the positive philoso- 
 phy. If this be true, the human mind is necessarily the- 
 ologic, and it would be as great a folly to contend against 
 that necessity as against all other necessities, physical or 
 organic." 1 This fatal concession of Comte, Littre im- 
 putes to the weakness induced by excess of work, " a 
 
 1 Auguste Comte et la Philosophic Positive. Par E. Littrd, p. 578. 
 Troisieiue partie, chap. vi.
 
 222 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 serious nervous disease," which caused the author of the 
 " Philosophie Positive " to relapse into the subjective 
 method and its theological tendencies. But the influ- 
 ences under which the great positivist admitted the uni- 
 versal necessity of a religious faith are of minor impor- 
 tance ; what here concerns us is that the thing itself is 
 true ; that the human mind is " necessarily theologic ; " 1 
 that a something within us impels us to religion ; that 
 metaphysical analysis lands us at last in the absolute ; 
 that the induction of physical facts and the unification 
 of the laws of the universe, through the correlation of 
 forces, leads us to the conception of a supreme cause or 
 power ; and that the study of mankind under all condi- 
 tions forces us to conclude with Spencer, that " religion, 
 everywhere present as a weft running through the warp 
 of human history, expresses some eternal fact." 2 That 
 fact is the aim of our inquiry. 
 
 Religious questions shift their ground, change their 
 form, vary in interest and importance, according to the 
 temper of the times, the schools of thought, the bent of 
 leaders in church or in state, in politics or in philosophy. 
 The theological, the ecclesiastical, the speculative, the 
 practical phases of religion are by turns predominant or 
 antagonistic. Many a dogma and theory has been ex- 
 ploded, many a form set aside, many a practice aban- 
 doned, in the endeavor after that union of knowledge 
 and freedom, of reason and will with faith, which is the 
 ideal of a philosophical religion. But while religious 
 questions have been thus relative and fluctuating, the 
 question of religion has suffered no abatement in its ino- 
 
 1 The late Professor Trendelenburg, of Berlin, once said to the 
 writer, " I believe in logic as strongly as did Hegel, but I believe 
 also in <//eo-logic." 
 
 8 Herbert Spencer's First Principles, p. 20, chap, i., " Religion 
 and Science."
 
 THE REALITY OF RELIGION. 223 
 
 ment to the individual man and to the well-being of 
 mankind. 
 
 Whether with Lecky we regard religion as " modes of 
 emotion," in distinction from theology, which consists of 
 " intellectual propositions ; * or, with Kant, hold that 
 " religion, subjectively considered, is the recognition of 
 all our duties as divine commands;" 2 whether, with 
 Comte, we " refer the obligations of duty, as well as all 
 sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once ideal 
 and real the human race conceived as one great be- 
 ing ; " 3 or, with Herbert Spencer, we find the root of re- 
 ligion in " mystery of an inscrutable power in the uni- 
 verse ; " 4 whether, with Mill, we rest in a dry formula 
 of " the infinite nature of duty ;" 5 or share with Schlei- 
 ermacher " the immediate feeling of the dependence of 
 man upon God ; " 6 under all modes of statement, of 
 expression, and even of negation, behind all objects of 
 adoration, personal and impersonal, humanity, nature, 
 God, there lies the reality of religion an inalienable, 
 indestructible, irrepressible something in the constitution 
 of man, testified to by the finer instincts of the soul, by 
 its sense of duty, its aspirations after virtue, its yearn- 
 ings toward the invisible, and confirmed by man's expe- 
 riences of nature and by the course of human history. 
 It is this something in man that we are seeking to ana- 
 lyze and define : What is Religion ? This question is 
 
 1 Rationalism in Europe, vol. i. p. 356. 
 
 2 Der philosophischen Religionslehre, viertes Stuck, erster Theil. 
 
 8 The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, p. 121. By John Stu- 
 art Mill. With Comte Ic grand etre is always I'humanite. 
 
 4 First Principles, chap, ii., " Ultimate Religious Ideas." 
 
 6 John Stuart Mill, Essay on Comte. 
 
 6 Reden iiber die Religion. In the same discourse Schleiermacher 
 says, " Religion is neither a special mode of thought nor a special 
 mode of deportment; it is neither knowledge nor action; it is feel- 
 ing."
 
 224 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 broader than any question of natural science or of theol- 
 ogy ; broader than the question of adjusting theology 
 with natural science ; broader than the stream of human 
 history, with all the collective interests of society, gov- 
 ernment, letters, art ; broader than the measure of the 
 earth and of the peoples that inhabit it ; more vital and 
 imperative than any question of reform in church or in 
 state, or of progress in knowledge and in society ; it is 
 the question of every race and of every time, from the 
 savage with his fetich to the Platonist with his ideas, 
 and the positivist with his laws ; a question new to each 
 man and binding upon every man the question of his 
 own being, 1 its origin, its relations, its obligations, its 
 possibilities, its destiny : " What can I knoiv ? What 
 ought I to do ? What may I hope ? " 2 
 
 As in defining science we were careful to eliminate from 
 the definition^all theoretical prepossession all that the 
 Germans style Tendenz so, in seeking to define religion, 
 we should divest ourselves of every theological bias, and 
 in the very spirit of science search for the primary facts 
 in this phenomenon of human consciousness. We should 
 especially guard against a devout tendency to forestall 
 
 1 John Stuart Mill says in his autobiography, " I was brought up 
 from the first without any religious belief, in the ordinary accepta- 
 tion of the term." Yet we find Mill feeling his way toward " an 
 ideal conception of a perfect Being," as the guide of conscience ; we 
 find him arguing " the beneficial effect" of a hope in God and in 
 immortality, in that " it makes life and human nature a far greater 
 thing to the feelings ; " and at last rendering a sublime homage to 
 the character and teachings of Christ. Then, with a pathetic weak- 
 ness, which in a Bushman he would have smiled at as superstition, 
 this great philosopher, after the death of his wife, records: "In or- 
 der to feel her still near me, I bought a cottage as close as possible 
 to the place where she is buried. . . . Her memory is to me a re- 
 ligion." 
 
 2 Kant, Krltik der reinen Vernunft : " Der Kanon der reinen Ver- 
 nunft," zweiter Abschnitt.
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH t 225 
 
 the inquiry by assuming that this or that religion is the 
 true religion ; and should accept only that as truth which 
 gives the reality of things. In every sphere of investiga- 
 tion truth is the sole demand of an honest mind ; in phys- 
 ical science, the facts of nature and the true explication 
 of her phenomena ; in the science of mind, the facts of 
 consciousness, the laws of a true psychology, and also 
 what logic may determine to be true in the region of ul- 
 timate ideas and of the absolute ; in the sphere of ethics, 
 the true ground of virtue, the true science of rights, and 
 the ultimate source of moral obligation ; in history, not 
 only truth in the record of events, but the true philosophy 
 of human society ; in theology, truth as seen in nature, 
 felt in consciousness, or revealed by God. It is truth that 
 Helmholtz is in quest of in his laboratory and Darwin in 
 his cabinet ; it is truth that Lepsius would decipher from 
 the hieroglyphics of Egypt, and Broca from the remains 
 of prehistoric man ; it is truth that Sir William Hamilton 
 and his critic Mill have sought with equal honesty in the 
 study of the human intellect and of the unconditioned ; 
 it is truth that Huxley seeks in the hints of biology and 
 Spencer in ultimate ideas ; from Plato to Schleiermacher, 
 his translator and expounder, truth has been the ideal in 
 the world of thought ; from Aristotle to Humboldt, his 
 royal successor in the priesthood of nature, truth has been 
 the objective in the world of fact ; above all sects in 
 Christianity, above all schools in theology, truth is con- 
 fessed as the standard and authority. Truth is the pole 
 of every explorer, around which lie hopes to find an open 
 sea, and either safe anchorage or a sure outlet into the 
 infinite. And what if science at last shall discover that 
 the star that must guide to that pole is religion, which 
 there sits enthroned above all night, unchanged by all the 
 revolutions of the world ? What then is this constant 
 
 15
 
 226 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 fact of human experience ? In the name of truth we ask, 
 What is Religion ? 
 
 It should be easy to define a term which the Romanic 
 and Teutonic peoples have alike appropriated from the 
 Latin for the same thing ; or to describe the thing itself, 
 which exists almost universally in the experiences and 
 usages of mankind. Yet the conception of religion varies 
 according as the term is taken etymologically, popularly, 
 or scientifically. Cicero has given the etymology of the 
 word religio with a precision that has the air of author- 
 ity. 
 
 " They who diligently and repeatedly review, and as it were 
 rehearse again and again everything that pertains to the worship 
 of the gods, are called religious, from religendo [going over again 
 in reading or in thought] ; as the elegant from eligendo [choos- 
 ing with care, picking out] ; the diligent from diligendo [attend- 
 ing carefully to what we value] ; the intelligent from intelli- 
 gendo [understanding persons and things]. In all these words 
 the derivation of meaning is analogous to the word religious." : 
 
 Lactantius, 2 however, derives religio from religare, to 
 bind back or fust. This meaning is retained in the French 
 religieux, which denotes a person who is bound by vows 
 to a life of sanctity. Critics are pretty evenly divided be- 
 tween these two derivations. Under the first, religion is 
 a voluntary act, either mental or outward, though inspired 
 no doubt by a sense of obligation ; under the second, re- 
 ligion is the sense of obligation, which finds expression in 
 pious feelings and in acts of devotion. In Cicero's mean- 
 ing, religion corresponds nearly to the German Andacht, 
 
 1 " Qui autem onmia, qua? ad cultum deorum pertinerent, diligen- 
 ter retractarant et tanquam relcgerent, sunt dicti religiosi ex reliyendo, 
 ut elegantes ex eligendo, itemque ex diligendo diligentes, ex intelli- 
 fjcndo intelligentes. His enim in verbis omnibus inest vis legendi 
 eadem qua; in religiose." De Natura Deorum, lib. ii. cap. 28. 
 
 2 Lactant. iv. 28.
 
 GREEK AND ROMAN IDEAS OF RELIGION. 227 
 
 " the careful pondering of divine things," l which Kant 
 so beautifully describes as " the tuning of the soul to a 
 susceptibility to divinely given impressions." 2 But apart 
 from his etymology of the word religio, Cicero uses the 
 term in a gradation with " piety " and " sanctity," which 
 requires for " religion " the sense of moral obligation. 
 
 " Pietas is a sincere loyal disposition toward those with whom 
 one stands in near relations, relatives, colleagues, superiors, 
 and especially toward the gods as rulers and benefactors. Sanc- 
 titas is an irreproachable, faultless carriage towards the gods. 
 But religio is the recognition of the obligation by which one 
 feels himself bound." 8 
 
 With the Greeks religion, though perhaps more assidu- 
 ously practiced than among the Romans, was less rigidly 
 defined. Their fy^oWa was religious worship and usages, 
 rather than the essence of religion in spirit and motive ; 
 emre/Jeta was the pietas of the Latins, reverence for parents, 
 elders, superiors, authorities, gratitude toward benefactors, 
 though Plato uses this term to describe a reverent devo- 
 tion toward the gods, and bids us " exhort all men to 
 piety, that we may avoid the' evil and obtain the good." 4 
 Mommsen goes so far as to say that " the Roman desig- 
 nation of faith, reliyio, that is to say, that which binds, 
 was in word and in idea alike foreign to the Hellenes." 5 
 Perhaps " that idealizing sense, which knew how to 
 breathe a higher life even into inert stone," refused to 
 be confined within the bonds of duty. 
 
 What religion was among the Greeks in respect of wor- 
 
 1 See Andrew's Freund's Lexicon, art. " Religio." 
 
 2 Kant, c. 353. 
 
 8 Schouiann, De Natura Deorum, lib. i. cap. 2, 3. See, also, Cic- 
 ero's own definitions, lib. i. chap. 41 :" Est enim pietas justitia ad- 
 versum deos : sanctitas auteni est scientia colendorum deorum. 1 ' 
 
 * Symposium, 193. 
 
 6 Momiu sen's History of Home, book i. chap. 2. Dickson's Trans- 
 lation.
 
 228 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 ship, beliefs, rites, and customs, it is easy to learn from 
 their poets and philosophers, their temples and statues. 
 The presence and agency of the gods were universally 
 recognized in nature and in human affairs : through the 
 An>phictyons religious union became the basis of political 
 confederation ; behind the symbols of faith and the ob- 
 jects of worship lay an inner spiritual devotion to higher 
 spiritual powers ; above the circle of the gods was a su- 
 preme unifying principle, rule, or fate; man, as the head 
 of the physical creation, was divinized, and the divinity 
 was humanity idealized. The religion of the Greeks was 
 anthropomorphic, even to reproducing the baser passions 
 of men in the persons of the gods. But all this helps lit- 
 tle toward a conception of religion in respect of ground or 
 motive; and in the absence of an infallible hierarchy, a 
 dogmatic revelation, and even of systematic treatises on 
 theology, it is not possible to reduce to a simple definition 
 the Greek conception of religion in itself. This is remark- 
 able if one considers how early the Greek mind showed 
 its bent toward synthesis and speculation ; how the Greek 
 poetry is pervaded with the presence of divinity, and 
 Greek philosophy with the ethical sense ; and with what 
 a free and unclouded spirit the Greek religion contem- 
 plated the relations of the gods with men. Perhaps the 
 very natural and human way in which the lives and do- 
 ings of the gods were conceived of, and the childlike sim- 
 plicity with which the gods were honored and served, ren- 
 dered a definition of religion as difficult and as superfluous 
 as a description of light and air. " The most godly man 
 was he who cultivated in the most thorough manner his 
 human powers, and the essential fulfillment of religious 
 duty lay in this, that every man should do to the honor 
 of the divinity what was most in harmony with his own 
 nature." l 
 
 1 Zeller, Die Philosophic der Griechen, erster Theil, vicrte Auflage, 
 Eink'itung, p. 42.
 
 CONFUCIUS. 229 
 
 Then there was the Sai/xwi/, or tutelary deity, a connect- 
 ing link between gods and men, which might be a celes- 
 tial attraction toward the good or a fatalistic impulse to- 
 ward the evil, in either case modifying that freedom of 
 choice which gives to actions their moral quality. And 
 yet, by faith in his attending genius, how gradually did 
 Socrates struggle after the pure and just, the beautiful 
 and good. No reader of the " Phaodo *' can fail to feel how 
 deep and vital is the religious spirit that here endeavors 
 to give a dialectic form to the conceptions of God, the 
 soul, right, duty, intmortality ; and yet the highest mo- 
 rality and the highest philosophy combined in the subject 
 and the framer of this most perfect of the Platonic dia- 
 logues have failed to direct us to the origin and nature 
 of the faith which it fundamentally implies. For the 
 mythology of Greece there is a rich vocabulary ; for its 
 religion, none. 
 
 Turning from the greatest sage of Greece to the older 
 sage of Chipa, we find in the dialogues or analects of 
 Confucius a system of social and political ethics pervaded 
 with the religious spirit, but which gives no distinct con- 
 ception of the nature or the source of religion itself. Cus- 
 toms, ceremonies, proprieties, filial piety, the worship of 
 the spirits of ancestors and of sages, as also of the spirits 
 of the land and of places, these all are enjoined, though 
 in a somewhat formal, perfunctory way, and with no ex- 
 press statement of the principle or the authority upon 
 which their obligation rests. Virtue and righteousness 
 in the outer life are prescribed with a sententious wisdom ; 
 but the ultimate law of righteousness, whether in nature, 
 in reason, or in God, is nowhere clearly enunciated. 
 
 Admirable, indeed, were some of the rules given by 
 Confucius for the conduct of life. " To subdue one's self 
 and return to propriety is perfect virtue ; " " Benevo- 
 lence is to love all men ; " " We should be true to the
 
 230 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 principles of our nature, and the benevolent exercise of 
 them to others ; " " Let the will be set on the path of 
 duty ;" " Let every attainment in what is good be firmly 
 grasped ; " " Let relaxation and enjoyment be found in 
 the polite arts ; " " Let every man consider virtue as 
 what devolves on himself. He may not yield the per- 
 formance of it even to his teacher ; " " The man who, 
 when gain is set before him, thinks of righteousness; who, 
 with danger before him, is prepared to give up his life ; 
 and who does not forget an old agreement, however far 
 back it extends, such a man may be reckoned a complete 
 man ; " " "Virtue is more to man than either water or fire. 
 I have seen men die from treading on water and fire, but 
 I have never seen a man die from treading the course of 
 virtue." When, however, he was asked to define vir- 
 tue, Confucius described it under certain manifestations, 
 without pointing to its inward essence : " To be able to 
 practice five things everywhere under heaven constitutes 
 perfect virtue ; to wit, gravity, generosity of soul, sin- 
 cerity, earnestness, and kindness." Again, he seemed to 
 resolve virtue back into obedience to knowledge. 
 
 "The ancients who wished to exemplify illustrious virtue 
 throughout the empire, first ordered well their own states. 
 Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their 
 families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first culti- 
 vated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they 
 first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they 
 first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sin- 
 cere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their 
 knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investiga- 
 tion of things." 
 
 It is a special honor of Confucius that he applied his 
 teachings to the benefit of mankind at large, and had no 
 esoteric doctrines : " The man of perfect virtue, wishing 
 to be established himself, seeks also to establish others :
 
 ANTICIPATION OF THE GOLDEN RULE. 231 
 
 wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge 
 others." And it is certain that this remarkable sage did 
 anticipate the' " Golden Rule " of Christianity, at least 
 upon its negative side : " What I do not wish men to do 
 to me, I also wish not to do to men." A favorite disci- 
 ple asked, " Is there not one word which may serve as a 
 rule of practice for all one's life ? " Confucius answered, 
 " Is not reciprocity such a word ? What you do not 
 want done to yourself, do not do to others." When, 
 however, we seek for the ultimate principles upon which 
 Confucius founded such lofty precepts of morality, we 
 find a certain vagueness and reserve quite in contrast 
 with the clearness and force of the precepts themselves. 
 Though after his death Confucius was worshiped by his 
 disciples with divine honors, and though he remains to 
 this day a chief object of religious homage to the Chinese 
 nation, he never claimed divinity, and hardly assumed a 
 divine commission and warrant for his teachings. Once, 
 when his life was threatened, he said, " Was not the 
 cause of truth lodged here in me? If Heaven had 
 wished to let this cause of truth perish, then I should not 
 have got such a relation to that cause. While Heaven 
 does not let the cause of truth perish, what can the peo- 
 ple of K'wang do to me ? " Yet he spoke of himself 
 with humility, as the compiler of the wisdom of the an- 
 cients, and not an originator of wisdom or the author of 
 a system. 
 
 That all which Confucius said and did was prompted 
 by a religious sentiment is the impression one receives 
 from an impartial reading of his works. " Man," said 
 he, " has received his nature from Heaven. Conduct in 
 accordance with that nature constitutes what is right and 
 true is a pursuing of the proper path. . . . The path 
 may not for an instant be left. . . . There is nothing 
 more visible than what is secret, and nothing more mani-
 
 232 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 fest than what is minute, and therefore the superior man 
 is watchful over his aloneness." This seems to carry the 
 distinction of right and wrong behind actions to the in- 
 nermost thoughts and feelings, and to find in conscience 
 " the eye of the mind " implanted by Heaven. It is 
 held by some commentators on Confucius that he had no 
 conception of a personal God, but used the term heaven 
 impersonally, to denote the pantheistic principle in the 
 universe; but Professor Legge, 1 whose careful transla- 
 tion and commentary we have followed in the foregoing 
 citations, is of opinion that the term heaven is fitly ex- 
 plained by " the lofty one who is on high." There seems 
 to be internal evidence of this in the saying of Confucius, 
 " He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he 
 can pray." The idea of offense, of prayer, and of such 
 alienation by offense that prayer can no longer avail, im- 
 plies the recognition of a personal being, and the term 
 heaven is but a reverential veil for the name of God. 
 Upon the whole we may gather from Confucius that re- 
 ligion is an inner sense of Tightness or fitness implanted 
 in man by his Creator, and which prompts to reverence 
 toward God and the spirits of sages and of ancestors, to 
 virtue in the conduct of life, and to justice and kindness 
 toward others. 
 
 Pursuing our analysis of the religious idea to a still 
 more remote antiquity, we pass from China to India, 
 from the preceptive philosophy of Confucius to the myth- 
 ological poetry of the Vediis. 2 In Greece were divinities 
 and a worship, but neither sacred books' nor a hierarchy ; 
 in China sacred books of morality, and a hierarchy of 
 
 1 The Life and Teachings of Confucius. By James Leggc, D. D. 
 
 2 Socrates died u. c. 899; Confucius died u. c. 478. The hymns 
 
 of the Rig Veda are the most ancient remains of Indian literature. 
 
 
 
 No authority in Sanskrit assigns to those a date more recent than 
 u. c. 1000, while some scholars carry them back to a period between 
 B. c. 2000 and 2400.
 
 RELIGION OF THE VEDAS. 233 
 
 sages, but in the more ancient times, little of organized 
 worship or of priestly functions ; in India, however, as 
 far back as we can trace her records, institutions, tradi- 
 tions, we find sacred writings, a sacred order, 1 and sacred 
 observances, public and domestic : religion the very warp 
 and woof of her literature and history. To a superficial 
 view the religion of the Vedas might seem a mass of 
 fables worthy of the childhood of the race, the crude 
 polytheism of primitive tribes. But in reality this was 
 preeminently the religion of thought, the spiritual na- 
 ture of man tasking itself with speculations upon the ori- 
 gin of things, and using this visible material universe to 
 personify the spiritual and unseen. Behind the multi- 
 farious array of gods and goddesses, and the sensuous, 
 sometimes grossly material, conceptions under which 
 these are presented, there is a subtle spiritual essence 
 which is " the ONE," supreme, infinite, eternal, absolute. 
 
 " There was then neither non-entity nor entity ; there was no 
 atmosphere, nor the sky which is above. . . . Death was not 
 then, nor immortality ; there was no distinction of day or night. 
 That One breathed calmly, self-supported ; there was nothing 
 different from It [that One] or above It." 2 
 
 This abstract, self-sustained essence is afterwards de- 
 scribed as Mind. " Desire first arose in It, which was 
 the primal germ of mind ; [and which] sages, searching 
 with their intellect, discovered in their heart to be the 
 bond which connects entity with non-entity." 
 
 All the attributes of this mysterious impei'sonal One 
 are ascribed in different hymns to different divinities, 
 which again are clothed with material forms, and are 
 subject to the incidents and the passions of human life. 
 
 1 It is uncertain how old is the origin of four castes, but the 
 priestly office is of great antiquity. 
 
 2 Hymns of the Rig Veda, x. 129. Translated by Muir. Original 
 Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 356.
 
 234 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 Thus, " Purusha himself is this whole [universe], what- 
 ever has been, and whatever shall be. He is also the 
 lord of immoi'tality. . . . This universe was formerly 
 soul only, in the form of Purusha." 1 Yet Purusha was 
 born, and was immolated in sacrifice. Again, " This en- 
 tire [universe] has been created by Brahma." And yet 
 " Brahma the eternal, unchanging, and undecaying, was 
 produced from the ether." 2 These discrepancies are 
 perhaps best harmonized by the supposition that each 
 divinity who is invested with supreme attributes is but 
 another expression for that One who is himself unnam- 
 able ; or all the several divinities are but members of one 
 soul, attributes or manifestations of the eternal, invisible 
 essence. Whether the Vedic hymns mark an upward 
 tendency of the religious feeling from naturism to the- 
 ism, and from polytheism to monotheism, or whether 
 their symbolism, like .the adornments of a cathedral, 
 used at first to body forth the supersensible, had come to 
 supplant spiritual worship by a species of idolatry, can 
 hardly be determined from the internal evidence of the 
 books, or from contemporary monuments or traditions. 
 Rather the subjective and the objective seem here to be 
 combined, to a. degree which transcends the union of the 
 subtleties of the Schoolmen, with the sensuous worship of 
 images in the Middle Ages. In the Vedic religion there 
 is scope for every faculty of the human mind, the dia- 
 lectic, the speculative, the imaginative, the contempla- 
 tive, the observative, and these all struggle together 
 to give expression to the theme which comprehends all 
 thought, all being, all space, all duration. 
 
 " There is no great and no small 
 To the soul that maketh all : 
 And where it cometh, all things are; 
 And it cometh everywhere. " 8 
 
 1 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. i. pp. 9, 25. 
 
 a Ibid. vol. i. pp. 17, 115. R. W. Emerson.
 
 THE RIG VEDA. 235 
 
 Hardly a theory of physics, hardly a speculation of 
 metaphysics, concerning the origin of things, force, 
 motion, heat, evolution, light, spirit, but is anticipated 
 in the Rig Veda. There nature is etherealized and 
 spirit materialized. " The intellectual and the sensible, 
 the ethical and the naturalistic, are there conjoined in 
 the most inartificial and also inseparable way, as kernel 
 and shell in the yet unripe fruit grow indissolubly to- 
 gether." l Nature and Soul are one. The powers of na- 
 ture personified, and by turns invested with all the attri- 
 butes of Deity, or the universal soul manifesting itself 
 in the phenomena of nature, especially in light, the 
 dawn, the sun, the sky, all -pervading, all-renewing, 
 all-beneficent, these worshiped with hymns, prayers, ob- 
 lations, represent the religion of India in the oldest and 
 purest of the Vedas. 
 
 In reading these hymns of more than thirty centuries 
 ago, one is puzzled by the frequent mixture in the same 
 verse of seeming puerility with real profundity. Where 
 we find such metaphysical acumen and such poetic sub- 
 limity as often occur in the Rig Veda, it is fair to pre 
 sume that connected passages, which a literal translation 
 makes meaningless or childish, had a higher meaning, 
 which is veiled from us by some symbol or mystery of 
 language. Yet this very commingling of metaphysical 
 acumen and poetic fervor with a certain childish credu- 
 lity, which characterizes the Rig Veda, is found also in 
 the Hindoos of to-day. Indeed, as these qualities are 
 combined rather than contrasted in those early hymns, 
 do they not show how human nature, at all points, was 
 open to the influence of religion, the philosophic 
 thought, the poetic fancy, equally with the childlike 
 faith ? And if at length materialism shall establish its 
 
 1 O. Pfleiderer, Die Religion, ihr Wesen und ihr Geschichte, vol. 
 ii. p. 82.
 
 236 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 atomic theory of the universe, this vaunted outcome of 
 physical science could but reaffirm an old metaphysical 
 theory of the Indian mind, the development of the uni- 
 verse from motion and heat, "impregnating powers and 
 mighty forces, a self-supporting principle beneath, and 
 energy aloft." 1 If physical science would make^ God 
 " the sum of all the forces of the universe," the Vedic 
 religion made of Nature "a metaphysical deity." 
 
 Recent researches in Babylon have brought to light 
 evidences of a religion there remarkable for simplicity 
 and purity, teaching the unity of God and doctrines 
 concerning sin, forgiveness, and the resurrection of the 
 body, with singular analogies on some points to the He- 
 brew Scriptures. 2 But as there is still some controversy 
 among Assyrian scholars concerning the proximate date 
 of these memorials and their inscriptions, we simply bring 
 them into notice here, and pass to a single additional ex- 
 ample. 
 
 Older than the oldest of the Vedas, and with the pos- 
 sible exception just mentioned, the most ancient landmark 
 between the prehistoric chaos and the recorded course of 
 the .world's history is the religion of Egypt, as read in 
 her temples and monuments, and especially in the " Book 
 of the Dead." If in the liturgy of Egypt, as in that of 
 India, we find a mingling of the puerile and grotesque 
 with the thoughtful and sublime, there is, on the whole, 
 in the faith of Egypt more of mystery, and in her wor- 
 ship more of majesty. In Egypt, as in India, we find in 
 the religious odes a frequent interblending of subjective 
 and objective, of metaphysical conceptions rising to pure 
 monotheism and nature- worship, taking upon them much 
 sooner than in India the symbolic form of idolatry. At 
 the same time we are left in suspense as to the order of 
 
 1 Rig Veda, x. 129. 
 
 2 Sayce's Lectures on Babylonian Literature.
 
 RELIGION IN EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA. 237 
 
 manifestation, whether polytheistic forms sprang from 
 a monotheistic root, 1 or from the broad base of nature- 
 worship religion rose like a pyramid tapering upwards to 
 a single point. But the Egyptian whether he worshiped 
 the sun as god or as a manifestation of the Deity, whether 
 he worshiped Osiris as the vivifying, fructifying potency 
 in nature, or as a type of the ever-living, ever-progressing 
 soul did certainly conceive of a supreme divinity, self- 
 originated, invisible, incorruptible, imperishable, the crea- 
 tor and lord of all. The worship was elaborate and im- 
 posing, and the priesthood almost absolute over domestic 
 life, and even in affairs of state. " The Egyptians," said 
 Herodotus, " are religious to excess, far beyond any other 
 race of men." But that faith can hardly be called a 
 superstition which projected itself beyond the world and 
 time into the regions of spiritual life, and drew thence 
 motives to the noblest conduct of this life, to justice, 
 honesty, temperance, chastity, truth, reverence, piety, 
 kindness, and beneficence. 
 
 It seems a complete collapse to pass from the high 
 plane of religious thought and worship in Egypt and in 
 Ethiopia to the fetichism of inner Africa. Yet even in 
 fetichism is found a belief in supernatural power, in fate 
 and mystery, in the spirits of the dead, and in other spir- 
 its of good and evil ; and in all this the groundwork of a 
 spiritual faith. In attributing to a doll the speech and 
 passions of a human being, the child makes this thing of 
 wax or wood a reflection of the personality which is just 
 developing in its own consciousness ; it projects the spir- 
 itual beyond its inner self to be mated with some other 
 spirit which it feels must be. And so, in the infancy of 
 the race, man makes the stone, the block, the material 
 thing that pleases him or does him harm, a spirit to be 
 
 1 Bunsen held that "all polytheism is based on monotheism." 
 Egypt's Place in Universal History, book v. part I. sec. 2, C.
 
 238 WHAT IS RELIGION* 
 
 conversed with, to be propitiated, or to be shunned. The 
 spirit within him, felt though unseen, reaches forth after 
 the spiritual without, which is felt though it cannot be 
 seen. 
 
 Whether belief in a personal God is so general that it 
 may be regarded as native, or at least normal to the hu- 
 man mind, it does not fall within our present scope to 
 consider. Neither is this the place for a general review 
 of comparative mythology. Our sole aim in analyzing 
 the religions of different races and different periods has 
 been to get at a conception of religion itself at once so 
 fundamental and so comprehensive that, in defining this, 
 we shall fix the place of the religious idea or sentiment in 
 the system of philosophic thought, distinct from forms of 
 worship and dogmas of theology. Thus far it is evident 
 that religion is reverence or homage to an object external 
 to the worshiper, which is looked upon as superior in 
 nature, in character, or in power. That this object should 
 be conceived of as a personal Being, or as one only God, 
 is not essential ; but religion does require an object of 
 faith or worship, a something exterior to the man, which 
 he looks upon with a sentiment of admiration, of loyalty, 
 or of awe, which leads him to acts of homage. The vir- 
 tue which proceeds solely from one's inward impulses, or 
 from self-regulation, with no reference in thought or feel- 
 ing to any external source or motive of obligation, is 
 morality or goodness, but not piety or religion. But, on 
 the one hand, the lowest form of fetichism, having an 
 object of worship, is called a religion ; and, on the other 
 hand, usage allows the term religion to the homage to an 
 ideal, such as nature or humanity in the abstract ; since 
 such an ideal as the commanding motive or power over 
 the soul is to all intents personified or deified as the ob- 
 ject of worship. This application of the term perhaps 
 a little overstrained Mr. Mill has pointed out in the
 
 RELIGION OF COMTE AND MILL. 239 
 
 case of Comte, and also of his own father. Speaking of 
 Comte's homage to collective humanity as the "grand 
 Stre," Mill says : " It may not be consonant to usage to 
 call this a religion ; but the term, so applied, has a mean- 
 ing, and one which is not adequately expressed by any 
 other word. Candid persons of all creeds may be willing 
 to admit, that if a person has an ideal object, his attach- 
 ment and sense of duty towards which are able to control 
 and discipline all his other sentiments and propensities, 
 and prescribe to him a rule of life, that person has a re- 
 ligion." He then argues that, in the majesty of his idea 
 of humanity as the object of reverence and love, and in 
 his golden rule of denying self to live for others, " vivre 
 pour autrui" Comte " had realized the essential con- 
 ditions of a religion." l And in describing his father's 
 character and opinions, Mr. Mill contends that many 
 whose belief is far short of deism may be " truly relig- 
 ious," since " they have that which constitutes the prin- 
 cipal worth of all religions whatever, an ideal concep- 
 tion of a perfect Being, to which they habitually refer as 
 the guide of their conscience." 2 This ideal, though exist- 
 ing purely in thought, is nevertheless projected before the 
 mind as a reality ; and the bare conception of such an 
 existence creates an obligation to conform to this as the 
 standard of life. Hence there enter into religion three 
 elements or conditions more or less pronounced Nature, 
 Man, or God ; and the precedence of one or the other of 
 these elements, in the proportion in which they are com- 
 bined, gives to different religions their distinguishing 
 characteristics. The first of these elements is Nature. 
 Now this term is so used by materialists as to exclude 
 from the categories of science every form of the religious 
 
 1 The Positive Philosophy ofAuguste Comte. By John Stuart Mill, 
 pp. 121-124. Also, Westminster Review, April, 1861. 
 a Autobiography, book 46.
 
 240 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 idea ; hence a strict definition of nature must precede and 
 prepare our definition of religion. 
 
 Going back to the Greek conception of nature, we find TO 
 </>uo-iKoV sharply distinguished from TO rjOiKov and TO AoyiKoV. 
 
 In his " Metaphysics " Aristotle gives a definition of 
 <tW, or nature, which separates it equally from the 
 sphere of mathematical speculations and from that of 
 spiritual powers. 
 
 " Physics are concerned with things that have a principle of 
 motion in themselves ; mathematics speculate on permanent but 
 not transcendental and self-existent things ; and there is another 
 science separate from these two, which treats of that which is 
 immutable and transcendental, if indeed there exists such a sub- 
 stance, as we shall endeavor to show that there does. This 
 transcendental and permanent substance, if it exists at all, must 
 surely be the sphere of the divine, it must be the first and high- 
 est principle. Hence it follows that there are three kinds of 
 speculative science, physics, mathematics, and theology." 1 
 
 When he comes to speak of nature more specifically, 
 in his lectures on physics, Aristotle gives this twofqld 
 definition : " Nature may be said in one way to be the 
 simplest and most deep-lying substratum of matter in 
 things possessing their own principle of motion and 
 change ; in another way it may be called the form and 
 law of such things." 2 And so Bacon, in the second book 
 of the " Novum Organum, in the first aphorism, speaks 
 of forma as natura naturans, and in the thirteenth apho- 
 rism as ipsissima res. 
 
 Passing over from the Greeks to the Latins, we find 
 the equivalent of <v'o-is in natura, from nascor, which the 
 German accurately renders by yeboren warden, not sim- 
 ply born or coming into being, but both origin and gene- 
 
 1 Metaphysics, x. vii. 7. 
 
 8 Nat. Aux, II. i. 8. See Sir Alexander Grant's Ethics of Aris- 
 totle, Essay iv.
 
 MEANING OF NATURE. 241 
 
 sis. Hence natura denotes not only result, but ongoing 
 process, that orderly becoming which comprehends both 
 that which is produced and also the producing agent. 
 In the individual, nature denotes the constitution or the 
 quality of a thing as produced ; and when conceived of 
 collectively or in continuity, nature is the order or course 
 of things, as being and " about-to-be." 
 
 Curiously enough, Lucretius, in his poetical disquisi- 
 tion on " The Nature of Things," has omitted to give a 
 strict definition of nature. Cicero, however, in discoursing 
 of " the nature of the gods," gives these notions of the 
 term : 
 
 " Some think that nature is a certain irrational power, excit- 
 ing in bodies the necessary motions ; others, that it is an intelli- 
 gent power, acting by order and method, designing some end in 
 every cause, and always aiming at that end. . . . And some 
 again, as Epicurus, apply the word nature to everything." 
 
 Cicero himself personifies nature, using this as an equiva- 
 lent for the gods, and speaking of nature as an artificer 
 and an intelligence. 
 
 Nevertheless, in strict usage, nature stands in contrast 
 to both spirit and art. Etymologically, as we have seen, 
 the natura is generation, but in the double sense of that 
 which is born and that which is in course of parturition, 
 the thing or event which, is and is continually becom- 
 ing; Werden and Dasein in perpetual flux and reflux. 
 Hence nature comes to mean the constitution of the 
 world and the universe and the course of things. In 
 German philosophy the term Natur is chiefly used to de- 
 note the world of matter in contrast to the world of 
 spirit or intelligence. How, then, do we form our con- 
 ception of nature ? In strict contemplation of philoso- 
 phy, nature is that established constitution and course of 
 
 1 Cicero, De Deorum Natura, ii. xxxii. 
 16
 
 242 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 things the knowledge of which we gain by observation or 
 experience, and by induction ; whereas that which we 
 know by intuition, or establish by logic, or which the im- 
 agination conceives, lies within another category. Ob- 
 serving certain phenomena in regular sequence, we learn 
 by experience to depend upon their relations, and to look 
 for their repetition ; and thus we ascertain, for example, 
 that it is the nature of fire to burn, and the nature of 
 water to expand with heat and to freeze with cold. Ex- 
 tending the range of such observations and inductions, 
 we find an established course or order of things in gen- 
 eral, and this we term nature. But that which makes 
 the observation, records the experience, classifies the in- 
 duction, call this what we may, whether a spiritual en- 
 tity or the functional activity of the brain, though it 
 may have a nature of its own, is not included within that 
 nature of whose phenomena it thus takes cognizance. 
 From a higher plane of vision the observer might per- 
 haps be comprehended within the scope of nature ; but 
 to him nature is confined within the periphery of things, 
 from which he, at least quoad hoc, is distinguished as 
 a person. Hence in worshiping nature, whether as a 
 whole or in detail, the worshiper sets before him, either 
 in visible form or as a conception, an object separate from 
 himself, to which he renders his homage and devout re- 
 gard. In nature-worship, religion takes its hue from the 
 phases of physical phenomena as these are reflected in 
 the phases of the mind. Sometimes it is the propitiation 
 of terrible and hurtful elements ; again it is the worship 
 of sensuous beauty ; 1 and, with a more advanced culture, 
 it becomes the homage of reason to material laws, and of 
 the imagination to the divinity immanent in the universe 
 as a soul ; now its prevailing sentiment is an awe of phe- 
 
 1 " The Homeric gods spoil no man's full enjoyment of the de- 
 sires of his senses." (Jurtius, History of Greece, bk. i. 64.
 
 HUMANISM. 243 
 
 nomena which suggest mysterious and destructive forces ; 
 and again, this feeling of reverence is modulated in art 
 and worship j to a delight in whatever ministers to taste, 
 beauty, love, as being either a divinity or some divine at- 
 tribute or gift. In a word, the extremes of superstition 
 and naturalism meet in nature as the central object of 
 the religious idea. Religion is, then, either the worship 
 of objects and forces in the material world as themselves 
 divinities, or the symbols of divinities; or it is a ration- 
 alistic atheism, which makes nature, or the universe in 
 its totality, the only power above man ; or again, it is a 
 sentimental, poetic personification of the grand and beau- 
 tiful in the physical universe ; or, it may be, a subtile 
 pantheism, which denies to its divinity personality and 
 independence, and holds the unconscious world-principle 
 bound within the visible universe, as the life-principle is 
 imprisoned within bodily forms. Thus nature-religion, 
 starting from fetichism, runs at last into sheer neuterism, 
 the favorite form of modern pantheism " modern " in 
 a certain freshness of assertion by recent schools of phi- 
 losophy, but not modern as a theory of the universe, 
 since Pliny held that the world and the heaven, or uni- 
 versal ether, which embraces all things in its vast circum- 
 ference, may be regarded as itself a deity, immense, eter- 
 nal, never made, and never to perish ; and the Stoics 
 declared that " God is the world, and the world is God ; 
 God is all matter and all mind." 
 
 Where man is made the chief factor in the world- 
 scheme, the type of religion is Humanism, whether as 
 hero-worship or a divinized selfhood. To that spiritual 
 worship of the invisible and unknown God which the 
 Hellenic races shared with other branches of the Aryan 
 family, and to the individualizing of divine attributes 
 and powers as themselves separate and local divinities, 
 the Greeks added myths of heroes whom they first rever-
 
 244 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 enced as nearer to the gods in gifts and powers, and 
 afterwards worshiped with divine honors. These heroes 
 personified successive acts and periods in the develop- 
 ment of man above nature ; * and yet the deified human- 
 ity of the Greeks was still, in some sort, under bondage 
 to nature through the doctrine of fate, or through that 
 dread of mysterious and destructive forces which over- 
 hangs the religions of paganism. 
 
 By conquering this dread of nature, modern science 
 has ministered to a yet bolder man-worship. A supreme 
 selfhood, an intensified egoism, characterizes much of the 
 rationalism of our time. Humanity and reason alone are 
 divine, and worship is homage to human nature. " In- 
 effable," says Emerson, " is the union of man and God 
 in every act of the soul. The simplest person who in 
 his integrity worships God, becomes God." The highest 
 theology of this school is man divinized. 
 
 Such are the results of an exaggeration either of na- 
 ture or of man, as terms in the scheme of religion. But 
 there is also a conception of God which relegates Him to 
 the sphere of the past or the unknown, as an abstraction 
 or a fate, not personally cognizant of human affairs, not 
 providentially acting in them a deism which postu- 
 lates nothing concerning the Deity but the infinite and 
 the absolute, and ends with making of God an infinite 
 and absolute nothing. " God is a name for our igno- 
 rance." For God is nothing to a man as a conception 
 unless He is conceived of as an objective, substantive 
 reality, possessing personality, will, holiness, and author- 
 ity ; and God is nothing to us as the cause of nature un- 
 less He is the author of nature in a sense which distin- 
 guishes Him from nature, and sets Him above nature as 
 the intelligent and controlling cause of all things. 
 
 1 Thus Heracles, Cadmus, the Argonauts, Danaus, etc. This 
 point is well treated by Curtius, History of Greece, i. 2.
 
 CONSTANCY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA. 245 
 
 Yet this view may be so exaggerated upon the other 
 side, that God becomes the Deus ex machind ; and the 
 miracle or the intervention is ever at hand to supply any 
 defect of observation or of logic upon the facts of nature. 
 And so, paradoxical as it may seem, religion may be fal- 
 sified by introducing into it too much of God ! It is 
 through this tendency to use the name of God as a dog- 
 matic formula, and to resort to the supernatural as an 
 expedient for solving all mysteries in nature, that some 
 theologians have brought religion into a seeming contra- 
 diction of science. 
 
 But our analysis has shown that under all forms of 
 conception and representation the religious idea is con- 
 stantly the same. Religion is an inner sense of obliga- 
 tion in man to an external object of a nature different 
 from his own, which is regarded as superior in nature, 
 position, or power ; which obligation prompts to acts of 
 reverence, devotion, or obedience, with a view to please or 
 to placate its object. Recalling our definition of science, 
 we see how readily religion falls within these limits 
 the systematic summation of all the knowledges pertain- 
 ing to a given subject-matter, and the formulating of 
 these in abstract general conceptions. Physical science 
 purports to concern itself exclusively with things ; but, 
 in reality, science is not concerned directly with things, 
 but with our thoughts of things. Professor Jevons has 
 shown that " scientific method must begin and end with 
 the laws of thought," and we cannot better conclude this 
 reference of religion to the categories of science than by 
 quoting the words with which Jevons concludes the sec- 
 ond edition of his " Principles of Science." 1 
 
 " Among the most unquestionable rules of scientific method is 
 that first law that whatever phenomenon is, is. We must ignore 
 
 1 A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method. By W. Stanley 
 
 Jevons. 1877.
 
 246 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 no existence whatever ; we may variously interpret or explain 
 its meaning and origin ; but if a phenomenon does exist, it de- 
 mands some kind of explanation. If, then, there is to be com- 
 petition for scientific recognition, the world without us must 
 yield to the undoubted existence of the spirit within. Our own 
 hopes and wishes and determinations are the most undoubted 
 phenomena within the sphere of consciousness. If men do act, 
 feel, and live as if they were not merely the brief products of a 
 casual conjunction of atoms, but the instruments of a far-search- 
 ing purpose, are we to record all other phenomena and pass 
 over these? We investigate the instincts of the ant and the 
 bee and the beaver, and discover that they are led by an inscru- 
 table agency to work towards a distant purpose. Let us be 
 faithful to our scientific method, and investigate also those in- 
 stincts of the human mind by which man is led to work as if 
 the approval of a Higher Being were the aim of life."
 
 XL 
 
 CHRIST, THE CHURCH, AND THE CREED. 
 
 (A Letter to a Professor of Philology in Berlin, December 25, 1877.) 
 
 THE interest you so kindly expressed in what I said to 
 you the other day, of the use of the " Apostles' Creed " 
 in the churches of the United States, and the request of 
 several German friends that I would bring this American 
 usage into public notice here, prompt me to address to 
 you, by your courtesy, the following statement of princi- 
 ples and usages concerning confessions of faith, especially 
 among churches of the Congregational order, in America. 
 Let me here explicitly disclaim any thought of entering 
 into the discussion of the " Hossbach case," or of the dif- 
 ferences that now agitate the Evangelical Church of Prus- 
 sia. I know too well the warning of Solomon to him 
 " that meddleth with strife belonging not to him ! " At 
 the same time, all Christian men, of whatever church or 
 country, have a common interest in the preservation of 
 Christian truth and Christian liberty ; and at a moment 
 when the foundations of all belief are assailed by mate- 
 rialism, and the exercise of all liberty is threatened by 
 ultramontanism, he who seeks the unity of the Church in 
 love, above its uniformity in dogma, is not a meddler but 
 a mediator. 
 
 I. In treating of confessions of faith, we must not lose 
 
 O * 
 
 sight of the distinction between that simple confession 
 
 which, according to the New Testament, is necessary to 
 
 * personal salvation, and the formal confessions which may
 
 248 CHRIST, THE CHURCH, AND THE CREED. 
 
 be expedient for ecclesiastical organization. If we inquire 
 what confession the Apostles made the condition of per- 
 sonal salvation, we find this always one and the same : 
 " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
 saved." Upon that confession, Peter, acting in the full 
 inspiration of the Holy Ghost, baptized three thousand 
 on the day of Pentecost. On that confession, Philip bap- 
 tized the eunuch of Ethiopia. On that confession Paul 
 baptized the jailer of Philippi. Jesus himself declared 
 that the substance of all faith was to believe on Him as 
 the Son of God. This was the simple Christian confession 
 upon which whoever should believe it from the heart 
 should be baptized and received into the fellowship of the 
 disciples of Christ. No apostle added anything to this 
 as an article of saving faith. And what the Apostles for- 
 bore to do, no pope, priest, presbytery, council, consistory, 
 or church may presume to do to add anything to the 
 one simple condition of salvation which Christ himself 
 laid down. " As many as received Him, to them gave He 
 power to become the sons of God, even to them that be- 
 lieve on his name." (John i. 12.) All who thus believe, 
 be they Catholic or Protestant, Churchmen or Quak- 
 ers are by Christ's own warrant members of " the body 
 of Christ," are in and of " the communion of saints," 
 whi^h is the one holy and universal Church. No one of 
 these, nor any number of these, can deny to any other 
 such believer his title to fellowship in the communion 
 of saints, and to " an inheritance among all them which 
 are sanctified." Peter, speaking for all the disciples, 
 said, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." 
 And Jesus answered, " Upon this rock will I build my 
 Church ; " not upon Peter as a person ; but taking his 
 name as a symbol, Jesus changed from the masculine 
 name HeVpos to the feminine term Wrpa ; thus clearly 
 meaning, " Upon this confession as a rock, upon this firm
 
 THE USE OF A CREED. 249 
 
 and unchanging confession of me as the Son of God, will 
 I build my Church." With Congrogationalists this con- 
 fession is fundamental to the conception of the Church 
 of Christ as one, as spiritual, as universal and perpetual ; 
 and this is the only confession which is absolute and ex- 
 clusive for personal salvation. 
 
 But Congregational ists recognize the fact, that to give 
 expression to Christian faith, and to facilitate the com- 
 munion of believers and the propagation of the gospel, 
 some visible ecclesiastical organization is requisite ; and 
 the unity and efficiency of such an organization demand 
 that its members shall be in substantial accord in matters 
 of doctrine, of regimen, and of practice. Hence it may 
 be expedient for such an organization that is for a par- 
 ticular church to adopt a formula of faith more in de- 
 tail than the simple confession appointed by Christ and 
 required by the Apostles for baptism into the communion 
 of Christian believers. Where, as in England and in the 
 United States, there is perfect liberty of ecclesiastical or- 
 ganization under the state, Christians of like views and 
 tastes in regard to doctrine and worship will gravitate 
 toward one another, and various churches will arise hav- 
 ing a substantial unity in faith under a diversity of forms. 
 The liberty conceded to particular churches of framing 
 their own confession and liturgy as was done for in- 
 stance by the Evangelical Church of Prussia has been 
 found by experience to conserve purity of doctrine as well, 
 as peace of communion. 
 
 Such particular creeds have also their uses for the defi- 
 nition and explication of Christian doctrine ; but, at this 
 point, care should be taken that these are not substituted 
 for that simple faith in Christ which is the token of sal- 
 vation, nor made damnatory against those who cannot 
 accept their phraseology in detail. Where the attitude 
 of the State toward the Church, or the habit of society,
 
 250 CHRIST, THE CHURCH, AND THE CREED. 
 
 does not favor the organization of separate churches, and 
 especially where membership in the Church is compulsory 
 by law or by custom, there should be the more liberty of 
 dissent within the Church itself. " Him that is weak in 
 the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations." 
 (Rom. xiv. 1.) 
 
 II. The place assigned to a creed in any particular 
 church will be determined largely by the basis upon 
 which that church itself is supposed to stand. If the 
 Church stands upon dogmatic history and tradition as its 
 foundation, then its creed may be taken for organic; but 
 if the Church stands directly upon the New Testament as 
 its organic law, then the creed can be only functional. 
 The foundation of the Church spiritual and universal was 
 laid by Christ himself, and none can add to that nor take 
 away from it. " Other foundation can no man lay than 
 that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." (1 Cor. iii. 11.) 
 But particular churches, being the work of human organ- 
 ization, are not always built directly and solely upon this 
 foundation. Protestant churches profess to be estab- 
 lished upon the New Testament as their fundamental 
 law ; and Luther no doubt set the authority of the Bible 
 above all creeds. But some churches in practice appeal 
 more to dogmatic history than to the Bible as their stand- 
 ard of belief and rule of discipline. Now it is of great 
 moment to our conception of the faith, whether we come 
 at the Bible through a creed, or come at the creed through 
 the Bible. The creed is valuable as formulating the teach- 
 ings of the Bible in a scientific method ; and great impor- 
 tance should be attached to the historical continuity of 
 the faith through eighteen centuries. But a creed almost 
 of necessity assumes the philosophic language of the age 
 in which it is framed ; and it is apt to give emphasis to 
 controversial statements current at the time. Now in 
 theology, as in other sciences, words change their mean-
 
 PRACTICE OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 2ol 
 
 ing -with the progress of thought, and the relative mo- 
 ment of doctrines changes also with each succeeding age. 
 Hence to impose upon the Church a form of confession as 
 obligatory for all ages would be to make of the Church a 
 mere symbolic monument in the stream of Time, as anti- 
 quated for the purposes of a living Christian society as is 
 a Catholic cathedral for the uses of a Protestant congre- 
 gation. Where a church is built upon the New Testa- 
 ment, creeds may well serve as buttresses to the faith ; 
 but it is a sorry spectacle when the Church stands as a 
 decaying shell, the creed projecting only in grotesque 
 gargoyles. 
 
 Thus to stereotype a creed in antiquated forms of ver- 
 bal philosophy is to rob Christianity of that flexibility of 
 adaptation which distinguishes it from all other religions 
 as the religion for mankind, of all races and in all ages. 
 This was clearly seen by the Reformers in separating 
 themselves from the Romish Church, and seen more clear- 
 ly still by John Robinson, the father of the Congrega- 
 tional polity, in separating himself from the Established 
 Church of England. This remarkable man, honored by 
 the University of Leyden for his learning, and revered 
 by his flock for his piety, was pastor of the band of Pil- 
 grims which in the beginning of the seventeenth century 
 went over from England to Holland, and afterwards emi- 
 grated to America. The governor of Plymouth Colony 
 has left on record the parting words of Robinson to the 
 Pilgrims as they set sail from Leyden. " He charged us 
 before God to follow him no farther than he followed 
 Christ ; and if God should reveal anything to us by any 
 other instrument of his, to be ready to receive it as ever 
 we were to receive any truth by his ministry ; for he was 
 very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to 
 break forth out of his holy Word. He took occasion also 
 to bewail the state of the reformed churches, which were
 
 252 CHRIST, THE CHURCH, AND THE CREED. 
 
 come to a period in religion, and would go no farther than 
 the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans 
 could not go beyond what Luther saw; for, whatever 
 part of God's word He had farther revealed to Calvin, 
 they had rather die than embrace it ; and so too the Cal- 
 vinists, they stick where he left them. A misery much 
 to be lamented ; for though they were precious shining 
 lights in their times, yet God had not revealed his whole 
 will to them ; and were they now alive, they would be 
 as ready to receive further light as that they had received. 
 For it is not possible the Christian world should come so 
 lately out of such anti-Christian darkness, and that full 
 perfection of knowledge should break forth at once." 
 
 What noble words are these ! " Truth and Light ; " 
 this is science. "More Truth and Light ; " this is prog- 
 ress. " The Lord will cause to break forth ;" this is faith. 
 "Out of his holy Word ; " this is law and authority. By 
 these tests we may determine what place should be as- 
 signed to any particular creed. 
 
 If we would preserve that political freedom and that 
 freedom of science for which our age has struggled so 
 earnestly, we must be no less jealous for Christian lib- 
 erty, and not suffer an effete patristic philosophy to dog- 
 matize in the Church, against the simple teachings of 
 Christ and the conscientious faith of any who have re- 
 ceived his word. 
 
 III. I come now, in conclusion, to speak of the so-called 
 " Apostles' Creed." That this creed was composed toti- 
 dem verbis by the Apostles, there is no evidence to sat- 
 isfy the critical student of church history. Happily we 
 are able to test the articles of this confession by the writ- 
 ings of the Apostles themselves. .Though in the Aqui- 
 leian Creed, as recorded by Rufinus, we find the articles 
 of the descent into hell, descendit ad inferna, and the 
 resurrection of the flesh, hujus carnis resurrectionem,
 
 THE APOSTLES' CREED. 253 
 
 yet the former rests upon a single doubtful passage (1 
 Peter iii. 19), and the second, the literal rising of the 
 flesh, has not a single text to support it in the New Tes- 
 tament. 1 We have the testimony of Rufinus himself that 
 the clause " He descended into hell " came into the creed 
 at a late period. "Sciendum sane est, quod in ecclesias 
 Romanoo symbolo non habetur additum, Descendit ad in- 
 ferna, sed neque in Orientis ecclesiis habetur hie sermo ; 
 vis tamen verbi eadem videtur esse in eo quod sepultus 
 dicitur." (Rufin. Expos. Symbol!, p. 22.) 
 
 The Episcopal Church in the United States, which in 
 doctrine and worship corresponds to the Established 
 Church of England, does not enforce upon its clergy the 
 reading of this article in the public service of the Church. 
 The Liturgy provides that " any churches may omit the 
 words, He descended into hell, or may, instead of them, 
 use the words, He went into the place of departed spirits, 
 which are considered as words of the same meaning in 
 the creed." Here is a wise example of refraining to en- 
 force through a creed a dogma which finds such doubtful 
 warrant in the writings of the Apostles. 
 
 The " Resurrection of the flesh " is nowhere taught by 
 the Apostles. This article came into the creed as a pro- 
 test against Origen's idealistic view of the resurrection ; 
 yet in the Nicene Creed we do not find this doctrine, but 
 only the expectation of the resurrection of the dead; 
 Trpoo-SoKto/xev avdaraa-iv veKpS>v. The early Christian Fathers 
 were quite as much given to metaphysical speculation as 
 are the theologians of our time, and w r ere no less liable to 
 prejudice and error. They foisted into creeds their met- 
 aphysical definitions of doctrines, and these often framed 
 
 1 In the German this article reads not "body," but "resurrection 
 of tliejlenh ; " and a party in the Prussian Church seek to make this 
 gross literal notion of the rising of the natural Jlesh, in distinction 
 from a bodily form, a test of soundness in the faith !
 
 254 CHRIST, THE CHURCH, AND THE CREED. 
 
 in the heat of controversy. Why then should we enforce 
 as the essential faith of the Church such definitions, no 
 longer tenable in the light of science, and never in the 
 least supported by the Scriptures ? 
 
 In your letter to Superintendent Dr. Bruckner you said 
 with much force that " doctrines about Christ have been 
 substituted for the doctrine of Christ ; " and in like man- 
 ner the so-called Apostles' Creed has been substituted for 
 the creed of the Apostles. 
 
 The New Testament does teach the resurrection as a 
 fundamental doctrine of the Christian system. But what 
 is the resurrection as taught by Christ and the Apostles? 
 
 The word (Morao-i? (resurrection*) occurs in the New 
 Testament as follows: in the Gospels 14 times, in the 
 Acts 11 times, in the Epistles 18 times, in the Revelation 
 twice. In several of these passages it is used simply of the 
 resurrection of Jesus as a fact and a simile. In Matthew 
 xxii. 31, Mark xii. 25, Luke xx. 35, it is the resurrection 
 of the dead, TU>V vfKpw ; in Luke xiv. 14, the resurrection 
 of the just, TWV Si/caiW; in John v. 29 the resurrection of 
 life, &$<: and of condemnation, Kpurews ; and in John xi. 24, 
 25 simply the resurrection at the last day. There is not 
 one solitary case in the New Testament where the res- 
 urrection is spoken of as a resurrection of the flesh, <rap ; 
 nor even of the body, o-Jj/xa ; and this notion is contrary 
 to the teachings of Paul. In his speech on Mars' Hill, 
 and in his defenses of himself at Jerusalem (Acts xvii. 
 32, xxiii. 6, xxiv. 15, 21), Paul speaks expressly of the 
 resurrection of the dead. And in his great argument for 
 the resurrection, 1 Cor. xv., Paul speaks four times of the 
 resurrection of the dead, but not once of the resurrection 
 of the flesh. This indeed he virtually denies. He sup- 
 poses some one to ask, " How are the dead raised up ? 
 and with what body do they come?" And he answers 
 triumphantly, " It is sown a natural body, it is r.tised a
 
 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 255 
 
 spiritual body." This spiritual body, though it shall 
 possess individuality and shall give assurance of personal 
 identity, shall not be the same mortal flesh that was 
 sown, for "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom 
 of God." 
 
 The English version of the Apostles' Creed, " I believe 
 in the resurrection of the Body" is better than the Ger- 
 man reading of the resurrection of the flesh ; but it would 
 be far better to adopt the grand, inspiring phrase of the 
 Nicene Creed, " I look for the Resurrection of the dead, 
 and the Life of the world to come." If our preaching 
 had more of Paul's largeness of thought and breadth of 
 charity, I am confident it would attract to the Church 
 men of intelligence and science, who are now repelled by 
 the narrowness of dogmatic speculation and the anti- 
 quated phraseology of a creed. " The letter killeth, but 
 the Spirit giveth life ; " and " where the Spirit of the 
 Lord is, there is liberty." My training as a Congrega- 
 tionalist has taught me to honor the great lights of the 
 Church in every age; to accept truth from whatever 
 source it may come ; but to acknowledge no authority 
 for Christian doctrine but the New Testament. Hence 
 in seeking comfort concerning the dear departed, and 
 hope for myself in view of death, I do not pin my faith 
 upon any theory of the resurrection as put forth by Ire- 
 nseus, Justin, Tertullian, in the period of Apologetics, but 
 go back to the promise of Jesus and the grand argument 
 of Paul. How the dead are raised up I know not, any 
 more than I know how grass grows, or how God exists. 
 What is that " spiritual body " of which Paul speaks, I 
 can no more conceive than I can conceive how my spirit 
 and body now act as one. But we may rationally be- 
 lieve upon evidence that which we cannot fully explain. 
 This we do constantly in the facts of science, of history, 
 and of daily life. And feeling as sure that Jesus rose
 
 256 CHRIST, THE CHURCH, AND THE CREED. 
 
 from the dead as that he was crucified and buried, I rest 
 upon his own declaration as my all sufficient hope : " This 
 is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which 
 seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlast- 
 ing life ; and I will raise him up at the last day." (John 
 vi. 40.)
 
 XII. 
 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 MATERIALISM AND THEISM TESTED BY THE NATUUE AND THE 
 NEEDS OF MAN. 
 
 (An Address delivered in the American Chapel, Berlin, on Thanksgiving Day, 
 November 25, 1875.) 
 
 THE favor with which you have received two Thanks- 
 giving addresses seemed to bring me under obligation to 
 accept your invitation for a third, in the hope that this 
 might at least serve for the utterance of such sentiments 
 of gratitude, fellowship, and devotion, as to-day are com- 
 mon to us all. With your hearts quickened by the an- 
 ticipations of the coming year, you might naturally ex- 
 pect that the grateful memories of a hundred years would 
 find vent to-da}' in an outburst of patriotic joy. But 
 everything in its season. That debt of gratitude is so 
 great, so high, so deep, that I shall not presume to dis- 
 count it in advance. Let it come with its whole weight 
 to the heart of the whole nation, in the year and the day 
 that Time has marked as one of the most bright and 
 blessed in its calendar. 1 
 
 1 In commemoration of the first century of the existence of the 
 United States as a nation,! propose to give a course of lectures upon 
 the following topics : 
 
 I. The Grounds and Motives of the American Revolution. 
 
 II. The Doctrines of the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 III. The Adoption of the Constitution, Washington as Head of 
 the Nation. 
 
 17
 
 258 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 As in the days of chivalry, he who would be enrolled 
 a knight spent the hours preceding his investiture in acts 
 of devotion in the chapel, so if we would be found worthy 
 to bear aloft the shield of liberty decked with the gar- 
 lands of the century, we should give ourselves the rather 
 now to studies and acts of devotion, which shall lead us 
 to the source of all gratitude, the theme of all praise. 
 
 To Americans no sentiment is more normal or more 
 patriotic than the recognition of God in their history. 
 The words with which Washington opened his first ad- 
 dress to the first Congress assembled under the Constitu- 
 tion have but gained in emphasis with succeeding years. 
 " No people," said he, " can be bound to acknowledge 
 ajnd adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs 
 of men more than the people of the United States. Ev- 
 ery step by which they have advanced to the character 
 of an independent nation seems to have been attended 
 with some token of providential agency ; " and he who 
 had won the independence of the nation, had shaped its 
 Constitution, and was now to order its administration, 
 called upon Congress and the people to join with him, 
 not in patriotic exultation, but in " pious gratitude." 
 
 Two years ago I spoke of the reasons we have for Na- 
 tional Thanksgiving, as Americans residing in a foreign 
 country ; last year, of the Heroic Age of America and 
 our grateful pride in our fathers. The matter of these 
 addresses was objective critical and historical ; but 
 underneath them both was the religious assumption that 
 from whatever point we view our country we are called 
 
 IV. The Nation tested by the Vicissitudes of a Century. 
 
 V. The Nation judged by its own Development and its Services 
 to Mankind. 
 
 VI. The Perils, Duties, and Hopes of the Opening Century. 
 These lectures will be given in Sachxe's Kunstxalon, Tauben- 
 
 Strasse 34, on Monday and Friday evenings, commencing Monday, 
 February 21st, 1876. [These lectures were subsequently printed.]
 
 THEISM OR MATERIALISM, THE ISSUE. 259 
 
 to gratitude, and that this gratitude lias at once its 
 source and its end in the loving care of a living Father. 
 
 Let me now attempt to lead you up to this highest 
 view of thanksgiving, a view in which rest all reasons of 
 thanksgiving for ourselves and our country, and which 
 is equally present and imperative at home and abroad, 
 
 God here, God there, God then and now and always, 
 
 the living Father with his loving care. 
 
 But is God here, there, everywhere ? Is He any- 
 where ? or is He nowhere ? Around this question of a 
 personal God the battle rages most fiercely in the world 
 of modern thought, and if we look to the clouds, as in the 
 battle of the Huns, we there see the ghosts of ancient 
 philosophy still fighting over the same field. A personal 
 God, Creator, Governor, Redeemer, Father, or, matter, 
 force, motion, evolution, and final extinction, this was 
 the issue in the last generation in the sphere of meta- 
 physics, renewed in our time in the sphere of physics, 
 in one word, theism or materialism, the issue which must 
 determine whether thanksgiving is a reasonable virtue or 
 a foolish superstition. 
 
 I need make no apology for handling such a question 
 before an audience having more than an average of 
 thinkers, and more than an average of training in the 
 facts of science and the laws of thought, and especially 
 before minds whose course of study brings them in con- 
 tact with materialism, either tacitly assumed or plausibly 
 presented almost as a synonym of science. But in pro- 
 pounding this theme, I do not propose to make a scien- 
 tific disquisition, nor to enter the field of modern contro- 
 versy ; but taking the materialistic and theistic schemes 
 of the universe as stated by the foremost advocates of 
 each in ancient times, to test them severally in their 
 adaptation to man, as an explication both of himself and 
 of that order of things with which he is inseparably con-
 
 260 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 nected. This test is strictly scientific. Science would 
 not accept as a definition of a thing or a creature a state- 
 ment that failed to include or account for some of its 
 most distinguishing properties ; nor would science record 
 as a law a formula that did not fairly cover all the char- 
 acteristic and undeviating phenomena of the subject-mat- 
 ter. Now, man is a creature of a certain characteristic 
 and undeviating constitution as to its essential elements 
 and their normal manifestation ; he is capable of obser- 
 vation, understanding, reason, imagination, emotion, af- 
 fection, volition, moral judgment, as truly and universally 
 as he is capable of growth, speech, nutrition, and locomo- 
 tion. Also, the order of things with which he stands 
 connected call it nature, the cosmos, the universe 
 addresses itself not only to his bodily senses, but to each 
 and all of these capacities or faculties that go to make up 
 the man. The scenes and sounds that impress his organs 
 of sight and hearing address themselves also to his imagi- 
 nation and taste ; excite within him joy, fear, hope, mem- 
 ory, love; move him to action, or lull him to repose. 
 What an unscientific absurdity, then, is a scheme of the 
 universe which would define its origin, its nature, and its 
 workings simply through its impression upon the phys- 
 ical senses of man, or as known to his observation, and 
 should leave quite out of account the rich and manifold 
 aptitudes of the universe to the nature of man as a being 
 of thought and imagination, of emotion and desire, of 
 affection and will ? How shallow the pretense to science, 
 in a definition of the universe, that should ignore all its 
 relations to the nobler and better part of man. 
 
 It is to this test of the universe as related to man and 
 man as related to the universe, that I propose to submit 
 the schemes of materialism and theism. In the state- 
 ment of these schemes I shall take for each its foremost 
 representative, Lucretius and Paul ; each in his kind the
 
 THE LEARNING OF PAUL. 261 
 
 highest type of man. I take these because, while they 
 can be contemplated apart from the prejudices and pas- 
 sions of contemporary disputants, they are also fairly 
 balanced, and are unsurpassed by any of the whole race 
 of philosophers, be they scientists or sciolists, of to-day. 
 Lucretius and Paul were alike in the rare combination in 
 equal measure of the logical and the imaginative facul- 
 ties ; strong-armed for blows of argument, strong-winged 
 for flights of poetry. They were alike in the love of 
 truth, in the desire to free mankind from superstition 
 and error, and in courage to avow their opinions and 
 obey their convictions. They were alike in seeking the 
 foundation of things, and from this to grasp the infinite, 
 and with thought and fancy to girdle the universe. 
 Nearly contemporary, Lucretius having died barely 
 fifty years before Paul was born, they both grew up 
 amid the culture of the Roman empire in its most brill- 
 iant and classic age. That Lucretius enjoyed this cul- 
 ture, his poem furnishes intrinsic evidence in its mastery 
 at once of Greek philosophy and of Latin verse, which 
 last, indeed, he perfected, as did Shakespeare the English 
 and Goethe the German. 
 
 Paul, too, had the best culture of his time : first, at 
 Antioch, then a foremost seat of learning ; next at Je- 
 rusalem, in the famous school of Gamaliel, where were 
 taught not only the history and laws of Judaism, but 
 philosophy, science, literature from every quarter, espe- 
 cially from the East." l That Paul was a man of intel- 
 lectual rank is evident, not only from the thought and 
 style of his writings, but from his being intrusted at an 
 
 1 In the higher schools of Palestine were taught law, ethics, his- 
 tory, grammar, languages (Coptic, Aramaic, Persian, Median, Latin, 
 Greek), mathematics, astronomy, botany, zoology, etc. See a full 
 account of these schools in the Literary Remains of Emanuel Deutsch, 
 pp. 21-25, and 140.
 
 262 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 early age with high responsibilities by the leaders of his 
 nation ; by his familiarity with Greek philosophy and 
 Greek authors, as shown for instance at Athens and Lys- 
 tra ; and by his " disputing in the school of one Tyran- 
 nus ; " l and that he was of a scholarly habit appears 
 from his message to Timothy, " The cloak that I left at 
 Troas bring with thee, and the books but especially 
 the parchments," 2 which he had written or needed for 
 writing. He could ill afford to lose an outer garment, 
 but, like a German professor, he cared more for books, 
 .and especially his own writings, than for clothes ! 
 
 Of Lucretius it must be said that he not only wrought 
 out the doctrine of materialism with a completeness of 
 statement and profuseness of illustration not attained by 
 any of his predecessors, but also made his system of the 
 universe so comprehensive that modern materialists have 
 added absolutely nothing to his conception, but have 
 simply confirmed at certain points, by observation and 
 experiment, what he had reasoned out from his specula- 
 tive postulates. 8 
 
 1 Acts xix. 9. 2 2 Tim. iv. 33. 
 
 8 Too little is known of the life of Lucretius to enable us to judge 
 how far lie subjected his philosophical theories to experimental tests. 
 His poeui exhibits a perfect acquaintance with the discoveries and 
 opinions of the Greek philosophers, and a minute observance of Na- 
 ture as to her more patent phenomena. But of experimental obser- 
 vation, what the Friar of Messina styled 
 
 " Observation 
 
 Which with experimental seal doth warrant 
 The tenor of my book," 
 
 Lucretius seems to have had little or none. The lack of facility 
 for this makes his system the more wonderful, as a structure of vast 
 and logical consistency, a metaphysical creation to so many parts of 
 which physical observation has now put its "experimental seal." 
 Thus, as to the properties of vacuum Lucretius argues not from ex- 
 periments in an artificial void, but abstractly, from the nature of 
 void " sua quod natura petit." L. ii. 237.
 
 MODERN SCIENCE ANTICIPATED BY LUCRETIUS. 263 
 
 Did Galileo demonstrate that in a vacuum all bodies 
 fall through equal spaces in equal times? Lucretius had 
 already said that " whenever bodies fall through water 
 and thin air, they must quicken their descents in pro- 
 portion to their weights, because the body of water and 
 subtle nature of air cannot retard everything in equal 
 degree, but more readily give way, overpowered by the 
 heavier ; on the other hand, empty void cannot offer re- 
 sistance to anything in any direction at any time, but 
 must, as its nature craves, continually give way ; and for 
 this reason all things must be moved and borne along 
 with equal velocity though of unequal weights through 
 the unresisting void." 1 Has modern astronomy, by the 
 most rigorous test of calculation and of instruments, set- 
 tled upon the nebular hypothesis as the most plausible 
 explanation of the formation of the masses of the planets, 
 their rotation, their rings and satellites, and also of the 
 asteroids and comets ? Lucretius had anticipated this in 
 his conception of minute, innumerable atoms in perpet- 
 ual motion through the realms of space. 2 Do modern 
 physicists boast the discovery that in < nature there is no 
 annihilation, but a perpetual conservation of energy, a 
 correlation of force, and transmutation of form ? Lucre- 
 
 1 " Omnia qua propter debent per inane quietum 
 JEque ponderibus non requis concita ferri." 
 
 De Rerum Natura, \. ii. 230-240. 
 
 For the convenience of readers who may not be able to consult Lu- 
 cretius in the original, in quoting his poem, I have followed through- 
 out (as upon the whole the best) the neat, terse, and accurate prose 
 translation of Mr. Munro, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 third edition. There is also a good French prose translation by 
 Ernest Lavigne, avec une Etude sur la Physique de Lucreee, par 
 Frederic Andre. Among the many editions ot the original, that of 
 Lachman is to be commended. 
 
 2 L. i. 988-1052. " All things are ever going on in ceaseless mo- 
 tion . . . hence many forms must arise." Helmholtz suggests a 
 vortex motion in an incompressible, frictionless liquid.
 
 264 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 tius had already said, " Nature does not annihilate 
 things;" "a thing never returns to nothing, but all 
 things after disruption go back into the first bodies of 
 matter. None of the things, therefore, which seem to be 
 lost is utterly lost, since nature replenishes one thing out 
 of another, and does not suffer anything to be begotten 
 before she has been recruited by the death of some 
 other." 1 And again he speaks of latent forces in things, 
 and of " an imperishable residuum into which all things 
 can be dissolved at their last hour, that there may be a 
 supply of matter for the reproduction of things." 2 Has 
 Darwin coined the phrases " struggle for existence," 
 " natural selection," " survival of the fittest," to account 
 for species and varieties ? Again Lucretius is before- 
 hand in saying, " Not by design did the first-beginnings 
 of things station themselves each in its right place, 
 guided by keen intelligence ; nor did they bargain, sooth 
 to say, what motions each should assume ; but because 
 many in number, and shifting about in many ways 
 throughout the universe, they are driven and tormented 
 by blows during infinite time past, after trying motions 
 and unions of every kind, at length they fall into ar- 
 rangements such as those out of which this our sum of 
 things has been formed." 3 
 
 Above all, the fundamental conception of Lucretius 
 that the atom is the unit of structure in all bodies is in 
 part confirmed by Dalton's discovery of the law of mul- 
 tiple proportions, 4 and by other recent discoveries in 
 
 1 " Hue acccdit uti quicque in sua corpora rursum, 
 Dissoluat natura neque ad nilum interemat res 
 
 Quando alid ex alio reficit natura, ncc ullam 
 
 Hem gigni patitur, nisi morte adiuta aliena." 
 
 2 L. i. 543-548. L. i. 215-265. 
 
 8 L. i. 1021-1027. " Omne genus mottis et coetus experiundo." 
 
 * This law, as bearing upon (he atomic theory, may be thus stated :
 
 HIS CONCEPTION OF THE ATOM. 265 
 
 chemistry and physics ; and should we accept also his 
 doctrine concerning body and void, I see not how there 
 would remain anything in the material universe beyond 
 the original ken of this poet-philosopher, nor anything 
 for science to do but to verify by observation his meta- 
 physical outline of nature and fill up its details. True, 
 if we take what he calls " the inane " for absolute vac- 
 uum, some scientists would be at issue with Lucretius 
 with their doctrine of a " luminiferous ether " filling all 
 space and trembling with waves of light what Roscoe 
 calls an " elastic medium," l and Tyndall says " though 
 more attenuated than any known gas, resembles jelly 
 rather than air." 2 But Lucretius seems to mean by the 
 
 Each atom is a definite mass of matter, having a definite weight, and 
 all atoms of the same substance have the same size and weight. 
 Hence " when an atom of iron unites with an atom of sulphur to 
 form a molecule of sulphide of iron, the union takes place in the 
 proportion by weight of 5G to 32. When two atoms of hydrogen 
 combine with one atom of oxygen to form a molecule of water, since 
 each atom of oxygen weighs sixteen times as much as an atom of hy- 
 drogen, the two substances must combine in the proportion of 2: 16 
 or 1 : 8. Further, the proportions of the different elementary sub- 
 stances which unite to form the various known compounds are so re- 
 lated that it is possible to find for each element a number, such that, 
 in regard to the several numbers, it may be said that the elements 
 always combine in the proportion by weight of these numbers or of 
 some simple multiples of these numbers." See The Ne>c Chemis- 
 try, by Prof. J. P. Cooke, chap. v. Many chemists, though not all, 
 accept the atomic theory as the best solution of this law of multiple 
 proportions. To our estimate of Lucretius, the variation of meaning 
 in the terms molecule and atom, as used in chemistry and in physics, 
 is of no practical importance. 
 
 1 " Light is due to the undulations of the elastic medium pervading 
 all space to which physicists have given the name of luminiferous 
 ether." Roscoe on Spectrum Analysis, p. 9. 
 
 2 Fragments of Science, Essay I. " The Constitution of Nature." 
 Reprinted from Fortnightly Review, vol. iii. p. 129. 
 
 Though this theory of a luminiferous ether seems to account satis- 
 factorily for all the phenomena of light, there remain eminent phys-
 
 266 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 inane, space in which there is no appreciable matter ; as 
 he expressly says " if it shall be intangible and unable 
 to hinder anything from passing through it on any side, 
 this you are to know will be that which we call empty 
 void." l This seems neither more nor less than what 
 philosophers have surmised, but not demonstrated, under 
 the name of ether. 
 
 Tennyson has finely phrased Lucretius' doctrine of the 
 void as the abode of the gods : 
 
 " The lucid interspace of world and world, 
 Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind, 
 Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, 
 Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, 
 Nor sound of human sorrow mounts, to mar 
 Their sacred everlasting calm." 
 
 We must pause here a moment to observe that, how- 
 ever in fact the universe was or is made, it was not first 
 constructed by the materialists of our day ; and if these 
 
 icists who reject it or hold themselves in suspense concerning it. The 
 path of Encke's comet as observed through the great equatorial at 
 Washington, seems to confirm von Asten's view that all the move- 
 ments of this body could be accounted for by the disturbing attrac- 
 tions of the planets, without supposing a retarding iniluence from an 
 ethereal medium. The existence of such a medium is still an open 
 question. 
 
 Professor Challis, of Cambridge, regards the universe as made up 
 of atoms and ether. " The atoms are spheres, unalterable in mag- 
 nitude, and endowed with inertia, but with no other property what- 
 ever. The ether is a perfect fluid, endowed with inertia, and exert- 
 ing a pressure proportional to its density. It is truly continuous (and 
 therefore does not consist of atoms), and it fills up all the interstices 
 of the atoms." Essay on the Mathematical Principles of Phyx'n-s. 
 See Nature, vol. viii. p. 279. This ether of Challis is a modification 
 of the void of Lucretius. See again Helmholtz's incompressible fric- 
 tionless fluid. 
 
 1 " Sin intactile erit, nulla de parte quod ullam 
 Rein prohibere queat per se transire meantem, 
 Scilicet, hoc id erit, vacuum quod inane vocamus." 
 
 L.i. 437-440.
 
 OTHER ANTICIPATIONS OF MODERN SC FENCE. 2G7 
 
 gentlemen were better versed in the history of that phi- 
 losophy which some of them affect to despise, they might 
 grow wiser, if not more modest, in presence of the gn-at 
 masters of thought, whose shadows they are. For here 
 observe in Lucretius, that it was thinking, and not seeing, 
 that first penetrated the arcana of the universe. That 
 Lucretius was familiar with the observations as well as 
 the speculations of foregoing philosophers is evident ; 1 
 but his own theory of the universe, now confirmed at so 
 many points by experiment, is a marvel of the deductive 
 method. To the examples already given of his anticipa- 
 tion of modern discoveries I add two that alone should 
 make him immortal among thinkers. Lucretius held that 
 atoms " are of solid singleness," but that bodies as we see 
 them are made up of atoms and void, and are solid or 
 rare according to the proportions of body and void. This 
 he illustrates by comparing a ball of wool with a lump of 
 lead. Take now the beautiful experiment of packing the 
 same globe with three kinds of vapor. A glass globe, 
 with a capacity of one cubic foot, and containing one cu- 
 bic inch of water, is exhausted of air, and then heated to 
 the boiling point ; the water all evaporates, and the globe 
 is filled with steam. If more water be added, the same 
 temperature being kept up, not a particle of this will 
 evaporate: but if alcohol is introduced, " this immedi- 
 ately evaporates, and just as much alcohol-vapor will form 
 as if no steam were present. The globe is filled with 
 aqueous-vapor and alcohol-vapor at one and the same 
 time, each acting, in all respects, as if it occupied the 
 space alone. If now we add a quantity of ether, we shall 
 have the same phenomena repeated ; the ether will ex- 
 pand, and fill the space with its vapor, and the globe will 
 hold just as much ether-vapor as if neither of the other 
 two were present. There is not here a chemical union 
 1 See note, p. 262.
 
 268 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 between the several vapors, and we cannot in any sense 
 regard the space as filled with a compound of the three. 
 We can give no satisfactory explanation of these phenom- 
 ena except on the assumption that each substance is an 
 aggregate of particles, or units, which, by the action of 
 heat, become widely separated from each other, leaving 
 very large intermolecular spaces, within which the par- 
 ticles of an almost indefinite number of other vapors may 
 find place." 1 But Lucretius was just as sure that such 
 must be the structure of bodies as if he had witnessed a 
 thousand such experiments. One other point in which 
 Lucretius anticipated the inductive and experimental 
 science of modern times has elicited the special admira- 
 tion of Sir William Thomson, himself a great authority 
 upon the structure and properties of atoms. Lucretius, 
 in his first book, vigorously contests the notion that the 
 universe is compounded of four elements, earth, water, 
 air, and fire, and especially the doctrine that fire is the 
 source of all things ; he refers all phenomena to the prop- 
 erties of atoms and their kinetic energy. As, for instance, 
 "there are certain bodies whose clashing motions, order, 
 position, and shapes, produce fires, and which, by a change 
 of order, change the nature of the things." 2 Hence, ac- 
 cording to Sir William, the recent methods of explain- 
 ing heat, light, elasticity, diffusion, electricity, and mag- 
 netism, in gases, liquids, and solids, are "carrying out 
 the grand conception of Lucretius, who admits no subtle 
 ethers, no variety of elements with fiery, or watery, or 
 light, or heavy principles; nor supposes light to be one 
 thing, fire another, electricity a fluid, magnetism a vital 
 principle, but treats all phenomena as mere properties or 
 accidents of simple matter." 3 
 
 1 Cooke's New Chemistry: Lecture I. 
 8 Mulaltique online mutant naturam. L. i. p. 685 seq. 
 * Address of Sir W.Thomson, LL. D., F. R. S., before the Hritish As- 
 ociation, 1871 ; also North British Review on Lucretius, March, 18t>8.
 
 METAPHYSICS NOT PHYSICS TI1E BASIS. 269 
 
 Now, the point I make, and would insist upon, is that 
 these were not lucky guesses or coincidences of Lucretius, 
 but results of the deductive method to which scientific 
 materialism is compelled to do homage by its own discov- 
 eries. But remarkable as are these correspondences of 
 experimental physics and chemistry with the atomic the- 
 ory, the atom itself is simply assumed. It never has been, 
 and never can be brought within the range of the senses. 
 The atomic theory is evidenced by experiments as to 
 atomic weights, volume, heat, and combining capacity, 
 and as to isomerism, and chemical molecules and homo- 
 geneity ; but the theory is still stoutly contested by some, 
 and the very existence of the atom is disputed by others. 1 
 Yet we are called upon to accept the materialistic doc- 
 trine of the universe, and to receive nothing as knowledge 
 which does not come to us through the senses, while for- 
 sooth the foundation of this sensible universe lies utterly 
 beyond the senses, is not at all a physical fact that any 
 one has seen or handled, but a theoretical deduction, an 
 assumption of the mind to explain facts that are seen. 
 Let the atomic theory have all due acceptance as an in- 
 genious and subtile theory, but let it not be thrust upon 
 us as a dogma by a hierarchy of physicists which, in 
 the name of human freedom, is as much to be resisted and 
 detested as an ecclesiastical hierarchy. Most heartily and 
 gratefully do I welcome all facts ascertained by physical 
 science ; nor do I see, upon theistic grounds, any solid 
 objection to the nebular hypothesis, the atomic theory, 
 the doctrine of the correlation of forces, or of natural se- 
 lection. But should all these be established upon the 
 physical basis of experimental observation, I pray men 
 of science to be honest enough to own that it was not 
 
 1 See Essay of S. D. Tillman, Nature, vol. vi. p. 171 ; E. J. Mills 
 in Philosophical Magazine, xliii. p. 112; and Professor B. C. Brodie, 
 Journal of the Chemical Society, London, p. xxi. p. 367.
 
 270 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 physics but metaphysics that first suggested and sought 
 to demonstrate them, each and all. Materialism cannot 
 repudiate its own parentage ; cannot steal the name of 
 Lucretius and scorn his method. Materialism was be- 
 gotten not of nature, but of mind through metaphysics. 
 
 I accept the method of induction as the basis of scien- 
 tific theorizing, but not to the exclusion of logic and im- 
 agination, in one word, of metaphysical speculation. 
 Three hundred years have passed since Bacon gave us 
 the inductive method, and now that method is only be- 
 ginning to give us results as to the physical universe, 
 which, nineteen hundred years ago, Lucretius, poet and 
 metaphysician, evolved from his own brain. In the 
 sphere of physics, speculation may require to be con- 
 firmed by observation, and speculation cannot stand 
 when positively contradicted by observation ; but in the 
 conception of the universe there is a sphere for meta- 
 physics as well as physics, and in which metaphysics may 
 be strong enough and clear enough to assert that the 
 seeming facts of physics are delusions and its deductions 
 fallacies. That which man sees is not all that is, nor all 
 that man knows or dare affirm. 
 
 Goethe, who might have been first among physicists 
 had he not been first among poets, said : " I want to 
 know what it is that impels every several portion of the 
 universe to seek out some other portion, either to rule or 
 to obey it, and qualifies some for the one part and some 
 for the other, according to a law innate in them all and 
 operating like a voluntary choice. But this is precisely 
 the point upon which the most perfect and universal si- 
 lence prevails." 1 And he puts into the mouth of Faust 
 
 1 Conversation with Falk. Hegel quotes a like sentiment from 
 another poet: 
 
 " In's Innere der Natur 
 
 Dringt kein erschaffner Geist,
 
 RELATION OF THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 271 
 
 that which we may take for at once the boast and the 
 confession of his own mind : 
 
 " I feel indeed that I have made the treasure 
 
 Of human thought and knowledge mine in vain, 
 
 And if I now sit down in restful leisure, 
 
 No fount of newer strength is in my brain; 
 
 I am no hair's-breadth more in height, 
 
 Nor nearer to the infinite." * 
 
 TJie knowledge of the Seen does not preclude the exist- 
 ence of the Unseen. It is the failure to admit this simple 
 aphorism that has been the folly of materialists from 
 Lucretius to Haeckel. Lucretius says, " From the senses 
 first has proceeded the knowledge of the true, and the 
 senses cannot be refuted ; " 2 and he asks, " What surer 
 test can we have than the senses whereby to note truth 
 and falsehood to what else shall we appeal?" 3 I 
 answer, to that Something within us that sits in judg- 
 ment upon the senses and determines whether their tes- 
 timony is true or false ; which, for instance, when the 
 eye sees a ghost in the grave-yard, or a lake in the desert, 
 decides that this is but an illusion of the retina, or a 
 disease of the optic nerve. 4 When you look upon the 
 Zu gliicklich, wenn er nur 
 Die aussere Schaale weis't." 
 
 To this Hegel adds the comment, " Rather should it be said, if the 
 essence of Nature is determined by any one as inner, in that very 
 determination he knows only the outer shell." Encyklop&die tier 
 philosophischen Wissenschaften. 140. Die Lelire vom Wesen. 
 1 Bayard Taylor's translation. 
 
 2 " Invenies primis ab sensibus esse creatam 
 Notitiem veri, neque sensus posse refelli." 
 
 L. iv. 475, 476. 
 8 " Quo referemus enim? quid nobis certius ipsis 
 
 Sensibus esse potest, qui vera ac falsa notemus ? " 
 
 L. i. 699, 700. 
 
 4 Thus Macbeth, while intent upon the murder of Duncan, first 
 sees a dagger, then disputes his sight by his touch, then, when his 
 reason recovers from the bewilderment of his imagination, he passes
 
 272 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 clever tricks of the juggler or the medium, you know 
 that you are being cheated, and do not see what you see, 
 nor hear what you hear. You judge your senses at the 
 time, and enjoy the conscious luxury of being hum- 
 bugged, or if misled for the moment by appearances, 
 when you think it over, you berate your senses for hav- 
 ing fooled you. Our senses are not the final and suffi- 
 cient judge upon all fact and truth. This crucial test of 
 Lucretius is unscientific in three particulars. 
 
 I. It would shut out the great body of mankind from 
 that knowledge which is necessary to just convictions 
 and beliefs, and to right action. It is not possible for the 
 body of mankind to make with their own senses those 
 observations of Nature upon which physicists base the 
 doctrine of the world and of life. Hence, in a matter of 
 such high concern as the order of things with which they 
 are related, mankind must put that faith in physicists 
 
 judgment both upon his senses and his fancy, and is himself again. 
 By italicizing a few words of his soliloquy the whole process becomes 
 plain: 
 
 " Is this a dagger, which I see before me, 
 
 The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee; 
 
 I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. 
 
 Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 
 
 To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but 
 
 A dagger of the mind : a. false creation, 
 
 Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? 
 
 I see thee yet, in form as palpable 
 
 As this which now I draw. 
 
 Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, 
 Or else worth all the rest : I SEE thee still : 
 And on thy blade, and dudgeon, gouts of blood, 
 Which was not so before; There 's no such thing : 
 It is the bloody business, which informs 
 Thus to mine eyes." 
 
 Shakespeare made no mistake in making sense thus mislead, and 
 then refuting sense by reason.
 
 UNSCIENTIFIC REASONING. 273 
 
 which for themselves they contest and renounce. When 
 the scientific materialist speaks ex cathedrd there is 
 nothing for the laity but implicit submission to his au- 
 thority. If they venture an opinion, he tells them they 
 have "no knowledge," they may feel or believe but 
 he knoivs. 1 
 
 II. It is unscientific to assume that all things are 
 discernible by the senses. No mortal has yet seen or 
 handled that in the senses which discerns. No atomist 
 has seen or felt an atom. No instrument has yet pierced 
 or measured what lies in spaces that are ever and forever 
 next beyond. 
 
 III. It is unscientific to attempt to account for man 
 and the universe within the narrow range of man's ex- 
 ternal senses, leaving out of view that immeasurable 
 reach and range of faculty by which he knows himself, to 
 be other than a walking, seeing, feeling, eating brute. 
 It was this unscientific limitation of knowledge to the 
 vehicle of the senses that led Lucretius into the fallacy 
 that " there is nothing which you can affirm to be at 
 once separate from all bodies and quite distinct from, 
 void, which would, so to say, account for the discovery of 
 a third nature," 2 that nothing exists or can exist in 
 the universe beside void and bodies. For the constitu- 
 tion of a material universe, it is true that matter and 
 space or body and void are alike essential, and so far as 
 we know are all ; but the question is, whether the mate- 
 rial universe is all ; and that question cannot be settled 
 by purely physical observation upon the nature of bodies 
 or the contents of space. That incessant striving of 
 
 1 See Tyndall's reply to Martineau in Fortnightly Review, Novem- 
 ber, 1875. 
 
 2 " Praeterea nil est quod possis dicere ab onmi 
 Corpore seiunctum secretumque esse ab inani, 
 Quod quasi tertia sit numerp natura'reperta." 
 
 L. i. 430-433. 
 18
 
 274 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 man's nature after something above and beyond, a 
 striving that grows the more impatient with his mastery 
 over nature and his accumulating stores of knowledge ; 
 that mighty unrest in which a Prometheus, a Lucifer, 
 a Faust are but projected types of our inner selves ; the 
 unrest that urges man on to think the unthinkable and 
 to know the unknowable ; that makes poetry, philoso- 
 phy, music, so much higher and worthier representations 
 of humanity than the recorded observation of phenom- 
 ena, what is this but an attestation of that " third 
 tbing " that Lucretius could not feel nor see, but that 
 Paul had attained to when he spoke of " body, soul, and 
 spirit," and found not only a third element in the con- 
 stitution of man and of the universe, but also a " third 
 heaven" in which spirit might abide? 
 
 But it is not my purpose here to discuss the world- 
 scheme of Lucretius or of Paul from a purely physical 
 point of view. As I have said, I would bring each sys- 
 tem before you in the words and with the weight of these 
 great masters, and then leave you to test the materialism 
 of the one and the theism of the other by the needs and 
 aptitudes of your own nature. Lucretius lays it down as 
 his first principle " that nothing is ever gotten out of 
 nothing by divine power." 1 Hence matter, as to its es- 
 sence, or what he terms the " first-beginnings," is eternal 
 and imperishable. Then, as to the forms of things, these 
 are due not to design nor intelligence, but to the conflicts 
 and combinations of atoms through motion and eternal 
 laws, so that everything exists as to its elements, and all 
 things are done, as to the manner of them, " without the 
 hand of the Gods." 2 Taking his illustration from the 
 minute bodies seen floating in a sunbeam in a dark cham- 
 ber, he says : " For the first-beginnings of things move 
 
 1 Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus umquam. L. i. 150. 
 8 L. i. 157 and 1020 seq.
 
 FIRST-BEGINNINGS OF LUCRETIUS. 275 
 
 first of themselves ; next those bodies which form a small 
 aggregate and come nearest so to say to the powers of the 
 first-beginnings are impelled and set in movement by the 
 unseen strokes of those first bodies, and they next in turn 
 stir up bodies which are . a little larger. Thus motion 
 mounts up from the first-beginnings, and step by step 
 issues forth to our senses, so that those bodies also move 
 which we can discern in the sunlight, though it is not 
 clearly seen by what blows they so act." l 
 
 We must now keep in mind how strongly Lucretius in- 
 sists that " from the senses first proceeded the knowledge 
 of the true, and the senses cannot be refuted." Yet he 
 here assumes several successive stages of motion by the 
 impact of bodies before either body or motion becomes 
 cognizable by the senses. That is, for the foundation of 
 his atomic theory he reasons back from the seen to the 
 unseen : the reasoning may be valid, but the existence 
 of the atom is not attested by the senses. Yet nowa- 
 days, to reason from the seen to the unseen, from phe- 
 nomena to cause, from adaptation to intelligence, is for- 
 sooth made an offense in the metaphysician, though 
 Lucretius arrived at his atom by deduction, and then as- 
 sumed the atom as the basis of his materialistic universe ! 
 Next, having inferred the motion of invisible atoms from 
 the perceived motion of visible particles, he makes the 
 bold assumption of self-originated motion for the first-be- 
 ginnings. This is sheer assertion, since his senses had 
 shown him only motion by impact, and neither the senses 
 nor logic could derive from this motion without " blows " 
 to start it. Newton has said that " the properties which 
 we attribute to the least parts of matter must be consis- 
 tent with those of which experiments on sensible bodies 
 have made us cognizant." Now Lucretius admits that 
 
 1 Prima moventur eniin per se prirnordia rerum, etc. B. ii. 133 
 seq.
 
 276 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 all bodies above the " first-beginnings " have the property 
 of inertia, and require to be " set in movement," " im- 
 pelled," " stirred up " by " strokes and blows " from 
 without. But when he reaches his " first-beginnings " 
 he drops inertia and impact, and substitutes self-move- 
 ment, by a most gratuitous assumption. This is the 
 habit of his followers. On the materialistic principle 
 neither observation nor logic can begin the first-begin- 
 ning, nor start the first motion. At this point material- 
 ism begs the whole question. It gives no proof that the 
 universe is automatic. 
 
 But to proceed. From atoms and motion acting under 
 certain conditions, Lucretius produces organic life, so that 
 " whatever things we perceive to have sense are all com- 
 posed of senseless first-beginnings ; " 1 and " Nature is 
 seen to do all things spontaneously of herself, without 
 the meddling of the Gods." 2 Nor does he stop with the 
 material origin of organic life, but teaches that " the na- 
 ture of the mind and soul is bodily " the directing and 
 governing principle of life being physically " no less part 
 of the man than hand and foot and eyes." 3 He even 
 goes so far as to describe the bodies, seeds, or atoms out 
 of which the mind is formed ; namely, that " these are 
 exceedingly small, smooth, and round, and inwoven 
 through the veins and flesh and sinews of the body ; the 
 proofs of which are the great velocity with which the 
 mind moves, and the fact that, at death, the " so-called 
 departure of the soul takes away none of the weight of 
 the body any more than a delicious aroma dispersed in 
 the air reduces the size or weight of the body that emits 
 it." 4 Hence he argues that in death the "cause of de- 
 struction is one and inseparable for both body and soul ; " 
 that the soul driven forth out of the body into the open 
 
 1 L. ii. 865. L. iii. 94-162. 
 
 a L. ii. 1090. * L. iii. 177-230.
 
 FATE OF THE SOUL. 277 
 
 air, " stripped of its covering, not only cannot continue 
 through eternity, but is unable to hold together the 
 smallest fraction of time." " The nature of the mind is 
 mortal ; therefore when the body has died, the soul itself 
 has perished also " as to its individuality ; the chain of 
 self-consciousness is snapped asunder ; and the elements 
 of both body and soul are resolved into other material 
 forms. " Immortal death takes away from both their 
 mortal life." * 
 
 There, is a certain grandeur and beauty in these con- 
 ceptions, and I confess that when first I had mastered 
 Lucretius, I felt a touch of awe at the majesty of a soul 
 thus blindly bowing to its fate, and, Samson-like, dragging 
 down men and gods together in its own destruction. But 
 as I looked upon such a universe, in which destruction is 
 the ever-recurring law, and death alone is immortal, from 
 this background of darkness and despair, I saw rise be- 
 fore me that marvelous vision of Wordsworth : 
 
 " In my mind's eye a temple, like a cloud 
 Slowly surmounting some invidious hill, 
 Rose out of darkness : the bright work stood still ; 
 And might of its own beauty have been proud, 
 But it was fashioned, and to God was vowed 
 By virtues that diffused, in every part, 
 Spirit divine through forms of human art ; 
 Faith had her arch her arch when winds blow loud, 
 Into the consciousness of safety thrilled ; 
 And Love her towers of dread foundation laid 
 Under the grave of things ; Hope had her spire 
 Star-high, and pointing still to something higher ; 
 Trembling I gazed, but beard a voice, it said, 
 llell-gates are powerless Phantoms when we build." 2 
 
 This vision recalls us to the scheme of the universe as 
 set forth by Paul, whom we mate with Lucretius as the 
 greatest master of theistic thought. His foundation prin- 
 
 1 L. iii. 632-867. 2 Miscellaneous Sonnets, xliv.
 
 278 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 ciple is, "Every house is builded by some man, but He 
 that built all things is God." l " Through faith we un- 
 derstand that the worlds were framed by the Word of 
 God ; so that things which are seen were not made of 
 things which do appear." 2 " For the invisible things of 
 Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, be- 
 ing understood by the things that are made, even his 
 eternal power and godhead." 8 Like Lucretius 4 seeking 
 to deliver men from superstition, but by satisfying that 
 feeling of devotion that is imperishable in man, Paul said 
 to the men of Lystra, " We preach unto you, that ye 
 should turn from these vanities unto the living God, 
 which made heaven and earth and the sea, and all things 
 that are therein. He left not himself without witness in 
 that He did good ; He gave us rain from heaven, and 
 fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and glad- 
 ness." 5 . At Athens, this system of Paul came into direct 
 collision with the Epicurean system of Lucretius. The 
 materialists of Athens, with the air of contempt that 
 their followers affect to-day, said, " What will this bab- 
 bler say ? " What does he know of philosophy, of science, 
 of the universe ? And the " babbler," standing in the 
 place where Socrates was judged, with an eloquence that 
 Demosthenes might have envied, addressed himself to 
 their consciousness, to their understanding, to their moral 
 sense, to the dignity of their nature, appealed to their 
 reason, to their own poets, and to that irrepressible, in- 
 satiable yearning of their souls, which, overflowing all 
 boundaries of superstition, and all temples of human art, 
 went forth into the unmeasured void of Lucretius to seek 
 the Unknown. " Ye men of Athens, I perceive that, 
 
 1 Heb. iii. 4. a Heb. ii. 3. 
 
 Rom. i. 20. 
 
 * See note at the end of this article. 
 
 6 Acts xiv. 15-17.
 
 THEISM OF PAUL. 279 
 
 above other peoples, ye are in every way given to relig- 
 ious reverence. For, as I passed through the city, and 
 looked over the objects of your devotion, I found an altar 
 with this inscription, To an Unknown God. Him, 
 therefore, whom ye worship though ye know Him not 
 Him do I set forth to you. God that made the world 
 and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven 
 and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, 
 neither is worshiped with men's hands as though He 
 needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life and breath 
 and all things : and every nation of men all alike of 
 one blood He hath caused to dwell on all the face 
 of the earth, and hath determined the times before ap- 
 pointed and the bounds of their habitation ; that they 
 should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him 
 and find Him, though He be not far from every on*e of 
 us: for in Him we live and move and have our being; 
 as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are 
 also his offspring." 1 
 
 As no materialistic philosopher of modern times has 
 improved upon Lucretius in his conception of the uni- 
 verse, so no theistic thinker has got beyond that " bab- 
 ble " of Paul at Athens ; and the question of to-day is, 
 to which system does your nature answer and which 
 teacher will your mind follow ? It is you then who are 
 to make the argument ; rather, it makes itself, as we ex- 
 hibit these two systems of the universe in the mirror of 
 your own nature. 
 
 I. The first test springs directly out of the day on 
 which and the purpose for which, we have come together. 
 
 1 Acts xvii. 22 seq. It is to be hoped that the new English trans- 
 lation will restore this incomparable speech to its original beauty and 
 force of diction. Paul was an orator, a scholar, and a gentleman, and 
 did not open his speech by insulting his audience, and stirring their 
 prejudices, as represented in the English version.
 
 280 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 In the words of the Proclamation by the President of the 
 United States, " Amid the rich and free enjoyment of all 
 our advantages, we should not forget the source from 
 whence they are derived, and the extent of our obliga- 
 tions to the Father of all our mercies." And therefore, 
 "in accordance with a practice at once wise and beauti- 
 ful," and in sympathy with the millions of our country- 
 men, " we devote this occasion to the humble expression 
 of our thanks to Almighty God for the ceaseless and dis- 
 tinguished benefits bestowed upon us as a nation, and for 
 his mercies and protection during the closing year." But 
 if the theory of Lucretius is true, it should shame you to 
 be here, and should shame me still more to be speaking 
 to you of such a theme. What then should we thank ? 
 the myriad atoms heaving, tossing, driving, mixing, with- 
 out consciousness, without intelligence, without feeling as 
 to whether they shall shape a mountain or a mole, a beast 
 or a man ? If the doctrine of Lucretius is true, this is no 
 place and these are no acts for men of science or men of 
 sense. We are no wiser, no better than the Africans 
 at their fetich worship, though under another name. 
 Thanksgiving is a superstition, and we of all people in 
 the world should be free of superstition. And we are 
 free of it. Our practical reasoning nature does not in- 
 cline toward it. There is no background of superstition 
 in our history, there are no legends, monuments, mythol- 
 ogies, ruins, for superstition to build upon. We have 
 broken the yoke alike of political tradition and of eccle- 
 siastical tyranny. We are free men of free thought. If 
 we brought with us superstitions of our own, we have 
 worked ourselves free of them by travel and study in for- 
 eign lands. Even that one amiable superstition that 
 clings to the unsophisticated American, that his is just 
 about the biggest nation on the planet, he gets ashamed 
 of, when he sees what bigger fools other people can make
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF GRATITUDE. 281 
 
 of themselves by boasting their nation the centre of all 
 wisdom, the source and end of all culture ! 
 
 But if we are sometimes fools we are not hypocrites. 
 No law, no form, no tradition, no regard for opinion com- 
 pels our attendance here to-day. We are here because 
 moved by one of the profoundest, noblest, holiest senti- 
 ments of our nature. In giving thanks to God, we do 
 homage to that which is best and purest within ourselves. 
 Man is as truly made for the exercise of gratitude as for 
 the use of his physical senses. These are no more part 
 of him than that. Nay, to be void of gratitude is worse 
 than to be blind, deaf, or dumb. Mankind have stamped 
 ingratitude as more execrable than any sin or crime. 
 ^Esop has branded it in the fable of the viper stinging 
 him who had warmed it into life. In that tragedy that 
 combines in itself more horrors than all dramas ever writ- 
 ten for the stage, the " Orestes " of Euripides, though 
 the matricide can plead in mitigation that his mother was 
 an adul tress and had murdered his father, and that the 
 god Apollo had commanded him to slay her, yet the con- 
 stant refrain of the chorus as they bewail his crime and 
 of the people as they demand his punishment is, that he 
 did not hold back the dagger when his mother bared to 
 hirn the breasts that had suckled him : and in the tor- 
 ments of his madness, Orestes sees his father beseeching 
 him not to slay her who bore him. 1 
 
 The lowest deeps of his " Inferno," that he was pow- 
 erless with terror to describe, Dante reserved for the in- 
 famy of ingratitude and treason. Shakespeare, holding 
 before us the rent and bloody mantle of Csesar, gives the 
 1 Shakespeare has the same thought in Lear, act i. scene 4 : 
 " Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, 
 
 More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child, 
 
 Than the sea-monster! 
 
 How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is 
 
 To have a thankless child ! "
 
 282 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 final thrill of horror when he points to the wound of 
 Brutus's dagger : 
 
 " This was the, most unkindest cut of all : 
 For when the noble Cscsar saw him stab, 
 Ingratitude, more strong than traitor's arms, 
 Quite vanquished him ; then burst his mighty heart! " 
 
 And the greatest master of English style, South, has 
 said, " In the charge of ingratitude omnia dixeris : it is 
 one great blot upon all mortality : it is all in a word : it 
 says Amen to the black roll of sins : it gives comple- 
 tion and confirmation to them all." 1 How strong in 
 man must be that emotional texture, the rending of 
 which has filled the literature of all ages with sounds of 
 terror and of woe ! And now shall the materialist tell 
 me that I, who, when I receive anything of good feel 
 within me this swelling, bursting heart of gratitude and 
 praise, can find in the universe nothing worthy of myself 
 on which to bestow it ? nothing but atoms where I can 
 see, nothing but void where I cannot see ! Shall I con- 
 sent to be stripped of this prerogative of love, of this 
 ecstasy of grateful praise, and be told that in the uni- 
 verse, amid its myriads of atoms, there is not one atom 
 of intelligence, of love, or good, that thinks or cares for 
 me ? What do I want from atoms like myself, grinding 
 on under the everlasting laws till our brief turn shall 
 come to be crushed and die ? My heart is greater than 
 them all. My heart refuses to be satisfied with a uni- 
 verse that makes its finest, noblest sentiments of no ac- 
 count, because it has nothing for these to rest upon, 
 aye that would put the heart itself into a crucible, and 
 reduce its divinest feelings to fantasies, that would 
 make its love a folly and its gratitude a superstition ! 
 Lucretius may puzzle my brain ; but when I cease to be 
 an automaton and feel myself a man, my heart rebounds 
 1 Vol. i. Sermon 10.
 
 NATURE OF MAN. 283 
 
 at the voice of Paul, and I turn from these materialistic 
 vanities " to the living God, which made heaven and 
 earth and the sea, and all things that are therein, and fills 
 our hearts with food and gladness." My whole nature 
 rests in, and is satisfied with, the thought that " in Him 
 we live and move and have our being ; for we are his 
 offspring." 
 
 Shall I be told that an appeal from human feelings 
 can have no weight against the testimony of physical 
 facts ? I answer, first, that I do not array feelings 
 against facts, but human nature against the narrow and 
 exclusive inference that materialists would make from 
 physical nature. And next, that I am dealing here not 
 with modern materialists of one idea, and that idea an 
 atom, but with the great master of materialism, whose 
 brain was large enough to take in Mankind as well as 
 Nature. Lucretius contemplated the nature of things as 
 related to the conditions of man, and sought to relieve 
 mankind of troubled feelings and fancies by teaching 
 that they and all things are but a congeries of atoms. 
 Hence it is a legitimate criticism upon his system that it 
 fails completely of the end to which he sought to apply 
 it. The materialist teaches that man himself is but a 
 material product of means and agencies purely physical, 
 and that at death he shall be resolved into primitive 
 atoms. He is not at liberty, therefore, to set aside the 
 feelings of man as having no relation to a physical sys- 
 tem, and of no account as matter of knowledge. He is 
 bound to account for the existence of such feelings, and 
 to find some correlation of the universe to man as he is, 
 and knows himself to be. It is a consistent, logical, and 
 also a scientific objection to the materialistic scheme of 
 the universe that it fails utterly to account for or respond 
 to that which is noblest and best in man his esthetic 
 and ethical nature, his spiritual longings and hopes. Far
 
 284 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 be it from me to imply that materialists themselves are 
 wanting in these finer sentiments of our nature. Men 
 are often better than their systems, and a man's feeling 
 may show him better than his opinion or belief. Even 
 while one is employing his intellect to prove that he is 
 of the earth earthy, his moral nature may proclaim his 
 divine origin and his immortal destiny. 1 My argument 
 has to do not with men but with systems ; and I put it 
 to you personally, whether you would consent to stifle 
 your emotions of gratitude for any scientific dogma of 
 materialism, or whether that can be to you a scientific 
 and sufficient explication of the universe, which, by re- 
 ducing it to mere matter and motion, leaves no place nor 
 object for the exercise of a part of your nature so tender, 
 so noble, so true, and so good ? Something in my heart 
 responds to the opening sentence of the proclamation 
 under which we meet to-day, that this custom of public 
 thanksgiving to Almighty God is " as wise as it is beau- 
 tiful." What my aesthetic nature calls for, a universe 
 fit for me to live in, must respond to, through a spirit 
 of intelligence, beauty, and love. 
 
 1 Professor Ernst Haeckel, of Jena, in the first chapter of his His- 
 tory of Creation, makes a proper distinction between scientific mate- 
 rialism and moral or ethical materialism, and justly protests against 
 the imputation of the belief and practice of the latter to those who 
 advocate the former, which he prefers to call Monism. Professor 
 Tyndall and Mr. Proctor likewise take pains to defend themselves 
 against the charge of moral delinquency in their scientific teachings. 
 It is a shame to the advocates of religion that there should be any 
 occasion for such a protest on the part of men of science. All per- 
 sonal imputation should be ruled out of a discussion which is of 
 equal import to science and religion. At the same time it would re- 
 lieve the books and lectures of Tyndall and Proctor of a tiresome 
 element, if these gentlemen could be made to understand that their 
 personal faith or feeling upon subjects of which no one should sus- 
 pect them of "knowledge," is of very little consequence to the gen- 
 eral public.
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF PATRIOTISM. 285 
 
 II. The second test to which I would subject the sys- 
 tems of Lucretius and Paul is the sentiment of patriot- 
 ism. This also grows directly out of the occasion that 
 has brought us together. This is the American Thanks- 
 giving Day ; and our gratitude grows more tender and 
 sacred as we think to-day of that nation of which we are 
 thankful, and in foreign lands oh so thankful to be 
 members ! 
 
 For nothing am I more proud of my country than that 
 she knows what she has to be thankful for; and from 
 President to peasant dares to be thankful before a mate- 
 rialistic and gainsaying age. In America we respect the 
 tenacity with which the German, though naturalized, 
 clings to memories of his Fatherland ; and the devotion 
 with which the Frenchman, refusing to be naturalized, 
 dreams of making his Paradise in la belle France. Even 
 John Chinaman commands a tear of sympathy that he 
 thinks the soil from which he digs his gold not good 
 enough to lay his bones in, but provides that these shall 
 be carried back to the Celestial Kingdom. 
 
 " Breathes there the man with soul so dead 
 Who never to himself hath said, 
 This is my own, my native land 1 " 
 
 But why a soul that itself consists of nothing but 
 atoms, even though " these are exceedingly round and 
 minute," 1 should have such a transcendent passion for 
 coarser bodily atoms round about it, the atoms that com- 
 pose my understanding are not " nimble " 2 enough to 
 discern. Why do we foster with such reverent care the 
 art, the literature, the monuments of a nation, identify 
 ourselves with its past, and transmit this with ourselves 
 to posterity ? Whence the sentiment of national honor, 
 
 1 Lucretius, 1. iii. 179. 
 
 2 Lucretius, 1. iii. 186. See, also, Shakespeare, "nimble spirits," 
 Love's Labor 's Lost, iv. 3.
 
 286 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 pride, humiliation, hope all that goes to make the 
 moral personality of a nation, if we are but atoms 
 brought together by no intelligence, if at death these 
 atoms of our minds, like those of our bodies, are to be 
 used to manure the growth of plants and feed the life 
 of animals ? What place is there, then, for the patriotic 
 and historic sentiment in a nation ? It was with full 
 knowledge of nature and science that Du Bois Raymond 
 declared it absolutely and forever inconceivable that a 
 number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms 
 should be otherwise than indifferent as to their own posi- 
 tion and motion, past, present, or future. It is utterly 
 inconceivable how consciousness should result from their 
 joint action. 1 And it is still more inconceivable how 
 from any number of atomic structures, originated by 
 matter, consisting only of matter, exercising purely ma- 
 terial functions, and then returning to matter, there 
 should arise that continuity of existence which is the 
 national life, that historic consciousness which is the 
 national soul. 2 If we are not the product of intelli- 
 gence, is there aught of intelligence in that which we 
 produce ? is there any more of spirit in the printed word 
 than in the type that print it? anymore of skill in the 
 art of painter and sculptor than in the fortuitous forma- 
 tions of nature? Who or what shall determine this, if 
 mind and soul are bodily ? And what is there worth 
 preserving or transmitting where body, soul, and spirit, 
 nations, lands, and seas are all alike parts in the endless 
 flux and reflux of atoms? 
 
 But on the spiritual system of the universe I can un- 
 derstand how minds can work together for the future, 
 how patriot spirits can labor for posterity, how the 
 thinkers of one generation can cherish the thoughts of 
 
 1 Address at Leipzig, 1872. 
 
 a See, also, Das Leben der Seele, von Professor Dr. M. Lazarus.
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 287 
 
 the past, and add to their heritage for after ages, and do 
 this with the feeling that there is a plan and purpose 
 over nations ; yes, with Paul's doctrine of men and 
 things, I can even rise to his unrivaled utterance of self- 
 sacrificing patriotism, " I could wish that myself were 
 accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen ac- 
 cording to the flesh : Who are Israelites, to whom per- 
 taineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, 
 and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and 
 the promises : Whose are the fathers, and of whom, as 
 concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God 
 blessed forever." J Yet patriotism is not the highest of 
 the moral virtues ; and a domineering antagonism, or a 
 blind Chauvinisme too often abuse its name. 
 
 III. But in harmony with true patriotism, and, in- 
 deed, emerging out of it, is the spirit of philanthropy, 
 regard for mankind as having a community of rights 
 and interests, and also in hopes and destiny. Nowhere 
 in modern literature is this spirit more beautifully pre- 
 sented than by Goethe, in answer to the charge of lack 
 of patriotism during the national movement of 1813- 
 1814. In a conversation with Soret, in 1830, Goethe 
 said, " National hatred is quite a peculiar thing. You 
 will always find that it is strongest and fiercest in the 
 lowest stages of culture. But there is also a stage where 
 it entirely disappears, where one stands to some extent 
 above the nations, and sympathizes with the weal or woe 
 of a neighbor people as with that of one's own. This 
 latter stage of culture suited my nature, and I had con- 
 firmed myself in it long before reaching my sixtieth year." 
 
 To this test of philanthropy I would now submit the 
 systems of Lucretius and Paul. Their relations to this 
 higher culture I can sum up in very few words. Lucre- 
 tius laughed at the superstitions and miseries of man- 
 1 Rom. ix. 1-5.
 
 288 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 kind ; Paul pitied them. Lucretius wrapped himself 
 aloof from the world in pride ; Paul took the whole 
 world to his heart in prayer. The contrast was not 
 merely personal; it lay in the systems, and is radical 
 and irreconcilable. Just what the philosophy of' Lucre- 
 tius on " the nature of things " caused him to think of 
 his fellows, just how it made him feel toward them, him- 
 self has told us in the opening of his second book. 
 
 " It is sweet, when on the great sea the winds trouble 
 its Waters, to behold from land another's deep distress ; 
 not that it is a pleasure and delight that any should be 
 afflicted, but because it is sweet to see from what evils 
 you are yourself exempt. It is sweet, also, to look upon 
 the mighty struggles of war arrayed along the plains 
 without sharing yourself in the danger. But nothing is 
 more welcome than to hold the lofty and serene positions 
 well fortified by the learning of the wise, from which 
 you may look down upon others, and see them wander- 
 ing all abroad and going astray in their search for the 
 path of life, see the contest among them of intellect, the 
 rivalry of birth, the striving night and day with surpass- 
 ing effort to struggle up to the summit of power and be 
 masters of the world. O miserable minds of men ! O 
 blinded breasts ! in what darkness of life, and in how 
 great dangers is passed this term of life whatever its du- 
 ration ! not choose to see that Nature craves for herself 
 no more than this, that pain hold aloof from the body, 
 and she in mind enjoy a feeling of pleasure exempt from 
 care and fear." 1 
 
 To recover ourselves from the shudder that this cold 
 scorn of humanity gives us, we must turn to Paul, a man 
 by nature as proud and fiery as Lucretius, and nursed 
 beyond exception in pride of race and religion, fed by 
 the flattery of teachers and rulers. Yet this " Hebrew 
 1 L. ii. 1-20.
 
 THE DOCTRINES OF PAUL. 
 
 of the Hebrews," this " Pharisee of the Pharisees," this 
 free-born Roman, this petted pupil of Gamaliel, this 
 haughty commissioner of the Sanhedrim, this thinker and 
 orator, who, in the consciousness of his powers and his 
 cause, could refute judges, dispute with philosophers, ad- 
 monish kings, wrote to a little band of converted pagans 
 living in contempt at the capital, " I long to see you, 
 that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift ; I am 
 debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to 
 the wise and to the unwise." 1 Ah ! my friends, noth- 
 ing makes man so great and noble as the thought that 
 he is a child of God, and that all men share this parent- 
 age. It is the nature of an atom to agglomerate ; it is 
 the nature of God to give. Some men have a talent 
 for the infinitely little, and it is well for the world there 
 are such minute investigators, and well for themselves, 
 when one knows how to connect the little with the 
 great. But it is bad for the vision to be always looking 
 through the microscope. There are men who spend 
 their lives in rolling atoms together as the beetle rolls its 
 ball, till they fancy that this ball they have rolled up is 
 the universe, and look down with swelling pride upon 
 the ants that it crushes as it rolls. Development through 
 the struggle for existence by the law of the strongest 
 tends to exclusiveness and selfish pride ; but the posses- 
 sion of gifts bestowed from some higher source of life 
 and power inclines to a generous impartation to others : 
 "Freely ye have received, freely also give." 2 By so 
 much as Paul had received of the wisdom and knowl- 
 edge of God, by so much did he feel himself a debtor 
 alike to the Greek who despised his race, and the barba- 
 rian whom his race .despised. How patient he was of 
 human errors and infirmities, how sympathetic with hu- 
 man sorrows, " showing all meekness unto all men," that 
 
 1 Rom. i. 14. 2 Matt. x. 8. 
 
 19
 
 290 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 he might win them to the truth ; renouncing the honors 
 and ambitions of his youth, working with his own hands, 
 accepting bonds and stripes and imprisonment, that he 
 might deliver men from the superstitions and errors that 
 Lucretius made a mock of, and willing to brave ship- 
 wreck, that he might rescue the struggling mariners that 
 Lucretius laughed at from his complacent footing on the 
 shore. " We were gentle among you," Paul writes to 
 the Thessalonians, " even as a nurse cherisheth her chil- 
 dren ; so being affectionately desirous of you, we were 
 willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of 
 God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear 
 unto us." 1 It has been finely said that Christianity 
 first wakened " an enthusiasm for humanity ; " and un- 
 der the Roman Empire, in days of slavery and caste on 
 the one hand, and conquest and colonization on the 
 other, Paul gave the precepts, " Honor all men ; " " Owe 
 no man anything, but to love one another." 2 The key 
 to this all-embracing philanthropy was given in his 
 speech at Athens : first the feeling of patriotism in the 
 fact that God has assigned to each nation the bounds of 
 its habitation, and furnished it with gifts and opportuni- 
 ties of its own ; and next the feeling of philanthropy in 
 the fact that all these nations thus divinely parceled out 
 are of one origin, children of one Father, their hearts 
 beating with one blood. The highest motive for the 
 love of man is given in the thought that this universe is 
 our Father's house, and we are his offspring. 
 
 IV. To advance a step higher, let us test these two 
 systems of the universe, in their adaptation to collec- 
 tive humanity, for its recovery or relief from the sorest 
 evils with which it has always been oppressed. Though 
 Lucretius mocked at human failures and miseries, in 
 another mood he sought to mitigate them. The latter 
 1 TLess. ii. 7, 8. 2 Rom. xiii. 8.
 
 THE RELIEF OF IIUMAN ILLS. 201 
 
 part of his third book, from v. 870, is devoted to this end. 
 It is almost impossible to condense his argument, or give 
 it fairly in modern forms of speech ; but if you will read 
 it attentively, I think you will agree with me that he 
 here falls quite below himself in the beggarly motives 
 that he presents for a noble and happy life. The sum 
 and substance of it all is, that the troubles and sorrows 
 of men either grow out of their superstitions or are 
 aggravated by these ; that the remedy is to learn the 
 nature of things, and adjust ourselves to the fact that 
 things always were, and always shall be, as they are 
 that living and dying went on for ages before our birth, 
 and shall go on unendingly after our death, when we 
 shall sink into the sleep that knows no waking. He can 
 furnish us nothing higher nor stronger than this, where- 
 with to cope with " the ills that flesh is heir to." This 
 poverty of motive lies in his system. Materialism has 
 invented names and terms enough to fill a lexicon of its 
 own, but among these all you find no such words as re- 
 covery, restoration, redemption, applied to the world and 
 its needs. But how can any system cover humanity, or 
 even touch upon it, that fails of this ? I press this point 
 the more earnestly, as fatal to the materialistic scheme 
 of the universe. Tyndall tries to meet it, or rather to 
 evade it, by constantly asserting that all such questions 
 belong to the feelings, and are therefore outside the do- 
 main of knowledge and of science ; that the difficulties 
 they raise against the conclusions of " pure intellect " are 
 due to the fact that " reason is traversed by the emo- 
 tions." If this were so, by what right does he assign to 
 " pure intellect " this exclusive preeminence over the 
 emotions as a part of the constitution of man to be sat- 
 isfied in the constitution of nature ? He admits that 
 materialism cannot pretend " to be a complete philosophy 
 of the human mind," and that " what is really wanted is
 
 292 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 the lifting power of an ideal element in human life." 
 But shall this " ideal " power be a chimera of the feel- 
 ings, a fantasy of the imagination, with no base of fact 
 or knowledge ? In what respect, then, would it be better 
 than a superstition, which does not " lift up " but de- 
 grade? Haeckel tells us that "scientific materialism 
 positively rejects every belief in the miraculous, and 
 every conception, in whatever form it appears, of super- 
 natural processes. Nowhere in the whole domain of 
 human knowledge does it recognize real metaphysics, but 
 throughout only physics." l And Tyndall says of the 
 power manifested in the universe, " I dare not, save 
 poetically, use the pronoun He regarding it ; I dare not 
 call it a mind ; I refuse to call it even a cause." 2 Thus 
 materialists claim a monopoly of the visible universe, and 
 deny to men the conception of any other. But here is 
 man in the universe, and of it, with most potent agencies 
 of being, with most insatiable desires and needs, to which 
 a materialistic universe utterly fails to respond. That 
 cannot be a scientific account of the universe that is 
 dumb to what is most vital and urgent in the chief known 
 factor of the system man. 
 
 Science has not solved that problem of moral evil that 
 pervades the whole structure of society, and seems to be 
 woven into the very texture of human life. Helpful as 
 science has been, and promises yet to be, in the mitiga- 
 tion of outward forms of evil, and the possible avoidance 
 of some evils in the future, it has not so much as 
 furnished the elements for resolving that evil which the 
 history, the legislation, and the conscience of mankind 
 unite in stamping as moral, and therefore personal and 
 responsible. Science multiplies its inventions, and the 
 genius of destruction seizes upon these to make war more 
 
 1 History of Creation, chap. 1. 
 
 a Fortnightly Review, Nov. 1, 1875.
 
 SCIENCE DOES NOT REMOVE MORAL EVIL. 293 
 
 sweeping, certain and terrible in its woes. Science pur- 
 sues its analysis of nature to the molecules in which she 
 had hidden her subtlest powers, and crime takes ad- 
 vantage of these to invent new means of fraud and 
 murder, and to elude detection. Year by year, scientific 
 associations, congresses for education, social science, law 
 reform, meet for the advancement of mankind in knowl- 
 edge and happiness I rejoice in such gatherings, and 
 meet with them ; year by year they bring forth some- 
 thing for the advantage of society in health, in morals, 
 and in peace ; but their processes are all too slow and too 
 superficial for the healing of the world, that still sins 
 and suffers, and suffers and sins, through the groaning 
 ages. Development has not yet eradicated this root of 
 evil ; natural selection has not yet secured the survival 
 of the fittest in that moral sphere upon which human 
 welfare depends ; social science has not lifted human 
 nature to the point where it no more tends to go astray. 
 Side by side with Bristol associations and Brighton 
 congresses are Whitechapel murders and drunken brutes 
 beating their wives ; so that every upward step in civil- 
 ization seems contrasted by a lower deep of barbarism. 
 The world cries out for redemption ; its soul complains, 
 " I know there are evils without me, which the eternal 
 Strife of atoms has not worn away, and the grinding of 
 the everlasting laws has not reduced to powder, but I 
 find a deeper evil within, for which nature yields no 
 remedy and no recompense." The heart in moments of 
 agony cries out for relief ; but atoms piled mountain 
 high only echo back its wail, and the laws that bind the 
 universe together are walls of adamant to such a cry. In 
 some hour of darkness, of fear, of despair, I lift up my 
 voice, " Hear, O heavens, give ear O earth ! " but the 
 heavens are brass over my head, the earth is iron unde- 
 my feet ; but I now lift my voice to the Father in
 
 294 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 Heaven, and the iron dissolves ; I am on the footstool of 
 prayer ; the gates of brass burst asunder, and heaven 
 and earth commingle in the light and air of love. All 
 laws now bend before the supreme majesty of that law of 
 love, which is God. I find myself in the higher universe 
 of moral laws, and here, for fall is recovery, for sin ia 
 redemption, for death is life. And this system of the 
 universe I feel to be true ; my needs confess it, my heart 
 accepts it, my soul rejoices in it, and emancipated from 
 the nature of things, I rise to the author of things, and 
 join the triumphant doxology of Paul, "of Him, and to 
 Him, and through Him are all things, to whom be glory 
 forever." 
 
 V. We come now to the final test of these systems in 
 their application to that feeling of hope which is native 
 and imperishable in man, and to that cheerful and 
 beneficent working that should realize the hopes of hu- 
 manity. It may fitly characterize the system of Lu- 
 cretius to say, there is no hope in it ; and it was a fitting 
 commentary on such a system that he who framed it, 
 seeing nothing to live for and nothing to hope for, should 
 end his life by his own hand. Not that I would charge 
 the suicide of Lucretius as a crime upon his system or 
 himself. So far from being put under the ban of priestly 
 superstition, or the more mercenary ban of life insurance 
 companies, the suicide should be looked upon with a 
 tender, even sacred pity, as the victim of meutal or moral 
 disease. Yet when Lucretius was so tempted, we find in 
 his system nothing of the hope that could have restrained 
 the hand which had written, " After death there will re- 
 main no self," that is, no conscious personality, and 
 "no one wakes up upon whom the chill cessation of life 
 has once come." l Thus we see this proud master of 
 
 1 " Nee quisqunm expergitus exstat, 
 Frigida quern semel est vital pausa secuta." 
 
 L. iii. 927.
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF HOPE. 295 
 
 the material universe succumbing to the fate that befalls 
 his atoms. 
 
 In that same capital where in the height of his fame 
 Lucretius threw away his life, we see the aged Paul a pris- 
 oner in chains ; of earthly toils, trials, conflicts, griefs, 
 the labor and the weariness of life, he has had as much as 
 any man could experience or bear ; he knows that the 
 end is near ; in the feeble light of his dungeon, his hand 
 chained to the guard ; without, the sentry and the axe of 
 the executioner, he writes these last words to his beloved 
 Timothy : " I am now ready to be offered, and the time 
 of my departure is at hand ; I have fought a good fight, 
 I have finished my course, I have kept the faith ; hence- 
 forth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, 
 which the Lord the righteous judge shall give me at that 
 day, and (O great, loving, magnanimous heart of Paul !) 
 not to me only, but unto all them also that love his ap- 
 pearing. The Lord shall deliver me from every evil 
 work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom ; 
 to whom be glory forever and ever." * Who would not 
 trample worlds of atoms under his feet to live in a uni- 
 verse of such hopes, such issues, such glorious rewards ? 
 Let the man that is within you answer which is the fit- 
 ting universe for you. To all that Lucretius has said of 
 "the nature of things," I oppose the nature of Man. 
 That most self-sacrificing of patriots, gentlest of spirits, 
 purest of men, Joseph Mazzini, once said to me, "These 
 materialistic questions belong to the kitchen of humanity ; 
 it is the soul of humanity that I care for." All that is 
 true in Darwin, Paul not only knew theoretically, but 
 felt within himself. He knew how much of the animal 
 he had inherited from his progenitors that low ma- 
 terialistic untamed " law in his members" working ever 
 toward sin and death but he opposed to this " the law 
 1 2 Tim. iv. 6-9.
 
 296 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 of the spirit of life;" and in the struggle to be a man 
 secured the survival of the fittest, in the triumph of spirit 
 over matter. And from this personal experience, this in 
 ward knowledge of spiritual power, he held up the torch 
 of hope for humanity : " We are saved by hope. The 
 whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together 
 waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God," when 
 even the material creation " shall be delivered from the 
 bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the 
 children of God." * How grand the vista here opened 
 of the future of humanity, and not of man alone, but of 
 all nature, organic and inorganic, through the restitution 
 and perfection of humanity. These notes of hope and 
 triumph go sounding and echoing through the ages, like 
 the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven, that cannot loose its 
 hold upon the theme, but recovers it again and again, 
 and rising from gentlest cadences gathers in volume and 
 majesty, till it might rouse atoms to life and wake the 
 dead ; so comprehensive, so inexhaustible is the 
 thought of Paul concerning man and the order of things 
 with which he is related. 2 But the scheme of Lucretius 
 admits of no expansion. It is shut down within its own 
 horizon : rather it is shut up within a cavern of endless 
 gloom, where those who enter must bid farewell to hope. 
 The scheme of Paul has made peoples wiser and better 
 in the degree that they have accepted it ; it wants but to 
 be accepted in its completeness, to fill the world with light 
 and peace and joy. It carries in itself the future of all 
 poetry and prophecy, and they who teach it are mes- 
 sengers of gladness and joy. But how can the followers 
 
 1 Rom. via. 19-25. 
 
 2 Tyndall seeme puzzled at " the wonderful plasticity of the the- 
 i.tie idea, which enables it to maintain, through many changes, its 
 hold upon superior minds." Has he never, then, read that " in Him 
 was life, and the life was the Uyht of men V "
 
 THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 297 
 
 of Lucretius exult in such a system ? Does the physician 
 put on airs of mirth and exultation when he tells his 
 patient there is no hope ? Yet this message of despair is 
 what the priests of materialism bring from the arcana of 
 nature. One would think they would go forth in sack- 
 cloth and ashes, with inverted torches, to the grave of all 
 things. Against a nature of such origin and end, 1 pit 
 my own manhood, and do not fear the issue. Would I 
 cherish the tender, graceful sentiment of gratitude? then 
 must I follow Paul, and not Lucretius. Would I yield 
 to the noble impulses of patriotism ? then must I follow 
 Paul, and not Lucretius. Would I rise to the magnani- 
 mous heights of philanthropy ? then must I follow Paul, 
 and not Lucretius. Would I help mankind in their sor- 
 rows, deliver them from their superstitions, raise them 
 from their sins? then must I follow Paul, and not Lucre- 
 tius. Would I lift myself and my race to immortal 
 hopes ? then must I drop Lucretius, and follow Paul to 
 the life everlasting. 
 
 That life is mine, by every title of nature and of spirit. 
 If I am the product of Nature's upward striving, I have 
 a right to demand that nature shall stand by her work, 
 and not burlesque her own laws. If her law be " the 
 survival of the fittest," then I, as the fittest, must and 
 will survive. Nature herself cannot reduce me to ob- 
 livion, and give immortality to atoms. With this con- 
 scious spiritual life I defy her power. Whatever its ori- 
 gin, whether struck out as a spark from flint}' atoms, or 
 stolen from heaven, it is mine ; and not rock, chains, 
 nor vulture, not billows, tempest, nor thunderbolt of 
 Jove, not all the powers of nature, death, and hell 
 shall compel me to part with it. Nature may have the 
 atoms that encompass me, but cannot have ME. 1 And if 
 
 1 "You cannot satisfy the human understanding in its demand 
 for logical continuity between molecular processes and the phenom-
 
 298 LUCRETIUS OR PAUL. 
 
 in this visible material universe there is no place where 
 this quickening, yearning, mounting, joying spirit of 
 mine can find its sphere, there is that within me that 
 will find or force its way out of such a universe to one 
 where the fittest do survive. But the way to that sphere 
 of spiritual and immortal powers is already open ; though 
 tracked with tears and blood, made sure and bright for 
 us by the man our brother, who, passing through the 
 gates of death, has gone before Him " who was dead, 
 but is alive forever more, and has the keys of hell and 
 death." 1 " Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the vic- 
 tory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 
 
 ena of consciousness. This is a rock on which materialism must in- 
 evitably split whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of 
 the human mind." Tyndall, Fortniyhtly Reriew, November, 1875. 
 1 Rev. i. 18. 2 1 Cor. xv. 57. 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 278. 
 
 It is the fashion with materialists to ridicule this mode of argu- 
 ment as having no basis of " knowledge." They mislead themselves 
 by assuming (1) that knowledge can only be objective. But when I 
 know a tiling as an object, in the same instant I know the fact that 
 1 know this thing. The knowing the thing requires simultaneously 
 these two other knowledges the knowledge of Me and of My 
 knowing. If any one denies this, I can only apply to him the words 
 of Lucretius (1. iv. 4C8) : " If a man believe that nothing is known, 
 he knows not whether this even can be known, since he admits lie 
 knows nothing. I will therefore decline to argue the case with him 
 who places himself with head where his feet should be." 
 
 Materialists mislead themselves, also, by assuming that a convic- 
 tion based upon sensible phenomena is necessarily and always more 
 certain as a ground of action than a fact of consciousness or a con- 
 clusion or belief that rests upon moral evidence or metaphysical rea- 
 soning. Mankind act upon these latter in ten cases to one of objec- 
 tive knowledge. Professor Tyndall insists upon limiting knowledge 
 and certainty to facts perceived by the senses (Fortnightly Review^ 
 November, 1875); and says: " The Power which I see manifested in 
 the universe I dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun lie regard-
 
 NOTE ON TYNDALL. 299 
 
 ing it; I dare not call it a mind; I refuse to call it even a cause." 
 Now, I have never seen Mr. Tyndall, but should he appear before 
 my eyes at this moment, could I be made a whit more certain of his 
 existence than I already am through his writings ? Moreover, with 
 no disrespect to Mr. Tyndall or his atomic theory, the power which 
 I see manifested in these writings I dare not call a mind ; and, by 
 precisely the same method, the power that I see manifested in Tyn- 
 dall himself I even dare call an intelligent cause. 
 
 Since Professor Tyndall cries out for " knowledge," I beg to di- 
 rect his attention to some knowable things of which one marvels to 
 find him so oblivious. In his Belfast address he tells us that "the 
 merchant had rendered the philosopher possible. ... In those re- 
 gions where the commercial aristocracy of ancient Greece mingled 
 with its eastern neighbors, the sciences were born." Can it be pos- 
 sible that Professor Tyndall does not know what had been accom- 
 plished on the Nile, in mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, applied 
 chemistry, ages before Greece was born, and how the Greek philos- 
 ophers owned their indebtedness to Egypt? Again in the Fort- 
 nightly Review, November, 1875, he speaks of the Mosaic cosmog- 
 ony as finally abandoned. False interpretations of that cosmogony, 
 due to ignorance of Hebrew and to the realistic philosophy, have in- 
 deed been abandoned. But can it be possible Professor Tyndall 
 does not know that ages before geology was dreamed of, Augustine, 
 as a Hebrew 'scholar had said, " These are the ineffable days (dies 
 ineffabiles) of the infinite Jehovah." He also terms them natune, 
 natures, and morce, pauses or delays (De Genesi ad Lileram, 1. ii. c. 14). 
 Surely Mr. Tyndall should know things within the reach of every 
 scholar, and not trust to the guidance of such an authority as Pro- 
 fessor Draper. In teaching others, he should first find out what they 
 already know ; otherwise the originality of his Fog Signals may be 
 disputed-.
 
 XIII. 
 
 FINAL CAUSE ; A CRITIQUE OF THE FAILURE OF 
 PALEY AND THE FALLACY OF HUME. 
 
 (Read before the Victoria Institute, London, in 1879.) 
 
 IN his " History of English Thought in the Eighteenth 
 Century," Mr. Leslie Stephen pays an earnest and im- 
 partial tribute to the two writers of that period, who 
 were the foremost disputants upon the doctrine of a final 
 cause in nature as proving the existence of God, 
 David Hume and William Paley. Of Hume he says : 
 " We have in his pages the ultimate expression of the 
 acutest skepticism of the eighteenth century, the one 
 articulate statement of a philosophical judgment upon 
 the central questions at issue." 1 And again: "Hume's 
 skepticism completes the critical movement of Locke. It 
 marks one of the great turning-points in the history of 
 thought. From his writings we may date the definite 
 abandonment of the philosophical conceptions of the pre- 
 ceding century, leading, in some cases, to an abandon- 
 ment of the great questions as insoluble ; and, in others, 
 to an attempt to solve them by a new method. Hume 
 did not destroy ontology or theology, but he destroyed the 
 old ontology ; and all later thinkers, who have not been 
 content with the mere dead bones of extinct philosophy, 
 have built up their systems upon entirely new lines." 2 
 
 Of Paley Mr. Stephen says : " The natural theology 
 1 Chap. vi. sec. 3. 2 Chap. iii. sec. 43.
 
 LESLIE STEPHEN ON PALEY AND HUME. 801 
 
 lays the basis of his whole system. The book, whatever 
 its philosophical shortcomings, is a marvel of skillful 
 statement. It states, with admirable clearness and in a 
 most attractive form, the argument which has the greatest 
 popular force, and which, duly etherealized, still passes 
 muster with metaphysicians. Considered as the work of 
 a man who had to cram himself for the purpose, it would 
 be difficult to praise its literary merits too highly. The 
 only fault in the book, considered as an instrument of 
 persuasion, is that it is too conclusive. If there were no 
 hidden flaw in the reasoning, it would be impossible to 
 understand, not only how any should resist, but how any 
 one should ever have overlooked, the demonstration." 1 
 
 In the history of polemics there is hardly another in- 
 stance of such collapse of popularity as has befallen the 
 book, the style and method of which Mr. Stephen has 
 here so justly praised. The argument of Paley was re- 
 garded by theologians of his time as invincible ; and his 
 illustrations from nature were so attractive to youth that 
 his " Natural Theology " was adopted as a text-book in 
 colleges. Upon the basis of his famous axiom was built 
 up the series of " Bridgewater Treatises," in which 
 anatomy and physiology, astronomy, geology, and various 
 branches of physics were brought to illustrate and es- 
 tablish the evidence of design in nature. So keen a 
 logician as Archbishop Whately used his acumen to 
 adapt Paley's reasoning to the later discoveries and de- 
 velopments of science ; and so careful a physicist as Dr. 
 Whewell led his " Induction of the Physical Sciences " 
 up to the same conclusion. Yet to the present genera- 
 tion, within less than eighty years from its first appear- 
 ance, Paley's " Natural Theology " is already antiquated 
 as to its once brilliant and conclusive demonstrations, and 
 as an authority is well-nigh obsolete. 
 
 2 Chap. viii. iv. 38.
 
 302 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 Quite otherwise has been the fate of Hume. Mr. 
 Stephen reminds us that " his first book fell dead-born 
 from the press ; few of his successors had a much better 
 fate. The uneducated masses were, of course, beyond 
 his reach ; amongst the educated minority he had but 
 few readers ; and amongst the few readers still fewer 
 who could appreciate his thoughts." 1 Add to this that 
 Hume, though deeming himself a match for the philo- 
 sophers and theologians of his time, had a secret dread of 
 that religious pugnacity in the common people of Scot- 
 land, which is so quickly roused against an assailant of 
 popular beliefs, and therefore kept back, to be published 
 after his death, his " Dialogues on Natural Religion," 
 the book most fitted to provoke that acrimonious criti- 
 cism which insures literary success. Now, however, with- 
 in a century of its first appearance, we find this masterly 
 product of Hume's dialectics still acknowledged as the 
 standard treatise of philosophical skepticism. Scotch 
 philosophers since his day have labored to reform philos- 
 ophy in the light of Hume's criticism ; Kant attempted 
 to refute his skepticism ; John Stuart Mill virtually built 
 upon Hume ; and he has lately been revived in Germany, 
 with the honor of translation and the prestige of au- 
 thority. His fame grows with time. This is due partly 
 to the beauty of Hume's style, and the clearness and 
 depth of his reasoning ; due also to the decline of the- 
 ological asperity, and the growth of a tolerant spirit 
 among various schools of thought ; and due not a little 
 to the tone of audacity, or what he himself styled " a 
 certain boldness of temper," with which Hume assailed 
 convictions which had come to be accepted as axioms 
 both in philosophy and in religion. And I am of opinion 
 also that no small part of the favor which has accrued 
 to Hume is due to the metaphysical fallacies which 
 1 Chap. i. 1.
 
 TWO OBJECTIONS TO PALEY. 303 
 
 have sprung up side by side with the scientific facts 
 which have discredited Paley. The whole history of sci- 
 ence discloses a disposition to metaphysical speculation 
 awakened by each new discovery in physical nature. 
 With every fresh deposit of facts upon the borders of 
 science comes a fresh brood of fallacies upon the adjacent 
 borders of hypothesis ; and the progenitors of these have 
 a natural afiinity for the greatest of skeptics, who was 
 notably the dupe of his own fallacies. This phenomenon 
 of the simultaneous generation of fact and fallacy is it- 
 self worthy of scientific investigation. But it is enough 
 to note it here as showing that the failure of Paley's 
 demonstration of God in nature should not drive us over 
 to Hume's contradiction, which is demonstrably a fallacy. 
 
 Paley's statement of the doctrine of an end in nature 
 was from the first open to these two objections. 
 
 (1.) Instead of formulating a proposition to be proved, 
 or pointing to the sources from which the conviction of 
 its truth arises in the mind, Paley tacitly assumed the 
 thing in question, and wrapped this assumption in a 
 self-repeating phrase which he sought to strengthen by 
 multifarious illustrations. 
 
 (2.) Assuming that design or contrivance exists in the 
 whole field of nature, Paley was betrayed into the use 
 of illustrations, sometimes far-fetched, sometimes super- 
 ficial or lacking confirmation, which wear the appearance 
 of making out a case. 
 
 " There cannot be design without a designer, contriv- 
 ance, without a contriver," was the axiom upon which 
 Paley built up his treatise. He does not seem to have 
 been aware at least, he takes no notice of the fact 
 that Hume had assailed this axiom, and the very illustra- 
 tion of the watch by which Paley so triumphantly asserts 
 it, at the one point at which it might be vulnerable, and 
 if vulnerable, then worthless to Paley's end, namely, that
 
 304 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 the axiom rests solely upon experience, and holds only 
 within the range of possible human action and observa- 
 tion. Though Hume's assertion is a fallacy, yet he had 
 put it so plausibly that Paley could not afford to pass it 
 by ; and by leaving his fundamental premise open to 
 doubt and contradiction, Paley failed to establish the ex- 
 istence of a Supreme Being from traces of design in na- 
 ture, however curious and multiplied. Indeed, he him- 
 self fell into the common fallacy of begging the question 
 in the very statement of it. 
 
 That design implies a designer is as obvious as that 
 thought implies a thinker ; but the materialist denies 
 personality to the thinking substance ; and to apply the 
 term design to every hint of adaptation in nature, in the 
 sense of an intelligence shaping matter to an end, is to 
 assume the existence of God in the very form of prov- 
 ing it. 
 
 It was also an error of Paley that he sought to make 
 out the goodness of the end, as part of the evidence of a 
 supreme contriver ; or at least to show the preponderance 
 of good over evil in apparent ends. In this endeavor he 
 was sometimes so unfortunate as to throw the weight of 
 his illustration into the opposite scale. Thus, in assert- 
 ing that " teeth were made to eat, not to ache," he 
 failed to dispose of the fact that they do ache, as an ob- 
 jection to any ruling design in their structure and com- 
 position. Their aching is not always due to some viola- 
 tion of nature, since wild beasts in our zoological gar- 
 dens sometime require dental surgery. It will not quiet 
 the jumping tooth-ache, nor ease a neuralgic nerve, to as- 
 sure the sufferer that teeth and nerves were not made for 
 the purpose of giving pain. Indeed, it is quite a popular 
 fancy that nerves are demons of evil. The whence and the 
 wherefore of evil must be taken into view in forming an 
 estimate of the end for which a thing was made, of unity
 
 PALEY'S VIEWS RE-STATED. 305 
 
 and wisdom in its design, or of any purpose whatever in 
 its existence. But the question of a final cause in things 
 is not to be set aside by some single characteristic or 
 quality of a thing which seems to mark it as useless or 
 even injurious. 
 
 That every event argues a cause is an intuitive, not an 
 experimental, conviction of the human mind. Whether 
 the cause is intelligent and purposing, or is only a mate- 
 rial or an accidental antecedent, is to be determined by 
 observation and analysis of the thing itself in its place 
 and its relations. Moral qualities or purposes, suggested 
 by certain properties of a thing as inhering in the cause, 
 if cause there be, do not necessarily enter into the 
 proof of the existence of an intelligent cause, which 
 might be either good or evil. Stripping Paley's state- 
 ment of its verbal assumptions, and setting aside such of 
 his illustrations as are crude or antiquated, his funda- 
 mental argument for the Creator as evinced by the traces 
 of design in nature is not only tenable in face of the more 
 recent discoveries of science, but is illustrated and con. 
 firmed by a far richer array of natural phenomena than 
 Paley had ever imagined. We may improve, however } 
 upon his statement of the doctrine of final causes as 
 follows: The perceived collocation or combination of 
 phenomena or forces in nature toward a given result, 
 produces in the mind the immediate conviction of an 
 intelligent purpose behind such phenomena and forces. 
 This statement, while it retains the essence of Paley's 
 axiom, avoids his logical vice of including in the defini- 
 tion the very term to be defined. A fixed series of 
 events may be mechanical ; but the combination of sev- 
 eral independent series of phenomena toward a distinct- 
 ive result must be referred to Thought purposing that 
 event. Nature with all her forces and material has never 
 produced a single thing that answers to the idea of an 
 
 20
 
 306 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 invention. This is always the product of human intelli- 
 gence applied to the powers and substances of nature. 
 The contrivance seen in a machine instantly refers us to 
 .the mind as its cause. Thus, electricity is a power every- 
 where present in nature ; yet electricity has never pro- 
 duced an electrical machine, an electric telegraph or tel- 
 ephone, or an electric light. But though nature cannot 
 turn her own powers into a practical machine, and the 
 least hint of an adaptation of these powers to the pur- 
 poses of man suggests the intervention of the human in- 
 tellect, yet the natural powers which man subordinates 
 to his intelligent uses remain greater and more wonder- 
 ful than the inventions to which they are applied. Are 
 then the powers and substances of nature which stand, as 
 it were, waiting for the touch of the inventor's genius to 
 make them 'available wherever mind shall lead the way, 
 themselves mere things of chance or products of material 
 law with no intent in their existence ? When made 
 available do they proclaim intelligence, and yet is the 
 marvelous property of availability only a meaningless 
 phenomenon of matter? Hitherto the phraseology of 
 the doctrine of design, and the illustrations of the doc- 
 trine, have had a certain coarseness of fibre, suggesting 
 a mechanical universe turned out by what Cowper styles 
 " the great Artificer of all that moves," and needing the 
 constant oversight of the Maker to keep it in working 
 order. The sublime personifications of the creation in 
 the Bible have been literalized by our matter-of-fact phi- 
 losophy, as though the differential calculus could measure 
 the astronomy of Job or of the 19th Psalm. But sci- 
 ence, by bringing us into nearer contact with what Tyn- 
 dall has called the " subsensible world," has at once en- 
 larged the sphere of our vision, and heightened its 
 powers. Teleology addresses itself to some finer sense 
 within. It widens its circle without changing its centre.
 
 BAEREXBACII AND ZELLER. :','i7 
 
 The mechanism of the universe drops away, and we find 
 or feel the Thought of the Infinite Mind projecting itself 
 in the actual through finite forms, and combining and 
 comprehending the whole in an ever-unfolding purpose. 
 Hence, we may say, with Von Baerenbach, " Darwin has 
 not rendered teleology impossible under any and every 
 form, but has conducted philosophical science to- another 
 and the true conception of design." l True, Von Bae- 
 renbach would find the solution of the universe in Mo- 
 nism ; but his testimony, from a scientific point of view, 
 shows that the question of causality will not be put down, 
 and that, after all sciences, nature persistently demands 
 the wherefore of her own phenomena. 
 
 Zeller, of Berlin, in his paper read before the Acad- 
 emy of Science, " upon the Teleological and the Mechan- 
 ical Interpretations of Nature in their application to the 
 Universe," seeks to combine the necessary in nature with 
 the purposive in reason. " Since, on all sides, the inves- 
 tigation of nature, so far as it has been carried, shows us 
 a firm linking together of cause and effect, we must as- 
 sume from the coherence of all, phenomena that the same 
 holds also of those which have not yet been investigated 
 and explained ; that everything in the world proceeds 
 from its natural cause, according to natural laws ; and 
 therefore nothing can here be brought in of the interven- 
 tion of an active purpose bearing upon this fixed result, 
 distinct from natural necessity. Yet we cannot consider 
 these natural causes as barely mechanical ; for their ef- 
 fects reach far beyond that which can be explained by 
 motion in space, or resolved into such motion. And if 
 from these same causes along with inorganic nature, life 
 also, and along with irrational life also conscious and 
 rational existence have appeared, not as it were by mere 
 
 1 Gedankcn ueber die Teleologie in der Natur, von Friedrich von 
 Baerenbach. Berlin, 1878, p. 5.
 
 308 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 accident in course of time, but necessarily by virtue of 
 their natures, do proceed and ever have proceeded ; if 
 the world never can have been without life and intelli- 
 gence, since the same causes which now produce life and 
 reason must already from eternity have worked, and 
 therefore have produced these continually, so must we 
 call the world, as a whole, in spite of the natural neces- 
 sity which rules in it, indeed, rather on account of this, 
 at the same time the work of absolute reason. That this 
 reason should have been guided in its action by proposed 
 ends is indeed not necessary. . . . 
 
 " Yet, inasmuch as it is one and the same cause from 
 which in the last analysis all effects spring, inasmuch as 
 all the laws of nature only show the art and manner in 
 which these causes, following the necessity of their exist- 
 ence, work toward many sides, so from the totality of 
 these operations must necessarily proceed a world harmo- 
 nious in .all its parts, a world complete in its way, and 
 arranged with absolute conformity to purpose." 1 
 
 A point of still higher moment to the argument Zeller 
 has quite overlooked, namely, that in no case could the 
 mechanical theory be adequate to the solution of the uni- 
 verse. Motion, indeed, might account for all the phe- 
 nomena of physics, with the exception of motion itself. 
 But, after all the facts of mechanism are disposed of, 
 there remain the facts and forces of vitalism, which re- 
 fuse to be included under mechanism. Motion cannot 
 originate life, neither can chemistry create or evolve life. 
 We may analyze life into all its constituents and condi- 
 
 1 It is a groundless assumption of Zeller that because life is it lias 
 always been; an assumption not warranted by the law of scientific 
 induction. The rule of experience by which physicists would bind 
 us forbids such a generalization upon phenomena of which there is 
 no possible record. This is not scientific testimony, but speculative 
 hypothesis.
 
 IIUMK'S POSITIONS. 309 
 
 tions, but cannot detect the life itself. We may com- 
 bine all the constituents and conditions of life, but can- 
 not produce life. The living organism \ve know, but the 
 mind demands the cause of life-organization, and sees 
 that this does not lie in mechanism. The mechanism of 
 the universe may be concluded within motion and the 
 correlation of forces ; but force is a quality, not a cause, 
 and motion demands an origin, and beyond both lie the 
 immensities of vitalism and of intelligence. 
 
 Hume attempted to break down the teleological argu- 
 ment by assailing the conception of cause and effect. He 
 maintained that "order, arrangement, or the adjustment 
 of final causes, is not of itself any proof of design, but 
 only so far as it has been experienced to proceed from 
 that principle," and also, that our experience of design, 
 from the operations of the human mind, cannot furnish 
 ,an analogy for "the great universal mind," which we 
 thus assume to be the author of nature. Hence, accord- 
 ing to Huuie, before we could infer " that an orderly 
 universe must arise from some thought and act, like the 
 human, it were requisite that we had experience of the 
 origin of worlds, and it is not sufficient, surely, that we 
 have seen ships and cities arise from human art and con- 
 trivance." 
 
 The first position of Hume is refuted Jby the universal 
 consciousness of mankind. Most assuredly our belief 
 that any particular object in which we perceive the adap- 
 tation of parts to each other, or of means to an end, must 
 have proceeded from a designing cause, does not arise 
 out of a previous observation or experience of such cause 
 in objects of the same class. Of the millions of men who 
 wear watches, how very few have ever seen the parts of 
 a watch formed and put together ! Yet every possessor 
 of a watch is^ sure that it had a maker; and this convic- 
 tion could not be strengthened by his going to Geneva
 
 310 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 and seeing watches made by hand, or to Waltham and 
 seeing them made by machinery. 
 
 The first maker of a watch had no " experience " to 
 follow. He used his own inventive skill. The watch 
 existed in his mind before he shaped it in metal. And 
 when the first watch was completed it testified of itself, 
 to every observer, of the designing mind and the cunning 
 hand which had produced it. And this because, as 
 Hume himself says, " Throw several pieces of steel to- 
 gether without shape or form ; they will never arrange 
 themselves so as to complete a watch." This is not an 
 inference from the study of such a casual heap of steel, 
 but is an immediate and irresistible cognition of the hu- 
 man mind. One does not need to trace the loose bits of 
 steel from their entrance at one end of the factory to 
 their emergence as a completed watch at the other, in 
 order to be satisfied that, at some point of their course, 
 a designing hand has adjusted them to each other. The 
 perceived adjustment produces this conviction instanta- 
 neously ; and no amount of experience could render the 
 conviction more certain. The conviction that a particu- 
 lar combination of means for an end is the product of a 
 designing cause is not at all dependent upon the " expe- 
 rience " of such cause in like cases. 
 
 Neither does the conviction that adaptation proceeds 
 from design rest upon " experience " in any case what- 
 ever. That the adaptation of means to an end proceeds 
 from an intelligent and purposing foresight of that end 
 is an intuitive conviction of the human mind. To be 
 convinced of this casual connection the mind requires 
 neither argument nor observation ; it could accept no 
 other explanation of the existence of the event. The 
 mind assumes this casual relation of intelligence to adap- 
 tation, in those very observations of nature or discoveries 
 of inventive skill which Mr. Hume would include in the 
 term " experience."
 
 THE APPEAL TO EXPERIENCE. 311 
 
 As the print of a human foot upon the sand gave to 
 Robinson Crusoe the immediate conviction that there 
 was another man upon what lie had supposed to be his 
 uninhabited island ; as the impressions of feet, talons, 
 fins, vertebra, embedded in rock, certify the geologist of 
 extinct races ; so does the least token of adaptation at 
 once articulate itself with the conception of design. 
 
 In the gravel-beds of the Somme were picked up at 
 first a few flint stones, bearing rude marks of having 
 been shaped for use. No human remains were associated 
 with them. The beds in which they lay were hitherto 
 supposed to antedate the appearance of man ; yet these 
 shapen flints, produced in every observer the instanta- 
 neous conviction that man was there at the period of this 
 formation. When once the eye had satisfied itself that 
 these forms were not the result of natural attrition, were 
 not worn but shaped, that this flint, however rudely 
 shaped, was intended for a knife or a hatchet, this block 
 for a hammer, this pointed stone for a spear, the mind 
 at once pronounced it the work of man. The adaptation 
 points to design, and the design points to a grade of hu- 
 man intelligence. It does not matter that we cannot 
 divine the specific use of this or that implement ; if the 
 object itself shows that it was shaped for some use, if it is 
 not merely a stone but an implement, there springs up at 
 sight of it the necessary conviction that this was the work 
 of a designing cause. Hence Hume's appeal to "ex- 
 perience " is fallacious in the general as well as in the 
 particular. 
 
 Equally fallacious is Hume's objection to the analogy 
 from the products of human design to the works of a 
 higher*intelligence. The scale of the works, the vastness 
 of the intelligence requisite to have conceived, and of the 
 power to have executed them, have no place in the con- 
 viction of design. This arises from the single fact of
 
 312 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 adaptation^ whether seen in the wheels of a watch or of 
 a locomotive, in the point of a pin or the lever of a steam- 
 engine, in the antenna} of an ant or the proboscis of an 
 elephant. Could Lord Rosse's telescope itself be pro- 
 jected by a series of lenses to the farthest star within its 
 field, this immensity of adaptation would no more ex- 
 haust the principle than does the actual size of the tele- 
 scope as compared with the eye of a beetle. Size, number, 
 magnitude, have no relation to the notion of adaptation, 
 which in and of itself produces the conviction of design. 
 
 Moreover, the human mind is the only possible unit by 
 which we may compute the operations of " the universal 
 mind." If we drop the argument from design, and fall 
 back upon ontology, still the finite mind which we know- 
 in consciousness is the only agent by which, through anal- 
 ogy, contrast, or negation, we can attain to a conception 
 of the Infinite. 
 
 The very observations which Hume would classify un- 
 der " experience " must be made and recorded by this 
 self-same mind ; and no man has a higher confidence in 
 the scope and the trustworthiness of its powers than the 
 philosopher who attempts to account for the existence of 
 nature without either a cause or an end. But as our con- 
 ception of causality and of personality, derived from con- 
 sciousness, is capable of being projected from ourselves 
 into the infinite or "universal" mind, just as we can 
 project a mathematical line or circle into infinite space, 
 so adaptation seen in nature reflects our conception of 
 design up to the highest heaven and back to the farthest 
 eternity. 
 
 The mathematician does not pretend to comprehend 
 the infinities or the infinitesimals which he nevertheless 
 conceives of as quantities in his calculations. It would 
 require his life-time to count up the billions which he 
 handles so freely on a sheet of paper. The mind which
 
 FALLACIES OF HUME. 313 
 
 can conceive of infinite number and of universal space 
 without comprehending either, can also derive from itself 
 the conception of a " universal mind." To do complete 
 justice to Hume, I will now sum up his argument and 
 my reply. In his essay on " Providence and a Future 
 State " Hume says : 
 
 " Man is a being whom we know by experience, whose 
 motives and designs we are acquainted with, and whose 
 projects and inclinations have a certain connection and 
 coherence, according to the laws which nature has estab- 
 lished for the government of such a creature. When, 
 therefore, we find that any work has proceeded from the 
 skill and industry of man, as we are otherwise acquainted 
 with the nature of the animal, we can draw a hundred 
 inferences concerning what may be expected from him ; 
 and these inferences will all be founded in experience 
 and observation." Hence, he concludes, we cannot 
 " from the course of nature infer a particular intelligent 
 cause, which first bestowed and still preserves order in 
 the universe," l inasmuch as we have had no experience 
 of such a cause in nature upon which to ground this in- 
 ference. 
 
 At least three oversights or misconceptions are ap- 
 parent in this statement. 
 
 (1.) Mr. Hume overlooks the fact that each man is 
 conscious of a designing faculty within himself, and does 
 not need to be certified of the adaptation of means to 
 ends through the observation of this faculty in other 
 men. There was a time when a first man invented the 
 first machine, or adapted something to his own ends ; and 
 surely he had no experience of design in other men to 
 create faith in himself as a designer. He put forth a 
 conscious power ; his experience of what he could ac- 
 complish confirmed his conception of design, but did not 
 1 Prov. and Put. State, vol. iv. p. 168.
 
 314 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 create it. So it is with us all. When we see adaptation 
 to an end, we say at once, Here was an intelligent cause, 
 and this not because we have observed that other men 
 have produced designs, but knowing ourselves as intelli- 
 gent designing causes, we of course refer adaptation to 
 intelligence. 
 
 (2.) This points us to Hume's second oversight ; he 
 fails to perceive that the single thing to which adaptation 
 refers us is intelligence. It is not man in general as a 
 being or an animal, but the intelligent spirit in man that 
 is immediately and indissolubly connected with the notion 
 of adaptation. Man does many things that are purely 
 animal ; he eats, walks, sleeps, like other animals, by an 
 instinct or a law of his nature, and we never think of as- 
 cribing such acts to an intelligence superior to physical 
 laws and functions. But the adaptation of means to 
 ends we refer directly to such intelligence ; and it is this 
 thing of intelligence that differentiates such effects from 
 purely physical sequences by the nature of their causes. 
 Crunched bones on a desert island might suggest beasts 
 of prey, but a cairn suggests man. An approach to such 
 adaptation on the part of the beaver, the bee, the dog, 
 the ant, disposes us to clothe such animals with the at- 
 tribute of reason. And on the same principle that it 
 is intelligence and not man we think of directly we per- 
 ceive adaptation do we refer such adaptation in nature 
 to an intelligence higher than nature and higher than man. 
 It is intelligence that we associate with adaptation, and 
 we are not limited to intelligence as manifested by man 
 as an animal of skill and industry. In point of fact the 
 great advances of physical science in recent times have 
 been due more to the imaginative and inventive faculty 
 prompting investigation, than to inference from experi- 
 ence. Science itself looks forward, not backward. Its 
 spirit is inquisitive, and its discoveries spring from the
 
 THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS. 815 
 
 desire to know not only what is, but why it is, to reach 
 at once the first elements of things and their final cause. 
 
 And (3.) Hume has overlooked the fact that when 
 once this idea of the connection between adaptation and 
 intelligence has entered the mind, from whatever source, 
 it does not require to be renewed, but remains always as 
 an intuitive perception ; no amount of experiences can 
 strengthen or weaken it, and this for the reason that the 
 conviction of a designing cause does not rest in observa- 
 tions or experiences, greater or less, of man and his con- 
 trivances, but lies in the thing of perceived adaptation ; 
 it does not require a knowledge of the cause or source of 
 the adaptation. That wherever there is an adaptation 
 of means to an end there must have been an intelligent 
 cause is an intuition of the mind. This term intuition 
 should not be confounded with the notion of innate ideas. 
 An intuition is a self-evident truth ; the mind may come 
 to the knowledge of such a truth in various ways and 
 by many processes ; but when once it is perceived, it is 
 seen to be true, as a proposition in and of itself, which 
 no amount of reasoning or of evidence could make clearer 
 or stronger than it is in its own simple statement. For 
 example, the sum of all the parts is together equal to the 
 whole. (A child may learn this, if you please, by trying 
 it ; but once gained it is there.} Everything that begins 
 to be must have a cause ; whatever exists must exist in 
 time and in space. To this class of self-convincing truths 
 belongs this also, that the adaptation of means to an end 
 springs from an intelligent and designing cause. Under 
 these criticisms of common sense and of universal con- 
 sciousness Hume's elaborate structure falls to the ground. 
 
 I am aware that this reasoning involves the intermi- 
 nable controversy between sensation and consciousness 
 as the originator of ideas. But it is clear that external 
 phenomena do not and cannot impart to us the idea of a
 
 316 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 cause. We cannot see a cause, feel a cause, hear a cause. 
 What we perceive in nature is never cause as a substan- 
 tial entity, but only the sequence of phenomena. And 
 yet the mind unhesitatingly affirms of every phenomenon 
 which actually comes to pass, that it is not self -origi- 
 nated, but must have had a cause. Whence has the mind 
 this conception of the necessary relation of an event to 
 a cause ? I answer that this is a necessary cognition of 
 the human mind, given in and of the mind itself. The 
 mind knows itself as a cause. It does not matter here 
 whether this knowledge be spontaneous or the result of 
 mental experiences. Of the first origin of cognitions in 
 a child, the first realization of consciousness, we have no 
 possibility of record. But this we know, that there 
 comes to every mind a moment when it awakes to the 
 feeling " I can " and " I will." It knows the Ego in con- 
 sciousness, and clothes the Ego with volition and with 
 causality. With the blow of a hammer I break a crystal. 
 We say the blow is the cause of the fracture ; and this 
 loose use of the term cause is sanctioned by usage. But 
 where and what is the cause? In the hammer? Or in 
 the contact of the hammer with the crystal ? Does it 
 reside in the hammer ? Or is it developed by the blow ? 
 There is no sense nor instrument fine enough to detect it. 
 We see the blow, we see the fracture, but not ten thou- 
 sand such experiences would enable us to see the cause. 
 The cause, you will say, is the force applied behind the 
 hammer. But that force is not an entity ; it is only a 
 quality of the cause, and that cause is the power which is 
 in me put in action by my will. All force is but cause 
 in action. And the sublime doctrine of universal force 
 points of necessity to universal cause, and that cause in- 
 telligent. Having its sole idea of cause through the con- 
 sciousness of itself as a cause, the mind intuitively refers 
 every event to a cause adequate in power and wisdom to 
 the result.
 
 TELEOLOGY NOT A CHRISTIAN INVENTION. 317 
 
 Even upon Hume's own principle, the thing which 
 "experience" has taught us is, that the adaptation of 
 means, or the collocation of materials for an end, must be 
 referred to an intelligent designer purposing that end. 
 And the world has grown so old in the infallibility of 
 this so-called experience, that it accepts the principle as 
 an axiom alike in its application to a watch and to a 
 world. The principle being recognized, we are prepared 
 to apply it more carefully than did Paley to the evidence 
 of nature to a supreme intelligent cause. 
 
 Teleology is not an invention of Christian theology. 
 In perceiving an end in nature, and from this assuming a 
 divine author of nature, Plato and Aristotle anticipated 
 Paul and Augustine ; and we are all familiar with Cice- 
 ro's reply to the Epicurean notion that the world was 
 formed by a chance concourse of atoms. " He who be- 
 lieves this may as well believe that if a great quantity of 
 the letters of the alphabet, made of gold or any other 
 substance, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall 
 into such order as legibly to form a book, say the * An- 
 nals of Ennius.' I doubt whether chance could make a 
 single line of them. . . . But if a concourse of atoms can 
 make a world, why not a porch, a temple, a house, a 
 city, which are works of less labor and difficulty? " 
 
 Many' of the witnesses which Paley brought forward 
 to establish the fact of design in nature have been dis- 
 credited through the searching cross-examination of mod- 
 ern science ; and some have even been so twisted and 
 turned as to lean to the opposite side. But what then ? 
 This impeachment of testimony prejudices the jury, but 
 cannot blind an impartial judge to the principles which 
 underlie the case. Much the same has happened in ge- 
 ology. Many of the facts relied upon by earlier geolo- 
 gists have been modified in their meaning and their rela- 
 tions, or have been quite set aside by the Research of
 
 318 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 later times. Theories have changed with every new 
 master of the science, and the now-accepted theory of 
 Lyell may yet be modified by the results of deep-sea 
 soundings and of explorations in the Sierra Nevada. 
 But no one dreams of doubting that there is in the struc- 
 ture of the earth a foundation for a science of geology. 
 And so we may trace there a foundation for a science of 
 teleology, all the more clear because the superficial 
 mechanism of design has been swept away. Indeed, the 
 very terms designer, contriver, smack of the mechanical, 
 the coarse, the vulgar. Professor Tyndall, who certainly 
 has no belief in final cause in the theological sense, is 
 already helping us to finer terms for teleology itself; and 
 these terms occur in examples best fitted to illustrate the 
 finer meanings and methods of this science. These ex- 
 amples are found in heat and in light. 
 
 There is even more of science than of poetry in the 
 saying that coal is " bottled sunlight." For what pur- 
 pose was coal produced, but that it should serve for fuel ; 
 should be made to give back in practical and beneficial 
 uses the heat it had condensed from the sun ? And for 
 whose use intended but for man ? Nature in her opera- 
 tions has no service for this concentrated extract of ferns 
 and trees. No animal tribes in burrowing or foraging 
 had ever sought out the coal or applied it to their wants. 
 But when man had need of other fuel than the surface 
 of the earth could furnish him, there lay the beds of coal 
 ready to his hand. Can we resist the conviction that 
 coal was provided in anticipation of the coming of man 
 stored, so to speak, in the cellar of his future abode ? 
 If there were, indeed, such a purpose in the formation of 
 coal, the relation between the purpose and the result is 
 the more impressive because it was so long latent, and 
 required ages for its development. Not fact and form 
 alone, but idea and intent as well, are in process of de-
 
 TELEOLOGY OF TYNDALL. 319 
 
 velopment. The plan in evolution is also the evolution 
 of a plan. Professor Tyndall has given us the very 
 term to characterize this phenomenon. " Wood and coal 
 can burn ; whence come their heat, and the work pro- 
 ducible by that heat? From the immeasurable reservoir 
 of the sun, Nature has proposed to herself the task of 
 storing up the light which streams earthward from the 
 sun, and of casting into a permanent form the most fugi- 
 tive of all powers. To this end she has overspread the 
 earth with organisms which, while living, take in the 
 solar light, and by its consumption generate forces of an- 
 other kind. These organisms are plants. The vegetable 
 world, indeed, constitutes the instrument whereby the 
 wave-motion of the sun is changed into the rigid form 
 of chemical tension, and thus prepared for future use. 
 With this prevision the existence of the human race it- 
 self is inseparably connected." In the terms which I 
 have italicized, teleology is so etherealized that nothing 
 remains of the grossness of the old conception of the 
 mechanism of the universe. Prevision is so much finer 
 than design or contrivance ! We no longer require to 
 see either the watch or the world in the process of mak- 
 ing ; we no longer hear the starting of the machinery ; 
 but as in Ezekiel's vision there is a spirit of life within 
 the wheels, and they are borne on mighty wings. 
 
 The objection to this illustration, that if coal were in- 
 tended for the use of man, it should have been evenly 
 distributed over the globe, and upon the surface, seems 
 too frivolous for a philosophical reply. But the reply is 
 given in the whole nature of man, and in the totality of 
 the ends of his existence. Man shall not live by coal 
 alone. The distribution of the earth's products gives 
 rise to that system of industries, to that development 
 of energy, skill, foresight, and invention, and to that 
 brotherhood of humanity which comes of widespread in-
 
 320 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 tercourse, which render human existence so much higher 
 than that of brutes. 
 
 I am not strenuous, however, for this illustration. I 
 have adopted it because a leading man of science seems 
 driven to teleology to account for the fact of coal. Thus 
 teleology, as in Harvey's discovery of the circulation of 
 the blood, is often the guide of science to higher ends. 
 
 My object in this essay is not to prove the doctrine of 
 final causes, but to point out the lines of proof, in the 
 true conception of causality, and in the wise interpreta- 
 tion of those more subtle phases of nature which science 
 now deals with, and which so transcend the mechanical 
 causes of Paley. 
 
 As with heat, so with light. To describe the web of 
 relations subsisting between solar light and the media 
 through which this passes to the human eye, Tyndall has 
 recourse to the same refinement of teleology. 
 
 *' We have, in the first place, in solar light an agent of 
 exceeding complexity, composed of innumerable constitu- 
 ents refrangible in different degrees. We find, secondly, 
 the atoms and molecules of bodies gifted with the power 
 of sifting solar light in the most various ways, and pro- 
 ducing by this sifting the colors observed in nature and 
 art. To do this they must possess a molecular structure 
 commensurate in complexity with that of light itself. 
 Thirdly, we have the human eye and brain, so organized 
 as to be able to take in and distinguish the multitude 
 of impressions thus generated. The light, therefore, at 
 starting, is complex ; to sift and select it as they do, nat- 
 ural bodies must be complex ; while to take in the im- 
 pressions thus generated, the human eye and brain, how- 
 ever we may simplify our conceptions of their action, 
 must be highly complex. Whence this triple complex- 
 ity ? If what are called material purposes were the only 
 end to be served, a much simpler mechanism would be
 
 GEOLOGICAL REASONING. 321 
 
 sufficient. But, instead of simplicity, we have prodigal- 
 ity of relation and adaptation, and this apparently for 
 the sole purpose of enabling us to see things robed in the 
 splendor of color. Would it not seem that Nature har- 
 bored the intention of educating us for other enjoyments 
 than those derivable from meat and drink ? At all 
 events, whatever Nature meant, and it would be mere 
 presumption to dogmatize as to what she meant, we 
 find ourselves here as the upshot of her operations, en- 
 dowed with capacities to enjoy not only the materially 
 useful, but endowed with others of indefinite scope and 
 application, which deal alone with the beautiful and the 
 true." i 
 
 In how many distinct forms and phrases in the two 
 passages cited does Mr. Tyndall pay homage to the in- 
 tuitive conviction of purpose, intention, design, as seen in 
 the adaptations of Nature: "Nature has proposed to her- 
 self ; " " to this end ; " " with this prevision ; " " atoms 
 gifted with the power ; " " prodigality of relation and 
 adaptation ; " " for the sole purpose ; " " Nature har- 
 bored the intention ; " " whatever Nature meant." Tyn- 
 dall is a master of language, whether as the poet pictur- 
 ing the Alps, or as the philosopher analyzing and defining 
 nature. In these passages he is the man of science upon 
 his own ground, reporting his observations and experi- 
 ments. And he tells us that in two of the most delicate, 
 subtle, yet all-pervasive forces of nature, heat and 
 light, he finds everywhere traces of intelligence, since 
 only intelligence can harbor an intention, can have a 
 meaning or purpose, or act with prevision for an end. 
 
 Two parallel incidents in geology will show that the 
 scientific mind intuitively discriminates between nature 
 and intelligence. (1.) In digging a well in Illinois, the 
 workmen at a depth of several feet struck upon the 
 
 1 Tyndall on Light, Lee. 1. 
 21
 
 322 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 trunk of a tree, and under this upon a bit of copper ore 
 identical with that of Lake Superior. The inference 
 was that ages ago the copper had been washed from its 
 native bed, and lodged in the alluvium of the Mississippi 
 Valley, perhaps that the great lakes then had an out- 
 let through the Mississippi, and over this deposit a 
 forest had grown, which in time was buried beneath the 
 ever-accumulating surface. The whole process was as- 
 cribed to natural causes, the interest concentrating in 
 the question of time. (2.) In working the copper mines 
 of Lake Superior, the miner came upon traces of excava- 
 tion, of smelting, of rude implements of labor ; and the 
 immediate conviction was, Man has been here before us, 
 probably that unknown race who built the mounds in 
 the Mississippi Valley had discovered and worked these 
 mines. How shall we account for the difference in these 
 judgments, the one pointing to nature, the other to 
 man ? The judgment in each case was spontaneous, and 
 each judgment is accepted by science as correct. The 
 dividing line between them is, that perceived adaptation 
 to an end betokens an intelligent purpose directed to 
 that end. A corresponding instance is familiar to Eng- 
 lish geologists. 
 
 At a considerable depth in the delta of the Nile were 
 found remains of pottery. The immediate conviction 
 was that man was on the soil at the period of this forma- 
 tion. Beyond question the pottery was the work of man ; 
 and the geological age of the deposit would determine 
 how far back man existed on the borders of the Nile. 
 When it was suggested that the pottery bore marks of 
 Greek workmanship, the inference was that either by ac- 
 cident it had worked its way so deep, or the Nile deposit 
 had been more rapid than is commonly supposed. The 
 question recurs, how do we make this distinction between 
 man and nature, and the answer lies in the one fact of 
 adaptation to an end.
 
 TELEOLOGY. 323 
 
 Now, Professor Tyndall assures us tlisit in the single 
 fact of light and vision " we have prodigality of relation 
 and adaptation." From the point of view of physical 
 science he cannot look beyond the bounds of nature, 
 and hence he provides the intelligence which adaptation 
 demands by personifying nature. I accept implicitly 
 Tyndall's testimony to the wondrous fact ; and not being 
 under the restriction which the pure scientist must ob- 
 serve, I accept the conviction of my own intelligence 
 that such intelligence is above nature. The principle of 
 teleology is thus attested by science itself in its most 
 subtle and intricate investigations. Indeed, that principle 
 becomes more patent the farther it is removed from the 
 sensuous into the sw6-sensible world. There we touch 
 upon causes, first, mediate, and final. It does not matter 
 that the relation of cause and effect is often obscure. 
 Could we have looked upon our planet in the carbonifer- 
 ous era, who could have seen reflected in that murky at- 
 mosphere the coal-grate glowing in our dwellings, the 
 furnace in our factories ? We are living in an unfinished 
 system, an era of the evolution of phenomena, and, as I 
 have said, the development of the ideas that lie at the 
 back of phenomena. 
 
 Neither does it disparage teleology to point to the 
 evil that is in the world. Moral evil is the product of 
 man's free agency. But free will is the highest endow- 
 ment of a rational creature. The power of moral choice 
 makes man akin to the infinite and the absolute ; and 
 moral evil is a perversion of this most illustrious attri- 
 bute of being, and the possibility of perversion lies in 
 the nature of free will, and gives to virtue its worth and 
 its glory. Hence it may be that moral, evil is inciden- 
 tal, in respect of divine prevention, to the best possible 
 system. 
 
 As to physical evil, this is but partial and relative.
 
 324 FINAL CAUSE. 
 
 Our own experience testifies that this often serves to dis- 
 cipline the intellect of man, to put fibre into his will, 
 and train him to noble and heroic action in subjugating 
 nature to the service of the human family. The very 
 doctrine of natural selection shows of how much worth 
 to man is the struggle for existence as a moral element 
 in the development of character. 
 
 Here, too, comes in the fact that the system is un- 
 finished. Things that seem untoward because unknown 
 may have a brighter end : " from seeming evil still educ- 
 ing good." 
 
 Science is teaching this, especially in chemistry, by 
 transforming what once was feared as hurtful and hostile 
 to man into some higher ministry of the beautiful and 
 the useful, ordered by wisdom and beneficence. What 
 serviceable dyes, what exquisite tints, are evolved from 
 the noisome refuse of coal-tar ! 
 
 And just this service should science render if tele- 
 ology is true. For if there be a Creator, He must be 
 spirit, and apprehensible only by spirit. Hence, the 
 more we are developed in mind by science, and the more 
 we penetrate through science to the silent, impalpable 
 forces of nature, the nearer shall we come to Him who is 
 invisible ; till with Dante, emerging into the light eternal, 
 "we can say : 
 
 " And now was turning my desire and will, 
 
 Even as a wheel that equally is moved, 
 The Love which moves the sun and the other stars."
 
 APPENDIX TO THE LAST ESSAY. 
 
 SINCE the foregoing paper was read, Professor Huxley has pub- 
 lished a " Life of Hurae," with an analysis of his works, which 
 in its cheap and attractive form may give a fresh impulse to the 
 popularity of the Scotch philosopher. A review of Hume's 
 philosophical system, as a whole, would here be out of place. 
 Supposing Huxley's synopsis of it to be now at hand, I must re- 
 strict myself to the points raised in my paper Cause, Power, 
 Intuition. It is a hopeful sign that such a master in physics as 
 Professor Huxley should invoke such a master in metaphysics as 
 Hume (just as Professor Tyndall invokes Lucretius) in support 
 of his own teachings ; that science, which we have been told 
 was the only knowledge the knowledge of things by observa- 
 tion of the senses should have recourse to philosophy to sift 
 and classify phenomena under ideas, in order that they may 
 have a place in the category of knowledge. The necessity for 
 this I have endeavored to show in the article, " What is 
 Science ? " in the " British Quarterly Review " for January, 
 1879 ; and the recognition of this dependence of science upon 
 philosophy for its own expression would put an end to much of 
 the controversy over physics and metaphysics. As to ideal spec- 
 ulation, Professor Huxley goes quite far enough. On page 55 
 he says : " All science starts with hypotheses in other words, 
 with assumptions that are unproved, while they may be, and 
 often are, erroneous ; but which are better than nothing to the 
 seeker after order in the maze of phenomena. And the histor- 
 ical progress of every science depends on the criticism of hy- 
 potheses, on the gradual stripping off, that is, of their untrue 
 or superfluous parts, until there remains only that exact verbal 
 expression of as much as we know of the fact, and 110 more, 
 which constitutes a perfect scientific theory."
 
 326 APPENDIX TO THE LAST ESSAY. 
 
 This statement of the way of attaining a scientific knowledge 
 of external phenomena raises two questions, which must be 
 answered before we can have any confidence in such knowl- 
 edge. Who or what is it which makes that " criticism of hy- 
 potheses " upon which " the progress of every science de- 
 pends ? " And how do we " know a fact," or who are the WE 
 who know a fact, so as to reduce it to its " exact verbal ex- 
 pression ? " 
 
 Professor Huxley is not quite satisfied with Hume's negation 
 of mind ; that " what we call a mind is nothing but a heap or 
 collection of different perceptions, united together by certain 
 relations, and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a 
 perfect simplicity and identity." Of this view, Huxley says : 
 " He [Hume] may be right or wrong ; but the most he, or any- 
 body else, can prove in favor of his conclusion is, that we know 
 nothing more of the mind than that it is a series of perceptions." 
 Here, again, I ask, Who or what are the We, who know this, or 
 anything else? Does a mere "series of perceptions," each of 
 which gives place in turn to its successor, know itself as a series, 
 and that this series is all that can be known of mind ? Has a 
 series of ever-changing, ever-vanishing impressions a continu- 
 ity of consciousness, a power of retention as memory, and of 
 discrimination as judgment ? There can be no criticism without 
 comparison, without remembrance, without selection, without 
 discriminating judgment ; and the question forces itself home to 
 the school of Hume, If the mind " is nothing but a heap or 
 collection of different perceptions," where or what is that faculty 
 which examines and compares these impressions, and which 
 reduces them to an " exact verbal expression " as fact or knowl- 
 edge? The truth is that Mr. Hume and Professor Huxley 
 necessarily assume a something within man which, though it 
 cannot be known " by direct observation," yets knows itself, and 
 knows other things. The existence of this something, which 
 we call mind, is asserted by the consciousness of all mankind 
 and in the language of every people. It is proved by the con- 
 sciousness which every man has of personal identity and of 
 individuality ; by his exercise of memory and of will ; and 
 above all by his sense of right and wrong, and his spontaneous
 
 APPENDIX TO THE LAST ESSAY. 327 
 
 emotions in view of good or of evil. This something knows it- 
 self as a cause, as a power, and as possessing free will ; that is, 
 in all actions having a moral quality it has power to choose a 
 course of action, and also power to choose the contrary. What- 
 ever the motive which finally determines its choice say, if 
 you please, the greatest apparent good there is always the 
 power of contrary choice. Every man knows these tilings to be 
 true of himself. But it is absolutely impossible to predicate 
 any of these things of a mere "series of perceptions." Though 
 the existence and the properties of mind may " lie beyond the 
 reach of observation," as the term observation is applied to 
 the study of nature, yet the existence of mind is known in 
 consciousness with a certainty as absolute as that which per- 
 tains to the phenomena of nature observed and reported through 
 the senses. In either case the conviction of certainty is given 
 in the mind, or it could not exist at all. How can I know any- 
 thing if I do not first know the I who knows, so far as to have 
 full confidence in the observations which / make, and in the 
 judgments which 1 form ? 
 
 Now, there are also truths which the mind knows by intuition, 
 of which it is as certain as of any fact ascertained by observa- 
 tion, and indeed as certain as of its own existence. Such truths 
 do not depend upon experience, but are assumed in all ex- 
 perience. They could not be made a whit more clear or certain 
 by reasoning or observation than they are seen to be by direct 
 cognition. Of this class of truths are the axioms of mathematics. 
 Hume admits that there are " necessary truths," but he would 
 not class with these the axiom of causation, " That whatever 
 event has a beginning must have a cause." Professor Hux- 
 ley is more inclined to class causation with necessary truths, 
 and this upon scientific grounds. Thus, on p. 121, he says: 
 " The scientific investigator who notes a new phenomenon may 
 be utterly ignorant of its cause, but he will, without hesitation, 
 seek for that cause. If you ask him why he does so, he will 
 probably say that it must have had a cause ; and thereby imply 
 that his belief in causation is a necessary belief." What is true 
 of the man of science is equally true of the human mind under 
 all possible conditions. It is an intuitive conviction of a neces-
 
 328 NOTE. 
 
 sary truth, that every event must have a cause. It is absolutely 
 impossible for the mind to conceive the contrary. Let any one 
 conceive of absolute universal Nothingness, and he will find it 
 impossible to conceive of anything as beginning to be ! Either, 
 then, we must have recourse to the unphilosophical conjecture 
 of an infinite series, or we must believe in an eternal Creator of 
 the universe. 
 
 In like manner, that adaptation points to a purposing intelli- 
 gence is an intuitive cognition of the human mind. This does 
 not arise from experience of adaptive power in other men ; and 
 though continually verified by experience, it does not rest in 
 experience for its proof. Here, too, as above, it is impossible 
 for the mind to conceive the contrary. 
 
 Having already exposed the fallacy of Hume on this point, 
 and having traced the notions of causation and of power to 
 their seat in the mind itself, I trust I have opened anew the 
 way for the evidence of God in nature, which physics is more 
 and more unveiling, for metaphysics to take note of and clas- 
 sify. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The reader who is interested in the preceding points of meta- 
 physical inquiry, but who lacks facilities for studying German 
 philosophy in the original, can put himself in communication 
 with two of the greatest thinkers of Germany, by reading " A 
 Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant," by Professor Ed- 
 ward Caird, of the University of Glasgow ; and " The Logic of 
 Hegel," by William Wallace, M. A., Fellow of Merton College, 
 Oxford. Kant was not satisfied with the argument from de- 
 sign, or as it is better called, the physico-theological argument 
 for the being of God; and while controverting Hume on some 
 points, he agreed with him that the existence of order in the 
 universe could at most establish a finite cause. This point I 
 have previously considered. But another form of reply pre- 
 sented by Professor Caird is so thoughtful and suggestive that 
 I give the gist of it here, referring the reader to the full argu- 
 ment in his eighteenth chapter.
 
 NOTE. 829 
 
 " Why do we seek in things, in the world, and in ourselves, 
 a truth, a reality, which we do not find in their immediate as- 
 pect as phenomena of the sensible world ? Jt is because the 
 sensible world, as such, is inconsistent with itself, and thus 
 points to a higher reality. We believe in the infinite, not be- 
 cause of what the finite is, but quite as much because of what 
 the finite is not ; and our first idea of the former is, therefore, 
 simply that it is the negation of the latter. All religion springs 
 out of the sense of the nothingness, unreality, transitoriness 
 in other words, of the essentially negative character of the finite 
 world. Yet this negative relation of the mind to the finite is at 
 the same time its first positive relation to the infinite. ' We 
 are near waking when we dream that we dream,' and the con- 
 sciousness of a limit is already at least the germinal conscious- 
 ness of that which is beyond it. The extreme of despair and 
 doubt can only exist as the obverse of the highest certitude, 
 and is in fact necessary to it." 
 
 Hegel, who was fond of reducing every conception to the last 
 possible analysis, says, " We must decidedly reject the mechan- 
 ical mode of inquiry when it comes forward and arrogates to it- 
 self the place of rational cognition in general, and when it seeks 
 to get mechanism accepted as an absolute category." lie then 
 shows how even the argument from design has been vitiated by 
 a mechanical tone. 1 
 
 " Generally speaking, the final cause is taken to mean noth- 
 ing more than external design. In accordance with this view 
 of it, things are supposed not to carry their vocation in them- 
 selves, but merely to be means employed and spent in realizing 
 a purpose which lies outside of them. That may be said to be 
 the point of view taken by utility, which once played a great 
 part even in the sciences. Of late, however, utility has fallen 
 into disrepute, now that people have begun to see that it failed 
 to give a genuine insight into the nature of things. It is true 
 that finite things as finite ought in justice to be viewed as non- 
 ultimate, and as pointing beyond themselves. This negativity 
 of finite things, however, is their own dialectic, and in order to 
 ascertain it we must pay attention to their positive content. 
 
 1 Pases 291 and 299.
 
 330 NOTE. 
 
 " Teleological modes of investigation often proceed from a 
 well-meant desire of displaying the wisdom of God, especially as 
 it is revealed in nature. Now in thus trying to discover final 
 causes, for which the things serve as means, we must remember 
 that we are stopping short at the finite, and are liable to fall 
 into trifling reflections. An instance of such triviality is seen 
 when we first of all treat of the vine solely in reference to the 
 well-known uses which it confers upon man, and then proceed 
 to view the cork-tree in connection with the corks which are 
 cut from its bark to put into the wine-bottles. AVhole books 
 used to be written in this spirit. It is easy to see that they 
 promoted the genuine interest neither of religion nor of science. 
 External design stands immediately in front of the idea: but 
 what thus stands on the threshold often for that reason gives 
 the least satisfaction." 
 
 The burden of my paper is to lead up through this external 
 design to the idea that lies behind it. And here Ilegel has 
 given food for thought in his profound saying that " Objectivity 
 contains the three forms of mechanism, cliemism, and the nexus 
 of design." This nexus holds the world and the universe to- 
 gether in our intuitive conception.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Aborigines, right of, to the soil, 110. 
 Absolutism in Europe in 1815, 3. 
 repudiated in Ivirope, 0. 
 the disappearance of, in Europe, 
 
 2. 
 Adaptation proceeding from design, 
 
 310. 
 
 Africa, opening of to civilization, 106. 
 Agrarianisro and communism, 113. 
 Alliance, the Holy, of 1815, 5, 13. 
 America, church independence in, 82. 
 American doctrine regarding liberty 
 
 and education, 29. 
 American republic, the, influence of, as 
 
 a model, 7. 
 Americans should recognize God in 
 
 their history, 258. 
 
 Amos, Professor Sheldon, on interna- 
 tional law, 120. 
 on treaties, 134. 
 
 Amphictyons religious union, the, 228. 
 Anarchy the end of materialism, 20. 
 Andrassy, Count, on the encyclical, 87. 
 Apostles' Creed, the, 252. 
 Appleton, C. E., on international copy- 
 right, 1(54. 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, aphorism by, 204. 
 Arabia territorial rights among tribes 
 
 of, 114. 
 Arbitration a remedv for international 
 
 evils, 147. " 
 a remedv for standing armies, 
 
 101. 
 
 between capital and labor, 20. 
 classes of cases that might be 
 
 settled by, 101. 
 hope for peace by, 174. 
 in case of crushing pecuniary 
 
 exactions, 172. 
 Aristocracy in France, 9. 
 
 of Germany at Berlin in 1877, 
 
 10. 
 Aristotle defines nature, 240. 
 
 demies science, 214. 
 Armament, tho, of Germany, 93. 
 Armies, standing, imperil society, 27. 
 
 Army, strength of the Gorman, 93. 
 
 the, a school to boorish young 
 men, 27. 
 
 Arnim, Count IIen>y Charles Edward, 
 correspondence, 01), 88. 
 his controversy with Bismarck, 
 
 88. 
 
 recommends Bismarck to meddle 
 with the Vatican council, 70. 
 Arnold on right in land, 112. 
 i Artificer, the great, of Cowper, 306. 
 i Aspirants for place in a democracy, 30. 
 ' Atlases, historical, 55. 
 Atom, the conception of, bv Lucretius, 
 
 264. 
 
 Atomic theory, the, 269. 
 Atoms and force, 193. 
 Augsburg, peace of, 56. 
 Austria, cost of her army, 98. 
 public instruction in, 14. 
 reconstruction of, after Ko'nig- 
 
 griitz, 4. 
 
 supremacy of, removed, 66. 
 | Authors, protection of native, 151. (See 
 
 Bitokg and Copyright.) 
 Autocracy of the 1'ope, 73. 
 
 vs. the I'apacy, 7. 
 
 Autocrats not possible in Europe, 6. 
 Avenarius, R., on experience, 201. 
 on philosophy, 187. 
 
 Babylon, religion of, 236. 
 
 Badenoch, Rev. G. R., 33. 
 
 Baerenbach, Friedrich von, on Darwin, 
 307. 
 
 Baggage-master and baggage-smasher, 
 72. 
 
 Balance of power, 3. 
 
 Bashi-Bazouks, outrages of, 122. 
 
 Bavaria, alarmed bv the Vatican coun- 
 cil, 69. 
 
 Beginning necessitates a cause, 327. 
 
 Beginnings of things according to Lu- 
 cretius, 274. 
 
 Belgium, King of, on African civiliza- 
 tion, 106.
 
 332 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Berlin, Congress of, of 1878, 4. 174. 
 Bible, the, confiscated in Russia, 183. 
 
 creation personified in, 306. 
 Bishops as princes, 55. 
 
 imprisonment of, 86. 
 Bismarck - Schoenhausen, Karl Otto, 
 Prince von, 4, 54. (See Ca- 
 
 nossfi.) 
 his policy regarding the bishops, 
 
 68. 
 
 his quarrel with Rome, 48. 
 on ultramontanism, 35. 
 prescience and intuition of, 65. 
 urges the consummation of Ger- 
 man unity, 71. 
 Black Hills, gold-hunting among the, 
 
 115. 
 Black Sea. the neutralizing of, by the 
 
 treaty of Paris, 144, 180. 
 Bliintschli, John Caspar, on interna- 
 tional law, 120. 
 on science, 215. 
 on treaties, 133. 
 on war indemnity, 1G9. 
 Bolingbroke on the demands of Queen 
 
 Anne for Protestants, 128. 
 Boniface VIII., anathemas of, 47. 
 
 claims of, 44. 
 
 Books, compulsory publication of, 156. 
 Booksellers oppose international copy- 
 right, 165. 
 
 Book trade, " courtesy " in, 161. 
 Brahma, the eternal, 234. 
 Brain-work, property in, 162. 
 Bridgewater Treatises, basis of, 301. 
 Broca. M. P., on the barbarity of war, 
 
 28. 
 
 Brodie, Professor B. C., 269. 
 Brutality in war, what is it? 105. 
 Bryce, James, on llildebrand's bull, 
 
 39. 
 Bulgaria, brutality of the Turks in, 
 
 105. 
 
 outrages in, 121. 
 Bundesrath, the Cerman, 11. 
 Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias, on poly- 
 theism, 237. 
 Business retarded by army service, 99. 
 
 Caird, Edward, his " Philosophy of 
 
 Kant," 328. 
 Calvo, Charles, on indemnities, 170. 
 
 on treaties, 133. 
 
 on uaucaption, 110. 
 Canossa, Bismnrck not going to, 37. 
 
 Henry IV. at, 37. 
 Cartography, ecclesiastical, 55. 
 Catholicism, French, of to-day 48. 
 
 retrogression of, in the 17th cen- 
 tury. 57. 
 
 superstition of, 23. 
 
 Catholics, opportunities of, in Prussia, 
 
 64. 
 
 Causality, the true conception of, 320. 
 Cause and effect, Hume on, 301). 
 Cause, idea of a, not imparted by phe- 
 nomena, 316. 
 
 Cause, power, intuition, 325. 
 Cause, the final, 308. 
 Cayour's maxim, " A free church in 
 
 a free state," 81. 
 Centralization in the state, 29. 
 Certainty, mathematical, 213. 
 moral, 11)7. 
 vs. probability, 197. 
 Challis, Professor James, on science, 
 
 214. 
 
 on the uniyorse, 206. 
 Chamerovzow, L. A., on the New Zea- 
 land Question, 113. 
 Charles V. confederate with the pope, 
 
 51. 
 
 China, opium trade in, 117, 118. 
 China, United States treaty with, 120. 
 Christ, the Church, and the Creed, 247. 
 Christian commerce wrongs non-Chris- 
 tian peoples, 118. 
 Christian nations, intercourse of with 
 
 non-Christian peoples, 104, 108. 
 Christianity at a stand-still, 25. 
 Christians and non-Christian peoples, 
 
 104. 
 
 Christians in Turkey, call for inter- 
 vention in behalf of, 127. 
 immunities pledged to, 177. 
 Church the, and Civil Society, con- 
 stant factors, 2. 
 discipline not to be used for 
 
 political ends in Prussia, 84. 
 independence in America and 
 
 Europe, 82. 
 the supreme over all, theory of, 
 
 74. 
 
 Church and State in Prussia, 29. 
 opposed, 61. 
 
 separation of, not wished in Prus- 
 sia, 81. 
 
 Churches, privileged, 05. 
 Cicero defines nature, 241. 
 defines religion, 226. 
 on Chance as a power, 317. 
 quoted on property, 113. 
 Citizen, the, Prussian view of, 14. 
 Civil power tributary to spiritual, 40. 
 Civilization, necessary evils of, 19. 
 Classes, a division info, necessary, 30. 
 Clerical control in polities doomed, 9. 
 Coal, the use of, 318, 319. 
 Coleridge on Shakespeare's " science 
 
 in mental philosophy," 188. 
 Commerce with non-Christian peoples, 
 109, 115.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Commission, an international proposed, 
 
 140. 
 Communism in France, dangerous to 
 
 society, 32. 
 
 Comparative theologj-, 221. 
 Cointe, Auguste, a fatal admission of, 
 
 221. 
 
 and Mill, religion of, 239. 
 Conception, the immaculate, 23. 
 Confession of faith, 247. 
 Conflict, the irrepressible, 54. 
 Confucius, religious system of, 229. 
 Congregational order, the, in America, 
 
 247. 
 
 Congress, the Geographical, 103. 
 Congresses, international, tend to 
 
 peace, 102. 
 
 Conscience, a criterion of duty, 62. 
 freedom of, 22. 
 its nature and sphere, 77. 
 Conscription in Germany, effect of, 97. 
 Constitution, sense of the word, 3. 
 Constitutional government, rise and 
 
 growth of, in Europe, 2, 7. 
 Consultation among nations necessary, 
 
 148. 
 
 Contrivance refers us to mind, 306. 
 Convents, increase of, 63. 
 Cooke, J. P., on the atom, 265. 
 Cooperation, growth of, 20. 
 Copyright Association, the, 164. 
 founded on justice, 163. 
 in Germany, 152, 158. 
 in Great Britain, 154, 158. 
 in the United States, 150, 160. 
 International, 151. 
 principles of, in Germany, Great 
 Britain, and the United States, 
 161. 
 
 rights of alien authors to, 166. 
 Copyrights to foreigners, 158. 
 Cortes, the, abolished in Spain in 1814, 
 
 4. 
 
 Council, the Vatican, 69. 
 Courtesy among publishers in the 
 
 Unite'd States, 161. 
 Creation, history of, by Haeckel, 191. 
 
 personified in the Bible, 306. 
 Creator, argument for a, 305. 
 Creed, the Apostles', 247, 252. 
 Creed, the, only functional, 250. 
 
 use of a, 241). 
 
 Crisis in European society, 22. 
 Gumming school of prophets, the, 1. 
 Customs, searches by otticers of, 119. 
 Cj'cle, the European since the Con- 
 gress of Vienna, 4. 
 Czar, power of, moditied, 5. 
 
 Darwinian theory, the, anticipated, 204. 
 Dead, resurrection of the, 255. 
 
 Debt, public, augmented to support the 
 
 army, 28. 
 Defense, national, in Europe, necessities 
 
 of, 97. 
 
 Definition, rules of, 187. 
 Democracies not lacking in a love of 
 
 display, 10. 
 Democracy, progress of, 10. 
 
 the, of Europe trained by ex- 
 perience, 1H. 
 Democratic civilization, remedy for the 
 
 evils of, not found, 31. 
 Demon, the, in Greek religion, 229. 
 Denmark, cost of her army, 99. 
 Design-argument, the, of Paley, 303, 
 
 30o. 
 
 Desigiij faculty of, in man, 313. 
 Despotism the aim of ultra-montanism, 
 
 25. 
 
 Dictionary, usefulness of the, 18!*. 
 Diplomatic papers, publication of, 90. 
 Discoverv, premium to be placed upon, 
 
 119. 
 
 right of, 110. 
 
 Divine right of kings, theory of the, 6. 
 Doubt inconsistent with knowledge, 
 
 195. 
 Draper, John W., on religion and 
 
 science, 190. 
 Drift of Europe, the, 1. 
 Du Bois-Keymond, Emile, on atoms 
 
 and force, 193. 
 oil the indifference of atoms, 286. 
 
 Eastern Question, the, 174. 
 in Berlin, 10. 
 
 position of England on, 176. 
 the treaty of 1'aris on, 142. 
 Ecclesiastical authority not supported 
 
 by Scripture, 77. 
 
 Ecclesiastical control, opposition to, 7, 8. 
 Ecclesiastical power in the sixteenth 
 
 century, 55. 
 
 Ecelesiasticism, tyranny of, in Ger- 
 many, 25. 
 
 Education a care of the state, 18. 
 compulsory, in Europe, 13. 
 in Austria, 14. 
 in Europe, 16. 
 
 not the panacea for all evils, 14. 
 Education, popular, in republics and 
 
 monarchies, 12. 
 marks the progress of Europe, 
 
 12. 
 
 Ego, the, what is it ? 205, 206, 207. 
 Elizabeth, Queen, seventies of, towards 
 
 Romanists, 45. 
 Emerson, K. W., on internal light, 
 
 204. 
 
 Emperor and Pope, conflict between, 35. 
 I Emperor, divine right of, 48.
 
 334 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Empire, the German, has no religion 
 
 68. 
 
 Encyclopedists, infidelity of the, 24. 
 England and her relations to the pa 
 
 paey, 45. 
 England's sympathy with Germany, 
 
 33. 
 
 Episcopal Church, the, 253. 
 Equality, social and legal, compared, 18. 
 Ethics superior to custom, 135. 
 Europe averse to war, 147. 
 
 beyond the drifting period, 21. 
 Christian and social, drift of, 1. 
 evidence of advance in, 2. 
 not tending to republicanism, 6. 
 term defined, 1. 
 two constant factors in, 2. 
 European society far from sound, 22. 
 in peril from the military sys- 
 tem, 27. 
 
 Evangelical Church, the, in Prussia, C5. 
 Evil, moral, the product of free agency, 
 
 323. 
 problem of, not solved by 
 
 science, 2!2. 
 
 Evils of democratic civilization, rem- 
 edies for, not found, 31. 
 Evolutionists, inlidelity of a school of, 
 
 24. 
 Excommunication of Frederic II., 41, 
 
 42. 
 
 Exhibitions, international, 103. 
 Experience, the appeal to, 311. 
 
 the training of, in Europe, 18. 
 
 Faith, confession of, 218. 
 necessary, 272. 
 and science as distinguished by 
 
 Haeckel, 191. 
 Favoritism, ecclesiastical, weakens 
 
 loyalty, 80. 
 Feelings, the, outside the domain of 
 
 science, 291. 
 Fetichism of Africa, 237. 
 Field, D. D., deiines the word Nation, 
 
 53. 
 
 Fiore, defines the word Nation, 53. 
 Fittest, survival of the, 297. 
 F'orce and atoms, 193. 
 
 cause in action, 316. 
 
 universal, points to universal 
 
 cause, 310. 
 
 Foreigners, copyrights to, 158. 
 Forster, Wilhelm, on astronomy, 192, 
 
 193. 
 
 France and Spain, national life in, 53. 
 France, cost of her army, 98. 
 humiliation of, 12. 
 revolutions of, 4. 
 
 Frederic II., excommunication of, 40, 
 42. 
 
 Frederic III., barters away his prerog- 
 ative, 49. 
 
 Frederick William III., of Prussia,13. 
 
 Freedom of conscience and mind, 22. 
 
 Freedom, religious, to be demanded, 
 184. 
 
 Freeman, E. A., on Teutonic freedom, 
 82. 
 
 Fulda, assembly of bishops at, 69. 
 
 Galileo anticipated by Lucretius, 263. 
 his doctrines preached in Koine, 
 
 23. 
 
 Geology, reasoning from, 321. 
 German empire, the Catholic Union 
 
 on, 86. 
 
 Germans, the, capacity for self-govern- 
 ment of, 90. 
 
 not a belligerent nation, 95. 
 Germany, armament of, 92. 
 
 Bismarck's devotion to, 66. 
 copyright in, 151, 158. 
 ecclesiastical conflict in, 46. 
 her needs for defense, 97. 
 incited to insurrection bv Greg- 
 ory IX., 41. 
 political freedom in, 82. 
 progress under law in, 18. 
 proud of her army, HiO. 
 resources drained bv her army, 
 
 98. 
 
 the arbiter of Europe, 14. 
 Gladstone, W. E., 33. 
 
 on the Vatican decrees, 81. 
 God, belief in a personal, 238. 
 
 in American history, 258. 
 Goethe on the elective principle, 270. 
 Golden Kule, the, anticipated, 231. 
 Gospel, the, of Christ, necessary to 
 
 European liberty, 20. 
 Government a living power under Bis- 
 marck, 71. 
 
 blamed for all evils, 31. 
 lOvernments, rise of constitutional, 2. 
 iratitude, the sentiment of, 2H1. 
 Great liritain, copyright in, 154, 159. 
 
 cost of her army, 99. 
 Jreece, republics of, cause of their re- 
 trogression, 21. 
 Jreeks, religion of, 227, 228. 
 iregorv VII., bull of, excommunicat- 
 ing llenry IV., 30. (Ste Jlllde- 
 brand.) 
 jiregorv IX., conflict with Frederic 
 
 II., 40, 41, 42. 
 irot in.-, father of modern international 
 
 law, 107. 
 iiiix.ot, M., advocates public schools, 
 
 17. 
 
 iyinna-imn, the Prussian, as a training 
 'for the clergy, 84.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 886 
 
 Haeckel, Ernest, audacity of assertion 
 
 of, 212. 
 
 his "History of Creation," 191. 
 on moral and scientific mate- 
 rialism, 284. 
 
 Halleck on conquest, 172. 
 Hamlet, the idea of, not to be em- 
 bodied, 201. 
 
 Hatti' Iluinaloiin, the, 177. 
 Heathens no longer proper spoil for 
 
 Christiana, 110. 
 Heffter, August Wilhelm, on treaties. 
 
 132, 135. 
 
 on war indemnity, 169. 
 Hegel defines philosophy. 210. 
 
 ou the mechanical mode of in- 
 quiry, 32!). 
 
 on the nexus of design, 330. 
 on self-consciousness, 205. 
 Henry IV., excommunication of, 36, 
 
 38. 
 Henry VI., of France, bows to the 
 
 Pope, 59. 
 Henry VIII., ecclesiastical quarrels of, 
 
 45. 
 
 Hero-worship, 243. 
 
 Hierarchy, the Roman, in Prussia, 83. 
 Hildehrand, ground of his act towards 
 
 Henry IV., 39. 
 humbles Henry IV., 37. (See 
 
 Gregory VII.) 
 Hohenlohe, Cardinal, not received by 
 
 the 1'ope, 37. 
 
 Hohenlohe, Prince, on the attitude of 
 Bismarck towards the Roman Church, 
 90. 
 Holy Alliance, the, invalid in one 
 
 point, 139. 
 Honor, meaning of, 189. 
 
 must be sacred between nations, 
 
 180. 
 
 Hope impossible to an equation of ele- 
 ments, 26. 
 
 not found in the system of Lu- 
 cretius, 204. 
 
 Hossbach case, the, in Prussia, 247. 
 Huber, D. J., 62. 
 Humanism, 243. 
 
 Humaiiitv in dealings with non-Chris- 
 tian peoples, 109, 120. 
 scorned by Lucretius, 288. 
 Humboldt defines science, 215, 216. 
 Hume, fallacies of, 300, 313. 
 Huxley's life of, 325. 
 on cause and effect, 309. 
 progress of his ideas, 302. 
 Hume's appeal to experience falla- 
 cious, 311. 
 Hume's philosophical system, synopsis 
 
 of, 325. 
 Huxley's life of Hume, 325. 
 
 Ideal, the American, 22. 
 Ideas, origin of. 315. 
 
 property in, 162. 
 
 Imagination advance** xrience, 314. 
 Indemnity, arbitration in ca.se of cruel. 
 172. 
 
 justification of, 1G8. 
 
 right of an aggresssivo power 
 to, 171. 
 
 war, right of, 168. 
 India, religion of, 232. 
 Indians, cruelty towards, 104. 
 
 right of to the land over which 
 
 they roamed, 111. 
 Indifferentism in Germany, 25. 
 
 in Protestant Christianity, 24. 
 Individual, crushing tin-, to elevate the 
 
 masses, 29. 
 
 Individuals, repression of, 29, 30. 
 Induction evolved by Lucretius, 270. 
 Indulgences, sale of, 49. 
 Industrial development, 20. 
 
 progress, 19. 
 Industry, damaged by the German 
 
 military system, 98. 
 Infallibility," papal, 8. 
 
 doctrine of, 45, 52. 
 
 Presseuse on, 47. 
 
 Infidelity, the, of the 18th century, 23. 
 Ingratitude, baseness of, 281. 
 Inhumanity tends to barbarism, 121. 
 Injustice cannot be made valid by 
 
 featy, 138. 
 
 Innocent III., audacity of, 39. 
 Innocent IV., deposes Frederic II. 43. 
 Intellectual freedom in Prussia, 82. 
 Intelligence indicated by adaptation, 
 314, 321. 
 
 popular, progress of, 12. 
 Interference, right of, 124. 
 International copyright, 151. 
 
 Association, the, 1G4. 
 
 faith required, 147. 
 
 faith, steps towards, 148. 
 
 law, 107. 
 Intolerance of Russia, 181. 
 
 in Turkey, 181. 
 Intuition of mind, an, 315. 
 Invention, never produced bv Nature, 
 
 306. 
 Italy, cost of her army, 98. 
 
 education in, 17. 
 
 the old and the new, 03 described 
 by Taine, 20. 
 
 unilicat'on of, 4. 
 
 unity of, 11, 52, 68. 
 
 Jesuits and infallibility, 48. 
 
 claims of, 52. 
 
 in Germany, 46. 
 Jesuitism opposes Protestantism, 61.
 
 336 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Jesuitism triumphing at Rome, 68. 
 Jevous, W. S., on certajnty, 207. 
 
 on phenuineiia, 245. 
 Jews, disabilities of, G4. 
 John, accepted as vassal of the Pope. 
 
 40. 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, on policy and moral- 
 ity, 131. 
 Justice, sense of, growing in power, 
 
 145. 
 
 the supreme duty of mankind, 
 125. 
 
 Kant, Emanuel, triviality of, 330. 
 
 on the Ego, 204. 
 
 on mathematics in science, 193. 
 Kenntnifs and erkeimtnitt, 198. 
 Kent, Chancellor, on treaties, 134. 
 Kingship and priestism, 35. 
 
 subordinate to the Church, 40. 
 Knowledge the conviction of certainty, 
 195. 
 
 the diffusion of, not abridged by 
 copyright, 105. 
 
 how acquired, 196. 
 
 Kouiggriitz, effect of the disaster of, 
 16. 
 
 triumph of, 67, 71. 
 
 Labor, manual, decreases as thinking 
 
 increases, 20. 
 subdivision of, 30. 
 and trade, laws of, 18. 
 Lactantius on the derivation of the 
 
 word Religion, 226. 
 
 Law, International, general commu- 
 nity of, 108. 
 
 Law, majesty of, exemplified, 115. 
 Law of nations, what it requires, 147. 
 Leeky's view of religion, 223. 
 Lectures, a course of, indicated, 257. 
 Legitimacy declared the salvation of 
 
 Europe, 5. 
 Libert}' endangered by a standing 
 
 army, 27, 28. 
 Liberty, religious, right to uphold, 33. 
 
 unproselyting, 62. 
 Liefland, persecution in, 182. 
 Life, an assumption regarding, 308. 
 
 motives for a happy, presented 
 
 by Lucretius, 291." 
 origin of, according to Lucretius, 
 
 276. 
 
 Light and the eye, Tyndall on, 320. 
 I^otze, Hermann, on the Ego, 206. 
 Lourdcs, pilgrimages to, 23. 
 Lucretius or Paul'/ 2o7. 
 Lucretius, philosophy of, 262. 
 suicide of, 294. 
 traits of, 2(51. 
 Luther, Martin, theses of, 50. 
 
 Luther, his protesting conscience, 78. 
 Lutherans cajoled, 182. 
 
 Machinery, effect of the introduction 
 
 of, 19. 
 
 influence of. 20. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, on interven- 
 tion, 129. 
 Man, antiquity of, 322. 
 
 the centre about which church 
 
 and state revolve, 75. 
 the nature of, 28;!. 
 for the state, theory of, 75. 
 traits of, 260. 
 Manning, Cardinal, on papal power, 
 
 73, 74. 
 
 on papal restrictions, 85. 
 Materialism, method of, 269. 
 
 would explode society, 26. 
 Mathematical certainty, 213. 
 Mathematician, habits of the, 203. 
 Mathematics and science, 202. 
 Matter imperishable according to Lu- 
 cretius, 274. 
 
 Mazzini, Joseph, on materialism, 295. 
 Mechanical theory, the, 308. 
 Mediation guarantied bv the treaty of 
 
 Paris, 181. 
 
 Menzel, Wolfgang, 62, 71. 
 Methodism and mysticism follow skep- 
 ticism, 24. 
 Mildmay, Sir Walter, on Jesuits in 
 
 Germany, 46. 
 Military service a detriment to young 
 
 men, 99. 
 
 Military system, the, of Europe, 27. 
 Mill, E". J", 269. 
 Mill, J. S., irreligious education of, 
 
 224. 
 
 Mill and Comte, religion of, 239. 
 Mind, freedom of the, 22. 
 
 existence of, asserted by con- 
 sciousness, 326. 
 
 human, must be the agent to 
 compute the Universal mind, 
 312. 
 
 must record experience, 312. 
 Miraculous, the, rejected by material- 
 ism, 292. 
 Missionaries, Protestant, in Turkey, on 
 
 religious liberty, 128. 
 Mommsen, Theodor, on Roman re- 
 ligion, 227. 
 
 Monism, the, of Von Haercmbach, 307. 
 Moral certainty, 197. 
 Moral forces, power of, 34. 
 Mul ford, Elisha, defines the word Na- 
 tion, 54. 
 Miiller, Max, on science and religion, 
 
 219. 
 Myths, the perpetuity of, 208.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 337 
 
 i, Professor C. von, 212. 
 Napoleon, mercenary use of war by, 
 
 170. 
 
 on the laws of war, 105. 
 Nation, d.-tined, 53, 54. 
 National autonomy must be effected, 
 
 72. 
 
 spirit in France, 12. 
 unity, drift towards, 11. 
 Nationalism realized in the .empire of 
 Germany and the kingdom of Italy, 
 86. 
 Nationality established in Germany, 
 
 67. 
 
 growth of the idea of, 52, 65. 
 and paparchy, struggle between, 
 
 87. 
 
 rise of, in Europe, 12. 
 Nations, solidarity of the, 120. 
 Nature defined, 240. 
 
 interpretations of, 307. 
 the Latin view of, 241. 
 spontaneous work of, according 
 
 to Lucretius, 276. 
 worship of, 242. 
 Nepotism at Koine, 49. 
 Netherlands, cost of its army, 99. 
 Neutrals, rules by which they are 
 
 bound, 137. 
 
 New Zealand Question, the, 113. 
 Nexus, the, of design, 330. 
 Nobility cheapened in Spain, 10. 
 Nootka Sound, contest for, 112. 
 Norway, cost of her army, 99. 
 Nothingness inconsistent with a begin- 
 ning, 328. 
 
 Occupation a presumptive right to soil, 
 
 110. 
 to be valid must be serviceable, 
 
 113. 
 
 what is it ? 111. 
 Opium trade in China, 117, 118. 
 Orders, the privileged, decline of, 9. 
 Over-production, evils of, 21. 
 
 Palestine, schools of, 261. 
 Paley, his design-argument, 317. 
 
 the failure of, 300. 
 
 objections to, 303. 
 
 views of, restated, 305. 
 Panagurishta, outrages at, 122. 
 Papacy, the claims of, 44. 
 
 growth of the power of, 44. 
 
 influence of, 7, 8. 
 
 opposed to modern society, 68. 
 
 a political power, 36. 
 
 power of, not compatible with 
 the welfare of the nations, 41. 
 
 pretensions of, 8. 
 Papal infallibility, 25. 
 
 22 
 
 Papal supremacy asserted, 5!). 
 Paparchy and nationality, 33. 
 
 the, opposed by Prussia, 80. 
 Papers, diplomatic, publication of, 90. 
 Paradise not created by individual 
 
 freedom, 29. 
 Paris, treaty of. character of. 142, 146. 
 
 violated by Kussia, 179. 
 Parliament, the German, duration of. 
 
 94. 
 
 influence of a, 9. 
 influence of, in Germany, 10. 
 suggestion for an international, 
 
 131. 
 
 Parties, strife of, in America, 7. 
 Patriotism not appropriate to material- 
 ists, 285. 
 
 Patriots, European, 4. 
 Paul, character of, 201. 
 death of, 295. 
 doctrines of, 289. 
 theism of, 278. 
 Paul V. asserts the power of the keys, 
 
 60. 
 Peace insured by a large army, 98. 
 
 of the world, right of the powers 
 
 to preserve, 125. 
 
 Peasantry, effect of military life on, 99. 
 Pellico, Silvio, 5. 
 
 Penn, William, and the Indians, 112. 
 People, the cause of the, 18. 
 
 enlightenment of, demanded, 16. 
 growing influence of, 8. 
 rights and liberties of, 33. 
 their interest in government in 
 
 Sweden in 1815, 4. 
 Peoples above parties, 9. 
 Persecution, interference against, 130. 
 
 religious, in Kussia, 182. 
 Personality, 207. 
 
 Persons, questions regarding, to be set- 
 tled by arbitraiion, 102. 
 Philanthropy incompatible with a ma- 
 terialistic theory, 287. 
 Philip the Fair, of France, 46. 
 I'hillimore on the nature of treaties, 
 
 137. 
 
 on occupation, 111. 
 Philosophic vs. scientific thought, 24. 
 Philosophy, defined by Hegel, 210? 
 is it a science ? 187. 
 and science, 195. 
 the highest of sciences, 217. 
 Pilgrim Fathers, practice of the, 250. 
 Piracy suppressed by the United States, 
 
 126". 
 
 Pirates under the laws of nations, 121. 
 Pius IX. follows the example of Greg- 
 ory IX., 41. 
 
 his antagonism to modern soci- 
 ety, 8.
 
 338 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Plebiscitum, Ihe, of Napoleon, 26. 
 Police of the world, how far to be con- 
 ducted by Christian nations, 109, 124. 
 Political economy, science of, 20. 
 Politics, clerical control in, doomed, 9. 
 Polytheism based on monotheism, 237. 
 Pope, the, claims of to all the baptized, 
 
 35. 
 
 and Kaiser, rivals, 49. 
 interference of the, in affairs of 
 
 state, 35. 
 overthrow of the temporal power 
 
 of, 4. 
 power of, in the church of Rome, 
 
 73. 
 result of the abolition of his 
 
 temporal power, 7. 
 universal sovereignty of, 34, 37. 
 Positive philosophy, 221. 
 Positiveism, 239. 
 Potterv, ancient, 322. 
 Pottha'ust, Dr. A., 41. 
 Power, civil and ecclesiastical, con- 
 trasted, 79. 
 
 civil, tributary to spiritual, 40. 
 ecclesiastical in the 16th cen- 
 tury, 55. 
 
 spiritual, centralization of, 39. 
 Prerogative, decline of, 9. 
 Press, limitations on, in papal lands, 
 
 15. 
 Pressense", E. de, 33, 62. 
 
 on papal infallibility, 47. 
 Prevision, the, of Nature." 319. 
 Priests and politics in Italy, 8. 
 Princes, lay figures, 10. 
 
 league of, in the time of Luther, 
 
 10. 
 
 scarcity of, in Germany, 9. 
 their ornamental nature, 10. 
 Principles formulated in treaties, 136. 
 Progress, material, benefits of, 19. 
 
 political, in Europe from 1815 
 
 to 1878, 4. 
 
 Property in brain -work, 162. 
 Protestantism allies itself with princes, 
 
 50, 51. 
 
 progress of, 55, 63. 
 repulsed, 58. 
 
 Providence, Hume on, 313. 
 Prussia, Church and State in, 85. 
 ecclesiastical law in, 83. 
 intellectual and theological free- 
 dom in, 82. 
 
 the leader of Germany, 14. 
 opposed to the paparchy, 80. 
 position of, 66. 
 schools in, 13, 14. 
 true to the pact of "Westphalia, 
 
 64. 
 upholding religious liberty, 33. 
 
 Public worship bill, the English, 85. 
 
 Publication, compulsorj', 155. 
 
 Publishers, courtesy among, 161. 
 
 Puritans, moderation of, in New Eng- 
 land, 112. 
 
 Purpose, an intelligent, behind phe- 
 nomena, 305. 
 
 Quantics defined, 203. 
 
 Ranke, History of the Popes quoted, 
 
 52, 56, 57, 58. 
 
 Reaction from the Reformation, 51. 
 Reading, the power of, for good, 15. 
 Reason in matters of faith, 62. 
 
 and the New Testament, 78. 
 Redemption not known to materialism, 
 
 291. 
 Reformation, the, 49, 50. 
 
 gives kaiser and pope a shock, 
 
 49. 
 
 progress of, 56. 
 the reaction from, 51. 
 secured bv a league of princes, 
 
 10. 
 
 Reichstag, the German, 11. 
 Religion defined, 245. 
 
 derivation of the term, 226. 
 interference with that of non- 
 Christian peoples, 109, 126, 
 129. 
 
 reality of, 223. 
 
 right to demand freedom of, 120. 
 and science, straggle over, 186. 
 a science, 218. 
 source of, 329. 
 views of, 223. 
 what is it? 219, 226. 
 Religious freedom to be demanded, 
 
 185. 
 
 Religious idea, the, constancy of, 245. 
 Republicanism not progressing in Eu- 
 rope, 6. 
 
 Resurrection, doctrine of the, 253, 254. 
 Resurrection of the flesh, 253. 
 Revolution, the French, a result of, 
 
 47. 
 
 Rhense, diet of, in 1338, 48. 
 Rig Veda, the, 233, 234. 
 Rights of man not to be abrogated by 
 
 treaty, 139. 
 
 Rivalries among princes, 11. 
 Robinson Crusoe'n footprint, 311. 
 Rome, Church of, its aggressive policy, 
 
 55. 
 not to be inquired of at every 
 
 step, 73. 
 
 Rome and Russia, parallel between, 50. 
 Russell, Earl, letter to, 41. 
 Russia, compulsory attendance on 
 schools, 17.
 
 ZXDEX. 
 
 339 
 
 Russia, cost of her army, 98. 
 education in, 10. 
 modification of the power of the 
 
 Czar of, 5. 
 
 more Asiatic than European, 3. 
 shall England side witliV 175, 185. 
 violates the treaty of Paris, 178. 
 
 Savages, right of Christian nations 
 
 against, 114. 
 Savigny, Friedrich Karl von, on the 
 
 paramount nature of right, 125. 
 Sayce, Professor A. H., on Babylonian 
 
 religion, 236. 
 Schism, the great, 49. 
 Schools, public, in Europe, 13. 
 Schuyler, Eugene, on the Turkish out- 
 rages in Bulgaria, 122. 
 Science advanced by imagination 
 rather than by experience, 314. 
 contents of the'term, 209. 
 defined by Aristotle, 215. 
 definition of, 218. 
 generation of, 199. 
 in the remote past r 299. 
 looks forward, 314. 
 modern, anticipated bv Lucre- 
 tius, 263, 264, 267. 
 and religion, struggle over, 186. 
 what is it? 186, 210. 
 the work of, 324. 
 Sciences, their influence, 21. 
 Secchi, teaching the doctrines of Gal- 
 ileo, 23. 
 Sectarianism not to be supported by 
 
 treaty, 139. 
 Sects slightly encouraged to propa- 
 
 gandism, 24. 
 no right to interfere in behalf 
 
 of, 130. 
 
 Seen and unseen, relations of the, 271. 
 Self-consciousness, 205. 
 Sense refuted by reason, 272. 
 Senses, the, cannot account for man 
 
 and the universe, 273. 
 cannot be refuted, according to 
 
 Lucretius, 275. 
 not the liual judge upon truth, 
 
 272. 
 Servia, intervention in, 143. 
 
 violates the treaty of Paris, 179. 
 Serviceable occupation, 113. 
 Shakespeare on conscience, 78. 
 quoted, 86, 87. 
 
 and Dante on ingratitude, 281. 
 his science in mental philosophy, 
 
 188. 
 
 Signs of the Times (1877), 1. 
 Skepticism the reaction from supersti- 
 tion, 23. 
 vs. inquiry, 23. 
 
 Slavery, abolition of, 20. 
 Slave-trade, movement against, 121. 
 Social amelioration, 20. 
 Socialism in Germany, dangers of, 32. 
 repression of, by government, 
 
 Society in Euro]>e far from sound, 22. 
 a fundamental law of, 30. 
 conflicting theories of, 74, 75. 
 dependent upon responsibility, 
 
 26. 
 
 secularization of, 47. 
 the reconstruction of, slow, 18. 
 Soldier's calling, the, the mark of na- 
 tional unity, 12. 
 Solidarity, the, of members of modern 
 
 society, 34. 
 of nations, 120. 
 Somme, shaped flint stones in the, 
 
 311. 
 Soul, fate of, according to Lucretius, 
 
 276. 
 
 Soul-rights, struggle for, 49, 50. 
 South, Robert, on ingratitude, 282. 
 Sovereignty inherent in a nation, 54. 
 Scriptural doctrine of, 76. 
 of the state, 79. 
 titles of, in Germanv in 1815, 
 
 11. 
 
 Spain and France, national" life in, 53. 
 Spain, vicissitudes of, 4. 
 Speculation, Huxley on, 325. 
 Spencer, Herbert, on the home of 
 
 science, 199. 
 
 Spinoza, on the method of self-con- 
 sciousness, 204. 
 State and Church opposed, 61. 
 State, sovereignty of, 75, 79.. 
 Stephen, Leslie, on Hume and Paley, 
 
 300. 
 Stewart, Balfour, on force and sound, 
 
 193, 194. 
 Suffrage, limited in France in 1814, 3. 
 
 in Prussia, 14. 
 
 Superintendence of labor, 30. 
 Superstition, growth of, 23. 
 Supremacy of the Pope, 39. 
 Survival of the fittest, 297. 
 Sweden, cost of her army, 99. 
 Svllabus, the, of the Vatican Council, 
 
 "45. 
 
 Sylvester, Professor, defines qualities, 
 "203. 
 
 Taine, Henri, on Italv, old and new, 
 
 20. 
 
 on the magnitude of states, 30. 
 Teachers of religion, normal influence 
 
 of, 9. 
 
 Teleology not a Christian invention, 
 317.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Teleology, remarks on, 307. 
 Territory, acquisition of from non- 
 Christian peoples, 109. 
 disputes concerning, to be settled 
 
 by arbitration, 102. 
 Thanksgiving, reasons for, in America, 
 
 258. 
 a superstition to the materialist, 
 
 280. 
 Theism or materialism the issue, 259. 
 
 the, of Paul, 279. 
 Theistic idea, plasticity of, 296. 
 Theology, comparative, 221. 
 
 how much a war of words, 189. 
 Thomson, Archbishop, on rules of def- 
 inition, 187. 
 Thomson, Sir William, his reference to 
 
 Lucretius, 208. 
 Thought, the, of the Infinite Mind, 
 
 307. 
 stagnation of, in the Catholic 
 
 Church, 15. 
 Tiepolo, Paolo, reports rumors about 
 
 Home, 57. 
 
 Tillman, S. D., 269. 
 Tischendorf protests against persecu- 
 tion, 183. 
 Titles of sovereignty in Germany, in 
 
 1815, 11. 
 Tocoueville, Alexis de, tendency of 
 
 political philosophy of, 25. 
 Trade and labor, laws of, 18. 
 Traffic, if corrupting, to be discoun- 
 tenanced, 117. 
 Treaties as parts of the laws of nations, 
 
 132. 
 cannot be annulled by one party 
 
 alone, 145. 
 contracts, 136. 
 inviolability of, 173. 
 may not have -secret clauses 
 nullifying open professions, 
 139. 
 
 the positive value of, 140. 
 should be codified, 148. 
 should be inviolable, 141. 
 Treaty obligation, state of, 142. 
 
 "of Paris violated, 178, 179. 
 Trendelenburg, Professor Friedrich 
 
 Adolf, belief of, 222. 
 Troglodytes not so barbarous as war- 
 ring men, 28. 
 Truth and light, 252. 
 
 sought by scientists, 225. 
 what is it, 225. 
 Turkey, abhorrence of, in England, 
 
 177. 
 
 breach of faith by, 176. 
 broken pledges o'f, 123, 178. 
 pledges immunities to Christian 
 subjects, 177. 
 
 Turkey, its position among nations ac- 
 cording to the treaty of Paris, 
 143. 
 
 schools in, 16. 
 Turner, F. S., on the British opium 
 
 policy, 117, 118. 
 Twiss, "Sir Travcrs, on Africa and the 
 
 slave states, 108. 
 
 Tyndall, John, his limits of knowl- 
 edge, 208. 
 
 on purpose in Nature, 321. 
 on the religious sentiment, 194. 
 teleology of, 318. 
 Tyranny of ecclesiastical power, 79. 
 
 Ultramontanism in France, 47. 
 opposed to liberty, 33. 
 the struggle with, 10. 
 Ultramontanists opposed to German 
 
 nationality, 63. 
 Union, the German, 67. 
 Union bv strength, 66. 
 United States behind Europe in pop- 
 ular education, 13. 
 copyright in, 150, 160. 
 influence of the, in Europe, 6. 
 influence of religious teachers 
 
 in, 9. 
 interested in the ecclesiastical 
 
 conflict in Germany, 34. 
 as a Nation, the, lectures on, 
 
 257. 
 position of, in the progress of 
 
 liberty, 32. 
 possible religious struggle in, 
 
 82. 
 
 right of, to Indian lands, 111. 
 Unity, the, of Germany, 11. 
 of Italy, 11. 
 
 national, drift towards, 11. 
 of the spiritual essence in Indian 
 
 religion, 233. 
 Universe, the, cannot be accounted for 
 
 by the senses, 273. 
 scheme of the, according to 
 
 Paul, 277. 
 
 two systems of the, 279. 
 Unknown god, the, 279. 
 Unscientific reasoning, 273. . 
 Usucaption, Calvo on, 110. 
 Utility fallen into disrepute, 329. 
 
 Vatican decrees, Gladstone on the, 81. 
 
 Vattel on occupation, 111. 
 
 Vedas, religion of the, 232. 
 
 Victor Emmanuel, government of, 19. 
 
 and the people, 8. 
 Vienna, Congress of (1815), 3, 11. 
 Virchow, Professor K., 212. 214. 
 Vitalism not accounted for by mech- 
 anism, 308.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 341 
 
 "Von," cheapness of the German ti- 
 tle, 9. 
 
 Wallace, William, his "Philosophy of 
 
 Hegel," 328. 
 War, aggressive, how to be justified, 
 
 172. 
 
 changed character of, 12. 
 danger that it mav become a 
 
 commercial speculation, 170. 
 for conquest, ambition, or re- 
 venge, not to be sanctioned 
 172. 
 
 indemnity, right of, 168. 
 its province, 148, 149. 
 mercenary use of, by Napoleon, 
 
 170. 
 party not known in Germany, 
 
 100. 
 
 readiness of Germany for, 95. 
 temptation to, from a standing 
 
 army, 98. 
 
 Wars and commotions of 1877, 1. 
 Washington recognized God in Amer- 
 ican history, 258. 
 
 Watches, arguments from, 310. 
 
 Webster, Noah, on rights in brain- 
 work, 162. 
 
 Westphalia, peace of, 50, 51, 00, 04. 
 
 Wheaton on the right to use force, 
 115. 
 
 Whewell defines science, 210. 
 
 William, Emperor, his correspondence 
 with the Pope, 41. 
 
 Woman, her right to labor, teach, and 
 talk, 22. 
 
 Words, meanings of, 189. 
 wars of, 189. 
 
 Workingman, advantages of the mod- 
 ern, 20. 
 opportunity of, 19. 
 
 Workingmen, influence of reading 
 upon, 15. 
 
 Worship, freedom of, 63. 
 
 Wrong cannot be sanctioned by treaty, 
 138. 
 
 Zeller, Dr. E., of Berlin, on interpre- 
 tations of nature, 307. 
 on science, 216.
 
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