> a> ^ * 'i > >3v^ ' ^-y : i^o , > > v >?$> jx> ix > }/Y w >5- .3^:>'>3> if *3S5 > ->. , >} ;>: >, ,-> > ; .^>:p0iQ p > ^>^ vs >> > -J ^> ^^ ---4j- > ) '">:> 3K> ^ > 3X> 2> > X > ->^ J> .,> J>">..' 3 ) > > , > >> '.>> -> .">> > -: ' > > J -. ) I >j> > f> :> ^~>^$SS* > ' > >>3t> "3Gi> T>- v > > > >j> JB>' > ,i> J? > xo> ->>:^> ' >- 1 " > > . -3> > /.?> > > i ,7 J > "> ->X>L v >Jg>' ^3> > v>^5> > > > >XJg> J>. > >>/ ) > ^ >1> } > ) -y >> ^> ' '^> ^ 5> y > :*> :> ) >> >> 1> >> >> JB>3) >) > > ,> " > _> ._ " ' > - > > - > - - > > ) > > - > > > > > > > . > j> ;j > ' > > > >' > > "-XS > > -> ->^ >> > > >> > 1 > > v > 1 > >> ' > > HISTOEY OP THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF THE SPIRIT OP RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. BT WILLIAM EDWARD HAETPOLE LECKY, M.A. SI2CTOH: EX5ITIO2T. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. L LONDON: LONGMANS. GREEN, AND CO. 1873. INTKODUCTION. DURING the fierce theological controversies that accompanied and followed the Reformation, while a judicial spirit was as yet unknown, while each party imagined itself the representative of abso- lute and necessary truth in opposition to absolute and fatal error, and while the fluctuations of belief were usually attributed to direct miracu- lous agency, it was natural that all the causes of theological changes should have been sought ex- clusively within the circle of theology. Each theologian imagined that the existence of the opinions he denounced was fully accounted for by the exertions of certain evil-minded men, who had triumphed by means of sophistical arguments, aided by a judicial blindness that had been cast upon the deluded. His own opinions, on the other hand, had been sustained or revived by apostles raised for the purpose, illuminated by special inspiration, and triumphing by the force of theological arguments. As long as this point of view continued, the positions of the theologian VI INTRODUCTION. and of the ecclesiastical historian were nearly the same. Each was confined to a single province, and each recognising a primitive faith as his ideal, had to indicate the successive innovations upon its purity. But when towards the close of the eighteenth century the decline of theological passions enabled men to discuss these matters in a calmer spirit, and when increased knowledge produced more comprehensive views, the his- torical standing-point was materially altered. It was observed that every great change of belief had been preceded by a great change in the in- tellectual condition of Europe, that the success of any opinion depended much less upon the force of its arguments, or upon the ability of its advocates, than upon the predisposition of society to receive it, and that that predisposition resulted from the intellectual type of the age. As men advance from an imperfect to a higher civilisa- tion, they gradually sublimate and refine their creed. Their imaginations insensibly detach themselves from those grosser conceptions and doctrines that were formerly most powerful, and they sooner or later reduce all their opinions into conformity with the moral and intellectual stan- dards which the new civilisation produces. Thus, long before the Reformation, the tendencies of the Reformation were manifest. The revival of Grecian learning, the developement of art, the reaction against the schoolmen, had raised INTBODTJCTION. Vll society to an elevation in which a more refined and less oppressive creed was absolutely essential to its well-being. Luther and Calvin only re- presented the prevailing wants, and embodied them in a definite form. The pressure of the general intellectual influences of the time deter- mines the predispositions which ultimately regu- late the details of belief; and though all men do not yield to that pressure with the same facility, all large bodies are at last controlled. A change of speculative opinions does not imply an increase of the data upon which those opinions rest, but a change of the habits of thought and mind which they reflect. Definite arguments are the symp- toms and pretexts, but seldom the causes, of the change. Their chief merit is to accelerate the inevitable crisis. They derive their force and efficacy from their conformity with the mental habits of those to whom they are addressed. Reasoning which in one age would make no im- pression whatever, in the next age is received with enthusiastic applause. It is one thing to understand its nature, but quite another to ap- preciate its force. And this standard of belief, this tone and habit of thought, which is the supreme arbiter of the opinions of successive periods, is created, not by the influences arising out of any one depart- ment of intellect, but by the combination of all the intellectual and even social tendencies of the VU1 INTRODUCTION. age. Those who contribute most largely to its formation are, I believe, the philosophers. Men like Bacon, Descartes, and Locke have probably done more than any others to set the current of their age. They have formed a certain cast and tone of mind. They have introduced pe- culiar habits of thought, new modes of reasoning, new tendencies of enquiry. The impulse they have given to the higher literature, has been by that literature communicated to the more popular writers ; and the impress of these master-minds is clearly visible in the writings of multitudes who are totally unacquainted with their works. But philosophical methods, great and unquestion- able as is their power, form but one of the many influences that contribute to the mental habits of society. Thus the discoveries of physical science, entrenching upon the domain of the anomalous and the incomprehensible, enlarging our conceptions of the range of law, and reveal- ing the connection of phenomena that had for- merly appeared altogether isolated, form a habit of mind which is carried far beyond the limits of physics. Thus the astronomical discovery, that our world is not the centre and axis of the material universe, but is an inconsiderable planet occupying to all appearance an altogether insig- nificant and subordinate position, and revolving with many others around a sun which is itself but an infinitesimal point in creation, in as far as INTRODUCTION. IX it is realised by the imagination, has a vast and palpable influence upon our theological concep- tions. Thus the commercial or municipal spirit exhibits certain habits of thought, certain modes of reasoning, certain repugnances and attractions, which make it invariably tend to one class of opinions. To encourage the occupations that produce this spirit, is to encourage the opinions that are most congenial to it. It is impossible to lay down a railway without creating an intel- lectual influence. It is probable that Watt and Stephenson will eventually modify the opinions of mankind almost as profoundly as Luther or Voltaire. If these views be correct, they establish at once a broad distinction between the province of the theologian and that of the historian of opinions. The first confines his attention to the question of the truth or falsehood of particular doctrines, which he ascertains by examining the arguments upon which they rest; the second should en- deavour to trace the causes of the rise and fall of those doctrines which are to be found in the general intellectual condition of the age. The first is restricted to a single department of men- tal phenomena, and to those logical connec- tions which determine the opinions of the severe reasoner; the second is obliged to take a wide survey of the intellectual influences of the period he is describing, and to trace that connection of I INTBODUCTION. congruity which has a much greater influence upon the sequence of opinions than logical argu- ments. Although in the present work we are con- cerned only with the last of these two points of view, it will be necessary to consider briefly the possibility of their coexistence ; for this question involves one of the most important problems in history the position reserved for the individual will and the individual judgment in the great current of general causes. It was a saying of Locke, that we should not ask whether our will is free, but whether WE are free ; for our conception of freedom is the power of acting according to our will, or, in other words, the consciousness, when pursuing a certain course of action, that we might, if we had chosen, have pursued a different one. If, however, pushing our analysis still further, we ask what it is that determines our volition, I conceive that the highest principles of liberty we are capable of attaining are to be found in the two facts, that our will is a faculty distinct from our desires, and that it is not a mere passive thing, the direc- tion and intensity of which are necessarily deter- mined by the attraction and repulsion of pleasure and pain. We are conscious that we are capable of pursuing a course which is extremely distaste- ful, rather than another course which would be extremely agreeable; that in doing so we are INTEODUCTION. XI making a continual and painful effort ; that every relaxation of that effort produces the most lively pleasure ; and that it is at least possible that the motive which induces us to pursue the path of self-abnegation, may be a sense of right altogether uninfluenced by prospects of future reward. We are also conscious that if our desires act power- fully upon our will, our will can in its turn act upon our desires. We can strengthen the natural powers of our will by steadily exerting it. We can diminish the intensity of our desires by habitually repressing, them ; we can alter, by a process of mental discipline, the whole symmetry of our passions, deliberately selecting one class for gratification and for developement, and crush- ing and subduing the others. These considera- tions do not, of course, dispel the mystery which perhaps necessarily rests upon the subject of free-will. They do not solve the questions, whether the will can ever act without a motive, or what are its relations to its motives, or whether the desires may not sometimes be too strong for its most developed powers ; but they form a theory of human liberty which I believe to be the highest we can attain. He who has realised, on the one hand, his power of acting according to his will, and, on the other hand, the power of his will to emancipate itself from the empire of pain and pleasure, and to modify and control the current of the emotions, has probably touched the limits of his freedom. Xll INTRODUCTION. The struggle of the will for a right motive against the pressure of the desires, is one of the chief forms of virtue ; and the relative position of these two influences, one of the chief measures of the moral standing of each individual. Some- times, in the conflict between the will and a par- ticular desire, the former, either through its own natural strength, or through the natural weak- ness of its opponent, or through the process of mental discipline I have described, has obtained a supreme ascendency which is seldom or never seriously disturbed. Sometimes, through causes that are innate, and perhaps more frequently through causes for which we are responsible, the two powers exhibit almost an equipoise, and each often succumbs to the other. Between these two positions there are numerous gradations ; so that every cause that in any degree intensifies the desires, gives them in some cases a triumph over the will. The application of these principles to those constantly-recurring figures which moral statis- tics present is not difficult. The statistician, for example, shows that a certain condition of tem- perature increases the force of a passion or, in other words, the temptation to a particular vice ; and he then proceeds to argue, that the whole history of that vice is strictly regulated by at- mospheric changes. The vice rises into promi- nence with the rising temperature ; it is sustained INTEODUCTION. 3111 during its continuance, it declines with its de- cline. Year after year, the same figures and the same variations are nearly reproduced. Investi- gations in the most dissimilar nations only strengthen the proof; and the evidence is so ample, that it enables us, within certain limits, even to predict the future. The rivers that rise and fall with the winter torrents or the summer drought ; the insect life that is called into being by the genial spring and destroyed by the return- ing frost ; the aspect of vegetation, which pur- sues its appointed changes through the recurring seasons : these do not reflect more faithfully or obey more implicitly external influences, than do some great departments of the acts of man. This is the fact which statistical tables prove, but what is the inference to be deduced from them ? Not, surely, that there is no such thing as free-will, but, what we should have regarded as antecedently probable, that the degree of energy with which it is exerted is in different periods nearly the same. As long as the resis- tance is unaltered, the fluctuations of our desires determine the fluctuations of our actions. In this there is nothing extraordinary. It would be strange indeed if it were otherwise strange if, the average of virtue remaining the same, or nearly the same, an equal amount of solicitation did not at different periods produce the same, or nearly the same, amount of compliance. The XIV INTRODUCTION. fact, therefore, that there is an order and se- quence in the history of vice, and that influences altogether independent of human control con- tribute largely to its course, in no degree destroys the freedom of will, and the conclusion of the historian is perfectly reconcilable with the prin- ciples of the moralist. From this spectacle of regularity, we simply infer that the changes in the moral condition of mankind are very slow ; that there are periods when, certain desires being strengthened by natural causes, the task of the will in opposing them is peculiarly arduous ; and that any attempt to write a history of vice with- out taking into consideration external influences, would be miserably deficient. Again, if we turn to a different class of phe- nomena, nothing can be more certain to an at- tentive observer than that the great majority even of those who reason much about their opinions have arrived at their conclusions by a process quite distinct from reasoning. They may be perfectly unconscious of the fact, but the ascendency ef old associations is upon them ; and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, men of the most various creeds conclude their investi- gations by simply acquiescing in the opinions they have been taught. They insensibly judge all questions by a mental standard derived from education ; they proportion their attention and sympathy to the degree in which the facts or INTRODUCTION. XV arguments presented to them support their fore- gone - conclusions ; and they thus speedily con- vince themselves that the arguments in behalf of their hereditary opinions are irresistibly cogent, and the arguments against them exceedingly absurd. Nor are those who have diverged from the opinions they have been taught necessarily more independent of illegitimate influences. The love of singularity, the ambition to be thought intellectually superior to others, the bias of taste, the attraction of vice, the influence of friendship, the magnetism of genius, these, and countless other influences into which it is needless to enter, all determine conclusions. The number of per- sons who have a rational basis for their belief is probably infinitesimal ; for illegitimate influences not only determine the convictions of those who do not examine, but usually give a dominating bias to the reasonings of those who do. But it would be manifestly absurd to conclude from this, that reason has no part or function in the formation of opinions. No mind, it is true, was ever altogether free from distorting influences; but in the struggle between the reason and the affections which leads to truth, as in the struggle between the will and the desires which leads to virtue, every effort is crowned with a measure of success, and innumerable gradations of progress are manifested. All that we can rightly infer is, that the process of xvi INTEODUCTIOBT. reasoning is much more difficult than is commonly supposed ; and that to those who would investi- gate the causes of existing opinions, the study of predispositions is much more important than the study of arguments. The doctrine, that the opinions of a given period are mainly determined by the intellectual condition of society, and that every great change of opinion is the consequence of general causes, simply implies that there exists a strong bias which acts upon all large masses of men, and eventually triumphs over every obstacle. The inequalities of civilisation, the distorting influ- ences arising out of special circumstances, the force of conservatism, and the efforts of individual genius, produce innumerable diversities; but a careful examination shows that these are but the eddies of an advancing stream, that the various systems are being all gradually modified in a given direction, and that a certain class of ten- dencies appears with more and more prominence in all departments of intellect. Individuals may resist the stream ; and this power supplies a firm and legitimate standing-point to the theologian: but these efforts are too rare and feeble to have much influence upon the general course. To this last proposition there is, however, an important exception to be made in favour of men of genius, who are commonly at once representa- INTRODUCTION. XV11 tive and creative. They embody and reflect the tendencies of their time, but they also frequently materially modify them, and their ideas become the subject or the basis of the succeeding de- velopements. To trace in every great movement the part which belongs to the individual and the part which belongs to general causes, without exaggerating either side, is one of the most delicate tasks of the historian. What I have written will, I trust, be sufficient to show the distinction between the sphere of the historian and the sphere of the theologian. It must, however, be acknowledged that they have some points of contact; for it is impossible to reveal the causes that called an opinion into being without throwing some light upon its intrinsic value. It must be acknowledged, also, that there is a theory or method of research which would amalgamate the two spheres, or, to speak more correctly, would entirely subordinate the theo- logian to the historian. Those who have appre- ciated the extremely small influence of definite arguments in determining the opinions either of an individual or of a nation who have perceived how invariably an increase of civilisation implies a modification of belief, and how completely the controversialists of successive ages are the pup- pets and the unconscious exponents of the deep under-current of their time, will feel an intense distrust of their unassisted reason, and will natu- VOL. i. a INTEODUOTIOTT. rally look for some guide to direct their judg- ment. I think it must be admitted that the general and increasing tendency, in the present day, is to seek such a guide in the collective wisdom of mankind as it is displayed in the de- velopements of history. In other words, the way in which our leading thinkers, consciously or un- consciously, form their opinions, is by endeavour- ing to ascertain what are the laws that govern the successive modifications of belief; in what directions, towards what conceptions, the intellect of man advances with the advance of civilisation ; what are the leading characteristics that mark the belief of civilised ages and nations as com- pared with barbarous ones, and of the most edu- cated as compared with the most illiterate classes. This mode of reasoning may be said to resolve it- self into three problems. It is necessary, in the first place, to ascertain what are the general intel- lectual tendencies of civilisation. It is then necessary to ascertain how far those tendencies are connected, or, in other words, how far the existence of one depends upon and implies the existence of the others, and it is necessary, in the last place, to ascertain whether they have been accompanied by an increase or diminution of happiness, of virtue, and of humanity. My object in the present work has been, to trace the history of the spirit of Rationalism : by which I understand, not any class of definite INTRODUCTION. XII doctrines or criticisms, but rather a certain cast of thought, or bias of reasoning, which has during the last three centuries gained a marked ascen- dency in Europe. The nature of this bias will be exhibited in detail in the ensuing pages, when we examine its influence upon the various forms of moral and intellectual developement. At present it will be sufficient to say, that it leads men on all occasions to subordinate dogmatic theology to the dictates of reason and of con- science, and, as a necessary consequence, greatly to restrict its influence upon life. It predisposes men, in history, to attribute all kinds of phe- nomena to natural rather than miraculous causes ; in theology, to esteem succeeding systems the expressions of the wants and aspirations of that religious sentiment which is planted in all men ; and, in ethics, to regard as duties only those which conscience reveals to be such. It is manifest that, in attempting to write the history of a mental tendency, some difficulties have to be encountered quite distinct from those which attend a simple relation of facts. No one can be truly said to understand any great system of belief, if he has not in some degree realised the point of view from which its arguments assume an appearance of plausibility and of co- gency, the habit of thought which makes its various doctrines appear probable, harmonious, and consistent. Yet, even in the great contro- XT INTRODUCTION. vcrsics of the present day even in the disputes between the Catholic and the Protestant, it is evident that very few controversialists ever suc- ceed in arriving at this appreciation of the opin- ions they are combating. But the difficulty be- comes far greater when our research extends over forms of belief of which there are no living representatives, and when we have not merely to estimate the different measures of probability subsisting in different societies, but have also to O indicate their causes and their changes. To re- construct the modes of thought which produced superstitions that have long since vanished from among us ; to trace through the obscurity of the distant past that hidden bias of the imagination which deeper than any strife of arguments, deeper than any change of creed determines in each succeeding age the realised belief ; to grasp the principle of analogy or congruity according to which the conceptions of a given period were grouped and harmonised, and then to show how the discoveries of science, or the revolutions in philosophy, or the developements of industrial or political life, introduced new centres of attrac- tion, and made the force of analogy act in new directions ; to follow out the process till the period when conclusions the reason had once naturally and almost instinctively adopted seem incongru- ous and grotesque, and till the whole current of intellectual tendencies is changed : this is the INTRODUCTION. XXI task which devolves upon every one who, not content with relating the fluctuations of opinions, seeks to throw some light upon the laws that govern them. Probably, the greatest difficulty of such a pro cess of investigation arises from the wide diffe- rence between professed and realised belief. When an opinion that is opposed to the age is incapable of modification and is an obstacle to progress, it will at last be openly repudiated; and if it is identified with any existing interests, or associated with some eternal truth, its rejection will be accompanied by paroxysms of painful agitation. But much more frequently civilisation makes opinions that are opposed to it simply ob- solete. They perish by indifference, not by con- troversy. They are relegated to the dim twilight land that surrounds every living faith ; the land, not of death, but of the shadow of death ; the land of the unrealised and the inoperative. Sometimes, too, we find the phraseology, the ceremonies, the formularies, the external aspect of some phase of belief that has long since perished, connected with a system that has been created by the wants and is thrilling with the life of modern civilisation. They resemble those images of departed ancestors, which, it is said, the ancient Ethiopians were accustomed to paint upon their bodies, as if to preserve the pleasing illusion that those could not be really dead whose INTRODUCTION. lineaments were still visible among them, and were still associated with life. In order to appre- ciate the change, we must translate these opin- ions into action, must examine what would be their effects if fully realised, and ascertain how far those effects are actually produced. It is necessary, therefore, not merely to examine suc- cessive creeds, but also to study the types of character of successive ages. It only remains for me, before drawing this introduction to a close, to describe the method I have employed in tracing the influence of the rationalistic spirit upon opinions. In the first place) I have examined the history and the causes of that decline of the sense of the mi- raculous, which is so manifest a fruit of civilisa- tion. But it soon becomes evident that this movement cannot be considered by itself; for the predisposition in favour of miracles grows out of, and can only be adequately explained by, certain conceptions of the nature of the Supreme Being, and of the habitual government of the universe, which invariably accompany the earlier, or, as it may be termed, the anthropomorphic stage of intellectual developement. Of the nature of this stage we have some important evidence in the history of art, which is then probably the most accurate expression of religious realisations, while the history of the encroach- ments of physical science, upon our first notions INTRODUCTION. XX111 of the system of the world, goes far to explain its decay.. Together with the intellectual move- ment, we have to consider a moral movement that has accompanied it, which has had the effect of diminishing the influence of fear as the motive of duty, of destroying the overwhelming import- ance of dogmatic teaching, and of establishing the supremacy of conscience. This progress in- volves many important consequences ; but the most remarkable of all is the decay of persecu- tion, which, I have endeavoured to show, is in- dissolubly connected with a profound change in theological realisations. I have, in the last place, sought to gather fresh evidence of the operations of the rationalistic spirit in the great fields of politics and of industry. In the first, I have shown how the movement of secularisation has passed through every department of political life, how the progress of democracy has influenced and been influenced by theological tendencies, and how political pursuits contribute to the for- mation of habits of thought, which affect the whole circle of our judgments. In the second, I have traced the rise of the industrial spirit in Europe ; its collisions with the Church ; the pro- found moral and intellectual changes it effected ; and the tendency of the great science of political economy, which is its expression. I am deeply conscious that the present work can furnish at best but a meagre sketch of these INTEODUCTION. subjects, and that to treat them as they deserve would require an amount both of learning and of ability to which I can m.-ikr no pretension. I shall be content if I have succeeded in detect- ing some forgotten link in the great chain of causes, or in casting a ray of light on some of the obscurer pages of the history of opinions CONTENTS THE FIRST VOLUME. INTRODUCTION v CHAPTER I. THE DECLINING SENSE OP THE MIKACULOUS. ON MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT. The Belief in Satanic Miracles,having been universal among Protestants and Roman Catholics, passed away by a silent and unreasoning process under the influence of Civilisa- tion Witchcraft arose from a vivid Realisation of Satanic Presence acting on the Imagination and afterwards on the Reason Its Existence and Importance among Savages The Christians attributed to Magic the Pagan Miracles Constantino and Constantius attempted to subvert Pa- ganism by persecuting Magic Magical Character soon attributed to Christian Rites Miracle of St. Hilarion Persecution suspended under Julian and Jovian, but afterwards renewed Not entirely due to Ecclesiastical Influence Compromise between Christianity and Pa- ganism Prohibited Pagan Rites continue to be practised as Magic From the Sixth to the Twelfth Century, ex- treme Superstition with little Terrorism, and, conse- quently, little Sorcery Effects of Eclipses, Comets, and XXVI CONTENTS OP PAOK Pestilence, on the Superstition The Cabalists Psellus The Revival of Literature in the Twelfth Century pro- duced a Spirit of Rebellion which was encountered by Terrorism which acting on the popular Creed, produced a bias towards Witchcraft The Black Death Influence of the Reformation in stimulating Witchcraft Luther The Inquisitors The Theology of Witchcraft First Evidence of a Rationalistic Spirit in Europe Wier answered by Bodin Rationalistic Spirit fully manifested in Montaigne Charron Rapid and silent Decadence of the Belief in Witches Opinions and Influence of La Bruyere, Bayle, Descartes, Malebranche, and Voltaire Gradual Cessation of the Persecution in France In Eng- land, the First Law against Witchcraft was made under Henry VIII. Repealed in the following Reign, but re- newed under Elizabeth Cranmer and Jewel Reginald Scott pronounced Witchcraft a Delusion The Law of James I. Opinions of Coke, Bacon, Shakespeare, Brown, and Selden English Witchcraft reached its climax in the Commonwealth Declined immediately after the Restora- tion The Three Causes were, the Reaction against Puritanism, the Influence of Hobbes, and the Baconian Philosophy as represented by the Royal Society Charge of Sir Matthew Hale Glanvil undertakes the Defence of the Belief Supported by Henry More, Cud worth, Casaubon, &c. Opposed by Webster and Wagstaafe Baxter vainly tries to revive the Belief by Accounts of Witch Trials in America RapidProgress of the Scepticism Trial of Jane Wenham Repeal of the Laws against Witchcraft Wesley's Summary of the History of the Movement Great Moderation of the English Church as compared with Puritanism Extreme Atrocity of the Witch Persecution in Scotland, and its Causes Slow Decline of the Belief in Scotland Conclusion . . 1 THE FIRST VOLUME. XXV11 CHAPTER II. THE DECLINING SENSE OF THE MIRACULOUS. THE MIRACLES OF THE CHTJBCH. PAGK Miracles related by the Fathers and Mediaeval Writers as ordinary and undoubted Occurrences Eapid Growth of Scepticism on the Subject since the Keformation The Sceptical Habit of Mind acts more powerfully on Contem- porary than on Historical Narrations Among the early Protestants, the Cessation of Miracles supposed to have taken place when the Fathers passed away Persecution regarded by some English Divines as a Substitute for Miracles Opinions of Locke and Newton on the Subject Tendencies of the Eighteenth Century adverse to the Miraculous Middleton Discussion of his Principles by Church, Dodwell, Gibbon, Hume, Farmer, Warburton, and Douglas General Abandonment of the Patristic Miracles Eise of Tractarianism Small place Catholic Miracles occupied in the Discussion it evoked Weakness of the common Arguments against the continuance of Miracles Developement of Continental Protestantism into Eationalism Eationalistic Tendencies in Eoman Catholic Countries Origin and Decline of the Evidential School in England Modification of the Conception of Miracles Eeasonableness of the Doctrine of Interference Summary of the Stages of Eationalism in its relation to the Miraculous Its Causes Its Influence on Chris- tianity . . .., 139 CHAPTER m. AESTHETIC, SCIENTIFIC, AND MORAL DEVELOPEMENTS OF EATIONALISM. The Expectation of Miracles grows out of the Eeligious Conceptions of an early Stage of Civilisation, and its Decline implies a general Modification of Eeligious Opinions Fetishism probably the First Stage of He- TXviii CONTENTS OP Hgiou8 Belief Examples of Fetish Notions in the Early Church Patristic Opinions concerning the Cross and the Water of Baptism Anthropomorphism the next Stage Men then ascribe the Government of the Universe to Beings like themselves ; but, being unable to concen- trate their Attention on the Invisible, they fall into Idolatry Idolatry a Sign sometimes of Progress, and sometimes of Retrogression During its continuance, Art is the most faithful Expression of Religious Realisation Influence of the National Religions on the Art of Persia, Egypt, India, and Greece The Art of the Cata- combs altogether removed from Idolatry Its Freedom from Terrorism Its Symbolism Progress of Anthropo- morphism Position of the First Person of the Trinity in Art Growing Worship of the Virgin Strengthened by Gnosticism by Dogmatic Definitions by Painting, Celibacy, and the Crusades Its Moral Consequences Growth of Idolatrous Conceptions Stages of the Vene- ration of Relics Tendency towards the Miraculous invests Images with peculiar Sanctity The Portrait of Edessa The Image at Paneas Conversion of the Barbarians makes Idolatry general Decree of Illiberis The Icono- clasts The Second Council of Nice St. Agobard Mahometanism the sole Example of a great Religion re- straining Semi-barbarians from Idolatry Three Causes of its Success Low Condition of Art during the Period of Mediaeval Idolatry Difference between the Religious and ^Esthetic Sentiment Aversion to Innovation Con- trast between the Pagan and Christian Estimate of the Body Greek Idolatry faded into Art Its Four Stages A corresponding Transition takes place in Christendom Greek Influence on Art Iconoclasm Tradition of the Deformity of Christ The Byzantine Style Broken by a Study of Ancient Sculpture renewed by Nicolas of Pisa Christian School of Giotto and Fra Angelico Corresponded with the Intellectual Character of the Time Influence of Dante Apocalyptic Subjects Progress of Terrorism in Art Increase of Scepticism Religious Paintings re- garded simply as Studies of the Beautiful Influence of Venetian Sensuality Sensuality favourable to Art Pa- rallel of Titian and Praxiteles Influence of the Pagan THE FIRST VOLUME. XXIX Sculpture History of Greek Statues after the rise of Chris- tianity Reaction in favour of Spiritualism led by Savo- narola Complete Secularisation of Art by Michael Angelo Cycle of Painting completed A corresponding Transi- tion took place in Architecture Fluctuations in the Esti- mate in which it has been held represent Fluctuations of Religious Sentiments Decline of Gothic Architecture Brunelleschi St. Peter's Intellectual Importance of the History of Art The Euthanasia of Opinions Con- tinued Revolt against Anthropomorphism Results from the Totality of the Influences of Civilisation, but es- pecially from the Encroachments of Physical Science on the old Conceptions of the Government of the Universe In the Early Church, Science was subordinated to Systems of Scriptural Interpretation Allegorical School of Origen St. Augustine de Genesi Literal School Controversy about the Antipodes Cosmas Virgilius Rise of the Copernican System Condemnation of Foscarini and of Galileo Influence of Theology on the Progress of Science Opinion of Bacon Astronomy displaces the Ancient Notion of Man's Position in the Universe Philosophical Importance of Astrology Refutation by Geology of the Doctrine of the Penal Nature of Death Increasing Sense of Law Reasons why apparently Capricious Phenomena were especially associated with Religious Ideas On Lots Irreligious Character attributed to Scientific Explanations Difference between the Conception of the Divinity in a Scientific and Unscientific Age Growth of Astronomy Comets Influence of Paracelsus, Bayle, and Halley Rise of Scientific Academies Ascendency of the Belief in Law Harsher Features of Theology thereby corrected The Morphological Theory of the Universe Its In- fluence on History Illegitimate Effects of Science In- fluence on Biblical Interpretation La Peyrere Spinoza Kant Lessing Moral Developement accompanies the Intellectual Movement Illustrations of its Nature Moral Genius Relations of Theology to Morals Com- plete Separation in Antiquity Originality of the Moral Type of Christianity Conceptions of the Divinity Evan- escence of Duties unconnected with our Moral Nature- History of Religious Terrorism Patristic Conception of XXX CONTENTS OP MM Hell Origen and Gregory of Nyssa Faint Notions of the Jews and Heathens on the Subject Doctrine of Purgatory Scotus Erigena Extreme Terrorism of the Fourteenth Century Destruction of Natural Religion by the conception of Hell Its Effect in habituating Men to contemplate the Sufferings of others with complacency Illustration of this from Tertullian and from the History of Persecution and from that of Torture Abolition of Torture in France, Spain, Prussia, Italy, and Russia Relations between the prevailing Sense of the Enormity of Sin and the Severity of the Penal Code Decline of the Mediaeval Notions of Hell due partly to the Progress of Moral Philosophy, and partly to that of Psychology Apparitions and the Belief in Hell the Corner-stones of the Psychology of the Fathers Repudiation of Platonism Two Schools of Materialism Materialism of the Middle Ages Impulse given to Psychology by Averroes and by the Mystics of the Fourteenth Century Des- cartes Swinden, Whiston, Horberry Change in the Ecclesiastical Type of Character Part taken by Theo- logians in ameliorating the English Penal Code First Impulse due to Voltaire and Beccaria Bentham Elimi- nation of the Doctrine of future Torture from Religious Realisations . .188 CHAPTER IV. ON PERSECUTION. PART I. THE ANTECEDENTS OF PEHSECTJTIOK. Persecution is the result, not of the personal Character of the Persecutors, but of the Principles they profess Foundations of all Religious Systems are the Sense of Virtue and the Sense of Sin Political and Intellectual Circumstances determine in each System their relative Importance These Sentiments gradually converted into Dogmas, under the Names of Justification by Works and Justification by Faith Dogmas unfaithful Expressions THE FIRST VOLUME. XXXI PAQB of Moral Sentiments The Conception of Hereditary Guilt Theories to account for it The Progress of De- mocratic Habits destroys it Its dogmatic Expression the Doctrine that all Men are by Nature doomed to Dam- nation Unanimity of the Fathers concerning the Non- salvability of unbaptised Infants Divergence concerning their Fate The Greek Fathers believed in a Limbo The Latin Fathers denied this Augustine, Fulgentius Origen associates the Doctrine with that of Pre-existence Pseudo-baptisms of the Middle Ages The Reformation produced conflicting Tendencies on the subject, diminish- ing the Sense of the Efficacy of Ceremonies, increasing that of imputed Guilt The Lutherans and Calvinists held a Doctrine that was less superstitious but more re- volting than that of Catholicism Jonathan Edwards Dogmatic Character of early Protestantism Rationalism appeared with Socinus Antecedents of Italian Rational- ism Socinus rejects Original Sin as also does Zuin- glius Rationalistic Tendencies of this Reformer Rapid Progress of his View of Baptism The Scope of the Doctrine of the Condemnation of all Men extends to Adults Sentiments of the Fathers on the Damnation of the Heathen Great Use of this Doctrine of Exclusive Salvation in consolidating the Power of the Church and in abbreviating the Paroxysms of the Reformation The Protestants almost all accepted it Protest of Zuinglius Opposition between Dogmatic and Natural Religion re- sulting from the Doctrine Influence on Predestinarian- ism Augustine Luther, de Servo Arbitrio Calvin and Beza Injurious Influence of the Doctrine of Exclusive Salvation on Morals and on the Sense of Truth Pious Frauds Total Destruction in the Middle Ages of the Sense of Truth resulting from the Influence of Theology The Classes who were most addicted to Falsehood proclaimed Credulity a Virtue Doctrine of Probabilities of Pascal and Craig Revival of the Sense of Truth due to Secular Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century Causes of the Influence of Bacon, Descartes, and Locke The Decline of Theological Belief a necessary Antecedent of their Success 352 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. CHAPTER I. ON THE DECLINING SENSE OF THE MIRACULOUS MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT. THERE is certainly no change in the history of the last 300 years more striking, or suggestive of more curious enquiries, than that which has taken place in the estimate of the miraculous. At present nearly all educated men receive an account of a miracle taking place in their own day, with an absolute and even derisive incredulity which dispenses with all examination of the evidence. Although they may be entirely unable to give a satisfactory explanation of some phenomena that have taken place, they never on that account dream of ascribing them to super- natural agency, such an hypothesis being, as they believe, altogether beyond the range of reasonable discussion. Yet, a few centuries ago, there was no solution to which the mind of man turned more readily in every perplexity. A miraculous account was then universally accepted as perfectly credible, probable, and ordinary. There was scarcely a village or a church that had not, 'at some time, been the scene of supernatural interposition. The powers of VOL. I. B a EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. light and the powers of darkness were regarded as visibly struggling for the mastery. Saintly miracles, supernatural cures, startling judgments, visions, prophecies, and prodigies of every order, attested the activity of the one ; while witchcraft and magic, with all their attendant horrors, were the visible manifes- tations of the other. I propose in the present chapter to examine that vast department of miracles, which is comprised under the several names of witchcraft, magic, and sorcery. It is a subject which has, I think, scarcely obtained the position it deserves in the history of opinions, having been too generally treated in the spirit of the antiquarian, as if it belonged entirely to the past, and could have no voice or bearing upon the controversies of the present. Yet, for more than fifteen hundred years, it was universally believed that the Bible es- tablished, in the clearest manner, the reality of the crime, and that an amount of evidence, so varied and so ample as to preclude the very possibility of doubt, attested its continuance and its prevalence. The clergy denounced it with all the emphasis of authority. The legislators of almost every land enacted laws for its punishment. Acute judges, whose lives were spent in sifting evidence, investigated the question on countless occasions, and condemned the accused. Tens of thousands of victims perished by the most agonising and protracted torments, without exciting the faintest compassion ; and, as they were for the most part extremely ignorant and extremely poor, sectarianism and avarice had but little influence on the subject. 1 Nations that were completely separated 1 The general truth of this be questioned, though there are, statement can scarcely, I think, undoubtedly, a few remarkable MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT. by position, by interests, and by character, on this one question were united. In almost every province of Germany, b^t especially in those where clerical influence predominated, the persecution raged with a fearful intensity. Seven thousand victims are said to have been burned at Treves, six hundred by a single bishop in Bamberg, and nine hundred in a single year in the bishopric of Wurtzburg. 1 In France, decrees were passed on the subject by the Parliaments of Paris, Toulouse, Bourdeaux, Kheims, Rouen, Dijon, and Rennes, and they were all followed exceptions. Thus, the Templars were accused of sorcery, when Philip the Beautiful wished to confiscate their property; and the heretical opinions of the Vaudois may possibly have had something to say to the trials at Arras, in 1459 ; and, indeed, the same Vauderie was at one time given to sorcery. There were, moreover, a few cases of obnoxious politicians and noble- men being destroyed on the ac- cusation ; and during the Com- monwealth there were one or two professional witch-finders in England. We have also to take into account some cases of Convent scandals, such as those of Gauffridi, Grandier, and La Cadiere; but, when all these deductions have been made, the prosecutions for witchcraft will represent the action of undi- luted superstition more faith- fully than probably any others that could be named. The over- whelming majority of witches were extremely poor they were condemned by the highest and purest tribunals (ecclesiastical and lay) of the time ; and as heretics were then burnt with- out difficulty for their opinions, there was little temptation to accuse them of witchcraft, and besides all parties joined cor- dially in the persecution. Gril- landus, an Italian inquisitor of the fifteenth century, says ' Isti sortilegi, magici, necro- mantici, et similes sunt cseteris Christ! tidelibus pauperiores, sordidiores, viliores, et con- temptibiliores, in hoc mundo Deo permittente calamitosani vitam communiter peragunt, Deum verum infelici morte perdunt et aeterni ignis incen- dio cruciantur.' (De Sortilegiis, cap. iii.) We shall see here- after that witchcraft and heresy represent the working of the same spirit on different classes, and therefore usually accom- panied each other. 1 See the original letter published at Bamberg in 1657, quoted in Cannaert, Procbs des Sorcieres, p. 145 ; see, too, Wright's Sorcery, vol. i. p. 186 ; Michelet, La Borders, p. 10. EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. by a harvest of blood. At Toulouse, the seat of the Inquisition, four hundred persons perished for sorcery at a single execution, and fifty at Douay in a single year. Remy, a judge of Nancy, boasted that he had put to death eight hundred witches in sixteen years. The executions that took place at Paris in a few months, were, in the emphatic words of an old writer, 'almost infinite:' l The fugitives who escaped to 1 On French Witchcraft, see Thiers" Traite des Superstitions, torn. i. pp. 134-136 ; Madden' s History of Phantasmata, vol. i. pp. 306-310 ; Garinet, Histoire de la Magie en France (passim), but especially the Remonstrance of the Parliament of Rouen, in 1670, against the pardon of witches, p. 337. Bodin's De- inonomanic des Sorcurs. The persecution raged wita extreme violence all through the south of France. It was a brilliant suggestion of De Lancre, that the witchcraft about Bourdeaux might be connected with the number of orchards the Devil being well known to have an especial power over apples. (See the passage quoted in Garinet, p. 176.) "We have a fearful illustration of the tena- city of the belief in the fact that the superstition still con- tinues, and that blood has in consequence been shed during the present century in the pro- vinces that border on the Pyre- nees. In 1807, a beggar was seized, tortured, and burned alive for sorcery by the inhabi- tants of Mayenne. In 1850, the Civil Tribunal of Tarbes tried a man and woman named Soubervie, for having caused the death of a woman named Bedouret They believed that she was a witch, and declared that the priest had told them that she was the cause of an illness under which the woman Soubervie was suffering. They accordingly drew Bedouret into a private room, held her down upon some burning straw, and placed a red-hot iron across her mouth. The unhappy woman soon died in extreme agony. The Soubervies confessed, and indeed exulted in their act. At their trials they obtained the highest possible characters. It was shown that they had been actuated solely by super- stition, and it was urged that they only followed the highest ecclesiastical precedents. The jury recommended them to mercy; and they were only sentenced to pay twenty-five francs a year to the husband of the victim, and to be im- prisoned for four months. (Cor- dier, Legendes des Hautes Pyre- nees. Lourdes, 1855, pp. 79- 88.) In the Rituel Auscitain, now used in the diocese of Tarbes, it is said ' On doit reconnaitre quo non-seulement il peut y avoir mais qu'il y a meme quelquefois des personnes qui sontveritablement posset ecs des esprits malins." (Ib. p. 90.) MAGIC AND WITCHCKAFT. 5 Spain were there seized and burned by the Inquisi- tion. In that country the persecution spread to the smallest towns, and the belief was so deeply rooted in the popular mind, that a sorcerer was burnt as late as 1780. Torquemada devoted himself to the extirpation of witchcraft as zealously as to the extir- pation of heresy, and he wrote a book upon the enormity of the crime. 1 In Flanders the persecution of witches raged through the whole of the sixteenth and the greater part of the seventeenth centuries, and every variety of torture was employed in. detecting the criminals. 2 In Italy a thousand persons were executed in a single year in the province of Como ; and in other parts of the country, the severity of the inquisitors at last created an absolute rebellion. 3 The same scenes were enacted in the wild valleys of Switzerland and of Savoy. In Geneva, which was then ruled by a bishop, five hundred alleged witches were executed in three months ; forty-eight were 1 Llorente, History of the ApologiepourlesGrandsHommes Inquisition (English Transla- soupqonnez de Magie (Paris, tion), pp. 129-142. Amongst 1625), pp. 81, 82. See also other cases, more than thirty Buckle's History of Civilisation, women were burnt at Calha- vol.i.p. 334, note, and Simancas, horra, in 1507. A Spanish l)e Catholicis Institutionibus, monk, named Castanaga, seems pp. 463-468. to have ventured to question 2 See a curious collection of the justice of the executions as documents on the subject by early as 1529 (p. 131). See Cannaert, Proces des Sorcieres also Garinet, p. 176 ; Madden, en Belgique (Gand, 1847). vol. i. pp. 311-315. Toledo s Spina, De Strigibus (1511), was supposed to be the head- cap. xii. ; Thiers, vol. i..p. 138 ; quarters of the magicians Madden, vol. i. 305. Peter the probably because, in the twelfth Martyr, whom Titian has im- andthirteenthcenturies.mathe- mortalised, seems to have been matics, which were constantly one of the most strenuous of confounded with magic, flou- the persecutors. Spina, Apol. rished there more than in any c. ix. other part in Europe. Naudl, RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. burnt at Constance or Ravensburg, and eighty in the little town of Valery, in Savoy. 1 In 1670, seventy persons were condemned in Sweden, 2 and a large proportion of them were burnt. And these are only a few of the more salient events in that long series of persecutions which extended over almost every country, and continued for centuries with unabated fury. The Church of Rome proclaimed in every way that was in her power the reality and the continued existence of the crime. She strained every nerve to stimulate the persecution. She taught by all her organs that to spare a witch was a direct insult to the Almighty, and to her ceaseless exertions is to be attributed by far the greater proportion of the blood that was shed. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII. issued a bull, which gave a fearful impetus to the persecu- tion, and he it was who commissioned the Inquisitor Sprenger, whose book was long the recognised manual on the subject, and who is said to have condemned hundreds to death every year. Similar bulls were issued by Julius II. in 1504, and by Adrian VI. in 1523. A long series of Provincial Councils asserted the existence of sorcery, and anathematised those 1 Madden, vol.i. pp. 303,304. a little village called Moraines Michelet, La Sorciere, p. 206. will be found in the Relation .Sprenger ascribes Toll's shot sur vne Epidemic d'Hystero- to the assistance of the devil. Demonopathie en 1861, par le Mall. Mai. (Pars ii. c. xvi.) Docteur A. Constans (Paris, Savoy has always been espe- 1863). Two French writers, cially subject to those epi- Allan Kardec and Mirville, demies of madness which were have maintained this epidemic once ascribed to witches, and to be supernatural. Boguet noticed that the prin- * Compare Plancey, Diet. cipal wizards he had burnt infernal, article Blokida : were from that country. An Hutchinson on Witchcraft, p. extremely curious account of a 55 ; Madden, vol. i. p. 3o4. recent epidemic of this kind in MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 7 who resorted to it. ' The universal practice of the Church was to place magic and sorcery among the reserved cases, and at Prones, to declare magicians and sorcerers excommunicated; ' l and a form of exor- cism was solemnly inserted in the ritual. Almost all the great works that were written in favour of the executions were written by ecclesiastics. Almost all the lay works on the same side were dedicated to and sanctioned by ecclesiastical dignitaries. Ecclesias- tical tribunals condemned thousands to death, and countless bishops exerted all their influence to mul- tiply the victims. In a word, for many centuries it was universally believed, that the continued existence of witchcraft formed an integral part of the teaching of the Church, and that the persecution that raged through Europe was supported by the whole stress of her infallibility. 2 Such was the attitude of the Church of Rome with 1 Thiers, Superst. vol. i. signification) sans contredire p. 142. visiblement les saintes lettres, 2 For ample evidence of the la tradition sacree et profane, teaching of Catholicism on the les lois canoniques et civiles et subject, see Madden's History 1' experience de tons les siecles, of Pliant, vol. i. pp. 23t-248 ; et sans rejeter avec impudence Des Mousseaux, Pratiques des 1'autorite irrefragable et infail- Demons (Paris, 1854), p. 174- lible de 1'Eglise qui lance si 177 ; Thiers' Superst. torn. i. souvent les foudres de 1'excom- pp. 138-163. The two last- munication contr' eux dans see mentioned writers were ardent Prones ' (p. 132). So also Catholics. Thiers, who wrote Garinet ' Tous les conciles, in 1678 (I have used the Paris tous les syuodes, qui se tinrent edition of 1741), was a very dans^les seize premiers siecles learned and moderate theo- de 1'Eglise s'eleVent contre les logian, and wrote under the sorciers ; tous les 4crivains ec- approbation of 'the doctors in clesiastiques les condamnent the faculty of Paris : ' he says avec plus ou moins de severite' ' On ne scauroit nier qu'il y (p. 26). The bull of Innocent ait des magiciens ou des sorciers VIII. is prefixed to the Malleus (car ces deux mots se prennent Malificaritm. ordinairement dans la meme 8 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. reference to this subject, but on this ground the Reformers had no conflict with their opponents. The credulity which Luther manifested on all matters connected with diabolical intervention, was amazing, even for his age ; and, when speaking of witchcraft, his language was emphatic and unhesitating. 'I would have no compassion on these witches,' he ex- claimed, ' I would burn them all ! ' ' In England the establishment of the Reformation was the signal for an immediate outburst of the superstition ; and there, as elsewhere, its decline was represented by the clergy as the direct consequence and the exact measure of the progress of religious scepticism. In Scotland, where the Reformed ministers exercised greater in- fluence than in any other country, and where the witch trials fell almost entirely into their hands, the persecution was proportionately atrocious. Probably the ablest defender of the belief was Glanvil, a clergy- man of the English Establishment ; and one of the most influential was Baxter, the greatest of the Puri- tans. It spread, with Puritanism, into the New World ; and the executions in Massachusetts form one of the darkest pages in the history of America. The greatest religious leader of the last century 2 was among the latest of its supporters. If we ask why it is that the world has rejected what was once so universally and so intensely be- lieved, why a narrative of an old woman who had been seen riding on a broomstick, or who was proved to have transformed herself into a wolf, and to have 1 Colloquia de fascinationi- 126, 127. Calvin, also, when bus. For the notions of Me- remodelling the laws of Geneva, lancthon on these subjects, see left those on witchcraft intact. Baxter's World of Spirits, pp. * Wesljey. MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT. 9 devoured the flocks of her neighbours, is deemed so entirely incredible, most persons would probably be unable to give a very definite answer to the question. It is not because we have examined the evidence and found it insufficient, for the disbelief always pre- cedes, when it does not prevent, examination. It is rather because the idea of absurdity is so strongly attached to such narratives, that it is difficult w- G4 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. reeled beneath the accumulated suffering, the con- sciousness of innocence disappeared, and the wretched victim went raving to the flames, convinced that she was about to sink for ever into perdition. The zeal of the ecclesiastics in stimulating the persecu- tion was unflagging. It was displayed alike in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Flanders, Sweden, England, and Scotland. An old writer who cordially approved of the rigour tells us that, in the province of Como alone, eight or ten inquisitors were con- stantly employed ; and he adds that, in one year, the number of persons they condemned amounted to a thousand ; and that during several of the succeeding years, the victims seldom fell below one hundred. 1 It was natural that a body of learned men like the inquisitors, whose habits of thought were eminently retrospective, should have formed some general theo- ries connecting the phenomena of sorcery with past events, and reducing them to a systematic form. We accordingly find that, in the course of about three centuries, a vast literature was formed upon the subject. The different forms of witchcraft were all carefully classified and associated with particular doctrines ; the whole philosophy of the Satanic was minutely investigated, and the prevailing mode of thought embodied in countless treatises, which were once regarded as masterpieces of orthodox theology. It is very difficult for us in the present day to do covery of Witchcraft (London, center qusestionatus ' (Pare iii. 1665), pp. 11, 12. All the old Quaest. 14, 15). The tortures treatises are full of the subject, were all the more horrible, Sprenger recommends the tor- because it was generally be- tures to be continued two or lieved that the witches had three days, till the prisoner charms to deaden their effect, was, as he expresses it, ' de- ' Spina, cap. xii. MAGIC AND W1TCHCEAFT. 65 justice to these works, or to realise the points of view from which they were written. A profound scepti- cism on all subjects connected with the Devil under- lies the opinions of almost every educated man, and renders it difficult even to conceive a condition of thought, in which that spirit was the object of an intense and realised belief. An anecdote which in- volves the personal intervention of Satan is now re- garded as quite as intrinsically absurd, and unworthy of serious attention, as an anecdote of a fairy or of a sylph. When, therefore, a modern reader turns over the pages of an old treatise on witchcraft, and finds hundreds of such anecdotes related with the gravest assurance, he is often inclined to depreciate very unduly the intellect of an author who represents a condition of thought so unlike his own. The cold indifference to human suffering which these writers display gives an additional bias to his reason ; while their extraordinary pedantry, their execrable Latin, and their gross scientific blunders, furnish ample materials for his ridicule. Besides this, Sprenger, who is at once the most celebrated, and, perhaps, the most credulous member of his class, unfortunately for his reputation, made some ambitious excursions into another field, and immortalised himself by a series of etymological blunders, which have been the delight of all succeeding scholars. 1 1 ' Fcemina,' he assures us, is quia duo occidit, scilicet corpus derived from Fe and minus, et animam. Et sccundum ety- because women have less faith mologiam, licet Greece, inter- than men (p. 65). Maleficiendo pretetur diabolus clausus er- is from male de fide sentiendo. gastulo : et hoc sibi convenit For diabolus we have a choice cum non permittitur sibi nocere of most instructive derivations, quantum vellet. Vel diabolus It comes ' a dia quod est duo, quasi defluens, quia defluxit, id et bolus quod est morsellus, est corruit, et specialiter et lo- VOJ,. I. f 66 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. But when all these qualifications have been made and, with the exception of the last, they would all apply to any other writings of the same period it is, I think, impossible to deny that the books in de- fence of the belief are not only far more numerous than the later works against it, but that they also represent far more learning, dialectic skill, and even general ability. For many centuries the ablest men were not merely unwilling to repudiate the supersti- tion ; they often pressed forward earnestly, and with the most intense conviction, to defend it. Indeed, during the period when witchcraft was most preva- lent, there were few writers of real eminence who did not, on some occasion, take especial pains to throw the weight of their authority into the scale. Thomas Aquinas was probably the ablest writer of the thirteenth century, and he assures us that diseases and tempests are often the direct acts of the Devil ; that the Devil can transport men at his pleasure through the air ; and that he can transform them into any shape. Grerson, the Chancellor of the Uni- versity of Paris, and, as many think, the author of * The Imitation,' is justly regarded as one of the master-intellects of his age ; and he, too, wrote in defence of the belief. Bodin was unquestionably the most original political philosopher who had arisen since Maehiavelli, and he devoted all his learning and acuteness to crushing the rising scepticism on the subject of witches. The truth is, that, in those ages, ability was no guarantee against error ; because the single employment of the reason was to develope and aliter* (p. 41). If the reader instance of verbal criticism, is curious in these matters, he which I do not venture to will find another astounding quote, in Bodin, Demon, p. 40. MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT. ? expand premises that were furnished by the Church. There was no such thing as an uncompromising and unreserved criticism of the first principles of teach- ing ; there was no such thing as a revolt of the rea- son against conclusions that were strictly drawn from the premises of authority. In our age, and in every other age of half belief, principles are often adopted without being fully developed. If a conclusion is drawn from them, men enquire, not merely whether the deduction is correct, but also whether its result seems intrinsically probable ; and if it does not ap- pear so, they will reject the conclusion, without absolutely rejecting the premise. In the ages of witchcraft an inexorable logic prevailed. Men were so firmly convinced of the truth of the doctrines they were taught, that those doctrines became to them the measure of probability, and no event that seemed to harmonise with them presented the slightest difficulty to the mind. They governed the imagination, while they subdued the reason, and secular considerations never intervened to damp their assurance. The ablest men were not unfrequently the most credu- lous ; because their ability was chiefly employed in discovering analogies between every startling narra- tive and the principles of their faith, and their success was a measure of their ingenuity. It is these considerations that give the writings of the period I am referring to so great an importance in the history of opinions, and which also make it so difficult for us to appreciate their force. I shall en- deavour to lay before the reader, in as concise a form as I am able, some of the leading principles they em- bodied ; which, acting on the imagination, contributed to produce the phenomena of witchcraft ; and, acting F2 68 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. on the reason, persuaded men that the narratives of witches were antecedently probable. 1 It was universally taught that innumerable evil spirits were ranging over the world, seeking the present unhappiness and the future ruin of man- kind ; that these spirits were fallen angels, who had retained many, if not all, the angelic capacities ; and that they, at all events, possessed a power and wis- dom far transcending the limits of human faculties. From these conceptions many important consequences were evolved. If these spirits are for ever hovering 'around us, it was said, it is surely not improbable that we should meet some signs of their presence. If they delight in the smallest misfortune that can befall mankind, and possess far more than human capacities for inflicting suffering, it is not surpris- ing that they should direct against men the ener- gies of superhuman malice. If their highest object is to secure the ultimate ruin of man, we need not wonder that they should offer their services to those who would bribe them by the surrender of their hopes. That such a compact can be made that it is possible for men to direct the energies of evil spirits was established by the clearest authority. ' Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' was the so- lemn injunction which had been more than once repeated in the Levitical code ; and the history of 1 The principal authority on Sprenger, Nider, Basin, Mo- these matters is a large collec- litor, Gerson, Murner, Spina, tion of Latin works (in great Laurent! us, Bernardus, Vigni- part written by inquisitors), tus, Grillandus, &c. I have extending over about two cen- noticed a great many other turies, and published under the works in their places, and the title of Malleus Maleficarum reader may find reviews of (the title of Sprenger'g book), many others in Madden and It comprises the works of Plancey. MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT. 69 the witch of Endor furnishes a detailed description of the circumstances of the crime. The Fathers had denounced magic with a unanimous and unvarying voice, and the writings of every nation bear traces of the universality of the belief. In an age which was essentially retrospective, it was impossible to name a tenet which could seem more probable, for there was none which was more closely connected with anti- quity, both ecclesiastical and profane. The popular belief, however, not only asserted the possibility and continued existence of witchcraft, it also entered into many of what we should now deem, the most extravagant and grotesque details. In the first place, one of the most ordinary operations of the witch, or of the Devil acting at her command, was to cause tempests, which it was said frequently desolated the fields of a single person, leaving the rest of the country entirely untouched. If any one ventured to deny that Satan possessed, or was likely to exercise this power, he was speedily silenced by a scriptural precedent. We read in the Old Testament that the Devil, by the Divine permission, afflicted Job ; and that among the means which he employed was a tempest which destroyed the house in which the sons of the patriarch were eating. The description, in the book of Revelation, of the four angels who held the four winds, and to whom it was given to afflict the earth, was also generally associated with this belief; for, as St. Augustine tells us, the word angel is equally applicable to good or bad spirits. Besides this, the Devil was always spoken of as the prince of the air. His immense knowledge and his immense power would place the immediate causes of atmo- spheric disturbances at his disposal ; and the sudden TO RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. tempest would, therefore, be no violation of natural laws, but simply an instance of their application by superhuman power. These considerations were, it was thought, sufficient to remove all sense of the antecedent improbability of the facts which were alleged ; but every uncertainty was dispelled by the uniform teaching of the Church. At all times, the Fathers and the mediaeval saints had taught, like the teachers of every other religion in the same early stage of civilisation, that all the more remarkable atmospheric changes resulted from the direct inter- vention of spirits. 1 Rain seems to have been com- monly associated, as it still is in the Church of England, with the intervention of the Deity ; but wind and hail were peculiarly identified with the Devil. If the Devil could originate a tempest, it followed, as a necessary consequence, that witches who had entered into compact with him had the same power. The same principles of argument applied to disease. The Devil had afflicted Job with horrible diseases, and might therefore afflict others. Great pestilences were constantly described in the Old Testament as the acts of the angels ; and the Devil, by the per- mission of the Deity and by virtue of his angelic capacities, might therefore easily produce them. The history of the demoniacs proves that devils could master and derange the bodily functions ; and, there- fore, to deny that they could produce disease, would be to impugn the veracity of these narratives ; and the later ecclesiastical testimony on the subject, if not unanimous, was, at least, extremely strong. As, 1 On the universality of this civilisation, see Buckle's flit- belief, in an early atage of tony, vol. L p. 346. MAGIO AND WITCHCBAFT. 71 therefore, the more striking atmospheric disturbances were ascribed generally to the Devil ; and, when the injury was spread over a small area, to witches ; so, the pestilences which desolated nations were deemed supernatural ; and every strange and unaccountable disease that fell upon an individual, a result of the malice of a sorcerer. If the witch, could produce dis- ease by her incantations, there was no difficulty in believing that she could also remove it. 1 These propositions were unanimously and firmly believed. They were illustrated by anecdotes, the countless numbers of which can only be appreciated by those who have studied the literature at its source. They were indelibly graven on the minds of men by hundreds of trials and of executions, and they were admitted by almost all the ablest men in Christendom. There were other details, however, which excited considerable discussion. One of the most striking 1 There can be little doubt vero provenit febris, tussis, that a considerable amount of dementia, phthisis, hydropsis, poisoning was mixed up with aut aliqua tumefactio carnis in the witch cases. In ages when corpore, sive apostema extrinse- medical knowledge was scanty, cus apparens : quandoque vero and post-mortem examinations intrinsece apud intestina ali- unknown, this crime was pecu- quod apostema sit adeo terribile liarly dreaded, and appeared et incurabile quod nulla para peculiarly mysterious. On the medicorum id sanare et remo- other hand, it is equally certain vere potest, nisi accedat alius that the witches constantly em- maleficus, sive sortilegus, qui ployed their knowledge of the contrariis medelis et remediis property of herbs for the pur- segritudinem ipsam maleficam pose of curing disease, and that tollat, quam facile et brevi they attained, in this respect, a tempore removere potest, cseteri skill which was hardly equalled vero medici qui artem ipsius by the regular practitioners. To medicinae profitentur nihil va- the evidence which Michelet lent et nesciunt afferre reme- has collected on this matter, dium ' (Mall. Mai. vol. ii. I may add a striking passage pp. 393, 394). from Grill and us: "Quandoque 72 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. of these was the transportation of witches through the air. That an old woman could be carried some hundreds of miles in a few minutes on a broomstick or a goat, or in any other way the Devil might select, would, in the present day, be regarded as so essen- tially and grotesquely absurd, that it is probable that no conceivable amount of testimony would convince men of its reality. At the period of which I am writing, this rationalistic spirit did undoubtedly exist in a few minds ; for it is noticed, though with ex- treme contempt, by some of the writers on the sub- ject, who treated it as a manifest mental aberration, but it had not yet assumed any importance. The measure of probability was still essentially theo- logical ; and the only question that was asked was, how far the narratives conformed with the theological conception of a spirit. On this point there seemed, at first sight, much difficulty, and considerable in- genuity was applied to elucidating it. Satan, it was remembered, had borne Christ through the air, and placed him on a pinnacle of the temple ; and there- fore, said St. Thomas Aquinas, if he could do this to one body he could do it to all. The prophet Habak- kuk had been transported by a spirit from Judea to Babylon, and Philip the Evangelist had been the object of a similar miracle. St. Paul had likewise been carried, perhaps in the body, into the third heaven. This evidence was ample and conclusive ; but other perplexing difficulties arose. Nothing in the witch trials was more minutely described than the witches' Sabbath, and many hundreds of women had been burnt alive for attending it. Occasionally, however, it happened that, when a woman had been condemned MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 73 on this charge by her own confession, or by the evidence of other witches, her husband came forward and swore that his wife had not left his side during the night in question. The testimony of so near a relative might, perhaps, be explained by perjury ; but other evidence was adduced which it was more dimcult to evade. It was stated that women were ofton found lying in a state of trance, insensible to pain, and without the smallest sign of life ; that, after a time, their consciousness returned ; and that they then confessed that they had been at the witches' Sabbath. These statements soon attracted the atten- tion of theologians, who were much divided in their judgments. Some were of opinion that the witch was labouring under a delusion of the Devil ; but they often added that, as the delusion originated in a compact, she should, notwithstanding, be burned. Others suggested a bolder and very startling expla- nation. That the same portion of matter cannot be in two places at once, is a proposition which rests entirely on the laws of nature ; but those laws have no existence for the miraculous; and the miracle of tran substantiation seems to destroy all the improba- bility of the pluri-presence of a human body. At all events, the Devil might furnish, for the occasion, a duplicate body ; in order to baffle the ministers of justice. This latter opinion became extremely popu- lar among theologians ; and two famous Catholic miracles were triumphantly quoted in its support. St. Ambrose was, on one occasion, celebrating mass in a church at Milan, when he suddenly paused in the midst of the service. His head sank upon the altar, and he remained motionless, as in a trance, for the space of three hours. The congregation waited 74 BATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. silently for the benediction. At last, the conscious- ness of the saint returned, and he assured his hearers that he had been officiating at Tours at the burial of St. Martin, a statement which was, of course, in a few days, verified. A similar miracle was related of St. Clement. This early saint, in the midst of a mass at Rome, was called away to consecrate a church at Pisa. His body, or an angel who had assumed its form, remained at Borne ; but the saint was at the same time present at Pisa, where he left some drops of blood upon the marble for a memorial of the miracle. 1 On the whole, the most general opinion seems to have been, that the witches were sometimes transported to the Sabbath in body, and sometimes in spirit ; and the devils occasionally assumed their forms in order to baffle the sagacity of the judges. 2 Another important and much discussed depart- ment, was the connection between evil spirits and animals. That the Devil could assume the form of any animal 3 he pleased, seems to have been generally 1 Spina, De Strigibus (1622), supposed to be in especial con- cap, xi. nection with spirits. Delrio 2 All the phenomena of som- mentions that the ancient Irish nambulism were mixed up with had such a veneration for the question. See e.g., Spina, wolves that they were accus- cap. x. and xi., where it is tomed to pray for their salva- fully discussed. Many curious tion, and to choose them as notions were held about som- godfathers for their children nambulism. One opinion was, (Thiers' Superst. vol. ii. p. 198). that the somnambulists had Beelzebub, as is well known, never been baptised, or had was god of flies, ' par ce qu'il been baptised by a drunken n'y avoit pas une mouche en priest. son temple, comme on diet qu'au 1 This belief was probably Palais de Venise il n'y a pas sustained by the great use une seule mouche et au Palais made of animals in Christian de Toledo qu'il n'y en a qu'une, symbolism as representatives qui n'est pas chose estrange ou of moral qualities. In different nouvelle, car nous lisons que districts different animals were les Cyrena'iques, apres avoir MAGIC AND WITCHCBAFT. 75 admitted ; and it presented no difficulty to those who remembered that the first appearance of that person- age on earth was as a serpent, and that on one occasion a legion of devils had entered into a herd of swine. St. Jerome also assures us that, in the desert, St. Antony had met a centaur and a faun a little man with horns growing from his forehead who were possibly devils j 1 and at all events, at a later period, the lives of the saints represent evil spirits in the form of animals as not unfrequent. Lycanthropy, however, or the transformation of witches into wolves, presented more difficulty. The history of Nebuchadnezzar, and the conversion of Lot's wife, were, it is true, eagerly alleged in support of its possibility ; but it was impossible to forget that St. Augustine appeared to regard lycanthropy as a fable, and that a canon of the council of Ancyra had emphatically condemned the belief. On the other hand, that belief had been very widely diffused among the ancients. It had been accepted by many of the sacrifie au dieu Acaron, dieu fellowship can there be between des mouches, et les Grecs a Christ and Belial ' (Wier, De Jupiter, surnomme Myiodes, freest. Dtem. p. 557). The c'est a dire mouchard, toutes ascription of intelligence to les mouches s'envolaient en animals was general through une nuee, comme nous lisons the middle ages, but it was en Pausanias In Arcadicis et most prominent in the Celtic en Pline au livre xxix. cap. 6 ' race. See a curious chapter (Bodin, Demon, p. 15). Dancing on mystic animals in Dalyell's bears and other intelligent ani- Superstitions of Scotland, and mills seem to have been also also the essay of Renan on connected with the Devil ; and Celtic Poetry. Muratori (Antiq. an old council anathematised Ital. Diss. xxix.) quotes an at once magicians who have amusing passage from a writer abandoned their Creator, for- of the eleventh century, con- tune-tellers, and those ' qui cerning a dog which in that ursas aut similes bestias ad century was ' moved by the ludum et perniciem simplicio- spirit of Pytho." rum circumferunt ' ' for what * Vita S. Pauli. RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. greatest and most orthodox theologians, by the in- quisitors who were commissioned by the popes, and by the law courts of most countries. The evidence on which it rested was very curious and definite.' If the witch was wounded in the form of an animal, she retained that wound in her human form, and hun- dreds of such cases were alleged before the tribunals. Sometimes the hunter, having severed the paw of his assailant, retained it as a trophy; but when he opened his bag, he discovered in it only a bleeding hand, which he recognised as the hand of his wife. 1 1 L'existence des loups- garous est attestee par Vir- gile, Solin, Strabon, Pomponiua Mela, Dionysius Afer, Varron, et par tous les Jurisconsultes et demonomanes des derniers siecles. A peine commen in the whole tone of literature, and in the repeated 1 At first they were strictly * That is, by the introduc- forbiduen to remain in the tion of the cross, which was the towns. Even the priest-ridden first innovation on the old ba- Theodosius made a law (which silica architecture, and in many however he afterwards revoked) of the churches by a slight in- commanding all who had em- clination of the extremity from braced the profession of monks the straight line, it is said, to to betake themselves to ' vast represent the verse, ' Jesus solitudes ' and ' desert places.' bowed his head and gave up the (Cod. Theod. lib. xvi. tit. 3, ghost.' c.1.) DEVELOPEMENTS OP KATIONALISM. 241 And passionate efforts to attain a more spiritual creed that were made by the precursors of the Reformation. It was shown at least as forcibly in the rapid corrup- tion of every organ of the old religion. They no longer could attract religious fervour ; and as their life was gone, they degenerated and decayed. The monasteries, once the scenes of the most marvellous displays of ascetic piety, became the seats of revelry, of licentiousness, and of avarice. The sacred relics, and the miraculous images that had so long thrilled the hearts of multitudes, were made a source of unholy traffic, or of unblushing imposition. The indulgences, which were intended to assuage the agonies of a despairing conscience, or to lend an additional charm to the devotions of the pious, be- came a substitute for all real religion. The Papal See itself was stained with the most degrading vice, and the Vatican exhibited the spectacle of a pagan court without the redeeming virtue of pagan sincerity. Wherever the eye was turned, it encountered the signs of disorganisation, of corruption, and of decay. For the long night of mediaevalism was now drawing to a close, and the chaos that precedes resurrection was supreme. The spirit of ancient Greece had arisen from the tomb, and the fabric of superstition crumbled and tottered at her touch. The human mind, starting beneath her influence from the dust of ages, cast aside the bonds that had enchained it, and, radiant in the light of recovered liberty, re- moulded the structure of its faith. The love of truth, the passion for freedom, the sense of human dignity, which the great thinkers of antiquity had inspired, vivified a torpid and down-trodden people, blended with those sublime moral doctrines and VOL. i. B 242 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. with those conceptions of enlarged benevolence which are at once the glory and the essence of Christianity, introduced a new era of human pro- gress, with new aspirations, habits of thought, and conditions of vitality, and, withdrawing religious life from the shattered edifices of the past, created a purer faith, and became the promise of an eternal developement. This was the tendency of the human intellect, and it was faithfully reflected in the history of art. As the old Catholic modes of thought began to fade, the religious idea disappeared from the paintings, and they became purely secular, if not sensual, in their tone. Religion, which was once the mistress, was now the servant, of art. Formerly the painter em- ployed his skill simply in embellishing and enhancing a religious idea. He now employed a religions subject as the pretext for the exhibition of mere worldly beauty. He commonly painted his mistress as the Virgin. He arrayed her in the richest attire, and surrounded her with all the circumstances of splendour. He crowded his pictures with nude figures, with countenances of sensual loveliness, with every form and attitude that could act upon the passions, and not unfrequently with images drawn from the pagan mythology. The creation of beauty became the single object of his art. His work was a secular work, to be judged by a secular standard. There can be no doubt that this secularisation of art was due to the general tone of thought that had been produced in Europe. The artist seeks to re- present the conceptions of his time, and his popu- larity is the proof of his success. In an age in which strong religious belief was general, and in which it DEVELOPEMENTS OP RATIONALISM. 243 turned to painting as to the natural organ of its ex- pression, such a style would have been impossible. The profanity of the painter would have excited uni- versal execration, and all the genius of Titian Or Michael Angelo would have been unable to save their works from condemnation. The style became popular, because educated men ceased to look for religion in pictures ; or in other words, because the habits of thought that made them demand material representations of the objects of their belief had declined. This was the ultimate cause of the entire move- ment. There were, however, two minor causes of great importance, which contributed largely to the altered tone of art, while they at the same time immeasurably increased its perfection one of them relating especially to colour, and the other to form. The first of these causes is to be found in the moral condition of Italian society. The age was that of Bianca di Cappello, and of the Borgias. All Italian literature and all Italian manners were of the laxest character, and the fact was neither concealed nor deplored. But that which especially distinguished Italian immorality is, that growing tip in the midst of all the forms of loveliness, it assumed from the first an aesthetic character, united with the most passionate and yet refined sense of the beautiful, and made art the special vehicle of its expression. This is one of the peculiar characteristics of later Italian painting, 1 and it is one of the chief causes of its 1 German pictures are often der Werff is ivory as painted indecent, but never sensual, by Titian or Correggio, it is It is all the difference between life. Spanish art tried much Swift and Don Juan. The to be religious and respectable ; nude figure as painted by Van and, like the Vergognosa at B2 944 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. artistic perfection. For sensuality has always been extremely favourable to painting, 1 the main object of the artist being to exhibit to the highest possible degree the beauty and the attractive power of the human body. Twice in the history of art national sensuality has thrown itself into national art, and in each case with the same result. The first occasion was in ancient Greece, at the time when Apelles derived a new inspiration from the voluptuous love- liness of Lais, and when the goddess of beauty, glowing with the fresh charms of Phryne or Theo- Pisa, put her hands before her eyes in the midst of the wicked- ness that surrounded her. But I am afraid she sometimes looked through her fingers. This aspect of Italian art has been most vividly exhibited in the writings of Stendhal (H. Beyle;. 1 It is perhaps true, as mo- dern critics say, that the transi- tion of Greek art from Phidias to Praxiteles was a decline. It is certainly true that that transition was from the repre- sentation of manly strength, and the form of beauty that is most allied to it, to the repre- sentation of beauty of a sen- sual cast from an art of which Minerva was the central figure, to an art of which Venus was the type or (as the German critics say) from the ascendency of the Doric to the ascendency of the Ionic element. But this decadence, if it really took place, is not, I think, incon- sistent with what I have stated in the text ; for sculpture and painting have each their special perfections, and the success of the artist will in a great degree depend upon his appreciation of the peculiar genius of the art he pursues. Now sculpture is as far superior to painting in its capacity for expressing strength and masculine beauty, as painting is superior to sculp- ture in expressing warmth and passionate beauty. All the efforts of a Grecian chisel never equalled the voluptuous power of the brush of Titian ; and, on the other hand, paint- ing has tried in vain to rival the majesty and the force of sculpture. If there be an ex- ception to this last proposition, it is one which proves the rule, for it is furnished by Michael Angelo, the greatest modern sculptor, in the most sculpture- like frescoes in the world. It should be added, however, that landscape painting is in no sense the creature of sensuality, and Mr. Kuskin has with some force claimed it as a special fruit of Christianity. DEVELOPEMENTS OP RATIONALISM. 245 dota, kindled a transport of no religious fervour in the Athenian mind. The second occasion was in the Italian art of the sixteenth century. The rapid progress of a sensual tone in most. of the schools of Italian art is a fact which is too manifest to be questioned or overlooked; but there is one school which may be regarded especially as its source and representative. This school was that of the Venetian painters, and it reflected very visibly the character of its cradle. Never perhaps was any other city so plainly formed to be the home at once of passion and of art. Sleeping like Venus of old upon her parent wave, Venice, at least in the period of her glory, comprised within herself all the influences that could raise to the highest point the aesthetic sentiment, and all that could lull the moral sentiment to repose. Wherever the eye was turned, it was met by forms of strange and varied and entrancing beauty, while every sound that broke upon the ear was mellowed by the waters that were below. The thousand lights that glittered around the gilded domes of St. Mark, the palaces of matchless archi- tecture resting on their own soft shadows in the wave, the long paths of murmuring water, where the gondola sways to the lover's song, and where dark eyes lustrous with passion gleam from the overhanging balconies, the harmony of blending beauties, and the languid and voluptuous charm that pervades the whole, had all told deeply and fatally on the character of the people. At every period of their history, but never more so than in the great period of Venetian art, they had been distinguished at once for their intense appreciation of beauty and for their universal, unbridled, and undisguised 246 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. licentiousness. 1 In the midst of such a society it was very natural that a great school of sensual art should arise, and many circumstances conspired in the same direction. Venice was so far removed from the dis- coveries of the ancient statues, that it was never influenced by what may be termed the learned school of art, which eventually sacrificed all sense of beauty to anatomical studies ; at the same time, the simul- taneous appearance of a constellation of artists of the very highest order, the luxurious habits that provided these artists with abundant patrons, the discovery of oil painting, 8 which attained its highest perfection under the skill of the Venetian colourists, perhaps even the rich merchandise of the East, accustoming the eye to the most gorgeous hues, 3 had all in different ways their favourable influence upon art. The study of the nude figure, which had been the mainspring of Greek art, and which Christianity had so long 1 On the amazing vice of they began to pour into France, Venice, and on the violent but the ornamentation, and es- unsuccessful efforts of the ma- pecially the tracery, of the gistrates to arrest it, see much windows of many of the French curious evidence in Sabatier, cathedrals are said to have Hist, de la Legislation sur les been copied accurately from Femmes publiques (Paris, 1828). these patterns. See a very cu- 1 It is generally said to have rious essay on painted glass by been invented in the beginning Thevenot (Paris, 1837). I may of the fifteenth century by Van add that, at the time of Augus- Eyck, who died in 1440; but tus, the importation of Indian the claim of Van Eyck is not dresses had told powerfully on undisputed. It was introduced Roman art, producing the into Italy about 1452 by a paintings known as arabesque, Sicilian painter named Anto- and (as Vitruvius complains) nello. (Rio, Art chritien, torn, diverting the artists from the i. p. 354.) study of the Greek model. In * At an earlier period, orien- the middle ages both Venice tal robes exeroised an influence and Florence were famous for of a different kind upon art. their dyers. In the thirteenth century, when DEVELOPEMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 247 suppressed, rose again, and a school of painting was formed, which, for subtle sensuality of colouring had never been equalled, and, except by Correggio, has scarcely been approached. Titian in this as in other respects was the leader of the school, and he bears to modern much the same relation as Praxiteles bears to ancient art. Both the sculptor and the painter pre- cipitated art into sensuality, both of them destroyed its religious character, both of them raised it to high aesthetic perfection, but in both cases that perfection was followed by a speedy decline. 1 Even in Venice there was one great representative of the early religious school, but his influence was unable to stay the stream. The Virgin of Bellini was soon ex- changed for the Virgin of Titian the ideal of female piety for the ideal of female beauty. A second influence which contributed to the secu- larisation, and at the same time to the perfection, of art, was the discovery of many of the great works of pagan sculpture. The complete disappearance of these during the preceding centuries may be easily explained by the religious and intellectual changes that had either accompanied or speedily followed the triumph of Christianity. The priests, and especially the monks, being firmly convinced that pagan idols 1 Praxiteles is Raid to hare death, was absolved on ac- definitively given the character count of her exceeding loveli- of sensuality to Venus, who had ness was his mistress. His previously floated between contemporary Polycles greatly several ideals of beauty, and strengthened the sensual move- also to have been the especial ment by introducing into art author of the effeminate type the hermaphrodite. See Rio, of Apollo. Phryne, who was Art chretien, Introd. pp. 17-21; then the great model of vo- 0. Miiller, Manuel cFArcheo- luptuous beauty she who, logie, torn. i. pp. 156-157. having been condemned to 248 .RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. were all tenanted by demons, for some time made it one of their principal objects to break them in pieces, and cupidity proved scarcely less destructive than fanaticism. Among the ancient Greeks, as is well known, marble had never obtained the same ascend- ency in sculpture as among ourselves. Great num- bers of statues were made of bronze, and a large proportion of the master-pieces of the most illustrious artists were of ivory or of gold. No features are more wonderful in the history of the Greek states than the immense sums they consented to withdraw from all other objects, to expend upon the cultiva- tion of beauty, and the religious care with which these precious objects were preserved unharmed amid all the vicissitudes of national fortune, amid war, rebellion, and conquest. This preservation was in part due to the intense aesthetic feeling that was so general in antiquity, but in part also to the catho- licity of spirit that usually accompanied polytheism, which made men regard with reverence the objects and ceremonies even of worships that were not their own, and which was especially manifested by the Romans, who in all their conquests respected the temples of the vanquished as representing under many forms the aspiration of man to his Creator. Both of these sentiments were blotted out by Chris- tianity. For about 1,500 years the conception that there could be anything deserving of reverence or respect, or even of tolerance, in the religions that were external to the Church, was absolutely unknown in Christendom, and at the same time the ascetic theories I have noticed destroyed all perception of beauty, or at least of that type of beauty which sculpture represented. The bronze statues were con- DEVELOPEMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 249 verted into coinage, the precious metals "were plun- dered, 1 the marble was turned into lime, mutilated or forgotten. When Christianity arose, the colossal statue of Jupiter, in gold and ivory, which was deemed the masterpiece of Phidias, and the greatest of all the achievements of art, still existed at Olympia. Our last notice of it is during the reign of Julian. At Rome, the invasion of the barbarians, the absolute decadence of taste that followed their ascendency, and those great conflagrations which more than once re- duced vast districts to ruin, completed the destruction of the old traditions, while most of the statues that had been transported to Constantinople, and had survived the fury of the monks, were destroyed by the Iconoclasts, the Crusaders, or the Mahometans. Towards the close of the twelfth century, as we have already seen, Nicolas of Pisa for the first time broke the slumber of medieeval art by the skill he had derived from the works of antiquity. There was then, however, no ancient mcdel of the highest class known, and the principal subject of his study is said to have been a pagan sarcophagus of third or fourth rate merit, which had been em- ployed for the burial of the mother of the famous Countess Matilda, and which was then in the Ca- thedral, and is now in the Campo Santo, of Pisa. Giotto, Massacio, and their contemporaries, all pur- sued their triumphs without the assistance of any great ancient model. Poggio, who wrote at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was only able to enumerate six statues within the walls of Rome. Rienzi and Petrarch gave some slight impulse to 1 Constantino himself set the admiring remarks of Eusebius, example in this respect See the Vita Const, lib. iii. caps. 5, 6. 250 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. archaeological collections, and during the latter half of the fifteenth century the exertions of the Medici, and of a long series of popes, sustained by the passion- ate admiration for antiquity that followed the revival of learning, produced vast works of excavation, which were rewarded by the discovery of numerous statues. 1 Art immediately rose to an unparalleled perfection, and an unbounded and almost universal enthusiasm was created. Paul II. indeed, in 1468, directed a fierce persecution against the artists at Rome,* but as a general rule his successors were warm patrons of art, and Julius II. and Leo X. may even be regarded as the most munificent of their munificent age. All the artists of Rome and Florence made the remains of pagan antiquity their models. Michael Angelo himself proclaimed the Torso Belvedere his true master. 3 The distinctive type and tone of Christi- anity was thus almost banished from art, and replaced by the types of paganism. Such was the movement which was general in Italian art, but it did not pass unchallenged, and it was retarded by one most remarkable reaction. Un- der the very palace of the Medici, and in the midst of the noblest collections of pagan art, a great preacher arose who perceived clearly the dangerous tendency, 1 When this impulse had gularly unfortunate in catching ceased in Italy, it was still in the moral expression of Scrip- some degree continued by the ture subjects. His Moses explorations of the French in half prize-fighter, half Jupiter Greece, where a French consu- Tonans is certainly the ex- late was formed about 1630. treme antithesis to 'the meek- See Vitet, Etudes sur FHistoire est man in all the world.' His eo- de PArt, torn. i. p. 94. lossal statue of David after his 2 See the description in victory over Goliath (it would Platina. be as rational to make a co- * And was accordingly in lossal statue of a Lilliputian) eculptxire (as in painting) sin- would be perfect as an Achilles. DEVELOPEMENTS OP RATIONALISM. 251 and who employed the full force of a transcendent genius to arrest it. The influence of Savonarola upon painting has been so lately and so fully described by an able living historian of art, 1 that it is not necessary to dwell upon it at length. It is sufficient to say, that during the last few years of the fifteenth century a complete religious revival took place in Tuscany, and that Savonarola, who was much more than a brilliant orator, perceived very clearly that in order to make it permanent it was necessary to ally it with the tenden- cies of the age. He accordingly, like all successful religious revivalists of ancient and modern times, proceeded to identify religion with liberty and with democracy, by his denunciations of the tyranny of the Medici and by the creation of great lending societies, for the purpose of checking the oppressive usury that had become general. He endeavoured to secure the ascendency of his opinions over the coming genera- tion by guiding the education of the children, and by making them the special objects of his preaching. He attempted above all to purify the very sources of Italian life, by regenerating the sacred music, and by restoring painting to its pristine purity. Week after week he launched from the pulpit the most scathing invectives against the artists who had painted prostitutes in the character of the Virgin, who under the pretext of religious art had pandered to the licentiousness of their age, and who had entirely forgotten their dignity as the teachers of mankind. A.s these invectives were not inspired by the fanati- cism of the old Iconoclasts, but proceeded from one who possessed to the highest degree the Tuscan per- ception of the beautiful, they produced an impression, 1 Eio I think the best part of his book. *- r >2 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. that was altogether unparalleled. Almost all the leading painters of Italy were collected at Florence, and almost all, under the influence of Savonarola, attempted to revive the religious character of art. The change was immediately exhibited in the paint- ing of Italy, and the impression Savonarola made upon the artists was shown by the conduct of many of them when the great reformer had perished in the flames. Botticelli cast aside his pencil for ever. Baccio della Porta 1 retired broken-hearted into a monastery. Perugino (perhaps the greatest of all the purely religious- painters of Catholicism) glided rapidly into scepticism, and on his death-bed refused disdainfully the assistance of a confessor. Raphael, who had derived all the religious sentiment of his early paintings from Perugino, was the first to vindi- cate the orthodoxy of Savonarola by inserting his portrait among those of the doctors of the Church, in the fresco of the Dispute of the Sacrament. After the death of Savonarola the secularisation of art was portentously rapid. Even Raphael, who ex- hibits the tendency less than his contemporaries, never shrank from destroying the religious character of his later works by the introduction of incongruous images. Michael Angelo, that great worshipper of physical force, probably represented the influence to the highest degree. Austere, pure, and majestic as he undoubtedly was, no great artist was ever more destitute of the peculiar tenderness of Christian sen- timent, and it was also reserved for him to destroy the most fearful of all the conceptions by which the early painters had thrilled the people. By making the last Judgment a study of naked figures, by the introduction of Charon and his boat, and by the 1 Better known as Fra Bartolomeo. DEVELOPEMENTS OP BATIONALISM. 253 essentially pagan character of his Christ, he most effectually destroyed all sense of the reality of the scene, and reduced it to the province of artistic criti- cism. This fresco may be regarded as the culmina- tion of the movement. There were of course at a later period some great pictures, and even some religious painters, but painting never again assumed its old position as the normal and habitual expression of the religious sentiments of the educated. In the first period of mediasvali'sm it had been exclusively religious, and aesthetic considerations were almost forgotten. In the second period the two elements coexisted. In the last period the religious senti- ment disappeared, and the conception of beauty reigned alone. Art had then completed its cycle. It never afterwards assumed a prominent or com- manding influence over the minds of men. It is worthy of remark that a transition very similar to that we have traced in painting took place about the same time in architecture. The architect, it is true, does not supply actual objects of worship, and in this respect his art is less closely connected than that of the painter with, the history of anthropo- morphism ; but on the other hand the period in which men require a visible material object of worship, is also tli at in which their religious tone and sentiment are most dependent upon imposing sensuous displays. Christianity has created three things which religious poetry has ever recognised as the special types and expressions of its religious sentiment. These are the church bell, the organ, and the Gothic cathedral. The first is said to have been invented by Paulinus, a bishop of Nola in Campania, about the year 400. l 1 Anderson, Hist, of Com- a very curious collection of merce, vol. ii. p. 36. There is passages from the Acts of the 284 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. The second appears to have been first used in the Greek Church, and to have passed into the Western Empire in the seventh or eighth century. 1 The third arose under the revived sense of beauty of the twelfth century, and preceded by a little the resurrection of painting. The new pictures and the new churches were both the occasions of ebullitions of the most pas- sionate devotion. When Cimabue painted one of his famous Virgins, the people of Florence gathered around it as to a religious festival, they transported it with prayers and thanksgivings to the Church, and filled the streets with hymns of joy, because a higher realisation of a religious conception had flashed upon them. Just so those majestic cathedrals that arose almost simultaneously throughout Europe be- came at once the channel of the enthusiasm of Chris- tendom ; the noblest efforts of self-sacrifice were made to erect them, and they were universally regarded as the purest expression of the religious feeling of the age. That this estimate was correct, that no other buildings the world has seen are so admirably cal- culated to produce a sensation of blended awe and tranquillity, to harmonise or assuage the qualms of Saints, in -which bells are seems to have been almost alluded to (but none of them exactly the same as a Scotch apparently earlier than the be- bappipe. I am sorry to say ginning of the seventh century) Julian had the bad taste to in an out-of-the-way quarter, praise it in one of his epigrams. (Suarez, De Fide, lib. ii. c. 16.) (See Burney, Hist, of Mtific, See, too, Colgan's Acta Sancto- vol. ii. pp. 65-67.) There is ;i rum Hibernia, torn. i. p. 149. curious series of papers on the 1 Anderson, vol. i. p. 30. musical instruments in the There had before been known middle ages, by Coussemaker, a water organ, called an hy- in the Annales archtologiques draulicon. There was also a (edited by Didron), torn. iv. wind instrument which some They have since, I believe, been have placed among the antece- published separately, denta of the organ, but which DEVELOPEMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 255 passion, to lull to sleep the rebellious energies of the intellect, to create around the mind an artificial, un- worldly, but most impressive atmosphere, to repre- sent a Church which acts upon the imagination by obscurity and terrorism, and by images of solemn and entrancing beauty, will be admitted by all who have any perception of the character, or any knowledge of the history of art. Whenever these modes of feeling have been very general, Gothic architecture has been the object of rapturous admiration. Whenever these modes of feeling were very rare, Gothic architecture has sunk into neglect and disfavour. 1 1 We have a very striking example of this in both the buildings and the criticisms of the eighteenth century. What (c.g.) should we now say to an imaginative writer who, speak- ing of York Minster, assured us, as Smollett does, ' that the external appearance of an old cathedral cannot but be dis- pleasing to the eye of every man who has any idea of pro- priety and proportion ; ' who could only describe Durham Cathedral as ' a huge gloomy pile ; ' and who acknowledged that he associated the idea of a church with a spire especially with that of a man impaled (see Humphrey Clinker} ? Thus too Hutcheson, in one of the ablest English works on the philoso- phy of the beautiful, applies himself elaborately to proving that the ancient preference of Gothic to Roman architecture is not inconsistent with the uni- versality of the sense of beauty, but is only an aberration caused by historical associa- tions. ' Education may make an inattentive Goth imagine that his countrymen have at- tained the perfection of archi- tecture, and an aversion to their enemies the .Romans may have joined some disagreeable ideas to their very buildings and ex- cited them to their demolition.' (An Enquiry concerning Beauty, sees. vi. vii.) Everyone, I should think, who was well acquainted with the literature of the eighteenth century, must have been struck with the con- tempt for Gothic architecture pervading it ; but the extent to which this was carried was never fully shown till the publi- cation, a few years ago, of an exceedingly curious book by the Abbe Corblet, called L 'Archi- tecture du May en Agejugeepar les ecrivains des deux derniers Siecles (Paris, 1859). This learned antiquarian has shown that, during the last half of the seventeenth century, and du- ring the whole of the eighteenth century, there was scarcely a 256 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. I do not intend to follow at length the vicissitudes of architecture, or to trace the successive phases of its secularisation. It is sufficient to observe, that about the time when the dense ignorance that had overspread Europe was dispelled, there arose a form of architecture which was exclusively and emphati- cally Christian, which has been universally admitted to be beyond all others the most accordant with the spirit of mediaeval religion, and in which the highest sense of beauty was subordinated to the religious sentiment. At the time when the moral and intellec- tual chaos that preceded the Reformation was uni- versal, and when painting had been secularised and had passed entirely into the worship of beauty, archi- tecture exhibited a corresponding decadence. The old Gothic style was everywhere discarded, and it was single writer, no matter what tation of Greek architecture, may have been his religious opinions, who did not speak of Gothic architecture not merely without appreciation, but with the most supreme and unquali- fied contempt. The list in- cludes, among others, Fenelon, Bossuet, Moliere, Fleury, Eol- lin, Montesquieu, La Bruyere, Helvetius, Eousseau, Mengs, and Votlaire. Goethe at one time opposed, but afterwards yielded to, the stream. Milan Cathedral was the special ob- ject of ridicule. Gothic archi- tecture was then almost uni- versally ascribed to the Goths of the fifth century, and Bishop Warburton suggested that they had derived the idea from the overarching boughs of their native forests. Some, however, and among others Barry, re- garded it as an imperfect imi- Many of the criticisms were very curious. Thus, Dupuis thought the zodiacs on the cathedrals were a remnant of the worship ofMithra. Another critic found a connection be- tween the shape of the ogive and the eggs of Isis. A third, named Montluisant, explained all the sculptures on the front of Notre Dame de Paris by the science of the philosopher's stone : God the Father, holding an angel in each hand, is the Deity, calling into existence the incombustible sulphur and the mercury of life. The flying dragon biting its tail is the philosopher's stone, composed of the fixed and the volatile substances, the former of which devours the latter, &c. &c. (GEuvres de St.-Foix, torn. iii. pp. 245, 246.) It is to the DEVELOPEMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 257 Supplanted under the influence of Brunelleschi l by a style which, some persons may deem more beautiful, but which is universally admitted to be entirely devoid of a religious character. The gorgeous, gay, and beautifully proportioned edifices that then rose to fashion were, in fact, avowedly formed from the model of the great temples of antiquity, and the beauty to which they aspired was purely classic. Cologne Cathedral, the last of the great mediaeval works, remained unfinished while the whole energies of Europe were concentrated upon the church of St. Peter at Rome. The design of this great work was confided to Michael Angelo, who had been the chief agent in the secularisation of painting, and the spirit in which he undertook it was clearly expressed in his famous exclamation, that he would suspend the Pan- theon in the air. Of all the edifices that have been raised by the hand of man, there is perhaps none that presents to the historian of the human mind a deeper interest than St. Peter's, and there is certainly none that tells a sadder tale of the frustration of human efforts and the futility of human hopes. It owes its greatest splendour to a worldly and ambitious pontiff, 2 who has not even obtained an epitaph beneath its dome. It was designed to be the eternal monument of the Catholic revival of the present signed by Nicolas of Pisa, is century that we. mainly owe the perhaps the best specimen of revival of Gothic architecture, purely Italian origin, for Milan 1 It is true that the Greek Cathedral is said to be due to traditions had always lingered German architects ; but this in Italy, and that pure Gothic fact, while it accounts for Italy never succeeded in gaining an having been the great assailant ascendency there as in other of the Gothic, did not prevent countries. The interior of the its influence from being cosmo- little church of Sta. Maria della politan. Spina, at Pisa, which was de- 2 Julius II. VOL. I. 8 258 BATIONALISM IN EUBOPE. glory and the universality of Catholicism, and it has become the most impressive memorial of its decay. The most sublime associations that could appeal to the intellect or the religious sentiment cluster thickly around it, but an association of which none had dreamed has consecrated it, and will abide with it for ever. The most sacred relics of the Catholic faith are assembled within its walls. The genius of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Bramante, Cellini, Thorwaldsen, and Canova, have adorned it. Mosaics of matchless beauty reproduce the greatest triumphs of Christian painting, and mingle their varied hues with those gorgeous marbles that might have absorbed the re- venues of a kingdom. Beneath that majestic dome, which stands like the emblem of eternity, and dwarfs the proudest monuments below, rest the remains of those who were long deemed the greatest of the sons of men. There lie those mediaeval pontiffs who had borne aloft the lamp of knowledge in an evil and be- nighted age, who had guided and controlled the march of nations, and had been almost worshipped as the representatives of the Almighty. There too the English traveller pauses amid many more splendid objects at the sculptured slab which bears the names of the last scions of a royal race, that for good or for ill had deeply influenced the destiny of his land. But inexpressibly great as are these associations, in the eyes of the theologian the recollection of Luther, and the indulgences, and the Reformation, will tower above them all ; while to the philosophic historian St. Peter's possesses an interest of a still higher order. For it represents the conclusion of that impulse, grow- ing out of the anthropomorphic habits of an early civilisation, which had led men for so many centuries DEVELOPEMENTS OP EATIONALISM. 259 to express their religious feelings by sensuous images of grandeur, of obscurity, and of terrorism. It re- presents the absorption of the religious by the testhetic element, which was the sure sign that the religious function of architecture had terminated. The age of the cathedrals had passed. The age of the printing press had begun. I have dwelt at considerable length upon this as- pect of the history of art, both because it is, I think, singularly fascinating in itself, and because it reflects with striking fidelity the religious developements of the time. When the organs of a belief are entirely changed, it may be assumed that there is some corre- sponding change in the modes of thought of which they are the expression, and it cannot be too often repeated, that before printing was invented, and while all conceptions were grossly anthropomorphic, the true course of ecclesiastical history is to be sought much more in the works of the artists than of the theologians. It is now admitted by most competent judges, that the true causes of the Reformation are to be found in the deep change effected in the intellec- tual habits of Europe by that revival of learning which began about the twelfth century in the renewed study of the Latin classics, and reached its climax after the fall of Constantinople in the diffusion of the knowledge of Greek and of the philosophy of Plato by the Greek exiles. This revival ultimately pro- duced a condition of religious feeling which found its expression in some countries in Protestantism, and in other countries in the prevalence among the educated classes of a diluted and rationalistic Catholicism entirely different from the gross and absorbing super- stition of the middle ages. Which of these two s 2 260 BATIONALI8M IN EUROPE. forms was adopted in any particular country de- pended upon many special political or social, or even geographical considerations; but, wherever the intel- lectual movement was strongly felt, one or other appeared. It is surely a remarkable coincidence, that while the literature of antiquity was thus on a large scale modifying the mediaeval modes of thought, the ancient sculptures should on a smaller scale have exercised a corresponding influence upon the art that was their expression. And, although the aesthetic movement was necessarily confined to the upper classes and to the countries in which civilisation was most prominent, it represented faithfully a tendency that in different forms was still more widely displayed. It represented the gradual destruction of the ascen- dency which the Church had once exercised over every department of intellect, the growing difference in realised belief between the educated and the igno- rant, and the gradual disappearance of anthropomor- phic or idolatrous conceptions among the former. The aspect, however, of the subject which is pecu- liarly significant, is, I think, to be found in the nature of the transition which religious art underwent. The sense of beauty gradually encroached upon and absorbed the feeling of reverence. This is a form of religious decay which is very far from being confined to the history of art. The religion of one age is often the poetry of the next. Around every living and operative faith there lies a region of allegory and of imagination into which opinions frequently pass, and in which they long retain a transfigured and idealised existence after their natural life has died away. They are, as it were, deflected. They no longer tell directly and forcibly upon human actions. They no DEVELOPEMENTS OP EATIONALISM. 261 longer produce terror, inspire hopes, awake passions, or mould the characters of men, yet they still exercise a kind of reflex influence, and form part of the orna- mental culture of the age. They are turned into allegories. They are interpreted in a non-natural sense. They are invested with a fanciful, poetic, but most attractive garb. They follow instead of con- trolling the current of thought, and being transformed by far- fetched and ingenious explanations, they become the embellishments of systems of belief that are wholly irreconcilable with their original tendencies. The gods of heathenism were thus translated from the sphere of religion to the sphere of poetry. The grotesque legends and the harsh doctrines of a super- stitious faith are so explained away, that they appear graceful myths foreshadowing and illustrating the con- ceptions of a brighter day. For a time they flicker upon the horizon with a softly beautiful light that enchants the poet, and lends a charm to the new system with which they are made to blend ; but at last this too fades away. Religious ideas die like the sun; their last rays, possessing little heat, are ex- pended in creating beauty. There can be no question that the steady tendency of the European mind, not merely in the period that elapsed between the revival of learning in the twelfth century and the Reformation, but also in that between the Reformation and our own day, has been to disen- gage itself more and more from all the conceptions which are connected either with fetichism or with anthropomorphism. The evidence of this meets us on all sides. "We find it among the Catholics, in the steady increase in Catholic countries of a purely rationalistic public opinion, in the vast multiplication 262 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. of rationalistic writings, and also in the profound difference in the degree of reverence attached even by fervent Catholics to images and talismans, in cities like Paris, which are in the centre of the intellectual movement of the age, and in cities like Seville or Naples, which have long been excluded from it. Among the Protestants the same tendency is displayed with equal force in the rapid destruction of what is termed the sacramentarian principle. This is manifest in the steady and almost silent evanescence of that doctrine of consubstantiation which was once asserted with such extreme emphasis as the distinctive mark of the great Lutheran sect, but which is now scarcely held, or if held is scarcely insisted on; 1 in the decadence of the High Church party, which in the seventeenth century comprised the overwhelming majority of the Anglican clergy, but which in the nineteenth century, notwithstanding a concurrence of favourable circum- stances and the exertions of a leader of extraordinary genius, never included more than a minority ; 2 in the 1 Indeed in Prussia, and * The principles of parties some other parts of Germany, change so much more than the Calvinists and Lutherans their names, that it is not have actually coalesced. The easy to get an accurate notion tendency to assimilation ap- of their strength at different pears to have been strongly periods. Shortly after the ac- felt as early as the middle of cession of William III., the the seventeenth century, and Low Church clergy, according Bishop Bedell exerted himself to Macaulay (History of Eng- strongly to promote it. (See land, vol. iii. p. 741) scarcely some interesting particulars in numbered a tenth part of the his Life, by Usher.) On the priesthood. On their strength recent amalgamation of the in the present controversy, see Lutherans and Calvinists in some curious statistics in Cony- Germdny, and on its relation beare's Essay on Church Par- to rationalism, there are some ties. The failure of the move- remarks worth reading in ment was very candidly con- Amand Saiutes' Hist, de Sa- fessed by the leader, in his tionalisme en Allemagne. Anglican Difficulties. DEVELOPEMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 263 constant alteration of the proportion between Angli- cans and Dissenters, to the detriment of the former ; and in the rapid developement of continental Pro- testantism into rationalism. The dominating cause of this movement is, as I have said, to be found mainly in that process of education which is effected by the totality of in- tellectual influences, and which produces both a capacity and a disposition to rise above material conceptions, and to sublimate all portions of belief. There is, however, one separate branch of knowledge which has exercised such a deep, and at the same time such a distinct, influence upon it, that it requires a separate notice. I mean the progress of physical science modifying our notions of the government of the universe. In the early Church the interests of theology were too absorbing to leave any room for purely secular studies. If scientific theories were ever discussed, it was simply with a view to elucidating some theological question, and the controversy was entirely governed by the existing notions of inspiration. On this subject two doctrines prevailed, which did not by any means exclude each other, but were both somewhat different from those that are now professed one of them being allegorical, the other intensely literal. The first, which had been extremely popular among the Jewish com- mentators, rested upon the belief, that besides the direct and manifest meaning of a scriptural narrative, which was to be ascertained by the ordinary modes of exegesis, there was an occult meaning, which could be discovered only by the eye of faith, or at all events by human ingenuity, guided by the defined doctrines of the Church. Thus, while the historian was apparently 264 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. relating a very simple narrative, or enforcing a very simple truth, his real and primary object might be to unfold some Christian mystery, of which all the natural objects he mentioned were symbols. This notion, which in modern times has been sys- tematised and developed with great ingenuity by Swedenborg in his ' Doctrine of Correspondences,' was the origin of many of those extremely far-fetched, and, as they would now appear, absurd, interpretations of Scripture that are so numerous in the Fathers, and several of which I have already had occasion to notice. Supposing it to be true, a very important question arose concerning the comparative authority of the historical and the spiritual meanings. Origen, as is well known, made the principle of allegorical interpretation the basis of a system of free- thinking, sometimes of the boldest character. Mani- chseism having violently assailed the Mosaic Cosmo- gony, he cordially accepted the assault as far as it was directed against the literal interpretation, turned into absolute ridicule, as palpable fables, the stories of the serpent and the trees of life and of knowledge, and contended that they could only be justified as alle- gories representing spiritual truths. 1 Origen, however, 1 See Beansobre, Hist, du Clavis of St. Melito, who was Manichkisme, torn. i. pp. 286- bishop of Sardis, it is said, in 288. Barbeyrac, Morale des the beginning of the second Peres, ch. vii., has collected a century, and consists of a cata- number of wonderful extrava- logue of many hundreds of gances of interpretation into birds, beasts, plants, and which the love of allegory led minerals, that were symbolical Origen. One of the most cu- of Christian virtues, doctrines, rious writings of the ancient and personages. Church bearing on this subject A modern High Churchman has been lately printed in the writes : ' I believe that a geo- Spicilegium Solesmense (curante legist deeply impressed with Pom. J. B. Pitra). It is the the mystery of baptism that DEVELOPEMENTS OP EATIONALISM. 265 verged far too closely upon heresy to be regarded as a representative of the Church ; and the prevailing though not very clearly denned opinion among the orthodox seems to have been, that the literal and the allegorical interpretations should be both retained. Perhaps the clearest illustration of this doctrine is to be found in a short treatise of St. Augustine in defence of. Genesis against the Manichaeans, which is very remarkable when we remember that its author was not more distinguished for his great abilities than for the precision and logical character of his mind. In this work, St. Augustine reviews and answers afc length the objections which the Manicha?ans had brought against each separate portion of the six days' work. Having done this, he proceeds to lay down the principle, that besides the literal meaning, there was a spiritual meaning which was veiled in the form of allegory. Thus the record of the six days' creation contained, not merely a description of the first forma- tion of the material world, but also a prophetic sketch of the epochs into which the history of mankind was to be divided ; the sixth day being the Christian dis- pensation, in which the man and woman, or Christ and the Church, were to appear upon earth. 1 Nor did it foreshadow less clearly the successive stages of the Christian life. First of all the light of faith streams mystery by which a new crea- truth lay in the union of both.' ture is formed by means of Sewell, Christian Morals, p. water and fire would never 323. have fallen into the absurdities ' The Church being wedded of accounting for the formation to Christ, ' Bone of his bone, of the globe solely by water or and flesh of his flesh,' that is to solely by fire. He would not say, participating alike of his have maintained a Vulcanian strength and of his purity. (De or a Neptunian theory. He Genesi, contra Manichceos, lib. would have sxispected that the i. c. 23.) tb BATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. upon the mind which is still immersed in the waves of sin ; then the firmament of discipline divides things carnal from things spiritual ; then the regenerated soul is raised above the things of earth, and prepared for the production of virtue ; spiritual intelligences rise like the planets in their various orders in the firma- ment of discipline, good works spring from the waves of trial as the fish from the sea, the purified mind itself produces its own graces, till sanctified thought being wedded to sanctified action, as Eve to Adam, the soul is prepared for its coming rest. 1 In the game way, when the serpent was condemned to creep along the earth, this meant that temptation comes commonly by pride and sensuality. 2 When it was condemned to eat earth, this probably signified the vice of curiosity, plunging into the unseen. When it is related that there was a time when no rain fell upon the earth, but that a mist, rising from the ground, watered its face, we should understand that prophets and apostles were once unnecessary, for every man bore the spring of revelation in his own breast. The literal narrative was true, and so was the spiritual sig- nification ; but if in the first anything was found which could not be literally interpreted in a manner consonant either with the doctrines of the Church, or with the dignity of the Creator, the passage was to be treated as an enigma, and its true purport was to be Bought in the spiritual meaning. 3 Some touches of description were inserted solely with a view to that meaning. Thus, when in the summary of the creation 1 Lib. v. cap. 25. This no- in a book on Conjugal Affec- tion of marriage representing twn. the union of the two main ele- 2 The chest signifying pride, ments of life, is very beauti- and the stomach sensuality, fully developed by Swedenborg, * Lib. ii. cap. 2. DEVELOPEMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 267 that is said to have been effected in one day which was really effected in six, and when the ' green herbs ' are specially singled out among created things, these expressions, which, taken literally, would be pointless or inaccurate, are intended merely to direct the mind to particular portions of the allegory. Together with the method of interpretation laid down in this and in other works of the early Church, there was another different, though, as I have said, not necessarily antagonistic one, of an intensely literal character. Theologians were accustomed to single out any incidental expressions that might be applied in any way to scientific theories, even though they were simply the metaphors of poetry or rhetoric, or the ordinary phrases of common conversation, and to interpret them as authoritative declarations, super- seding all the deductions of mere worldly science. The best known example of this is to be found in those who condemned the opinions of Galileo, because it had been said that the ' sun runneth about from one end of heaven to the other,' and that ' the founda- tions of the earth are so firmly fixed that they cannot be moved.' It may be well, however, to give an illustration of an earlier date of the extent to which this mode of interpretation was carried. Among the very few scientific questions which occupied a considerable amount of attention in the early Church, one of the most remarkable was that concerning the existence of the Antipodes. The Manicheeans had chanced to stumble on the correct doctrine, 1 and consequently the Fathers opposed it. Although, however, the leaders of the Church were apparently unanimous in denying the existence of the 1 Beausobre, Hist, du Manicheisme, torn. i. p. 246. 268 BATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. Antipodes, it appears that the contrary opinion had spread to a considerable extent among the less noted Christians, and some fear was entertained lest it should prove a new heresy. About the year A.D. 535, in the reign of Justinian, there was living in a monastery of Alexandria an old monk named Cosmas, to whom the eyes of many were then turned. He had been in his youth a merchant, and in that profession had travelled much, expecially in the regions of India and of Ethiopia. He was also noticed for his keen and inquisitive mind, and for his scientific attainments, and since he had embraced a religious life he had devoted himself zealously to the relations between Scripture and science. At the earnest request of some of the theologians of his time, he determined, though now somewhat broken in health, and suffering especially, as he tells us, from 'a certain dryness both of the eyes and of the stomach,' to employ the remainder of his life in the composition of a great work, which was not only to refute the ' anile fable ' of the Antipodes, but was to form a complete system of the universe, based upon the teaching of Revelation. This book is called the ' Topographia Christiana,' or ' Christian Opinion concerning the World.' l Inde- pendently of its main interest, as probably the most elaborate work on the connection between science and the Bible which the early Church has bequeathed us, it is extremely curious on account of its many digres- sions concerning life and manners in the different 1 This work is published in In his preface, Montfaucon has the Benedictine edition of the collected a long chain of pas- Greek Fathers (Paris, 1706), sages from the Fathers denying torn. ii. I have quoted the the existence of the Antipodes. Benedictine Latin translation. DEVELOPEMENTS OP BATIONALISM. 269 nations Cosmas had visited. It opens in a tone of great confidence. It is 'a Christian topography of the universe, established by demonstrations from Di- vine Scripture, concerning which it is not lawful for a Christian to doubt.' l In a similar strain the writer proceeds to censure with great severity those weak- minded Christians who had allowed the subtleties of Greek fables, or the deceitful glitter of mere human science, to lead them astray, forgetting that Scripture contained intimations of the nature of the universe of far higher value and authority than any to which unassisted man could attain, and seeking to frame their conceptions simply by the deductions of their reason. Such, Cosmas assures us, is not the course he would pursue. ' To the law and to the testimony ' was his appeal, and he doubted not that he could evolve from their pages a system far more correct than any that pagan wisdom could attain. The system of the universe of which remarks to this effect form the prelude may be briefly stated. According to Cosmas, the world is a flat parallelogram. Its length, which should be measured from east to west, is the double of its breadth, which should be measured from north to south. In the centre is the earth we inhabit, which is surrounded by the ocean, and this again is encircled by another earth, in which men lived before the deluge, and from which Noah was transported in the ark. To the north of the world is a high conical mountain, around which the sun and moon continually revolve. When the sun is hid behind the mountain, it is night ; when it is on our side of the mountain, it is day. To the edges of the outer earth the sky is glued. It consists of four 1 Lib. i. prologus 2. 270 BATIONALISM IN EUROPE. high walls rising to a great height and then meeting in a vast concave roof, thus forming an immense edifice of which our world is the floor. This edifice is divided into two stories hy the firmament which is placed between the earth and the roof of the sky. A great ocean is inserted in the side of the firma- ment remote from the earth. This is what is signified by the waters that are above the firmament. The space from these waters to the roof of the sky is al- lotted to the blest ; that from the firmament to our earth to the angels, in their character of ministering spirits. The reader will probably not regard these opinions as prodigies of scientific wisdom ; but the point with which we are especially concerned is the manner they were arrived at. In order to show this, it will be necessary to give a few samples of the arguments of Cosmas. In the account of the six days' creation, it will be remembered the whole work is summed up in a single sentence, ' This is the book of the generation of the heaven and the earth.' These expressions are evi- dently intended to comprise everything that is con- tained in the heaven and the earth. But, as Cosmas contended, if the doctrine of the Antipodes were correct, the sky would surround and consequently contain the earth, and therefore it would only be said, * this is the book of the generation of the sky.' 1 This very simple argument was capable of great extension, 1 ' Ait, " Hie est liber genera- coelum tantummodo universa tionis coeli et terras," quasi contineat, terrain cum coelo non omnia iis contineantur, et uni- nominasset, sed dizisset " Hie versa quae in eis sunt cum illis est liber generationis coeli." ' significentur. Nam si secun- (P. 126.) dum fucatos illos Christianos DEVELOPEMENTS OP EATIONALISM. 271 for there was scarcely any sacred writer who had not employed the phrase 'the heaven and the earth' to include the whole creation, and who had not thus implied that one of them did not include the other. Abraham, David, Hosea, Isaiah, Zechariah, and many others, were cited. Even Melchisedec had thus uttered his testimony against the Antipodes. If we examine the subject a little further, we are told that the earth is fixed firmly upon its foundations, from which we may at least infer that it is not sus- pended in the air ; and we are told by St. Paul, that all men are made to live upon the ' face of the earth,' from which it clearly follows that they do not live upon more faces than one, or upon the back. With such a passage before his eyes, a Christian, we are told, should not ' even speak of the Antipodes.' Such arguments might be considered a conclusive demonstration of the falseness of the Manichaean doctrine. It remained to frame a correct theory to fill its place. The first great point of illumination that meets us in this task, consists in the fact that St. Paul more than once speaks of the earth as a taber- nacle. 1 From this comparison some theologians, and Cosmas among the number, inferred that the taber- nacle of Moses was an exact image of our world. This being admitted, the paths of science were greatly simplified. The tabernacle was a parallelogram twice as long from east to west, as from north to south, and covered over as a room. Two remarkable pas- sages, mistranslated in the Septuagint, in one of which Isaiah is made to compare the heavens to a vault, and in the other of which Job speaks of the sky as 1 Cosmas inferred this from fanciful interpretations of Heb. Yiii. 1, 2; ix. 1, 2, 11, 12, 24. 872 BATIONALISM IN EUROPE. glued to the earth, completed the argument, 1 and enabled the writer to state it almost with the autho- rity of an article of faith. 3 It is easy to perceive how fatal such systems of in- terpretation must have been to scientific progress. It is indeed true that Cosmas belongs to a period when the intellectual decadence had already begun, that he was himself a writer of no very great abilities, and that some of the more eminent Fathers had treated the subject of the Antipodes with considerable good sense, contending that it was not a matter connected with salvation. 8 But still, from the very beginning, the principles of which this book forms an extreme ex- ample were floating through the Church. The dis- tinction between theology and science was entirely unfelt. The broad truth which repeated experience has now impressed on almost every unprejudiced student, that it is perfectly idle to quote a passage from the Bible as a refutation of any discovery of scientific men, or to go to the Bible for information on any scientific subject, was altogether undreamed of, 4 1 These were Isaiah xl. 22, didicerimus terrain magis and Job xxxviii. 38. The first quoad longitudinem extend!, was translated t> a-rfiaas rbv id DOS quod fatemur gnari, ovpavbv ds Ka.na.pav. The second, scilicet Scripturse divinse cre- ovpa.vbv 5* (isyrivtK\lyt, xtxvrat dendum.' (P. 129.) 5 So"irp yf) Kovia, KecdAAi)Ka 8 This very liberal opinion 8 aiirbv &