{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_15084/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_15084","id":"gutenberg_15084","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15084","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Politics","Civilization","Progress"],"text":"Produced by Ted Garvin, Garrett Alley, and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE UNITY SERIES\n\nRECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT\n\n_ESSAYS ARRANGED AND EDITED_\n\nBY\n\nF.S. MARVIN\n\nAUTHOR OF 'THE LIVING PAST', ETC.\n\n    'To hope till Hope creates\n    From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.'\n\n    _Prometheus Unbound._\n\nHUMPHREY MILFORD\n\nOXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS\n\nLONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY\n\n1920\n\nPRINTED IN ENGLAND\n\nAT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThis volume, like its two predecessors, arises from a course of lectures\ndelivered at a Summer School at Woodbrooke, near Birmingham, in August,\n1919. The first, in 1915, dealt with 'The Unity of Western Civilization'\ngenerally, the second, in 1916, with 'Progress'. In this book an attempt\nhas been made to trace the same ideas in the last period of European\nhistory, broadly speaking since 1870.\n\nIt was felt at the conclusion of the course that the point of view was\nso enlightening and offered so many opportunities of useful further\nstudy that it should, if possible, be resumed in future years. A large\nnumber of subjects were suggested--'The Relations of East and West,'\n'The Duty of Advanced to Backward Peoples,' 'The Role of Science in\nCivilization,' &c.--all containing the same elements of 'progress in\nunity' which have inspired the previous volumes. It was thought that\npossibly for the next session 'World Reconstructions Past and Present'\nmight be most appropriate.\n\nIf any reader feels moved by interest or sympathy with the general idea\nto send suggestions, either as to possible places of meeting, or topics\nfor treatment or any other kindred matter, they would be welcomed either\nby the Editor or by Edwin Gilbert, Woodbrooke, Selly Oak, Birmingham.\n\nF.S.M.\n\nBERKHAMSTED, _December, 1919._\n\n\n[** Transcriber's Note: This text contains a single instance of a\n    character with a diacritical mark. The character is a lower-case\n    'r' with a caron (v-shaped symbol) above it. In the text, that\n    character is depicted thusly: [vr] **]\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n                                                      PAGE\n\n   I. GENERAL SURVEY                                     7\n      By F.S. MARVIN.\n\n  II. PHILOSOPHY                                        25\n      By Professor A.E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews.\n\n III. RELIGION                                          65\n      By Dr. F.B. JEVONS, Hatfield Hall, Durham.\n\n  IV. POETRY                                            91\n      By Professor C.H. HERFORD, Manchester.\n\n   V. HISTORY                                          140\n      By G.P. GOOCH.\n\n  VI. POLITICAL THEORY                                 164\n      By A.D. LINDSAY, Balliol College, Oxford.\n\n VII. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT                             181\n      1. THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE, 1842                    181\n      2. MINING OPERATIONS                             195\n      3. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION                     209\n         By C.R. FAY, Christ's College, Cambridge.\n\nVIII. ATOMIC THEORIES                                  216\n      By Professor W.H. BRAGG, F.R.S.\n\n  IX. BIOLOGY SINCE DARWIN                             229\n      By Professor LEONARD DONCASTER, F.R.S.\n\n   X. ART                                              247\n      By A. CLUTTON BROCK.\n\n  XI. A GENERATION OF MUSIC                            262\n      By Dr. ERNEST WALKER, Balliol College, Oxford.\n\n XII. THE MODERN RENASCENCE                            293\n      By F. MELIAN STAWELL.\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nGENERAL SURVEY\n\nF.S. MARVIN\n\n\nWe are trying in this book to give some impression of the principal\nchanges and developments of Western thought in what might roughly be\ncalled 'the last generation', though this limit of time has been, as it\nmust be, treated liberally. From the political point of view the two\nmost impressive milestones, events which will always mark for the\nconsciousness of the West the beginning and the end of a period, are no\ndoubt the war of 1870 and the Great War which has just ended. From 1870\nto 1914 would therefore be the most obvious delimitation of our study;\nand it is a striking illustration of human paradox, that a great stage\nin the growth of unity should be marked by two international tragedies\nand crowned by the most terrible of all.\n\nNearly coincident with the political divisions there are important\nlandmarks in the history of thought. During the 'sixties, while the\npower of Prussia was rising to its culmination in the Franco-Prussian\nWar, the Darwinian theory of development was gaining command in biology.\nTo many thinkers there has appeared a clear connexion between that\nbiological doctrine and the 'imperialism', Teutonic and other, which was\nso marked a feature of the time. In any case 'post-Darwinian' might well\ndescribe the scientific thought of the age we have in view.\n\nIndustrially the epoch is as clearly defined as it is in politics and\nscience. For in 1871, the year of the Treaty of Frankfort, an act was\npassed after a long working-class agitation, assisted by certain eminent\nmembers of the middle class, legalizing strikes and Trade Unions. And\nnow at the end of the war, all over the world, society is faced by the\nproblem of reconciling the full rights, and in some cases the extreme\ndemands, of 'labour', with democratic government and the prosperity and\nsocial union of the whole community. This is the situation discussed in\nour seventh and eighth chapters.\n\nIn philosophy and literature a similar dividing line appears. In the\n'sixties Herbert Spencer was publishing the capital works of his system.\nThe _Principles of Psychology_ was published in 1872. This 'Synthetic\nPhilosophy' has proved up to the present the last attempt of its kind,\nand with the vast increase of knowledge since Spencer's day it might\nwell prove the last of all such syntheses carried out by a single mind.\nSpecialism and criticism have gained the upper hand, and the fresh turn\nto harmony, which we shall notice later on, is rather a harmony of\nspirit than an encyclopaedic unity such as the great masters of system\nfrom Descartes to Comte and Spencer had attempted before.\n\nIn literature also the dates agree. Dickens, most typical of all early\nVictorians, died in 1870. George Eliot's last great novel, _Daniel\nDeronda_, was published in 1876. Victor Hugo's greatest poem, _La\nLegende des Siecles_, the imaginative synthesis of all the ages,\nappeared in the 'seventies. There have been many writers since, with\nTolstoi perhaps at their head, in whom the fire of moral enthusiasm has\nburnt as keenly, nor have the borders of human sympathy been narrowed.\nYet one cannot fail to note a less pervading and ready confidence in\nhuman nature, a less fervent belief that the good must prevail if good\nmen will only follow their better leading.\n\nHere then is our period, marked in public affairs by a progress from\none conflict, desperate and tragic, between two of the leading nations\nof the West, to another and still more terrible which swept the whole\nworld into the maelstrom; and marked in thought by a certain dispersion\nand depression of mind, a falling in the barometer of temperament and\nimagination, but also by a grappling with realities at closer quarters.\nNo wonder that some have seen here a 'tragedy of hope' and the\n'bankruptcy of science'.\n\nBut it must be noted at once that these obvious landmarks, though\nstriking, are in themselves superficial. They require explanation rather\nthan give it, and in some cases an explanation, much less tragic than\nthe symptom, is suggested by the symptom itself. We may at least fairly\ntreat them at starting simply as beacon-hills to mark out the country we\nare traversing. We have to go deeper to find out the nature of the soil,\nand travel to the end to study the vista beyond.\n\nIn making this fuller analysis of man's recent achievement, especially\nin the West, the first, and perhaps ultimately the weightiest, element\nwe have to note is the continued and unexampled growth of science. Was\nthere ever a more fertile period than the generation which succeeded\nDarwin's achievement in biology and Bunsen's and Kirchhoff's with the\nspectroscope? Both have created revolutions, one in our view of living\nthings, the other in our view of matter. In physics the whole realm of\nradio-activity has come into our ken within these years, and during the\nsame time chemistry, both organic and inorganic, has been equally\nenlarged. All branches of science in fact show a similar expansion, and\na new school of mathematicians claim that they have recast the\nfoundations of the fundamental science and assimilated it to the\nsimplest laws of all thinking. Some discussion of this will be found in\nthe chapter on philosophy.\n\nIt may serve as tonic--an antidote to that depression of spirits of\nwhich we have spoken--to consider that such an output of mental energy,\nrewarded by such a harvest of truth, is without precedent in man's\nevolution. No single generation before ever learnt so much not only of\nthe world around it but also of the doings of previous generations. For\nsince 1870 we have been living in an age as much distinguished for\nhistorical research as for natural science. If mankind is now to go down\nin a wrack of war, starvation, bankruptcy, and ruin, the sunset sky at\nleast is glorious.\n\nAnd there is tonic in another thought which rises from the very nature\nof this recent blossoming of knowledge. It marks the growing\nco-operative activity of mankind. The fact that science and research of\nevery kind have advanced so rapidly is not only, or even primarily, a\nproof of the continued vigour of the human intellect, but of the\nstability of society, the coherence of social classes and nations, the\nreadiness of the bulk of men to allow their more immediately productive\nwork to be used for the support of those whose labours are in a more\nremote and ideal sphere. Science did not begin until the ancient\npriesthoods were enabled to pursue disinterested inquiries without the\nneed of earning their daily bread. Civilization, we may be assured, is\nnot threatened in its most vital part so long as the general will\npermits the application of the general resources to the promotion of\nlearning and research without a claim for immediate marketable results.\nOur last generation has not only permitted but has encouraged this in\nall Western countries, and in other countries, such as China and Japan,\ninfluenced by the West. The money thus spent is vastly greater than in\nany equal period before, and the United States, the land of the fullest\ndemocratic claims, is also the land of the amplest generosity for\nscientific and educational purposes.\n\nThe growth of knowledge is a symptom not only of the collective capacity\nof living man but also of the continuity of the present age with those\nwhich had laid the earlier foundations. One school of vigorous action,\nand still more vigorous talk, advises our generation to be done with the\npast and make a fresh start on more ideal lines. This is not the voice\nof science, which, just in proportion to its growth, has shown more and\nmore care for its origins and its past: and this is true at every stage\nin the history of thought. The Greeks, fighting for freedom and\nestablishing in the city-state a new form of political organization for\nthe world, were yet in their scientific evolution true and grateful\nsuccessors of the priests who first compiled the observations necessary\nfor the scientific study of the heavens and founded the art of medicine.\nThe men of the Renascence, who were burnt and imprisoned for doubting\nthe verbal inspiration of Aristotle and the Bible, were in fact going\nback to an earlier impulse than that of the scholastic philosophy. The\nmathematics of Pappus and the mechanics of Archimedes had to be carried\nfurther before the new sciences of which Aristotle had given the first\nsketch could be securely founded. The pioneers of the sixteenth and\nseventeenth centuries built therefore on the past, although accused of\nimpiety and revolution; and it must be so with any intellectual\nconstruction which is to hold its own and form the future. So far from\nthere being any opposition in nature between history and science, the\ntwo are but different aspects of one continuous enlargement of the human\nspirit, which sees and lives more fully at each great moment of its\nprogress, and, so far as it is alive, is always informed by the real\nachievements of the past. We illustrate this advance in the marvellous\nrecord of our fifth chapter, and its spirit is summed up in the great\nsaying of Benedetto Croce that 'all history is contemporary history'.\n\nBut the reader may here begin not unnaturally to feel some impatience\nwith the argument, and to think that he is being carried into a region\nof ideal imaginings quite out of touch with the realities of blood and\nhatred and starvation with which we have been actually surrounded at the\nend of our period. It is well to be thus sharply reminded of the\ncontrariety of facts, when we are sailing smoothly along on the current\nof any theory, whether of education or politics, religion or art. To get\nright with our objector, to set our sail so that the rocks in the stream\nmay not completely wreck us, we will go back to the point where we were\ninsisting on the obvious truth that the collective resources and\ncapacity of mankind have of late enormously increased.\n\nThe material fruits of science are among our most familiar wonders--the\nmotor-car, the aeroplane, wireless telegraphy. But it is not\nsufficiently realized how all these things and the like are dependent\nupon the co-operation of a multitude of minds, the collective rather\nthan the individual capacity of man. Men had dreamt for ages of flying,\nbut it was not until the invention of the internal combustion engine\nthat bird-like wings and the mechanical skill of man could be brought\ntogether and made effective. It is Humanity that flies, and not the\nindividual man alone. The German Daimler, the French Levassor, are the\ntwo names which stand out most prominently in this later development of\nengineering as our own Watt and Stephenson stand in the history of the\nsteam-engine. Wireless telegraphy offers a similar story. Faraday,\nMaxwell, Hertz, Lodge, Marconi; the names are international. In 1913,\nbefore ever the League of Nations had been planned, Lord Bryce was\ntelling an International Congress in London that 'the world is becoming\none in an altogether new sense.... More than four centuries ago the\ndiscovery of America marked the first step in the process by which the\nEuropean races have gained dominion over nearly the whole earth. As the\nearth has been narrowed through the new forces science has placed at our\ndisposal, the movements of politics, of economics, and of thought, in\neach of its regions, become more closely interwoven. Whatever happens in\nany part of the globe has now a significance for every other part. World\nHistory is tending to become one History.'\n\nThe war, tragically as it has shaken this growing oneness of mankind,\nhas not destroyed it. In some ways it has even stimulated growth.\nAgainst a background of blood and fire the League of Nations has been\nforced into actual being, and the long isolation alike of the ancient\nEast and the youthful West has been broken down at last. Within the\nState, again, even allowing for all setbacks, the efforts at social\nsolidarity have on the whole been strengthened, not weakened. This war\nhis been an accelerator of, not, as the Napoleonic, a brake upon,\nreform. Many reforms, especially in England, which had been long\ndiscussed and partly attempted before the war, were carried out with\ndispatch at its close. This was the case with education, with the\nfranchise and with measures affecting the health, the housing, and the\nindustrial conditions of the people. And there is now a greater and\nstronger demand among us for a further advance, above all for making\nevery citizen not merely or even primarily a voting unit, but a\nconsciously active, consciously co-operative, member of the community.\n\nComte, who died in 1857 just before our period, was perhaps the clearest\nvoice in Europe to herald both movements: the advance to international\nunity, and social reform within the State. It was he who, under the\ntitle of _Western Republic_, proclaimed the existence of a real unity of\nnations, whose business it was to strengthen themselves as a moral\nforce, to act as trustees for the weaker people and lead the world. It\nwas he who, in the phrase 'incorporation of the proletariate', summed up\nall those social reforms in which we are immersed, which aim at making\nevery citizen a full member of his nation. Like all ideals it was far\neasier to conceive and to respect than to foresee or to secure the\nnecessary means to put it into effect. Perhaps the perfect symmetry of\nthe plan, the over-sanguine hopes of the man who framed it, have even\nproved some hindrance to its rapid spread. It has seemed, like Dante's\npolity in the _De Monarchia_, to take its place rather among the utopias\nthan the practical schemes of reform, and when men saw the infinite\ncomplexity of the problems and met the living lions in the path, they\nsuffered the comparative depression which we have noticed as a feature\nof the age.\n\nHere indeed it would appear that we have reached one of the most serious\ncross-currents in recent European thought. In science, in philosophy, in\npolitics, and in social economics, though we see the goal at least in\noutline, we are in some danger of being overwhelmed by the difficulties\nof the pursuit. Our vision is somewhat clouded and our steps hampered by\nthe entangling details of the country between. It is substantially the\nsame problem which faces us both in the philosophical and the practical\nsphere, and the analogy between the two is instructive. Spencer's\nsynthesis, which we instanced as the last encyclopaedic attempt to\npresent all knowledge--at least all scientific knowledge--in one system,\nhas been riddled fore and aft by hostile shot, though in the end more\nof it may be found to have survived than is seen at present above water.\nThe philosopher who in our generation has acquired the European vogue\nmost comparable to that of Spencer is Bergson. Now Bergson has dealt\nsome of the shrewdest blows at Spencer's system, but he does not set out\nto construct a rival system of his own. He is most careful to say that\nhe is not doing this, that any such work must be done by later workers,\nthat he is only making suggestions for a new point of view. It is\ninteresting to note in general terms what that point of view is, as we\nshall have occasion later on to revert to it. It rests on a new\ninterpretation of the nature and growth of conscious life. He is in\nshort a _semeur d'idees-force_ rather than an encyclopaedist or a\nsystem-maker. The difference is characteristic of the age and might be\ntraced in the other contemporary schools, the pragmatists, the new\nrealists, and the rest. The new Descartes is looked for but not\nannounced. Perhaps when he arrives he will prove to be a whole army and\nnot a single man. But if an army, it will need a better co-ordination, a\nmore clearly defined common spirit, than is at present apparent in the\nphilosophic hosts.\n\nA similar perplexity in the practical sphere has a similar cause but a\ngraver urgency. The multiplicity and contrariety of the facts are upon\nus as we face in practice the ideals which we have accepted from the\nearlier thinkers, from the century of hope. In science and philosophy we\nfeel that the cause of unity may with some safety be left to look after\nitself. If the new Descartes does not appear in person, we may have\nconfidence that plenty of inferior substitutes will be found, who, if\nthey work together, will keep alive the great task of unifying thought.\nFor in this region the nature of things assists our efforts and will\nsooner or later get the work done. The stars in their courses are\nfighting for us and for unity. But in the world of wills the task is\ntenfold more difficult and the dangers imminent. The poor and labouring\nmillions, the oppressed and dissatisfied nations, are forcing the door,\nand though there is fair agreement in theory as to how they should live\nand work together in peace, yet the realization is by no means\nautomatic, and the difficulties thicken as we come nearer to them.\n\nBut even here, perhaps most of all here, it is the first word of wisdom\nto take stock of the favourable symptoms, to see clearly the forces on\nwhich we can rely in our forward march. And they are not far to seek in\nall classes and in every Western land. Read any account of an English\ncommunity in the early nineteenth century, say George Eliot's 'Milby' in\nthe _Scenes of Clerical Life_. How far more humane, more enlightened,\nand happier is the state of the succeeding community, the Nuneaton or\nCoventry of the present day! No question but the novelist would have\nwelcomed as a convincing proof of her 'meliorist' doctrine the progress\nmade in her own homeland in the century since her birth. We know by\npersonal experience the general kindliness and cheerfulness of our\nfellow citizens, their tolerance, their readiness to hope, their\nprevalent orderliness and self-restraint. We are thinking perhaps of a\ncertain tendency to slackness, a dangerous falling-off in the output of\nwork. If that be so, we need only look at the activities of any\nplayground, or of a class-room in a well-ordered school, to be sure of\nthe future. The natural man, at least in our temperate climates, and as\nexhibited in the behaviour of his natural progenitor, the child, is all\nfor vigour and experiment. It is we, the adult community, the trustees\nof the child, who are to blame if his maturity fails of the eager\nquestioning and the untiring labours of his unspoilt youth.\n\nBut we are dealing in this volume rather with changes of thought than\nwith the actual life of the times. Theories affecting the organization\nof work, the distribution of the product, and the government of society\nhave had much to do with our present difficulties. They have arisen from\nthe conditions of the industrial revolution and the doctrines of the\npolitical revolution which began about the same time, and they have\nreacted ever since on the work and wages, the life and government of the\nmass of Western men. They are discussed in our eighth chapter. It may be\nsaid broadly that in this sphere, as in philosophy, the old and\n_simpliste_ doctrines have been criticized almost to the point of\nextinction, but that no new all-embracing practical synthesis has taken\ntheir place. The Marxian theory that social evolution has been due\nmainly to economic causes, that these have produced inevitably the\npresent--or recent--capitalist system, which inevitably must be turned\nupside down in the interests of manual labour--this is no longer\ndominant in any Western community, though it is fighting a desperate\nbattle in Eastern Europe. But it is equally true that the capitalist\nsystem, presented in an ideal and moralized form in the Utopias of St.\nSimon and Comte, is not generally accepted now as an ideal for industry.\nThe spirit which Comte desired and believed would animate the moralized\nemployer, acting as the providence of his workpeople, we look to find\nrather in a reconstituted and moralized State. We all share this hope in\nour degree, _The Times_ as well as the _Daily News_, and we do not\nexpect the new spirit to operate simply through the free-will and\nprivate capacity and initiative of individuals. The joint stock company\nhas settled that.\n\nWhat we are waiting and hoping for is the time when, under the aegis of\na benevolent State, capital and labour may live together in many\nmansions and, like the monks of old, follow many rules of life. In this\nregion our ideal of unity is more diversified than in the realm of\nthought, and there is no demand for a Descartes.\n\nAnd here it is interesting to note that one of the most telling books on\nsocial reconstruction published since the war is by an international\nwriter. This is Dr. Walther Rathenau, a German of Jewish descent, whose\nideas have just been popularized by a Frenchman, M. Gaston Raphael[1].\nHe fits in well with our general argument by virtue of his double\nattitude, holding, on the one hand, that under the general supervision\nof the State, industry should be organized in various self-governing\ngroups, 'Social Guilds' or 'professional syndicates' in which both\nemployers and workmen would be included with representatives of the\nGovernment; while, on the other hand, he is emphatic that progress must\nproceed from a changed and widening mentality, and aim in turn at\nincreasing the depth and capacity of the individual soul.\n\nOur book has no special chapter on the League of Nations itself. The\nidea pervades the whole, and the subject was treated in detail in the\nfirst volume of this series (_The Unity of Western Civilization_, 1915).\nThe history behind the League offers a striking analogy to the other\nstruggles for unity of which we have spoken. There is the same advance\nfrom the idea of a unity dictated and controlled by one mind to a unity\nof spirit arising from the free co-operation of many diverse elements\nall aiming at the same general good. Down even to yesterday it seemed to\nmany minds a necessary condition that one man, gathering in his hands\nthe resources of one great State, should from that centre dominate the\nworld. And in the dawn of human history it was no doubt often true, the\nonly way in which the world could then advance. This was true for\nAlexander, the prototype of all the Roman conquerors, and true,\nconspicuously, for the Roman empire at its best. But, after the break-up\nof the empire, unity of this type became a delusive mirage, misleading\nall who, like the Holy Roman emperors, sought to enjoy it again. By the\ntime of Napoleon it had become an anachronism of the most dangerous and\nreactionary kind. The world was then too vast, the freedom of men and\nnations too various and deeply rooted. Meanwhile a real unity, stronger\nthan before, had been forming beneath the surface and needed fresh\ninstitutions to body it forth. This movement for unity has been, as we\nhave seen, precipitated by the war into visible and decisive action. It\nhad been simmering for three hundred years in 'Great Designs', 'Projects\nof Peace', Treaties of Arbitration, and Hague Conventions.\n\nAmong much that is doubtful in the future of the League, one thing\nstands out as a capital certainty. Without losing the very spirit of its\nbeing it can never become a satellite system, revolving round one\ndominant Power or even a dominant clique. It was formed to contradict\nand destroy an oppressive imperialism: it can only thrive by the free\nco-operation of the partners, finding their proper end in a prosperity\nshared by all.\n\nSuch is a short summary of some of the leading topics treated here,\nthose perhaps in which public interest has been most keenly aroused. But\nnothing has been said in this introduction of Art or Music, and of\nReligion only a little by implication. It may be well in conclusion to\nattempt a still more summary impression of the main drift of the period\non the spiritual side. We may in such a wider view see some common\ntendency in all these activities, some inspiration of religion, some\nlink with art, some impulse to live strongly and to hope.\n\nThe present writer would find this leading thread in the increasing\nstress laid by recent European thought on the spiritual, or\npsychological, side of every problem, in the growing desire to\nunderstand the character of man's own nature and to develop all the\npowers of his soul.\n\nOne of the latest authorities[2] on anthropology has told us that 'to\ndevelop soul is progress', and he has followed the clue through the\nmeagre relics of Palaeolithic and Neolithic man. So does the last\nscience of the nineteenth century throw light on the dim recesses of the\npast. For unquestionably psychology is the characteristic science added\nto the hierarchy in our period; it has crowned biology and is exercising\na profound influence on philosophy, literature, and even politics. If\nAristotle was its founder, if it was Descartes who first showed its\nprofound connexion with philosophy, it is to workers in our own day that\nwe must look for those methods of accurate observation, comparison, and\nthe study of causes without which it could not advance farther. And\nmodern psychology has advanced far enough to see that we must include in\nits purview the 'soul' of a minnow as well as of a man. Descartes had\nstopped too short, for to him animal life, as distinct from human,\nshowed only the movements of automata. But now, just as the biologist\nconceives man as part of one infinite order of living things, so the\npsychologist believes that the facts of his consciousness, the crown of\nlife, must find their place somewhere related to the simplest movements\nof the amoeba. Hence the whole of animate evolution, and not only that\npart of which Dr. Marett spoke, may be thought of as the growth of soul.\n\nBut, the objector will inquire, does this imply the enlargement of every\nindividual or even of the average or the typical personality? And if\nnot, what becomes of a 'growth of the soul'?\n\nTo this we must admit the impossibility of any complete, or even\napproximate, answer with our present knowledge. We can only note one or\ntwo points of certainty or of confident belief. The first, that there\nhave been individual men, an Aristotle or a Shakespeare, in the past,\nwith whom later ages never have, and perhaps never may, compare. The\nsecond, that there are good grounds for thinking that the average man\nhas improved in goodness and in knowledge since we first knew him dimly\nin the dawn of history. But more important and more certain is the fact\nthat the collective soul of man has grown, and all the extensions of\nknowledge and of power of which our volume speaks bear witness to it.\nThey are essentially social in origin and outlook, and rest on a\nfoundation of common thought immeasurably wider than any in the more\ndistant past.\n\nThe man of science, the statesman, even the poet, now speaks for a\nmultitude, and out of a multitudinous consciousness, which had not\ngathered to support, to inspire, or to weigh down, an Aristotle, a\nPericles, a Cromwell. This is a dominating fact from which it is well to\ntake our start. Assuredly the soul of mankind has been collectively\nenlarged and enriched. How far the individual can share in this\nenlargement is still one of the problems of the future. The West has\ncommitted itself to a general policy of education which aims at making\nevery citizen a full partaker in the advance of the race. But it cannot\nbe said that this policy has yet been really tried. It is the\nacknowledged ideal to which in all Western countries partial steps have\nbeen taken, and the democracy, through their most enlightened leaders,\nwill continue to press for its fulfilment. As this approaches, the\nindividual may become more and more in his degree the microcosm which\nphilosophers have proclaimed him, and the enlargement of the soul, which\nwe know to be a fact for humanity, will become a fact for every man.\nNeed we doubt that with the general raising in the level new eminences\nwill appear? Do not great mountains sometimes rise from the sea and\nsometimes from the high plateau? We are now in the very midst of a\nstruggle for settlement and incorporation, which, as it is accomplished,\nshould prepare the way for new excellences of every kind. What may not\nbe hoped of men if once they learn to live with their fellows? And they\ncan only so learn by studying them. This is felt by all contemporary\nwriters from Bergson in philosophy to Graham Wallas in politics. Poets\nand novelists, above all, have turned more and more to problems of the\ninner life.\n\nThe novelists who ushered in our age are significant of this, and none\nmore so than George Eliot, whose work, though somewhat out of fashion\nfor the moment, is yet marked by the transition from Victorian\ncomplacency to modern unrest and modern hopes. Full of love and\nappreciation for the old order in England--the contentment and humours\nof the country-side, the difference of classes, the respect for\nreligion--she was carried by the evolutionary philosophy of her time\ninto thoughts of an eternal and world-wide order, the growth of\nhumanity, the kinship of man with the universe, the social nature of\nduty. Her contribution was essentially psychological; she enlarged our\nknowledge of the soul. She showed us, not certainly more living types\nthan Scott or Dickens, but more play of motives, more varied interests\nin life, more mental crises. The soul, above all the woman's soul, had\nwidened its horizon between Flora Macdonald and Dorothea Brooke.\n\nEvery reader will think of famous novelists who have followed the same\nbroadening path, and their work is often really great as well as famous.\nThe history of thought has in fact throughout the last century been a\ncommentary on those words of Keats to which many of us have turned of\nlate for comfort and inspiration: 'The world is not a vale of tears, but\na vale of soul-making.' Tears there are in abundance, as the tears of\nchildren. But sorrow is not the leading note of children, nor should it\nbe of humanity in growth. Soul-making--the practice and the theory--has\nbecome more and more clearly and consciously the object of human thought\nand endeavour. We need the greater mind to see the links in the\noverwhelming mass of science, in the mazes of human action and history.\nWe need it still more to grasp and to preserve the unity of our social\nlife. Most of all for the healing of the world is the greater soul\nneeded, with a world-consciousness, some knowledge, some sympathy, some\nhope for all mankind. Without this, a league of nations would be dead\nbefore its birth.\n\nThe recent development of psychology, social as well as individual, its\npursuit on scientific lines, and its alliance with biology, suggest one\nthought which applies generally to an age of science and may be found to\nthrow some illumination even on the future. Which of all types of modern\nmen is the most habitually hopeful, the man of letters, the politician,\nthe business man, or the man of science? There can be no question of the\nanswer. The typical man of science is sure of the greatness and solidity\nof the work he shares, and confident that the future will extend and\nmake still more beneficial its results. His forward glance is more\nassured because the backward reveals a course of growing strength and\ncontinuous ascent. The physicist foresees unmeasured sources of energy,\nstill untapped. He warns us of our dangers, but has no doubt that, with\ndue foresight, we may overcome them, and make the reign of man upon the\nplanet wider and firmer than before. The doctor knows no disease which\nmay not in time yield to scientific treatment. The agricultural expert\nforesees, and can produce, new types of grain and fruit which will\nsurpass the best yet known. And the trainer of youth, the man to whom\nthe new science of psychology stands most in stead, is the most hopeful\nof them all. Dealing with human nature in its growth he puts no limits\nto its powers of goodness and activity. He deplores the want of wise\nmethods in the past, and if he errs at all it is in an excess of\noptimism, in believing that with new methods we may make a new man.\n\nOn this enlargement of the soul, enlightened by science, we build the\nfuture. It is the crowning vision of the modern world, first sketched by\nDescartes, filled out and strengthened by the life and thought of three\nhundred years. In the interval we have lived much and learnt much, both\nof our own nature and of the world in which we live. In our own age a\npowerful stimulus has been given by a transformed biology and a new\nscience which shows the soul itself in growth from an immemorial past,\nmoulding the future by its own action, surmounting, while assimilating,\nthe mechanism which surrounds it. But for this building two things are\nneeded. One, that our souls, as builders, shall act as one with all our\nfellows and strive for unity as well as power. The other, that in the\nbuilding the laws of growth shall be followed, which science has already\nrevealed in part and will reveal more fully. For the spirit of science\nis the spirit of hope.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 1: _Walther Rathenau. Ses Idees et ses Projets d'Organisation\nEconomique_. By Gaston Raphael (Paris: Payot, 4f. 50 c).]\n\n[Footnote 2: R.R. Marett in _Progress and History_ (Oxford University\nPress).]\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nPHILOSOPHY\n\nPROFESSOR A.E. TAYLOR\n\n\nBetween forty and fifty years ago a great European man of science, Emil\ndu Bois-Reymond, delivered before an audience of the leading scientific\nmen of Germany a famous discourse on _The Limits of our Knowledge of\nNature_, which he followed up some years later with a second discourse\non the _Seven Riddles of the Universe_. His object was to convince the\nmaterialists of the 'seventies that there were at least seven such\nunsound places in _their_ story of everything. Some of the 'riddles', he\nadmitted, might prove to be soluble as science advances, but the most\nimportant of them will always remain unanswered. Our position as regards\nthem will always be _ignoramus et ignorabimus_--we do not know the\nsolutions and we never shall know them. I do not ask now whether du\nBois-Reymond was right in his judgement or not. If he was right, that\nmeans, of course, that the one tale of everything will never be told by\nhuman lips to human ears. There will no more ever be a finally true\nPhilosophy than there will ever be a finally perfect poem or picture or\nsymphony. But there is no reason why we should not, at any rate, try to\nmake our story as nearly perfect as we can, to reduce the number of the\nplaces where we have to break off with 'that is another story', and\nperhaps even to hazard a 'wide solution' in matters where absolute\ncertainty is beyond our reach. This is the work of human Philosophy as I\nconceive it, and every man who is disinterestedly trying, without one\neye on wealth or fame or domination over the minds of others, to make\nany contribution, however humble, to the telling of this one story or\nthe removal of loose threads from it, is inspired by the true spirit of\nPhilosophy. Whoever is doing anything else, no matter under what name or\nwith what profit or renown to himself, is no true philosopher.\n\nThis point of view implies, it will be seen, no sharp dividing line\nbetween Philosophy and Science. The avoidance of this commonly made\ndistinction may offend two different sets of students--students of\nmetaphysics who wish to exalt their own pursuit at the expense of the\n'special' sciences, and students of natural science who are accustomed\nto pride themselves on the contrast between the finality and\ndefiniteness of their own results and the vagueness and dubiousness of\nthe conclusion of the metaphysicians. But I must avow my own conviction\nthat the only distinction we can make is one of convenience, and it may\nhelp to make my peace with both parties if I explain where I take this\ndistinction of convenience to come in. If we are ever to construct an\napproximation to the one story of everything, clearly one result will\nconsist of a relatively few first principles and a great mass of\nconclusions which can be inferred from them. And clearly again, since\nmen differ so widely in their mental aptitudes, some men will be most\nsuccessful in the detection of the principles which underlie all our\nknowledge, and others most successful in the accumulation of facts and\nthe detailed working out of the application of the principles to the\nfacts. For convenience' sake it will be well that some of us shall be\nengaged on the discovery of principles which are so very ultimate that\nmost men take them for granted without reflecting on them at all, and\nothers on the work of detail. Further, it will be convenient that,\nwithin this second group, various students shall give their attention to\nmore special masses of detail, according to their several tastes and\naptitudes, some to the behaviour of moving particles, some to the\nbehaviour of living organisms, some again to the structure and\ninstitutions of human societies, and so on. For convenience we may agree\nto call preoccupation with the great ultimate principles Philosophy and\npreoccupation with the application of the principles to masses of\nspecial facts Science. If we make the distinction in this way, we shall\nbe following pretty closely the lines of historical development along\nwhich 'special' sciences have gradually been constituted. When we go\nback far enough in the history of human thought, we find that\noriginally, among the great Greeks who have taught the world to think,\nthere was no distinction at all between Science and Philosophy. Men like\nPlato and Aristotle were busied at once with the discovery of the first\nprinciples on which all our knowledge depends and with the construction\nof a satisfactory theory of the planetary motions or of the facts of\ngrowth and reproduction. As the study of special questions was pursued\nfurther, it became advisable to hand over the treatment of first one and\nthen another group of closely interconnected questions to students who\nwould pursue them independently of research into ultimate\npresuppositions. This is how Geometry, Astronomy, Biology came, in\nancient times, to be successively detached from general Philosophy. The\nseparation of Psychology--the detailed study of the processes of mental\nlife--from Philosophy hardly goes back beyond the days of our fathers,\nand the separation of such studies as 'sociology' from general\nPhilosophy may be said to belong quite definitely to our own time. If\nour children have leisure for study at all, no doubt they will see the\nprocess carried much further. But it is important to bear in mind that\nneither Philosophy in the narrower sense nor Science in the narrower\nsense will be fruitfully prosecuted unless the men who are working at\neach understand that their own labours are only part of a single\nundivided work. Without a genuine grasp of some department of detailed\nfacts no man is likely to achieve much in the search for principles, for\nit is by analysis of facts that principles are to be found, and without\nreal insight into broad general principles the worker in detail is\nlikely to achieve nothing but confusion. The antagonism between\n'philosophers' and 'men of science' so characteristic of the last half\nof the nineteenth century has been productive of nothing but evil. It\nhas given us 'philosophers' whose knowledge about the facts with which\nserious thinking has to deal has been hopelessly inaccurate; it has also\ngiven us 'men of science' who have been 'ageometretes' and have, by\nconsequence, when forced to offer some account of first principles,\ntaken refuge in the wildest and weirdest improvisation. For really\nfruitful work we need the union in one person of the 'man of science'\nand the 'philosopher', or at least the most intimate co-operation\nbetween the two. Our theories of first principles require to be\nconstantly revised, purified, and quickened by contact with knowledge of\ndetailed fact; and our representations of fact call for constant\nrestatement in terms of a system of more and more thoroughly thought-out\npostulates or first principles. This is perhaps why the department of\nhuman knowledge in which the last half-century has seen the most\nremarkable advances is just that in which unremitting scrutiny of\nprinciples has gone most closely hand-in-hand with the mastery of fresh\nmasses of detail, pure mathematics, and again why the present state of\nwhat is loosely called 'evolutionary' science is so unsatisfactory to\nany one who has a high ideal of what a science ought to be. It exhibits\nat once an enormous mass of detailed information and an apparently\nhopeless vagueness about the meaning of the 'laws' by which all this\ndetail is to be co-ordinated, the reasons for thinking these laws true,\nand the precise range of their significance. The work of men like\nCantor, Dedekind, Frege, Whitehead, Russell, is providing us with an\nalmost unexceptional theory of the first principles required for pure\nmathematics. We are already in a position to say with almost complete\nfreedom from uncertainty what undefined simple notions and\nundemonstrated postulates we have to employ in the science and to\nexpress these ultimates without ambiguity. 'Evolutionary science,' rich\nas is its information about the details of the processes going on in the\norganic world, seems still to await its Frege or Russell. It talks, for\nexample, much of 'hereditary' and non-hereditary peculiarities, and some\nof us can remember a time when our friends among the biologists seemed\nalmost ready to put each other to the sword for differences of opinion\nabout the inheritability of certain characteristics; but no one seems to\ntrouble himself much with the question a philosopher would think most\nimportant of all--precisely what is meant by the metaphor of\n'inheritance' when it is applied to the facts of biology. (Indeed, it is\nstill quite fashionable to talk not merely as if a 'character' were,\nlike a house or an orchard, a _thing_ which can be transferred bodily\nfrom the possession of a parent to the possession of the offspring, but\neven as though an 'heir' could 'inherit' himself.)\n\nThis last remark leads me to a further consideration. Science and\nPhilosophy are alike created by the simple determination to be\n_thorough_ in our thinking about the problems which all things and\nevents present to us, to use no terms whose meaning is ambiguous, to\nassert no propositions as true until we are satisfied that they are\neither directly apprehended as true, or strictly deducible from other\npropositions which are thus apprehended. But now that the area of facts\nopen to our exploration has become far too vast for a modern Francis\nBacon to 'take all knowledge for his province', and convenience has led\nto the distinction between the philosopher and the man of science, a\n_practical_ distinction between the two makes its appearance. It is\n_convenient_ that our knowledge of detail should be steadily extended by\nconsidering the consequences which follow from a given set of postulates\nwithout waiting for the solution of the more strictly philosophical\nquestions whether our postulates have been reduced to the simplest and\nmost unambiguous expression, whether the list might not be curtailed by\nshowing that some of its members which have been accepted on their own\nmerits can be deduced from the rest, or again enlarged by the express\naddition of principles which we have all along been using without any\nactual formulation of them. The point may be illustrated by considering\nthe set of 'postulates' explicitly made in the geometry of Euclid. We\ncannot be said to have made geometry thoroughly scientific until we know\nwhether the traditional list of postulates is complete, whether some of\nthe traditional postulates might not be capable of demonstration, and\nwhether geometry as a science would be destroyed by the denial of one or\nmore of the postulates. But it would be very undesirable to suspend\nexamination of the consequences which follow from the Euclidean\npostulates until we have answered all these questions. Even in pure\nmathematics one has, in the first instance, to proceed tentatively, to\nventure on the work of drawing inferences from what seem to be plausible\npostulates before one can pass a verdict on the merits of the postulates\nthemselves. The consequence of this tentative character of our\ninquiries is that, so far as there is a difference between Philosophy\nand Science at all, it is a difference in _thoroughness_. The more\nphilosophic a man's mind is, the less ready will he be to let an\nassertion pass without examination as obviously true. Thus Euclid makes\na famous assumption--the 'parallel-postulate'--which amounts to the\nassertion that if three of the angles of a rectilinear quadrilateral are\nright angles, the fourth will be a right angle. The mathematicians of\nthe eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, again, generally assumed\nthat if a function is continuous it can always be differentiated. A\ncomparatively unphilosophical mind may let such plausible assertions\npass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when\nit comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask _Why_?'\nSuppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my\nquadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of\nconclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from\ncontradictions or not? If I really give my mind to the task, cannot I\ndefine a continuous function which is _not_ differentiable? The raising\nof the first question led in fact to the discovery of what is called\n'non-Euclidean' geometry, the raising of the second has banished from\nthe text-books of the Calculus the masses of bad reasoning which long\nmade that branch of mathematics a scandal to logic and led distinguished\nphilosophers--Kant among them--to suspect that there are hopeless\ncontradictions in the very foundations of mathematical science.\n\nNow, the effect of such careful scrutiny of first principles is not, of\ncourse, to upset any conclusions which have been correctly drawn from a\nset of premisses. All that happens is that the conclusion is no longer\nasserted by itself as a truth; what is asserted is that the conclusion\nis true _if_ the premisses are true. Thus we no longer assert the\n'theorem of Pythagoras' as a categorical proposition; what we assert is\nthat the theorem follows as a consequence from the assertion of some\nhalf-dozen ultimate postulates which will be found on analysis to be the\npremisses of Euclid's proof of his forty-seventh proposition.\n\nTo come back to the point I wish to illustrate. The peculiarity of the\nphilosopher is simply that he still goes on to 'wonder' and ask _Why_\nwhen other persons are ready to leave off. He is less contented than\nother men to take things for granted. Of course, he knows that, in the\nend, you cannot get away from the necessity of taking something for\ngranted, but he is anxious to take for granted as few things as\npossible, and when he has to take something for granted, he is\nexceptionally anxious to know exactly what that something is. De Morgan\ntells a story of a very pertinacious controversialist who, being asked\nwhether he would not at least admit that 'the whole is greater than the\npart', retorted, 'Not I, until I see what use you mean to make of the\nadmission.' I am not sure whether De Morgan quotes this as an ensample\nfor our following or as a warning for our avoidance, but to my own mind\nit is an excellent specimen of the philosophic temper. Until you know\nwhat use is going to be made of your admission, you do not really know\nwhat it is you have admitted. It is this superior thoroughness of\nPhilosophy which Plato has in mind when he says of his supreme science\n'Dialectic' that its business is to examine and even to 'destroy'\n([Greek: anairein]) the assumptions of all the other sciences. It does\nnot let propositions which they have been content to take for granted\npass without challenge, and it may actually 'destroy' them by showing\nthat there is no justification for asserting them. Thus Euclid's\nassumption about parallels ceased to be included among the indispensable\npremisses of geometry, and was 'destroyed' in Plato's sense when\nLobatchevsky, Bolyai, and Riemann showed that complete bodies of\nself-consistent geometrical theory can be deduced from sets of\npostulates in which Euclid's assumption is explicitly denied. There are\ntwo further points I should like to put before you in this connexion.\nOne of them has been forcibly argued by Mr. Bertrand Russell in his\nadmirable little work _The Problems of Philosophy_; the other has not.\nIndeed, it is just in his unwillingness to allow the second of these\npoints to be raised at all that Mr. Russell seems to me to fall\nconspicuously and unaccountably short of being what, by his own showing,\na great philosopher ought to be.\n\nTo take first the point with which Mr. Russell has dealt. There is one\nvery important branch of inquiry, if we ought not rather to say that\nthere are two, which appear to belong wholly to general Philosophy and\nnot to any of the 'sciences'. We cannot so much as ask the simplest\nquestion without making the implication that there is an ultimate\ndistinction between true assertions and false ones, and certain definite\nprinciples by which we can infer true conclusions from true premisses.\nIt is thus a very important part of the true 'story of everything' to\nstate the principles upon which valid reasoning depends, and to\nenunciate the ultimate postulates which have to be taken for granted\nwhenever we try to reason validly about anything. This is the inquiry\nknown by the name of logic. We cannot expect men whose time is fully\ntaken up with the task of reaching true conclusions about some special\nclass of facts, those which concern the history of living organisms, or\nthe production and distribution of 'wealth', or the stability of various\nforms of government, to burden themselves with this inquiry in addition\nto their other tasks. They may fairly be allowed to leave the\nconstruction of logic to others. But the man who makes it the business\nof his life to get back to ultimate first principles must plainly be a\nlogician, though he need not be a specialist in biology or economics or\n'sociology'. One great advantage which our children should have over\ntheir parents as students of Philosophy is that the last half-century\nhas been one of unprecedented advance in the study of logic. In the\n'logic of relations', founded by De Morgan, carried out further in the\nthird volume of Ernst Schroeder's _Algebra der Logik_, and made still\nmore precise in the earliest sections of the _Principia Mathematica_ of\nWhitehead and Russell, we now possess the most potent weapon of\nintellectual analysis ever yet devised by man.\n\nWe must further remark that the serious pursuit of any kind of science\nimplies not only that there _are_ truths, but that some of them, at\nleast, can be _known_ by man. Hence there arises a problem which is not\nquite the same as that of logic. What _is_ the relation we mean to speak\nof when we talk of 'knowing' something, and what conditions must be\nfulfilled in order that a proposition may not only be true but be known\nby us to be true? The very generality of this problem marks it out as\none which belongs to what I have been all along calling Philosophy. (We\nmust be careful to note that the problem does not belong to the 'special\nscience' of psychology. Psychology aims at telling us how particular\nthoughts and trains of thought arise in an individual mind, but it has\nnothing to say on the question which of our thoughts give us 'knowledge'\nand which do not. The 'possibility of knowledge' has to be presupposed\nby the psychologist as a pre-condition of his particular investigations\nexactly as it is presupposed by the physicist, the botanist, or the\neconomist.) The study of the problem 'what are the conditions which must\nbe satisfied whenever anything at all is known' is precisely what Kant\nmeant by _Criticism_, though the raising of the problem in this\ndefinite form is not due to Kant but goes back to Plato, who made it the\nsubject of one of his greatest dialogues, the _Theaetetus_. The simplest\nway to make the nature and importance of the problem clear is perhaps\nthe way Mr. Russell adopts in the _Problems of Philosophy_--to give a\nvery rough statement of Kant's famous solution.\n\nKant held that careful analysis shows us that any piece of knowledge has\ntwo constituents of very diverse origin. It has a _matter_ or material\nconstituent consisting, as Kant held, of certain crude data supplied by\nsensation, colours, tones of varying pitch and loudness, odours,\nsavours, and the like. It has also a _form_ or formal constituent. Our\ndata, when we know anything at all, are arranged on some definite\nprinciple of order. When we recognize an object by the eye or a tune by\nthe ear, we do not apprehend simply so much colour or sound, but colours\nspread out and forming a pattern or notes following one another in a\nfixed order. (If you reverse the movement of a gramophone, you get the\nsame notes as before, but you do not get the same tune.) Further, Kant\nthought it could be shown that the data of our knowledge are a\ndisorderly medley and come to us from without, being supplied by things\nwhich exist and are what they are equally whether any one perceives them\nor not, but the element of form, pattern, or order is put into them by\nour own minds in the act of knowing them. Our minds are so constructed\nthat we _can_ only perceive things or think of them as connected by\ncertain definite principles of orderly arrangement. This, he thought,\nexplains the indubitable fact that we can sometimes know universal\npropositions to be true without needing to examine all the individual\ninstances. I can know for certain that in every triangle the greater\nangle is subtended by the greater side, or that every event has a\ndefinite cause among earlier events, though I cannot examine all\ntriangles or all events one by one. This is because the postulates of\ngeometry and the law of causality are types of order which my mind\n_puts_ into the data of its knowledge in the very act of attending to\nthem, and it is therefore certain that I shall never perceive or think\nanything which does not conform to these types.\n\nI give Kant's answer to the problem of Criticism not because I believe\nit to be the correct one, but to show what important consequences follow\nfrom our acceptance of a solution of this problem. If it is true that\none of the constituent elements of every piece of knowledge is a lump of\ncrude sensation, it follows that we can have no knowledge about our own\nminds or souls, and still less about God, since, if there are such\nbeings as my soul and God, at any rate neither furnishes me with\nsense-data. Hence a great part of Kant's famous _Critique of Pure\nReason_ is taken up by an elaborate attempt to show that psychology and\ntheology contain no real knowledge. We cannot even know whether there is\nany probability for or against the existence of the soul or of God,\nthough Kant was very anxious to show that it is our duty on moral\ngrounds to _believe_ very firmly in both. Now if Kant is right about\nthis, his result is tremendously important. If psychology and theology\nare wholly devoid of scientific value, it is most desirable that we\nshould know this, not only that we may not waste time in studying them,\nbut because it may reasonably make a very great difference to the\npractical ordering of our lives. If Kant can be proved wrong, it is\nequally important to be convinced that he is wrong. We may have been led\nby belief in his teaching to neglect the acquisition of a great deal of\nknowledge of high intrinsic interest, and may even have been betrayed\ninto basing the conduct of life on wrong principles. If, for example, we\ncan really know something about the soul, it _may_ be possible to know\nwhether it is immortal or not, and it is not unreasonable to hold that\ncertain knowledge, or even probable belief, on such a point ought to\nmake a great difference to our choice between rival aims in life. There\nis clearly much less to be said for the recommendation to 'eat and drink\nfor to-morrow we die' if we have reason to believe our souls immortal\nthan if we have not, and some of us do not share Mr. Russell's view that\nPhilosophy is called upon to abdicate what the Greeks thought her\nsovereign function, the regulation of life. It is true that Kant\nconvinced himself that it is a moral duty to act as if we knew the truth\nof doctrines for or against which we cannot detect the slightest balance\nof probability. But the logically sound inference from Kant's premisses\nwould be that, to use Pascal's famous metaphor, a prudent man will do\nwell to bet neither for nor against immortality. Unfortunately, as\nPascal said, you can't _help_ betting; _il faut parier_. If it makes any\ndifference to the relative values of different goods whether the soul\ndies with the body or not, one _must_ take sides in the matter. In\nmaking one's choices one must prefer either the things it is reasonable\nto regard as good for a creature whose days are threescore years and ten\nor those which it is reasonable to regard as best for a being who is to\nlive for ever. The only way to escape having to bet is not to be born.\n\nI come to the second problem, the one which, as I think, Mr. Russell\narbitrarily ignores. A human being is not a mere knowledge-machine. The\nrelation of knower to known is not the only relation in which he stands\nto himself and to other things. The 'world' is not merely something at\nwhich he can look on, it is also an instrument for achieving what he\nregards as good and for creating what he judges to be beautiful. To do\ngood and to make beautiful things are just as much man's business as to\ndiscover truth. A knowledge of the world would be very incomplete if it\ndid not include knowledge of what ought to be, whether because it is\nmorally best or because it is beautiful, as well as knowledge of what is\nactually there. And it is not immediately evident how the two, knowledge\nof what ought to be and knowledge of what merely is, are connected.\n\nThere is, to be sure, one way in which it is pretty plain that they are\n_not_ related. You cannot learn what ought to be--what is beautiful or\nmorally good--merely by first finding out what has been or what is\nlikely to be. This simple consideration of itself deprives many of the\nbig volumes which have been written about the 'evolution' of art and\nmorals of most of their value. They may have interest if they are\ntreated only as contributions to the history of opinion about art and\nmorals. But unhappily their authors often assume that we can find out\nwhat really _is_ right or beautiful by merely discovering what men have\nthought right and beautiful in the remote past or guessing what they\nwill think right or beautiful in the distant future. The fallacy\nunderlying this procedure has been happily exposed by Mr. Russell\nhimself in an occasional essay where he remarks that it is antecedently\njust as likely that evolution is going from bad to worse as that it is\ngoing from good to better. _Unless_ it is going from bad to worse it is\nobviously absurd to suppose that you can find out what _is_ good by\ndiscovering what our distant ancestors _thought_ good. And _if_ (as may\nbe the case) it is going from bad to worse, no amount of knowledge about\nwhat our posterity will think good can throw any light on the question\nwhat is good. There is, in fact, no ground whatever for believing that\n'evolution' need be the same thing as progress, and this is enough to\nknock the bottom out of 'evolutionary ethics'.\n\nOn the other hand, it is quite certain that when we call an act right\nor a picture beautiful we do not mean to be expressing a mere personal\nliking of our own, any more than when we make a statement about the\ncomposition of sulphuric acid or the product of 9 and 7. As Dr. Rashdall\nhas put it, when we say that a given act is right, we do not pretend to\nbe infallible. We know that we may fall into mistakes about right and\nwrong just as we may make mistakes in working a multiplication sum. But\nwe do mean to say that _if_ our own verdict 'that act is right' is a\ntrue one, then the verdict of any one who retorts 'that act is wrong' is\nfalse, just as when we state the result of our multiplication we mean to\nassert that _if_ we have done the sum correctly any one else who brings\nout a different answer has worked it wrongly. Indeed, we might convince\nourselves that these verdicts are not meant to be expressions of private\nand personal liking in a still simpler way. All of us must be aware that\nthe line of action we pronounce 'right' is not always what we like nor\nthe conduct we call 'wrong' what we dislike. We often like doing what we\nfully believe to be wrong and dislike doing what we believe right,\nwithout being in the least confused in our moral verdicts by this\ncollision of liking and conviction. So again it is a common thing to\nlike one poem or picture better than another, and yet to be fully\npersuaded that the work we like the less is the better work of art.\nIndeed, the whole process of moral and aesthetic education may be said\nto exist just in learning to like most what is really best.\n\nAll this, put into so many words, may seem too simple to call for\nstatement, but it makes nonsense of a great deal that has been written\nabout ethics of late years. It disposes once for all of the theory that\nmoral and aesthetic verdicts are 'subjective', that is, that they mean\nno more than that the persons who make them have certain personal likes\nand dislikes of which these verdicts are a record. Of course, it might\nbe urged that all of us do indeed mean to express truths which are\nindependent of our personal likings when we make moral and aesthetic\njudgements, but that we never succeed in doing so. A man might\nconceivably hold that there is no real distinction between right and\nwrong or between beautiful and ugly, but that it is a universal illusion\nof mankind to suppose that there are such distinctions. Or he might hold\nthat the distinctions are real, but that we do not know where to draw\nthem. He might suggest that some ways of acting are really right and\nothers really wrong, but that we do not know which are the right acts\nand so regularly confuse what we like doing with what is 'really' right.\nMr. Russell, in some of his later writings, seems to incline to views of\nthis sort. But the suggestion is really unmotived. It would be just as\nreasonable to suggest that all geometrical or astronomical propositions\nare only expressions of the personal and private feelings of geometers\nand astronomers, and that either there is no distinction between truths\nand falsehoods in geometry and astronomy, or that, at any rate, we do\nnot know which the true propositions are. That there is a real\ndistinction between true and false propositions and that, with pains and\ncare, we can discover some truths are assumptions we must make if we are\nto recognize the possibility of pursuing knowledge at all, and there is\nno reason to suppose that these assumptions do not hold as good in\nmatters of art and morals as elsewhere. No doubt, in practice men are\nprone to mistake what they like for what is right or beautiful, but this\ndanger, such as it is, is not confined to art and morals. Men do often\ncall acts right merely because they like doing them or pictures\nbeautiful merely because they get pleasure from them. But it is also\nnotorious that many men are prone to believe that a thing is likely to\nhappen merely because they wish it to happen, or that it is unlikely to\nhappen merely because they wish it not to happen. Yet no one seriously\nmakes the reality of these tendencies a ground for denying the\npossibility of 'inferring the future from the past'. We must then, I\nhold, regard it as an integral part of the whole story of everything to\nfind an answer to the questions What is good? and What is beautiful? as\nwell as to the question What is fact? By the side of the so-called\n'positive sciences', which deal with the third question, we must\nrecognize as having an equal right to exist the so-called 'sciences of\nvalue', which deal with the first and the second.\n\nI want now to take a further step in which disciples of Mr. Russell\nwould perhaps decline to follow me. We have already seen what is meant\nby the co-ordination of the sciences into a single body of deductions\nfrom definite ultimate postulates, though in what we have said about the\ntask we were content to speak provisionally as if the sciences of 'what\nis' were all the sciences to be co-ordinated. We talked, in fact, as if\nthe work of Philosophy were merely to work into a coherent story all\nthat can be known of 'objects that present themselves to the\ncontemplation' of a knower. But, of course, if Philosophy is ever to\nattack its final problem, we must take into account two things which we\nhave so far ignored. The 'whole story of everything' includes the\nknowing intelligence itself as well as the 'objects' which present\nthemselves to its gaze. Indeed, it is not even accurate to speak as if\n'objects' 'presented themselves' to a merely passive intelligence; to be\napprehended, they have to be actively attended to. If we would see them,\nwe have to be on the look-out for them. And the knowing intelligence is\nnot aware merely of these objects. It is also aware of itself, though\nit is certainly never a 'presented object'. Also, it is not only a\nknower but a doer and a maker. Intelligence is shown as much in the\nordering of life by a rule based on a right valuation of goods and in\nthe making of things of beauty as in the discovery of propositions about\nwhat is. Hence, we can hardly be content to leave the 'positive'\nsciences and the 'sciences of values' simply standing over against one\nanother. There is that which 'is', and there is that which 'ought to\nbe', and, at first sight at any rate, the two seem very different. Much\nthat is--ignorance, sin, misery, ugliness--ought not to be, and much\nthat ought to be is very far from being fact. We are accustomed to\nregard this as a matter of course, but, closely considered, it is\nperhaps the supreme wonder of all the wonders. We creatures of\ncircumstance, as we call ourselves, can take stock of the sum of things\nto which we belong, and judge it. It is not simply that we can, and\noften do, _wish_ that it were different in various ways; we can judge\nthat it _ought_ to be different, and you may find a man of science like\nHuxley, after a life spent in trying to understand the laws which\nprevail in the world, deliberately making it his last word to his\nfellows that their duty is to set themselves to reverse the 'cosmic\nprocess', to select for preservation just the human types which, if the\nmuch-abused metaphor may be tolerated, Nature, left to herself, selects\nfor destruction.\n\nWe might, of course, regard this apparently unreconcilable conflict\nbetween the arrangements which do prevail; as is commonly supposed, in\nthe world, and those which ought to prevail, as a mystery which we must\ndespair of ever understanding. But, to say the least of it, it is hardly\nconsistent with the philosophic temper to treat any question as an\ninsoluble riddle until one has tried all ways of solution and found them\n_culs-de-sac_. If we are to be thoroughly loyal to the spirit which\nprompts all intelligent inquiry, we are bound at least to ask whether\nit is, after all, beyond the power of human intelligence to think of the\nworld as a system in which somehow, in the end, what ought to be\nprescribes what is. It is true that, for reasons already mentioned, we\ncannot, like Spinoza or the Sufis, reconcile facts and values by the\nsimple assumption that what is is shown, by the fact that it is, to be\nwhat ought to be, and that our common conviction that sin and ugliness\nare painfully real is only an illusion due to spiritual short sight. We\nhave just as much reason to believe that some pleasures are good, that\npain which is not a means to good is evil, that justice and purity are\ngood, lewdness and cruelty bad, that some colours are lovely and others\nodious, as we have to believe that between any two points there is\nalways a third, or that, if _B_ and _C_ are two points there is always a\npoint _D_ on the straight line _BC_ such that _C_ is between _B_ and\n_D_, and a point _A_ on _CB_ such that _B_ is between _C_ and _A_.\nIndeed, the most fanatical champion of what Mr. Russell in his\nanti-ethical mood calls 'ethical neutrality' cannot well avoid\nrecognizing the truth of at least one proposition in ethics, the\nproposition that knowledge of scientific truth is _better_ than\nignorance of it. The admission of this single truth of value is enough\nto raise all the time-honoured problems of ethics and theodicy. If\nknowledge of truth is better than ignorance of it, the actual present\nstate of the world, in which so much truth is yet to seek, is by no\nmeans wholly good, and there really is at least one way in which it is\nour duty to make it more like what it ought to be.\n\nIf then we cannot get rid of the apparent conflict between Is and Ought\nby saying that Ought is an illusion, can we get rid of it, in the only\nother possible way, by holding that what ought to be is the lasting and\nprimary reality and that the 'facts' which are so far from being what\nthey ought to be are by comparison only half-real, much what shadows are\nto the solid things which throw them? This was the doctrine of Plato,\nwho makes Socrates say in the _Phaedo_ that it is the 'Good' which holds\nthe Universe together, and that in the end the true reason for each\nparticular arrangement in the world, whether we can see it or not, is\nthat it is 'best' that this arrangement, and no other, should exist. It\nis also the foundation of Kant's well-known contention that, however\nbarren speculative theology and psychology may be, the reality of the\nmoral order and the unconditionality of moral obligation compel us to\nmake the existence of God, the immortality of our souls, and the moral\ngovernment of the world postulates of practical philosophy. More\ngenerally, it is just this conviction that 'what is' has its source and\nexplanation in what 'ought to be', which is the central thought of all\nphilosophical Theism. If we can accept such a faith, we shall not, of\ncourse, be enabled to eliminate mystery from things. We shall, for\ninstance, be still quite in the dark about the way in which evil comes\nto be in a world of God's making. We shall neither be able to say _how_\nany particular thing comes to be other than it ought to be, nor _how_ in\nthe end good is 'brought out of evil'. But if we are to have a right to\nhold a view of the Platonic or Theistic type, we must be able, not\nindeed to say how evil comes about or how it is to be finally got rid\nof, but to say, in a general way, what it is 'good for'. Thus, if there\nare certain goods of the highest value which could not exist at all\nexcept on the condition of the existence of less important evils, this\nconsideration will remove, so far as _those_ goods and evils are\nconcerned, the time-honoured puzzle how evil can exist at all if God is.\nTo take a specific example. To many of us it appears directly certain\nthat such qualities of character as fortitude, patience, superiority to\ncarnal lusts, magnanimity, are goods of the highest value. We think also\nthat we see that these qualities are not primitive psychological\nendowments but require for their development the experience of struggle\nand discipline in a world where there is real suffering, real\ndisappointment, real temptation. To us, therefore, there seems to be no\ncontradiction between the existence of God and the presence in a world\nmade by God of the evils needed for the development of these virtues.\nAnd this will include some of the worst of all the evils we know of. Few\nthings are more ghastly than some of the cruelties which have been\npractised in the late War and are still being practised in the\ndistracted country of Russia. Yet we know how revulsion from these\nhorrors has made many a man who seemed to be sunk in sloth or greed or\ncarnality into a Bayard or a Galahad. It may well be that this moral\nre-birth would never have been effected if the evils which provoked it\nhad been less monstrous. Here, then, we seem to discern a principle\nwhich _may_ be adequate to explain what all the ills of human life are\n'good for'.\n\nI must not deny that all such explanation, in my judgement, involves the\npostulate that the ennoblement of character and deepening of insight\nbrought about by suffering are permanent--in fact, that it requires the\npostulates of the existence of God and the reality of everlasting life.\nMr. Russell, I imagine, would regard this as a confession that I am sunk\nin what he airily dismisses as 'theological superstitions'. I should\nreply that the 'superstition' is on his side; to dismiss God and the\neternal soul, without serious inquiry, as 'superstitions' is just the\nmost superficial of all the superstitions. It is, of course, incumbent\non anyone who holds the Platonic view to show that its postulates are\nnot inconsistent with any known truth, and I would add that he ought\nalso to show that there are at any rate known facts which seem to demand\njust this kind of explanation. Both these points, as I hold, can be\nestablished, but I do not in the least wish to suggest that any\nphilosopher will ever find it an easy task to 'justify the ways of God\nto man'. As Timaeus says in Plato, 'to find the father and fashioner of\nthe Universe is _not_ easy', and I want rather to lay stress on the\nmagnitude of the task than to extenuate it. But I am concerned to urge\nthat the doctrine which accounts for what is by what ought to be is the\n_only_ philosophical theory on which it ceases to be an unintelligible\nmystery that we should have--as I maintain we certainly have--the same\nkind of assurance about values that we have about facts. The chief\ncomplaint I have to make about the mental attitude of Mr. Russell and\nsome of his friends is that, in their zeal for the unification of\nscience, they seem inclined to assume that the larger problem of the\nco-ordination of Science with Life does not exist, or, at any rate, need\nnot occupy our minds. This is what I should call mere atheistic\nsuperstition. On this point they might, I believe, learn much which it\nimports them to know from the works of some of the notable living\nphilosophers of Italy, in particular from Professor Varisco of Rome and\nProfessor Aliotta of Padua, whose labours have been specially directed\nto the co-ordination in a consistent system of the principles of the\nsciences of fact with those of the sciences of value. Though, after all,\nthose who have refused to learn the lesson from the noble philosophical\nwork of Professor James Ward, the illustrious champion of sober thought\nin their own University of Cambridge, are perhaps unlikely to master it\nin the schools of Rome or Padua.\n\nYou will readily see that I am suggesting in effect that if Philosophy\nis ever to execute her supreme task, she will need to take into much\nmore serious account than it has been the fashion to do, not only the\nwork of the exact sciences but the teachings of the great masters of\nlife who have founded the religions of the world, and the theologies\nwhich give reasoned expression to what in the great masters is immediate\nintuition. For us this means more particularly that it is high time\nphilosophers ceased to treat the great Christian theologians as\ncredulous persons whose convictions need not be taken seriously and the\nGospel history as a fable to which the 'enlightened' can no longer pay\nany respect. They must be prepared to reckon with the possibility that\nthe facts recorded in the Gospel happened and that Catholic theology is,\nin substance, true. If we are to be philosophers in earnest we cannot\nafford to have any path which may lead to the heart of life's mystery\nblocked for us by placards bearing the labels 'reactionary', 'unmodern,'\nand their likes. That what is most modern must be best is a superstition\nwhich it is strange to find in a really educated man--especially after\nthe events of the last five years. A philosopher, at any rate, should be\nable to endure the charge of being 'unmodern' with fortitude. It is at\nleast a tenable thesis that many of the qualities which we Western men\nhave been losing in our craze for industrialism and commercialistic\n'Imperialism' are just those which are most necessary to the seeker\nafter speculative truth. Abelard and St. Thomas would very likely have\nfailed as advertising agents, company promoters, or editors of\nsensational daily papers. But it may well be that both of them were much\nbetter fitted than Lord Northcliffe, Mr. Bottomley, or Mr. A.G. Gardiner\nto tell us whether God is and what God is. In fact, one would hardly\nsuppose habitual and successful composition of effective 'posters' or\nalluring prospectuses to be wholly compatible with that candour and\nscrupulous veracity which are required of the philosopher. As for\n'reaction', no one but a writer in a 'revolutionary' journal would be\nfool enough to use the word as, in itself, an epithet of reproach. Most\npersons who have a bowing acquaintance with Mechanics know that you\ncannot have an engine in which there is all action and no reaction, and\nmost sane men can see that before you pronounce a given 'reaction' good\nor bad you need to know what it is reacting against. If a man who wants\nto go east discovers that he is walking west, he is usually reactionary\nenough to go back on his steps.\n\nIn short, if we mean to be philosophical, our main concern will be that\nour beliefs should be true; we shall care very little whether they\nhappen to be popular or unpopular with the intellectual 'proletarians'\nof the moment, and if we can get at a truth, we shall not mind having to\ngo back a long way for it. Indeed, when one wants to get on the track of\nthe most ultimate and important truths of all, there is usually a great\npositive advantage in going back a very long way for them. The questions\nwhich deal with first principles, being the simplest--though the\nhardest--of all, are mostly raised very simply and directly by Plato and\nAristotle, who were the very first writers to raise them. In the\ndiscussions of later times, the great simple questions about principles\nhave so often been overlaid by mainly irrelevant accretions of secondary\ndetails that it is usually very hard indeed 'to see the wood for the\ntrees'. This is the chief reason why one who, like myself, finds it his\nmain business in life to introduce younger men and women to the study of\nPhilosophy must think indifference to Greek literature about the worst\nmisfortune which could happen to our intellectual civilization.\n\nI have tried in what I have said so far to explain what I understand by\nthe philosophical spirit and what I regard as the primary problems with\nwhich Philosophy has to wrestle. If what I have said is not wholly wide\nof the mark, it should be clear what is the deadliest enemy of the true\nspirit of Philosophy. It is the temper which is too indolent to think\nout a question for itself and consequently prefers to accept traditional\nready-made answers to the problems of Science and Life. Traditionalism,\nwherever it is found, is the enemy, because Traditionalism is only\nanother name for indolence. Observe that I say Traditionalism, not\nTradition. Nowhere in life, and least of all in Philosophy, is the\nsolitary likely to work to much purpose unless he has behind him that\nbody of organized sound sense which we call Tradition. And I do not mean\nthat true philosophers are necessarily 'heretics', or that 'orthodoxy'\nis less philosophical than 'heterodoxy'. I mean that however true an\n'orthodox' proposition may be, it is no living truth for me unless I\nhave made it my own, as its first discoverer did, by personal labour of\nthe spirit. The truth is something which each generation must rediscover\nfor itself. True traditions may be quite as injurious, if they have\nbecome mere traditions, as false ones. It was not so much because the\nAristotelian doctrines were false that the unquestioning acceptance of\nAristotelian formulae all but strangled human thought in the later days\nof Scholasticism. Some of these doctrines were false, but many of them\nwere much truer than anything the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries\nhad to put in their place, and the rediscovery of their real meaning is\nperhaps the chief service of the Hegelian school to Philosophy. The\ntrouble was that mechanical repetition of Aristotle's formulae as\nmatters of course inevitably led to loss of real insight into the\nmeaning the formulae had borne for Aristotle.\n\nWe may say, generally, that because Traditionalism is the death of sound\nthinking, the ages in which the prospects of advance in Philosophy are\nbrightest are just those in which a powerful historical tradition has\nbroken down and men feel themselves compelled to go back on their steps\nand raise once more the fundamental questions which their fathers had\nsupposed to be disposed of once for all by a formula. This has happened\ntwice since the downfall of the degenerate Scholasticism, Protestant and\nRoman, of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century the result\nwas the great movement in Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics, of which\nDescartes and Galileo are the principal figures. Towards the end of the\neighteenth century, when the doctrines of Descartes had themselves been\ntraditionalized, the same thing happened again, the leading actors in\nthe drama being David Hume and Immanuel Kant; the result was first the\nrevival of the 'critical' problem by Kant, and then the great, if\nover-hasty, attempt at a positive interpretation of the Universe which\nculminated in the philosophical system of Hegel. In our own age, it is\nmainly Kant and Hegel who have been traditionalized, and we seem to be\nliving through the last stages of the discrediting of this third\ntradition with every prospect of a great advance if our own time can\nonly find its Descartes. In what I am going on to say I must naturally\nspeak of the disintegrating influences chiefly as we have seen them at\nwork in our own country; but I should like, before I do so, to remark\nthat on the Continent splendid work has been done in the requickening of\ngenuine philosophical thought by an influence which has, so far, not\nmade itself widely felt among ourselves. I mean the revival of Thomism\nso earnestly promoted in the academies of the Roman Church by Pope Leo\nXIII. Neo-Thomism, I am convinced, if its representatives will only\nmaintain it at the high level characteristic, for example, of the\nItalian _Rivista Neo-Scolastica_, has a very great contribution to make\nto the Philosophy of the future, and is much more deserving of the\nserious attention of students in our own country than the\nmuch-advertised 'impressionism' of Pragmatists and Bergsonians. Indeed,\nI hardly know how much we may not hope from the movement if it should\nplease Providence to send into the world a Neo-Thomist who is also a\nreally qualified mathematician.\n\nOf the state of thought in our own country we may fairly say that a\ngeneration ago opinion on the ultimate questions was, in the main,\nfairly divided into two camps. There were the professional\nmetaphysicians, mainly living on a tradition derived from Kant and\nHegel, and there were the men of science whose 'philosophy', such as it\nwas, is perhaps best represented by two well-known and most instructive\nbooks, Mach's _Science of Mechanics_ and Karl Pearson's _Grammar of\nScience_. The men of the Kant-Hegel tradition, whatever their family\ndissensions, were generally united by the common view that--as William\nJames accused them of teaching--the function of sensation in\ncontributing to knowledge, whatever it is, is something 'contemptible'.\nKant himself, as we have seen, had thought very differently, but he was\nsupposed to have been 'corrected' on this, as on so many points, by\nHegel. The most distinguished of my own Oxford teachers seemed agreed to\nbelieve that our thought builds up the fabric of knowledge entirely from\nwithin by what Hegel called an 'immanent dialectic'. A rough idea of\nwhat this means may be given in the following way. You take any\nexperience you please and try to put what you experience into a\nproposition. The proposition may, to begin with, be as vague as, e.g. 'I\nam now feeling something,' 'I am now aware of something.' On reflection\nyou find that the statement does not do justice to the experience. You\nfeel the need to say more precisely _what_ you are feeling or are aware\nof, how it is related to what you experience on other occasions, and\nwhat the 'I' is which is said to 'have' the experience. Until you have\ndone this your thought is a miserable reproduction of your experience,\nand if you could ever do it completely, it would turn out that a really\nadequate account of the most trivial experience would involve complete\nknowledge of the structure and working of everything. Thus, if you once\nbegin to think about your experience at all, you are irresistibly driven\non to endless further reflection. If you try to stop short anywhere in\nthe process, the results of your reflection are found to contain\nunexplained contradictions, just because you have not yet fitted on the\nfact on which you are reflecting to everything else there is to know.\nAll the assumptions of every-day 'common sense' and all the more\nrecondite assumptions of the sciences are saturated with these\ncontradictions, because both 'common sense' and the sciences leave so\nmuch of the whole 'story of everything' untouched. If the whole story\nwere told, all things would be found to be just one thing, which these\nphilosophers call the 'Absolute', and the only perfectly true statement\nwe can make would be a statement about this Absolute in which we\nasserted of it all that it is. Since no science ever attempts to say\nanything at all about this one sole thing, far less to get all there\nmight be to be said about it into a single statement, no scientific\nproposition can be more than 'partially' true, and unhappily _we_ do not\nknow what alterations would be required to make our 'partial' truths\nquite true. Naturally enough Kant's allegation that mathematical first\nprinciples are so self-contradictory that you can rigidly demonstrate\nmathematical propositions which contradict each other was grist to the\nHegelian mill. That our notions of space, time, the infinitely great,\nthe infinitely little, are all a jumble of contradictions was steadily\nrepeated by the Hegelian philosophers, and indeed the mathematicians\nwere accustomed to state their own principles so loosely and confusedly\nthat there was a great deal of excuse for the suspicion that the fault\nlay with Mathematics and not with the mathematicians.\n\nIt is clear that such a philosophy ought to end in unqualified\nAgnosticism. The Hegelians, to be sure, made merry over the Unknowable\nof Mr. Spencer, but their own Absolute is really just the Unknowable in\nits 'Sunday best'. Nothing that we can say about anything which is not\nthe Absolute is really true, because there really _is_ nothing but the\nAbsolute to speak about, and nothing that we can say about the Absolute\nis quite true either, because we can never succeed in saying itself of\nit. Mr. Bradley, far the most eminent of the philosophers of the\nAbsolute, has made persistent and brilliant attempts to show that, in\nspite of this, we do know enough to be sure that our own mind is more\nlike the Absolute than a cray-fish, and a cray-fish more like it than a\ncrystal. But when all is said, though I owe more to Mr. Bradley than I\ncan ever acknowledge adequately, I cannot help feeling that there are\ntwo men in Mr. Bradley, a great constructive thinker and a subtle\ndestructive critic, and that the destructive Hyde is perpetually pulling\nto pieces all that the constructive Jekyll has built up. Of course it is\nobvious that the truth of mathematics, if mathematics are true, is a\nfatal stone of stumbling for this type of philosophy. Mathematics never\nattempts to say anything about the 'Absolute'--the only 'Absolute' of\nwhich it knows is only a 'degraded conic'--yet it claims that its\nstatements, if once they have been correctly expressed, are not\n'partial' but complete.\n\nOver against the Hegelianizing philosophers, we had, of course, the men\nof science. No one could wish to speak of the scientific men of the\ndays of Huxley without deep respect for their success in adding to our\npositive knowledge of facts. But it may perhaps be said at this distance\nof time that it was not precisely the greatest among them who were most\nprominent as mystagogues of Science with the big S, and it may certainly\nbe said that when the mystagogues, the Cliffords, Huxleys, and the rest,\nundertook to improvise a theory of first principles, their achievement\nwas little better than infantile. They took it on trust from Hume that\nthe whole of knowledge is built up of sensations, actual or 'revived',\nand quite missed Kant's point that their empiricism left the formal\nconstituent in knowledge, the type of order by which data are organized\ninto an intelligible pattern, wholly out of account. Even when they\ndeigned to read Kant, they read him without any inkling of the character\nof the 'critical' problem. Hence they taught dogmatically as true a\ntheory of scientific method which Hume himself had elaborately proved\nimpossible. It was just because Hume had seen so clearly that no\nuniversal scientific truths can be derived from premisses which merely\nrecord particular facts that he professed himself a follower of the\n'academic' or 'sceptical' philosophy. He recognized the impossibility of\nconstructing scientific knowledge out of its material constituent alone,\nbut did not see where the formal constituent could come from, and so\nresigned himself to regarding the actual successes of science as a kind\nof standing miracle.\n\nThe men of the 'seventies were, after all, in many cases more anxious to\ndamage theology than to build up Philosophy. They read Hume without any\ndelicate sense for his urbane ironies, and believed in good faith that\nhe and John Stuart Mill between them had shown that by a mysterious\nprocess called 'induction' it is possible to prove rigorously universal\nconclusions in science without universal premisses. A scientific law,\naccording to them, is only a convenient short-hand notation in which to\nregister the 'routine of our perceptions'. Thus we have known of a great\nmany men who have died, and have never known of any man who lived to\nmuch over a hundred without dying. The universal proposition 'all men\nare mortal' is a short expression for this information, and it is\nnothing more. It ought to have been obvious that, if this is a true\naccount of science, all scientific 'generalizations' are infinitely\nimprobable. The number of men of whom we _know_ that they have died is\ninsignificant by comparison with the multitude of those who have lived,\nare living, or will live, and we have no guarantee that this\ninsignificant number is a fair average sample. So again, unless there\nare true universal propositions which are not 'short-hand' for any\nplurality of observed facts whatever, we cannot with any confidence,\nhowever faint, infer that a 'regular sequence' or 'routine' which has\nbeen observed from the dawn of recorded time up to, say, midnight,\nAugust 4, 1919, will continue to be observed on August 5, 1919. How,\nexcept by relying on the truth of some principle which does not depend\nitself on the validity of 'generalization', can we tell that it is even\nslightly probable that the nature of things will not change suddenly at\nthe moment of midnight between August 4 and August 5, 1919? What is\ncalled 'inductive' science certainly has 'pulled off' remarkable\nsuccesses in the past, but we can have no confidence that these\nsuccesses will be repeated unless there are much better reasons for\nbelieving in its methods and initial assumptions than any which the\nscientific man who is an amateur 'empiricist' in his philosophy can\noffer us. We may note, in particular, that this empiricism, which has\nbeen expounded most carefully by Pearson and Mach, coincides with\nHegelian Absolutism in leading to the denial of the truth of\nmathematics. It would be a superfluous task to argue at length that,\ne.g., De Moivre's theorem or Taylor's theorem is not a short-hand\nformula for recording the 'routine of our perceptions'.\n\nThe general state of things at the time of which I am speaking was thus\nthat relations were decidedly strained between a body of philosophers\nand a body of scientific men who ought at least to have met on the\ncommon ground of a complete Agnosticism. The philosophers were, in\ngeneral, shy of Science, mainly, no doubt, because they were modest men\nwho knew their own limitations, but they had a way of being\ncondescending to Science, which naturally annoyed the scientific men.\nThese latter professed a theory of the structure of knowledge which the\nphilosophers could easily show to be grotesque, but the retort was\nalways ready to hand that at any rate Science seemed somehow to be\ngetting somewhere while Philosophy appeared to lead nowhere in\nparticular.\n\nThe conditions for mutual understanding have now greatly improved,\nthanks mainly to the labour of mathematicians with philosophical minds\non the principles of their own science. If we admit that mathematics is\ntrue--and it seems quite impossible to avoid the admission--we can now\nsee that neither the traditional Kant-Hegel doctrine nor the traditional\nsensationalistic empiricism can be sound. Not to speak of inquiries\nwhich have been actually created within our own life-time, it may fairly\nbe said that the whole of pure mathematics has been shown, or is on the\nverge of being shown, to form a body of conclusions rigidly deduced from\na few unproved postulates which are of a purely logical character.\nDescartes has proved to be right in his view that the exceptional\ncertainty men have always ascribed to mathematical knowledge is not due\nto the supposed restriction of the science to relation of number and\nmagnitude--there is a good deal of pure mathematics which deals with\nneither--but to the simplicity of its undefined notions and the high\nplausibility of its unproved postulates. Bit by bit the bad logic has\nbeen purged out of the Calculus and the Theory of Functions and these\nbranches of study have been made into patterns of accurate reasoning on\nexactly stated premisses. It has appeared in the process that the\nalleged contradictions in mathematics upon which the followers of Kant\nand Hegel laid stress do not really exist at all, and only seemed to\nexist because mathematicians in the past expressed their meaning so\nawkwardly. Further, it has been established that the most fundamental\nidea of all in mathematics is not that of number or magnitude but that\nof _order_ in a series and that the whole doctrine of series is only a\nbranch of the logic of Relations. From the logical doctrine of serial\norder we seem to be able to deduce the whole arithmetic of integers, and\nfrom this it is easy to deduce further the arithmetic of fractions and\nthe arithmetic or algebra of the 'real' and 'complex' numbers. As the\nlogical principles of serial order enable us to deal with infinite as\nwell as with finite series, it further follows that the Calculus and the\nTheory of Functions can now be built up without a single contradiction\nor breach of logic. The puzzles about the infinitely great and\ninfinitely small, which used to throw a cloud of mystery over the\n'higher' branches of Mathematics, have been finally dissipated by the\ndiscovery that the 'infinite' is readily definable in purely ordinal\nterms and that the 'infinitesimal' does not really enter into the\nmisnamed 'Infinitesimal Calculus' at all. Arithmetic and the theory of\nserial order have been shown to be the sufficient basis of the whole\nscience which, as Plato long ago remarked, is 'very inappropriately\ncalled geometry'. A resume of the work which has been thus done may be\nfound in the stately volumes of the _Principia Mathematica_ of Whitehead\nand Russell, or--to a large extent--in the _Formulario Matematico_ of\nProfessor Peano. Of other works dealing with the subject, the finest\nfrom the strictly philosophical point of view is probably that of\nProfessor G. Frege on _The Fundamental Laws of Arithmetic_. The general\nresult of the whole development is that we are now at last definitely\nfreed from the haunting fear that there is some hidden contradiction in\nthe principles of the exact sciences which would vitiate all our\nknowledge of universal truths. This removes the chief, if not the only\nground for the view that all the truths of Science are only 'partial'.\nAt the same time, the proof that pure mathematics is a strictly logical\ndevelopment and that all its conclusions are of the hypothetical form,\n'if _a b c_ ..., then _x_' definitely disproves the popular Kantian\ndoctrine that _sense_-data are a necessary constituent of scientific\nknowledge. And with this dogma falls the _main_ ground for the denial\nthat knowledge about the soul and God is attainable. The recovery of a\nsounder philosophical method has, as Mr. Russell himself says, disposed\nof what was yesterday the accepted view that the function of Philosophy\nis to narrow down the range of possible interpretations of facts until\nonly one is left. Philosophy rather opens doors than shuts them. It\nmultiplies the number of logically possible sets of premisses from which\nconsequences agreeing with empirical facts may be inferred. Mr.\nRussell's unreasoned anti-theism seems to me to make him curiously blind\nto an obvious application of this principle. On the other side, the\nrevived attention to the logical methods of the sciences is killing the\ncrude sensationalism of the days which saw the first publication of\nMach's _Science of Mechanics_ and Pearson's _Grammar of Science_. The\nclaims of 'induction' to be a method of establishing truths may be\nfairly said to have been completely exposed. It is clearer now than it\nwas when Kant made the observation that each of the 'sciences' contains\njust so much science as it contains mathematics, and that the Critical\nPhilosophy was fully justified in insisting that all science implies\nuniversal _a priori_ postulates, though it went wrong in thinking that\nthese postulates are laws of the working of the human mind or are 'put\ninto' things by the human mind. How far Science has moved away from\ncrude sensationalistic empiricism may be estimated by a comparison of\nthe successive editions of the _Grammar of Science_. It must always have\nbeen apparent to an attentive reader that the chapters of that\nfascinating book which deal directly with the leading principles of\nPhysics and Biology are of very different quality from the earlier\nchapters which expound, with many self-contradictions and much wrath\nagainst metaphysicians and theologians whom the writer seems never to\nhave tried to understand, the fantastic 'metaphysics of the\ntelephone-exchange'. But the difference of quality is more marked in the\nsecond edition than in the first, and in the (alas!) unfinished third\nedition than in the second. So far, then, as the problem of the\nunification of the sciences is concerned, the old prejudices which\ndivided the rationalist philosopher from the sensationalist scientific\nman seem to have been, in the main, dissipated. We can see now that what\nused to be called Philosophy and what used to be called Science are both\nparts of one task, that they have a common method and presuppose a\ncommon body of principles.\n\nSo far it may be said with truth that Philosophy is becoming more\nfaithful than Kant was himself to the leading ideas of 'Criticism', and\nagain that it is reverting once more, as it reverted in the days of\nGalileo, to the positions of Plato. I do not mean that the whole\nprogramme has been completely executed and that there is nothing for a\nsuccessor of Frege or Russell to do. It is instructive to observe that\nat the very end of the great work on arithmetic to which I have referred\nFrege found himself compelled by difficulties which had been overlooked\nuntil Russell called attention to them to add an appendix confessing\nthat there was a single important flaw in his elaborate logical\nconstruction of the principles of arithmetic. He had shown that if there\nare certain things called 'integers', defined as he had defined them,\nthe whole of arithmetic follows. But he had not shown that there _is_\nany object answering to his definition of an integer, and the logical\nresearches of Russell had thrown some doubt on the point. This proved\nthat some restatement of the initial assumptions of the theory was\nneeded. Since the date of Frege's appendix (1903), Mr. Russell and\nothers have done something towards the necessary rectification, and the\nresulting 'Theory of Types' is pretty certainly one of the most\nimportant contributions ever made to logical doctrine, but it may still\nbe reasonably doubted whether the 'Theory of Types', as expounded by\nWhitehead and Russell in their _Principia Mathematica_, is the last word\nrequired. At any rate, it seems clear that it is a great step on the\nright road to the solution of a most difficult problem.\n\nThere still remains the greatest problem of all, the harmonization of\nScience and Life. I cannot believe that this problem is an illegitimate\none, or that we must sit down content to accept the severance of 'fact'\nand 'value' as final for our thought. Even the unification of the\nsciences itself remains imperfect so long as we treat it as merely\nsomething which 'happens to be the case' that there are many things and\nmany kinds of things in the universe and also a number of relations in\nwhich they 'happen' to stand. It is significant that in his later\nwritings Mr. Russell has been driven to abandon the concept of personal\nidentity, which is so fundamental for practical life, and to assert that\neach of us is not one man but an infinite series of men of whom each\nonly exists for a mathematical instant. I am sure that such a theory\nrequires the abandonment of the whole notion of value as an illusion,\nand even more sure that it is ruinous to any practical rule of living,\nand I cannot believe in the 'philosophy' of any man who is satisfied to\nbase his practice on what he regards as detected illusion. Hence I find\nmyself strongly in sympathy with my eminent Italian colleague Professor\nVarisco, who has devoted his two chief works (_I Massimi Problemi_ and\n_Conosci Te Stesso_) to an exceedingly subtle attempt to show that 'what\nought to be', in Platonic phrase 'the Good', is in the end the single\nprinciple from which all things derive their existence as well as their\nvalue. Mr. Russell's philosophy saves us half Plato, and that is much,\nbut I am convinced that it is whole and entire Plato whom a profounder\nphilosophy would preserve for us. I believe personally that such a\nphilosophy will be led, as Plato was in the end led, to a theistic\ninterpretation of life, that it is in the living God Who is over all,\nblessed for ever, that it will find the common source of fact and value.\nAnd again I believe that it will be led to its result very largely by\nwhat is, after all, perhaps the profoundest thought of Kant, the\nconviction that the most illuminating fact of all is the _fact_ of the\nabsolute and unconditional obligatoriness of the law of right. It is\nprecisely here that fact and value most obviously meet. For when we ask\nourselves what in fact we are, we shall assuredly find no true answer to\nthis question about what _is_ if we forget that we are first and\nforemost beings who _ought_ to follow a certain way of life, and to\nfollow it for no other reason than that it is good. But I cannot, of\ncourse, offer reasons here for this conviction, though I am sure that\nadequate reasons can be given. Here I must be content to state this\nultimate conviction as a 'theological superstition', or, as I should\nprefer to put it with a little more certainty, as a matter of faith. The\nalternative is to treat the world as a stupid, and possibly malicious,\nbad joke.\n\n_Note_.--It may be thought that something should have been said about\nthe revolt against authority and tradition which has styled itself\nvariously 'Pragmatism' and 'Humanism', and also about the recent vogue\nof Bergsonianism. I may in part excuse my silence by the plea that both\nmovements are, in my judgement, already spent forces. If I must say more\nthan this, I would only remark about Pragmatism that I could speak of it\nwith more confidence if its representatives themselves were more agreed\nas to its precise principles. At present I can discern little agreement\namong them about anything except that they all show a great impatience\nwith the business of thinking things quietly and steadily out, and that\nnone of them seems to appreciate the importance of the 'critical'\nproblem. 'Pragmatism' thus seems to me less a definite way of thinking\nthan a collective name for a series of 'guesses at truth'. Some of the\nguesses may be very lucky ones, but I, at least, can hardly take the\nclaims of unmethodic guessing to be a philosophy very seriously. To\n'give and receive argument' appears to me to be of the very essence of\nPhilosophy. As for M. Bergson, I yield to no one in admiration for his\nbrilliancy as a stylist and the happiness of many of his illustrations.\nBut I have always found it difficult to grasp his central idea--if he\nreally has one--because his whole doctrine has always seemed to me to be\nbased upon a couple of elementary blunders which will be found in the\nopening chapter of his _Donnees Immediates de la Conscience_. We are\nthere called on to reject the intellect in Philosophy on the grounds (1)\nthat, being originally developed in the services of practical needs, it\ncan at best tell us how to find our way about among the bodies around\nus, and is thus debarred from knowing more than the _outsides_ of\nthings; (2) that its typical achievement is therefore geometry, and\ngeometry, _because it can measure only straight lines_, necessarily\nmisconceives the true character of 'real duration'. Now, as to the first\npoint, I should have thought it obvious that the establishment of a\n_modus vivendi_ with one's fellows has always been as much of a\npractical need as the avoidance of stones and pit-falls, and the alleged\nconclusion about the defects of the intellect does not therefore seem to\nme to follow from M. Bergson's premisses, even if we had any reason, as\nI do not see that we have, to accept the premisses. And as to the second\npoint, I would ask whether M. Bergson possesses a clock or a watch, and\nif he has, how he supposes time is measured on them? He seems to me to\nhave forgotten the elementary fact that angles can be measured as well\nas straight lines. (I might add that he makes the further curious\nassumption that all geometry is metrical.) It may be that something\nwould be left of the Bergsonian philosophy if one eliminated the\nconsequences of these initial blunders, but I do not know what the\nremainder would be. At any rate, the anti-intellectualism which M.\nBergson and his disciple, Professor Carr, seem to regard as fundamental\nwill have to go, unless different and better grounds can be found for\nit. I must leave it to others to judge of the adequacy of this apology.\n\n\nFOR REFERENCE\n\nVarisco, _The Great Problem_ (Macmillan).\n\nVarisco, _Know Thyself_ (Macmillan).\n\nAliotta, _The Idealistic Reaction against Science_ (Macmillan).\n\nBertrand Russell, _Our Knowledge of the External World_ (Open Court\nPublishing Co.).\n\nBertrand Russell, _The Problems of Philosophy_ (Home University\nLibrary).\n\nA.N. Whitehead, _The Principles of Natural Knowledge_ (Cambridge Press).\n\nG.E. Moore, _Ethics_ (H.U.L.).\n\nW. McDougall, _Philosophy_ (H.U.L.).\n\nA.N. Whitehead, _Introduction to Mathematics_ (H.U.L.).\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nRECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT ON THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION\n\nF.B. JEVONS\n\n\nThe living beings that exist or have existed upon the earth are of kinds\ninnumerable; and, in the opinion of man, the chief of them all is\nmankind. Man, for the simple reason that he is man, is anthropomorphic\nin all his judgements and not merely in his religious conceptions; he\nholds himself to be the standard and measure in all things. If his right\nso to regard himself were challenged, if he were called upon to justify\nhimself for having taken his foot as a unit of measurement, or his\nfingers as the basis of his system of numbers, he might reply that\nanything will serve as a standard for weights and measures, provided\nthat it never varies, but is always the same whenever referred to. But\nthe reply, valid though it is, does not do full justice to man: it\nleaves room for the suspicion that a standard is something chosen by man\nin a purely arbitrary manner and without reference to the facts of\nnature. If that were really the case, then man's conception of himself\nas superior to the other animals on earth might be but a prejudice of an\narbitrary kind. When, however, we consider, from the point of view of\nevolution, the place of man among the other animals that occupy or have\noccupied the earth, it is indubitable that the human organism is in\npoint of time the latest evolved and the human brain is in point of\ncomplexity and efficiency the most highly developed. Further, the\nevidence of embryology goes to show that the organism which has\neventually become human became so only by passing through successive\nstages, each of which has its analogue in some of the existing forms of\nanimal life. Those forms of animal life exist side by side; and if we\nconceive them to be represented diagrammatically by vertical lines,\ndiffering in height according to their degree of evolution, the line\nrepresenting the human organism will be the tallest, and may be\nconsidered to have become the tallest by successive increments or stages\ncorresponding to the height of the various other parallel vertical\nlines.\n\nWhen the conception of evolution, which had been employed to explain the\norigin of species and the descent of man, and which had been gained by a\nconsideration of material organisms, came to be applied to the world of\nman's thoughts, to the non-material and spiritual domain, and to be used\nfor the purpose of explaining the growth and the development of\nreligion, it was natural that the conception which had proved so\nvaluable in the one case should be applied without modification to the\nother--as natural as that the first railway coach should be built on the\nmodel of the stagecoach. The possibility that the theory of evolution\nmight itself evolve, and in evolving change, was one that was not, and\nat that time could hardly be, present to the minds of those who were\nextending the theory and in the process of extending it were developing\nit. Yet the possibility was there, implicit in the very conception of\nevolution, which involves continuous change--change in continuity and\ncontinuity in change.\n\nAny and every attempt to trace the evolution of religion seems at first\nnecessarily to involve the assumption that from the beginning religion\nwas there to be evolved. That was the position assumed by Robertson\nSmith in _The Religion of the Semites_, which appeared in 1889. At that\ndate the aborigines of Australia were supposed to represent the human\nrace in its lowest and its earliest stage of development. In them,\ntherefore, if anywhere, we might expect to find what would be religion\nin its lowest and earliest stage indeed but still religion. Reduced to\nits lowest terms, religion, it was felt at first, must imply at least\nbelief in a god and communion with him. If, therefore, religion was to\nbe found amongst the representatives of the lowest and earliest stage in\nthe evolution of humanity, belief in a god and communion with him must\nthere be found. He who seeks finds. Robertson Smith found amongst the\nAustralians totem-gods and sacramental rites. Indeed, it was at that\ntime the belief universally held by students of the science of religion\nthat in Australia a totem was a god and a god might be a totem. It was\nconjectured by Robertson Smith that in Australia the totem animal or\nplant was eaten sacramentally. Since, then, the totem in Australia was\nheld to be both the god and the animal or plant in which the god\nmanifested himself, it followed that in Australia we had, preserved to\nthis day, the earliest form of sacrifice--that in which the totem animal\nwas itself the totem god to whom it was offered as a sacrifice, and was\nitself--or rather himself--the sacramental meal furnished to his\nworshippers. The totem was eaten, it was conjectured, with the object of\nacquiring the qualities of the divine creature, or of absorbing them\ninto the person of the worshipper. That the totem was eaten\nsacramentally rested, as has just been said, on the conjecture made by\nRobertson Smith in 1889; but in 1899 Dr. (now Sir James) Frazer declared\nthat, thanks to the investigations of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, 'here,\nin the heart of Australia, among the most primitive savages known to\nus, we find the actual observance of that totem sacrament which\nRobertson Smith, with the intuition of genius, divined years ago, but of\nwhich positive examples have hitherto been wanting.'\n\nOn the foundation thus laid by the intuition of Robertson Smith and\napproved in 1899 by Sir James Frazer, a simple and complete theory of\nthe evolution of religion was possible. In any one tribe there were\nseveral totem-kins. The totem of each kin was divine, but the\npersonality of a totem was so undeveloped in conception that, though it\nmight, and on the theory did, develop into a deity, it was originally\nmore of the nature of a spirit than a god, and totemism proper might\neasily pass into polydaemonism, that is a system in which the beings\nworshipped were conceived to possess a personality more clearly defined\nthan that attributed to totems but less developed than that assigned to\ndeities. From the beginning each tribe had worshipped a plurality of\ntotems; it was, therefore, readily intelligible that, as these totems\ncame to be credited with more and more definite and developed\npersonality, the plurality of totems became not only a polydaemonism,\nbut afterwards a plurality of deities, and a system of polytheism came\nto be established. From polytheism then, amongst the Israelites,\nmonotheism was conceived to have been gradually developed.\n\nOn this theory the evolution of religion was, if we may so describe it,\nlinear or rectilinear: the process consisted in a series of successive\nstages. In some cases, as for instance among the aborigines of\nAustralia, it never rose higher than its starting-point, totemism; in\nothers, as for instance in Samoa, it became polytheism without ceasing\nto be totemism; in others again, as for instance amongst the Aryan\npeoples, it became so completely polytheistic that even conjecture can\ndiscover but few indications or 'survivals' of the totemism from which\nit is supposed to have developed; and the polytheism of the Israelites\nwas so completely superseded by monotheism that the very existence of an\nearlier stage of polytheism could be as strenuously denied in their case\nas the pre-existence of totemism could be denied amongst the\npolytheistic Aryans. Nevertheless the theory was that if we represent\nthe growth of the various religions of the world diagrammatically by\nvertical lines parallel to one another but of various lengths, one line\nstanding for totemism, a longer line for polydaemonism, a still longer\none for polytheism, and the longest of all for monotheism, we should see\nthat the line of growth has been the same in all cases, and that it is\nin their length, or (shall we say?) in their height alone that the\nvarious lines differ, and that the longest line culminates in monotheism\nonly because it has been, so to speak, pulled out in the same way that a\ntelescope when closed, may be extended. The evolution of religion on\nthis view has been a process literally of 'evolution' or unfolding: the\nidea of a god and of communion with him has been present from the\nbeginning; and, much though religion may have changed, it remains to the\nend essentially the same thing. This view of the process of religious\nevolution we may fairly term 'the pre-formation theory'; for on this\ntheory each stage is pre-formed in the stage immediately preceding it,\nand in the earliest stage of all were all succeeding stages contained\npre-formed, though it depended on circumstances whether the seed should\nspring up, and how many stages of its growth it should accomplish.\n\nRobertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion is in effect a\nform of the pre-formation theory, and is liable to the same difficulties\nas dog the theory of pre-formation in all its applications. On the\ntheory, if we cut open a seed we should find within it the plant\npre-formed; if we analyse totemism, the seed from which, in Robertson\nSmith's view, all other forms of religion have grown in orderly\nsuccession one after the other, we find in it religion in all its stages\npre-formed. In fact, however, if we cut open an acorn we do not find a\nminiature oak-tree inside. The presumption, therefore, is that neither\nin totemism, if we dissect it, shall we find religion pre-formed.\nIndeed, there is the possibility that totemism, on dissection, will be\nfound to have no such content--that the hope or expectation of finding\nanything in it is as vain, is as much doomed to disappointment, as is\nthe expectation of the child who cuts open his drum, thinking to find\ninside it something which produces the sound.\n\nIt was, however, not on _a priori_ grounds like these that Sir James\nFrazer was led eventually to combat and deny the existence, 'in the\nheart of Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us' of\n'that totem sacrament which', in 1899 he declared, 'Robertson Smith,\nwith the intuition of genius' had divined years before it was actually\nobserved. It was by the evidence of new facts, discovered by Messrs.\nSpencer and Gillen, that Sir James Frazer was compelled to abandon\nRobertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion. Robertson Smith\nhad seen, or had thought he saw, amongst the Australians sacramental\nrites and the worship of totem gods. Sir James Frazer is now compelled\nby the evidence of the facts to hold that in what he calls 'pure\ntotemism', i.e., in totemism as we find it in Australia, 'there is\nnothing that can properly be described as worship of the totems.\nSacrifices are not presented to them, nor prayers offered, nor temples\nbuilt, nor priests appointed to minister to them. In a word, totems pure\nand simple are never gods, but merely species of natural objects,\nunited by certain intimate and mystic ties to groups of men.' It seems,\ntherefore, according to Frazer, that in totemism, when dissected, there\nis no religion, just as in the child's drum, when cut open, there\nis--nothing. Yet, we may reflect, on the battle-field from a drum\nproceeds a great and glorious sound, inspiring men to noble deeds.\nWhereas _ex nihilo nil fit_: from nothing naturally nothing comes. If,\nhowever, something does come, it is not from nothing that it comes.\nAmongst the most primitive savages known to us, men are united to their\ntotems, as Frazer admits, by 'certain intimate and mystic ties'.\n\nWhat then is it in totemism from which, on Sir James Frazer's view,\nsomething comes? We might, perhaps, have expected that it was from the\n'mystic' bond uniting man with the world which is not only around him\nbut of which he is part, and in which he lives and moves and has his\nbeing. To say so, however, would be to admit that in totemism there was\nsomething not only 'mystic' but potentially religious. And Sir James\nFrazer does not follow that line of thought, so dangerous in his view.\nOn the contrary, he maintains that 'the aspect of the totemic system,\nwhich we have hitherto been accustomed to describe as religious,\ndeserves rather to be called magical'. The totem rites which Robertson\nSmith had interpreted as being sacramental and as being intended as a\nmeans of communion with the totem-gods Sir James Frazer regards as\nmerely magical: 'totemism,' he says, 'is merely an organized system of\nmagic intended to secure a supply of food.'\n\nWe may remark, in passing, that if totemism is 'mere' magic, there is\nindeed (as Sir James holds) no worship in totemism, but in that case in\ntotemism there can be no such 'intimate and mystic ties' between the\ntotem and the totem-kin as Sir James at first maintained there was. But\nbe that as it may, according to Sir James Frazer, 'in the heart of\nAustralia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us,' we find\ntotemism; and totemism on examination proves to be 'merely an organized\nsystem of magic'. If now we start by assuming these premisses, or by\ngranting these postulates for the sake of argument, we can, indeed,\nerect on them a theory of the evolution of religion. But if we so start,\nwe must do as Sir James Frazer did in the first edition of _The Golden\nBough_: we must hold that religion is but a developed form of magic. _En\nroute_ it may have changed considerably in appearance, but in fact and\nfundamentally it remains the same thing. In all the lower forms of\nreligion, and in most of the higher, there are practices which are by\ncommon consent and beyond doubt magical. This indisputable fact lends\ncolour to the view that religion was in its origin nothing but magic,\nand that religion is, to those who can see the facts as they are,\nnothing but magic to this day: the magician was but a priest, and the\npriest, claiming superhuman power, is but a magician still. Prayers were\nat first but spells, and even now are supposed, by simple repetition, to\nproduce their effects.\n\nIf against this view it be objected that one of the most constant facts\nin the history of all religions, from the lowest to the highest, is that\nreligion has at all times carried on war against sorcery, witchcraft,\nand magic, that in the lowest stages of man's evolution witches have\nbeen 'smelt out' by the witch-finder, and that in the higher stages of\ncivilization witches have been persecuted, tortured, and burnt, the\nreply made to the objection is that the war against witchcraft and magic\nis due simply to the jealousy and resentment which regular practitioners\nof any art, e.g., medicine, have ever displayed and do still display\ntowards irregular, unprofessional practitioners. This reply, however, is\nnow generally admitted to be one which it is impossible to accept in\nthe case of religion for the simple reason that it does not account for\nthe facts. The plain fact which wrecks this attempted explanation is\nthat magic is punished and witches are burnt not because witch-finders\nor priests are jealous of them, but because the community dreads them\nand feels their very existence to be a danger. It is the community which\nfeels the world of difference there is between magic and religion.\n\nThe attraction of the view that religion is but magic under another\nname, that prayers are to the end but spells, that 'priest' is but\n'magician' written differently, is that it is a simplicist theory. It\nsimplifies things. It exhibits religion as evolved out of magic and as\ncontaining at the end nothing more or other than was present at the\nbeginning in magic. It is but a variant of the pre-formation theory of\nthe evolution of religion. In fine, the notion that in magic we have\nreligion pre-formed is the counterpart of the idea that we can find\nreligion pre-formed in totemism. In both cases we secure continuity in\nthe process of evolution apparently, but the continuity secured is\nappearance merely and is gained only at the price of ignoring the facts.\n\nIt is not surprising, therefore, that in the later, enlarged editions of\n_The Golden Bough_, Sir James Frazer has given up the view that religion\nevolved out of magic, being moved thereto by the fact, as he says, that\nthere is 'a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle\nbetween magic and religion'. There is, in Frazer's present view, no\ncontinuity between the magic which came first and the religion which\ncame ages later: between them is an absolute breach of continuity, a\nfundamental distinction, an opposition of principle. 'The principles of\nthought on which magic is based,' Frazer says, 'resolve themselves into\ntwo: first, that like produces like; and, second, that things which\nhave once been in contact with each other continue to act on each\nother.' These beliefs are due to the association of ideas: if two things\nare more or less like one another, or if two things have gone together\nin our experience of the past, the sight of the one will make us think\nof the other and expect to find it. So strong is the expectation which\nis thus created that in the savage it amounts to absolute belief; and\nmagic consists in acting on that belief, in setting like to produce\nlike, with the firm conviction that thus (by magic) man can obtain all\nthat he desires. For long ages, according to Frazer, man acted on that\nbelief, and only eventually did he discover that magic did not always\nact. This discovery set him thinking and led him to the inference that\nat work in the world there must be supernatural powers or beings, that\nthe course of nature and of human life is controlled by personal beings\nsuperior to man. And that inference, according to Sir James Frazer's\ndefinition, constitutes religion.\n\nThe fundamental distinction, then, and even opposition of principle\nbetween magic and religion, is that in the one case man thinks that he\ncan gain all that he desires by means of magic, and that in the other he\nturns with offerings and supplication to the personal beings superior to\nman whom he imagines to control the course of nature and of human life.\n\nWhether the distinction which Sir James Frazer draws between magic and\nreligion will hold depends partly on whether his definitions of magic\nand religion are acceptable. In his account of magic there at least\nappears to be some confusion of thought. On the one hand, he says, 'it\nmust always be remembered that every single profession and claim put\nforward by the magician, as such, is false; not one of them can be\nmaintained without deception, conscious or unconscious.' This\npronouncement makes it easy for us to understand that even the savage\nwould eventually find magic an unsatisfactory method of gratifying his\ndesires, a deception in fact. On the other hand, Sir James apparently\ncontradicts himself, that is to say, he denies that every single\nprofession or claim put forward by the magician is false, and says,\n'however justly we may reject the extravagant pretensions of magicians\nand condemn the deceptions which they have practised on mankind, the\noriginal institution of this class of man has, take it all in all, been\nproductive of incalculable good to humanity.' The ground for this second\npronouncement, so contradictory of the first, is that magicians, Sir\nJames tells us, 'were the direct predecessors, not merely of our\nphysicians and surgeons but of our investigators and discoverers in\nevery branch of natural science.' Thus, though he no longer regards\npriests as transmogrified magicians, he does regard magicians as the\nearliest men of science, and does regard science, therefore, as a highly\ndeveloped stage of magic. This view logically follows from the premisses\nfrom which it starts; and if it is felt to be unacceptable, we shall\nnaturally be inclined to scrutinize the premisses once more and more\ncarefully. When we do so scrutinize them, we see that the principles of\nthought on which Sir James Frazer assumes magic to be based are in\neffect the principles from which science started: they are the beliefs\nthat like produces like--the basis of the law of causation--and that\nthings which our experience shows to have gone together in the past tend\nalways to go together--which is one way of stating our belief in the\nuniformity of nature. If then these principles of thought are the\nprinciples on which magic as well as science is based, then science and\nmagic are the same thing, and we have only to choose whether we will\nsay that magic is not magic but undeveloped science, or that science is\nnot science but merely magic transmogrified. Thus, the pre-formation\ntheory once more reasserts itself: magic is the seed in which science is\nprefigured or pre-formed.\n\nIf we wish to escape from this conclusion, if we wish to maintain the\nvalidity of science and yet always to remember 'that every single\nprofession and claim put forward by the magician, as such, is false--not\none of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or\nunconscious', we must consider whether Sir James Frazer's account of\nmagic, according to which the principles of magic are identical with\nthose of science, is the only account that can be given of magic; and\nfor that purpose we may contrast it with the view of Wilhelm Wundt. But\nbefore doing so, since Sir James Frazer holds that there is 'a\nfundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic\nand religion', it will be well to try to see not only what he means by\nmagic, but also whether his description or definition of religion is\nacceptable.\n\nWhereas Robertson Smith held that religion, reduced to its very lowest\nterms, must imply at least belief in a god and communion with him,\nFrazer considers religion to be the belief that the course of nature and\nof human life is controlled by personal beings superior to man. By the\none view stress is laid on the mystic side of religion, on the communion\nwhich is effected through sacrifice; by the other view stress is laid on\nthe power which the gods may be induced by prayer and supplication to\nexercise for the benefit of man. Our first reflection, therefore, is\nthat any view of religion, to be comprehensive, cannot confine itself to\neither of these aspects singly, but must find room for both--for both\nprayer and sacrifice. They cannot be mutually exclusive, nor can they\nbe simply juxtaposed, as though they were atoms unrelated to one\nanother, accidental neighbours in the same district. There must be a\nhigher unity, not created by or subsequent to the coalescence of\nelements originally independent of each other, but a higher unity of\nwhich both prayer and sacrifice are manifestations. This higher unity, I\nventure to suggest, is the first principle of religion; and, if it is\nnot explicitly recognized as the first principle of religion either by\nRobertson Smith or by Frazer, that may well be because their attention\nis concentrated on the earlier stages in the evolution of religion, when\nas yet it is not conspicuous and is, therefore, though in fact\noperative, liable to be overlooked. As Ferrier has said, 'first\nprinciples of every kind have their influence, and indeed operate\nlargely and powerfully long before they come to the surface of human\nthought and are articulately expounded.' What then is the first\nprinciple of religion which only after long ages of evolution rose to\nthe surface of human thought, and which, though it had been operative\nlargely and powerfully, came only in the slow course of human evolution\nto be articulately expounded? The first principle of religion is\nlove--love of one's neighbour and one's God.\n\nIn the light of that first principle it is manifest that prayer and\nsacrifice are not fundamentally unrelated and accidentally juxtaposed: a\nsacrifice accompanied not even by unspoken prayer, prompted by no\ndesire, no wish for anything whatever, is a meaningless concept. Equally\nunmeaning and unintelligible is the idea of a prayer which involves no\nsacrifice--whether by sacrifice we understand the offering of gifts or\nthe sacrifice of self. But perhaps it may be said that, even though love\nalone can lead to sacrifice of self, still it is undeniable that prayers\nmay be put up and sacrifices be offered by a man for the sake of what he\nis going to get by doing so; and that that is what Sir James Frazer\nmeans when he sees in religion the belief that beings superior to man\nmay be induced by prayer so to order things that man may get his heart's\ndesire. Then, indeed, we get a continuity of evolution, a continuity\nbetween magic and religion, which Frazer perhaps did not intend wholly\nto deny: that is to say the continuous thread running through both magic\nand religion and uniting them is desire. Desire is continuous, though\nthe means of gratifying it change. In one stage of evolution magic is\nthe means; in another, religion. But throughout we find the process of\nevolution to be continuous--change in continuity and continuity in\nchange.\n\nNow it is indeed undeniable that prayer and sacrifice may be made by a\nman for the sake of what he is going to get, and may from the beginning\nhave been made, partly at least, from that motive. But if evolution in\none of its aspects is change, then one of the changes brought about by\nevolution in religion is precisely that prayer and sacrifice come to be\nregarded as no longer a means whereby a man can get his desires\naccomplished--his will done--but as the indispensable condition for\ndoing God's will. Prayer then becomes communion with God, and the\nsacrifice of self the living exhibition of love--the first principle of\nreligion, the principle which manifests itself now in prayer and now in\nsacrifice.\n\nFrom this point of view, then, Sir James Frazer's account of religion\nwill be considered unacceptable: it makes religion and magic alike but\nmeans whereby man has--vainly--sought to satisfy desire. And the\nimplication is that the day of both alike is over. But if Frazer's\naccount of religion is unacceptable, his account of magic also is open\nto criticism. He wavers between two opinions about magic: at one time he\nregards it as all falsehood and deception, at another as the source from\nwhich science springs, just as at one time he considered magic\nfundamentally the same as religion and then again as fundamentally\ndifferent from religion. When Frazer is bent upon identifying magic and\nscience, he attributes to primitive man a theory of causation (that like\nproduces like): magic is based, he says, upon 'the views of natural\ncausation embraced by the savage magician'. On the other hand, according\nto Wilhelm Wundt in his _Voelkerpsychologie_, primitive man has no notion\nwhatever of natural causation: primitive man, Wundt says, has only one\nway of accounting for events--if something happens, somebody did it. If\nany one mysteriously falls ill and dies, the question at once presents\nitself to the savage mind, who did it? How any one could contrive to\nmake the man fall ill and die is, to the man's relations, thoroughly and\ndisquietingly mysterious. The one thing clear to them is that somebody\npossesses and has exercised this mysterious and horrible power. The\nperson who, in the opinion not only of the relatives but also of all or\nmost of the community, naturally would do this sort of thing differs in\nsome way--in his appearance or habits--from the average member of the\ncommunity, and accordingly is credited, or discredited, with this\nmysterious and dreadful power. Such a person, according to Wundt, is a\nmagician. Such an event is a marvel: so long as it is supposed to be\nbrought about by a man, it is a piece of magic; when it is ascribed (as,\naccording to Wundt, it comes in later, though not in primitive times, to\nbe ascribed) to a god, it is a miracle.\n\nIf science then does not work magic, there must be a fundamental\ndistinction between science and magic, an absolute opposition of\nprinciples. The principles of thought on which magic is based cannot be,\nas Frazer maintains, the same as those which give to science its\nvalidity. In fine, the belief in magic seems to be based not on any\nprinciple of thought, but upon the assumption that, if something\nhappens, somebody must have done it, and therefore must have had the\npower to do it.\n\nWundt, whilst differing from Frazer in his description of magic, is at\none with him in believing that before religion existed there was an age\nof magic. But Wundt's view that marvels are magic when supposed to have\nbeen done by man, but miracles when supposed to have been done by a god\nor his priests, suggests the possibility that, as the belief in magic is\nfound usually, if not always, to exist side by side with the belief in\nmiracles, the two beliefs may from the beginning have co-existed, that\nthe age of magic is not prior in the course of evolution to the age of\nreligion. This possibility, it will be admitted, derives some colour at\nleast from the way in which the theory of evolution is employed to\naccount for the origin of species: different though reptiles are from\nbirds, the serpent from the dove, both are descended from a common\nancestor, the archaeopteryx. If this instance be taken as typical of the\nprocess of evolution in general, then the course of evolution is not, so\nto speak, linear or rectilinear, but--to use M. Bergson's\nword--'dispersive'. To suppose that religion is descended from magic\nwould then be as erroneous as to suppose that birds are descended from\nreptiles or man from the monkey. The true view will be that the course\nof evolution is not linear, is not a line produced for ever in the same\ndirection, not a succession of stages, but is 'dispersive', that from a\ncommon starting point many lines of evolution radiate in different\ndirections. The course of evolution is not unilinear but multilinear; it\nruns on many lines which diverge, but all the diverging lines start from\nthe same point.\n\nIf we apply this conception of evolution in general to the evolution of\nreligion in particular--and Bergson, I should say, does not--then the\ncentre of dispersion, common to all religions, is the heart of man. The\nforms of religion evolving, emanating and radiating from that common\ncentre are, let us say, fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism. If we\nwish to avoid, in the theory of religious evolution, an error analogous\nto that of supposing birds to be descended from reptiles, we must\ndecline to suppose that monotheism is simply polytheism evolved, or that\npolytheism is descended from fetishism. We must consider that each of\nthese three forms of religion is terminal, in the sense that no one of\nthem leads on to, or passes into, either of the other two. All three\nforms of religious life may, and indeed do, exist side by side with one\nanother, just as the countless forms of physical life may be found\nexisting side by side. The foraminifera exist now, as they existed\nmillions of years ago; but the fact that they co-exist with higher forms\nof physical life does not show that the higher forms of life are but\nforaminifera in a more highly evolved form. Similarly, the fact that\nfetishism exists side by side with polytheism, or polytheism with\nmonotheism, does not show that one is but a higher form of another: we\nmust consider each to be a terminal form, as incapable of producing\nanother, as it is impossible to conceive that the serpent develops into\nthe dove.\n\nThe common centre and starting-point of fetishism, polytheism, and\nmonotheism on this view (the 'dispersive' view) of the evolution of\nreligion lies in the heart of man, in a consciousness, originally vague\nin the extreme, of the personality and superiority to man of the being\nor object worshipped. In all these three forms of religion there is\nworship, and in all three forms the being worshipped is personal.\nFurther, a special tie is felt to exist between the worshipper and the\npersonality worshipped: religion is the bond of union between them, and\nit is also a bond which unites the worshippers to one another. It is by\nits very nature a bond of union, a means of communion between persons,\nhuman and divine. That is the mystic aspect of religion which finds\nexpression in the rite of sacrifice and in the sacramental meals which\nare felt somehow to bind together, or rather to reunite and keep\ntogether, the worshippers and their god. This communion however is not\nmerely mystic: it has its practical effects inasmuch as it affects the\nconduct of the worshipper and enables him to do what without it he would\nnot have had strength to do.\n\nIf fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism radiate from a common centre,\nthe heart of man, then the heart of man must also be regarded as the\nstarting-point of magic. If they spring straight from the heart, though\nin different directions, dispersively, then magic must also start from\nthe common centre; and, though its divergence from religion tends to\nbecome total, at first, and indeed it may be for long, the discrepancy\nbetween them is rather felt uneasily than recognized clearly.\nCategories, such as those of cause and effect, identity and difference,\nwhich are the common property of civilized thought, and which among us,\nMr. L.T. Hobhouse says, 'every child soon comes to distinguish in\npractice, are for primitive thought interwoven in wild confusion.' Two\ncategories, which in primitive thought are thus interwoven in wild\nconfusion, are, it may be suggested, religion and magic; and only in the\ndispersive process of evolution do they tend to become discriminated. In\nancient Egypt, in Babylon, in Brahminism, religion fails to disentangle\nitself from magic; and not even has Christianity always succeeded in\nthrowing it off. Different as we may conceive magic and religion to be,\nthe fact remains that at first they grow up intertwined together. In the\nlower forms of religion magic is worked not only by magicians but by\npriests as well; spells and prayers are hardly to be distinguished from\none another. The idea that 'priest' is but 'magician' writ differently,\nthat prayers are but spells under another name, is now obsolete. The\ntruth may be that religion neither follows on, nor is evolved from\nmagic, but that both radiate from a common centre, the heart of man; and\nthat at first both are attempts made by man to secure the fulfilment of\nhis desires, to do his will, though eventually he finds that the way to\ncontrol nature is to obey her, not to try to command her by working\nmagic; and that it is in endeavouring to do God's will, not his own,\nthat man finds peace at the last.\n\nIn the three forms of religion which thus far we have taken into\naccount, fetishism, polytheism, monotheism, religion is felt to be a\npersonal relation--a relation between the human personality and some\npersonality more than human; and the human heart is reaching out and\ngroping after some divine personality, if peradventure it may find Him.\nBut there is yet another form of religion proceeding from the human\nheart in which this does not seem to be the case--and that is Buddhism.\nThe Buddha definitely renounced the search after God and would not allow\nhis disciples to engage in the pursuit. Practically the pursuit was\nuseless, according to the Buddha: escape from suffering is all that man\ncan want or strive or hope for. Escape from suffering is possible only\nby cessation from existence; and that cessation from existence, here and\nhereafter, can be attained by man himself, who can reach Nirvana without\nthe aid of gods, if gods there be. From the point of view of metaphysics\nthe idea that there is any relation between the human personality and\nthe divine falls to the ground, according to the Buddha, because,\nwhether there be gods or not, at any rate there is no human personality.\nAs in a conflagration--and according to the Buddha the whole world,\nburning with desire, is in a state of conflagration--the flames leap\nfrom one house that is burning to the next, so in its transmigrations\nthe self, or rather the character, _Karman_, like a flame, leaps from\none form of existence to another. The flame indeed appears to be there\nall the time the fire is burning; but the flame has no permanence, it is\nchanging all the time the process of combustion is going on; and 'I'\nhave no more permanence than the flame. 'I' only appear to be there as\nlong as the process of life goes on. And as the flame only continues so\nlong as there is something for it to feed on, so the process of\ntransmigration or re-birth continues only so long as the thirst for\nbeing continues: the escape from re-birth is conditional on the\nextinction of that thirst or desire; and the disciple who has succeeded\nin putting off lust and desire has attained to deliverance from death\nand re-birth, has attained to rest, to Nirvana.\n\nThus, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of religion, Buddhism is\na radiation from the common centre, from the heart of man, though it\nradiates in a direction very different from that followed by any other\nreligion. The direction is indeed one which, as the history of religion\nshows, it has been impossible for man long to follow, for, wherever\nBuddhism has been established, it has relapsed; and the Buddha, who\nstrove to divert man from prayer and from the worship of gods, has\nhimself become a god to whom prayer and worship are addressed. Whether\nin the future the direction may be pursued more permanently than it has\nbeen by Buddhism up to now lies with the future to show.\n\nBuddhism, however, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of\nreligion, is not the only radiation from the common centre, of which we\nhave to take account, in addition to fetishism, polytheism, and\nmonotheism. From the human heart also proceeds 'the religion of\nhumanity', the Positivist Church. Here, as originally in Buddhism, the\nconception of a divine personality plays no part; but here the human\npersonality, the very existence of which is denied by the Buddha, is\nraised to a high, indeed to the highest, level. There is no such thing\nas an individual, if by 'individual' is meant a man existing solely by\nhimself, for a man can neither come into existence nor continue in\nexistence by himself alone. It is an essential part of the conception of\npersonality that it includes fellowship: a person to be a person must\nstand in some relation to other persons. They are presented to him, the\nsubject, as objects of his awareness; and he, the subject, is also an\nobject of their awareness. Humanity is thus a complex, in which alone\npersons are found and apart from which they have in fact no existence.\nHumanity thus plays in Positivism, as a religion, the part of 'the great\nBeing', _le grand Etre_, which in other religions is fulfilled by God,\nbut with this difference, that humanity is human always and never\ndivine.\n\nThe ruler of a country steers the ship of state, but he is a pilot only\nmetaphorically. Whether the terms worship and prayer are used more than\nmetaphorically by the Positivist seems hard to decide. On the one hand,\nif it is felt that worship and prayer are indispensable to religion, it\nmay be argued that in religions other than Positivism they prove not\nonly on analysis, but in the course of history, to be, as by Positivism\nthey are recognized to be, of purely subjective import. On the other\nhard, it may be that they provide merely a means of transition from the\nreligions of the past to the religion of the future.\n\nAnother matter of interest is the place of morality in Positivism as a\nreligion. According to M. Alfred Loisy in his book _La Religion_,\nmorality and religion are bound up together. They cannot exist apart\nfrom one another: they might, he says, 'be dissociated in fact and\nthought, were it not that they are inseparable in the life of\nhumanity.' And in his view morality is summed up in the idea of duty. He\nsays, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity, and duty was\nhumanity. Duty was at the beginning in humanity. By it all things were\nmade, and without it nothing was made.' Thus, where duty is, there also\nis religion. Not only, according to Loisy, has that always been so in\nevery stage through which the evolution of religion has passed, but it\nwill also be the case with the religion of the future. Thus the\nconception of evolution which Loisy holds is the same as that\nentertained by Robertson Smith, the difference being that, whereas on\nthe one view the idea of God and of communion with Him has been present\nfrom the beginning, and, much though it may have changed, it remains to\nthe end the same thing; on the other view it is the idea of duty--the\nduty which is humanity--that was in the beginning and will continue to\nthe end. Both views are applications of the 'pre-formation' theory of\nevolution.\n\nBut Positivism perhaps is not necessarily tied to the 'pre-formation'\ntheory. It seems equally capable of being fitted in to the 'dispersive'\ntheory, and of being regarded as an emanation or radiation proceeding\ndirect from the human heart. It may be so regarded, if we consider the\nessence of it to be found not in the concept of duty, which seems to\nimply the existence of some superior who imposes duties on man, but in\nthat love of one's fellow-man which, to be love, must be given freely,\nand simply because one loves. The sense of obligation, the feeling of\nduty, obedience to the commandments of authority and to the prohibitions\nwhich the community both enforces and obeys, are, all of them, various\nexpressions of the primitive feeling of taboo--a feeling of alarm and\nfear. If we confine our attention to this set of facts, we may say,\nwith M. Loisy, 'in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity'. We\nmay however hesitate to follow him when he goes on to say, 'by duty all\nthings were made, and without it nothing was made'. We may hesitate and\nthe Positivist may hesitate, because, primitive though the feeling of\nfear may be, the feeling of love is equally original: on it and in it\nthe family and society have their base and their origin; and to it they\nowe not only their origin but their continuance. Love however is not a\nmatter of duty and obedience; it is not subject to commandment or\nprohibition; nor does it strive by commands or authority to enforce\nitself. In the process by which duty--legal and moral\nobligation--evolves out of the primitive feeling of taboo, love is not\nimplicated: love springs from its own source, the human heart, and runs\nits own course. Taboo may have existed from the beginning; but to the\nend, whatever its form--duty, obligation, obedience to authority--it\nremains in character what it was at first, prohibitive, negative. Love\nalone is creative: without it 'was not anything made that was made'.\n\nThere seems, therefore, no necessity to regard the 'pre-formation'\ntheory of evolution, rather than the 'dispersive theory, as essential to\nPositivism.\n\nCommon to all the views about the evolution of religion that have been\nmentioned in this paper is the belief that, the more religion changes,\nthe more it remains the same thing. If identified with duty, then duty\nit was in the beginning, and duty it will remain to the end. For those\nwho conceive it to be merely magic, magic it was and magic it remains.\nThose who define it as belief in a god and communion with him find that\nbelief in the earliest as well as the latest stages. All would agree in\nrejecting Bergson's view of evolution--that in evolution there is\nchange, but nothing which changes. All would agree that in the evolution\nof religion there is something which, change though it may, remains the\nsame thing, and that is religion itself. But on the question what\nreligion is, there is no agreement: no definition of religion as\nyet--and there have been many attempts to define it--has gained general\nacceptance. We may even surmise, and admit, that no attempt ever will be\nsuccessful. Such admission, indeed, may at first to some seem equivalent\nto admitting that religion is a nullity, and the admission may\naccordingly be welcomed or rejected. But a moment's reflection will show\nthat the admission has no such consequence. None of our simple feelings\ncan be defined: pleasure and pain can neither be defined; nor, when\nexperienced, doubted. And some of our general terms, those at any rate\nwhich are ultimate, are beyond our power either to define or doubt: no\none imagines that 'life' can be defined, but no one doubts its\nexistence. And religion both as a term and as a fact of experience is\nultimate, and, because ultimate, incapable of definition. It is not to\nbe defined but only to be felt. It is an affair not merely of the\nintellect, but still more of the heart.\n\nIn what sense, then, can we speak of the evolution of religion?\nEvolution implies change; and no one doubts that there have been changes\nin religion. No one can imagine that it has from the beginning till now\nremained identically the same. What seems conceivable is that throughout\nthere has been, not identity but continuity--change indeed in continuity\nbut also continuity in change. The child 'learns to speak the words and\nthink the ideas, to reproduce the mode of thought, as he does the form\nof speech' of the community into which he is born. In the speech,\nthought, and feelings--even in the religious feelings--of the community,\nfrom generation to generation, there is continuity, but not identity.\nFrom generation to generation they are not identical but are\ncontinuously changing; and they change because each child who takes them\nover reproduces them; and, in reproducing them, changes them, not much\nin most cases, but very considerably in the case of men of genius and\nthe great religious reformers. The heart is the treasure-house in which\nnot only old things are stored, but from which also new things are\nbrought forth. The process of evolution implies indeed that the old\nthings, though not everlasting, persist for a time; but it also implies\nthe manifestation of that which, though continuous with the old, is at\nthe same time new. It is from the heart of man, of some one man, that\nwhat is new proceeds: the community it is which is conservative of the\nold. The heart of man, or man himself, exhibits both change in\ncontinuity and continuity in change.\n\nThe acorn, the sapling, and the oak are different stages of one\ncontinuous process. But it is the same tree throughout the whole\nprocess. So, too, perhaps it may be said, religion is a term which\nincludes or is applicable to all stages in the one process, and not to\nthe stage of monotheism alone, or of polytheism alone, or even to those\nstages alone in which there is a reference to personal beings. Each of\nthese stages is a stage in the process of religion but no stage is by\nitself the whole process. But this view of the evolution of religion\nregards religion as though it were an organism, self-subsistent,\nexisting and evolving as independently of man as the oak-tree does;\nwhereas in truth religion has no such independent existence or\nevolution. It is not from polytheism that monotheism proceeds; nor does\npolytheism proceed from fetishism: it is from the heart of man that they\nand all other forms of religion emanate and radiate. To conceive\nfetishism, polytheism, and monotheism as three successive stages in one\nprocess, to represent the evolution of religion by a straight line\nmarked off into three parts, or any other number of parts, is to forget\nthat they do not produce one another but that each emanates from the\nheart of man. The fact that they emanate in temporal succession does not\nprove that one springs from the other.\n\nNor can we say that values--religious or aesthetic--are to be determined\non the simple principle that the latest edition is the best. To say that\nan _editio princeps_ has value only for the bibliophile is to admit that\nall values are personal, as are all thoughts and all feelings, all\ngoodness and all love.\n\n\nFOR REFERENCE\n\nRobertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_ (A. & C. Black, 1889).\n\nJ.G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_ (Macmillan & Co., 1890-1915).\n\nGrant Allen, _The Evolution of the Idea of God_ (Grant Richards, 1897).\n\nH. Bergson, _L'Evolution creatrice_ (F. Alcan, 1908).\n\nF.B. Jevons, _The Idea of God in Early Religions_ (1910), and\n_Comparative Religion_ (1913) (Cambridge University Press).\n\nG.F. Moore, _History of Religions_ (T. & T. Clark, 1914).\n\nA. Loisy, _La Religion_ (E. Nourry, 1917).\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nRECENT TENDENCIES IN EUROPEAN POETRY\n\nWITH OCCASIONAL REFERENCES TO THE NOVEL, DRAMA, AND CRITICISM\n\nPROFESSOR C.H. HERFORD\n\n\nWhen Matthew Arnold declared that every age receives its best\ninterpretation in its poetry, he was making a remark hardly conceivable\nbefore the century in which it was made. Poetry in the nineteenth\ncentury was, on the whole, more charged with meaning, more rooted in the\nstuff of humanity and the heart of nature, less a mere province of\n_belles-lettres_ than ever before. Consciously or unconsciously it\nreflected the main currents in the mentality of European man, and the\nreflection was often most clear where it was least conscious. Two of\nthese main currents are:\n\n(1) The vast and steady enlargement of our knowledge of the compass, the\nhistory, the potencies, of Man, Nature, the World.\n\n(2) The growth in our sense of the _worth_ of every part of existence.\n\nCertain aspects of these two processes are popularly known as 'the\nadvance of science', and 'the growth of democracy'. But how far\n'science' reaches beyond the laboratory and the philosopher's study, and\n'democracy' beyond political freedom and the ballot-box, is precisely\nwhat poetry compels us to understand; and not least the poetry of the\nlast sixty years with which we are to-day concerned.\n\nHow then does the history of poetry in Europe during these sixty years\nstand in relation to these underlying processes? On the surface, at\nleast, it hardly resembles growth at all. In France above all--the\nliterary focus of Europe, and its sensitive thermometer--the movement of\npoetry has been, on the surface, a succession of pronounced and even\nfanatical schools, each born in reaction from its precursor, and\nsuccumbing to the triumph of its successor. Yet a deeper scrutiny will\nperceive that these warring artists were, in fact, groups of successive\ndiscoverers, who each added something to the resources and the scope of\npoetry, and also retained and silently adopted the discoveries of the\npast; while the general line of advance is in the direction marked by\nthe two main currents I have described. Nowhere else is the succession\nof phases so sharp and clear as in France. But since France does reflect\nmore sensitively than any other country the movement of the mind of\nEurope, and since her own mind has, more than that of any other country,\nradiated ideas and fashions out over the rest of Europe, these phases\nare in fact traceable also, with all kinds of local and national\nvariations, in Italy and Spain, Germany and England, and I propose to\ntake this fact as the basis of our present very summary and diagrammatic\nview. The three phases of the sixty years are roughly divided by the\nyears 1880 and 1900.\n\nThe first, most clearly seen in the French Parnassians, is in close, if\nunconscious, sympathy with the temper of science. Poetry, brought to the\nlimit of expressive power, is used to express, with the utmost veracity,\nprecision, and impersonal self-suppression, the beauty and the tragedy\nof the world. It sought Hellenic lucidity and Hellenic calm--in the\nexample most familiar to us, the Stoic calm and 'sad lucidity' of\nMatthew Arnold.\n\nThe second, best seen in the French Symbolists, was directly hostile to\nscience. But they repelled its confident analysis of material reality in\nthe name of a part of reality which it ignored or denied, an immaterial\nworld which they mystically apprehended, which eluded direct\ndescription, frustrated rhetoric, and was only to be come at by the\nmagical suggestion of colour, music, and symbol. It is most familiar to\nus in the 'Celtic' verse of Mr. Yeats and 'A.E.'.\n\nThe third, still about us, and too various and incomplete for final\ndefinition, is in closer sympathy with science, but, in great part, only\nbecause science has itself found accommodation between nature and\nspirit, a new ideality born of, and growing out of, the real. If the\nfirst found Beauty, the end of art, in the plastic repose of sculpture,\nand the second in the mysterious cadences of music, the poetry of the\ntwentieth century finds its ideal in life, in the creative evolution of\nbeing, even in the mere things, the 'prosaic' pariahs of previous\npoetry, on which our shaping wills are wreaked. We know it in poets\nunlike one another but yet more unlike their predecessors, from\nD'Annunzio and Dehmel and Claudel to our Georgian experimenters in the\npoetry of paradox and adventure.\n\n\nI. POETIC NATURALISM\n\nThe third quarter of the nineteenth century opened, in western Europe,\nwith a decided set-back for those who lived on dreams, and a\ncorresponding complacency among those who throve on facts. The political\nand social revolution which swept the continent in 1848 and 1849, and\nfound ominous echoes here, was everywhere, for the time, defeated. The\ndiscoveries of science in the third and fourth decades, resting on\ncalculation and experiment, were investing it with the formidable\nprestige which it has never since lost; and both metaphysics and\ntheology reeled perceptibly under the blows delivered in its name. The\nworld exhibition of 1851 seemed to announce an age of settled\nprosperity, peace, and progress.\n\nIn literature the counterpart of these phenomena was the revolt from\n_Romanticism_, a movement, in its origins, of poetic liberation and\ndiscovery, which had rejuvenated poetry in Germany and Italy, and yet\nmore signally in England and in France, but was now petering out in\nemotional incoherence, deified impulse, and irresponsible caprice.\n\nThe revolt accordingly everywhere sought to bring literature into closer\nconformity with reality; with reality as interpreted by science; and to\nmake art severe and precise. In the novel, Flaubert founded modern\nnaturalism with his enthralling picture of dull provincials, _Mme\nBovary_ (1857); two years later George Eliot tilted openly in _Adam\nBede_ against the romancers who put you off with marvellous pictures of\ndragons, but could not draw the real horses and cattle before their\neyes.[3]\n\nRealism, at once more unflinching and more profoundly poetic, and yet\npenetrated, especially in Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, with an intensity of\nmoral conviction beside which the ethical fervour of George Eliot seems\nan ineffectual fire, was one of the roots of the Russian Novel; which\nalso reached its climax in the third quarter of the century. But though\nit concurred with analogous movements in the West, it drew little of\nmoment from them; even Turgenjev, a greater Maupassant in artistry, drew\nhis inner inspiration from wholly alien springs of Slavonic passion and\nthought. And it was chiefly through them that the Russian novel later\nhelped to nourish the radically alien movement of Symbolism in France.\n\nIn drama, Ibsen broke away from the Romantic tradition of his country\nwith the iconoclastic energy of one who had spent his own unripe youth\nin offering it a half-reluctant homage. The man of actuality in him\ndenounced the drama built upon the legends of the Scandinavian past--the\nmark for him of a people of dreamers oblivious of the calls of the hour.\nOn the morrow of the disastrous (and for Norway in his view ignominious)\nDanish war of 1864, his scorn rang out with prophetic intensity in the\nfierce tirade of _Brand_. Happily for his art, revolt against romance in\nhim was united, more signally than in more than two or three of his\ncontemporaries, with the power of seizing and presenting contemporary\nlife. 'Realism' certainly expresses inadequately enough the genius of an\nart like his, enormously alive rather than fundamentally like life, and\nno less charged with purpose and idea than the work of the great\nRussians, though under cover of reticences and irony little known to\nthem. The great series of prose dramas--from 1867 (_The League of\nYouth_) onwards--with their experimental prelude _Love's Comedy_\n(1863)--were to be for all Europe the most considerable literary event\nof the fourth quarter of the century, and they generated affiliated\nschools throughout the West. They did not indeed themselves remain\nuntouched by the general intellectual currents of the time, and it will\nbe noticed below that the later plays (from _The Lady of the Sea_\nonward) betray affinities, like the Russian novel, with what is here\ncalled the second phase of the European movement.\n\nIn Criticism, the showy generalizations of Villemain gave place to\nSainte-Beuve's series of essays towards a 'natural history of minds'[4]\nand Taine's more sweeping attempt to explain literature by\nenvironment.[5] Among ourselves, Meredith's _Essay on Comedy_ (1872)\nbrilliantly restated Moliere's dictum that the comic is founded on the\nreal, and not on a fantastic distortion of it, while Matthew Arnold\napplied alike to literature and to theology a critical insight\nfertilized by his master Sainte-Beuve's delicate faculty for disengaging\nthe native quality of minds from the incrustations of tradition and\ndogma.\n\nIn poetry the French Parnassians created the most brilliant poetry that\nhas, since Milton, been built upon erudition and impeccable art. Their\nleader, Leconte de Lisle, in the preface of his _Poemes antiques_\n(1853), scornfully dismissed Romanticism as a second-hand, incoherent,\nand hybrid art, compounded of German mysticism, reverie, and Byron's\nstormy egoism. Sully Prudhomme addressed a sterner criticism to the\nshade of Alfred de Musset--the Oscar Wilde of the later\nRomantics[6]--who had never known the stress of thought, and had filled\nhis poetry with light love and laughter and voluptuous despairs; the new\npoets were to be no such gay triflers, but workers at a forge, beating\nthe glowing metal into shape, and singing as they toiled.[7] Carducci,\ntoo, derisively contrasts the 'moonlight' of Romanticism--cold and\ninfructuous beams, proper for Gothic ruins and graveyards--with the\nbenignant and fertilizing sunshine he sought to restore; for him, too,\nthe poet is no indolent caroller, and no gardener to grow fragrant\nflowers for ladies, but a forge-worker with muscles of steel.[8] Among\nus, as usual, the divergence is less sharply marked; but when Browning\ncalls Byron a 'flat fish', and Arnold sees the poet of _Prometheus_\nappropriately pinnacled in the 'intense inane', they are expressing a\nkindred repugnance to a poetry wanting in intellectual substance and in\nclear-cut form.\n\nIf we turn from the negations of the anti-romantic revolt to consider\nwhat it actually sought and achieved in poetry, we find that its\npositive ideals, too, without being derived from science, reflect the\ntemper of a scientific time. Thus the supreme gift of all the greater\npoets of this group was a superb vision of beauty, and of beauty--_pace_\nHogarth--there is no science. But their view of beauty was partly\nlimited, partly fertilized and enriched, by the sources they discovered\nand the conditions they imposed, and both the discoveries and the\nlimitations added something to the traditions and resources of poetry.\nThus:\n\n(1) They exploited the aesthetic values to be had by knowledge. They\npursued erudition and built their poetry upon erudition, not in the\ndidactic way of the Augustans, but as a mine of poetic material and\nsuggestion. Far more truly than Wordsworth's this poetry could claim to\nbe the impassioned expression which is in the face of science; for\nWordsworth's knowledge is a mystic insight wholly estranged from\nerudition; his celandine, his White Doe, belong to no fauna or flora.\nWhen Leconte de Lisle, on the other hand, paints the albatross of the\nsouthern sea or the condor of the Andes, the eye of a passionate\nexplorer and observer has gone to the making of their exotic sublimity.\nThe strange regions of humanity, too, newly disclosed by comparative\nreligion and mythology, he explores with cosmopolitan impartiality and\nimaginative penetration; carving, as in marble, the tragedy of Hjalmar's\nheart and Angentyr's sword, of Cain's doom, and Erinnyes never, like\nthose of Aeschylus, appeased. The Romantics had loved to play with\nexotic suggestions; but the East of Hugo's _Orientales_ or Moore's\n_Lalla Rookh_ is merely a veneer; the poet of _Qain_ has heard the wild\nasses cry and seen the Syrian sun descend into the golden foam.\n\nIn the three commanding poets of our English mid-century, learning\nbecomes no less evidently poetry's honoured and indispensable ally.\nTennyson studies nature like a naturalist, not like a mystic, and finds\nfelicities of phrase poised, as it were, upon delicate observation. Man,\ntoo, in Browning, loses the vague aureole of Shelleyan humanity, and\nbecomes the Italian of the Renascence or the Arab doctor or the German\nmusician, all alive but in their habits as they lived, and fashioned in\na brain fed, like no other, on the Book of the histories of Souls.\nMatthew Arnold more distinctively than either, and both for better and\nfor worse, was the scholar-poet; among other things he was, with Heredia\nand Carducci, a master of the poetry of critical portraiture, which\nfocusses in a few lines (_Sophocles_, _Rahel_, _Heine_, _Obermann Once\nMore_) the meaning of a great career or of a complex age.\n\n(2) In the elaboration of their vision of beauty from these enlarged\nsources, Leconte de Lisle and his followers demanded an impeccable\nartistry. 'A great poet', he said, 'and a flawless artist are\nconvertible terms.' The Parnassian precision rested on the postulate\nthat, with sufficient resources of vocabulary and phrase, everything can\nbe adequately expressed, the analogue of the contemporary scientific\nconviction that, with sufficient resources of experiment and\ncalculation, everything can be exhaustively explained. The pursuit of an\nobjective calm, the repudiation of missionary ardour, of personal\nemotion, of the _cri du coeur_, of individual originality, involved the\nsurrender of some of the glories of spontaneous song, but opened the\nway, for consummate artists such as these, to a profusion of\nundiscovered beauty, and to a peculiar grandeur not to be attained by\nthe egoist. Leconte's temperament leads him to subjects which are\nalready instinct with tragedy and thus in his hands assume this grandeur\nwithout effort. The power of sheer style to ennoble is better seen in\nSully Prudhomme's _tours de force_ of philosophic poetry--when he\nunfolds his ideas upon 'Justice' or 'Happiness', for instance, under the\nform of a debate where masterly resources of phrase and image are\ncompelled to the service of a rigorous logic; or in the brief cameo-like\npieces on 'Memory', 'Habit', 'Forms', and similar unpromising\nabstractions, most nearly paralleled in English by the quatrains of Mr.\nWilliam Watson. But the cameo comparison is still more aptly applied to\nthe marvellously-chiselled sonnets of Heredia--monuments of a moment, as\nsculpture habitually is, but reaching out, as the finest sculpture does,\nto invisible horizons, and to the before and after--the old wooden\nguardian-god recalling his former career as a scarlet figure-head\nlaughing at the laughter or fury of the waves; Antony seeing the flying\nships of Actium mirrored in the traitorous azure of Cleopatra's eyes.\n\nIn Italy the ideal of an austere simplicity and reserve, resting as it\ndid on the immense prestige of Leopardi, asserted itself even in the\nnaturally exuberant and impetuous genius of Carducci. Without it we\nshould not have had those reticences of an abounding nature, those\neconomies of a spendthrift, which make him one of the first poets of the\nsonnet in the land of its origin, and one of the greatest writers of\nOdes among the 'barbarians'. With reason he declared in 1891, when most\nof his poetry had been written, that 'all the apparent contradictions in\nmy work are resolved by the triple formula: in politics Italy before\nall, in aesthetics classical poetry before all, in practice, frankness\nand force before all'. His two chief disciples, D'Annunzio and Pascoli,\nantithetical in almost all points, may be said to have divided his\ninheritance in this; Pascoli's Vergilian economy contrasting with the\nexuberance of D'Annunzio somewhat as with us the classicism of the\npresent poet-laureate with that of Swinburne. In Germany the Parnassian\nreserve, concentration, and aristocratic exclusiveness was to reappear\nin the lyrical group of Stefan Georg.\n\n(3) Finally, the Parnassian poetry, like most contemporary science, was\nin varying degrees detached from and hostile to religion, and found some\nof its most vibrating notes in contemplating its empty universe. Leconte\nde Lisle offers the Stoic the last mournful joy of 'a heart seven-times\nsteeped in the divine nothingness',[9] or calls him to 'that city of\nsilence, the sepulchre of the vanished gods, the human heart, seat of\ndreams, where eternally ferments and perishes the illusory\nuniverse'.[10] Here, too, Leopardi had anticipated him.\n\nIn the ebullient genius of Carducci and Swinburne this lofty disdain for\ntheological illusions passes into the fierce derision of the Ode to\nSatan and the militant paganism of the Sonnet to Luther, and the _Hymn\nto Man_. In Matthew Arnold it became a half-wistful resignation, the\npensive retrospect of the Greek 'thinking of his own gods beside a\nfallen runic stone', or listening to the 'melancholy long withdrawing\nroar' of the tide of faith 'down the vast edges drear and naked shingles\nof the world'; while in James Thomson resignation passed into the\nunrelieved pessimism of the _City of Dreadful Night_. In all these\npoets, what was of moment for poetry was not, of course, the\nanti-theological or anti-clerical sentiment which marks them all, but\nthe notes of sombre and terrible beauty which the contemplation of the\npassing of the gods, and of man's faith in them, elicits from their art.\n\nYet the supreme figure, not only among those who share in the\nanti-Romantic reaction but among all the European poets of his time, was\none who had in the heyday of youth led the Romantic vanguard--Victor\nHugo. Leconte de Lisle never ceased to own him his master, and Hugo's\ngenius had since his exile, in 1851, entered upon a phase in which a\npoetry such as the Parnassian sought--objective, reticent, impersonal,\ntechnically consummate--was at least one of the strings of his\nmany-chorded lyre. Three magnificent works--the very crown and flower of\nHugo's production--belong to this decade, 1850-60,--the _Chatiments_,\n_Contemplations_, and _Legende des Siecles_. I said advisedly, one\nstring in his lyre. Objective reticence is certainly not the virtue of\nthe terrible indictment of 'Napoleon the Little'. On the other hand, the\ngreatest qualities of Parnassian poetry were exemplified in many\nsplendid pieces of the other two works, together with a large benignity\nwhich their austere Stoicism rarely permits, and I shall take as\nillustration of the finest achievement of poetry in this whole first\nphase the closing stanzas of his famous _Boaz Endormi_ in the _Legende_,\nwhose beauty even translation cannot wholly disguise. Our decasyllable\nis substituted for the Alexandrine.[11]\n\n    'While thus he slumbered, Ruth, a Moabite,\n    Lay at the feet of Boaz, her breast bare,\n    Waiting, she knew not when, she knew not where,\n    The sudden mystery of wakening light.\n\n    Boaz knew not that there a woman lay,\n    Nor Ruth what God desired of her could tell;\n    Fresh rose the perfume of the asphodel,\n    And tender breathed the dusk on Galgala.\n\n    Nuptial, august, and solemn was the night,\n    Angels no doubt were passing on the wing,\n    For now and then there floated glimmering\n    As it might be an azure plume in flight.\n\n    The low breathing of Boaz mingled there\n    With the soft murmur of the mossy rills.\n    It was the month when earth is debonnaire;\n    The lilies were in flower upon the hills.\n\n    Night compassed Boaz' slumber and Ruth's dreams,\n    The sheep-bells vaguely tinkled far and near;\n    Infinite love breathed from the starry sphere;\n    'Twas the still hour when lions seek the streams.\n\n    Ur and Jerimedeth were all at rest;\n    The stars enamelled the blue vault of sky;\n    Amid those flowers of darkness in the west\n    The crescent shone; and with half open eye\n\n    Ruth wondered, moveless, in her veils concealed,\n    What heavenly reaper, when the day was done\n    And harvest gathered in, had idly thrown\n    That golden sickle on the starry field.'\n\n\nII. DREAM AND SYMBOL\n\nThe rise of French symbolism towards the end of the 'seventies was a\nsymptom of a changed temper of thought and feeling traceable in some\ndegree throughout civilized Europe. Roughly, it marked the passing of\nthe confident and rather superficial security of the 'fifties into a\nvague unrest, a kind of troubled awe. As if existence altogether was a\nbigger, more mysterious, and intractable thing than was assumed, not so\neasily to be captured in the formulas of triumphant science, or mirrored\nand analysed by the most consummate literary art.\n\nPolitical and social conditions contributed to the change. France stood\non the morrow of a shattering catastrophe. The complacency of\nmid-Victorian England began to be disturbed by menaces from the\nworkshops of industry. And it was precisely in triumphant Germany\nherself that revolutionary Socialism found, in Karl Marx, its first\norganizing mind and authoritative exponent. The millennium was not so\nnear as it had seemed; the problems of society, instead of having been\nsolved once for all, were only, it appeared, just coming into view.\n\nIn the secluded workshops of Thought, subtler changes were silently\ngoing on. The dazzling triumphs of physical science, which had led\npoetry itself to emulate the marble impassivity of the scientific\ntemper, were undiminished; but they were seen in a new perspective,\ntheir authority ceased to be exclusive, the focus of interest was slowly\nshifting from the physical to the psychical world. Lange, writing the\nhistory of _Materialism_ in 1874, virtually performed its obsequies; and\nTyndall's brilliant effort, in 1871, to equip primordial Matter with the\n'promise and the potency' of mind, unconsciously confessed that its\ncause was lost. Psychology, after Fechner, steadily advanced in prestige\nand importance from the outlying circumference of the sciences to their\nvery centre and core.\n\nBut it was not merely particular doctrines that lost ground; the scope\nand validity of scientific method itself began to be questioned. In the\nmost varied fields of thought there set in that 'idealistic reaction\nagainst science' which has been described in one of the most penetrating\nbooks of our time. Most significant of all, science itself, in the\nperson of Mach, and Pearson, has abandoned the claim to do more than\nprovide descriptive formulas for phenomena the real nature of which is\nutterly beyond its power to discover.\n\nOf this changed outlook the growth of Symbolism is the most significant\nliterary expression. It was not confined to France, or to poetry. We\nknow how the drama of Ibsen became charged with ulterior meanings as the\nfiery iconoclast passed into the poet of insoluble and ineluctable\ndoubt. But by the French symbolists it was pursued as a creed, as a\nreligion. If the dominant poetry of the third quarter of the century\nreflected the prestige of science, the dominant poetry of the fourth\nreflected the idealistic reactions against it, and Villiers de l'Ile\nAdam, its founder, came forward proclaiming that 'Science was bankrupt'.\nAnd so it might well seem to him, the visionary mystic inhabiting, as\nhe did, a world of strange beauty and invisible mystery which science\ncould not unlock. The symbolists had not all an explicit philosophy; but\nthey were all aware of potencies in the world or in themselves which\nlanguage cannot articulately express, and which are yet more vitally\nreal than the 'facts' which we can grasp and handle, and the\n'respectable' people whom we can measure and reckon with. Sometimes\nthese potencies are vaguely mysterious, an impalpable spirit speaking\nonly by hints and tokens; sometimes they are felt as the pulsations of\nan intoxicating beauty, breaking forth in every flower, but which can\nonly be possessed, not described; sometimes they are moods of the soul,\nbeyond analysis, and yet full of wonder and beauty, visions half\ncreated, half perceived. Experiences like these might have been\ndescribed, as far as description would go, by brilliant artificers like\nthe Parnassians. Verlaine and Mallarme did not discover, but they\napplied with new daring, the fact that an experience may be communicated\nby words which, instead of representing it, suggest it by their colour,\ntheir cadences, their rhythm, their verbal echoes and inchoate phrases.\nAll the traditional artistry of French poetic speech was condemned as\nboth inadequate and insincere. 'Take eloquence and wring her neck!\nNothing but music and the nuance--all the rest is \"Literature\", mere\nwriting--futile verbosity!' that was the famous watchword of Verlaine's\ncreed.[12]\n\nThe strength of symbolism lay in this demand for a complete sincerity of\nutterance. Its revolt against science was at the same time a vindication\nof truth, an effort to get nearer to reality both by shedding off the\nincrustations of habitual phrase and by calling into play the obscure\naffinities by which it can be magically evoked. In the subtleties of\nsuggestion latent in sensations the symbolists were real discoverers.\nBut the way had already been pointed in famous verses by Baudelaire:\n\n    'Earth is a Temple, from whose pillared mazes\n    Murmurs confused of living utterance rise;\n    Therein Man thro' a forest of symbols paces,\n    That contemplate him with familiar eyes.\n\n    As prolonged echoes, wandering on and on,\n    At last in one far tenebrous depth unite,\n    Impalpable as darkness, and as light,\n    Scents, sounds, and colours meet in unison.'\n\nThere Baudelaire had touched a chord that was to sound loud and long;\nfor what else than this thought of all the senses meeting in union\ninspired the music drama of Wagner?--only one of his points of kinship,\nas we shall see, with symbolism.\n\nThus the symbolists, in quest of reality, touched it only through the\ninner life. There they are, in their fashion, realists. 'A landscape',\nsaid Albert Samain, 'is a state of soul.' The landscape may be false,\nbut the state of soul is veracious. What interests them in life is the\nimage of life, not lucidly reflected but exquisitely transformed. Yet\nthe vision of the world caught in that transforming mirror was not\nwithout strange revealing glimpses, invisible, like stars mirrored in a\nwell, to the plain observer. They could hear the music of the spheres;\nor in the language of Samain's sonnet\n\n    'Feel flowing through them, like a pouring wave,\n    The music-tide of universal Soul;\n    Hear in their heart the beating pulse of heaven.'[13]\n\nIn the earlier poetry of Maurice Maeterlinck, the inner life imposes a\nmore jealous sway. The poet sits not before a transforming mirror, where\nthe outer world is disguised, but in a closed chamber, where it is only\ndreamed of, and it fades into the incoherence and the irrelevance of a\ndream. But the chamber is of rare beauty, and in its hushed and perfumed\ntwilight, dramas of the spirit are being silently and almost\nimperceptibly enacted, more tragic than the loud passion and violence of\nthe stage. He has written an essay on Silence,--silence that, like\nhumility, holds for him a 'treasure' beyond the reach of eloquence or of\npride; for it is the dwelling of our true self, the spiritual core of\nus, 'more profound and more boundless than the self of the passions or\nof pure reason.' And so there is less matter for drama in 'a captain who\nconquers in battle or a husband who avenges his honour than in an old\nman, seated in his arm-chair waiting patiently with his lamp beside him,\ngiving unconscious ear to all the eternal laws that reign about his\nhouse, interpreting without comprehending, the silence of door and\nwindow, and the quivering voice of the light; submitting with bent head\nto the presence of his soul and his destiny.'\n\nIt is on this side that symbolism discloses its kinship with the Russian\nnovel,--with the mystic quietism of Tolstoy and the religion of\nself-sacrifice in Dostoievsky; and its sharp antagonism to the\nNietzschean gospel of daemonic will and ruthless self-assertion, just\nthen being preached in Germany. The two faiths were both alive and both\nresponded to deep though diverse needs of the time; but the immediate\nfuture, as we shall see, belonged to the second. They had their first\nresounding encounter when Nietzsche held up his once venerated master\nWagner to scorn as the chief of 'decadents' because he had turned from\nthe superhuman heroism of Siegfried and the boundless passion of\nTristram to glorify the mystic Catholicism of the Grail and the\nloveliness of the 'pure fool' Parzifal.\n\nOutside France symbolism found eager response among young poets, but\nrather as a literary than as an ethical doctrine. In Germany Dehmel, the\nmost powerful personality among her recent poets, began as a disciple of\nVerlaine; in Italy, D'Annunzio wove esoteric symbols into the texture of\nthe more than Nietzschean supermanliness of his supermen and superwomen.\nMore significant than these, however, was the symbolism of what we call\nthe Celtic school of poets in Ireland. For here both their artistic\nimpressionism and their mystic spirituality found a congenial soil. The\nprincipal mediating force was Mr. Arthur Symons, friend of Verlaine and\nof Yeats, and himself the most penetrating interpreter of Symbolism,\nboth as critic and as poet.[14] And to the French influence was added\nthat of Blake, a poet too great to be included in any school, but allied\nto symbolism by his scorn for 'intellect' and for rhetoric, and by his\naudacities of figured speech. But Mr. Yeats and 'A.E.', the leaders of\nthe 'Celtic' group, are in no sense derivation voices. They had the\ngreat advantage over the French of a living native folklore and faery\nlore. Hence their symbolism, no less subtle, and no less steeped in\npoetic imagining, has not the same air of literary artifice, of studio\nfabrication, of cultured Bohemianism; it breathes of the old Irish\nhills, holy with old-world rites, and the haunted woods, and the magical\ntwilight and dewy dawns. And beneath all the folklore, and animating it,\nis the passion for Ireland herself, the mother, deathless and ever\nyoung, whom neither the desolation of the time nor the decay of hope can\ntouch:\n\n    'Out-worn heart in a time out-worn\n    Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;\n    Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight;\n    Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.\n\n    Your mother Eire is always young,\n    Dew ever shining and twilight grey;\n    Tho' hope fall from you and love decay\n    Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.\n\n    Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill;\n    For there the mystical brotherhood\n    Of sun and moon and hollow and wood\n    And river and stream work out their will.'\n\nFor that, the French had only the Fauns of a literary neo-classicism.\nThe passion for France was yet indeed to find a voice in poetry. But\nthis was reserved for the more trumpet-tongued tones of the contemporary\nphase to which I now turn.\n\n\nIII. 'CREATIVE EVOLUTION'\n\n1. _Philosophic Analogies_\n\nNothing is more symptomatic of the incipient twentieth century than the\ndrawing together of currents of thought and action before remote or\nhostile. The Parnassians were an exclusive sect, the symbolists an\neccentric and often disreputable coterie; Claudel, D'Annunzio, Rudyard\nKipling, speak home to throngs of everyday readers, are even national\nidols, and our Georgians contrive to be bought and read without the\nleast surrender of what is most poetic in their poetry. And the\nanalogies between philosophic thinking and poetic creation become\npeculiarly striking. Merely to name Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson,\nand Benedetto Croce is to become vividly aware of these analogies and\nof the common bent from which they spring. All three--whether with\nbrilliant rhetoric, or iron logic, or a blend of both--use their\nthinking power to deride the theorizing intelligence in comparison with\nthe creative intuition which culminates in poetry. To define the scope\nand province of this intuition is the purport of Croce's epoch-making\n_Aesthetics_, the basis and starting-point of his illumining work, in\n_Critica_, as a literary critic. Bergson is the dominant figure in a\nline of French thinkers possessed with the conviction that life, a\nperpetual streaming forth of creative energy, cannot be caught in the\nmechanism of law, adapted to merely physical phenomena, which at best\nmerely gives us generalizations and lets the all-important\nparticulars--the individual living thing--slip through the meshes;\nwhereas intuition--the eye fixed on the object--penetrates to the very\nheart of this individual living thing, and only drops out the skeleton\nframework of abstract laws. Philosophy, in these thinkers, was deeply\nimbued with the analogies of artistic creation. 'Beauty,' said\nRavaisson, 'and especially beauty in the most divine and perfect form,\ncontains the secret of the world.'[15] And Bergson's _Creative\nEvolution_ embodied a conception of life and of the world profoundly\ncongenial to the artistic and poetic temper of his time. For he\nrestated, it has been well said, the two great surviving formulas of the\nnineteenth century, evolution and the will to live, in terms precisely\nsuited to the temper of the age just dawning. The will to live became a\nformula of hope and progress; evolution became a formula of vital\nimpulse, of creative purpose, not of mechanical 'struggle for\nexistence'.\n\nThe idea that aesthetic experience gives a profounder clue than logical\nthought to the inner meaning of things was as old as Plato. It was one\nof the crowning thoughts of Kant; it deeply coloured the metaphysics of\nSchelling. And Nietzsche developed it with brilliant audacity when in\nhis _Birth of Tragedy_ (1872) he contrasted scornfully with the laboured\nand ineffectual constructions of the theoretic man, even of Socrates the\nfounder of philosophy, the radiant vision of the artist, the lucid\nclarity of Apollo. 'His book gave the lie to a thousand years of orderly\ndevelopment', wrote the great Hellenist Wilamowitz, Nietzsche's old\nschoolfellow, indignant at his rejection of the labours of scholastic\nreason. But it affirmed energetically the passion of his own time for\nimmediate and first-hand experience.\n\nAnd it did more. Beside and above Apollo, Nietzsche put Dionysus; beside\nvision and above it, _rage_. Of the union of these two Tragedy was born.\nAnd Nietzsche's glorification of this elemental creative force also\nresponded to a wider movement in philosophy, here chiefly German. His\nDionysiac rage is directly derived from that will in which Schopenhauer\nsaw the master faculty of man and the hidden secret of the universe; and\nthe beginning of Schopenhauer's fame, about 1850, coincides with a\ngeneral rehabilitation of will as the dominant faculty in the soul and\nin the world, at the cost of the methodic orderly processes of\nunderstanding; a movement exhibited in the psychological innovations of\nWundt and Muensterberg, in the growth of the doctrine that what a thing\nis is determined by what it _can_; that value is in fact the measure,\nand even the meaning, of existence; that will can arm impotence, create\nfaith, and master disease; and in the call of the colossal will-power\nwhich created the German empire and launched her on the career of\nindustrial greatness. Nietzsche's Superman is, above all, a being of\ncolossal and masterful will, and Zarathustra, the prophet of\nsuperhumanity, is only an incarnation of the will that for Schopenhauer\nmoved the world. The moment at which the prestige of will began\ndefinitely to overcome that of reasoning is marked, as Aliotta has\npointed out, by the appearance of James's _Will to Believe_, just when\nagnosticism seemed triumphant.\n\nNietzsche and Bergson thus, with all their obvious and immense\ndivergences, concurred in this respect, important from our present point\nof view, that their influence tended to transfer authority from the\nphilosophic reason to those 'irrational' elements of mind which reach\ntheir highest intensity in the vision and 'rage' of the poet. James's\nvindication of drunken exaltation as a source of religious insight was\nnot the least symptomatic passage of his great book. And both concurred,\nhowever remote their methods or their speech, in conceiving reality as\ncreation, creation in which we take part--a conception which again, in\nthe hands of the constructive religious thinker, led directly to the\ntype of faith announced in that last--the Jamesian--'Variety' of\nreligious experience, which represents us as indispensable\nfellow-workers and allies of a growing and striving God.\n\n\n2. _The New Freedom_\n\nNo reader of the poetry of our time can mistake the kinship of its\nprevailing temper with that which lies at the root of these\nphilosophies. Without trying to fit its infinite variety to any finite\nformula, we may yet venture to find in it, as Mr. McDowall has found in\nour Georgian poetry in particular, a characteristic union of grip and\ndetachment; of intense and eager grasp upon actuality as it breaks upon\nus in the successive moments of the stream of time, and yet an inner\nindependence of it, a refusal to be obsessed by its sanctions and\nauthorities, a tacit assumption that everything, by whatever length of\ntradition consecrated, must come before the bar of the new century to be\njudged by its new mind. 'Youth is knocking at the door,' as it is said\nof Hilda in the symbolical _Master Builder_, and doubtless in every\ngeneration the philistines or Victorians in possession have had occasion\nto make that remark. The difference in our time is rather that youth\ncomes in without knocking, and that instead of having to work slowly up\nto final dominance against the inertia of an established literary\nhousehold, it has spontaneously, like Hilda Wrangel, taken possession of\nthe home, rinding criticism boundlessly eulogistic, the public\ninexhaustibly responsive, and philosophy interpreting the universe, as\nwe have seen, precisely in sympathy with its own naive intuitions. No\nwonder that youth at twenty is writing its autobiography or having its\nbiography written, and that at twenty-five it makes a show of laying\ndown the pen, like Max Beerbaum, with the gesture of one rising sated\nfrom the feast of life: 'I shall write no more.'\n\nThe fact that youth finds itself thus at home in the world explains the\ndifference in temper between the new poets of freedom and the old. The\nwild or wistful cry of Shelley for an ideal state emancipated from pain\nand death is as remote from their poetry as his spiritual anarchy from\ntheir politics; they can dream and see visions, in Scott's phrase, 'like\nany one going', but their feet are on the solid ground of actuality and\ncitizenship, and the actuality comes into and colours their poetry no\nless than their vision. When Mr. Drinkwater looks out of his 'town\nwindow' he dreams of the crocus flaming gold in far-off Warwick woods;\nbut he does not repudiate the drab inglorious street nor the tramway\nringing and moaning over the cobbles, and they come into his verse. And\nI find it significant of the whole temper of the new poetry to ordinary\nlife no less than that of ordinary men and women to the new poetry,\nthat he has won a singularly intimate relationship with a great\nindustrial community. He has not fared like his carver in stone. But\nthen the eagles of his carving, though capable of rising, like\nShelley's, to the sun, are the Cromwells and Lincolns who themselves\nbrought the eagle's valour and undimmed eye into the stress and turmoil\nof affairs.\n\nNo doubt a fiercer note of revolt may be heard at times in the poetry of\ncontemporary France, and that precisely where devotion to some parts of\nthe heritage of the past is most impassioned. The iconoclastic scorn of\nyouth's idealism for the effeteness of the 'old hunkers', as Whitman\ncalled them, has rarely rung out more sharply than in the closing\nstanzas of Claudel's great Palm Sunday ode. All the pomp and splendour\nof bishops and cardinals is idle while victory yet is in suspense: that\nmust be won by youth in arms.\n\n        'To-morrow the candles and the dais and the bishop with his clergy\n                coped and gold embossed,\n    But to-day the shout like thunder of an equal, unofficered host\n        Who, led and kindled by the flag alone,\n    With one sole spirit swollen, and on one sole thought intent,\n    Are become one cry like the crash of walls shattered and gates rent:\n        'Hosanna unto David's son!'\n\n    Needless the haughty steeds marble-sculptured, or triumphal arches, or\n                chariots and four,\n    Needless the flags and the caparisons, the moving pyramids and towers,\n                and cars that thunder and roar,--\n        'Tis but an ass whereon sits Christ;\n    For to make an end of the nightmare built by the pedants and the\n                pharisees,\n    To get home to reality across the gulf of mendacities,\n        The first she-ass he saw sufficed!\n\n    Eternal youth is master, the hideous gang of old men is done with, we\n    Stand here like children, fanned by the breath of the things to be,\n        But victory we will have to-day!\n    Afterwards the corn that like gold gives return, afterwards the gold\n                that like corn is faithful and will bear,\n    The fruit we have henceforth only to gather, the land we have\n                henceforth only to share,\n        But victory we will have to-day!'\n\nIn the same spirit Charles Peguy--like Claudel, be it noted, a student\nof Bergson at the Ecole Normale--found his ideal in the great story of\nthe young girl of Domremy who saved France when all the pomp and wisdom\nof generals had broken down. And in our own poetry has not Mr. Bottomley\nrewritten the Lear story, with the focus of power and interest\ntransferred from the old king--left with not an inch of king in him--to\na glorious young Artemis-Goneril?\n\nBut among our English Georgians this tense iconoclastic note is rare.\nTheir detachment from what they repudiate is not fanatical or ascetic;\nit is conveyed less in invective than in paradox and irony; their temper\nis not that which flies to the wilderness and dresses in camel hair, but\nof mariners putting out to the unknown and bidding a not unfriendly\ngood-bye at the shore. The temper of adventure is deeply ingrained in\nthe new romance as in the old; the very word adventure is saturated with\na sentiment very congenial to us both for better and worse; it quickens\nthe hero in us and flatters the devil-may-care.\n\nIn its simplest form the temper of adventure has given us the profusion\nof pleasant verses which we know as the poetry of 'vagabondage' and 'the\nopen road'. The point is too familiar to be dwelt on, and has been\nadmirably illustrated and discussed by Mr. McDowall. George Borrow,\nprince of vagabonds, Stevenson, the 'Ariel', with his 'Vagabond-song'--\n\n    'All I seek the heaven above,\n      And the road below me',\n\nand a few less vocal swallows, anticipated the more sustained flights\nand melodies of to-day, while Borrow's wonderful company of vagabond\nheroes and heroines is similarly premonitory of the alluring gipsies and\ncircus-clowns of our Georgian poetry. Sometimes a traditional motive is\ncreatively transformed; as when Father Time, the solemn shadow with\nadmonitory hour-glass, appears in Mr. Hodgson's poem as an old gipsy\npitching his caravan 'only a moment and off once again'.\n\nElsewhere a deeper note is sounded. It is not for nothing that Jeanne\nd'Arc is the saint of French Catholic democracy, or that Peguy, her\npoet, calls the Incarnation the 'sublime adventure of God's Son'. That\nlast adventure of the Dantesque Ulysses beyond the sunset thrills us\nto-day more than the Odyssean tale of his triumphant home-return, and\nD'Annunzio, greatly daring, takes it as the symbol of his own\nadventurous life. Francis Thompson's most famous poem, too, represents\nthe divine effort to save the erring soul under the image of the hound's\neager chase of a quarry which may escape; while Yeats hears God 'blowing\nhis lonely horn' along the moonlit faery glades of Erin. And Meredith,\nwho so often profoundly voiced the spirit of the time in which only his\nripe old age was passed, struck this note in his sublime verses on\nrevolutionary France--\n\n                      'soaring France\n    That divinely shook the dead\n    From living man; that stretched ahead\n    Her resolute forefinger straight\n    And marched toward the gloomy gate\n    Of Earth's Untried.'\n\nIt is needless to dwell upon the affinity between this temper of\nadventure in poetry and the teaching of Bergson. That the link is not\nwholly fortuitous is shown by the interesting _Art Poetique_ (1903) of\nhis quondam pupil, Claudel, a little treatise pervaded by the idea of\nCreative-evolution.\n\nIt was natural in such a time to assume that any living art of poetry\nmust itself be new, and in fact the years immediately before and after\nthe turn of the century are crowded with announcements of 'new'\nmovements in art of every kind. Beside Claudel's _Art Poetique_ we have\nin England the _New Aestheticism_ of Grant Allen; in Germany the 'new\nprinciple' in verse of Arno Holz. And here again the English innovators\nare distinguished by a good-humoured gaiety, if also by a slighter build\nof thought, from the French or Nietzschean 'revaluers'. Rupert Brooke\ndelightfully parodies the exquisite hesitances and faltering half-tones\nof Pater's cloistral prose; and Mr. Chesterton pleasantly mocks at the\nset melancholy of the aggressive Decadence in which he himself grew up:\n\n    'Science announced nonentity, and art adored decay,\n    The world was old and ended, but you and I were gay.'\n\nLike their predecessors in the earlier Romantic school, the new\nadventurers have notoriously experimented with poetic _form_. France,\nthe home of the most rigid and meticulous metrical tradition, had\nalready led the way in substituting for the strictly measured verse the\nmore loosely organized harmonies of rhythmical prose, bound together,\nand indeed made recognizable as verse, in any sense, solely by the\nrhyme. With the Symbolists 'free verse' was an attempt to capture finer\nmodulations of music than the rigid frame of metre allowed. With their\nsuccessors it had rather the value of a plastic medium in which every\nvariety of matter and of mood could be faithfully expressed. But whether\ncalled verse or not, the vast rushing modulations of rhythmic music in\nthe great pieces of Claudel and others have a magnificence not to be\ndenied. And the less explicitly poetic form permits matter which would\njar on the poetic instinct if conveyed through a metrical form to be\ntaken up as it were in this larger and looser stride.\n\nIn Germany, on the other hand, the rhythmic emancipation of Whitman was\ncarried out, in the school of Arno Holz, with a revolutionary audacity\nbeyond the example even of Claudel. Holz states with great clearness and\ntrenchancy what he calls his 'new principle of lyric'; one which\n'abandons all verbal music as an aim, and is borne solely by a rhythm\nmade vital by the thought struggling through it to expression'. Rhyme\nand strophe are given up, only rhythm remains.\n\nOf our Georgian poetry, it must suffice to note that here, too, the\ntemper of adventure in form is rife. But it shows itself,\ncharacteristically, less in revolutionary innovation than in attempts to\nelicit new and strange effects from traditional measures by deploying to\nthe utmost, and in bold and extreme combinations, their traditional\nresources and variations, as in the blank verse of Mr. Abercrombie and\nMr. Bottomley. This, and much beside in Georgian verse, has moods and\nmoments of rare beauty. But, on the whole, verse-form is the region of\npoetic art in which Georgian poetry as a whole is least secure.\n\n\n3. _The New Realism_\n\nWe see then how deeply rooted this new freedom is in the passion for\nactuality; not the dream but the waking and alert experience throbs and\npulses in it. We have now to look more closely into this other aspect of\nit. Realism is a hard-worked term, but it may be taken to imply that the\noverflowing vitality of which poetry is one expression fastens with\npeculiar eagerness upon the visible and tangible world about us and\nseeks to convey that zest in words. Our poets not only do not scorn the\nearth to lose themselves in the sky; they are positive friends of the\nmatter-of-fact, and that not in spite of poetry, but for poetry's sake;\nand Pegasus flies more freely because 'things' are 'in the saddle' along\nwith the poet.\n\nThat this matter-of-factness is loved by poets, for poetry's sake, marks\nit off once for all from the photographic or 'plain' realism of Crabbe.\nBut it is also clearly distinct from the no less poetic realism of\nWordsworth. Wordsworth's mind is conservative and traditional; his\ninspiration is static; he glorifies the primrose on the river brink by\nseeing its transience in the light of something far more deeply\ninterfused which does not change nor pass away. Romance, in a high\nsense, lies about his greatest poetry. But it is a romance rooted in\nmemory, not in hope--the 'glory of the grass and splendour of the\nflower' which he had seen in childhood and imaginatively re-created in\nmaturity; a romance which change, and especially the intrusions of\nindustrial man, dispelled and destroyed. Whereas the romance of our new\nrealism rests, in good part, precisely in the sense that the _thing_ so\nvividly gripped is not or need not be permanent, may turn into something\nelse, has only a tenancy, not a freehold, in its conditions of space and\ntime, a 'toss-up' hold upon existence, as it were, full of the zest of\nadventurous insecurity. A pessimistic philosophy would dissipate this\nromance, or strip it of all but the mournful poetry of doom. Mr.\nChesterton glorifies the dust which may become a flower or a face,\nagainst the Reverend Peter Bell for whom dust is dust and no more, and\nHamlet who only remembers that it once was Caesar. If our realism is\nbuoyant, if it had at once the absorbed and the open mind, this is, in\nlarge part, in virtue of the temper which finds reality a perpetual\ncreation. Every moment is precious and significant, for it comes with\nthe burden and meaning of something that has never completely been\nbefore; and goes by only to give place to another moment equally curious\nand new. This is the deeper ground of our present fashion of paradox;\nwhat Mr. Chesterton, its apostle, means when he says that 'the great\nromance is reality'; for paradox, the unexpected, is, in a reality so\nframed, the bare and sober truth. Hence the frequency, in our new\npoetry, of pieces founded deliberately upon, as Mr. McDowall points out,\nparadox: the breaking in of some utter surprise upon a humdrum society,\nas in Mr. de la Mare's _Three Jolly Farmers_, or Mr. Abercrombie's _End\nof the World_, or Mr. Munro's _Strange Meetings_.\n\nMoreover, in this incessantly created reality we are ourselves\nincessantly creative. That may seem to follow as a matter of course; but\nit corresponds with the most radical of the distinctions between our\nrealism and that of Wordsworth. When Mr. Wells tells us that his most\ncomprehensive belief about the universe is that every part of it is\nultimately important, he is not expressing a mystic pantheism which\nfeels every part to be divine, but a generous pragmatism which holds\nthat every part _works_. The idea of shaping and adapting will, of\nenergy in industry, of mere routine practicality in office or household,\nis no longer tabooed, or shyly evaded; not because of any theoretic\nexaltation of labour or consecration of the commonplace, but because\nmerely to use things, to make them fulfil our purposes, to bring them\ninto touch with our activities, itself throws a kind of halo over even\nvery humble and homely members of the 'divine democracy of things'.\nRupert Brooke draws up a famous catalogue of the things of which he was\na 'great lover'. He loved them, he says, simply _as being_. And no\ndoubt, the simple sensations of colour, touch, or smell counted for\nmuch. But compare them with the things that Keats, a yet greater lover\nof sensations, loved. You feel in Brooke's list that he liked doing\nthings as well as feasting his passive senses; these 'plates', 'holes in\nthe ground,' 'washen stones,' the cold graveness of iron, and so forth.\nOne detects in the list the Brooke who, as a boy, went about with a book\nof poems in one hand and a cricket-ball in the other, and whose left\nhand well knew what his right hand did.[16] That takes us far from the\ndream of eternal beauty, which a Greek urn or a nightingale's song\nbrought to Keats, and the fatal word 'forlorn', bringing back the light\nof common day, dispelled. The old ethical and aesthetic canons are\nsubmerged in a passion for life which finds a good beyond good and evil,\nand a beauty born of ugliness more vital than beauty's self. 'The worth\nof a drama is measured', said D'Annunzio, 'by its fullness of life', and\nthe formula explains, if it does not justify, those tropical gardens,\nrank with the gross blooms of 'superhuman' eroticism and ferocity, to\nwhich he latterly gave that name. And we know how Maeterlinck has\nemerged from the mystic dreams and silences of his recluse chamber to\nunfold the dramatic pugnacities of Birds and Bees.\n\nEven the downright foulness and ugliness which some people find so\npuzzling in poets with an acute delight in beauty, like Mr. Masefield,\ncome into it not from any aesthetic obtuseness, but because these\nuglinesses are full of the zest of drama, of things being done or made,\nof life being lived. When Masefield sounded his challenge to the old\naesthetics:\n\n    'Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,\n     Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth',\n\nhe knew well, as _The Everlasting Mercy_ and _The Widow of Bye Street_\nshowed, that dirt and dross, if wrought into tragedy, can win a higher\nbeauty than the harmonies of idyll. Even the hideous elder women in Mr.\nBottomley's _Lear's Wife_, or his Regan--an ill-conditioned girl,\nsidling among the 'sweaty, half-clad cook-maids' after pig-killing,\n'smeary and hot as they', participate in this beauty and energy of\ndoing.\n\nPoetry, in these cases, wins perhaps at most a Pyrrhic victory over\nreluctant matter. It is otherwise with the second of the great Belgian\npoets.\n\nIn the work of Verhaeren, the modern industrial city, with its spreading\ntentacles of devouring grime and squalor, its clanging factories, its\nteeming bazaars and warehouses, and all its thronging human population,\nis taken up triumphantly into poetry. Verhaeren is the poet of\n'tumultuous forces', whether they appear in the roar and clash of 'that\nfurnace we call existence', or in the heroic struggles of the Flemish\nnation for freedom. And he exhibits these surging forces in a style\nitself full of tumultuous power, Germanic rather than French in its\nviolent and stormy splendour, and using the chartered licence of the\nFrench 'free verse' itself with more emphasis than subtlety.\n\n\n4. _The Cult of Force_\n\nIn Verhaeren, indeed, we are conscious of passing into the presence of\npower more elemental and unrestrained than the civil refinement of our\nGeorgians, at their wildest, allows us to suspect. The tragic and heroic\nhistory of his people, and their robust art, the art of Rembrandt, and\nof Teniers, vibrates in the Flemish poet. He has much of the temperament\nof Nietzsche, and if not evidently swayed by his ideas, or even aware of\nthem, and with a generous faith in humanity which Nietzsche never knew,\nhe thinks and imagines with a kindred joy in violence:\n\n    'I love man and the world, and I adore the force\n     Which my force gives and takes from man and the universe.'\n\nAnd it is no considerable step from him to the poets who in this third\nphase of our period have unequivocally exulted in power and burnt\nincense or offered sacrifice before the altar of the strong man. The joy\nin creation which, we saw, gives its romance to so much of the realism\nof our time, now appears accentuated in the fiercer romance of conflict\nand overthrow. Thanks largely to Nietzsche, this romance acquired the\nstatus of an authoritative philosophy--even, in his own country, that of\nan ethical orthodoxy.\n\nThe German people was doubtless less deeply and universally imbued with\nthis faith than our war-prejudice assumes. But phenomena such as the\nenormous success of a cheap exposition of it, _Rembrandt als Erzieher_\n(1890) by a fervent Bismarckian, and of the comic journal\n_Simplicissimus_ (founded 1895) devoted to systematic ridicule of the\nold-fashioned German virtues of tenderness and sympathy, indicated a\ncurrent of formidable power and compass, which was soon to master all\nthe other affluents of the national stream.\n\nBut older, and in part foreign, influences concurred to colour and\nqualify, while they sustained, the Nietzschean influence,--the daemonic\npower of Carlyle, the iron intensity and masterful reticence of Ibsen.\nThis was the case especially, as is well known, in the drama. Gerhardt\nHauptmann, who painted the tragedy of the self-emancipated superman,--as\nMr. Shaw about the same time showed us his self-achieved\napotheosis,--was no doubt the most commanding (as Mr. Shaw was the most\noriginal) figure in the European drama of the early century.\n\nIn poetry, the contributory forces were still more subtly mingled, and\nthe Nietzschean spirit, which blows where it listeth, often touched men\nwholly alien from Nietzsche in cast of genius and sometimes stoutly\nhostile to him. Several of the most illustrious were not Germans at all.\nAmong the younger men who resist, while they betray, his spell, is the\nmost considerable lyric poet of the present generation in Germany.\nRichard Dehmel's vehement inspiration from the outset provoked\ncomparison with Nietzsche, which he warmly resented.\n\nHe began, in fact, as a disciple of Verlaine, and we may detect in the\nunrestraint of his early erotics the example of the French poet's\n_fureur d'aimer_. But Dehmel's more strongly-built nature, and perhaps\nthe downright vigour of the German language, broke through the tenuities\nof _la nuance_. It was not the subtle artistry of the Symbolists, but\nthe ethical and intellectual force of the German character, which\nfinally drew into a less anarchic channel the vehement energy of Dehmel.\nNietzsche had imagined an ethic of superhuman will 'beyond good and\nevil'. The poet, replied Dehmel, had indeed to know the passion which\ntranscends good and evil, but he had to know no less the good and evil\nthemselves of the world in and by which common men live. And if he can\ncry with the egoism of lawless passion, in the _Erloesungen_, 'I will\nfathom all pleasure to the deepest depths of thirst, ... Resign not\npleasure, it waters power',--he can add, in the true spirit of Goethe\nand of the higher mind of Germany, 'Yet since it also makes slack, turn\nit into the stuff of duty!'\n\nIf Nietzsche provoked into antagonism the sounder elements in Dehmel, he\nwas largely responsible for destroying such sanity as the amazing genius\nof Gabriele D'Annunzio had ever possessed. In D'Annunzio the sensuality\nof a Sybarite and the eroticism of a Faun go along with a Roman\ntenacity and hardness of nerve. The author of novels which, with all\ntheir luxurious splendour, can only be called hothouses of morbid\nsentiment, has become the apostle of Italian imperialism, and more than\nany other single man provoked Italy to throw herself into the great\nadventure of the War. Unapproached in popularity by any other Italian\nman of letters, D'Annunzio discovered Nietzsche, and hailed him--a great\nconcession--as an equal. When Nietzsche died, in 1900, D'Annunzio\nindicted a lofty memorial ode to the Titanic Barbarian who set up once\nmore the serene gods of Hellas over the vast portals of the Future.\nNietzsche indeed let loose all the Titan, and all consequently that was\nleast Hellenic, in the fertile genius of the Italian; his wonderful\ninstinct for beauty, his inexhaustible resources of style are employed\nin creating orgies of superhuman valour, lust, and cruelty like some of\nhis later dramas, and hymns intoxicated with the passion for Power, like\nthe splendid Ode in which the City of the Seven Hills is prophetically\nseen once more the mistress of the world, loosing the knot of all the\nproblems of humanity. His poetic autobiography, the first _Laude_\n(1901)--counterpart of Wordsworth's _Prelude_ and its very\nantipodes--culminates in a prayer 900 lines long to Hermes, god of the\nenergy which precipitates itself on life and makes it pregnant with\ninvention and discovery, of the iron will 'which chews care as a laurel\nleaf'--the god of the Superman. And so he discovers the muse of the\nSuperman, the Muse of Energy, a tenth Muse whose first poet he modestly\ndisclaims to be, if he may only be, as he would have us interpret his\nname, her Announcer.\n\nIf D'Annunzio emulates Nietzsche, the two great militant poets of\nCatholic France would have scorned the comparison. Charles Peguy's brief\ncareer was shaped from his first entrance, poor and of peasant birth, at\na Paris Lycee, to his heroic death in the field, September 1914, by a\ndaemonic force of character. His heroine, glorified in his first book,\nwas Jeanne d'Arc, who attempted the impossible, and achieved it. In\nwriting, his principle--shocking to French literary tradition--was to\nspeak the brutal truth _brutalement_. As a poet he stood in the direct\nlineage of Corneille, whose _Polyeucte_ he thought the greatest of the\nworld's tragedies. As a man, he embodied with naive intensity the\nunsurpassed inborn heroism of the French race.\n\nClaudel, even more remote as a thinker from Nietzsche than Peguy,\nexhibits a kindred temper in the ingrained violence of his art. His\nstroke is vehement and peremptory; he is an absolutist in style as in\ncreed. It is the style of one who apprehends the visible world with an\nintensity as of passionate embrace, such as the young Browning expresses\nin _Pauline_. 'I would fain have seen everything,' he cries, 'possessed\nand made it my own, not with eyes and senses only, but with mind and\nspirit.' And after he was converted he saw and painted supernatural\nthings with the same carnal and robust incisiveness. The half-lights of\nSymbolist mysticism are remote from his hard glare. As a dramatist he\ndrew upon and exaggerated that which in Aeschylus and Shakespeare seems\nto the countrymen of Racine nearest to the limit of the terrible and the\nbrutal permissible in art: a princess nailed by the hands like a\nsparrow-hawk to a pine by a brutal peasant; the daughter of a noble\nhouse submitting to a loathed marriage with a foul-mouthed plebeian in\norder to save the pope.\n\nAnd if we look, finally, for corresponding phenomena at home, we find\nthem surely in the masculine, militant, and in the French sense _brutal_\npoetry of W.E. Henley and Rudyard Kipling. If any modern poets have\nconceived life in terms of will, and penetrated their verse with that\nfaith, it is the author of 'I am the Captain of my Soul', the 'Book of\nthe Sword', and 'London Voluntaries', friend and subject of the great\nkindred-minded sculptor Rodin, the poet over whose grave in St. Paul's\nGeorge Wyndham found the right word when he said--marking him off from\nthe great contemplative, listening poets of the past--'His music was not\nthe still sad music of humanity; it was never still, rarely sad, always\nintrepid.' And we know how Kipling, after sanctioning the mischievous\nsuperstition that 'East and West can never meet', refuted it by\nproducing his own 'two strong men'.\n\n\n5. _The New Idealism_\n\n(1) _Nationality_\n\nWe have now seen something of that power, at once of grip and of\ndetachment with which the dominant poetry of this century faces what it\nthinks of as the adventure of experience, its plunge into the\never-moving and ever-changing stream of life. How then, it remains to\nask, has it dealt with those ideal aspirations and beliefs which one may\nlive intensely and ignore, which in one sense stand 'above the battle',\nbut for which men have lived and died. With a generation which holds so\nlightly by tradition, which revises and revalues all accepted values,\nthese aspirations and beliefs might well drop out of its poetry. On the\nother hand, these same aspirations and beliefs might overcome the\nindifference to tradition by ceasing to be merely traditional, by being\nimmersed and steeped in that moving stream of life, and interwoven with\nthe creative energies of men. The inherited faiths were put to this\ndilemma, either to become intimately alive and creative in poetry or to\nbe of no concern for it. Some of them failed in the test. England has\nstill devotees of Protestantism, but Protestant religion has hardly\ninspired noble poetry since Milton. Nationality, on the other hand, has\nduring the last century inspired finer poetry than at any time since the\nsixteenth, and that because it has been brought down from the region of\npolitical abstractions and ideologies into intimate union with heart and\nbrain, imagination and sense. This is true also of Catholicism and of\nSocialism, and, if fitfully and uncertainly yet, of the ideal of\ninternational fraternity, of humanity. And to all these ideals, to all\nideals, came finally the terrific, the overwhelming test of the War,--a\nsearching, annihilating, purifying flame, in which some shrivelled away,\nsome were stripped of the illusive glitter that concealed their mass of\nalloy, and some, purged of their baser constituents, shone out with a\nlustre unapproached before.\n\nWhat is the distinctive note of this new poetry of nationality? And for\nthe moment I speak of the years before the War. May we not say that in\nit the ideal of country is saturated with that imaginative grip of\nreality in all its concrete energy and vivacity which I have called the\nnew realism? The nation is no abstraction, whether it be called\nBritannia, or _Deutschland ueber Alles_. It is seen, and felt; seen in\nits cities as well as in its mountains, in the workers who have made it,\nas well as in the heroes who have defended it; in its roaring forges as\nwell as in its idyllic woodlands and its tales of battles long ago; and\nall these not as separate strands in a woven pattern, but as waters of\ndifferent origin and hue pouring along together in the same great\nstream.\n\nEmile Verhaeren, six years before the invasion, had seen and felt his\ncountry, living body and living soul, with an intensity which made it\nseem unimaginable that she should be permanently subdued. He well called\nhis book _Toute la Flandre_, for all Flanders is there. Old\nFlanders,--Artevelde and Charles Temeraire--whose soul was a forest of\nhuge trees and dark thickets,\n\n    'A wilderness of crossing ways below,\n    But eagles, over, soaring to the sun,'--\n\nVan Eyck and Rubens--'a thunder of colossal memories'; then the great\ncities, with their belfries and their foundries, and their warehouses\nand laboratories, their antique customs and modern ambitions; and the\nrivers, the homely familiar Lys, where the women wash the whitest of\nlinen, and the mighty Scheldt, the Escaut, the 'hero sombre, violent and\nmagnificent', 'savage and beautiful Escaut', whose companionship had\nmoulded and made the poet, whose rhythms had begotten his music and his\nbest ideas[17].\n\nNone of our English poets have rendered England in poetry with the same\nlyric intensity in its whole compass of time and space, calling up into\nlight and music all her teeming centuries and peopled provinces. Yet the\npresent generation has in some respects made a nearer approach to such\nachievement than its predecessors. A century of growing historic\nconsciousness has not passed over us in vain; and if any generic\ndistinction is to be found between our recent, often penetrating and\nbeautiful, poetry of the English countryside and the Nature description\nof Wordsworth or of Ruskin, it is in the ground-tone of passion and\nmemory that pervades it for England herself. Wordsworth wrote\nmagnificently of England threatened with invasion, and magnificently of\nthe Lake Country, Nature's beloved haunt. But the War sonnets and the\nLake and mountain poetry come from distinct strains in his genius,\nwhich our criticism may bring into relation, but our feeling insists on\nkeeping apart. His Grasmere is a province of Nature--her favoured\nprovince--rather than of England; it is in the eye of Nature that the\nold Cumberland beggar lives and dies; England only provides the\nobnoxious workhouses to which these destitute vagrants were henceforth\nto be consigned. Is it not this that divides our modern local poetry\nfrom his? Mr. Belloc's Sussex is tenderly loved for itself; yet behind\nits great hills and its old-world harbours lies the half-mystic presence\nof historic England. And in Edward Thomas's wonderful old Wiltshireman,\nLob, worthy I think to be named with the Cumberland Beggar,\n\n    'An old man's face, by life and weather cut\n     And coloured,--rough, brown, sweet as any nut,--\n     A land face, sea-blue eyed,'--\n\nyou read the whole lineage of sterling English yeomen and woodlanders\nfrom whom Lob springs.\n\nThis note is indeed relatively absent from the work of the venerable\nmaster who has made 'Wessex' the most vividly realized of all English\nprovinces to-day, and whose prose Egdon Heath may well be put at the\nhead of all the descriptive poetry of our time. But Mr. Hardy, in this\nrespect, belongs to an earlier generation than that into which he\nhappily survives.\n\nSometimes this feeling is given in a single intense concentrated touch.\nWhen Rupert Brooke tells us of\n\n      'Some corner of a foreign field\n    That is for ever England. There shall be\n    In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;\n    A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,\n    Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,'\n\ndo we not feel that the solidarity of England with the English folk and\nof the English folk with the English soil, is burnt into our\nimaginations in a new and distinctive way?\n\nBut the poetry of shires and provinces reacts too upon the poetry of\nnationality. It infuses something of the more instinctive and\nrudimentary attachments from which it springs into a passion peculiarly\nexposed to the contagion of rhetoric and interest. Some of the most\nstrident voices among living nationalist poets have found an unexpected\nnote of tenderness when they sang their home province. Mr. Kipling\ncharms us when he tells, in his close-knit verse, of the 'wooded, dim,\nBlue goodness of the Weald'. And the more strident notes of D'Annunzio's\npatriotism are also assuaged by the tenderness and depth of his home\nfeeling. We read with some apprehension his dedication of _La Nave_ to\nthe god of seas:\n\n    'O Lord, who bringest forth and dost efface\n    The ocean-ruling Nations, race by race,\n    It is this living People, by Thy grace\n        Who on the sea\n    Shall magnify Thy name, who on the sea\n    Shall glorify Thy name, who on the sea\n    With myrrh and blood shall sacrifice to Thee\n        At the altar-prow,\n    Of all earth's oceans make our sea, O Thou!\n        Amen!\n\nBut he dedicated a noble drama, the _Figlia d'Iorio_, in a different\ntone, 'To the land of the Abruzzi, to my Mother, to my Sisters, to my\nbrother in exile, to my father in his grave, to all my dead and all my\nrace in the mountains and by the sea, I dedicate this song of the\nancient blood.'\n\n\n(2) _Democracy_\n\nThe growth of democratic as of national feeling during the later century\nnaturally produced a plentiful harvest of eloquent utterance in verse.\nWith this, merely as such, I am not here concerned, even though it be\nas fine as the Socialist songs of William Morris or Edward Carpenter.\nBut the Catholic Socialism of Charles Peguy,--itself an original and,\nfor most of his contemporaries, a bewildering combination--struck out a\nno less original poetry,--a poetry of solidarity. Peguy's Socialism,\nlike his Catholicism, was single-souled; he ignored that behind the one\nwas a Party, and behind the other a Church. It was his bitterest regret\nthat a vast part of humanity was removed beyond the pale of fellowship\nby eternal damnation. It was his sublimest thought that the solidarity\nof man includes the damned. In his first version of the Jeanne d'Arc\nmystery, already referred to, he tells how Jesus, crucified,\n\n    Saw not his Mother in tears at the cross-foot\n    Below him, saw not Magdalen nor John,\n    But wept, dying, only for Judas' death.\n    The Saviour loved this Judas, and though utterly\n    He gave himself, he knew he could not save him.\n\nIt was the dogma of damnation which for long kept Peguy out of its fold,\nthat barbarous mixture of life and death, he called it, which no man\nwill accept who has won the spirit of collective humanity. But he\nrevolted not because he was tolerant of evil; on the contrary to damn\nsins was for him a weak and unsocial solution; evil had not to be damned\nbut to be fought down. Whether this vision of Christ weeping because he\ncould not save Judas was un-Christian, or more Christian than\nChristianity itself, we need not discuss here; but I am sure that the\nspirit of a Catholic democracy as transfigured in the mind of a great\npoet could not be more nobly rendered.\n\n\n(3) _Catholicism_\n\nBut Peguy's powerful personality set its own stamp upon whatever he\nbelieved, and though a close friend of Jaures, he was a Socialist who\nrejected almost all the ideas of the Socialist school. As little was\nhis Catholicism to the mind of the Catholic authorities. And his\nCatholic poetry is sharply marked off from most of the poetry that\nburgeoned under the stimulus of the remarkable revival of Catholic ideas\nin twentieth-century France. I say of Catholic ideas, for sceptical\npoets like Remy de Gourmont played delicately with the symbols of\nCatholic worship, made 'Litanies' of roses, and offered prayers to\nJeanne d'Arc, walking dreamily in the procession of 'Women Saints of\nParadise', to 'fill our hearts with anger'.[18] The Catholic adoration\nof women-saints is one of the springs of modern poetry. At the close of\nthe century of Wordsworth and Shelley, the tender Nature-worship of\nFrancis of Assisi contributed not less to the recovered power of\nCatholic ideas in poetry, and this chiefly in the person of two poets,\nin France and in England, both of whom played half-mystically with the\nsymbolism of their names, Francis Thompson and Francis Jammes. The\nchild-like naivete of S. Francis is more delicately reflected in Jammes,\na Catholic W.H. Davies, who casts the idyllic light of Biblical pastoral\nover modern farm life, and prays to 'his friends, the Asses' to go with\nhim to Paradise, 'For there is no hell in the land of the Bon Dieu.'\n\nBut the most powerful creative imagination to-day in the service of\nCatholic ideas is certainly Paul Claudel. I pass by here the series of\ndramas, where a Catholic inspiration as fervent as Calderon's is\nenforced with Elizabethan technique and Elizabethan violence of terror,\ncruelty, and pity.[19] From the ferocious beauty of _L'Otage_ turn\nrather to the intense spiritual hush before the altar of some great\nFrench church at noon, where the poet, not long after the first\ndecisive check of the invaders on the Marne, finds himself alone, before\nthe shrine of Marie. Here too, his devotion finds a speech not borrowed\nfrom the devout or from their poetry:\n\n    'It is noon. I see the Church is open. I must enter.\n    Mother of Jesus Christ, I do not come to pray.\n\n    I have nothing to offer and nothing to ask.\n    I come only, Mother, to gaze at you.\n\n    To gaze at you, to weep for happiness, to know\n    That I am your son and that you are there.\n\n    Nothing at all but for a moment when all is still,\n    Noon! to be with you, Marie, in this place where you are.\n\n    To say nothing, to gaze upon your face,\n    To let the heart sing in its own speech.'\n\nThere the nationalist passion of Claudel animates his Catholic religion,\nyet does not break through its confines. But sometimes the strain of\nsuffering and ruin is too intense for Christian submission, and he takes\nhis God to task truculently for not doing his part in the contract; we\nare his partner in running the world, and see, he is asleep!\n\n     'There is a great alliance, willy-nilly, between us henceforth, there\n                is this bread that with no trembling hand\n      We have offered you, this wine that we have poured anew,\n    Our tears that you have gathered, our brothers that you share with us,\n                leaving the seed in the earth,\n      There is this living sacrifice of which we satisfy each day's demand,\n      This chalice we have drunk with you!'\n\nYet the devout passion emerges again, with notes of piercing pathos:\n\n    'Lord, who hast promised us for one glass of water a boundless sea,\n        Who knows if Thou art not thirsty too?\n    And that this blood, which is all we have, will quench that thirst\n                in Thee,\n        We know, for Thou hast told us so.\n    If indeed there is a spring in us, well, that is what is to be shown,\n        If this wine of ours is red,\n    If our blood has virtue, as Thou sayest, how can it be known\n        Otherwise than by being shed?'\n\n\n(4) _Effects of the War upon Poetry_\n\nThus could the great Catholic poet sing under pressure of the supreme\nnational crisis of his country. Poetry at such times may become a great\nnational instrument--a trumpet whence Milton or Wordsworth, Arndt or\nWhitman, blow soul-animating strains. The war of 1914 was for all the\nbelligerent peoples far more than a stupendous military event. It\nshattered the patterns of our established mentality, and compelled us to\nseek new adjustments and support in the chaotically disorganized world.\nThe psychical upheaval was most violent in the English-speaking peoples,\nwhere the military shock was least direct; for here a nation of\ncivilians embraced suddenly the new and amazing experience of battle.\nHere too, the imaginatively sensitive minds who interpret life through\npoetry, and most of all the youngest and freshest among them, themselves\nshared in the glories and the throes of the fight as hardly one of the\nsigners of our most stirring battle poetry had ever done before. How did\nthis new and amazing experience react upon their poetry? This, our final\nquestion, is perhaps the crucial one in considering the tendencies of\nrecent European poetry.\n\nIn the first place it enormously stimulated and quickened what was\ndeepest and strongest in the energies and qualities which had been\napparent in our latter day poetry before. They had sought to clasp life,\nto live, not merely to contemplate, experience; and here indeed was\nlife, and death, and both to be embraced. Here was adventure indeed, but\none whose grimness made romance cheap, so that in this war-poetry, for\nthe first time in history, the romance and glamour of war, the pomp and\ncircumstance of military convention, fall entirely away, and the\nbitterest scorn of these soldier-poets is bestowed not on the enemy, but\non those contemplators who disguised its realities with the camouflage\nof the pulpit and the editorial arm-chair. Turn, I will not say from\nCampbell or from Tennyson, but from Rudyard Kipling or Sir H. Newbolt,\nto Siegfried Sassoon, and you feel that you have got away from a\nliterary convention, whether conveyed in the manners of the barrack-room\nor of the public-school, to something intolerably true, and which holds\nthe poet in so fierce a grip that his song is a cry.\n\nBut if the war has brought our poets face to face with intense kinds of\nreal experience, which they have fearlessly grasped and rendered, its\ngrim obsession has not made them cynical, or clogged the wings of their\nfaith and their hope. I will not ask how the war has affected the\nidealism of others, whether it has left the nationalism of our press or\nthe religion of our pulpits purer or more gross than it found them. But\nof our poetry at least the latter cannot be said. In Rupert Brooke the\ninspiration of the call obliterated the last trace of dilettante youth's\npretensions, and he encountered darkness like a bride, and greeted the\nunseen death not with a cheer as a peril to be boldly faced, but as a\ngreat consummation, the supreme safety. How his poetry would have\nreacted to the actual experience of war we can only guess. But in\nothers, his friends and comrades, the fierce immersion in the welter of\nruin and pain and filth and horror and death brought only a more superb\nfaith in the power of man's soul to rise above the hideous obsession of\nhis own devilries, to retain the vision of beauty through the riot of\nfoul things, of love through the tumult of hatreds, of life through the\ninfinity of death. True this was not a new power: poetry to be poetry\nmust always in some measure possess it. What was individual to the poets\nwas that this power of mastering actuality went along in them with the\nfierce and eager immersion in it; the thrill of breathing the\n\n         'calm and serene air\n    Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot\n    Which men call earth,'\n\nwith the thrill of seeing and painting in all its lurid colouring the\nvolcanic chaos of this 'stir and smoke' itself. Thus the same Siegfried\nSassoon who renders with so much close analytic psychology the moods\nthat cross and fluctuate in the dying hospital patient, or the haunted\nfugitive, as he flounders among snags and stumps, to feel at last the\nstrangling clasp of death, can as little as the visionary Shelley\novercome the insurgent sense that these dead are for us yet alive, made\none with Nature.\n\nHe visits the deserted home of his dead friend--\n\n    'Ah, but there was no need to call his name,\n    He was beside me now, as swift as light ...\n    For now, he said, my spirit has more eyes\n    Than heaven has stars, and they are lit by love.\n    My body is the magic of the world,\n    And dark and sunset flame with my spilt blood.'\n\nAnd so the undying dead\n\n      'Wander in the dusk with chanting streams,\n    And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms upflung,\n    To hail the burning heaven they left unsung.'\n\nFurther, this war poetry, while reflecting military things with a\nveracity hardly known before, is yet rarely militant. We must not look\nfor explicit pacifist or international ideas; but as little do we find\njingo patriotism or hymns of hate. The author of the German hymn of hate\nwas a much better poet than anyone who tried an English hymn in the same\nkey, and the English poets who could have equalled its form were above\nits spirit. Edith Cavell's dying words 'Patriotism is not enough' cannot\nperhaps be paralleled in these poets, but they are continually\nsuggested. They do not say, in the phrase of the old cavalier poet, that\nwe should love England less if we loved not something else more, or that\nsomething is wanting in our love for our country if we wrong humanity in\nits name. But the spirit which is embodied in these phrases breathes\nthrough them; heroism matters more to them than victory, and they know\nthat death and sorrow and the love of kindred have no fatherland. They\n'stand above the battle' as well as share in it, and they share in it\nwithout ceasing to stand above it. The German is the enemy, they never\nfalter in that; and even death does not convert him into a friend. But\nfor this enemy there is chivalry, and pity, and a gleam, now and then,\nof reconciling comradeship.\n\n    'He stood alone in some queer sunless place\n    Where Armageddon ends,'--\n\nthe Englishman whom the Germans had killed in fight, to be themselves\nslain by his friend, the speaker. Their ghosts throng around him,--\n\n    'He stared at them, half wondering, and then\n    They told him how I'd killed them for his sake,\n    Those patient, stupid, sullen ghosts of men:\n    At last he turned and smiled; smiled--all was well\n    Because his face would lead them out of hell.'\n\nFinally, the poet himself glories in his act; he knows that he can beat\ninto music even the crashing discords that fill his ears; he knows too\nthat he has a music of his own which they cannot subdue or debase:\n\n    'I keep such music in my brain\n    No din this side of death can quell,\n    Glory exulting over pain,\n    And beauty garlanded in hell.'\n\nTo have found and kept and interwoven these two musics--a language of\nunflinching veracity and one of equally unflinching hope and faith--is\nthe achievement of our war-poetry. May we not say that the possession\ntogether of these two musics, of these two moods, springing as they do\nfrom the blended grip and idealism of the English character, warrants\nhope for the future of English poetry? For it is rooted in the greatest,\nand the most English, of the ways of poetic experience which have gone\nto the making of our poetic literature--the way, ultimately, of\nShakespeare, and of Wordsworth. But that temper of catholic fraternity\nwhich finds the stuff of poetry everywhere does not easily attain the\nconsummate technique in expression of a rarer English tradition, that of\nMilton, and Gray, and Keats. Beauty abounds in our later poets, but it\nis a beauty that flashes in broken lights, not the full-orbed radiance\nof a masterpiece. To enlarge the grasp of poetry over the field of\nreality, to apprehend it over a larger range, is not at once to find\nconsummate expression for what is apprehended. The flawless perfection\nof the Parnassians--of Heredia's sonnets--is nowhere approached in the\nless aristocratically exclusive poetry of to-day. But the future, in\npoetry also, is with the spirit which found the aristocracy of noble art\nnot upon exclusions, negations, and routine, but upon imagination,\npenetration, discovery, and catholic openness of mind.\n\n\nSOME BOOKS FOR CONSULTATION\n\nPellissier, _Le Mouvement Litteraire au XIXme Siecle_.\n\nBrunetiere, _La Poesie Lyrique au XIXme Siecle_.\n\nEccles, F.Y., _A Century of French Poets_.\n\nVigie-Lecocq, _La Poesie Contemporaine_.\n\nPhelps, _Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century_.\n\nMuret, _La Litterature Italienne d'aujourd'hui_.\n\nLadenarde, _G. Carducci_.\n\nSymons, _The Symbolist Movement in Literature_.\n\nJackson, _The Eighteen Nineties_.\n\nMcDowall, _Realism_.\n\nAliotta, _The Idealist Reaction against Science_.\n\nSoergel, _Die deutsche Litteratur unserer Zeit_.\n\nBithell, _Contemporary German Poetry_ (Translated).\n\nHalevy, _Charles Peguy_.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 3: The temper of the two realists was no doubt widely\ndifferent. 'C'est en haine du realisme', wrote Flaubert, 'que j'ai\nentrepris ce roman. Mais je n'en deteste pas moins la fausse idealite,\ndont nous sommes berces par le temps qui court' (_Corresp._ 3, 67).]\n\n[Footnote 4: _Causeries du Lundi_, 1850 f.]\n\n[Footnote 5: _Histoire de la litterature anglaise_, 1863.]\n\n[Footnote 6: But a Wilde who wrote no _De Profundis_ and no _Ballad of\nReading Gaol_.]\n\n[Footnote 7: _La Forge_: dedicated to Gaston Paris, the greatest\n_forgeron_ of his generation in the love of Old French.]\n\n[Footnote 8: _Rime Nuove_: Classicismo e Romantismo.]\n\n[Footnote 9: _Midi_.]\n\n[Footnote 10: _La Paix des Dieux_.]\n\n[Footnote 11: For this and the other verse-translations the writer is\nresponsible.]\n\n[Footnote 12: Even the 'music' was far removed from the simplicity of\npure song. The song of these poets was an incantation. Nay, painting\nitself witnessed a corresponding revolt against the 'eloquence' of the\npseudo-realists--the 'far away dirty reasonableness', as Manet dubbed\nit, which missed the essential vision by using the worn-down accepted\nphrases of the public.]\n\n[Footnote 13: _Au jardin de l'Infante: Veillee_.]\n\n[Footnote 14: To some types of Irish imagination French Naturalism, it\nis true, was no less congenial; hence the rift between the realist and\nthe spiritual Irishmen delightfully played on in Max Beerbaum's cartoon\nof Yeats presenting the _Faery Queene_ to George Moore.]\n\n[Footnote 15: Aliotta, _The Idealistic Revolt_, p. 116. Cf. the account\nof the analogous views of Boutroux and Renouvier in the same chapter.]\n\n[Footnote 16: Keats, no doubt, also aspired to the life of action. But\nin him the two moods were disparate, even in conflict; in Brooke they\nwere seemingly fused.]\n\n[Footnote 17: Eighteenth-century observation, in the person of\nGoldsmith, had found no worthier epithet for the great Flemish river\nthan 'lazy', and the modern tourist is likely to find this by far the\nmore 'characteristic'. But which had the best chance of seeing truly,\nthe life-long companion and lover, or the stranger, sad, lonely, and\nlonging for home?]\n\n[Footnote 18: _Les Saintes du Paradis_.]\n\n[Footnote 19: Cf. for instance the situation of Signe, in the grip of\nthe brutal _prefet_, with that of Beatrice, in _The Changeling_, in the\nhands of De Flores.]\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nHISTORICAL RESEARCH\n\nG.P. GOOCH\n\n\nThe scientific study of history began a hundred years ago in the\nUniversity of Berlin. Preparatory work of the highest importance had\nbeen accomplished by laborious collectors like Baronius and Muratori,\nkeen-sighted critics such as Mabillon and Wolf, and brilliant narrators\nlike Gibbon and Voltaire. But it was not till Niebuhr, Boeckh, and above\nall Ranke preached and practised the critical use of authorities and\ndocumentary material that historical scholarship entered on the path\nwhich it has pursued with ever-increasing success for the last three\ngenerations. It is my task to-day to direct your attention to some of\nits main achievements during the last half-century.\n\nThe outstanding feature of our time has been the immense increase in the\nmaterial available for the knowledge and interpretation of every stage\nand chapter in the life of humanity. Primitive civilization has been\ndefinitely brought within the circle of historical study. The\ndiscoveries of Boucher des Perthes, Pitt-Rivers, and their successors\nhave thrown back the opening of the human drama tens if not hundreds of\nthousands of years, and we recreate prehistoric man from skull and\nweapon, language and legend. Anthropology has become a science, and the\nhabits and beliefs of our savage ancestors have been rendered\nintelligible by the piercing insight of Tylor and Sir James Frazer. In\nits boundless erudition, its constructive imagination, and its wealth of\nsuggestion, the _Golden Bough_ stands forth as perhaps the most notable\ncontribution of the age to our knowledge of the evolution of the human\nrace.\n\nAmong the most sensational events of the nineteenth century was the\nresurrection of the Ancient East. We now know that Greece and Rome, far\nfrom standing near the beginning of recorded history, were the heirs of\na long series of civilizations. Our whole perspective has been changed\nor should be changed by the discovery. The ancient world thus revealed\nby the partnership of philology and archaeology ceases to be merely the\nvestibule to Christian Europe, and becomes in point of duration the\nlarger part of human history.\n\nThe story opens with Champollion's decipherment of the bilingual tablet\ndiscovered more than a century ago at the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. The\nkey once fitted to the lock, the whole civilization of ancient Egypt lay\nopen to the explorer. A secure chronological basis was supplied by\nLepsius, and systematic excavation was commenced by Mariette, who was\nnamed by the Khedive Director of Antiquities and established the Cairo\nMuseum. The work of the three great founders of Egyptology has been\ncarried forward during the last half-century by an international army of\nscholars. The interpretation of the ancient scripts has reached a\ntechnical mastery unknown to the pioneers, and the genius of Brugsch\nunlocked the door to demotic, which Champollion had never thoroughly\nmastered. But the triumphs of philology have been surpassed by the\nconquests of the spade. The closest friend of Mariette's later years was\nMaspero, who succeeded him as Director of Antiquities, and whose most\nsensational find was the tombs of the Kings near Thebes. Equally eminent\nas excavator, philologist, and historian, Maspero was the first to\npopularize Egyptology in France, as Flinders Petrie, the greatest\nexcavator since Mariette, has popularized it in England. Until twenty\nyears ago the curtain rose on the pyramid-builders of the Fourth\ndynasty. We have now not only recovered the earlier dynasties, but\nneolithic and palaeolithic Egypt emerges from the primitive cemeteries.\nThe immense accession of new material has enabled Eduard Meyer to\nconstruct something like a definite chronology; but though marvellous\nprogress has been made in our knowledge of the Early, Middle, and New\nEmpires, a great gap remains between the sixth and the eleventh\ndynasties, and the period of the Hyksos is still tantalizingly obscure.\nEgyptian history in the light of the latest discoveries may be best\nstudied in the judicial pages of Breasted, the foremost of American\nEgyptologists.\n\nThe revelation of Assyrian civilization through Rawlinson's decipherment\nof cuneiform and the excavations of Botta and Layard in the middle of\nthe nineteenth century was followed by a concerted attack on Babylonia.\nIt was clear from the Nineveh tablets that most of the literary\ntreasures of Assyria were merely copies of Babylonian originals; and\nwhen in 1877 de Sarzec, French Vice-Consul at Basra, bored into the\nmounds at Tello, the ancient Lagash, in Southern Babylonia, the most\neager anticipations were surpassed. Texts had been found which Rawlinson\npronounced to be pre-Semitic; but for the purpose of history the\nSumerians were discovered at Tello. When de Sarzec died in 1901 he had\nopened a new chapter of history. The palaces of Sargon and Sennacherib,\nat which the world had marvelled in the 'forties, appeared relatively\nmodern beside the vast antiquity of the Chaldean city. The chain of\nhuman experience lengthened before our eyes when it was realized that as\nAssyrian culture derived from Babylonia, so a large part of Babylonian\nculture, including the art of writing, was inherited by the Semites from\nthe Sumerians.\n\nWhile de Sarzec was busy at Tello, an American expedition was sent to\nNippur under the lead of Peters and Hilprecht; and the long array of\nmagnificent volumes which embody the results of the mission, including\nthe thousands of tablets found in the temple library, constitutes the\nmost important source of our knowledge of Northern Babylonia. Still more\nrecently a German mission under Koldewey commenced the systematic\nexcavation of Babylon itself; but its operations were interrupted by the\noutbreak of the Great War. Though no monuments have been brought to\nlight in Babylonia comparable in magnificence to those of Khorsabad and\nNineveh, Babylonian culture towers above its neighbour. Since the\ndiscovery in the royal library of Nineveh of a cylinder containing the\nstory of the Flood, no find has aroused such world-wide interest as that\nof the Code of Hammurabi, unearthed by de Morgan at Susa in 1901. The\nmassive block of diorite, eight feet high, containing 282 paragraphs of\nlaws, revealed in a flash a complex, refined, and orderly civilization.\nAfter expelling the Elamites about 2250 B.C. Hammurabi united North and\nSouth Babylonia into a single State, and, desiring that uniform laws\nshould prevail, issued the code which bears his name. During the last\ndecade the exploration of Assyria has been resumed after a long\ninterval, and the city of Assur, the first capital, has been unearthed\nby the German Oriental Society. We thus learn of Assyria before the days\nof its greatness, when it was still a subject province under Babylonian\nViceroys.\n\nThe history of the lands watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates, which\nwas almost a blank half a century ago, may now be tentatively\nreconstructed. The vast mass of official correspondence, judicial\ndecisions, and legal documents, taken in conjunction with the evidences\nof religion, science, and art, reveal a startlingly modern society a\nthousand years before Rameses and two thousand years before Pericles.\nBabylonia proves to have been to the ancient East what Rome was one day\nto be to Europe. The Tel-el-Amarna letters prove the unchallenged\nsupremacy of its culture over vast areas, and the revelation of the\nreligious debt of the Jews sets the Old Testament in a new frame. So\nrapid is the pace of excavation and interpretation that all but the most\nrecent narratives of the Ancient East are out of date. If we master\nLeonard King's sumptuous volumes on Babylonia and the latest edition of\nthe first volume of Eduard Meyer's incomparable _History of Antiquity_,\nwe need go no farther afield.\n\nScarcely if at all less remarkable has been the discovery of an advanced\ncivilization in Crete in the second and third millenniums before Christ.\nWhile in Egypt and Mesopotamia the frontiers of knowledge were pushed\nback, in Crete an unknown world was brought to light. Its romantic\ninterest was intensified by the establishment of an historic foundation\nfor one of the most celebrated legends of the ancient world. How the\nMinotaur devoured the tribute of youths and maidens in the labyrinth,\nhow Ariadne, daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and gave him a\nsword to slay the Minotaur and a thread to retrace his steps, was known\nto every Greek child and has thrilled the imagination of the centuries.\nThe exploration of the city called by Homer 'Great Knossus' was among\nthe ambitions of Schliemann; but it was carried out by Sir Arthur Evans,\nwhose labours have outlined a series of chapters in Cretan history\nextending two thousand years before the destruction of the palace about\nthe year 1400. Though the Minoan language still defies attack, the\nfrescoes, sculptures, and objects of art tell their tale of a luxurious\nand peace-loving community, closely connected with Egypt and forming one\nof the main sources of the Greek culture of a later age.\n\nMost of us are old enough to remember the thrill of excitement when Susa\nand Knossus, if not Tello or Thebes, yielded up their romantic secrets;\nbut the generation now growing to manhood may experience similar\nemotions as it watches the ghost of the Hittite Empire materialize\nbefore its eyes. The meagre references in the Old Testament have been\nsupplemented by Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions, revealing an\nimportant Power in Northern Syria and Asia Minor for a thousand years\nbefore it was swallowed up by Assyria. During the last twenty years\nHittite remains, marked by crude vigour rather than by a sense of\nbeauty, have been discovered all over Asia Minor and in the northern\nreaches of the great Mesopotamian plain. In 1911 the British Museum\nundertook the excavation of Carchemish on the Euphrates, the capital of\nthe North Syrian sector of the Empire; but the most precious results\nhave been achieved by Winckler at Boghaz Keui, the capital of the\nCappadocian portion of the Hittite dominions, which yielded a library of\n20,000 tablets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, now stored in\nthe museum at Constantinople. A few bilingual inscriptions have\nfurnished valuable clues; but the world still eagerly awaits the coming\nof a new Champollion to unlock the doors of the treasure-house. Winckler\nhimself died in 1913; but in 1915 the Austrian Professor Hrozny startled\nthe world by proclaiming his conviction that Hittite was an\nIndo-European language. Whether or no his contention is confirmed,\norientalists of both hemispheres are hot in pursuit, and it is no rash\nprophecy that within a decade scholars will read Hittite as they now\nread cuneiform and hieroglyphics, and new chapters of incalculable\nimportance will be added to the story of the Ancient East.\n\nThe recovery of the political and religious history of the empires\nsurrounding Palestine has run parallel with the application of critical\nmethods to the Jewish scriptures. To read Ewald's _History of the People\nof Israel_, which was regarded as dangerous by pious folk in the middle\nof last century, is to realize the progress of Semitic studies. The\ngreat revolution in our conception of the Old Testament which rendered\nEwald out of date was accomplished by Wellhausen's _Prolegomena to the\nHistory of Israel_. That the arrangement of the Canon was utterly\nmisleading, that the Prophets were earlier than the priestly code and\nthat the Psalms for the most part were later than both, was proclaimed\nin the writings and lectures of Vatke and Graf, Kuenen and Reuss; but it\nwas not till their discoveries were confirmed and elaborated by\nWellhausen that they won their way, and it was generally recognized that\ntheir reconstruction alone rendered the religious development of the\nJews intelligible. This outline was shortly after filled in by Stade in\nthe first critical history of Israel; but his emphasis on the falsity of\ntradition was overdone, and subsequent critics, while accepting the late\nredaction of the law, have argued that parts of it are far older, in\nsubstance if not in form, than Wellhausen and his disciple were prepared\nto allow.\n\nThe history of the Jews owes much less to archaeological research on the\narena of their historic life than Egypt or Mesopotamia. No splendid\nbuildings or sculptures have been brought to light, and the inscriptions\nare few. But British, American, and German excavators have flashed light\nfar back into the third millennium, and a partial excavation of\nJerusalem has revealed a network of prehistoric tunnels and aqueducts.\nThe historic life of Gezer has been minutely revealed by Macalister,\nwith the strata of seven cities reaching back to the neolithic age. The\nmost piquant result of his excavations has been to rehabilitate the\nPhilistines, the makers of the most artistic objects found in the debris\nof two thousand years. Far more light, however, has been thrown on the\nreligious customs and beliefs of the Jews by discoveries beyond their\nborders. The notion firmly held by our fathers that Israel was one of\nthe oldest of civilizations and formed a world by itself has vanished\ninto thin air; for an older and vaster civilization has been discovered\nto which she owed not only her science but the larger part of her\nreligion. The dimension of the debt to Babylonia has been and continues\nto be fiercely argued by conservative and radical critics; but its\nrecognition has sufficed to revolutionize the study of early Israel and\nto provide a new background for the religious history of the world. The\nrelation of the beliefs and practices of the Jews to those of other\nbranches of the Semitic family was boldly explored by Robertson Smith,\nand has lately been illuminated by the epoch-making volumes of Sir James\nFrazer on the _Folklore of the Old Testament_.\n\nThe history of Greece, like the history of the Jews, presents a very\ndifferent aspect to that which was offered to the readers of Grote,\nThirlwall, and even Curtius. Schliemann's discoveries at Troy, Tiryns,\nand Mycenae unearthed Mycenaean civilization and gave an incalculable\nimpetus to archaeological research; but the brilliant amateur was almost\npathetically incompetent to interpret the treasures he had brought to\nlight, and much of his work has had to be done again by Doerpfeld.\nDespite the achievements of archaeology, however, the period before\nSolon remains very dark. Barely second in importance to the discoveries\nof Schliemann was the Aristotelian treatise on the Constitution of\nAthens, which was given to the world in 1891 by Sir Frederick Kenyon and\nhas been most authoritatively interpreted by Wilamowitz, the greatest of\nliving Hellenists. With the growing mass of new literary material,\ninscriptions, coins, and papyri, the exploration of sites, the recovery\nof innumerable objects of art and fresh light streaming from Asia Minor\nand Crete, new attempts to write the history of Greece have been made.\nProfessor Bury's narrative, at once scientific and popular, has\nsummarized for English readers the assured results of research; but the\nmost authoritative survey is that contained in the Greek volumes of\nEduard Meyer's vast survey of antiquity. 'For the great tasks of\nhistory', he writes, 'salvation is only to be found when it becomes\nconscious of its universal character, in ancient as well as in modern\ntimes. Only by treating Greece in connection with the Mediterranean\npeoples can its real nature be seized.' This colossal task, which proved\nbeyond the strength of Duncker, has been performed by the Berlin\nProfessor, the only scholar of our time who could have accomplished it\nsingle-handed. The dazzling picture of Athenian democracy painted by\nGrote has faded away; and Beloch, following in the footsteps of Droysen,\ndwells with greater satisfaction on the diffusion of Greek influence\nthrough the conquests of Alexander.\n\nGreek culture has received no less attention than Greek politics. The\nHomeric problem continues to exert an irresistible attraction. Every\nexpert from Wilamowitz to Gilbert Murray and Walter Leaf adds to our\ncomprehension of the epic; but no positive results have been\nestablished, and Holm uttered the gloomy prophecy that we shall never\nknow whether Homer existed, who he was, or what he wrote. On the other\nhand we have gained a deeper insight into the early mind and soul of\nGreece, thanks in large measure to a group of English scholars with Jane\nHarrison at their head. Rohde's _Psyche_, the most illuminating treatise\non any branch of Greek religion, has traced the conception of\nimmortality through the ages. The later editions of Zeller's _Philosophy\nof the Greeks_, first published in 1851, kept pace with the progress of\nscholarship, and remains one of the glories of German scholarship. The\nmore recent work of the Austrian Gomperz has won almost equal\npopularity, without placing its predecessor on the shelf. In the realm\nof literature the most interesting event has been the recovery of the\npoems of Bacchylides and Herondas, fragments of Sappho and Pindar,\nEuripides and Sophocles and Menander; and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which\nhave already produced undreamed-of treasures, may well have in store for\nus further glad surprises. The attempt to assess the influence of\neconomic factors, courageously undertaken by Boeckh and somewhat\nneglected after his death, has in recent years been renewed, with the\nfruitful results familiar to us in Zimmern's realistic picture of Athens\nin the fifth century.\n\nThe history of Roman studies since Niebuhr is largely the record of the\nactivity of a single man. The most personal and popular of Mommsen's\nworks, the _Roman History till the death of Caesar_, the greatest effort\nof his genius though not of his scholarship, was published as far back\nas 1854, and carried his name all over the world. He next turned to\nspecial departments of research, pouring forth in rapid succession his\ntreatises on Chronology, Coinage, the Digest, and above all the\n_Staatsrecht_, the largest and in his opinion the most important of his\nworks, and perhaps the greatest constitutional treatise in historical\nliterature. Meanwhile the _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, which he\nedited for the Berlin Academy, was the main occupation and the most\nenduring monument of his life. He had devoted himself to Latin epigraphy\nand had edited the Sammite and Neapolitan inscriptions before the\npublication of the Roman History. The first instalment of the Corpus\nappeared in 1863, and the great scholar lived to hail the appearance of\nnearly twenty volumes, half of them edited by himself. The Inscriptions\nrendered possible a history of the Empire, and the whole world hoped\nthat the master would write it; but he contented himself with a survey\nof the provinces. The closing years of his life were devoted to a\ngigantic treatise on Roman Criminal Law, and to editions of Jordanes,\nCassiodorus, the Theodosian Code and the Liber Pontificalis, thus\nenlarging the sphere of his operations till Rome was swallowed up in the\nMiddle Ages. His publications extended over sixty years. There is no\nimmaturity in his early works and no decline in the later. The\nimaginative and critical faculties met and balanced, large vision mating\nwith a genius for detail. The complete assimilation and reproduction of\na classical civilization of which scholars have dreamed ever since\nScaliger has been achieved by Mommsen alone. Rome before Mommsen was\nlike modern Europe before Ranke. We may truly say of him, as was said of\nAugustus, that he found it of brick and left it of marble.\n\nMommsen, like Ranke, was the founder of a school; and his inspiration\nhas been felt by every worker in the field of Roman studies. His\nsuccessors naturally confine themselves to some special province or\nperiod. Gaetano de Sanctis is far advanced in the most ambitious history\nof the Republic that has been attempted in the last half-century.\nFerrero's _Greatness and Decline of Rome_, though frowned on by\nscholars, aroused world-wide interest by interpreting the fall of the\nRepublic in terms of economics and psychology. The political and social\ncrises which fill the century from Sulla to Augustus, he argues, were\ndue to the change of customs caused by the augmentation of wealth,\nexpenditure, and needs. Of greater value are the attempts to fill in\ndifferent sections of the vast canvas of Imperial Rome, such as\nGardthausen's monumental survey of the reign of Augustus, Camille\nJullian's volumes on Gaul, and Professor Haverfield's slender monographs\non Britain. Roman life and culture have been diligently explored; but\nthe extreme paucity of materials makes the recovery of the atmosphere of\nthe early Republic almost impossible. The most daring attempt was made\nby Fustel de Coulanges in _La Cite Antique_, which offered a complete\ninterpretation of early society in terms of religion. Less harmonious\nbut more convincing pictures of religious life have been painted by\nWarde Fowler, while the civilization of the Empire has been successively\nanalysed in the fascinating and authoritative works of Friedlaender,\nBoissier, and Dill. Meanwhile archaeology contributes a steady stream of\nnew material. Boni's excavations in the Forum and on the Palatine have\nproduced sensational results. The unveiling of Pompeii moves slowly\nforward, and that of Ostia, the port of Rome, has begun. The\nresurrection of Herculaneum should be witnessed by the next generation\nif not by our own.\n\nA more difficult because a more controversial problem than the Roman\nEmpire is its contemporary, the early Christian Church. In the middle\ndecades of last century Baur treated the rise of Christianity as an\nhistorical phenomenon, leaving his hearers to determine for themselves\nwhether it was human or divine; but his influence proved more enduring\nthan his writings. Weiszaecker, his successor at Tuebingen, in his\n_Apostolic Age_, described with consummate scholarship and passionless\nserenity the life and organization of the early Christian communities.\nThe necessity of a careful study of the soil out of which Christianity\nhas grown is now generally recognized, and great scholars such as\nSchuerer and Pfleiderer have re-created the religious atmosphere into\nwhich Christ was born. The constitution of the primitive Church, too\nlong hotly discussed by the champions of rival sects, has been studied\nwith welcome impartiality by Lightfoot and Hatch. But no man, alive or\ndead, can boast of such achievements as Harnack. His History of Dogma,\nhis vast survey of Christian Literature till Eusebius, his narrative of\nthe Expansion of Christianity before the conversion of Constantine, are\ninseparable companions of the student who means business. The treasures\nof the catacombs have been revealed by De Rossi, to whom we also owe the\npublication of the Christian Inscriptions of Rome. The history of the\nearly Christian communities in the outlying provinces of the Empire has\nbeen enriched by Ramsay's explorations in Asia Minor. While the best\nwork naturally goes into monographs, comprehensive narratives are\noccasionally attempted by scholars of the first class. Renan's sparkling\nvolumes have enjoyed immense popularity, and some of them may still be\nread with profit; but, like his History of the Jews, they belong rather\nto literature than to science. If we desire a readable summary of the\nscholarship of the last half-century we may turn to the Volumes of the\nCatholic Duchesne or, better still, to those of the late Professor\nGwatkin.\n\nImperial Rome and the Christian Church meet and blend in the Byzantine\nEmpire, the later history of which appeared to Gibbon 'a tedious and\nuniform tale of weakness and misery'. Its services to civilization and\nthe greatness of many of its rulers were revealed to the world by\nFinlay, whose narrative was acclaimed by Freeman as the most\nconsiderable work of English historical literature since the _Decline\nand Fall_. In the half-century that has elapsed since its completion,\nthe exploration of a thousand years has gone busily forward. The lead\nwas taken in France by Rambaud, Schlumberger, and Diehl, the latter of\nwhom was rewarded for his efforts by his appointment as first occupant\nof the Chair created in Paris in 1899. Greater than any of the three was\nKrumbacher, the prince of German Byzantinists, for whom a Chair was\nfounded at Munich in 1892, and whose encyclopaedic survey of Byzantine\nliterature is beyond comparison the most important single work in this\nfield of historical study. England is worthily represented by Professor\nBury, whose narrative of the Empire has already reached the ninth\ncentury.\n\nByzantium has emerged from the scholarship of two generations no longer\ndecadent and inert but the mother of great statesmen and soldiers, the\nhome of culture while Central and Western Europe was plunged in\ndarkness, the rampart of Christian Europe for a thousand years against\nthe Arab and Turk, the educator of the Slavonic races. Freeman truly\nremarked that Constantinople was for ages the seat of the only regular\nand systematic Government in the world. Its administrative machine was\nthe most elaborate yet invented by man, and the Court was to mediaeval\nEurope what Versailles was to the rulers of the seventeenth and\neighteenth centuries. It was indeed a bureaucratic despotism in which\nliberty was unknown, and, except in art, its spirit was imitative; but\nto preserve Greek culture during the barbarism of the Middle Ages and to\ndefend it against the repeated assaults of Islam was to deserve well of\ncivilization.\n\nWhile the Byzantine Empire carried over important elements from the\nclassical world, Western and Central Europe passed under the dominion of\nideas which were as foreign to those of Greece and Rome as they are to\nthe conceptions of to-day. We have outgrown the blind contempt of the\neighteenth century and the gushing enthusiasm of the Romantic Movement;\nbut it is still a difficult task to form a just estimate of the\ncharacter of the thousand years that began with Augustine and ended with\nMacchiavelli. It is true that our materials grow from year to year; that\nthe criticism of original authorities as taught in the Ecole des Chartes\nhas become something like an exact science; that thanks to Lord Bryce\nthe Holy Roman Empire has become intelligible; that the structure and\nfunction of institutions have been patiently analysed by Waitz and\nStubbs, Fustel de Coulanges and Vinogradoff, Maitland and Gierke; that\nliterature and art, scholasticism and the Universities, have found their\nchroniclers and interpreters; that every ruler and every State, every\ntreaty and every council, may be studied in monographs innumerable. But\nthe Middle Ages were above all the reign of the Catholic Church; and we\nare still far from agreement as to the merits and influence of that\nvenerable institution which, be it human or divine, occupies a unique\nplace in the story of civilization.\n\nIn the middle decades of last century the history of the mediaeval\nChurch was related from very different standpoints in the widely-read\nworks of Neander and Milman; but it was only with the opening of the\nVatican archives by Pope Leo XIII in 1881 that it became possible to set\nforth the whole story of the Papacy and to understand the working of the\nmachinery of Catholicism. So vast is the accumulation of official acts\nand documents, and such technical training is required for the task,\nthat we shall have to wait many years till the material is surveyed in\nits entirety and its results made available for the use of the\nhistorian. Some idea of the value of the Registers may be gained from\nthe Master of Balliol's pregnant lectures on Church and State in the\nMiddle Ages, based on the 8,000 documents of the eleven years of the\nrule of Innocent IV in the middle of the thirteenth century. The study\nof these documents, he tells us, stirred him to admiration of the\norganization of the Papacy, and convinced him of its enormous\nsuperiority over its secular contemporaries as a centre not merely of\nreligion but of law and government; but he adds that he derived an\nequally profound impression of the abuses which ate into the heart of\nthe system, of the growing bitterness which it inspired, and of the\ndevastating effects of the passion to erect a powerful principality in\nthe heart of Italy.\n\nNo Protestant historian is tempted to glorify the record of the Papacy\nin the last two centuries before the Reformation; but it is generally\nagreed that in the earlier half of the Middle Ages the example and\ninfluence of the Church were a bright light shining in a dark world.\nThis notion has been recently challenged by Mr. Coulton, who, angered by\nthe special pleading of Cardinal Gasquet and other professional\napologists, hotly denounces the exaltation of the Ages of Faith. The\nMiddle Ages, he complains, are the one domain of history into which, in\nEngland at any rate, the scientific spirit has not yet penetrated.\nTaking as his text the autobiography of the Franciscan Fra Salimbene,\nthe most precious authority for the ordinary life of Catholic folk at\nthe high-water mark of the Middle Ages, he draws a sombre picture of\nmanners and morals and maintains that hideous vices existed in all the\nOrders long before the thirteenth century. 'Imagination', he cries,\n'staggers at the moral gulf that yawns between that age and ours.' His\ncondemnation of the life and influence of the Church re-echoes in\nsomewhat shrill tones the verdict of Henry Charles Lea, whose massive\ntreatise on the Inquisition was rightly described by Lord Acton as the\nmost important contribution of the New World to the religious history of\nthe old, and whose volumes on Sacerdotal Celibacy constitute a\nformidable indictment of mediaeval Catholicism.\n\nNext to the origins of Christianity the most controversial of the larger\nproblems of history is the Reformation; and here Protestants of all\nschools are ranged in a solid phalanx against Catholics. That the Church\nwas in need of reform is agreed by both sides; but the Catholic contends\nthat the evils to be remedied have been fantastically exaggerated, that\nthere was no need for a revolt, and that the revolution inaugurated by\nLuther left Germany far worse than it found her. Realizing that the\nProtestant view most authoritatively presented in Ranke's classical\nwork on the Reformation held the field, Janssen compiled a cultural\nhistory of the German people from the end of the Middle Ages to the\noutbreak of the Thirty Years War. Based throughout on original sources,\nand illustrating his thesis from every angle, his eight massive volumes\nwere hailed with gratitude and enthusiasm by Catholics all over the\nworld. No Catholic historical work of the nineteenth century, and\ncertainly no attack on the Reformation since Bossuet's _Variations of\nProtestantism_, obtained such resounding success or led to so much\ncontroversy.\n\nJanssen's object was to show that the fifteenth century was not a period\nof moral or intellectual decrepitude, with a few 'Reformers before the\nReformation' crying like voices in the wilderness, but an era of healthy\nactivity and abounding promise. He describes the flourishing state of\nreligious and secular education, the vitality of art, the comfort of the\npeasantry, and the prosperity of the towns. On reaching the sixteenth\ncentury, he denounces the paganism of the Humanists and paints a\nterrible picture of the material and moral chaos into which Germany was\nplunged by the Lutheran revolt. The later volumes are devoted to the era\nof the Counter-Revolution and present a canvas of unrelieved gloom,\nimmorality and drunkenness, ignorance, superstition and violence. Thus\nthe story which opened with the bright colours of the fifteenth century\ncloses in deep shadows, and the moral is drawn that Germany was ruined\nnot by the Thirty Years War but by the Reformation.\n\nProtestant historians fell upon the audacious iconoclast with fierce\ncries of anger, and had no difficulty in exposing his uncritical use of\nauthorities, his habit of generalizing from isolated particulars, and\nhis suppression of facts damaging to his own side. But though it was a\ndexterous polemic, not a work of disinterested science, Janssen's book\nhas made it impossible for any self-respecting Protestant to write on\nthe Reformation without knowing and weighing the Catholic side. Of\nsimilar tendency though of far higher value is the monumental work in\nwhich Pastor is narrating the story of the Renaissance and\nsixteenth-century Popes from the Vatican archives, which neither Ranke\nnor Creighton had been able to employ. No really objective picture of\nthe Reformation can be painted by Catholic or Protestant; but a good\ndeal of firm ground has been won, and the writings of Kawerau, the\ngreatest of Lutheran scholars, inspire us with a confidence that no\nwritings of the last generation deserved.\n\nThough Ranke's chief works had been published before the period to which\nthis lecture is confined, his influence can be traced in almost every\nwriter on modern history during the last half-century. His greatest\nservice to scholarship was to divorce the study of the past from the\npassions of the present, and, to quote the watchword of his first book,\nto relate what actually occurred. A second was to establish the\nnecessity of founding historical construction on strictly contemporary\nauthorities. When he began to write in 1824 historians of high repute\nbelieved memoirs and chronicles to be trustworthy guides. When he laid\ndown his pen in 1886 every scholar with a reputation to make had learned\nto content himself with nothing less than the papers and correspondence\nof the actors themselves and those in immediate contact with the events\nthey describe. A third service was to found the science of evidence by\nthe analysis of authorities, contemporary or otherwise, in the light of\nthe author's temperament, affiliations, and opportunity of knowledge,\nand by comparison with the testimony of other writers. There can be no\nbetter preparation for the perils and responsibilities of authorship\nthan to study the critical analyses of Guicciardini and Sarpi,\nClarendon, Saint-Simon, and many another, scattered through the sixty\nvolumes of the master. And finally he taught by precept and practice the\nnecessity of exploring the relations of States to one another and of\nmeasuring the interaction of foreign and domestic policy.\n\nThese sound principles have been applied by the scholars of all\ncountries who have jointly built up the history of the last four\ncenturies. We may study the Tudors under the guidance of Pollard, the\nStuarts under Gardiner and Firth, the Hanoverians under Lecky, without\nfear that we are being misled or that essential facts are being withheld\nfrom our notice. We continue to admire the literary brilliance of\nMacaulay and Carlyle, Motley and Froude; but we are instinctively aware\nthat their partisanship is out of date. The same cooling process has\ntaken place in France, where the passions and tempers of Thiers and\nMichelet have tended to yield place to the calm lucidity of which Mignet\nand Guizot were the earliest masters. There is, it must be confessed, a\ngood deal of the old Adam in Taine's elaborate study of Jacobinism, in\nMasson's innumerable volumes on Napoleon, and even in Aulard's priceless\ncontributions to our knowledge of the French Revolution; but such works\nas Lavisse's full-length portrait of Louis XIV, Segur's volumes on\nTurgot and Necker, Sorel's massive treatise on Europe and the\nRevolution, and Vandal's incomparable presentation of the Consulate rank\nas high in scholarship as in literature.\n\nThe unification of Germany after fierce struggles within and without\nnaturally deflected historical scholarship from the path marked out by\nRanke, who had grown to manhood in the era of political stagnation\nfollowing the downfall of Napoleon. The master's Olympian serenity was\ndeplored by the group of hot-blooded scholars who are collectively\nknown as the Prussian School, and who were firmly convinced that the\nprincipal duty of historians was to supply guidance and encouragement to\ntheir fellow-countrymen in the national and international problems of\nthe time. In his gigantic work on the History of Prussian Foreign\nPolicy, Droysen, the eldest of the Triumvirate, calls four centuries to\nwitness that the Hohenzollerns alone, from their unswerving fidelity to\nGerman interests as a whole, were fitted to restore the Empire. He\nworked exclusively from Prussian archives, and history seen exclusively\nthrough Prussian spectacles was bound to be one-sided. No student of\nEuropean history would contest the value of his researches; but his\ninterpretation of Prussian policy in terms of German nationalism was at\nonce recognized as a fundamental error, and has long been abandoned. The\nsecond member of the group, Sybel, himself one of the three favourite\npupils of Ranke, revolted in middle life, and in his two great treatises\non the era of the French Revolution and the foundation of the German\nEmpire championed the policy of the Hohenzollerns and delivered slashing\nattacks on France and Austria, their rivals and antagonists.\n\nThe last and greatest of the triumvirate, Treitschke, the Bismarck of\nthe Chair, devoted his life to a history of Germany in the nineteenth\ncentury which occupies the same unique place in the affections of German\nreaders as Macaulay's unfinished masterpiece enjoys throughout the\nEnglish-speaking world. Unlike the works of Droysen and Sybel, the\n_German History_ was far more than a political narrative, and presented\nan encyclopaedic picture of national development. His theme was the\nconflict of the forces which were promoting and opposing the\ntransformation of his country into a powerful Empire, and he judges men\nand states by the measure in which they promoted or obstructed that\npurpose. On the one side stands Prussia, feeling her way to the\nrealization of her historic task, on the other the middle and smaller\nstates, aided and abetted by the arch-enemy Austria and deeply infected\nwith the doctrinaire liberalism of France. Treitschke's stage is a\nbattlefield, with the historian looking down and encouraging his friends\nwith loud cries of applause. Such methods could not survive the\nrealization of the aim which they had done so much to assist, and with\nTreitschke's death in 1896 the Prussian School disappeared. Its members\nwere the political schoolmasters of Germany at a time of uncertainty and\ndiscouragement, and they braced their countrymen to the efforts which\nculminated in the creation of a mighty Empire. If the purpose of history\nis to stir a nation to action, Droysen, Sybel, and Treitschke are among\nthe greatest masters of the craft. If its supreme aim is to discover\ntruth and to interpret the movement of humanity, they have no claim to a\nplace in the first class. The stream, temporarily deflected by their\npowerful influence, began to return to the channel which Ranke had\nmarked out for it. Such works as Moriz Ritter's narrative of the\nCounter-Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Koser's biography of\nFrederick the Great, Max Lehmann's biographies of Scharnhorst and Stein,\nand Erich Marcks' studies of Bismarck and his master are as notable for\ntheir judgement as for their erudition.\n\nThe cooling process noted in the Old World has also occurred in the New,\nand America of the twentieth century smiles at Bancroft's complacent\nidealization of the Puritan colonies. Even the slavery struggle, the\nashes of which are scarcely yet cold, has found in James Ford Rhodes a\nhistorian who can do justice to Jefferson Davis and Lee no less than to\nLincoln and Grant. But no American scholar compares in world-wide\ninfluence with Mahan, whose study of Sea-Power in the seventeenth and\neighteenth centuries, published in 1889, not only founded a school of\nnaval history but was inwardly digested by distinguished pupils in both\nhemispheres, among them the Emperor William II and Theodore Roosevelt.\nThe Admiral's writings owe their importance not to research, for few new\nfacts are brought to light, but to the new angle from which familiar\nevents are envisaged. Occasionally, perhaps, the element of sea-power in\nthe determination of a particular result is over-emphasized at the\nexpense of other factors; but he was the first to seize the wider\nbearings of naval history and to make the general reader aware of its\nmomentous significance.\n\nThe scope of history has gradually widened till it has come to include\nevery aspect of the life of humanity. No one would now dare to maintain\nwith my old master Seeley that history was the biography of States or\nwith Freeman that it was merely past politics. The growth of nations,\nthe achievements of men of action, the rise and fall of parties remain\namong the most engrossing themes of the historian; but he now casts his\nnet wider and embraces the whole opulent record of civilization. The\ninfluence of nature, the pressure of economic factors, the origin and\ntransformation of ideas, the contribution of science and art, religion\nand philosophy, literature and law, the material conditions of life, the\nfortunes of the masses--such problems now claim his attention in no less\ndegree. He must see life steadily and see it whole. We must master such\nrevealing works as Lecky's histories of Rationalism and Morals,\nBurckhardt's and Symonds' interpretations of the Italian Renaissance,\nSainte-Beuve's full-length portrait of the Jansenists, Morley's studies\nof Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopaedists, Dean Church's sketch of\nthe Oxford Movement, and Merz's survey of European Thought in the\nnineteenth century, if we are to understand the throbbing life of the\nhuman spirit. We must measure the operation of economic factors and\nforces and profit by the faithful labours of Schmoller and Thorold\nRogers, Cunningham and Kovalevsky, the Webbs and the Hammonds, if we are\nto visualize the life of the unnumbered and the unknown who have done\nthe routine work of the world.\n\nThe fifty years roughly sketched in this lecture witnessed an immense\nand almost immeasurable advance in historical studies. The technique\nneeded to turn raw materials into the finished article kept pace with\nthe supply, and men learned to write the history of their own country,\ntheir own party, and their own beliefs, as impartially as that of other\nlands and other creeds. But the Great War has ravaged the placid\npastures of scholarship no less than the fields of France and Belgium.\nToo many historians in every belligerent country have lost their heads\nand degenerated into shrieking partisans. International co-operation in\nthe pursuit of truth, which is the condition of progress in history no\nless than in science, has been rudely shattered by the clash of arms.\nWith all but the calmest minds, national self-consciousness and national\nself-righteousness have rendered frankness in dealing with the record of\nour late allies and fairness in dealing with our late enemies difficult\nif not impossible. Many years will elapse before the European atmosphere\nregains the tranquillity in which alone the disinterested pursuit of\ntruth can nourish. Meanwhile it is a source of legitimate satisfaction\nthat while the world was rocking to its foundations two English\nhistorians, Sir Adolphus Ward and Mr. William Harbutt Dawson, were\nnarrating the development of Germany in the nineteenth century with a\nsteadiness of pulse unsurpassed in the piping times of peace. The\nhistorian is a man of flesh and blood and may love his country as\nardently as other men; but, if he is to be worthy of his high calling,\nhe must trample passion and prejudice under his feet and walk humbly and\nreverently in the temple of the Goddess of Truth.\n\n\nFOR REFERENCE\n\nGooch, _History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century_ (Longmans).\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nPOLITICAL THEORY\n\nA.D. LINDSAY\n\n\nPolitical Philosophy or the philosophical theory of the State has closer\nrelations with history than any other branch of philosophical inquiry.\nIt is indeed distinguished from history in that it can disregard the\nsuccess or failure, the historical development of this or that state.\nFor it is concerned not with historical happenings but with ideals, not\nwith the varying extent to which different states have approximated or\nfallen short of their purpose, but with that purpose itself, not, in\nshort, with states but with _the_ State. Yet this need not involve that\nthe ideal, _the_ State, is always and everywhere the same. Ideals are\nborn of historical circumstances and fashioned to meet historical\nproblems, and the would-be timeless ideals which political philosophers\nhave put before us have always borne clear marks of the country and time\nof their origin. The ideal which men have set themselves in political\norganization has varied from time to time. That such variation is\ninevitable will be clear if we ask ourselves what we can possibly mean\nby an ideal state. That states fall short of their ideal because of the\nimperfections of their citizens is clear enough. All political life\ndemands a certain standard of moral behaviour, of capacity to work for a\ncommon good, and an understanding of the results of our own and other\npeople's actions. Were human selfishness completely overcome, the state\nwould still be necessary to correct individual shortsightedness. The\npoliceman, exempt from the cares of apprehending criminals, would still\nbe needed to control traffic. But imagine, not that all citizens\nattained a certain standard of moral and intellectual behaviour, as the\nideal demands, but that they were all perfectly good and perfectly wise,\nshould we need any kind of government at all? Is not the supposition of\nperfection so far removed from any state of affairs we can really think\nof or plan for, that it cannot enter into our reckoning, ideal or\npractical? Every ideal takes certain facts of human life for granted\nwhilst it tries to improve others. All ideal states, Plato's as well as\nothers, assume certain facts about human nature and human society. These\nfacts may and do vary. The Greek city state assumed that a state must be\nsmall, if it was to have the intensive life they demanded. The Roman\nEmpire was a denial of the anarchy to which the Greek ideal had led, but\nit lost in intensity what it gained in extent. All political ideals\nassume a certain sociological background on which the state is based and\nfrom which spring the problems which the state is intended to solve. As\nthis sociological background varies from time to time, _the_ State, the\npurpose which men set before themselves in political organization, will\nvary also. The Greek city state and the mediaeval state were not\ndifferent approximations to the same ideal. They were the expressions of\ndifferent ideals. They rested on different assumptions, e.g. as to the\nplace of authority in society. With the disappearance at the Reformation\nof one of the great assumptions on which the mediaeval state had been\nbased, a new theory of the state was inevitable. The national state of\nthe seventeenth century was something new in history, and Hobbes differs\nfrom Aristotle, not because Hobbes is perverse and Aristotle right,\nthough Hobbes often is perverse, but because the political problems\nwhich Hobbes and Aristotle had to face were not the same.\n\nTwo great historical facts at the end of the eighteenth century, the\nFrench Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, profoundly modified the\nbasis of political organization. The modern state in consequence differs\nin many important respects from any that have preceded it. It does not\nrest on the common acceptance of authority, either religious, as did the\nmediaeval state, or personal, as did the seventeenth-century state.\nUnlike the Greek city state, it is large. Its administration is\nconcerned with millions who cannot be in personal relations to one\nanother, or share the same intensive life.\n\nWith the nineteenth century, then, a new chapter in the development of\npolitical theory begins as the peculiar problems of the modern state\ndevelop. Professor Dicey, in his _Law and Opinion in England_, has\ndivided the century into two periods of political thought--Individualism\nand Collectivism--one marking the decrease, the other the increase of\nthe power and authority of the state. When our period begins, the day of\nindividualism was passing. Ever since the Reformation it had, in spite\nof Burke, dominated political theory. Two forces had given it\nstrength--one idealistic, one scientific. It represented the revolt of\nthe individual conscience against the claims of authority, and as such\nwas a theory which attempted to limit the power of government over the\nindividual, whether by an appeal to natural rights in Locke and Tom\nPaine, or to the greatest happiness of the greatest number in the\nUtilitarians, or to the super-eminent value of individual liberty as set\nforth in John Stuart Mill's noble panegyric. The French Revolution gave\na notable impetus to this side of individualism, with its passionate\nassertion of the principle that political institutions exist for man,\nnot man for political institutions, and that all government must be\ntested by the life which it enables each and every one of its citizens\nto live. Individualism in this sense is concerned with the discovery of\nprinciples by which the power of government over the lives of its\nmembers may be limited. It is not necessarily a theory of the nature of\nsociety. Hobbes, however, was an individualist as well as Locke, and for\nHobbes the individual was the scientific unit from which societies and\nstates were built up--the starting-point for a scientific treatment of\nsociety. As the French Revolution gave a fresh impulse to idealistic\nindividualism, the Industrial Revolution reanimated the scientific, for\nit displayed the economic man, Hobbes's hero, come to life and a\nrespectable member of society. With him came the growth of political\neconomy, apparently the first really scientific study of man. From\nPolitical Economy Darwin borrowed the conception of the struggle for\nexistence and the survival of the fittest, and from the new biology the\ndoctrine of Evolution through individual competition returned to\nreinforce with the prestige of the new science the economists'\nconception of society.\n\nFor the first half of the nineteenth century all the forces inspiring\nindividualism seemed to work together, for economics and biology\nbreathed a benevolent optimism which promised that if the scientific\nforces of individualism were left to work unchecked by state\nrestriction, they would of themselves produce that individual liberty\nand free development which idealistic individualism desired.\n\nThe development of the industrial revolution, however, soon made\neconomic optimism impossible, and with its decay idealistic and\nscientific individualism parted company. The former retained its concern\nfor individual liberty but came to see that its ideal was as much\nthreatened by economic dependence as by state control, that the choice\nfor most members of society was not one between state interference and\nno interference at all, but between the state controlling or not\ncontrolling the power of interference possessed by the economically\nsuperior members of society. On such principles Henry Sidgwick\njustified an extensive system of state control of industry, and for such\nreason the strongest supporters of the rights of the individual have\nbeen found among Socialists.\n\nScientific individualism, which found its unit in the economic man and\nsought to absorb in economics both ethics and politics, was not in\nessence affected by the discrediting of economic optimism. It painted\nthe struggle between individuals in gloomy instead of in attractive\ncolours, its 'scientific' prepossessions inclined it to a determinism\nwhich led easily to the economic theory of history and even, by a\ncurious conversion of opposites, to the 'scientific socialism' of Karl\nMarx. In its essence it is a denial of the real existence of politics.\nFor it is a theory of society which denies the possibility of a will for\nthe common good and therefore the possibility of political ideals.\n\nIt was this powerful and malignant theory which was attacked and\nanswered by the modern idealist school represented by Green, Wallace,\nand Ritchie, and, in the present day, by Dr. Bosanquet. These writers\ngave us a theory of the state based on the importance and reality of\nsocial purpose. They went back to the theory of the Greek city state\nexpounded by Plato and Aristotle, finding modern reinforcement in the\nteaching of Rousseau and more especially of Hegel. Their destructive\ncriticism of 'scientific' individualism was reinforced by the teaching\nof anthropology and of historical jurisprudence, which emphasized the\npart played in early forms of society by social solidarity and showed\nthe inability of individualism to account for the development of\nsociety. Their destructive criticism was, however, the least part of\ntheir achievement. They exhibited convincingly the state as the product\nof will and purpose, based on man's moral nature and being in turn the\nform in which that moral nature expresses itself. In a notable phrase of\nDr. Bosanquet's, a phrase to which he has given constant detailed\namplification, 'institutions are ethical ideas'; moral purpose may seem\nto shine dimly enough in many actual institutions, but it is the only\nlight which shines in them at all, and only in that light can their\nmeaning and reality be understood.\n\nThe main principles of this idealistic school may be safely said to have\nby this time established themselves against criticism. Of recent years\nSocial Psychology has done much to explain the gap between the\ncontemplated purpose and the actual working of institutions, and has\ngiven precision and definiteness to those elements in human nature which\nstrengthen or weaken social solidarity. Economists have come to see that\neconomic relations are possible only within the framework of a society\nwhich has its root in moral and political purpose, although within that\nframework they may be theoretically isolated and studied by themselves.\nSociology, after many false starts, inspired by the mistaken belief that\na scientific treatment of society should interpret higher forms in the\nlight of lower, has now found it possible to study the manifold variety\nof institutional and social life on the basis provided by idealistic\nphilosophy.\n\nAs a theory of society, in short, this philosophy holds the field. It\nhas been criticized of late years as a theory of the state, and as these\ncriticisms show both where the idealistic theory was in some respects\ndefective and also where the chief problems for political philosophy in\nthe future are to be found, I shall devote the greater part of my\nlecture to these considerations.\n\nThe idealistic school drew their inspiration from the theory of the\nGreek city state, and in their conception of the function of the state\nthey assumed an essential identity between the Greek city state and the\nmodern nation state. In so far as these two types of state have been the\nmost self-conscious types of society that have existed, and have\ntherefore displayed explicitly the purpose that is implicit in all\nsociety, the identification has been sound and fruitful; in so far,\nhowever, as the identity is pressed to imply that in the modern state\nthe definite political or governmental organization should play the same\nfunction as it did in the Greek city state, the identification has been\nmistaken.\n\nThe Greek city state failed conspicuously to solve the problem of\ninter-state relations, and its philosophers, instead of recognizing the\nfailure and trying to remedy it, made their ideal state even more\nself-centred and autonomous than the existing states around them. Modern\nIdealism, just because it glorifies the state as the necessary upholder\nof moral relations, has often found it hard to regard the state as in\nits turn a member of a moral world.\n\nAgain, the Greek city state, just because it was small, could take up\ninto itself all the various social activities of its members. The state,\nin the sense of the Community in its political organization, directed\nand inspired Society, and the distinction between society and the state\nwas not of great importance. In the modern world the boundaries of\npolitical organization are not nearly as definite boundaries in society\nas are the boundaries of the Greek city state. There are all manner of\nassociations whose members are of different states and whose purposes\nare but to a small degree inspired or controlled by political\norganizations. Modern states are not all or completely nation states,\nand the nation is not as pervading and dominating an entity as was the\nGreek _polis_. This is not to say that the non-political associations\ncould do without the state, as some recent writers have contended.\nChurches, e.g., could not exist were there not law and government. Yet\nit is impossible to maintain that in any real sense they are upheld by\nthe state. They clearly get their inspiration from other sources. The\ndifficulty is not evaded if we go behind both political and\nnon-political organization to the community in which both exist and\nwhich upholds them both. For what in this reference is 'the community'?\nIn regard to the political association it is the special solidarity of\npeople living in a certain area; in regard to the non-political\norganization it is the solidarity of a section of the world-wide\nsociety, marked off from the rest on a non-territorial basis. The\ncommunity in the two cases is not the same. Hence there arises in the\nmodern state, as there arose in the mediaeval, a conflict of loyalties\nbetween the state and non-political associations. If we divide the world\ninto states whose lines of division follow the divisions of the\norganization of force, we are faced with a host of problems concerning\nthe proper place in society of these force-bearing organizations, and\ntheir relation to other associations.\n\nIn considering both sets of problems, international and internal, we may\neither begin with the division of the world into states, each of which\nwill be an approximation of _the_ State which we are studying, or we may\nregard the whole world as in some sort one society, covered with a\nnetwork of overlapping associations of all kinds. On the former view the\nworld is thought of as consisting of a number of independent\ncommunities, each shaping and controlling the various forms of social\nlife within its own borders, upholding their moral world, and each being\nas a whole single entity a member of the community of states. On the\nlatter we start with the solidarity and will to co-operate which\npervades in all manner of degrees the whole world society, and regard\nthe organization of force which marks the state as being the mark of a\nsettled and determined form of that will to co-operate which is\ncharacteristic of all forms of human association. How dominant and\ndeterminant over other forms of association is that special form which\ncontrols organized force--that is the problem before us. We are\nconcerned in technical language with the problem of sovereignty.\n\nLet us consider first the problem of international relations. The\ndoctrine of sovereignty, formulated in the seventeenth century and\ncrystallized by Austin at the beginning of the nineteenth, made\nsovereignty the hallmark of the state. The person or persons, to whom\nthe bulk of a given society render habitual obedience, either do or do\nnot render habitual obedience in turn to some other person or persons.\nIf they do not, the society constitutes a sovereign state; if they do,\nit is only part of a sovereign state. The world therefore was regarded\nas containing a number of sovereign independent states. As sovereignty\nand law necessarily went hand in hand, there could be no law between\nsovereign states. There could only be world-wide law if there were one\nworld-wide state. So long as there are more states than one, there are\ncommunities between whom there is no law. The doctrine of sovereignty\nwas in its inception individualist, but in so far as concerns the\nimplications, though not the basis of sovereignty, it was taken over by\nHegel and by the English idealist school with the exception of T.H.\nGreen. Idealism, indeed, always insisted that will, not force, was the\nbasis of the state, but whereas in Green the state is constituted by the\nmoral willing of individuals for a general good, in Hegel and in\nBosanquet the conflicting willings of individuals are reconciled by\ntheir being taken up into the supra-personal will of the state. With the\nformer therefore the morality of individuals is the primary fact, the\nexistence of the state the secondary; with the latter on the whole the\nexistence of the state is the primary moral fact, the moral willing of\nindividuals secondary. Just because the wills of individuals are\nreconciled, not by each recognizing certain abstract principles of duty,\nbut by being taken up into the supra-personal will of the state, where\nthere is no such supra-personal will there is no reconciliation of\nconflicting wills and no morality beyond and outside the boundaries of\ncommunities. Hence arises a conception of the state which fits into the\nabsolutist doctrine of sovereignty which we have described.\n\nThe first thing to be said about this doctrine of the independent\nsovereign state is that political facts have obviously outrun it. It was\nderived from a study of the unitary state and will hardly fit any\nfederal state. It is manifestly absurd when applied to the British\nEmpire. If we disregard, as we must, the superficial legal facts and\nlook at the real nature of the British Empire, we must admit that the\nDominions are neither separate sovereign states nor parts of one\nsovereign state, and that the unity of the Empire is a unity of will--a\nwillingness to co-operate which has not yet clothed itself in legal\nforms, and which is not, for geographical and other reasons, as intense\nas that will to co-operate which must be at the basis of a unitary\nsovereign state. This must suggest to us that the willingness to\nco-operate admits of degrees, and the relations of communities to one\nanother to have stability must reflect these degrees. The importance of\nthese considerations is obvious if we think of the problems with which\nwe are confronted at the present moment, when we are attempting to form\nan international organization. The problems which have confronted the\nPeace Conference have brought two things clearly to light. The first,\nthat the nation state is far too simple a solution of modern\ndifficulties. Self-determination will not carry us very far. There are\nmany cases where the boundaries dictated by nationality on the one hand\nand by the need for common organization on the other do not coincide,\nand where the only solution is one which impairs sovereignty in the old\nsense. The second is that the League of Nations, if it is to mean\nanything at all, will have to impair the sovereignty of the states which\njoin it without thereby constituting in itself a world state. Much of\nthe opposition to the League of Nations is concerned with this implied\nimpairment of sovereignty. Whether this opposition will weigh with us\nwill depend on whether we regard the independent sovereign state as the\nbe-all and end-all of political theory, or see that the fundamental fact\nto be taken into account is man's readiness to co-operate for common\npurposes. If we take the latter view, we shall still be holding to what\nwas the fundamental contribution of the idealist school, the teaching\nthat the basis of all political questions is moral. The essence of the\nmatter is how we are prepared to treat other people, for what purposes\nwe are prepared to act with them, how far we are prepared to recognize\nand give settled organized recognition to our mutual obligations. The\npolitical organization is the vehicle and not the creator of these moral\nfacts. As the facts vary, so will its forces. We may learn from the\nHegelian school to recognize the enormous importance of the state, the\ngreat achievement of the human spirit which its organization represents,\nand the folly of light-heartedly endangering its existence, without\nmaking one form which it has taken in the nation state sacrosanct and\nabsolute.\n\nLet us turn now to the second of our problems, the relation of the state\nto associations, such as churches and trade unions, within its borders.\nHere again we find a principle, originating in earlier individualist\ntheory, taken up into idealism. In the beginnings of modern political\ntheory in the seventeenth century, the absolutist doctrine of the state\nwas the outcome of the need of the times for strong government. A state\nthat was not master in its own house was felt to be incapable of the\nhard task these troublous times set before it. The French Revolution\nmade no change in the attitude of the state to associations. New-born\ndemocracy was not inclined to look favourably on the independence of\nreligious non-democratic associations, and the fact that Leviathan had\nbecome democratic was thought to have transformed him into a monster\nwithin whose capacious maw any number of Jonahs might live at ease or\nliberty. Association against a tyrant might be a sacred duty; against\nthe people it could only be a suspicious superfluity. In a very\ndifferent way the Prussian state, centralized, efficient, and Erastian,\norganizing the whole resources of the community under the guidance of\nthe state, enforced the same principle. The state is a moral\ninstitution, it cannot surrender the inculcation and upholding of\nmorality to an alien or independent body. From all the sources of modern\nidealistic political theory, Plato, Rousseau, Hegel, comes the same\nprinciple of state absolutism over associations within the state. The\nprinciple was put in idealistic form in the doctrine that the state is a\nsupra-personal will, absorbing in itself the activities of its members.\n\nOf late years dissatisfaction with this doctrine has been making itself\nmore and more loudly expressed. Along with an increasing belief in the\nextension of the state's administrative capacities has gone an\nincreasing disinclination to leave men's moral and cultural activities\nto the political organization. The ideal of the _Kulturstaat_ is now\nsufficiently discredited. Men are coming more and more to recognize the\npart played in life by non-political organizations and to insist on the\nimportance of preserving the independence and freedom from state control\nof such associations as churches. The loyalty of individuals to their\nassociations, churches or trade unions, has been conflicting with their\nloyalty to the state, and men are not prepared to admit that in all such\ncases of conflict loyalty to the state ought to be paramount.\n\nCuriously enough, the central doctrine of the later idealistic school,\nthe personality of the state, lent a force to the criticism of the\ndoctrine of state absolutism. If the state can be described as a person,\nmay not also a church and a trade union? We have begun to learn from\nGierke, interpreted and reinforced to us by Maitland, that what is sauce\nfor the state goose is also sauce for the corporation gander, and that\nassociations within the state may claim from the state a greater\nindependence and a recognition of their intrinsic worth because they, as\nit, embody in some sense a real will over and above the wills of their\nmembers. This doctrine of corporate personality is of great interest and\ncomplexity, and has not yet been satisfactorily worked out. But I shall\nnot discuss it now because it will not help us far towards a solution of\nthe problem of what are the proper relations between associations and\nthe state, be they personalities or not.\n\nRecent writers have mainly attempted to solve the problem by the\nprinciple of differentiation of function. This will certainly help us in\nconsidering the relation of church and state. For we can say that the\ntask of the political organization is to maintain the conditions of the\ngood life, leaving the work of developing the meaning of the good life,\nthe fostering and inculcation of ideals, to voluntary associations. The\nstate will then maintain a certain minimum of moral behaviour, while the\nmore delicate and freer work of inspiration is left to individuals and\nvoluntary associations. This will not always provide a clean-cut and\nsufficient differentiation. The state must make up its own mind what is\nessential to the maintenance of the good life, the voluntary\nassociations may hold that what the state ordains is flatly evil, as the\nstate may hold that what a voluntary association teaches is subversive\nof all that makes a common ordered life possible, and both must be true\nto the facts as they see them. When such conflict arises, as it has\narisen lately, if the only answer we can give at present is the old\nanswer given by Dr. Johnson, 'The state had a right to martyr the Early\nChristians, and they had a right to be martyred,' yet at least we are\nfarther on if each side honestly recognizes the importance of the work\nthat the other has to do.\n\nWhen we come to the problem raised by the present position and claims of\nTrade Unions, differentiation of functions is less satisfactory. Let us\nfirst look at the problem as it confronts us to-day. There was a time\nwhen the state was doubtful whether it should allow trade unions to\nexist. The Political Economy prevalent in the earlier part of the\nnineteenth century taught that trade unions were either unnecessary or\nuseless--unnecessary in so far as economic relations, if unhindered by\nregulations from the state or from combinations, were regarded by\neconomic optimism as themselves producing satisfactory social\nconditions; useless where Political Economy had substituted for optimism\na belief in 'iron laws' whose results no combination or government\nregulation could affect. We now see that economic relations, just\nbecause they are possible between men who have no common purpose, need\nregulation inspired by a common purpose, and can be affected by such\nregulation. The growth of governmental interference with industry and of\ntrade unionism are part of the same movement to control the working of\neconomic relations with a view to maintaining the conditions of the good\nlife. Trade unions have grown and are still steadily growing in size and\nimportance. For a large portion of the nation loyalty to a trade union\nhas become the most obvious form of collective loyalty or general will.\nThis has been accompanied by an inevitable decrease in what we may call\nterritorial loyalty. The result of the increase in means of\ncommunication and the growth of large towns has been that men's common\ninterests as members of the same trade or as employees in the same\nworkshop are coming to mean more and to constitute a greater common bond\nbetween men than their common interests as dwellers in the same\nlocality. The trade union has often a more live and real general will\nthan the Parliamentary constituency. Men's aspirations and ideals for\ntheir common life are being expressed more truly through trade union\norganizations than through Parliament. The growth in the prestige of\norganized labour is therefore coincident with a decay in the prestige of\nParliament. Parliament, however, based on a local sub-division of the\nnation, is at present the only political organization of the nation.\nTrade union organization, as a political organization, has no\nconstitutional authority, and all the general will which it represents\ncan find no regular national expression. The result is that it either\nuses the territorial organization by getting men who really represent\ntheir Trade Union elected as members for Parliamentary local\nconstituencies, to the detriment of both the territorial and the trade\nunion organization, or acts as an _imperium in imperio_ by making\ndemands on and issuing ultimata to Parliament. We seem to be approaching\na crisis where the trade unions are asking whether they will allow the\nstate to exist.\n\nThis is obviously an unsatisfactory state of affairs. What is the cure\nfor it? Differentiation of functions, as I have said, will not help us\nhere. Some writers have maintained that vocational organization should\nconcern itself with industrial or economic matters, the state, as we\nknow it, with political matters. But can we possibly distinguish between\nindustrial and political matters? If the aim of politics is to regulate\nmen's actions in the light of men's common interests, the action of a\ntrade union is in its essence political. Its differentiation from\ngovernment is that it is concerned with the common interests of a few\nrather than the common interests of all. The difference between a trade\nunion and a parliamentary constituency is that the sub-division of the\ngeneral common interest which each represents rests on a different basis\nof division. The whole community might as well be organized by vocations\nas it now is by localities. There would seem to be certain advantages in\nboth principles of differentiation, and one obvious practical solution\nof our present difficulties is that the supreme organ of government\nshould in its two chambers represent the nation as organized on both\nprinciples, vocational and territorial.\n\nWe seem to have come now to the discussion of political machinery, but,\nas in our discussion of the League of Nations, we can see that our\nattitude to such questions of machinery will vary as we regard the\nforce-bearing organization with its national and territorial basis as\nthe primary fact in the community, to be distinguished sharply from all\nother organizations, or regard the possession of organized force as the\nexpression of men's settled and permanent will to maintain their common\ninterests and safeguard the conditions of the good life. If we\nconsistently follow out Green's dictum that will, not force, is the\nbasis of the state, we shall be anxious that the political organization\nto which we render obedience shall follow the actual ramifications of\ncommon interests and of men's willingness to co-operate, and shall\nrecognize that the national state with its territorial basis represents\nonly one form of such ramification.\n\nThe view that political action is not confined to constitutional and\ngovernmental channels will not imply that we must give up the\ndistinction between society and the state. For, on the one hand, trade\nunions have only arisen because of the special need for a _common_\nsafeguarding of common interests produced by economic relations.\nEconomic relations need to be controlled by, but cannot be superseded\nby, politics. On the other hand, as we have seen, the work of such\nassociations as churches is different in kind from the work done by\npolitical organizations. The inculcation and development of moral ideals\nand the safeguarding of the conditions of the good life are\ncomplementary functions. Each is impossible without the other. But that\ndoes not make them identical, however closely interfused they may be.\n\nIf, then, we accept the political theory of idealism as a theory of\nsociety, we must recognize in social life the distinction between\nethical, economic, and political relations, and the task before\nPolitical Theory is to define the relations between politics and\neconomic activities on the one side and ethical activities on the other,\nand that in a society which is not confined within the bounds of a\nsingle nation state. The intricate ramifications of vast economic\nundertakings and the common aspirations and ideals of humanity are but\nsigns of a solidarity of mankind that political philosophy must\nrecognize in all the problems it has to face.\n\n\nFOR REFERENCE\n\nGreen, _Principles of Political Obligation_.\n\nBosanquet, _Philosophical Theory of the State_.\n\nBarker, _Political Thought in England from Spencer to to-day_.\n\nHobhouse, _The Metaphysical Theory of the State_.\n\nFiggis, _Churches in the Modern State_.\n\nCole, _Labour in the Commonwealth_.\n\nCole, _Self Government in Industry_.\n\nDelisle Burns, _The Morality of Nations_.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT[20]\n\nC.R. FAY\n\n\nI. THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE, 1842\n\n1. Let us hover in fancy over the industrial scene in 1842, and\nphotograph a stage of the economic conflict which the people of England\nwere waging then with the forces which held them in thrall.\n\nOur photograph shows us great white lines, continuous or destined to\nbecome continuous; they are numerous in Durham and Lancashire, and the\nnewest lead up to and away from London. These white lines are the new\nrailroads of England, and the myriad ant-heaps along them are the\nnavvies. In the year 1848 their numbers had risen to 188,000.[21]\n\nWhat is a navvy and how does he live? The navvy is an inland navigator\nwho used to dig dykes and canals and now constructs railroads. In the\nforties the navvies are getting 5_s._ a day, and for tunnelling and\nblasting even more, but they are a rowdy crowd, and many of them are\nIrish. Said the Sheriff substitute of Renfrewshire in 1827: 'If an\nextensive drain, or canal, or road were to make that could be done by\npiecework, I should not feel in the least surprised to find that of 100\nmen employed at it, 90 were Irish.'[22] In 1842 they are building\nrailroads, and when they and the Highlanders are on the same job, it is\nnecessary to segregate them in order to avoid a breach of the peace. The\nIrish sleep in huts and get higher pay than the natives who are lodged\nin the neighbouring cottages. The English navvy too keeps out the\nIrishman if he can. On a track in Northamptonshire, 'There is only one\nIrishman on the work, for they would not allow any other Irishman.'[23]\n\nIn the South of England wages are lower and the navvies are less expert.\nIn South Devon 'very few North countrymen; they are men who have worked\ndown the line of the Great Western; that have followed it from one\nportion to another'.[24] The riff-raff from the villages cannot work\nstroke for stroke with the navvy. 'In tilting the waggons they could,\nbut in the barrow runs it requires practice and experience.'[25]\n\nThe high wages of the navvy are offset by the disadvantages of his\nemployment. He is lucky if he gets the whole of his earnings in cash. In\nthe Trent Valley they are paid once a month, 'but every fortnight they\nreceive what is called \"sub\" that is subsistence money, and between the\ntimes of subsistence money and times of the monthly payment, they may\nhave tickets by applying to the time-keeper, or whoever is the person to\ngive them out, for goods; and those tickets are directed to a certain\nperson; they cannot go to any other shop.'[26]\n\nThe huts in which they live are little better than pigsties, and\nespecially bad for regular navvies, who take their families about with\nthem. In South Devon, 'man, woman, and child all sleep exposed to one\nanother.'[27] On a section of the London and Birmingham Railway fever\nand small-pox broke out. 'I have seen', says an eye-witness, 'the men\nwalking about with the small-pox upon them as thick as possible and no\nhospitals to go to.'[28] The country people, the witness continues, make\nmoney by letting rooms double. When one lot came out, another lot went\nin.\n\nSuch is the navvy's life at work and at rest.\n\n\n2. If we can suppose that our camera is capable of distinguishing\ncentres of industrial activity, then our picture will give us 'vital'\npatches, which stand out against a background of deadness. This deadness\nis rural England.\n\nWhat is the condition of the rural counties of Wessex? 'Everywhere the\ncottages are old, and frequently in a state of decay.' 'Ignorance of the\ncommonest things, needle-work, cooking, and other matters of domestic\neconomy, is ... nearly universally prevalent.'[29] To make both ends\nmeet the wife has abandoned her now useless spinning-wheel and hired\nherself out to hoe turnips or pick stones.\n\nOn the little farms inside the factory districts of Lancashire and\nYorkshire, on which the country hand-loom weavers eke out a miserable\nlivelihood by cultivating patches of grass land, there is distress more\nacute than ever was known in a Dorset village. But in Northumberland, by\nexception, there is a decent country life. 'What I saw of the northern\npeasantry impressed me very strongly in their favour; they are very\nintelligent, sober, and courteous in their manners.... The education in\nNorthumberland is very good; the people are intelligent and cute, alive\nto the advantages of knowledge, and eager to acquire it; it is a rare\nthing to find a grown-up labourer who cannot read and write and who is\nnot capable of keeping his own accounts.'[30] The same sort of thing was\nsaid of Northumberland in 1869: 'If all England had been like\nNorthumberland, this commission ought never to have been issued.' The\nCommissioner found that though the labourers worked harder and longer\nthan in the South they were not working against starvation. They were\nenjoying a rough plenty, which included fresh milk. The rest of the\nfamily earned sufficient to leave the married woman in her home and no\nchildren under twelve were employed in field labour.[31]\n\nHere then in Northumberland there is a decent country life, but\nelsewhere there is an atmosphere of deadness; and it is this deadness of\nthe countryside which explains the horror that new comers to industrial\nregions frequently expressed at the prospect of a forcible return to the\nparish of their origin.\n\n'I was told,' says a visitor to Lancashire in 1842, 'that there had been\nseveral instances of death by sheer starvation. On asking why\napplication had not been made to the commissioner of the parish for\nrelief, I was informed that they were persons from agricultural\ndistricts who, having committed an act of vagrancy, would be sent to\ntheir parishes, and that they had rather endure anything in the hope of\nsome manufacturing revival, than return to the condition of farm\nlabourers from which they had emerged. This was a fact perfectly new to\nme, and at the first blush, truly incredible, but I asked the neighbours\nin two of the instances quoted ... and they not only confirmed the\nstory, but seemed to consider any appearance of scepticism a mark of\nprejudice or ignorance.'[32]\n\n\n3. Though there is little peasant life in England, there is life of a\nfeverish desperate order for many who live in country places. These\npeople are not farm workers nor yet are they craftsmen who supply the\nindustrial needs of the village. They are feeders to the towns, engaged\nin what is misnamed 'domestic industry'. The life they lead is a sordid\nreplica of an all too sordid original.\n\nCobbett in a tirade against the Lords of the Loom[33] idealized the\nold-time union of agriculture and manufacture. The men should work in\nthe fields, while the women and children stayed at home at their\nspinning wheels, making homespun for the family garments. But the\npicture was a vanishing one even in his day. Domestic industry does not\nmean this. The rural distress revealed in the Hand-loom Weavers\nCommission is the distress of specialized hand-workers, male and female,\nwho are clinging desperately to the worst-paid branch of a dying trade.\nThe worsted industry of East Anglia is perishing, defeated by the\nresources of Yorkshire, of which the power-loom is only one. The cloth\ntrade in the Valley of Stroud (Gloucester) is a shadow of its former\nself. It has lost the power of recovering from a depression. The next\nperiod of slackness that comes along may bankrupt the business and rob a\nvillage of specialized hand-workers of their main employment.\n\nIn Devonshire, the serge trade, which used to give employment to looms\nin almost every town and village, has become so unremunerative that it\nhas passed into the hands of the wives and daughters of mechanics and\nagricultural labourers. In Oxfordshire in 1834, we are told by the Poor\nLaw Commissions of that year, glove and lace making were vanishing\noccupations. In the neighbourhood of Banbury 'some make lace and gloves\nin the villages. Formerly spinning was the work for women in the\nvillages, now there is scarcely any done.'[34]\n\nSince 1834 the process of disintegration had proceeded apace.\n\nWe must not, however, convey the impression that domestic industry in\n1842 had all but vanished from the countryside. In its ancient\nstrongholds it still endures, but it is in an unhealthy condition, and\nthe towns are sucking its life-blood away.\n\nTo illustrate this, let us describe the course of a boom in domestic\nindustry and study how the trade boom of 1833-7 reached through to the\ncountry silk weavers in Essex and other places all around London. The\nterms which we usually apply to the cultivation of land are apposite.\nThe town workers represent the intensive margin of cultivation, the\ncountry workers the extensive margin. First of all the Spitalfield\nweavers, who have been short of work, have more work given to them. The\nweavers' wives also get work, and their boys and girls who never were on\na loom before are now put to the trade. Fresh hands are introduced. From\nthe Metropolis the demand for labour pushes outwards over the country.\nRecourse is had to 'inferior soils'. Old weavers in the villages get\nwork, together with their wives and families. Even farm labourers are\nimpressed. Blemishes for which at other times deductions would be\nclaimed are now over-looked. Carts are sent round to the villages and\nhamlets with work for the weavers, so that time may not be lost in going\nto the warehouses to take back or carry home work. Then comes the ebb:\n'the immediate effect is that all the less skilful workmen, the\ndissolute and disorderly, are denied work; the third and fourth looms,\nthose worked by the sons and daughters of the weavers, are all thrown\nout of use'. The intensiveness of cultivation has been reduced in the\ntowns, the least remunerative no longer pays.\n\nThe ebb of the tide, which reduces the quantity of employment in the\ntowns, leaves the country districts high and dry. 'At such times the\ncountry towns and villages to which work is liberally sent, when there\nis a demand for goods, suffer still more. A staff or skeleton only is\nkept in pay, and that chiefly with a view to operations when a demand\nreturns.'[35] A skeleton--well said.\n\nOccasional cultivation is bad for land, and worse for human beings. The\nribbon-weaving villages north of Coventry are a disorderly eruption from\nthe town. Coventry itself has the better-paid 'engine weaving'; the\nrural districts have the 'single hand trade'. The country workers, say\nthe Commissioners, 'retain most of their original barbarism with an\naccession of vice'. The yokels who went out to the French wars innocent\nboys returned confirmed rogues. Bastardy is greater than ever, despite\nthe new Poor Law. 'It may surprise the denouncers of the factory system\nto find all the vices and miseries which they attribute to it,\nflourishing so rankly in the midst of a population not only without the\nwalls of a factory, but also beyond the contamination of a large\ntown.'[36] It may have surprised such people, but it does not surprise\nus who are surveying the industrial scene and beginning to apprehend the\nrottenness of that worm-eaten structure which under the misnomer of\ndomestic industry marks the half-way house to full capitalism.\n\n\n4. Let us now journey to the factory districts of Lancashire and the\nWest Riding of Yorkshire where town lies close upon town, and the tall\nchimneys envelop in smoke the cottages in which hand-loom weavers work\nand the children of hand-loom weavers sleep. Let us suppose that we have\nfound our position by Leeds. We should like to follow the track of the\nnew railroads, for we have in our pocket a small green book:\n\n  'Bradshaw's Railway Time Tables and Assistant to\n                  Railway Travelling'.\n\n  '10th Mo. 19th, 1839.         Price Sixpence.'\n\nBradshaw tells us that we can get from Littleborough to Manchester in 11\nhours--via Rochdale, Heywood, and Millshill--but it is not clear how we\nare to get to Littleborough. So we follow an alternative route, the\ncanal. It is a fashionable method of transit for mineral traffic and\npaupers. Mr. Muggeridge, the emigration agent, tells us how he\ntransported the southern paupers in 1836. 'The journey from London to\nManchester was made by boat or waggon, the agents assisting the\nemigrants on their journey.'[37] When we got up our geography for the\ntour out of Thomas Dugdale's 'England and Wales' this is what we read at\nevery turn: 'Keighley: in the deep valley of the Aire, its prosperity\nhad been much increased by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal which passes\nwithin two miles.' 'Skipton: in a rough mountainous district. The trade\nhas been greatly facilitated by the proximity of the town to the Leeds\nand Liverpool Canal.' So the Leeds and Liverpool canal shall be our\nguide.\n\nWe leave Bradford, Halifax, and the worsted districts to the left of us,\nand passing by Shipley, approach the cotton district near the Lancashire\nborder. 'The township of Shipley is the western-most locality of the\nLeeds clothing districts; it runs like a tongue into the worsted\ndistrict. In like manner the worsted district blends with the cotton\ndistrict at Steeton, Silsden, and Addingham.' We are passing, the\nCommissioner tells us, from high wages to low. 'The cloth weavers of\nShipley work for wages little, if any, higher than those of the worsted\nweavers; while the worsted weavers north-west of Keighley are reduced\ndown to the cotton standard.'[38]\n\nAt Keighley we bend sharply south and soon reach Colne in Lancashire.\nDr. Cook Taylor describes the conditions there in the early part of\n1842:\n\n     'I visited eighty-eight dwellings, selected at hazard. They were\n     destitute of furniture save old boxes for tables or stalls, or\n     even large stones for chairs; the beds are composed of straw and\n     shavings. The food was oatmeal and water for breakfast, flour and\n     water, with a little skimmed milk for dinner, oatmeal and water\n     again for a second supply.' He actually saw children in the\n     markets grubbing for the rubbish of roots. And yet, 'all the\n     places and persons I visited were scrupulously clean. Children\n     were in rags, but they were not in filth. In no single instance\n     was I asked for relief.... I never before saw poverty which\n     inspired respect, and misery which demanded involuntary homage.'\n\nFrom Colne we journey to Accrington. Of its 9,000 inhabitants not more\nthan 100 were fully employed. Numbers kept themselves alive by\ncollecting nettles and boiling them. Some were entirely without food\nevery alternate day, and many had but one meal in the day and that a\npoor one.[39]\n\nOur last stage is Burnley, where the weavers--to quote again from Dr.\nCook Taylor--'were haggard with famine, their eyes rolling with that\nfierce and uneasy expression common to maniacs. \"We do not want\ncharity,\" they said, \"but employment.\" I found them all Chartists, but\nwith this difference, that the block-printers and hand-loom weavers\nunited to their Chartism a hatred of machinery which was far from being\nshared by the factory operatives.'\n\nWhat a comment on England's industrial supremacy--England with her\nvirtual monopoly of large-scale manufacture in Europe! It must have been\na puzzle, too, for the Poor Law Commissioners, who were then building\nworkhouses in these parts for the purpose of depauperizing hand-loom\nweavers on the less eligibility principle.\n\nBut how was it, with such a Poor Law, that the hand-loom weavers did not\ndie of starvation by the thousand? If we enter a cotton mill we shall\nsee why. Within these gaunt walls, which are illumined at night by\nsputtering gas-light, the factory children work, earning twice as much\nas their parents, who were too old and too respectable to become factory\nhands.\n\nBy this time, perhaps, it is evening, but this matters nothing to the\n'melancholy mad engines', which feed on water or burning coals. The\nyoung people will still be there, with eight hours work to their credit\nand more to do--'kept to work by being spoken to or by a little\nchastisement'.[40]\n\n'I have seen them fall asleep,' said an over-looker in 1833, 'and they\nhave been performing their work with their hands while they were asleep,\nafter the Billy had stopped. Put to bed with supper in their hands, they\nwere clasping it next morning, when their parents dragged them out of\nbed. Half asleep they stumbled or were carried to the mill, to begin\nagain the ceaseless round.'\n\n'It keeps them out of mischief', said the opponents of shorter hours.\nBesides, the conditions were no worse than any other industries! Factory\nwork, however, as the doctors show, was different from work in the\nmines. The heat and confinement of the mill caused precocious sexual\ndevelopment, whilst in the mines the result of exaggerated muscular\ndevelopment was to delay maturity.\n\nIn 1842 conditions are better than they were in 1833--thanks to the\nfactory inspectors. There is little positive cruelty, and the sight of\ndeformity--enlarged ankle bones, bow legs, and knock knees, caused by\nexcessive standing as a child--is rare. The problem now is one of\nindustrial fatigue. The children are 'sick-tired'.\n\n\n5. The Midlands of Leicestershire, Notts, and Derbyshire are a region of\nred bricks and pantiles, dotted over valleys of exquisite green. So let\nus leave the smoke of Lancashire and hover here for a while. Here dwell\nthe stocking workers or frame-work knitters--the people who knit on\nframes stockings, gloves, and other articles of hosiery. It does not\nlook like a region of industry. There are only a few towns, such as\nNottingham, Leicester, and Loughborough; and except for a few lace\nfactories in Nottingham, large buildings are rare. The town knitters\neither work in their own homes or in shops with standings for perhaps as\nmany as fifty frames. In the villages the knitting is nearly all done in\nthe cottages, opposite long low windows, or in a small out-house which\nmight well be a fowl-house.\n\nBut in the streets of Leicester we can see 'life' of a sort. We can\nwatch the procession to the pawnbrokers. Some of the knitters pawn their\nblankets for the day, and most lodge their Sunday clothing during the\nweek. Says a Leicester pawnbroker:\n\n     'We regularly pay away from L40 to L50 (to some 300 persons)\n     every Monday morning or on the Tuesday. They will, perhaps, wash\n     on the Monday and get their linen clean preparatory to the next\n     Sunday, and in the course of the week they bring all the linen\n     things they can spare. Friday is the worst; they will then bring\n     their small trifling articles, such as are scarcely worth a\n     penny, and we lend on them, to enable them to buy a bit of meat\n     or a few trifles for dinner.'[41]\n\nThey are too poor to indulge in church-going or alcohol. They have no\nclothes to go to church in. Their publican is the druggist, where they\nbuy opium for themselves and Godfrey's cordial, a preparation from\nlaudanum, for their children. In the whole of Leicester, with its\npopulation of 50,000, there are but nine gin-houses. And only on Sundays\ndo they get a bit of schooling. 'We have only one bit of a cover lid to\ncover the five of us in winter ... we are all obliged to sleep in one\nbed.'[42]\n\nA frame smith, making his usual inspection of hosiers' frames at\nworkmen's dwellings in Nottingham, after thus spending a fortnight,\nfound his health had begun to suffer from the squalid wretchedness of\ntheir abodes. Thinking to improve it, he went on the same errand into\nthe country, but found the frame-work knitters there in a still more\ndeplorable state. From the bad air and other distressing influences in\ntheir condition and that of their dwellings, in another fortnight he\nreturned, too ill to attend to his business for some weeks afterwards.\nThis occurred in 1843.[43]\n\nNottingham, however, with its up-to-date lace trade was usually better\noff than this. The lace factories, like the cotton mills in Lancashire,\neased the position of the hand-workers. In Leicestershire the knitters\nhad no such alternative. The more their earnings were reduced, the more\nhelplessly they were bound to their only trade.\n\n\n6. 1842 is a long while ago! Let us go to sleep for thirty years and\nwake up in 1871, when the Truck Commissioners are publishing their\nreport.\n\nWest of Birmingham lies the black country, an area of some twenty square\nmiles. Here, if we have read the evidence of the Truck Commissioners, we\ncan interpret a dumb-show in Dudley, where the nail-makers dwell.\n\nOn Monday mornings the nail-maker emerges from a small hovel containing\na smithy and walks into Dudley to call on a gentleman known as a fogger,\na petty-fogger if he is a middleman, a market-fogger if he is a master.\nThe nailer comes out with a bundle of metal which he takes to a second\nhouse and changes for a second bundle of metal, and with this he walks\naway. (The next nailer, not so lucky, hangs about till Wednesday\nmorning, waiting for his metal.) On Saturday the nailer comes back with\nhis nails, enters the fogger's shop, and emerges with 12_s._ in his\nhand. But he does not go home. He slips into a shop close by and parts\ncompany with the shillings. In return he gets a parcel, the contents of\nwhich are obviously displeasing to him. What has happened?\n\nThe nailer is a Government servant. But the Government only employs him\nindirectly. It puts out contracts for rivets and nails to contractors\nwho sublet their contract, so that the work reaches the nailer at third\nor fourth hand. The Government, in the interest of public economy\n(Victorian England is famous for retrenchment), gives its contract to\nthe lowest tenderer; and the policy of the lowest tender is responsible\nfor the dumb-show we have watched.\n\nTo begin with, the nailer gets metal which does not suit him, so he has\nto change it, and this he does at the price of 2_d._ per 10_d._ bundle,\nat a metal changers, a relative of the fogger. (His friend who has to\nwait till Wednesday for his bundle is kept idling about in order that\nhe may drink what is left of last week's earnings at a 'wobble shop'\nwhich is owned by yet another branch of the family of fogger.)\n\nWhen the nailer and his family have worked fourteen hours a day\nthroughout the week, the nailer returns on Saturday with the nails, and\nreceives 12_s._ for them. These shillings he takes to the fogger's store\nand exchanges for tea and other articles. The shillings are 'nimble'; we\ncommend the rapidity of their circulation to Mr. Irving Fisher. A fogger\nwho pays out the shillings from his warehouse receives them back again\nin a few minutes over the counter of his store. 'He will perhaps reckon\nwith seven or eight at one time, and when he has reckoned with them, and\nperhaps paid them six, seven, or eight pounds, he will wait until they\nhave gone to the shop and taken the money there as they leave the\nwarehouse. Then he goes into the shop himself for it, as he cannot go on\npaying without it.'[44]\n\nBut surely this is truck! Certainly not. There may be 'fearful cheating'\nwith tea, but the nailer is not bound to go there. He is perfectly free.\nThe only trouble is this: it is a case of tea or no work the week\nfollowing. This is why, despite the Truck Act of 1831 and despite the\nknown existence of the abuse, these practices are rife among the nailers\nas late as 1871, the year in which the Truck Commissioners issued the\nReport from which this scene is compiled. The plight of the nailers is\nnot the plight of factory operatives or miners; it is the plight of the\nframe-work knitters, of men who are bound by the intangible fetters of\neconomic need to the uncontrollable devil of 'semi-capitalism'.\n\n\n2. MINING OPERATIONS\n\n1. Coal was king of the nineteenth century. The first steam-engine was\nbuilt to pump water out of coal mines, the first canal was cut to carry\nthe Duke of Bridgwater's coal from Worsley to Manchester. The first\nrailroads were laid around Newcastle to convey the coals from the pit\nmouth to the river. George Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive,\nbegan life as a trapper on a Tyneside colliery.\n\nWhere would English industry have been without its king? In 1780 (in\nround figures) 5,000,000 tons of coal were raised in the United Kingdom:\nin 1800, 10,000,000; in 1865, 100,000,000; and in 1897, 200,000,000.\nCoal enticed the cotton factories from the dales of the Pennines to the\nmoist lowlands of West Lancashire. At every stage of their work the\niron-makers depended on coal; and the great inventions in the iron and\nsteel industry are land-marks in the expansion of the demand for\ncoal--Cort's puddling process 1783, Watt's steam-engine 1785, Neilson's\nhot blast 1824, Naysmith's steam-hammer 1835, Bessemer's steel-converter\n1855, Siemen's open hearth 1870, Thomas' basic process for the treatment\nof highly phosphoric ores 1878. The steamship, a novelty in 1820, ruled\nthe seas in 1870; and ironclads followed steamships. The smokeless\nsteam-coal of South Wales guarded the heritage of Trafalgar. By the end\nof the nineteenth century, coaling stations were an important item in\ninternational politics.\n\nMeanwhile, the people of England, heedless of Malthusian forebodings,\nmultiplied exceedingly. They lighted their streets and buildings with\ncoal-gas, and burnt coal in their grates. With coal they paid for the\nfood and raw materials from other lands. Imports of food and raw\nmaterials were offset by exports of coal and of textiles and hardware\nproduced by coal. The spirit of invention has pushed on to electricity\nand oil, but coal is still the pivot of English industry and commerce.\nAnd therefore, seeing that coal has meant all this to England, let us\nlook at the men who raised the coal. How did they live, what did they\nthink about, what did they count for then, what do they count for now?\n\n\n2. In 1800 the miners stood for nothing in the nation's life. In\nScotland they had just been emancipated from the status of villeinage.\nIn Northumberland and Durham they were tied by yearly bonds. Elsewhere\nthey were weak and isolated. In 1825 a 'Voice from the coal mines of the\nTyne and Wear' cried: 'While working men in general are making 20_s._ to\n30_s._ per week (_sic_) the pitmen here are only making 13_s._ 6_d._ and\nfrom this miserable pittance deductions are made.'[45]\n\nIn 1839, during the Chartist disturbances, a Welsh M.P. wrote to the\nHome Secretary begging for barracks and troops: 'A more lawless set of\nmen than the colliers and miners do not exist ... it requires some\ncourage to live among such a set of savages.'[46] When the miners came\nout in 1844, there were thousands of cottages tenantless in\nNorthumberland and Durham. For the colliery proprietors owned the\ncottages, and when the miners struck evicted them. So the miners set up\nhouse in the streets. 'In one lane ... a complete new village was built,\nchests-of-drawers, deck beds, etc., formed the walls of the new dwelling;\nand the top covered with canvas or bedclothes as the case might be.'[47]\nYet, for all their griminess, they had human hearts and voices. During\nthe strike they obtained permission to hold a meeting at Newcastle; and\nthe wealthy citizens who made their fortunes out of the coal trade\ntrembled before the invasion of black barbarians. But the meeting passed\noff in rain and peace. Thirty thousand miners marched in procession,\n'for near a mile flags in breeze, men walking in perfect order'; and as\nthey marched, they sang, as only miners sing, songs and hymns and\ntopical ditties:\n\n    'Stand fast to your Union\n      Brave sons of the mine,\n    And we'll conquer the tyrants\n      Of Tees, Wear, and Tyne!'\n\nUp and down the Durham coalfields tramped a misguided agitator (in after\nlife the veteran servant of the Durham Miners' Association), by name\nTommy Ramsey. With bills under his arm and crake in hand, he went from\nhouse-row to house-row calling the miners out. He had only one message:\n\n    'Lads, unite and better your condition.\n    When eggs are scarce, eggs are dear;\n    When men are scarce, men are dear.'[48]\n\nSuch blasphemy appalled the Government's Commissioners. But the miners\nhad a zest for religion as well as for strikes. During the strike of\n1844, 'frequent meetings were held in their chapels (in general those of\nthe Primitive Methodists or Ranters as they are commonly called in that\npart of the country), where prayers were publicly offered up for the\nsuccessful result of the strike.' They attended their prayer meeting 'to\nget their faith strengthened'.[49]\n\nSuch ignorance could only be cured by education. Some worthy members of\nsociety had already recognized the fact. In 1830 a Cardiff 'Society for\nthe improvement of the working population in the county of Glamorgan'\nissued improving pamphlets:\n\nNo. 9. Population, or Patty's Marriage.\n\nNo. 10. The Poor's Rate, or the Treacherous Friend.\n\nNo. 11. Foreign Trade, or the Wedding Gown.[50]\n\nBut the northern miners were perverse people. In Scotland, according to\none Wesleyan minister,[51] the miners read Adam Smith. In\nNorthumberland, with still greater perversity, they preferred Plato. 'A\ntranslation of Plato's _Ideal Republic_ is much read among those\nclasses, principally for the socialism and unionism it contains; in pure\nignorance, of course, that Plato himself subsequently modified his\nprinciples and that Aristotle showed their fallacy.'[52]\n\n\n3. The Royal Commission of 1842 on the Employment and Condition of\nChildren and Young Persons in Mines disclosed facts which made Cobdenite\nEngland gasp. The worst evidence came from Lancashire, Cheshire, the\nWest Riding of Yorkshire, East Scotland, and South Wales. In these\ndistricts juvenile labour was cheap and plentiful; and this was an\nirresistible argument for its employment, though the miners themselves\ndisliked it. The meddlesome restrictions on the factories were a\ncontributory cause. Parents, it was said in Lancashire, were pushing\ntheir children into colliery employment at an earlier age because of the\nlegal restrictions upon sending them to the neighbouring factories.\n\nA Lancashire woman said in evidence:\n\n     'I have a belt round my waist and a chain passing between my\n     legs, and I go on my hands and feet.... The pit is very wet where\n     I work and the water comes over our clog tops always, and I have\n     seen it up to my thighs.... I have drawn till I have had the skin\n     off me; the belt and chain is worse when we are in the family\n     way.'[53]\n\nThe children's office was a lonesome one. Children hate the dark, but\nbeing little they fitted into a niche, and so they were used to open and\nclose the trap-doors. A trapper lad from the county of Monmouth, William\nRichards, aged seven-and-a-half, said in evidence:\n\n     'I been down about three years. When I first went down, I could\n     not keep my eyes open; I don't fall asleep now; I smokes my pipe,\n     smokes half a quartern a week.'[54]\n\nExcept in the northern mining districts, where there were good day and\nSunday schools and Methodism was powerful, a pagan darkness prevailed.\nAs a Derbyshire witness put it:\n\n     'When the boys have been beaten, knocked about, and covered with\n     sludge all the week, they want to be in bed all day to rest on\n     Sunday.'[55]\n\nIn the hope of startling a religiously-minded England, the Commissioners\nreproduced examples of working-class ignorance. James Taylor, aged\neleven,\n\n     'Has heard of hell in the pit, when the men swore; has never\n     heard of Jesus Christ; has never heard of God; he has heard the\n     men in the pit say, \"God damn thee \".'\n\nA Yorkshire girl, aged eighteen, said:\n\n     'I do not know who Jesus Christ was; I never saw him, but I have\n     seen Foster, who prays about him.'[56]\n\n\n4. Just as in the East Midlands the frame-work knitters worked for\nmiddlemen or master middlemen, and just as the Dudley nailers worked for\npetty-foggers and market-foggers, so too the Staffordshire miners worked\nfor 'butties'. Here again the workers were exposed to the petty\ntyrannies of semi-capitalism; and here again the middlemen, in this case\nthe butties, incurred the odium of a system for which their superiors,\nthe coal-owners and coal-masters, were responsible.\n\nWhy the butty system prevailed in the Midlands--and in a modified form\nit prevails to-day--is not clear. In some places it seems to be\nconnected with the smallness of the mining concerns or of the metal\ntrades which they supplied. In South Staffordshire a contributing factor\nwas the ancient and allied industry of nail-making.\n\nThe conditions in South Staffordshire in 1843 are fully described in the\nMidland Mining Commission of that year.\n\nThe butty was a contractor who engaged with the proprietor or lessee of\nthe mine to deliver the coal or iron-stone at so much per ton, himself\nhiring the labourers, using his own horses, and supplying the tools\nrequisite for the working of the mine. The contract price was known as\nthe 'charter price' or 'charter'. Thus by a freak of language the\nStaffordshire miner knew by the same word the 'butty's charter' which\nwas the symbol of his oppression, and the 'people's charter' which was\nthe goal of his desire.\n\n'The butties', said the miners and their wives, 'are the devil: they are\nnegro drivers: they play the vengeance With the men.'[57] The men\nkicked when, after working a couple of hours, they were fetched up,\nwithout pay, on the excuse that there were no waggons to take away the\ncoal. But the butty comforted them with a bottle of pit drink, and all\nwas smooth again.\n\nA collier related a case where 'a pike man had worked only one half-day\nin the week and got 2_s._ for it, and because he did not spend 6_d._ of\nthis at the butty's shop, the latter told the doggy (the under man) to\nlet the man play for it.'[58]\n\nThe miners recognized that often the butty was not to blame. In the\ndistrict north and east of Dudley, the butties got their 'charter price'\nfrom the coal-owners in the form of tickets on the coal-owners'\ntruck-shop. What else could they do but hand them on to the men? 'He\nused to be a very good butty,' said one miner's wife, 'till they haggled\nhim and dropped his \"charter\", so that he cannot pay his men.'[59]\n\nWest and south of Dudley the butties, though they did not truck their\nmen, kept public-houses; and being employer and publican in one, they\nhad a tight hold on the men.\n\nWas the compulsion to drink an oppression? To our minds, yes; as also to\nthe minds of the teetotal Chartists whom the Government imprisoned, and\nof the strike leaders whom the Government's Commissioners denounced. But\nto the majority of the miners the abundance of beer was a delight. They\nobjected to the butty's bullying, but they loved his beer, especially\nthe feckless ones, for when wives were importunate the drunkards pleaded\nnecessity.\n\nHowever, all the beer-drinking could not be charged to the butties. The\nminers themselves, in their own fellowships, were devoted to it; and\nthe compulsion of friends was as severe as the compulsion of butties.\nEvery approach to recreation, every act of mutual providence against\naccident or disease, began and ended in beer. The day a man entered the\npit's company, he paid 1_s._ for footing-ale, and the doggy saw that no\nchurl escaped. When a lad was old enough to have a sweetheart he was\ntoasted with the 'nasty' shilling. The sins of the married men were\nwashed away in half-a-crown's worth of ale. The beer-shop was the\nhead-quarters of the Burial and Savings Clubs. The first charge on a\nBurial Club was a good oak coffin, the second charge drinks for the\npall-bearers, and then a glass or two for the rest of the company.\n\nThey had lotteries to which each man contributed 20 fortnightly\nshillings. Each week a name was drawn, and the lucky man stood a feast;\nwhile every member, in addition to a shilling for the box, produced\n6_d._ for drinks.\n\nIn all these festivities the butty was in the offing. When they would\nhave him he presided; and so at his worst an obnoxious bully, at his\nbest he was an accommodating landlord.\n\nDirect employment, such as prevailed in the north of England, would have\naverted much of this evil. There were no structural difficulties in the\nway of change. Direct employment would not have meant a change to\nanother class of work (this is what direct employment meant for knitters\nand hand-loom weavers). The butty system existed and persisted through\nslackness and irresponsibility. The owners paid compensation for\naccidents, when they might have diminished the number of accidents. They\npaid commissions to middlemen with whom they might have dispensed. The\nsystem made temperance impossible for the individual; and the masters,\nwith the full approval of the Government, did their best to destroy the\n'pernicious combinations' by which alone a standard of sober decency\ncould be promoted.\n\n\n5. The Report of the Truck Commissioners (1871-2) enables us to complete\nthe picture. It also enables us to understand why, at this late day,\ntruck was still rife in certain districts.\n\nTruck and Tommy, truck-shop and Tommy-shop, are convertible terms. Truck\nis from the French 'troc' = barter. Cobbett tells us how the word\n'Tommy' was used. In his soldiering days the rations of brown bread,\n'for what reason God knows', went by the name of Tommy. 'When the\nsoldiers came to have bread served out to them in the several towns in\nEngland, the name of Tommy went down by tradition, and, doubtless, it\nwas taken up and adapted to the truck-system in Staffordshire and\nelsewhere.'[60] From the textile districts it had all but disappeared in\n1871. When the cotton manufactures went to outlying dales for water\npower, they were almost compelled to open stores for their workpeople.\nOwen's store at New Lanark was, in effect, a well-managed truck-shop;\nand the Truck Commissioners of 1871 reported that the New Lanark Company\nof that day was breaking the law. But when the cotton industry was\ngathered in the towns, the need for company stores ceased. Consequently,\nafter the passing of the Act of 1831, which prohibited truck altogether,\nthe masters very generally abolished the stores of their own accord; and\nsurvivals were jealously watched.\n\nA collection of Factory Scraps, preserved at the Goldsmiths' Library in\nLondon, contains a copy of the Factory Bill of 1833, with some pencil\nnotes in Ostler's handwriting which run:\n\n     _Cragg Dale Facts_\n\n     _Truck System_: Little altered: men knew they were imposed. They\n     pay in money now--but compel them to buy at their own shops....\n     Wholesale warehouses at Rochdale say, 'Oh! put it sideways: it\n     will do for Cragg Dale masters to sell among their people.'\n\n     _Song_: 'Lousy butter and burnt bread.'\n\nAbout 1842 a curious perversion of truck was prevalent in parts of\nYorkshire. The trade depression in the Bradford district tempted\ndisreputable woollen manufacturers to force on their operatives the\nproducts of the factory as part payment of wages. Combers were given\npieces of cloth, workers in shoddy mills bundles of rags. But this\nutterly inexcusable fraud, no less than its more specious complement,\nthe employer's store, was rooted out by inspectors and factory\nreformers. Therefore in 1854 the Government's Commissioner was able to\nsay that in a factory district like Lancashire truck was not only\nnon-existent but 'impossible'.[61]\n\nHe was right as to the factory districts, but not quite right as to\nLancashire. In Prescot, a small Lancashire town on the fringe of the\nfactory district, the watchmakers in 1871 were being paid in watches.\nThe masters alleged that they only gave watches to the workers when the\nlatter had orders for them, but the evidence showed that these orders\nonly came to hand when the men were asking for fresh work. The\npawnbrokers explained what happened. 'Watches', said a pawnbroker's\nclerk, 'pass from hand to hand as a circulating medium until they get\nvery low in the market and are pawned.'[62] The pawnshop in question\nhad 700 watches on pledge, most of them belonging to workmen in the\ntown.\n\nIn railway contracting truck was prevalent in the forties. In roving\nemployment of this type it is difficult to see how some form of\ncontractor's shop could have been avoided. The navvy needed canteens or\nY.M.C.A. huts, but such things had not been thought of then. However,\nwhen the big period of railway construction came to an end, the question\nlost its importance.\n\nSouth Staffordshire and the Black Country were the ancient strongholds\nof truck. The campaigns against truck originated here. The nailers, the\ncash-paying masters, and the respectable ratepayers joined together to\npromote the Truck Act of 1820. Lord Hatherton, a Staffordshire nobleman,\nafter three years hammering at the House of Commons, obtained the Truck\nAct of 1831. But in 1843, the year of the Midland Mining Commission,\ntruck was still rife in the coalfields. The well-known Tommy-shop scene\nin Disraeli's novel _Sybil_, which was published in 1845, is taken\ndirect from the Commissioners' Report. Diggs, the butty of the novel, is\nBanks, the coal proprietor of the Report. In the novel the people say of\nMaster Joseph Diggs, the son: 'He do swear at the women, when they rush\nin for the first turn, most fearful; they do say he's a shocking little\ndog.' In the Report, page 93, the miner's wife says: 'He swears at the\nwomen when the women are trying to crush in. He is a shocking little\ndog.' One touch is Disraeli's own. He makes the miners keen to purchase\n'the young Queen's picture'. 'If the Queen would do something for us\npoor men, it would be a blessed job.' In the Report there is nothing\nabout this, but there is a section dealing with Chartism.\n\nHowever, the truck-shop was gradually disappearing. Every year it\nbecame easier to expose evasions, and in good times the workers used\ntheir prosperity to slip away from the Company store. In 1850 a final\ncampaign was initiated by five local Anti-Truck Associations, backed by\nthe National Miners' Association under Alexander MacDonald.\nTruck-masters were prosecuted and truck was steadily dislodged from the\ncoalfields and adjacent ironworks. Only in the nail trade did it\nsurvive, for the reason that the complete subjection of the nailers made\nit possible to practise the essentials of truck without a formal\nviolation of the law.\n\nIn the remaining colliery districts in 1871 truck was prevalent only in\nWest Scotland and South Wales.\n\nIn West Scotland it was yielding ground before the pressure of the\nunions. The companies only maintained it by active coercion. If a miner\nheld out for money, they had to yield; and if they were malicious, they\nmarked him as a sloper and dismissed him the first when a depression\ncame. 'Black lists', said the Truck Commissioners, 'are often kept of\nslopers; threats of dismissal were repeatedly proved; and cases of\nactual dismissal for not dealing at the store are not rare.'[63]\nHowever, the masters themselves were getting tired of it, since it led\nso frequently to strikes.\n\nTruck in South Staffordshire was bound up with the butty system; in\nrailway construction with the system of contracting and sub-contracting,\nand similarly in South Wales, as also in the west of Scotland, it was\nbound up with and dependent on the system of long pays. In order to\ncarry on from one pay day to the next, the men got advances on the\ncompany's store. In this way many lived permanently ahead of their\nwages. The thriftless and drunkards were always 'advance men, but the\nprovident miners hated it and only dealt there on compulsion'.\n\nThe Commissioners drew a vivid picture of Turn Book morning in South\nWales at the close of the pay month.\n\nAt 1 or 2 a.m. the women and children begin to arrive with their Advance\nBooks. Perhaps one hundred would be there, wet or fine, sleeping on the\ndoorsteps or singing ballads until morning.\n\nAt 5.30 a.m. the doors opened, and the waiters made a rush for the\ncounter. Advance Books were produced, and goods handed over up to the\namount of wages which would shortly fall due. Women took their pick of\nthe articles, groceries, tobacco, occasionally a few shillings.\n\n     'It is quite usual', say the Commissioners, 'for shoemakers and\n     other small tradesmen in the neighbourhood of Abersychan to be\n     paid by the workmen in goods.... Tobacco in several districts of\n     South Wales has become nothing less than a circulating medium. It\n     is bought by the men and resold by them for drink, and finds its\n     way back again to some of the Company's shops. Packets of tobacco\n     pass unopened from hand to hand. An Ebbw Vale grocer who took the\n     Company's tobacco at a discount declared: \"For years, when they\n     were selling it for 1_s._ 4_d._ a lb. I used to give 1_s._; but I\n     was so much over-flooded with it that I was obliged to reduce the\n     price to 11_d._ That would not do still, and I had to reduce it\n     to 10_d._ I told the men to take it to some other shop if they\n     could get 11_d._ or 1_s._ for it. I was obliged to do that many a\n     time, in order to get rid of the large stocks I held in hand.\n     Tobacco will not keep for many months without getting worse.\"'\n\nWeekly pays, therefore, were the constant demand of the miners' unions.\nIn Northumberland and Durham, whence truck had disappeared long ago,\npays were fortnightly, and the only objection advanced by the owners\nagainst weekly pays was the practical inconvenience of the pressure on\nthe pay staff. In the North of England Iron Trade, weekly pays, the\nCommissioners found, had just been introduced. In West Scotland some of\nthe coal-owners were trying to recoup themselves for the loss of their\ntruck-shop by charging poundage on the men's wages. But this dodge, like\nthe bigger grievance of truck, was stoutly resisted by the local union.\nIndeed, in one coalfield after another the disappearance of truck and\nkindred evils coincides with the appearance of strong County Unions.\n\n\n6. We are given to understand that the miners of South Wales insist on\neconomics written by sound labour men. We therefore offer them a few\nsuggestions for a history of the currency in the nineteenth century from\nthe worker's point of view.\n\n     i. In 1800 London relied for small coin on private enterprise.\n     Every week the Jews' boys collected from the shopkeepers their\n     bad shillings, buying them at a heavy discount, with serviceable\n     copper coin forged in Birmingham (_vide_ Patrick Colquhoun, _A\n     Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis_, 1800, Chapter VII).\n     The resumption of cash payments in 1819 was injurious; for owing\n     to the shortage of small coin, the wage-earners were paid in bulk\n     with large notes, which they had to split at the nearest\n     public-house. The Truck Act of 1831 prohibited wage-payments in\n     notes on Banks more than 15 miles distant, but said nothing about\n     cheques--an oversight which the capitalists repeated in their\n     Bank Act of 1844.\n\n     ii. The general dissatisfaction with the state of the currency\n     led to attempts to dispense with coin. About 1830 Labour\n     Exchanges were opened in London for the exchange of goods against\n     time notes, representing one or more hours of labour. The\n     originator was Robert Owen, and the failure of the Exchanges was\n     probably due to the fact that Owen was at heart a capitalist.\n     The National Equitable Labour Exchange at one time was doing a\n     business of over 20,000 hours per week, but very shortly after\n     this, the President (Owen) had to report a serious deficiency of\n     hours, many thousands having been mislaid or stolen. The Exchange\n     in consequence had to close its doors.\n\n     iii. In the 'forties the centre of interest is the Midlands, and\n     the period may be termed the Staffordshire or beer period. The\n     currency was very popular and highly liquid, but it was issued to\n     excess and difficult to store. More solid surrogates were\n     therefore tried. A Bilston pawnbroker[64] said that he had in\n     pawn numerous batches of flour, which the men's wives had brought\n     from the Truck Shops and turned into money, in order to pay their\n     house-rents. Flour, however, was not so hard as a Prescot watch.\n\n     iv. We come next to the Welsh or Tobacco period, when the\n     currency was easily transferable, but liable to deterioration.\n\n     v. Finally, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the\n     world of labour attained to a cash basis, and there was no\n     Cobbett to denounce the resumption.\n\nWe shall not be guilty of serious exaggeration if we preface our history\nwith the motto:\n\n'_In the nineteenth century the Trade Unions and the Trade Unions alone\nmade the nominal earnings of the working man a cash reality_.'\n\n\n3. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION\n\n1. The student of Dicey's Law and Opinion in England is invited to\ndistinguish three periods:\n\n     i. The period of old Toryism or legislative quiescence (1800-38).\n\n     ii. The period of Benthamism or individualism (1825-70).\n\n     iii. The period of collectivism (1865-1900).\n\nBentham lived during the first period and his name is rightly given to\nthe second period.\n\nThe student, therefore, comes to wonder if there is anything which is\nnot Benthamism. Benthamism, he says to himself, stands for\nindividualism. How then can the period of Benthamism include the\nhumanitarian legislation which begins with the first Factory Act of 1802\nand broadens out during the middle of the century into the elaborate\ncode regulating from then onwards the conditions of employment in\nworkshops, factories, and mines? How can a monster beget an angel?\n\nWe may perhaps throw light on this difficulty by suggesting that the\n_social_ trend from 1825-70 cannot be compressed into a single word.\nIndividualism may suffice to define the dominant _legal_ trend, but it\nconceals the influence exerted on the legislature from without and from\nbelow by the action of voluntary associations. The period of voluntary\nassociation coincides with and overlaps the period of individualism.\n\n\n2. What Bentham was to individualism, Robert Owen was to voluntary\nassociation. Bentham himself was an admirer of Owen and supported his\nphilanthropy, but, as expressions of a social attitude, Benthamism and\nOwenism were poles asunder. The contrast between the two is admirably\ndisplayed in the evidence given before the Factory Committee of 1816 by\ntwo representatives of the employing class, Josiah Wedgwood of pottery\nfame and Robert Owen himself.\n\n'In the state of society,' said Wedgwood, 'in which there is evidently a\nprogressive movement, it is much better to leave things as they are than\nto attempt to amend the general state of things in detail. The only\nsafe way of securing the comfort of any people is to leave them at\nliberty to make the best use of their time, and to allow them to\nappropriate their earnings in such way as they think fit.'[65]\n\nRobert Owen thought otherwise. In a couple of answers he exposed the\nfallacy of enlightened self-interest. They seem obvious enough to-day,\nbut in 1816 they were the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He was\nasked whether he believed that 'there is that want of affection and\nfeeling on the part of parents, that would induce them to exact from\ntheir children more labour than they could perform without injury to\ntheir health;' and he replied:\n\n'I do not imagine that there is the smallest difference between the\ngeneral affection of the lower order of the people, except with regard\nto that which may be produced by the different circumstances in which\nthey are placed.'[66]\n\nAnother question was: 'Do you conceive that it is not injurious to the\nmanufacturer to hazard, by overwork, the health of the people so\nemployed?' He replied:\n\n'If those persons were purchased by the manufacturers I should say\ndecisively, yes; but as they are not purchased by the manufacturer and\nthe country must bear all the loss of their strength and their energy{;}\nit does not appear, at first sight, to be the interest of the\nmanufacturer to do so.'[67]\n\nOwen had grasped the meaning of social responsibility, and he devoted\nhis life to social service. But he was too wayward to observe the\nconventions of society, and passed beyond the social pale. The factory\nreformer became the Socialist. Whether his disciples comprehended his\nphilosophy we may doubt, but he understood better than any one else\ntheir instinct for association, and he gratified it.\n\nIt is not contended that Owen was responsible for all the associative\neffort of his generation; for with political and religious associations\nhe had no sympathy. But the spirit which infected him infected others\nafter him, rousing them to associate now for this, and now for that\nsocial or religious or political purpose.\n\n\n3. We may divide associations for social purposes into two classes.\n\nTo the first class belong associations formed to secure the abolition of\nsome abuse. These naturally disappear when their object is attained.\n\nFor example, there was the Anti-slavery Campaign in which Joseph Sturge\nand other Quakers played so prominent a part. By an organized crusade of\npolitical education the Abolitionists induced an originally hostile\nParliament to emancipate the West Indian negroes in 1833, and to shorten\nthe period of semi-servile apprenticeship in 1838. Yorkshire was the\nhome of the Short Time Committees, which organized the campaign against\nWhite Slavery at home. The Ten Hours Movement caused the Ten Hours Bill\nto become the law of the land. From Lancashire came the Anti-Corn Law\nLeague, whose story is told in another chapter.\n\nThe second class of association was the association for economic\nbetterment--the Friendly Society, the Co-operative Society, the Trade\nUnion. Conceived in enthusiasm and self-inspired, these associations\nasked only of the State a legal framework in which to develop, but they\ndid not win it without struggle and delay.\n\nThe Government was anxious to encourage thrift, but the development of\nthe Friendly Societies was impeded for a time by legislation aimed at\npolitical conspiracy. The Corresponding Societies Act of 1799 prevented\nthe Friendly Societies from forming a central organization with\nbranches, and the Dorchester Labourers of 1834 discovered the peril into\nwhich the ritual of oaths might lead innocent men.\n\nThese deterrents were removed by enabling legislation. In 1829 a central\nauthority, the Registrar of Friendly Societies, was appointed to\nsupervise Friendly Societies, and between 1829 and 1875 further\nprivileges and safeguards were conferred. But the Friendly Society\nMovement throughout the nineteenth century was wholly voluntary. In 1911\nthe situation was suddenly reversed by the passing of the National\nInsurance Act.\n\nThe Co-operative Societies were more suspect. They crept into legal\nrecognition as the children of the Friendly Society, under the 'frugal\ninvestments' clause of the Act of 1846, being compelled by the legal\nprejudice against association in restraint of trade to adopt this\nunnatural mother. Their real nature was recognized in 1852, when they\nwere brought under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, and in\n1862, when they were granted the boon of limited liability. But the\naccident of their legal origin still survives; for they are regulated\nto-day by the Industrial and Provident Societies Act of 1893. The\nCo-operative Movement is now drawing closer to politics, following the\nlead of most of the continental countries, notably Belgium and Germany.\nThough we cannot say that there is any indication of the State taking\nover the movement, we may note that the growth of municipal trading in\nthe 'nineties was, in principle, an application of the consumers'\nassociation to monopolies of distribution such as tramways, water,\nelectricity, and gas.\n\nThe State was altogether hostile to the growth of the Trade Union. The\nCharter of Emancipation, won by the guile of Francis Place in 1824, was\nseverely curtailed in 1825. Huskisson[68] depicted in lurid terms the\ntyranny of a military trades unionism, 'representing a systematic union\nof the workers of many different trades'. It was a 'kind of federal\nrepublic', whose mischievous operations, if not checked, would keep the\ncommercial classes 'in constant anxiety and fear about their interests\nand property'. Arnold, of Rugby, a decade later wrote of them in the\nsame strain: 'you have heard, I doubt not, of the trades unions; a\nfearful engine of mischief, ready to riot or assassinate; and I see no\ncounteracting power.'[69]\n\nThe counteracting power was their own weakness. The early militancy\nburnt itself out, and was succeeded at the turn of the century by a 'New\nSpirit and a New Model'. The new spirit was anti-militant, and the new\nmodel was a trade union representing the _elite_ of the skilled trades.\nThe Amalgamated Society of Engineers was founded in 1850 and served as a\nmodel to the Carpenters, Tailors, Compositors, Iron-founders,\nBrick-layers, and others. The Trades Unions were now respectable, and in\n1867 the State recognized the fact.\n\nThe period of collectivism is denoted by the growth of the Labour Party\nin Parliament, and the increasing part played by the State in industrial\ndisputes and the regulation of wages. The nationalization of railways\nand the nationalization of mines are burning questions.\n\n\n4. In all the movements we have described, the spiritual stimulus, the\ninitial drive, and the solid successes have been provided by voluntary\nassociation. The State has not been the pioneer of social reform. Such a\nnotion is the mirage of politicians. It has merely registered the\ninsistent demands of organized voluntary effort or given legal\nrecognition to accomplished facts. This is the distinctive note of\nEnglish social development in the nineteenth century.\n\n\nFOR REFERENCE\n\nDicey, _Law and Opinion_.\n\nRobinson, _The Spirit of Association_.\n\nHovell, _The Chartist Movement_.\n\nSombart (tr. Epstein), _Socialism and the Socialist Movement_.\n\n[Cd. 9236], _Report of Committee on Trusts_.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 20: From the writer's forthcoming book _Life and Labour in the\nNineteenth Century_, to be published by the Cambridge University Press.]\n\n[Footnote 21: Tooke and Newmarch, _History of Prices_, v. 356.]\n\n[Footnote 22: _Commons Committee on Emigration_, 1827, Q. 1761.]\n\n[Footnote 23: _Commons Committee on the Condition of Labourers employed\nin the Construction of Railways_, 1846, Q. 866.]\n\n[Footnote 24: Ibid., Q. 217.]\n\n[Footnote 25: Ibid., Q. 897.]\n\n[Footnote 26: Ibid., Q. 733.]\n\n[Footnote 27: Ibid., Q. 193.]\n\n[Footnote 28: Ibid., Qs. 869-78.]\n\n[Footnote 29: _Report of Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of\nWomen and Children in Agriculture_ (1843), pp. 20, 25.]\n\n[Footnote 30: Ibid., pp. 299-300.]\n\n[Footnote 31: _Report of Commissioners on the Employment of Young\nPersons in Agriculture_, p. 64.]\n\n[Footnote 32: Dr. Cook Taylor, Letter to the _Morning Chronicle_, dated\nfrom Rossendale Forest (Lancashire), June 20, 1842.]\n\n[Footnote 33: _Rural Rides_, i. 219.]\n\n[Footnote 34: _Poor Law Commission of 1834_, Appendix.]\n\n[Footnote 35: _Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Final Report, 1841_, p.\n18.]\n\n[Footnote 36: _Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Assistant-Commissioner's\nReport, 1840_, Part IV, pp. 76-81.]\n\n[Footnote 37: _Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners_,\n1836.]\n\n[Footnote 38: _Hand-loom Weavers' Commission, Assistant-Commissioner's\nReport_, Part III, p. 551.]\n\n[Footnote 39: _Anti-bread Tax Circular_, No. 91, June 16, 1842.]\n\n[Footnote 40: _First Report of the Factory Commissioners_, 1833, p. 27.]\n\n[Footnote 41: _Report of Commissioner on the Condition of the Framework\nKnitters_ (1845), p. 109.]\n\n[Footnote 42: Ibid., p. 115.]\n\n[Footnote 43: William Felkin, _History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery\nand Lace Manufactures_ (1867), p. 458.]\n\n[Footnote 44: _Evidence before the Truck Commissioners_ (1871), Q.\n37,500.]\n\n[Footnote 45: Pamphlet of 1825, p. 14.]\n\n[Footnote 46: _Home Office Papers_, 40, Letter from R.J. Blewitt, Esq.,\nM.P., November 6, 1839.]\n\n[Footnote 47: Richard Fynes, _Miners of Northumberland and Durham_, p.\n72.]\n\n[Footnote 48: John Wilson, _History of the Durham Miners' Association_\n(1870-1904), p. 40.]\n\n[Footnote 49: _Report of Commissioner on the State of the Mining\nPopulation_ (1846).]\n\n[Footnote 50: These pamphlets are in the British Museum.]\n\n[Footnote 51: _Report of Commissioner on the State of the Mining\nPopulation_ (1850).]\n\n[Footnote 52: Ibid. (1852).]\n\n[Footnote 53: _Royal Commission, First Report_ (_Mines_), p. 27.]\n\n[Footnote 54: Ibid., p. 21.]\n\n[Footnote 55: _Royal Commission, Second Report_ (_Trades and\nManufactures_), p. 147.]\n\n[Footnote 56: Ibid., pp. 155-6.]\n\n[Footnote 57: _Midland Mining Commission, First Report_, p. 34.]\n\n[Footnote 58: Ibid., p. 91.]\n\n[Footnote 59: Ibid., p. 44.]\n\n[Footnote 60: _Rural Rides_, ii. 353.]\n\n[Footnote 61: _Commons Committee, Stoppage of Wages_ (_Hosiery, 1854_).\nEvidence of Mr. Tremenheere.]\n\n[Footnote 62: _Evidence before the Truck Commissioners_, Q. 33,670.]\n\n[Footnote 63: _Truck Commission, 1871. Report_, p. 16.]\n\n[Footnote 64: _Commons Committee, Stoppage of Wages in the Hosiery\nManufacture_ (1854), Q. 80.]\n\n[Footnote 65: _Commons Committee of_ 1816, pp. 64 and 73.]\n\n[Footnote 66: Ibid., p. 38.]\n\n[Footnote 67: Ibid., p. 28.]\n\n[Footnote 68: Speech, March 29, 1825.]\n\n[Footnote 69: Letter to the Chevalier Bunsen, 1834, quoted in Strachey,\n_Eminent Victorians_, p. 197.]\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nATOMIC THEORIES\n\nPROFESSOR W.H. BRAGG, C.B.E., D.SC., F.R.S.\n\n\nWhen a lecture on the progress of Science is given before a conference\nconcerned largely with historical subjects, it is not inappropriate to\npoint out that Science has a history of its own and that its progress\nmakes a connected story. The discovery of new facts is not made in an\nisolated fashion, nor is it a matter of pure chance, unaffected by what\nhas gone before. On the contrary, scientific progress is made step by\nstep, each new point that is reached forming a basis for further\nadvances. Even the direction of discovery is not entirely in the\nexplorer's control; there is always a next step to be taken and a\nlimited number of possible steps forward from which a choice can be\nmade. The scientific discoverer has to go in the direction in which his\ndiscoveries lead him. When discoveries have been made it is possible to\nthink of uses to which they may be put, but in the first instance all\ndiscoveries are made without any knowledge whatever of what use may\nafterwards be made of them.\n\nConsequently scientific progress is a quite orderly advance, not a\nspasmodic collection of facts, and in the truest sense of the word it\nhas a history. In order that opportunities for this steady progress may\nbe provided it is very important that this point should be fully\nappreciated. Every one, for example, is vaguely conscious that science\nplayed a great part in the War. As a consequence the number of students\nof science has greatly increased; manufacturing firms are awakening to\nthe fact that they must pay more attention to scientific development\nand are founding research laboratories. It is very important that this\nawakened attention should be well informed, and for that reason it\ncannot be pointed out too often that the scientific work which has been\nthe basis of all material progress can only be turned to definite\nmaterial ends in the last stages of its development. Fundamentally\neverything rests on the pure attempt to gain knowledge without any idea\nof the use to which it may subsequently be put. Without pure science\nthere is no applied science at all. It is quite right in my opinion that\nthe researcher in pure science should have with him the hope that what\nhe does may one day be of direct benefit to others. But it is probable\nthat he does not in his own mind confine the idea of possible uses to\nsuch material matters as I have mentioned above and as are so prominent\nat present. He believes that his work has a less material side whose\nvalue need not be explained to the present audience.\n\nIn the general line of progress it is natural to find that there are\ncertain broad roads along which the main advance has been directed.\nStudents of physics and chemistry and the subjects which are allied to\nthem find that they are in general considering either matter, or\nelectricity, or energy. I make this classification, not from any\nphilosophical point of view, but simply for present convenience. The\nfirst important principle to which I would like to draw your attention\nis that each of these things can be measured quantitatively. If we\naccept the weight of a substance as an indirect measure of the amount of\nmatter present, then we all know we can express the amount of matter in\nany given body in terms of a fundamental unit, like a pound or a gramme;\nand the idea has been put to immemorial use. In later years we have\nlearnt that electricity itself is also a quantity and that the amount of\nelectricity which stands on an electrified body, or flows past a given\npoint in an electric conductor, as for example the wire connected to an\nelectric light, can be expressed arithmetically in terms of some unit.\nInstruments are made for the purpose of measuring quantities of\nelectricity in terms of the legal standard. It is one of the functions\nof a Government Institution, like the National Physical Laboratory, to\ntest such instruments and report on their accuracy. International\nconferences have been held for the purpose of reducing these units to as\nsmall a number as possible so that people may be able to trade less\nwastefully and more conveniently, so that also the barriers between\npeoples may be broken down and the interchange of ideas as well as of\nmaterials may be made more easily. Without an arrangement of this kind\nit would be impossible to carry on industrial life in which use is made\nof electricity. It would be as difficult as to hold a market without the\nuse of weights and scales, more difficult, in fact, since anyone can\nestimate the size of a piece of cloth or the amount of corn in a sack,\nbut no one has a natural sense by which he can estimate an amount of\nelectricity.\n\nIn just the same way energy can be measured as a quantity in terms of a\nfundamental unit. The discovery that this was so was made by Joule and\nothers towards the middle of the nineteenth century, and lit the road\nfor further advance as a dark street is lit by the sudden turning-up of\nthe lamps. All modern industry rests on this principle. We are now so\naccustomed to the idea that energy is a quantity that we can hardly\nrealize a time when it was merely a vague term. If we want an\nillustration of how thoroughly we have grasped this idea let us remember\nthat when we pay our electric-light bill we pay so much money for so\nmany units of energy supplied; for so much energy, let us note, not for\nso much electricity, since we take into account not only the actual\namount of electricity driven through our house wires, but also the\nmagnitude of the force which is there to drive it. Energy exists in many\nforms: energy of motion, heat, gravitational energy, chemical energy,\nradiation, and so on. In the transformations of energy which are\ncontinually occurring in all natural processes, there is never any\nchange in the total amount of energy. This is the famous principle of\nthe Conservation of Energy. Sometimes it is stated in the form\n'Perpetual motion is impossible'.\n\nOne of the most important forms of energy is radiation. The constant\noutpouring by the sun of energy in this form is vital to us. The fact\nwas obvious long ago and that is one of the reasons why light and heat\nhave interested students of science in all ages.\n\nThere exist then three main subjects of study--matter, electricity, and\nenergy. These themselves and their mutual relations have been, and are,\nthe principal objects of interest to the scientific student, and from\nour strivings to understand them we have learnt most of what we know.\nAll three are quantities and all are expressible in terms of units.\n\nNow there is one point which I have thought would especially interest\nyou. A very remarkable tendency of modern discovery shows more and more\nclearly that not only are these things quantities which we can express\nin units of our own choosing, but that Nature herself has already chosen\nunits for them. The natural unit does not, of course, bear any exact\nconnexion with our own. This being so, it must be of the utmost\nimportance that we should know what these natural units are and so be\nable to understand what Nature is ready to tell us. Nature has chosen to\nspeak in a certain language; we must get to know that language.\n\nIn the first place we know surely that there are natural units of\nmatter. This was the great discovery made by Dalton in the beginning of\nthe nineteenth century. When he found that each of the known elements,\nsuch as copper or oxygen or carbon, consisted ultimately of atoms, all\nthe atoms of any one element being alike, he laid the foundation on\nwhich the huge structure of modern chemistry has been raised. The\nchemist takes one or more atoms of one element, one or more of another,\nand may be of a third or fourth, and he puts them together into a\ncompound which we call a molecule. The molecule for example of ordinary\nsalt contains always one atom of chlorine and one of sodium. Chlorine\nand sodium are elements, salt is a compound. Six atoms of carbon and six\nof hydrogen put together in a certain way make benzene. In the same way\nevery substance that we meet is capable of analysis, showing ultimately\nthe molecules as made up, according to a definite plan, of so many atoms\nof the various elements. In analytical chemistry molecules are dissected\nin order to discover the mode of their building; in synthetic chemistry\nthe atoms are put together to make a molecule which is already known to\nhave, or even may be anticipated to have, certain properties. This is\nthe work of the chemist. Sometimes enormous forces are concerned in this\npulling apart and putting together, witness the terrific power of modern\nexplosives. But the same kind of handling by the chemist may be devoted\nto the delicate construction of a molecule which gives a certain colour\nto the dyer's vat and so pleases the eye that the great cloth industries\nfeel the consequence, and nations themselves are affected by the flow of\ntrade. After all, since the processes of the physical world operate\nultimately through the power and properties of molecules, it is not\nsurprising that the chemist's work in these and numberless other ways\nhas such tremendous influence in the world.\n\nHere then by the recognition of the units of matter which Nature has\nchosen for herself it has been possible to do great things.\n\nIt should be observed that the atom, in spite of its name, is not\nsomething which is incapable of all further division; it is only\nincapable of retaining its properties on division. When an atom of\nradium breaks down in the unique operation during which its singular\nproperties are manifested, it dies as radium and becomes two atoms, one\nof helium, the other of a different and rare substance. It will interest\nyou to know that the airships of the future are expected to be filled\nwith this non-inflammable helium.\n\nThe discovery of the atomic nature of electricity came later. Faraday\nestablished the fact that in certain processes there was more than a\nhint that electricity was always present in multiples of a definite\nunit. In the process called electrolysis the electric current is driven\nacross a cell full of liquid containing molecules of some substance.\nWhen the electricity passes there is a loosening of the bonds that bind\ntogether the atoms of the molecule, and a separation; atoms of one kind\ntravel with the electricity across the cell and are deposited where the\ncurrent leaves the cell; the other kind travel the opposite way. In this\nway for example we deposit silver on metal objects in electro-plating\nprocesses, or separate out the purest copper for certain electrical\npurposes. The striking thing which Faraday discovered was that the\nnumber of atoms deposited always bore a very simple relation to the\nquantity of electricity that passes. The same current passing in\nsuccession through cells containing different kinds of molecules broke\nup the same number of molecules in each cell. It was as if in each\nelectrolytic cell atoms of matter and atoms of electricity travelled\ntogether. The movement of an atom meant the simultaneous movement of a\ndefinite quantity of electricity. Electricity was, so to speak, done up\nin little equal parcels, and an atom of matter on the move, which was\ntermed an ion, or wanderer, carried, not a vaguely defined amount of\nelectricity, but one of these definite parcels.\n\nIt was not, however, until the later years of the nineteenth century\nthat the natural unit of electricity was manifested by itself and\nwithout a carrier. At a famous address to the British Association at\nYork in 1881 Sir William Crookes described the first marvellous\nexperiments in which this feat had been accomplished, though there was\nstill to come a long controversy before the interpretation was clearly\naccepted. It is now definitely established that there is a fundamental\natom of electricity which we now call the electron. As we all know\nelectrification is of two kinds--a positive and a negative. The electron\nis of the negative kind. There does not appear to be a corresponding\npositive atom of electricity, or at least not one that is so singular in\nits properties as the electron. Electrons go to the making of all atoms,\njust as atoms go to the making of molecules. The atom which is neutral,\nthat is, shows neither positive nor negative electrification, must\ncontain positive electricity in some form to balance the electrons which\nwe know it contains. When we strip an atom, as we know how to do, of one\nor more of these electrons, the remainder is positively charged. The\npositive ion is any sort of an atom or molecule which has become\npositively electrified in this way. An atom which has become positive by\nthe loss of one or more of its electrons exercises a force on any spare\nelectrons in its neighbourhood or on any atom carrying a spare electron.\nWhen there are large numbers of atoms seeking in this way to become\nneutral once more, as occurs often in Nature, the forces generated may\nbe tremendous. They are shown, for example, in the lightning-stroke. But\nindeed it would seem that all the chemical forces of which we have\nalready spoken depend ultimately upon the electric state of the atom\nconcerned.\n\nIt is because the force which a positively-charged atom exerts on an\nelectron is so great and because the electron is so light and easily\nmoved compared to an atom that the electron has not been isolated at\nwill until recent years. The isolation in fact depends upon the electron\nbeing endowed with a sufficient speed to carry it through or past the\naction of an atom which is seeking to absorb it into its system. A lump\nof matter flying in space might enter our solar system with such speed\nas to be able to pass through and go on its way almost undeflected. Or\nagain, it might have a much lower speed and go so much nearer the sun\nthat it was seriously deflected in its course, as we see in the case of\ncomet visitors. But if for some reason or other the lump of matter found\nitself inside the solar system without the endowment of high velocity it\nwould certainly be absorbed. Just so an electron can pass through an\natom with or without serious deviation from its line of motion, provided\nthat motion is rapid enough. Only recently have we been able to exert\nelectric forces of sufficient strength to set an electron in motion with\nthe speed it must have if it is to maintain an individual existence Now\nwe can gather electrons at will, dragging them from the interior of\nsolid bodies, and hurl them with tremendous speed like a stream of\nprojectiles. Since in the open air the speed is soon lost by innumerable\ncollisions with the air-molecules, the effect can only be studied\nsatisfactorily in a glass bulb from which the air has been evacuated.\nCrookes made great improvements in air-pumps during an investigation on\nthallium, and consequently was able to obtain the high vacuum required\nfor the experiment with the electron streams. It was afterwards found by\nRoentgen that when an electron stream in an evacuated bulb was directed\nupon a target placed within the bulb, a remarkable radiation issued\nfrom the target. Thus arose the so-called X or Roentgen rays. As you all\nknow they have for many years played a most important part in surgery\nand medicine. You may have heard that during the war they were also used\nto examine the interior of aeroplane constructions and to look for flaws\ninvisible from without. Although X-Rays are of the same nature as light\nrays they can penetrate where light rays cannot, passing in greater or\nless degree through materials which are opaque to visible light and\nallowing us to examine the interior which is hidden from the eye.\n\nEvery electric discharge is essentially a hurried rush of electrons.\nWhen we rub two bodies together and they become electrified we have in\nsome way or other torn electrons from one of the bodies and piled them\non the other. The former becomes the positively charged body and the\nlatter the negative. A film of moisture stops this action. When wool is\nspun in factories it tends to become in certain stages of the process\ntoo dry and too free from grease; the yarn then becomes electrified as\nit passes over the leather rollers, and when the machine tries to spin\nthe threads together they fly apart and refuse to join up the minute\nhooks with which the wool fibres are furnished. The spinning operation\nwould come to an end were there not means provided by which the air can\nbe so filled with moisture that the fibres become damp and the action\nceases. So in some cases a stream of air filled with positive and\nnegative ions is made to play upon the fibres; the fibres select what\nions they want, and so neutralizing themselves, spinning can proceed\nagain.\n\nWhen a current of electricity runs along a wire there is in fact nothing\nmore than a procession of electrons. The stream of electrons that runs\nthrough the filaments in the lamps that light this room, raising the\nfilaments to a white heat, are set in motion by the dynamos in the city.\nThere is a complete wire circuit, including the dynamo, the conductors,\nand the lamps. When the dynamos are not working the electrons do not as\na whole move either way, though they are always there. When the dynamo\nbegins to turn, the electrons set out on their continuous journey.\n\nElectrons are involved in the emission of wireless signals, and in their\nreceipt. The so-called 'valve', which multiplies minute electric signals\nand was so greatly improved during the war, depends entirely on the\naction of electrons, and the brilliant experimental work was based on\nthe newly-acquired knowledge of their properties.\n\nI have told you that under certain circumstances a stream of electrons\nmay generate X-Rays, in reality a form of light rays. This action is a\nvery common one, and it is curious that the faster the electron goes the\nshorter is the wave-length of the radiation. A very fast electron\ngenerates an X-Ray of so short a wave-length that the penetrating power\nof the ray, which goes with the shortness of the wave, is excessive, and\nin this way we may have rays which go right through the human body or\neven through inches of steel. As the speed of the exciting electron\nbecomes less, the X-Rays are less penetrating. With still slower\nelectrons we may generate ordinary light, and it will take a slower\nelectron to generate red than to generate blue. The slowest electrons we\nuse in this way have a speed of many hundred miles per second; the\nfastest have a speed which nearly approaches that of light, or 186,000\nmiles a second.\n\nAnd conversely radiation can set electrons in motion. When X-Rays are\ndriven into a patient's body electrons are set in motion within, and\nmoving over certain minute distances, initiate chemical actions which\nare necessary to some cure. Or they may go right through the body and\nfall on a photographic plate, setting in operation chemical action which\nforms a picture on the plate.\n\nThere is another occasion of an entirely different kind when the\nelectron is greatly in evidence and displays effects which are most\nastonishing and significant. Every atom of radium or other radio-active\nsubstances sooner or later meets with the catastrophe in which its life\nas radium ends and atoms of other substances are formed. At that moment\noccurs the emission which is the characteristic property of the\nsubstance. One of the radiations emitted consists of high-velocity\nelectrons, moving, some of them, nearly as fast as light.\n\nNow it is found that when the speed approaches that of light, 186,000\nmiles or 3 x 10^{10} centimetres per second, the energy is higher than\nit should be if it followed the usual rule, viz. energy is equal to half\nthe mass multiplied by the square of the velocity. It would seem that an\nelectron moving with the velocity of light would have infinite energy;\nor, to put the matter in another way, the experimenter in his laboratory\ncan never hope to observe an electron moving so fast; it would be the\nend of his laboratory and of himself if ever it turned up.\n\nLinked up with this result is the very strange fact that no one has ever\nbeen able to find any direct evidence of the existence of the ether,\nwhich is postulated in order to carry light-waves. It has been pictured\nas a medium through which the heavenly bodies move, and to which their\nmotions may be referred. But when light is launched into the ether, its\napparent velocity must depend on whether it travels with or against the\ndrift of the ether through the laboratory where the measurement is made.\nThe experiment has been performed without the discovery of any such\ndifference, although the method was amply accurate enough to detect the\neffect that might be expected. It was afterwards shown that the negative\nresult might be explained by supposing that a measure of length varied\nin length according to whether it was travelling with or against the\nether. But the continual failure of all such experiments has led to a\nremarkable hypothetical development with which the name of Einstein is\nfirmly connected. It is supposed that some flaw must exist in our\nfundamental hypotheses, and that if this were corrected we should then\nfind that we ought to get the same value for the velocity of light\nhowever and whenever we measured it, and at the same time we should find\nthat no measurement of the velocity of a body moving relative to the\nobserver would ever equal the velocity of light. The hypothesis denies\nthe existence of an absolute standard to which motions can be referred,\nand insists that they must all be considered relatively to the observer.\nIt is called the principle of relativity. Calculations of its\nconsequences begin with the necessary changes in the fundamentals, such\nas Einstein has introduced.[70]\n\nTime does not allow me to say more of the innumerable ways in which\nelectrons play an essential part in all the processes in the world. We\nhave long believed that this is so, but the picture has never been so\nclear to us as it is now; and with our understanding our power is\nincreased. Yet once more the illumination of our understanding comes\nfrom our recognition that Nature has preferred the discrete to the\ncontinuous and that electricity is not infinitely divisible but is, like\nmatter, and even more simply than matter, of an atomic structure. And we\nhave found the unit and learnt how to handle it.\n\nIt is even more strange that it may now be said of energy that there are\nsigns of atomicity. It may seem absurd to think that the energy which is\ntransformed in any operation is transformed in multiples of a universal\nunit or units, so that the operation cannot be arrested at any desired\nstage but only at definite intervals. Indeed we have no right to assert\nthat this is always true. But undoubtedly there are cases in which the\natomicity of energy is clear enough, as for example in the interchange\nof energy between electrons in motion and radiation. It is remarkable\nthat when radiation sets an electron in motion, the electron acquires a\nperfectly definite speed depending only on the wave-length of the\nradiation and not on its intensity, and has apparently absorbed from the\nradiation a definite unit of energy. Radiation of a particular\nwave-length cannot spend its energy in this way except in multiples of a\ncertain unit, because each of the electrons which it sets in motion has\nthe same initial energy, which it must have got from the radiation. In\nother words, energy of radiation of the particular wave-length can only\nbe transformed into energy of movement of electrons in multiples of a\ncertain 'quantum' peculiar to that wave-length. The intensity of the\nradiation, that is to say, the amount of energy moving along the beam,\ncan only affect the number of electrons set in motion and not the speed\nof any one of them. During the last few years a very extraordinary\ntheory has been developed on the basis of these and similar facts. I\ndoubt if it would be more profitable to give further instances at\npresent, but I have mentioned it because it seems to show looming on the\nhorizon of our knowledge another tendency of Nature to make use of the\natomic principle.\n\nI will only add that the whole position of physics is indeed at this\ntime of extraordinary interest, and at any moment there may be some\ngreat discovery or illuminating thought which will explain the present\nstartling difficulties and open up new worlds of thought.\n\n\nFOR REFERENCE\n\nBragg, _Rays and Crystals_ (Ball & Sons).\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 70: Since this address was given, the results of the Eclipse\nExpedition to Brazil are considered to have confirmed in a satisfactory\nmanner one of the most remarkable deductions made by Einstein from the\nprinciples which he maintains. The matter has roused so much interest\nthat some of the leading exponents of the relativity principle have\npublished careful accounts intended for students not familiar with it:\nit would therefore be superfluous to discuss the matter here.]\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nPROGRESS IN BIOLOGY DURING THE LAST SIXTY YEARS\n\nPROFESSOR LEONARD DONCASTER, F.R.S.\n\n\nOn November 24, 1859, _The Origin of Species_ was published, and this\ndate marks the beginning of an epoch in every branch of biology. Before\nit, Biology had been almost entirely a descriptive science, but within a\nfew years after the publication of the _Origin_ its effects began to\ncolour all aspects of biological research. A co-ordinating and unifying\nprinciple had been found, and the leading idea of biologists ceased to\nbe to describe living things as they are, and became transformed into\nthe attempt to discover how they are related to one another. The first\neffect of this change of attitude was chiefly to turn biologists towards\nthe task of tracing phylogenetic or evolutionary relationships between\ndifferent groups of animals--the drawing up of probable or possible\ngenealogical trees and the explanation of natural classification on an\nevolutionary basis. When once, however, the notion of cause and effect,\nor more correctly of relationship, between the phenomena seen in living\nbeings had become familiar to biologists, it spread far beyond the\nlimits of tracing genealogical connexions between different animals and\nplants. It made possible the conception of a true Science of Life, in\nwhich every phenomenon seen in a living organism should fall into its\ntrue place in relation to the rest, and in which also the phenomena of\nlife should be correlated with those discovered in the inorganic\nsciences of Chemistry and Physics.\n\nThe history of the various branches of biological science in the past\nsixty years reflects the general course of these tendencies. Until\nshortly after 1859, the study of morphology, or the comparative\nstructure of animals (and of plants) was intimately related with that of\nphysiology, that is, with the study of function. In the years following\nthe appearance of the _Origin_, however, anatomists and morphologists\nwere seized with a new interest. For the time at least, the chief aim in\nstudying structure was no longer to explain function, but rather to\nexplain how that structure had come into being in the course of\nevolution, and how it was related with homologous but different\nstructures in other forms. The result was a tendency to a divorce\nbetween morphology and physiology, or at least between morphologists and\nphysiologists, which led to the division into two more or less distinct\nsciences of what had hitherto been regarded as closely inter-related\nbranches of one. The greater men of the early part of the period, such\nas Huxley, remained both morphologists and physiologists, but most of\ntheir followers fell inevitably into one or the other group, and in\ndiscussing the later phases of biological progress it will be necessary\nto keep them separate.\n\nApart from its effect on the systematic and anatomical side of Biology,\nthe idea of Evolution, and especially of Darwin's theory of Natural\nSelection, had important consequences on that side of the science which\nmay be described as Natural History. Before the appearance of Darwin's\nwork, Natural History consisted chiefly in the observation and\ncollection of facts about the habits and life-history of animals and\nplants, which as a rule had no unifying principle unless they were used,\nas in the Bridgewater Treatises, to illustrate 'the power, wisdom, and\ngoodness of God'. Now, however, a new motive was provided--that of\ndiscovering the uses to the organism of its various colours,\nstructures, and habits, and the application of the principle of natural\nselection to show how these characters conduced to the preservation and\nfurther evolution of the species. And out of this interest in the theory\nof natural selection grew in the last twenty years of the nineteenth\ncentury the greatly increased attention to the facts and theories of\nheredity, which was stimulated by Darwin's hypothesis of Pangenesis and\nespecially by Weismann's speculations about the nature and behaviour of\nthe 'germ-plasm'. Before the appearance of Weismann's work, the\ngerm-cells, which bear somehow or other the hereditary characters that\nappear in the offspring, were supposed to be produced directly from the\nbody of the parent. Darwin provisionally suggested that every cell of\nevery organism gives off minute particles which become congregated in\nthe germ-cells, and that these cells thus contain representative\nportions of all parts of the parent's body. Weismann, on the basis of\nhis work on the origin of the germ-cells in Medusae and Insects,\nmaintained that these cells are not derived from the body, but only from\npre-existing germ-cells stored within it--that, in fact, although an egg\ngives rise to a hen, a hen does not give rise to an egg, but only keeps\ninside her a store of embryonic eggs which mature and are laid as the\ntime comes round. The theory had to be modified to suit the facts of\nregeneration and vegetative reproduction, but in essence it was accepted\nby the biological world and is the orthodox opinion (if such a word may\nbe used in Science) at the present day. The difference between the two\nviews is not only of theoretical interest, for it involves the whole\nquestion of whether characteristics acquired by an individual during its\nlife in response to external conditions can or cannot be transmitted to\noffspring. If the germ-cells contain representatives of all parts of the\nbody, modifications impressed on the body during its life may at least\npossibly be transmitted to offspring born after the modifications have\ntaken place. If, however, the germ-cells are independent of the rest of\nthe body, and only stored within it for safe-keeping like a deed-box in\nthe vaults of a bank, it would seem impossible for any environmental\ninfluence, whether for good or ill, to take effect on the offspring.\nThis controversy on the heritability of 'acquired characters' was one of\nthe most important towards the end of last century, and although the\nmajority of biologists now follow Weismann in so far as they deny that\n'acquired' characters are transmissible, the question is not yet\ncompletely settled; all that can be said is that, in spite of many\nattempts to prove the contrary, there is no satisfactory evidence of the\ntransmission to offspring of effects impressed on the body of the\nparent, unless the germ-cells themselves have been affected by the same\ncause--as for example in some cases of long-continued poisoning by\nalcohol or similar drugs.\n\nWhile the problem of the transmission of acquired characters, and of the\ncause of variation and its relation to evolution, was occupying much of\nthe attention of biologists, the whole problem entered upon a new phase\nin the year 1900 with the re-discovery of Mendel's work on heredity.\nMendel worked with plants, and published his results in 1865, but at\nthat time the biological world was too much occupied with the fierce\ncontroversy which raged over _The Origin of Species_ to take much notice\nof a paper the bearing of which upon it was not appreciated. Mendel's\ndiscovery never came to the notice of Darwin, was buried in an obscure\nperiodical, and remained unknown until many years after the death of its\nauthor. In 1900 it was unearthed, and, largely owing to the work of\nBateson, it rapidly became known as one of the most important\ncontributions to Biology made during the period under review.\n\nThis is not the place to describe in detail the nature of Mendel's\ntheory. Its essence is, firstly, that the various characteristics of an\norganism are in general inherited quite independently of one another;\nand, secondly, that the germ-cells of a hybrid are pure in respect of\nany one character, that is to say, that any one germ-cell can only\ntransmit any unit character as it was received from one parent or the\nother, and not a combination of the two. This leads to a conception of\nthe organism as something like a mosaic, in which each piece of the\npattern is transmitted in inheritance independently of the rest, and in\nwhich any piece cannot be modified by association with a different but\ncorresponding piece derived from another ancestor. It is impossible to\nsay as yet whether this conception at all completely represents the\nnature of the living organism, but it is one which is exercising\nconsiderable influence in biological thought, and if established it will\nmark a revolution in Biology hardly inferior to that brought about in\nPhysics and Chemistry by the discovery of radio-activity.\n\nAn important consequence of the advance in our knowledge of heredity\nassociated with the work of Mendel and his successors is a tendency to\ndoubt whether natural selection is of such fundamental importance in\nshaping the course of evolution as was supposed in the years of the\nfirst enthusiasm which followed the publication of the _Origin_.\n\nDarwin based his theory of Natural Selection on the belief which he\nderived from breeders of plants and animals, that the kind of variation\nused by them to produce new breeds was the small and apparently\nunimportant differences which distinguish a 'fine' from a 'poor'\nspecimen. He supposed that the skilled breeder picked out as parents of\nhis stock those individuals which were slightly superior in one feature\nor another, and that by the accumulative effect of these successive\nselections not only was the breed steadily improved, but also, by\ndivergent selection, new breeds were produced. Experience shows,\nhowever, that although this method is used to keep breeds up to the\nrequired standard, it is rarely, if ever, the means by which new breeds\narise. New breeds commonly come into existence either by a 'sport' or\nmutation, or by crossing two already distinct races, and by selecting\nfrom among the heterogeneous descendants of the cross those individuals\nwhich show the required combination of characters. And it is further\nfound that most of the distinguishing features of various breeds of\ndomestic animals and plants are inherited according to Mendel's Law,\nsuggesting that each of these characters is a unit, like one piece of a\nmosaic, independent of the rest. Now it is easy to see how the selection\nof small, continuously varying characters could take place in Nature by\nthe destruction of all those individuals which failed to reach a certain\nstandard, but it is much more difficult to understand how natural\nselection could act on comparatively large, sporadic, unco-ordinated\n'sports'. There is thus a distinct tendency at present to regard natural\nselection as less omnipotent in directing the course of evolution than\nwas formerly supposed, but it must be admitted that no very satisfactory\nalternative hypothesis has been suggested. Some have supposed that there\nis a kind of organic momentum which causes evolution to continue in\nthose directions in which it has already proceeded, while others have\npostulated, like Bergson, an _elan vital_ as a kind of directive agency.\nOthers again have reverted towards the older belief in the inherited\neffects of environment--a belief which, in spite of the arguments of\nWeismann and his followers, has never been without its supporters. The\npresent condition of this part of biology, as of many others, is one of\nopen-mindedness approaching agnosticism. There is dissatisfaction with\nthe beliefs which satisfied the preceding generation, and which were\nheld up almost as dogmas, but there is no clear vision of the direction\nin which a truer view may be sought.\n\nBefore leaving this side of the subject, reference must be made to one\nimportant aspect of modern work on heredity--that of the inheritance of\n'mental and moral' characteristics. As a result of the work of the\nbiometric school founded by Galton and Pearson, it has been shown that\nthe so-called mental and moral characteristics of man are inherited in\nthe same manner and to the same extent as his physical features. Of the\ntheoretical importance of this demonstration this is not the place to\nspeak; its practical value is unquestionable, and may in the future have\nimportant effects on sociological problems.\n\nAnother notable line of advance, entirely belonging to the period under\nreview, and chiefly the product of the present century, is seen in the\nscience of Cytology--the investigation of the microscopic structure of\nthe cells of which the body is composed. The marvellous phenomena of\ncell and nuclear division have revealed much of the formerly unsuspected\ncomplexity of living things, while the universality of the processes\nshows how fundamentally alike is life in all its forms. In recent years\ngreat progress has been made in correlating the phenomena of heredity\nand of the determination of sex with the visible structural features of\nthe germ-cells. Weismann attempted a beginning of this over thirty years\nago, but the detailed knowledge of the facts was then insufficient.\nSince the discovery of Mendel's Law, a great amount of work has been\ndone, chiefly in America, by E.B. Wilson and T.H. Morgan and their\npupils, on tracing the actual physical basis of hereditary transmission.\nAlthough the matter is far from being completely known, the results\nobtained make it almost indubitable that inherited characters are in\nsome way borne by the _chromosomes_ in the nuclei of the germ-cells.\nThe work of Morgan and his school has shown that the actual order in\nwhich these inherited 'factors' are arranged in the chromosomes can\nalmost certainly be demonstrated, and his results go far to support the\nconception of the organism, referred to above, as a combination or\nmosaic of independently inherited features.\n\nIt was said at the beginning of this sketch that most of the more\nnotable lines of advance in Biology could be traced back to the impetus\ngiven by the acceptance of the theory of Evolution, and the desire to\ntest and prove that theory in every biological field. It is most\nconvenient, therefore, to take this root-idea as a starting-point, and\nto see how the various branches of study have diverged from it and have\nthemselves branched out in various ways, and how these branches have\noften again become intertwined and united in the later development of\nthe science.\n\nPerhaps the most obvious method of testing the theory of evolution is by\nthe study of fossil forms, and our knowledge of these has progressed\nenormously during the period under review. Not only have a number of new\nand strange types of ancient life come to light, but in some cases, e.g.\nin that of the horse and elephant, a very complete series of\nevolutionary stages has been discovered. In this branch, however, as in\nalmost all others, the results have not exactly fulfilled the\nexpectations of the early enthusiasts. On the one hand, evolution has\nbeen shown to be a much more complex thing than at first seemed\nprobable; and on the other, many of the gaps which it was most hoped to\nfill still remain. A number of most remarkable 'missing links' have been\ndiscovered, such as, for example, _Archaeopteryx_, the stepping-stone\nbetween the Reptiles and the Birds, and the faith of the palaeontologist\nin the truth of evolution is everywhere confirmed. But the hope of\nfinding all the stages, especially in the ancestry of Man, has not been\nrealized, and it has been found that what at one time were regarded as\ndirect ancestors are collaterals, and that the problem of human\nevolution is much less simple than was once supposed.\n\nA second important piece of evidence in favour of evolution is provided\nby the study of the geographical distribution of animals, on which much\nwork was done in the earlier part of the period under review. And in\nthis connexion mention must be made of the science of Oceanography, for\nour whole knowledge of life in the abysses of the ocean, and almost all\nthat we know of the conditions of life in the sea in general, has been\ngained in the last fifty years.\n\nAnother of the chief lines of evidence for the truth of the evolution\ntheory is based on the study of embryology, and this also was followed\nwith great vigour by the zoologists of the last thirty years of the\nnineteenth century. It is found that in many instances animals\nrecapitulate in their early development the stages through which their\nancestors passed in the course of evolution. Land Vertebrates, including\nman, have in their early embryonic life gill-clefts, heart and\ncirculation, and in some respects skeleton and other organs of the type\nfound in fishes, and this can only be explained on the assumption that\nthey are descended from aquatic fish-like ancestors. On the basis of\nsuch facts as these, the theory was formulated that every animal\nrecapitulates in ontogeny (development) the stages passed through in its\nphylogeny (evolution), and great hopes were founded upon this principle\nof discovering the systematic position and evolutionary history of\nisolated and aberrant forms. In many cases the search has led to\nbrilliant results, but, as in the case of palaeontology, in many others\nthe light that was hoped for has not been forthcoming. For it soon\nbecame evident that the majority of animals show adaptation to their\nenvironment not only in their adult stages but also in their larval or\nembryonic period, and these adaptations have led to modifications of the\ncourse of development which are often so great as to mask, or obscure\naltogether, the ancestral structure which may once have existed.\nAlthough, therefore, the results of embryological research have provided\nmost convincing proof of the truth of the theory of evolution in\ngeneral, they have not completely justified the hopes of the early\nembryologists that by this method all the outstanding phylogenetic\nproblems might be solved.\n\nThe detailed study of embryology, however, has led to most important\nresults apart from the particular purpose for which most of the earlier\ninvestigations in this field were originally undertaken. For the study\nof embryology, at first purely descriptive and comparative, was soon\nfound to involve fundamental problems concerning the factors which\ncontrol development. An egg consists of a single cell, and it develops\nby the division of this cell into two, then into four, eight, and so\nforth, until a mass of cells is produced. In some cases all these cells\nare to all appearance alike, or nearly alike; in others the included\nyolk is from the first segregated more or less completely into some\ncells, leaving the other cells without it. But in any case, after this\nprocess of cell-division has proceeded for a certain time,\ndifferentiation begins to set in--some cells become modified in one way,\nothers in another, and from what was a relatively homogeneous mass an\norganized embryo, with highly differentiated parts, appears. The problem\nimmediately propounds itself--what are the factors which control this\ndifferentiation? This problem is essentially a physiological one, and\nyet, since it arises most conspicuously in a field which has been worked\nby professed zoologists rather than physiologists, it has been studied\nmore by those trained in zoology and botany than by those who have\nspecialized in physiology. In this way, as in many other directions,\nsuch as in the study of heredity, of sex, and of the effects of the\nenvironment on the colours and structure of animals, the trend of\nzoology in recent years has returned towards the physiological side, and\nthe old division which separated the sciences (but which has never so\nseriously affected students of plant life) is being obliterated.\n\nHence we are led back to consider the progress of Physiology as a\nwhole--a subject with which the present writer hesitates to deal except\nin a very superficial manner. Physiology as an organized science has\ninevitably been deeply influenced by its close relation with medicine,\nwith the result that through a large portion of the period under review\nit has concerned itself chiefly with the functions of the human body in\nparticular, or at least chiefly with Vertebrates from which, by analogy,\nthe human functions may be inferred. In this field it has made enormous\nprogress, and a vast amount of knowledge has been gained with regard to\nthe function and mechanism of all the parts and organs of the body. It\nmay perhaps be suggested, however, that in the pursuit of this detailed\n(and in practice absolutely necessary) knowledge, physiologists have to\nsome extent lost sight of the wood in their preoccupation with the\ntrees. That is to say, while they have advanced an immense distance in\ntheir knowledge of organs, they have not yet got as far as might be\nhoped in the understanding of the organism--which is to say no more than\nthat the great and fundamental problem of Biology, the nature and\nmeaning of Life, is apparently almost as far from solution as ever. To\nthis further reference will be made below.\n\nThe progress of Physiology has been so great in all its branches that it\nis difficult to decide which most deserve mention; perhaps the most\nimportant advances are those connected with the nervous system and with\ninternal secretions. Little or nothing was known fifty years ago of the\nminute structure of the nervous system, nor of the special functions of\nits different parts. Now the main functions of the various parts of the\nbrain, and the relation of these parts to the activities of the other\norgans of the body, are well known, although much remains to be\ndiscovered with regard to the more detailed localization of function.\nThe study of the microscopic structure of brain and nerve, and\nexperiment on the conduction of nervous impulse, have given us some\ninsight into the mechanism of the nervous system, but the fundamental\nnature of nervous action still remains unsolved.\n\nThe nervous system is the chief co-ordinating link between the various\norgans of the body, but in recent years it has been discovered that the\nrelations of the different parts to one another are greatly influenced\nby substances known as internal secretions or 'hormones'. These\nsubstances are produced by ductless glands (the thyroid, suprarenals,\n&c.), from which they diffuse into the blood-stream and exercise a\nremarkable influence either on particular organs or systems, or on the\nbody as a whole. Some of these secretions act specifically on the\ninvoluntary muscles of the body, others control growth, others the\ndevelopment of the secondary sexual characters, such as the distinctive\nplumage of male birds, and also greatly influence the sexual instinct.\nMuch still remains to be discovered with regard to them, but it seems\nclear that they are of immense importance in the economy of the body. It\nhas been suggested, without much experimental support, however, that if\na part of the body becomes modified by use or environment, it may\nproduce a modified hormone, and that so, by the action of this on the\ngerm-cells, the modification may be transmitted to subsequent\ngenerations.\n\nBefore leaving the subject of physiology in the more special or\ntechnical application of the term, reference must be made to another\nscience the growth of which has been largely under the influence of\nmedicine. This is bacteriology, one of the newest branches of biology,\nand yet one which both from its practical importance and from the\ntheoretical interest of its discoveries is rapidly taking a foremost\nplace. Of its practical achievements in connexion with disease, and with\nthe part played by bacteria and other minute organisms in the life and\naffairs of man, it is not necessary to speak. Every one knows the great\nadvances that have been made in recent years in identifying (and to a\nless extent in controlling) disease-producing organisms, whether\nbacteria, protozoa (such as the organisms causing malaria, dysentery,\netc.), or more highly organized parasites. The attempt, however, to\ncombat these pathogenic bacteria has led to discoveries of the highest\nimportance with regard to the production of immunity, not only against\nspecific germs, but against many organic poisons such as snake venom and\nvarious vegetable toxins. That an attack of certain diseases leaves the\npatient immune to that disease for a longer or shorter time has of\ncourse been known for centuries, but it is a modern discovery that a\nspecific poison induces the body to produce a specific antidote which\nneutralizes it, and the detailed working out of this principle and the\nstudy of the means by which the immunity is brought about promise to\nlead us a long way towards the central problem of the nature and\nactivities of life itself.\n\nWe have seen how zoology has been led back into physiological channels\nof research, and how the study of bacteria is opening up some of the\ndeepest problems of the reaction of living things to environmental\nstimuli, and just as the various branches of these sciences interlace\nand influence one another, so all of them, in recent years, have been\ncoming into contact with the inorganic sciences of chemistry and\nphysics. One of the noteworthy features of science in all its branches\nin recent years has been the tendency of subjects which were at one time\nregarded as distinct to come together again and to find that the\nproblems of each can only be successfully attacked by the co-operation\nof the others. In their earlier days the biological sciences were in\nmost respects far removed from chemistry and physics; it was recognized,\nof course, that organisms were in one sense at least physico-chemical\nmechanisms, consisting of chemical elements and subject to the\nfundamental laws of matter and energy. With the advent of the theory of\nevolution this conception of the organism as a mechanism took more\ndefinite shape, and among many biologists the belief was held that in no\nvery long time all the phenomena of life would be explicable by known\nphysico-chemical laws. Hence arose the scientific materialism which was\nso widespread in the years following the general acceptance of Darwin's\ntheory. It was recognized, of course, that our knowledge of organic\nchemistry was at the time entirely inadequate to place this belief upon\na proved scientific basis, but the expectation of proving it gave a\ngreat impetus to the study of the physical and chemical phenomena of\nlife. This attempt was still further stimulated by the investigation of\nthe factors controlling development referred to in a preceding\nparagraph, for it is evident that to a great extent at least these\nfactors are chemical and physical in nature. And concurrently, the great\nadvances in organic chemistry, resulting in the analysis and in many\ncases in the artificial synthesis of substances previously regarded as\ncapable of production only in the tissues of living organisms, made\npossible a much more thorough investigation of the chemical and physical\nbasis of vital phenomena. The result of this has been that to a quite\nconsiderable extent the factors, hitherto mysterious, which control the\nfertilization, division, and differentiation of the egg, the digestion\nand absorption of food, the conduction of nervous impulses, and many of\nthe changes undergone in the normal or pathological functioning of the\norgans and tissues, can be ascribed to chemical and physical causes\nwhich are well known in the inorganic world.\n\nAs in other instances, however, some of which have been mentioned above,\nthe elucidation of the organism from this point of view has turned out\nto be a much less simple process than the more sanguine of the early\ninvestigators supposed. The more knowledge has progressed, the more\ncomplex and intricate has even the simplest organism shown itself to be,\nand although the mechanism of the parts is gradually becoming\nunderstood, the fundamental mystery of life remains as elusive as ever.\n\nThe chief reason for this failure to penetrate appreciably nearer to the\ncentral mystery of life appears to be the fact that an organism is\nsomething more than the sum of its various parts and functions. In\ntracing the behaviour of any one part or function, whether it be the\nconduction of a nervous impulse, the supply of oxygen to the tissues by\nthe blood, or the transmission of inherited characters by the\ngerm-cells, we may be able to give a more or less complete\nphysico-chemical or mechanical account of the process. But we seem to\nget little or no nearer to an explanation of the fact that although\nevery one of these processes may be explicable by laws familiar in the\nnon-living, in the living organism they are co-ordinated in such a way\nthat none of them is complete in itself; they are parts of a whole, but\nthe whole is not simply a sum of its parts, but is in itself a unity, in\nwhich all the parts are subject to the controlling influence of the\nwhole. An organism, alone among the material bodies which we know, is\nconstantly and necessarily in a state of unstable equilibrium, and yet\nhas a condition of _normality_ which is maintained by the harmonious\ninteraction of all its parts. Every function of the body, if not thus\nco-ordinated with the rest, would very quickly destroy this condition of\nnormality, but in consequence of the co-ordination each is subject to\nthe needs of the whole, and normality is maintained. When the normality\nis artificially disturbed, all the functions of the body adapt\nthemselves to the change, and, if the disturbance be not too great,\nco-operate in the restoration of the normal condition. It is in these\nphenomena of adaptation and organic unity and co-ordination that up to\nthe present time the efforts to reduce the phenomena of living things to\nthe operation of physico-chemical laws have most conspicuously failed.\n\nFrom what has been said it will be evident that, fundamentally, all\nbiological research, whether its authors are conscious of it or not, is\ndirected towards the solution of one central problem--the problem of the\nreal and ultimate nature of life. And the main outcome of the work of\nsixty years has been that this problem has begun clearly to emerge as\nthe central aim of the science. The theory of evolution made the problem\na reality, for without evolution the mystery of life must for ever be\ninsoluble, but whatever direction biological investigation has taken, it\nhas led, often by devious paths, to the borderland between the living\nand the inorganic, and in that borderland the central problem inevitably\nfaces us.\n\nMany suggestions for its solution have been made. On the one hand there\nis still, as there always has been, a considerable body of opinion that\nthe solution will be a mechanical one--using the word mechanical in the\nwidest sense--and that the living differs from the non-living not in\nkind, but only in degree of complexity. The upholders of the mechanistic\nor materialist theory, however, are perhaps less confident than their\npredecessors of the last century, for the solution in this direction\nhas to face not only the problem of organic co-ordination already\nreferred to, but also that of consciousness and mind. For although the\nstudy of psychology on physiological lines has made similar progress to\nthat of other branches of physiology, it seems to approach little nearer\nto a discovery of the nature of the relation between consciousness in\nits various aspects and the material body with which it is associated.\nSo long as this gulf remains unbridged, the possibility of a\nsatisfactory mechanistic explanation of life seems far away.\n\nOn the other hand, there has been a revival of the ancient tendency\ntowards what is called a vitalistic solution. A certain number of\nbiologists, impressed by the apparent similarity between the control and\nco-ordination exercised by the organism over its functions and the\nconscious control of voluntary activity with which we are familiar in\nourselves, have supposed that these things are not merely superficially\nsimilar but have a real and fundamental affinity. This does not mean\nthat organic control is always conscious, but that there is a\ncontrolling entity, non-material in nature, which is similar in kind to\nthe 'ego' of a self-conscious human being. They suppose that the\norganism is not simply material, but is a material mechanism controlled\nby a non-material entity the nature of which is more akin to what we\nmean by the word spirit than anything else of which we are accustomed to\nthink. They are in fact dualists, and divide reality into the material\nand spatial on the one hand, and non-material principle or entity which\nmay fairly be called spiritual on the other.\n\nAnd, in the third place, there are those who seek a solution which\ndenies the truth of both the preceding, and which is metaphysically\nidealist or monist in character. To them, if the present writer\nunderstands their attitude, matter and spirit are different aspects of\none reality. In the inorganic and non-living, phenomena appear which are\ngeneralized under the laws of physics and chemistry, but the phenomena\nof life fall into a different category which includes the conception of\nco-ordination or individuality, while a still higher category is\nrequired to include the phenomena of consciousness and mind.\n\nIt is evident from this brief review that Biology in the period\nconsidered has passed through three main stages. The first of these was\nthe acceptance of a new illuminating and unifying idea, which led to\nenthusiastic research in many directions for the purpose of proving and\namplifying it. Very rapidly new facts, or new interpretations of facts\nalready known, were shown to fall into line, and the evolution theory\nbecame converted from a hypothesis into something approaching a dogma.\nNot only the idea of organic evolution itself, but all the current\nbeliefs about the method of evolution, and the larger speculations to\nwhich it gave rise, were widely regarded as almost indisputable, and\nwhere difficulties and inconsistencies appeared, these were supposed to\nbe due solely to the insufficiency of our knowledge, which would soon be\nremedied. Then, however, as detailed knowledge increased, the voice of\ncriticism and doubt was more frequently heard. The various branches of\nBiology began once more to overlap, and to join hands with chemistry and\nphysics, and it became clear that the interpretation of life was very\nfar from being a simple problem. And so, as with the Atomic Theory in\nchemistry, the present position is one of dissolution of the older ideas\nand of hesitation to express a fixed belief, for while Biology has a\nclearer vision of the problem before it than ever it had, its wider\nknowledge reveals the fact that the problem is far from being solved.\nPerhaps one of the chief results of the great increase of knowledge\nduring the past sixty years has been to show us the immensity of the\nfield still remaining to be explored.\n\n\nFOR REFERENCE\n\nCentenary volume on Darwin (Cambridge University Press).\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nART\n\nA. CLUTTON-BROCK\n\n\nMy subject is art and thought about art. I deal with aesthetics only so\nfar as they concern art, that is to say I shall not attempt any purely\nphilosophic speculations about the nature of art and I shall speak of\nthe speculations of others, such as Croce and Tolstoy, only so far as\nthey seem to me likely to have a practical effect upon art. My subject\nis the art of to-day and our ideas about it. We are beginning at last to\nconnect aesthetics with our own experience of art and to see that our\nbeliefs about the nature and value of art will affect the art we\nproduce. Hence a new aesthetic is very slowly appearing; but I have to\nconfess it has not yet appeared.\n\nIndeed there are at present two conflicting theories of art, one or\nother of which is held consciously or unconsciously by most people who\nare interested in art at all, and both of which I think are not only\nimperfect but to some extent false. They are theories about the relation\nof the artist to the public, and because of the conflict between them\nand the falsity of each, we are confused in our ideas about art, and the\nartists are often confused in their practice of it.\n\nThe first theory has been expressed, not philosophically but with great\nliveliness, by Whistler in his _Ten O'clock_, and has had great\ninfluence both upon the thought of many people who care about art and\nupon the practice of artists. It is, put shortly, that the artist has no\nconcern with the public whatever, nor the public with the artist. There\nis no kind of necessary relation between them, but only an accidental\none; and the less of that the better for the artist and his art.\n\nWhistler states it in the form of a New Testament of his own.\n\n     'Listen,' he says. 'There never was an artistic period.\n\n     'There never was an art-loving nation.\n\n     'In the beginning man went forth each day--some to do battle,\n     some to the chase; others again to dig and to delve in the\n     field--all that they might gain and live or lose and die. Until\n     there was found among them one differing from the rest, whose\n     pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with\n     the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a\n     gourd.\n\n     'This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren--who cared\n     not for conquest and fretted in the field--this designer of\n     quaint patterns--this deviser of the beautiful--who perceived in\n     nature about him curious curvings--as faces are seen in the\n     fire--this dreamer apart, was the first artist.'\n\n     'And when from the field and from afar, there came back the\n     people, they took the gourd--and drank from it.'\n\nWhistler means that they did not notice the patterns the artist had\ntraced on it.\n\n     'They drank at the cup,' he says, 'not from choice, not from a\n     consciousness that it was beautiful, but because forsooth there\n     was none other.'\n\nSo gradually there came the great ages of art.\n\n     'Then', he says, 'the people lived in marvels of art--and ate and\n     drank out of masterpieces for there was nothing else to eat and\n     drink out of, and no bad building to live in.'\n\nAnd, he says, the people questioned not, and had nothing to do or say in\nthe matter.\n\nBut then a strange thing happened. There arose a new class\n\n     'who discovered the cheap, and foresaw fortune in the facture of\n     the sham. Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common, the\n     gewgaw, and what was born of the million went back to them and\n     charmed them, for it was after their own heart.... And Birmingham\n     and Manchester arose in their might--and Art was relegated to the\n     curiosity shop.'\n\nI do not think this can be a true account of the matter; for, if the\npeople were not aware of the existence of art and did not value it at\nall, how came they to imitate it? One imitates only that which one\nvalues. Imitation, as we know, is the sincerest form of flattery; and\nyou cannot flatter that which you do not know to exist.\n\nBut Whistler's account of the primitive artist is also wrong, so far as\nwe can check it. We may be sure that, if the other primitive men had\nseen no value in his pursuits, they would have killed him or let him\nstarve. And the artist, as he exists at present among primitive peoples,\nis not a dreamer apart. The separation between the artist and other men\nis modern and a result of modern specialization. In many primitive\nsocieties most men practise some art in their leisure, and for that\nreason are interested in each other's art. In fact they notice the cups\nthey drink out of much more than we do. If we did notice the cups we\ndrink out of, we should not be able to endure them. In primitive\nsocieties there are not star pianists or singers or dancers; they all\ndance and make music. Homer himself was a popular entertainer; he would\nhave been very much surprised to hear that he was a dreamer apart. In\nfact Whistler made up this pretty story about the primitive artist\nbecause he assumed that all artists must be like himself. He read\nhimself back into the past and saw himself painting primitive nocturnes\nin a primitive Chelsea, happily undisturbed by primitive critics. He is\nwrong in his facts, and I believe he is wrong in his theory. There is a\nrelation, and a necessary relation, between the artist and his public;\nbut what is the nature of it? That is a difficult question for us to\nanswer because the relation now between the artist and the public is, in\nfact, usually wrong; and Tolstoy in his _What is Art?_ tried to put it\nright.\n\n_What is Art?_ is a most interesting book, full of incidental truth; but\nI believe that the main contention in it is false. I will give this\ncontention as shortly as I can in his own words.\n\n     'Art', he says, 'is a human activity, consisting in this--that\n     one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on\n     to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people\n     are infected by these feelings and also experience them.'\n\nNow this is well enough as far as it goes, but it is not enough, and\njust because it is not enough it leads Tolstoy into error. Clearly, if\nart is nothing but the infection of the public with the feelings of the\nartist, it follows that a work of art is to be judged by the number of\npeople who are infected. And Tolstoy with his usual sincerity accepts\nthese conclusions; indeed, he wrote his book to insist upon them. He\njudges art entirely as a thing of use, moral use, and he says it can be\nof no use unless a large audience is infected by it. A work of art that\nfew can enjoy fails as art, just as a railway from nowhere to nowhere\nfails as a railway. A railway exists to be travelled by and a work of\nart exists to be experienced by as many people as possible. Here are the\nactual words of Tolstoy:\n\n     'For a work to be esteemed good and to be approved of and\n     diffused, it will have to satisfy the demands, not of a few\n     people living in identical and often unnatural conditions, but it\n     will have to satisfy the demands of all those great masses of\n     people who are situated in the natural conditions of laborious\n     life.'\n\nNow this sounds plausible; but consider the effect of it upon yourself.\nYou listen to a symphony by Beethoven; and before you esteem it good,\nyou must ask yourself, not whether it is good to you, but whether it\nwill satisfy the demands of those great masses of people who are\nsituated in the natural conditions of laborious life. Tolstoy does\nproceed to ask himself this question about Beethoven's Choral symphony\nand about King Lear, and condemns them both because, he says, a Russian\npeasant would not understand them. But if we all obeyed him and asked\nthis question about all works of art, we should none of us ever\nexperience any work of art at all; for, while we listened to a piece of\nmusic, we should be wondering whether other people understood it; that\nis to say we should not listen to it at all. And what is this Jury of\npeople situated in the natural conditions of laborious life who are to\ndecide not individually but as a Jury? Who can say whether he himself\nbelongs to them? Who is to choose them? Tolstoy chose them as consisting\nof Russian peasants; he, like Whistler, believed in the primitive, but\nfor him it was the primitive man, not the primitive artist, who was\nblessed. In his view there would be no Jury in all western Europe worthy\nof deciding upon a work of art, because we none of us are situated in\nthe natural conditions of laborious life. So we must change all our way\nof life or despair of art altogether. Not one of the great ages of art\nwould satisfy his conditions. Certainly not the Greeks of the age of\nPericles, or the Chinese of the Sung dynasty, or the thirteenth century\nin France, or the Renaissance in Italy; and as a matter of fact he\ncondemns most of the great art of the world, including his own.\n\nWe can escape from the tyranny of Tolstoy's doctrine, as from the\ntyranny of Whistler's, only by considering the facts of our own\nexperience of art. The fact that we _can_ enjoy and experience a work\nof art frees us from Whistler's doctrine, because, if we can enjoy and\nexperience it, we are concerned with it. Because of our enjoyment, art\nis for us a social activity and not a game played by the artist for his\nown amusement. We know also that the artist likes us to enjoy his art,\nin fact complains loudly if we do not; and we do not believe that the\nprimitive artist or man was different in this respect. There is now, and\nalways has been, some kind of relation between the artist and the\npublic, but not the relation which Tolstoy affirms.\n\nAccording to him the proper aim of art is to do good.\n\n     'The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time\n     unintelligible to a great number of people is extremely unjust,\n     and its consequences are ruinous to art itself.'\n\nThe word _unjust_ implies that the aim of art is to do good. The artist\nsins if he does not try to do good to as many people as possible, and I\nsin if I am ready to enjoy and encourage a work of art which most people\ndo not enjoy.\n\nBut as a matter of fact a work of art is good to me, not morally good\nbut good as a work of art, if I enjoy it. In my estimate of the work of\nart I can ask only if it is a work of art to me, not if it is one to\nother people. I may wish and try to make them enjoy it, but if I do that\nis as a result of my own enjoyment of it. I can't begin by asking\nwhether other people enjoy it; I must begin with my own experience of\nit, for I have nothing else to go by.\n\nAnd so it is with the artist; he cannot begin by asking himself whether\nthe mass of men will understand what he proposes to produce; he must\nproduce it, and then trust in man, and God, for its effect. Art is\nproduced by the individual artist and experienced by the individual man.\nTolstoy holds that it is to be experienced by mankind in the mass, not\nby individuals; his audience is an abstraction. Whistler holds that it\nis produced by the individual, but for himself, and not experienced by\nmankind either in the mass or as individuals. Both are heretics. What is\nthe truth?\n\nI will now turn for a moment to the high aesthetic doctrine of Benedetto\nCroce. He in his _Aesthetic_ tells us that all art is expression. True\nenough, as far as it goes; but what do we mean by expression? Croce's\ndoctrine of expression is incomplete, he does not explain clearly what\nhe means by expression, because he also avoids the question of the\nnecessary relation between the artist and his audience; and this is the\nquestion which our thought about art has to deal with, just as we have\nto solve it in our practice of art and in our actual relation with the\nartist. Croce does not see that the question--What is expression?\ndepends upon the question--What is the relation between the artist and\nhis audience? He does see that the audience exists, which Whistler\ndenies; he insists that the audience have the same faculties as the\nartist, though to a less degree--that the artist is not a dreamer apart.\nHe says indeed that to experience a work of art we also must exercise\nour aesthetic faculty; our very experience of it is itself expression;\nand this is a most important point. But for Croce, as for Whistler, the\nartist, when he expresses himself, is concerned only with what he\nexpresses, not with the people to whom he expresses himself. Croce does\nnot see this obvious fact, that a work of art is a work of art _because\nit is addressed to some one_ and is not a private activity of the\nartist. That is why he fails to give a satisfying account of the nature\nof expression. Croce cannot distinguish between expression, or art, and\nday-dreaming; but the distinction is this, that as soon as I pass from\nday-dreaming to expression, I am speaking no longer to myself but to\nothers. So the form of every work of art is conditioned by the fact that\nit is addressed to others. A story, for instance, is a story, it has a\nplot, because it is told. A play is a play, and also has a plot, because\nit is made to be acted before an audience. A piece of music has musical\nform, with its repetitions and developments, because it is made to be\nheard. A picture has composition, emphasis, because it is painted to be\nseen. The very process of pictorial art is a process of pointing out.\nWhen a man draws he makes a gesture of emphasis; he says--This is what I\nhave seen and what I want you to see. And in each case the work of art\nis a work of art, expression is expression, because it implies an\naudience or spectators. Without that implication, without the effort of\naddress, there could be no art, no expression, at all.\n\nIn fact, art in its nature is a social activity, because man in his\nnature is a social being. Art does not exist in isolation because man\ndoes not exist in isolation. His very faculties are in their nature\nsocial always and whether for good or for evil. The individual in\nisolation is a figment of man's mind, and so is art in isolation.\n\nBut although art is a social activity, it is not, as Tolstoy thinks, a\nmoral activity. The artist does not address mankind with the object of\ndoing them good. It is useless to say that he ought to have that object;\nif he had he would not be an artist. The aim of doing good is itself\nincompatible with the artistic aim. But that is not to say that art does\nnot do good. It may do good all the more because the artist is not\ntrying to do good.\n\nBut what is it that really happens when the artist addresses us, and why\ndoes he wish to address us? To answer this, we must consider our own\nexperience, not merely as an audience but also as artists, for we are,\nas Croce insists, all of us to some extent artists. You have all no\ndoubt been aware of some failure and dissatisfaction in those of your\nexperiences which seem to you the highest. Suppose, for instance, you\nsee some extreme beauty, as of a sunset. It leaves you sad with a\nfeeling of your own inadequacy. You have not been equal to it, and why?\nYou will say in speaking of it to others--I wish I could tell you what I\nfelt or what I saw, but I can't. That wish is itself natural and\ninstantly stirred in you by the experience of extreme beauty. The\nexperience seems incomplete, because you cannot tell anyone else what\nyou felt and saw; and you are hurt by your effort and failure to do so.\n\nIt is a fact of human nature that the experience of any beauty does\narouse in us the desire to communicate our experience; and this desire\nis instinctive. It is not that we wish to do good to others by\ncommunicating it. It is simply that we wish to communicate it. The\nexperience itself is incomplete for us until we communicate it. The\nhappiness which it gives us is frustrated by our failure to communicate\nit. We should be utterly happy if we could make others see what we see\nand feel what we feel, but we fail of happiness because we cannot.\n\nWhy? One can only conjecture and express conjectures in dull language.\nThis beauty is itself a universal quality or virtue which makes\nparticular things more real when they have it. It speaks to the\nuniversal in us, to the everyman in us, and, speaking so, it makes us\naware of the universal in all men. We too wish to speak to that\nuniversal, we wish to find it and the more intense reality which is to\nbe seen only where it is seen, we wish ourselves to be a part of it; and\nwe can do that only when all other men also are a part of it. Beauty\nseems to speak not merely to us but to the whole listening earth, and we\nwould be assured that all the earth is listening to it, not to us.\n\nBut we ourselves have to play our part in the realizing of this\nuniversal; the sense of it comes and goes; for the most part we\nourselves are not aware of it. We are merely particulars, like other\nmen, and separated from them by the fact that we are all particulars.\nOnly, when for a moment we are aware of it, then we are filled with a\npassion to make it real and permanent; and it is this passion which\ncauses art and the blind instinctive effort at art, at communication, at\nexpression, which we have all experienced.\n\nBut it follows from this that the audience to which the artist addresses\nhimself is not any particular men and women: it is mankind. The moment\nhe addresses himself to any particular men and women and considers their\nparticular wants and desires, he is giving up that very sense of the\nuniversal that impelled him to expression; he is ceasing to be an artist\nand becoming something else, a tradesman, a philanthropist, a\npolitician. The artist as artist speaks to mankind, not to any\nparticular set of men; and he speaks not of himself but of that\nuniversal which he has experienced. His effort is to establish that\nuniversal relation which he has seen, a universal relation of feeling.\nAnd to him, in his effort, there is neither time nor space. Mankind are\nnot here or there or of this moment or of that; they are everywhere and\nfor ever. The voice in Mozart's music is itself a universal voice\nspeaking to the universe of universal things. And all art is an acting\nof the beauty that has been experienced, a perpetuation of it so that\nall men may share it for ever. The artist's effort is to be the sunset\nhe has seen, to eternalize it in his art, but always so that he and all\nmen may be part of this universal by their common experience of it.\n\nSo, as I say, the artist must not speak to any particular audience with\nthe aim of pleasing them--there is that amount of truth in Whistler's\ndoctrine; and he does fail if he does not communicate, since his aim is\ncommunication--there is that amount of truth in Tolstoy's doctrine.\n\nBut the next question that arises is the attitude of ourselves to the\nartist.\n\nWe have to remember that he is speaking not to us in particular, but to\nall mankind, and that he speaks, not to please us or to satisfy any\nparticular demand of ours, but to communicate to us that universal he\nhas experienced so that we with him may become part of it.\n\nIt follows then that we must not make any particular demands upon him.\nWe must not come with our own ideas of what he ought to give us. If we\ndo, we shall be an obstruction between him and that ideal universal\naudience to which he would address himself. We shall be tempting him,\nwith our egotistical demands, to comply with them. But these demands we\nare always making; and that is why the relation between the artist and\nany actual public is usually nowadays wrong. I was once looking at\nTintoret's 'Crucifixion' in the Scuola di San Rocco with a lady, and she\nsaid to me--'That isn't my idea of a horse.' 'No'--I answered--'it's\nTintoret's. If it were your idea of a horse, why should you look at it?\nYou look at a picture to get the artist's idea.' But that isn't the\ntruth about art either. The artist doesn't try to substitute his own\nparticular for yours. He tries to communicate to you that universal\nwhich he has experienced, because it is to him a universal, not his own,\nbut all men's, and he wishes to realize it by sharing it with all men.\nHis faith, though he may never have consciously expressed it to himself,\nis in this universal which, because it is a universal, can be\ncommunicated to all men. His effort is based on that faith. He speaks\nbecause he believes all men can hear, if they will.\n\nSo the effort of the audience must be to hear and not to distract him\nwith their particular demands. They must not, for instance, demand that\nhe shall remind them of what they have found pleasant in actual life.\nThey must not complain of him that he does not paint pretty women for\nthem, or compose bright cheerful tunes. They are not to him particular\npersons to be tickled according to their particular tastes, but mankind\nto whom he wishes to communicate the universal he has experienced.\n\nSo, if there is an actual audience listening for that universal and\nclearing their minds of their own egotistical demands, then art will\nflourish and the artist will be encouraged to communicate that universal\nwhich he has experienced. But if particular audiences demand this or\nthat and are not happy until they get it, if they say to him--Tickle my\nsenses--Persuade me that all is for the best in the world as I like it;\nthat prosperous people like myself have a right to be prosperous; that I\nam a fine fellow because I once fell in love; that all who disagree with\nme are wicked and absurd--then you will have the kind of art you have\nnow, in the theatre, in the picture gallery, in the cinema, in the\nnovel; yes, and in your buildings, your cups and saucers, your pots and\npans even. For in the very arts of use you demand that the craftsman\nshall provide you with what you demand, and as cheap as possible;\nbecause you do not understand that he should express himself, you do not\nunderstand also that his expression is worth having and that he ought to\nbe paid for it. In the very pattern on a tea-cup, if it is worth having\nat all, there is the communication of that universal which the artist\nhas experienced. It is there to remind you of itself whenever you drink\ntea, to bring the sacrament of the universal into everything as if it\nwere music accompanying and heightening all our common actions; but if\nyou want a fashionable tea-cup cheap, you will get that, and you will\nnot get anything expressed or communicated with it. You will be shut up\nin yourself and your own particularity and ugliness. If we want art we\nmust know how we should think and feel and act so as to encourage the\nartist to produce it.\n\nBut why should we want art at all? I hope I have answered that question\nincidentally. It is so that we may have life more abundantly; for we can\nhave life more abundantly only when we are in communication with each\nother, mind flowing into mind, the universal expressing itself in and\nthrough all of us. We all more or less blindly desire this\ncommunication, but we seldom know why we desire it or even what exactly\nit is we desire. We make the strangest, clumsiest efforts to communicate\nwith each other--I am making one now--and we are constantly inhibited by\nfalse shame from real communication. We are afraid to be serious with\neach other, afraid of beauty, of the universal, when we see it. On this\npoint I will tell a little story from Mr. Kirk's _Study of Silent\nMinds_. At a concert behind the front, an audience of soldiers had\nlistened to the ordinary items, a performance, as Mr. Kirk says, 'clean,\nbright, and amusing', which means of course silly and ugly. Then the\norchestra played the introduction to the _Keys of Heaven_, and a gunner\nremarked--'Sounds like a bloody hymn.' That was his fear of beauty, his\nfalse shame. But when the _Keys of Heaven_ was ended, the whole\naudience, including the gunner, gave a sigh of content; and after that\nthey went to hear it time after time. Well, the beauty of that song, and\nof all art, is the 'Key of Heaven' itself. For Heaven is a state of\nbeing of which we all dream, however dully, in which all have the power\nof communication with each other; in which all are aware of the\nuniversal, possessed by it and a part of it, all members of one body,\nall notes in one tune, and therefore all the more intensely themselves,\nfor a note is itself, finds itself, only in a tune; otherwise it is mere\nnonsense.\n\nOf course if you are to believe this, you must believe in the existence\nof a universal, independent of yourself, yet also in you and in all men.\nYou must believe that beauty exists as a virtue, a quality, a relation\nof things, and that it is possible for you also to produce that virtue,\nto live in that relation. But no one can prove that to you. The only way\nto believe it is to see beauty with intensity and to make the effort of\ncommunication in some form or other.\n\nTolstoy believes that the very word beauty is a useless one because, he\nsays, all efforts to define beauty are vain. But that is true of the\nword life, yet we have to use the word because life exists. And all\nexplanations of art which refuse to believe in beauty as a reality\nindependent of us, yet one of which we may become a part, do fall into\nincredible nonsense. We are told that art is play; the only answer to\nwhich is that it isn't. Others say that it is an expression of the\nsexual instinct, which has forgotten itself. They discover that in some\nsavage tribe the male beats a tom-tom to attract the female; and they\nconclude that Beethoven's Choral Symphony is only a more elaborate\ntom-tom beaten to attract a more sophisticated female. But again the\nonly answer is that it isn't; and that if all our ancestors were, not\nWhistler's dreamers apart, but beaters of tom-toms to attract females,\nthen there was something in the sound of the tom-tom that made them\nforget the female. The reality of art is to be found not in its origins\nbut in what it is trying to be; and what it is trying to be is always a\ncommunication between mind and mind; what we aim at in art is a\nfellowship not for purposes of use but for its own sake, the fellowship\nwe feel when we are all together singing a great tune.\n\nBut now, since we have a hundred foolish ideas about art, its nature and\nvalue, it is of the greatest importance that we should attain to a right\nidea of it, not only as a matter of theory to be discussed, but as a\nreligion to be practised. And, if we can grasp this right idea of it, we\nshall not think of art as consisting merely of the fine arts, painting,\npoetry, music, sculpture. We shall see that it is possible for men to be\nartists, to exercise this great activity of communication, in the work\nby which they earn their living, and that a happy society is one in\nwhich all men do so exercise it. We are very far from that happiness\nnow, and that is why Ruskin and Morris became almost desperate rebels\nagainst our present society. What they said about art and its nature is\nstill the best that has been said about it, far nearer to philosophic\ntruth than all that the professed philosophers have said, and of the\nutmost moment to us now. For if we could believe them we should change\nmost of our values; we should see that the ordinary man, now being\ndeprived of all the joy of art in his work, is living a mutilated life;\nwe should place art among the rights of man. Whereas Rousseau said--All\nmen are born free and everywhere they are in chains--we should say--All\nmen are born artists and everywhere they are drudges. With our curious\nEnglish originality, which hits on so many momentous truths and then\nmakes no use of them, it is we who have found the greatest truth about\nart, but neither we nor any other people is at present making much use\nof it. Because we lack art, lack the power of communication, we lack\nfellowship; and as Morris said--Fellowship is life and the lack of it is\ndeath.\n\n\nFOR REFERENCE\n\nW. Morris, _Hopes and Fears for Art_.\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nA GENERATION OF MUSIC\n\nDR. ERNEST WALKER\n\n\nThe general subject of this course is European Thought; and, to some,\nmusic may perhaps seem in this connexion rather like an intruder.\nIndeed, if the musician is, in William Morris's phrase, 'the idle singer\nof an empty day', if his business is to administer alternate stimulants\nand soporifics to the nerves or, at best, the surface emotions, or to\nserve in Cinderella-like fashion any passing, shallow needs of either\nthe individual or the crowd, then, obviously, he has no place worth\nself-respecting mention in the world as it exists for philosophy. But\nwidespread as some such conception of the function of music is, I hope\nyou will agree with me in throwing it aside as, at any rate for our\npresent purpose, no more worth the trouble of even approximately patient\nargument than that other less general but more objurgated conception of\nmusical composition as something like a mechanically calculated spinning\nof bloodless formulae. By the conditions of its being, music has to\nexpress itself through non-intellectual channels, but may we not say\nthat its essence is intellectual, that it is, in Combarieu's phrase, the\nart of thinking in sound--thinking in as precise a sense as the word can\nbear? It does not express itself verbally: it is self-dependent, with a\nlanguage available only for the expression of its own ideas and not even\nindirectly translatable by nature into a verbal medium. Yet it is\nthought none the less; perhaps all the more. Words, we have often been\ntold, serve for the concealment of thought; but the language of music is\nmore subtle, more comprehensive. It has been said that where words end,\nmusic begins; and anyhow, for musicians, there stands on record the\nserenely proud claim of one of themselves. 'Only art and knowledge',\nsaid Beethoven, 'raise man to the divine; and music is a higher\nrevelation than all wisdom and all philosophy.'\n\nBut I must not allow this little preliminary apology to stray into the\nfield of abstract aesthetics. The subject proposed to me, the\ncorrelation of the progress of specifically musical thought during the\nlast generation with the progress of European thought in general, is so\nextensive that I cannot within the necessary limits attempt to deal with\nmore than some of the most salient features, and even those I shall have\nto treat in very broad outlines, with a certain disregard of detail and\nnicely balancing qualifications. I shall only attempt to put before you\nwhat seem to me the most prominent considerations, and to throw out\nsuggestions which I hope you may perhaps, if sufficiently interested,\ndevelop at leisure for yourselves.\n\nIn several ways the correlation of the musician with the non-musical\nworld is now more intimate and conscious than ever before. Forty or\nfifty years ago--in spite of brilliant individual exceptions--musicians\nwere, in the main, self-centred craftsmen; they were inclined to drift\ninto a backwater, away from the chief currents of the intellectual, or\noften indeed of the general artistic life of their day, and they seem on\nthe whole to have been content to have it so. In England we were\nsomewhat behindhand, no doubt, in our participation in the gradual but\nsteady change. But men like Parry and Stanford brought their profession\ninto close touch with the general culture of their contemporaries, and\nmade the universities and music understand each other; Grove, the first\ndirector of the Royal College, himself a man whose professional career\n(not to mention his amateur interests) had ended in music after ranging\nthrough civil engineering, business organization, biblical archaeology,\nand the editorship of a great literary magazine, preached with\ninfectious enthusiasm the new doctrine of the larger outlook; and for\nthe last thirty years, even if our practice may have occasionally seemed\nsomewhat to lag behind, at any rate our theory has not looked back.\nMusicians have been granted their claim to be judged by the same\nintellectual and moral standards as other reasonable people; it is a\nmodest claim, but, especially in England, it has had to be fought for.\n\nAnd the entry on this wider heritage, which English musicians, apart\nfrom an exception or two such as Pierson and Bennett, won for the first\ntime a generation ago, has had in every country a definite influence on\ncomposition, especially (as is only natural) on the composer's attitude\ntowards the musical setting of literature. I should be far from saying\nthat any modern is a greater song-writer than Schubert; but it is\nobvious that the followers of Wolf and Duparc and Moussorgsky are aiming\nat something different. They may not express the general mood of the\npoem more faithfully, but they certainly attach more importance to its\nlyrical structure and to flexibly expressive diction: they accept the\npoet as an equal colleague. The serious song-writer can hardly any\nlonger, like Schumann in his setting of Heine's 'Das ist ein Floeten und\nGeigen', afford to stultify great poetry by quoting from memory and\ngetting the adjectives deplorably wrong. Nor can he, like Beethoven in\n'Adelaide' and the 'Entfernte Geliebte' cycle, let himself weave musical\nstructures many sizes too large for the proper structure of the words,\nwhich have consequently to be repeated over and over again with very\nlittle regard for poetical or even common sense. Schumann and Beethoven,\nespecially the former, were culturally very far from narrow-minded men;\nbut there was not in their days any general cultural pressure\nsufficiently strong to influence them as composers. Now, the pressure is\nso strong that few can resist. Most composers have now fully learned\ntheir lesson of a fitting politeness towards their\npoet-colleagues--learned it in the main, so far as not intuitively, from\nthe high examples set by Wolf and the modern French school--and have,\nmoreover, come to recognize the duty of setting such words as may be fit\nnot only to be sung but to be read, a duty shockingly neglected by many\nof the greatest geniuses in musical history.\n\nAnd the cultural pressure has gone farther than this. Not only has the\nincreasing complexity of life broadened the musician's personal outlook,\nprofessional or unprofessional: it has also modified, whether for better\nor for worse, the outlook of the music itself. We may conveniently\ndivide all music into two great classes: 'absolute' music, in which the\ncomposer appeals to the listener through the direct medium of the pure\nsound and that alone; and 'applied' music, in which the appeal is more\nor less conditioned by words, either explicit or implicit by\nassociation, or by bodily movement of some kind, dramatic or not, or by\nany other non-musical factor that affects the nature of the composer's\nthought and the method of its presentation. Up to the present\ngeneration, instrumental music, unconnected with the stage, has been\nvirtually identifiable with absolute music; there are a handful of\nexceptions--sporadic pieces, usually though not invariably thrown off in\ncomposers' relatively easy-going moods, and an isolated figure or two of\nserious revolt, like Berlioz and Liszt--but they only serve to prove\nthe rule. Now, this identification is far from holding good. More\nconsciously than ever before, instrumental music is straining beyond its\nown special domain and asking for external spurs to creative activity.\nAnd it asks in various quarters. It may ask merely the hint of\nparticular emotional moods conditioned by special circumstances; or it\nmay vie with the poet and the novelist in analysis of character. The\npsychology, again, may pass into the illustration of incident, whether\npartially realistic or purely imaginative, or into the illustration of\nphilosophical tenets, as in Strauss's version of Nietzsche's doctrines\nin his _Also sprach Zarathustra_ or Scriabin's of theosophy in his\n_Prometheus_. Or the composer may go directly to painting, whether\nactual as in Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem on Boecklin's picture of 'The\nisland of the dead', or visionary as in Debussy's 'La cathedrale\nengloutie'. There is indeed no end to such instances.\n\nAll this development of instrumental music into territories more or less\nadjacent makes a very imposing show; and it is so markedly a product of\nthe last generation that we easily over-estimate the novelty of its\nessential results. As I have said, instrumental music is more and more\nasking for external spurs to creative activity; but this does not mean\nthat music as a whole is, so to speak, breaking loose from its moorings\nand adventurously voyaging on to uncharted seas. What it means is,\nsimply, that, under the stress of modern culture, the barriers between\nvocal and instrumental, dramatic and non-dramatic, music have been to a\ngreat extent abolished.\n\nWe may consider music as normally involving three persons: the composer,\nthe performer, and the listener. Until the present generation, the role\nof the listener was normally quite passive. All that he had to do was to\nkeep his ears open to the music, and further, when required, his ears\nopen to words and his eyes to dramatic presentation. The composer and\nthe performers did everything for him. But now they do not. The modern\ncomposer urges that, just as vocal music demands from the listener a\nseparate knowledge of the words, so instrumental music may demand, as a\ncondition of full understanding, a separate knowledge of some verbally\nexpressible signification. The parallel no doubt holds well enough even\nif we answer, as we certainly may, that in much vocal music the words\nare so unimportant that it really does not musically matter if they are\nunintelligible or inaudible. But this latter-day demand on the listener\nis considerable. The listener to Strauss's _Don Quixote_, for example,\nmust, in order to appreciate in full measure any section of this long\nwork, have a fairly close acquaintance with Cervantes' book--whether\nderived from an analytical programme or from personal reading: there are\nneither words nor acting to give a clue, nor does the printed music\nitself give the slightest assistance, except in so far that a couple of\nthemes are labelled with the names of the 'Knight of the sorrowful\ncountenance' himself and Sancho Panza. Sometimes, no doubt, a composer\nhelps at any rate the purchaser of his music more; but to the listener\nhe gives nothing, and leaves his thought, as embodied in the mere title,\nto be reached as best it may. The modern composer makes these demands on\nthe listener continually; and he does so simply because the sphere of\nthe music-lover's imaginativeness and general culture has become so\ngreatly enlarged that he thinks he can fairly afford to take the risk.\n\nBut we may well ask whether the music of suggestion has not, in its\nrestless anxiety to correlate itself with non-musical culture, reached\nor perhaps even overstepped the limits of musical possibility. It is no\nquestion of a composer's rights: he has a right to do anything he can,\nprovided that he preserves a due proportion between essentials and\nunessentials. And judicious criticism will turn, if not a blind, at any\nrate a short-sighted eye towards a great composer's occasional realistic\nescapades, which, however irritating they may perhaps be to others, are\nto him only a part of the general background of his texture; after all,\nin their different media, Bach and most of the other giants have\noccasionally allowed themselves similar little flings. It is a question\nnot of rights, but of powers. The poet and the painter and the novelist,\nnot to mention all the non-human agents in the universe, are bound to do\na good many things much better than the composer can; and even if he may\npersonally aspire to be a kind of spectator of all time and existence,\nhe has no means of making his listeners see eye to eye with himself. The\nrisk he runs may be too great. Realizing as we must that all this\nferment of suggestion-seeking has undoubtedly vivified and enriched\nmusical development in not a few aspects, we may nevertheless feel, and\nfeel profoundly, that there is a cardinal weakness inherent in it. A\ncomposer may so easily be tempted to forget that it is after all by his\nmusic, and by his music alone, that he stands or falls. If he asks too\nmuch extra-musical sympathy from the listener, he defeats his own end.\nThe listener will inevitably concentrate on the unessentials, and will\nas likely as not get them quite wrong; he may indeed indulge the habit\nof realistic suspicion to such an extent as to make him become\nthoughtlessly unfair and credit the composer with sins of taste, whether\nbabyish or pathological, of which the objurgated culprit may be\naltogether innocent. If a composer plays with fire, he is fairly sure to\nburn some one's fingers, even if he successfully avoids burning his own.\nAnd anyhow it is waste of time, and worse, for us to cudgel our brains\nto fits of entirely unnecessary inventiveness when the composer has\nleft his music unlabelled. We sometimes hear of children being\nencouraged to give verbal or dramatic expression of their own to\ninstrumental music; that is not education--very much the reverse. It is\nmerely the expense of spirit in a waste of fancifulness, the wilful\nmurder of all feeling for music as such.\n\nThe feeling for music as such, that is still the one thing needful. And\nby this canon, so it seems to me, we must judge all these alarums and\nexcursions of modern composers. If we hold firmly by it, we shall not be\nunduly worried when we learn that the music which seems so perfectly to\nrealize the composer's expressed meaning has been originally designed by\nhim quite otherwise--as has happened oftener than is generally known;\nthough this fact does not excuse wilful contradictions of a composer's\ndefinite intentions, as in the vulgar perversion of Rimsky-Korsakoff's\n_Scheherezade_ popularized by the latest fashionable toy, the Russian\nBallet, which would do more musically unexceptionable service were it to\nconfine itself to works specially designed for it, such as the\nfascinating and finely-wrought scores of Stravinsky, or concert works\nlike Balakireff's _Thamar_, based on programmes that can be mimetically\nreproduced without unfaithfulness. And anyhow, in the midst of all these\nappeals to the eye or the literary memory or what not, we may call to\nmind the simple truth that music is something to be heard with either\nthe inward or the outward ear, and if we are too much distracted\notherwise, our hearing sense suffers. We shall pay too high a price for\nour latter-day correlation of music with literature and the other arts\nif the music itself has to play the part of Cinderella. 'We do it wrong,\nbeing so majestical.'\n\nAgain, we may endeavour to correlate recent musical development with\nthe development of the conceptions of nationality and race. With\nnationality in the strictly political sense music has, indeed, nothing\nto do: there is no inborn musical expression common to all the\ninhabitants of Switzerland, or the United States, or the British Empire\n(or indeed the British Islands). And if we abandon political nationality\nentirely and think of national music solely in terms of race, we still\nhave to make very large deductions. Heredity counts, it would seem, for\nfar less than environment in musical development--especially so in these\ndays of free intercourse. Nevertheless, we may to some extent isolate\nthe racial element; and within the last generation increasingly vigorous\nefforts have been made to do so--though they have perhaps neglected\nsufficiently to observe that racial ancestry is often an extremely mixed\nquantity.\n\nTo the musician, this insistence on race is in the main a quite modern\nthing. It is true that, as the successive waves of Italian influence\nflowed northward in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth\ncenturies, they met in England, France, and Germany, and, at the end, in\nRussia, native cross-currents; and there was plenty of controversy\nbetween the opposing parties. But this controversy was mainly concerned\nwith matters of technique; whereas the whole force of the modern\nmovement consists in its reliance on the simple folk-music which is\nsupposed to be characteristic of the race as a whole, and about which\nhardly any composers of the past consciously troubled themselves at all.\nHaydn and Beethoven, no doubt, used folk-tunes in their own works to\nsome extent, but the former's adaptations from the uncultivated tunes of\nhis own Croatian people are polished nearly out of recognition, and when\nthe latter commandeers from Ireland or Russia or elsewhere, nothing but\npure Beethovenishness remains after his masterful hand has done its\nwill. We may say, indeed, that nationality, as such, was never in their\ntime a conscious factor in musical composition.\n\nThe modern movement seems to owe its origin to several non-musical\ncauses. For example, the spread of political democracy had no little\ninfluence in arousing interest in the music specifically characteristic\nof at any rate the non-urban sections of the newly enfranchised classes.\nBut, in the main, it was caused by the modern rise into something like\npolitical prominence of the smaller nations, smaller either in size or\nin historical importance. The events of 1848, for example, brought\nHungarian folk-music before the world; Bohemian claims against Austria\nproduced the work of Smetana and Dvo[vr]ak, largely based on the general\nstyle of their own native melodies; the Irish Question made us know the\nIrish songs; and the dominating races followed those leads, at any rate\nin so far as to take interest in their own traditional music, and try to\nevaluate its differentiating factors. Conscious connexion between\nartistic composition and folk-music has varied very much: very strong in\nRussia and other Slavonic countries, it has been very weak in Italy and\nFrance; in Germany we find all stages between the work of Brahms, where\nthe folk-element is very notable, and of Wolf, where it is non-existent;\nin our own islands it has been very weak, but is now becoming very\nstrong. But, whether this connexion has been conscious or not, still,\nsooner or later, all the insisters on the importance of the element of\nnationality have joined hands with the enthusiasts for the folk-music of\nthe people. In the work of preserving the knowledge of this folk-music\nEngland has been one of the last of all countries: even the last edition\nof Grove's _Dictionary_, our standard authority, gives many pages to\nScotland and Ireland and Wales, and smuggles English folk-music into an\nappendix. Only indeed in the twentieth century has anything like an\nadequate study of the varied treasures of English folk-music become\npossible, and we have learned enough to realize that great folk-music is\nno monopoly of the races that have been either politically or socially\ndecentralized.\n\nThis advance of the conception of racialism has widened and intensified\nmusic in not a few ways. It has brought to our knowledge many splendid\nmelodies, infinitely varied in design and emotional range, and, at their\nbest, inspirations that the greatest composers would have been proud to\nsign. And, mixed as are the feelings with which we must contemplate the\ngeneral course of our own musical history, we can anyhow boast of some\nof the finest folk-tunes in existence in these relics of the old world\non its last western fringes, in Ireland and the Hebrides. We have come\nto see that this great mass of traditional music--only in part, of\ncourse, the outpouring of sheer genius, but at its worst sincere--is,\nwith its appeal alike to the child and the adult, either in years or in\nmusical culture, the most perfect educational weapon yet devised with\nwhich to combat all the forces that make for musical degradation. And,\napart from all this half-unconsciously wrought music, we have been shown\nthe value of the bypaths in art, of the work of the great men of the\nyounger races like the Scandinavians and the Czechs and most of all the\nRussians, who do not speak the older classical tongues but have, all the\nsame, abundance to say that is well worth the whole world's hearing. It\nis to our immense gain that we have now come, far more than ever before,\nto realize that in the house of music there are many mansions. And, once\nagain, we have been taught the duty of being fair to the men of our own\nblood, past and present. Particularly in our own artistic history there\nhas been visible a strongly marked tendency, such as no other nation\nhas shown in equal measure, to neglect and depreciate native work in\ncomparison with foreign, even when the latter might perhaps be worse.\nBut I think we may say, without self-laudation, that British composition\nis now worth some considerable attention from ourselves and others; it\nwas, not unnaturally, wellnigh forgotten during its sleep from the death\nof Purcell till the rise of Parry--a fairly sound sleep, during which it\noccasionally half-opened its eyes for a moment or two--but it is wide\nawake now. We are still slow to learn the lesson; but we have come to\nrealize, at any rate theoretically, the duty of doing what we can, in\nthe spirit not of favouritism but of justice and knowledge, to disprove\nthe proverb that a prophet (and an artist also) has no honour in his own\ncountry and in his father's house.\n\nSo much to the good. But to-day, more than ever before, many voices are\nurging us to go farther--and, I think, to fare worse. Artistic racialism\nhas always been spontaneous, so far as the art is great. No composer who\nis worth anything can be dragooned into being patriotic: he will go his\nown way. Some are attracted more than others by the general types of\nphrase or the general emotional moods exemplified in the folk-music of\ntheir own race; but that is a matter for neither credit nor discredit.\nIndividuality includes race as the greater includes the less. The only\nvital consideration is the value of the output in the general terms of\nall races; and indeed all great folk-music, like any other kind, speaks,\nfor those who have ears to hear, a world-language and not a dialect. And\nthere is still more at stake in this issue. Those who, as I do, hold\nthat the best chance for the political future of the world lies in the\nweakening of national and racial as well as class consciousness, must\nneeds regard very suspiciously any of these modern attempts to force\nmusic into channels which are deliberately designed for it by\nnon-musical considerations: the fettering, by set purpose, of art is a\nvery considerable step towards the fettering of life itself. England may\nsometimes have failed in kindness to her own artistic children, living\nand dead; but at any rate we have been free from the curse of a narrow\njealousy and have steadfastly held to the proud faith of the open door\nand the open mind. The ideal--so violently dinned into our ears\nnowadays--of a national school of composers may very easily mean a\nwilful narrowing of our artistic heritage. If an English composer with\nnothing to say for himself imitates Brahms or Debussy, it is obviously\nregrettable; but he will not mend matters by imitating Purcell. And,\nafter all, the musician who (save occasionally when seeking texts for\nhis own individual discourses) borrows his material from his native\nfolk-music stamps himself, just as much as if he borrowed from any other\nquarter, as a common plagiarist incapable of inventing material of his\nown. If we may adapt for the purpose Johnson's famous aphorism about\npatriotism and scoundrels, we may say that racial parochialism is the\nlast refuge of composers who cannot compose. Let us assert once more the\nsupreme beauty of folk-music at its best; but it is often childish, and,\nanyhow, childish or not, it is after all the work of children. And any\nof the world's activities would come to a strange pass if children--or\nany races or classes which, through lost opportunities or the oppression\nof others, are still virtually children--were to dictate principles of\nintolerance to those who, by no merit of their own but as a plain matter\nof fact, can possess the wider vision. Let a composer steep himself as\nmuch as he can in his native folk-music, as in all other great music,\nand then write in sincerity whatever is in his own marrow; but anything\napproximately like a chauvinistic attitude towards music, as towards\nany other of the things of the spirit, means either insensibility to\nspiritual ideals or unfaithfulness to them. Let me take an analogy. I\nhave always felt that a philosophical and historical study of the idea\nof honour would throw more light than anything else on many great\nproblems, notably the problem of war, and that in this investigation the\nconception of the duel would have a very prominent place. May we not say\nthat, just as the individual honour of each of us, unless we are members\nof the self-styled upper classes of a few countries, is now supposed to\nbe able to take care of itself, so the blood in a composer's veins will,\nif his music is worth anything, be able to take care of itself also?\nNeither honour nor artistic personality is affectable by external\nconsiderations which are on a different plane of value. And music indeed\nis the most specifically international, or supernational, of all the\narts; it has not, like literature, any barriers of language, nor, like\npainting or sculpture or architecture, any local habitation. Musical\nseparatism is not a natural quality; it needs careful and continuous\nfostering. And I know from personal experience that, all through the\nwar, there was no difficulty at all in carrying on concerts in the\nprogrammes of which works by living German composers, and songs in the\nGerman language, were included in their due proportions just as before.\n\nAnother great factor in modern European thought with which I would\nattempt to correlate music is the factor of religion. No one will deny\nthat the last generation has seen profoundly important changes in\nreligious thought: whatever may have been the eddies and backwaters, the\nmain stream has run, and still runs, like a cataract. These changes may\nbe very differently judged by different types of men, all of them\nequally firm believers in the supremacy of spiritual ideals: some may\ndefinitely regret, some may, with the help of such conceptions as that\nof progressive revelation, steer a middle course, some (among whom I\nwould number myself) may definitely welcome. But in whatever light we\nmay regard these radical refusals of the old allegiances, we shall\nnaturally expect to find their influence in music, which has had in many\nways so intimate a connexion with religion. Indeed, the conception of\nmusic as in some special way the handmaid of religion dies very hard. It\nis still possible, in April 1919, for distinguished musicians, when\nappealing for funds for the foundation of a professorship of\necclesiastical music, to put their names to the statement that 'the\nchurch will always be the chief home and school of music for the\npeople'[71]: and this when the facts about attendances at places of\nworship have long been familiar. We must rate the influence of church\nmusic more modestly; it has a great influence in its own sphere, but its\nsphere is only one among many.\n\nWe may, I think, envisage this religious development on its practical\nside as a process of differentiation by which the sincere standers in\nthe old and the middle and the new paths have little by little drawn\napart intellectually--but not, in societies that are happily able to\ntake broad views of human nature, otherwise than intellectually--not\nonly from each other but still more from those who, whatever their\nostensible labels, are in reality followers of Gallio and routine. And\nsomething like the same process is observable in the religious music of\nthe past generation. Many of its old conventions have silently dropped\naway, unregarded and unregretted: whatever the outlooks, and they are\nmany and various, they are more clear-sighted, more sincere. Here in\nEngland we have somewhat lagged behind: we have had, not perhaps\naltogether fairly but indubitably, a reputation for national hypocrisy\nto sustain, and our religious music has only with difficulty shaken\nitself loose. Not very long ago, Saint-Saens's _Samson and Delilah_, now\none of the most popular of operas, could only be performed as an\noratorio: it dealt with biblical incidents and characters, therefore it\nwas religious music, therefore it could not be given stage presentation.\nOf course this kind of attitude is never logical: for a long time we\nclosed Covent Garden to Strauss's _Salome_ for the same reason, but no\none, so far as I know, ever proposed to endow it with a religious halo.\nNow, when Sunday secular music is everywhere, its origins seem lost in\nantiquity; but the chamber-music concerts at South Place in London and\nBalliol College in Oxford, which are, I think I am right in saying, the\ntwin pioneers, are both little over thirty years old. In most other\ncountries, however, music has suffered far fewer checks of this kind;\nand it is of more importance to correlate musical and religious\ndevelopment on more general lines. Particularly interesting, I think, is\nthe history of the decline of the oratorio, which I should myself be\ninclined to date from the production of the German Requiem of Brahms\nabout half a century ago, though the real impetus has become apparent\nonly during the last generation.\n\nBrahms's Requiem was indeed something of a portent: it was a definite\nherald of revolt. The mere title, 'A German Requiem', involving the\ncommandeering of the name hitherto associated exclusively with the\nritual of the Roman Church and the practice of prayers for the dead, and\nits adaptation to entirely different words, was in itself of the utmost\nsignificance; and the significance was enhanced by the character of the\nwords themselves. In the first place, they were self-selected on purely\npersonal lines; in the second place, they were, theologically, hardly so\nmuch as Unitarian. Brahms claimed the right to express his own\nindividual view of the problem, and at a length which involved the\ncorollary that the problem was regarded in its completeness. The 'German\nRequiem' cannot be considered, as an anthem might be, as an expression\nof a mere portion of a complete conception of the particular religious\nproblem: in an organic work of this length, what it does not assert it\nimplicitly denies or at any rate disregards. And this was at once\nrecognized, both by Brahms's opponents and by himself: he categorically\nrefused to add any dogmatically Christian element to his scheme.\nSimilarly with his _Ernste Gesaenge_, written some thirty years later, at\nthe end of his life: he balances the reflections on death taken from\nEcclesiastes and similar sources with the Pauline chapter on faith,\nhope, and charity--not with any more definite consolation. And again,\nwith the choral works, the settings of Hoelderlin's _Schicksalslied_,\nSchiller's _Naenie_, Goethe's _Gesang der Parzen_ (the first-fruits of\nthe essentially modern spirit which has impelled so many composers to\nchoral settings of great poetry)--they deal with the ultimate things,\nbut the expression is never, so to speak, orthodox: it is imaginative,\nsometimes perhaps ironical, but never anything but intensely\nnon-ecclesiastical.\n\nBrahms's Requiem represents, as I have said, the beginning of the change\nin the conception of concert-room religious music, of the abandonment of\nthe old type of oratorio in favour of something much more conscious and\nindividual; and in refusing to take things for granted, religious music\nhas been altogether in line with general religious development. The\nchange can perhaps be observed in English music more markedly than\nelsewhere. Oratorio, in the sense in which we ordinarily use the term,\nis to all intents and purposes an invention of the genius of Handel\nreacting on his English environment: the form was of course older, but\nhe gave it a specific shape that set the fashion for future times. It\nhad its birth in a business speculation; it was a novelty designed to\noccupy the Lenten season when the theatres were not available for opera.\nLike the opera, it supplied narrative and incident and characterization\nthough without scenery or action, and it dealt with biblical history.\nThe history of the oratorio is the history of this loose compromise; it\nhas afforded an attractive flavour of the theatre even to those to whom\ndrama may in itself have seemed disreputable, and it has had the\nadvantage of possessing subjects which combined unquestioningly accepted\nliteral truth with unlimited possibilities for wholesale edification,\nand at the same time made no intimately personal claims. The libretto of\nMendelssohn's _Elijah_ is perhaps at once the most familiar and the most\nskilfully compiled example of the type; but it is now, so far as great\nmusic is concerned, extinct. Here in England--where, for something like\na century and a half, the demand was so large that composers, when tired\nof writing oratorios themselves, still went on producing them out of the\nmangled fragments of other music--Parry's _Judith_ of 1888 is the last\nof the old type from the pen of a great composer; and his subsequent\nworks show, in striking fashion, the direction of the newer paths. There\nis no longer the assumption that everything in the Bible or the\nApocrypha is at one and the same time literally true and somehow or\nother edifying. _Job_ and _King Saul_ are great literature and vivid\ndrama; they stand on their own merits. And the long succession of\nsmaller choral works, in which Parry mingled in curious but intensely\npersonal fusion his own earnest but somewhat pedestrian poetry with\nfragments of the Old Testament prophets, represent a still further\nabandonment of the old routine; they form a connected exposition of his\nphilosophy of life, on the whole theistic rather than specifically\nChristian, and always transparently individual. Individual--that is the\nreal issue. According to their differing temperaments, different\ncomposers may swing towards either the right or the left wing of thought\nin these non-ecclesiastical expressions of ultimate things: Stanford may\njoin with Whitman or Robert Bridges, Vaughan-Williams with Whitman or\nGeorge Herbert, Frank Bridge with Thomas a Kempis, Walford Davies with a\nmediaeval morality-play, Gustav Hoist with the Rig-Veda, Bantock with\nOmar Khayyam. But the essentials, for any composer worth the name, are\nthat his theme shall have its birth in personal vision and shall appeal\nto personal intelligence. The routine oratorio fulfilled neither of\nthese conditions; and it is dead beyond recall. It was a curious\nillustration of foreign ignorance of British musical life that\nSaint-Saens, when asked to write a choral work for the Gloucester\nFestival of 1913, should have imagined that he was meeting our national\ntastes with an oratorio on the most prehistoric lines. However, the\nunanimous chilliness with which _The Promised Land_ was received must\nhave effectually disillusioned him.\n\nBut the liberalisers, though the more numerous force, have no monopoly\nof sincerity: among the genuine conservatives also we can find, I think,\nsigns of the correlation of musical with religious development. We have\nhad, during the last generation, many works that are in the legitimate\nline of descent from the great classical settings of ritual words or (as\nwith the Passions and Cantatas of Bach) words that are intended anyhow\nto appeal not as literature but as dogma. When Elgar prints on the\ntitle-pages of his oratorios the letters A.M.D.G.--_ad majorem Dei\ngloriam_--the personal note is, in these days, obvious. His own libretti\nto _The Apostles_ and its sequel _The Kingdom_ (and to the further\nsequels which had been sketched out twelve years ago, though none has as\nyet seen the light) resemble those of the older type of oratorio in so\nfar as they include narrative and dramatic incident and religious\nmoralizing; but there is not a trace of the old lethargic taking things\nfor granted, it is all a ringing sacramental challenge to the individual\nsoul. Elgar's work is indeed the typical musical expression of recent\nRoman Catholic developments; but there are others also. There was\nPerosi, the Benedictine priest, whose oratorios, tentative, childishly\nsincere mixtures of Palestrina and Wagner, were forced upon Europe in\nthe late 'nineties with the full driving power of his Church, and who,\nwhen his musical insufficiency became palpable, was dropped in favour of\nElgar himself, whose sudden rise into deserved fame coincides in time.\nThere was again the allocution of Pius X, known as the _Motu proprio_,\nwhich sought to reform ecclesiastical music and has, however fruitless\nit may have been elsewhere, made the services in Westminster Cathedral,\nunder Dr. Terry's direction, a Mecca for musicians of all faiths who are\ninterested in the great sixteenth-century masterpieces. There are also\nthe aristocratically Catholic composers of latter-day France, centring\nround Vincent d'Indy and the _Schola Cantorum_ and looking back for\ninspiration to Cesar Franck. And again, in the English communion, there\nis the marked High-Church movement for the encouragement of dignified\nmusic, a movement that has had great influence in the purification of\npopular taste. And the pivot round which all this turns is the dogmatic\nfaith that definitely Christian expression in music is the property,\nthe exclusive property, of those who by temperament and conviction are\nChristians. The attitude, like the conditions which have brought it\nabout, is, I think, new: but some of its adherents go surely too far\nwhen they urge that those whose minds work otherwise cannot really\nappreciate this music at its due worth. Cesar Franck, that simple-minded\nchildlike genius, once pronounced Kant's _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_\n'very amusing'--a surely unique criticism--simply, it would seem,\nbecause it was eccentric enough not to take Catholicism as a primary\npostulate: I do not myself happen to have any information about Kant's\nmusicianship--perhaps, like too many great thinkers, he knew little\nabout music and cared less--but I think we may venture to say, in the\nabstract, that his philosophy would have made him fairer to Franck than\nFranck was to him.\n\nAnd thus perhaps we may conclude that recent musical development has\nkept pace with religious development in concentrating more and more on\nindividual sincerity, whether on the one side or the other, and\nabandoning the old easy-going haphazard routine. But, in reaction from\nthe extreme right and the extreme left of the movement, we have also the\nsincere dislikers of stark thinking, whom their opponents call by\ndignified names of abuse, such as pragmatists or undenominationalists:\nand here again music keeps pace with religion. It is not the old routine\nagain (though perhaps in practice it may at times come rather perilously\nnear it); it is the more or less conscious adoption of a compromise. We\ncan see its musical working best of all in the recent history of church\nmusic in England; it is true that the great mass of the younger\nmusicians, here as in all other countries, stand outside these\ndevelopments, and look both for ideals and practice elsewhere, but the\ndevelopments have none the less been very significant. There have been\nthree stages. A couple of generations ago there was no conflict and no\ncall for compromise. The ecclesiastical musician of the time was\nexpected, whether as composer, as organist, or as administrator, to do\nhis best according to his lights: it was his accepted business, as\npresumably knowing more about the matter than the artistic laity, to\nlead their taste, not to follow. Then came the reign of men like Dykes\nand Stainer and Gounod, whose normal attitude involved the sacrifice by\nthe musician of some of his musicianship in the supposed interests of\nreligion. The supposed interests, I say; for the whole point of the\nthird stage of development, the conflict in which English church music\nis now involved, is the denial by one of the opposing parties that the\ninterests of religion are in any way served by such a sacrifice. It is a\nvery keen conflict, in which the sympathies of the musician _qua_\nmusician naturally lean towards those who uphold the inalienable dignity\nof his art: and even if he feels that ecclesiastical music, _qua_\necclesiastical, is outside his personal concern, influences from it are\nbound to radiate into the secular departments. But what I would more\nespecially point out is that the religious and the musical developments\nproceed side by side. Just as the stricter purists in the one field are,\nin the other, generally inclined, even if themselves unmusical, to\nuphold plain-song and the Elizabethans and only such modern work as is\ninspired by something like a similar spirit, aloof and strong, so those\nwhose religious mentality is of a more pliable type are, if musically\nindifferent, generally inclined to uphold the practical accommodation\nafforded by the inclusion of at any rate a certain quantity of music\nthat is consciously adapted to the more immediately obvious emotions of\nthe average worshipper.\n\nAnd, even if there is no question of a lowered artistic standard, we\nsee, I think, the same spirit of compromise, of ready acceptance of the\nmore immediately obvious as the average and proper norm for all people,\nelsewhere on the boundaries of musical and religious life. It is so easy\nto turn a blind eye to logic and minorities, or even to majorities if\nthey have little pressure, social or other, to back them up. To\nillustrate from one or two English examples, the transformations of\ncathedrals into secular concert-rooms are as open to blame from the one\nside as are, from the other, such assumptions as that of the 'Union of\nGraduates in Music' to take rank as a definitely ecclesiastical, indeed\nan Anglican society. Again, it so happens that a somewhat exceptional\nproportion of English musicians hold, or have held, as conditions of\nlivelihood, posts to which not all of them would have aspired had other\nchannels, open to their foreign fellow-artists, been open to them also;\nand, as a necessary consequence, there is more probability here than\nelsewhere of the musical profession presenting practical problems for\nthe intellectual conscience to solve. So far as the musician is a\npersonal non-conformer and also a teacher (even if not a church\norganist), he is often compelled into a tacit agreement with the\nCowper-Temple clause, at the least: and so far as he is a convinced\nconformer, he is often compelled to strain, far beyond the meaning of\nthe parable, the principle of letting the wheat and the tares grow\ntogether. This is called a practical age: and the compromisers, in\nreligion and in religious music, are a powerful force. But I would\nventure to think that the future lies, in the long run, in other hands\nthan theirs.\n\nTo the mediaeval musician, religion and science were the twin\nfoundations of his art. But while the influence of religious development\ncan without difficulty be traced in musical history, the influence of\nscientific development is much more contestable. It may indeed, I\nthink, be said that post-mediaeval music has gone its own way without\nconsidering science at all. Theorists of course there have been, and\nstill are, who try to discover scientific foundations for the art of\nmusic as we moderns know it: they do their best to correlate\nmathematical physics with practical composition. But during the past\ngeneration these attempts, never very hopeful, have become much less so.\nIt is only too easy to play scientific havoc with the foundations of\nmodern music: but, arbitrary and scientifically indefensible though they\nmay be, they are our inheritance. Music has come to be what it is by\nmethods that will not bear accurate investigation: our tonal systems are\nmere makeshifts, and no composer can completely express his thoughts in\nour clumsy notation. I doubt if, throughout all this last generation\nthat has seen such overwhelming scientific advance, music has really\nbeen scientifically affected (in the strict sense of the word) in the\nslightest degree, if we exclude some interesting experiments in\nsympathetic resonances, primary and secondary, at which some recent\ncomposers for the piano have, at present rather tentatively, tried their\nhands. And whole-tone and duodecuple scales and modern harmony in\ngeneral are taking us farther and farther away from those natural laws\nof the vibrating string upon which arm-chair theorists have sought to\nbuild a very top-heavy edifice. Of course, the vibrating string\nultimately gives--mostly out of tune--all the notes of the chromatic\nscale, but composers employ them on principles the reverse of\nmathematical.\n\nThe growth of music has not been scientific; but growth of some kind is\nevident enough, though it is none too easy to define it at all\nadequately. Some might say, with Romain Rolland in his _Musiciens\nd'autrefois_, that 'the efforts of the centuries have not advanced us a\nstep nearer beauty since the days of St. Gregory and Palestrina'; but\nthis is surely a narrow outlook. Beauty combines the many with the one:\nand plain-song and the _Missa Papae Marcelli_ show us only a few, a very\nfew, of its manifestations. But artistic progress is, anyhow, very\nsubtle and evasive; and musical progress, in particular, is hardly\ncorrectable with any other. Above all, we must recollect that, to us\nEuropeans, music--which, in the only sense worth our present\nconsideration, is an exclusively European product--is incalculably the\nyoungest of the great arts; if we exclude some monophonic conceptions\nthat have still their value for us, it is barely five hundred years old\nat the most.\n\nDuring the last generation an advance in material complexity is obvious,\neven though the complexity may often enough be one of accidentals rather\nthan essentials. An orchestral score of Wagner is relatively simple in\ncomparison with one of Delius or Ravel or Scriabin or Stravinsky or\nSchoenberg; and the demands on performers' technique and also on their\nintelligence have steadily increased to heights altogether unknown\nbefore. The composer has at his present disposal a vastly enlarged\nmedium; the possibilities of sound have developed incalculably more than\nthose of paint or stone or marble. Pheidias could, we may imagine, have\nappreciated Rodin across a gulf of over two thousand years; but it is\ndifficult to see the points of contact, after little over three hundred\nyears, between Palestrina and any twentieth-century work that would\nclaim to be 'in the movement'. And it is not only in complexity that we\nhave advanced. We have extended the limits of musical style. We have\nadopted in sober earnest methods forecasted at rare intervals in the\npast by adventurous explorers, and employ musical notes not as elements\nin any harmonic scheme but purely as points of colour, exactly as if\nthe definite notes were mere clangs of indefinite instruments like\ncymbals or triangles. Wordless vocal tone, moreover, of several\ndifferent types, is pressed into the same service. Varied tonal and\nharmonic colour, and structural freedom: those are the two battle-cries\nof the young generation. Little by little the old tonalities, based as\nthey were on fixed centres, are slipping away; all the notes of the\nchromatic scale are acquiring even status; the principles of structure\nare newborn with every new work. And advance of this kind has been\nextraordinarily accelerated during the last twenty years. At no time in\nmusical history have there been such express-speed modifications of\nmanner as those which divide, let us say, the latest piano pieces of\nBrahms (1893) and the latest of Scriabin (1914). It is possible, indeed,\nthat our standard system of keyboard tuning may require modification in\nthe not very distant future. Once again, as three hundred years ago,\nmusic seems to be in the throes of a new birth. On the former occasion,\nthe process of convalescence lasted rather more than a century, from\nMonteverde through Carissimi and Schuetz and Purcell to Bach; and it may\nperhaps take as long now.\n\nBut it is plain enough that mere novelty does not involve progress; if\nit were so, the music of the casually strumming baby would demand high\nrecognition. Nor is progress to be found in merely quantitative,\nBrobdingnagian expansion. And when we have taken our stand on what seems\na sufficiently sound definition of musical progress in its material\naspect--the combination of novelty with expansion, the new thought with\nits appropriately enlarged medium--we have yet to remember that many\nvery fine composers still can, and do, express their natural and full\nselves in older idioms, and that progress of this kind, however\nwidespread it may become, is not necessarily advance in the scale of\nvalues. There is, somewhere or other, a limit to the cubic capacity of\nthings: they cannot increase indefinitely in depth and breadth at once.\nWe may confidently hope that we have not yet musically come within\nhailing distance of the limit: but nevertheless it is becoming more and\nmore difficult to see music steadily and see it whole, and it is useful\nto take stock of our position. Our musical minds are very much broader\nthan they were: in that sense we can well, like the heroes of Homer,\nboast that we are much better than our fathers. But are they also\ndeeper? We have gained access to many new rooms in the house of art,\nrooms full of strange and beautiful things, for the knowledge of which\nwe must needs be profoundly and lastingly grateful; but some of the\nrooms seem rather small and their windows do not seem to have been\nopened very often, while others seem liable to be swept by hurricanes\nwhich upset the furniture right and left. Veterans there are, musicians\nnot to be named except with high honour, who fall back for nutriment on\nthe great classics and pessimism; but our notions of beauty cannot stand\nstill, and in all ages of music one of the most vital tasks of criticism\nhas been to distinguish between the relatively non-beautiful which has\ncharacter and truth and its superficial imitation which has neither. All\nmusicians very well recollect their first bewilderment at what has\nafterwards become as clear as daylight. But we must retain our standards\nof judgement. We have no right to criticize without familiarity, but we\nmust remember that over-familiarity, mere dulled habitual acceptance,\nmeans equal incapacity for criticism. If, after trying our utmost, we\nstill cannot see any sense in some of these modernist pages, there is no\nreason why we should not say so; it is quite possible that there really\nis no sense in them, and that the composer is perfectly aware of the\nfact. Odd stories float about the artistic world. And if the anarchists\ncall us philistines and the philistines call us anarchists, it is fairly\nlikely that we are seeing things pretty much as they are.\n\nMoreover, it is worth remembering that a good deal of what is loosely\ncalled modernism is in reality very much the reverse. There is nothing\nprogressive in the confusion of processes with principles, in the\nbreathless disregard of the larger issues. Take the ideal of 'direct\nexpression of emotion', the attempt to give, as Pater said half a\ncentury ago, 'the highest quality to our moments as they pass and simply\nfor those moments' sake'. Musically, it is a return to the childhood of\nour race, to the natural savage. If a musical composition is to consist\nof anything more than one isolated noise, it must inevitably have a form\nof some kind, its component parts must look backward and forward. The\nlatter-day composers who speak of Form as a kind of bogey that they have\nat last exorcized remind us of those latter-day thinkers who boast that\nthey have abolished metaphysics. We cannot leap off our shadows; if we\ntry, we shall only find that we are left with a residuum of bad\nmetaphysics or bad musical form--as thoroughly bad as the metaphysics\nand the musical form that have resulted from the confusion of the one\nwith empty word-spinning and of the other with hide-bound pedantry.\nAgain, much of the modern rhythmical complexity strongly resembles, in\nessence, the machine-made experiments of mediaeval times; and the\npeculiarly fashionable trick of shifting identical chords up and down\nthe scale--the clothes'-peg conception of harmony, so to speak--is a\nmere throw-back still farther, to Hucbald and the diaphony of a thousand\nyears ago. And the insistence, now so common, on the decorative side of\nmusic, the conscious preference of the sensuous to the intellectual or\nemotional elements, brings us back to our own infancy, with its\nunreflecting delight in things that sparkle prettily or are soft to the\ntouch or sweet to the taste. It is a reaction from sentimentality, no\ndoubt, but is a reaction to an equal extreme, a perversion of the truth\nthat great art never wholly gives itself away. As Vincent d'Indy has\njustly pointed out, the 'sensualist formula'--'all for and by\nharmony'--is as much an aberration of good sense as the parallel formula\nof the ultra-melodic schools of Rossini and Donizetti: in either case it\nmeans the sacrifice of spaciousness to immediate effect, the supremacy\nof sensation over the equilibrium of the heart and the intelligence. Not\nof course that any music lacks the sensuous element; but it is a matter\nof proportion. And very distinguished as are many of the modern\nexponents of this side of things, history tells us, I think, that they\nare working in a blind alley. They have their supporters, no doubt. M.\nJean-Aubry, in his very suggestive and valuable book on modern French\nmusicians, has used a phrase that seems to me worth remembering; he\nspeaks of the 'obsession of intellectual chastity' which, to his mind,\ndisfigures the work of Cesar Franck and other great composers whom he\ntherefore rejects from his latter-day Pantheon. I am glad to think that\nFranck would have gloried in this shame. He, and a very goodly company\nwith him, knew that music was, at its highest, something better than an\nentertainment, however thrilling or however refined.\n\nBut, whatever critics and composers may feel about musical progress, it\nis, as Wagner said, in the home of the amateur that music is really kept\nalive, and the amateur's music depends very largely on the schools. A\ngeneration ago music was certainly sociologically selfish. Musicians had\nnot realized that all classes of the community were open to the\ninfluences of fine music, if only they had the opportunities for\nknowing it. But since then there have been very great advances, both\nquantitative and qualitative, in musical education. We have spread it\nbroadcast, in the increasing faith that appreciation depends, not on\ntechnical knowledge or executive skill, but on the responsive\ntemperament and the will to understand. Familiarity, familiarity at home\nif possible, is the key to this understanding; and in this connexion\nthere is, I believe, an enormous educational future before pianolas and\ngramophones, if only the preparation of their records can be taken in\nhand on artistic rather than narrowly commercial lines. And our\nstandards of judgement have risen: we do not worship quite so blindly\nmere names, whether of the past or of the present, nor exalt the\nperformer quite so dizzily above what is performed. Nor do we quite so\nglibly disguise our indifference to vital distinctions by talking about\ndifferences of taste: we know that, however catholic we may rightly be\nwithin the limits of the good, whether grave or gay, there comes sooner\nor later, in our judgement of musical as of all other spiritual values,\na point where we must put our foot down. We are going on, and our\ntheories are sound enough: but the path of a democratically widened, and\nrightly so widened, art is by no means easy. The principle of levelling\nup slides so readily into the practice of levelling down: and the book\nof music is closed once for all if we are to accept the plenary\ninspiration of majorities.\n\nBut here in England the greatest danger to musical progress is, I\nventure to think, the self-styled practical Englishman--fortified as he\nis by the consciousness that, for at any rate a couple of centuries or\nmore, we have as a nation taken a low view of the arts and have been\nrather proud of it than otherwise. It is so obvious that no profession\nis economically more unsound than that of the serious composer: it is\nnot so obvious that we owe all the great things of the spirit by which\nwe chiefly live to those whom the world calls dreamers, among whom the\ngreat musicians have had, and, I hope and believe, will always have, no\nmean place. Against the 'practical Englishman', and all that his\nattitude to music involves, we can all of us fight in our respective\nspheres: and I would commend to you for useful weapons three very\ndifferent books by very different men--Sir Hubert Parry's great book on\n_Style in Musical Art_, Mr. C.T. Smith's account of his artistic work in\nan elementary school in the East End of London which he calls _The Music\nof Life_, and a pamphlet _Starved Arts mean Low Pleasures_ recently\nwritten by Mr. Bernard Shaw for the British Music Society. And one\nparticular line of indirect attack, easily open to all of us, is, I am\ninclined to think, specially promising. In the third and fourth verses\nof the thirty-fifth chapter of the book of Ecclesiasticus we shall find\nthese injunctions, which I translate as literally as Greek epigrams can\nbe translated: 'Do not hinder music: do not pour out chatter during any\nartistic performance: and do not argue unseasonably.' In other words,\nconversation, however valuable, prevents complete listening to music;\nand music that is not meant to be listened to in its completeness is not\nworth calling music, and had much better not be there at all. Musical\nprogress will be spiritually well on its way when we all realize this\naxiomatic truth as firmly as this Hebrew sage of two thousand years and\nmore ago.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 71: _The Times_, April 17, 1919.]\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nTHE MODERN RENASCENCE\n\nF. MELIAN STAWELL\n\n\nTo understand in any degree the modern outlook on life it seems\nnecessary to go back to the time of the French Revolution. For at that\nstirring epoch there flamed up in the minds of enthusiasts an ideal of\nman's life larger than had ever yet been known, and one that has\ndominated us all ever since. If we give, as I think we should give, a\nwide sense to the word 'Liberty' and make it mean all that stands for\nself-development, then one may say that this ideal was fairly well\nsummed-up in the famous Revolutionary watchword, 'Liberty, Equality,\nFraternity'. It is impossible at any rate to read the idealists of that\ntime and its sequel--say from 1793 to 1848--whether in France, Germany,\nEngland, or Italy, whether inside or outside the Revolutionary ranks,\nwithout feeling their buoyant hope that a fresh era was opening in which\nman, casting aside old shackles and prejudices, could advance at once\ntowards knowledge, joy, splendour, both for himself and all his fellows.\nShelley, perhaps, is most typical of what I mean. Hogg laughed at him\nfor his belief in the 'perfectibility' of the race, but Hogg knew the\nbelief was vital to the poet. To Shelley it was a damnable doctrine that\nthe many should ever be sacrificed to the few: yet neither was the\nultimate vision that inspired him the vision of the few being sacrificed\nfor the many. He was anything but an ascetic seeking martyrdom. The\nmartyrdom of his Prometheus is a prelude to the Unbinding when\nhappiness shall flood the world:--\n\n    'The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!\n     The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,\n       The vaporous exultation not to be confined!'\n\nAnd not only happiness and love, but knowledge also: the Earth calls to\nthe Sky: 'Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.'\nSoberer spirits shared this poet's ecstasy. Wordsworth sang\n\n    'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,\n     But to be young was very heaven.'\n\nAnd that heaven was exactly this foretaste of the Spirit of Man entering\nundisturbed into his full inheritance at last: Science welcomed as a\ndear and honoured guest, Poetry known as 'the breath and finer spirit\nthat is in the countenance of all knowledge'.\n\nIt is scarcely necessary even to mention the high hopes of the French\nthemselves, the confident anticipation of an Age of Reason when all men\nshould be brothers and the earth bring forth all her treasures, but it\nis well worth noting the attitude of Goethe, an attitude the more\nsignificant because, in a sense, Goethe always stood outside the French\nRevolution. But he, like the best of its votaries--and this is less\nknown than it should be--desired the development of all men every whit\nas much as he desired the high culture of a few. It was for the double\ngoal that he worked. 'Only through all men,' he writes in a notable\npassage, 'only through all men, can mankind be made.'[72] All good lies\nin Man, he tells us again, and must be developed, 'only not in one man,\nbut in many'. Goethe, the so-called aristocrat, has given us here as\ntrue a formula for the democratic faith as could well be found. And to\nhim, as to Shelley and to Wordsworth, Poetry and Science were not\nenemies but friends dearer than sisters. Those three, Shelley,\nWordsworth, and Goethe, foreshadowed a new poetry of science that has\nnever yet been achieved, though fine work has been done by Tennyson,\nWhitman, Sully Prudhomme, and Meredith.\n\nGoethe, moreover, again like Shelley and the French, broke with all\nideals of mere self-abnegation. In his poem, 'General Confession', he\nmakes his disciples repent of ever having missed an opportunity for\nenjoyment and resolve never so to offend again. Here, as often, Goethe\ncomes into the closest touch with our modern feeling. We, too, can never\nreturn to the Franciscan ideal of poverty, celibacy, and obedience as\nthe highest life for man on earth. We have done with self-denial except\nas the means to a human end. We are still in the tide of what I would\ncall the Modern Renascence; we claim the whole garden of the world for\nour own, the tree with the knowledge of good and evil included, reacting\neven from Christian ideals if they can make no room for that. But, after\nall, the characteristic of the belief dominant a century ago was exactly\nthat such room could be made, that Hellenism could be combined with\nChristianity, and self-development with self-denial.\n\nAnd this belief is, I think, reflected in the music of the time.\nSchubert, that sweetest soul of tears and laughter, understands every\nshade of wistfulness, and yet again and again in his music it seems as\nthough the universe had become, to quote a lover of his, one immense and\nglorious blackbird. Mozart, in 'The Magic Flute', as Goethe seems to\nhave recognized, sings the very song of union between the unreflecting\njoy of the natural man and the strenuous self-devotion of the awakened\nspirit. Beethoven, greatest of them all, plumbs the lowest depths of\nsuffering and then astounds and comforts us by ineffable vistas of\nhappiness. After years of personal misery he crowns the glorious series\nof his symphonies by the one that ends in a hymn of joy, freedom, and\nfaith, embracing the whole world--'Diese Kuss der ganzen Welt'--that\nmajestic open melody, clear as the morning, fresh as though it came from\nfar oversea, greater even than any of the great harmonies that have gone\nbefore, larger than the tortured human heart, steadier than the sudden\necstasy of the spirits set free, stronger than the swansong of the\ndying, a melody content with earth because it is conscious of heaven. I\noffer no apology for weaving my own fairy-tales round such music: I see\nno harm in the practice, but only good, so long as we understand what we\nare about. Music, it is true, is something other than, in a sense more\nthan, either thought or feeling or even poetry, and cannot be reduced to\nany of them (nor any of them to it). The universe would be poor indeed\nif it could be so. But none the less the truth may be, as Spinoza\nthought, that the universe is at once a unity and a unity with many\nfacets, so that any one facet, while for ever unique, can bring to our\nminds all the mysteries of the rest.\n\nIn any case, the high confidence that breathes in the music of a hundred\nyears ago meets us again in the philosophers.\n\nHegel, born in the same year as Beethoven and Wordsworth (1770), is sure\nthat nothing can resist the onslaught of man's spirit. 'Stronger than\nthe gates of Hell are the gates of Thought.' Fichte is convinced that\nthere waits in man, only to be developed, a power that will unite him\nwith all other men and at the same time develop his own personality to\nthe full. In a sense, the deepest, each man _is_ his fellow-men, and\nthey are he.\n\nHow much this conception has affected modern thought can be seen in a\nrecent and very remarkable book, _The New State_,[73] where the very\nbasis of democracy is shown to be the faith in this essential unity, a\nunity to be worked out, not yet realized, but capable of realization, a\nfaith stirring all through the modern world, in ways expected and\nunexpected, from Syndicalism to the League of Nations.\n\nLater than Hegel and Fichte, the great Positivist conception of life\npreached by Comte is instinct with this belief that man united with his\nfellows, and only as so united, can attain heights undreamt-of and\nunlimited.\n\nThe flood-tide of this faith flowed far into the nineteenth century. The\nItalian Mazzini, leader of revolt in 1848, was filled with it. Prophet\nof the most generous political gospel ever preached, he lived on the\nhope that, if freedom were given to the nations and duty set before\nthem, they would prove worthy of their double mission, and peace would\ncome to pass between all peoples.\n\nBut even Mazzini had his moments of agonizing doubt. And others beside\nhim, men of lesser intellect as well as greater, were soon to raise, or\nhad already raised, voices, stern or fretful, of protest and criticism.\nIt became clear at last that this joyous confidence rested on a very\ndefinite view of life and one that might easily be challenged, the view,\nnamely, that at bottom the universe meant well to man, that his greatest\naspirations were compatible with each other and nowise beyond\nattainment. Almost from the first there were men of the modern world who\ndid challenge this. Byron and Schopenhauer are significant figures, both\nborn in the same year, only eighteen years later than the great Three of\n1770, Wordsworth, Hegel, and Beethoven. Byron is full of moody\nquestionings, Schopenhauer of much more than questionings. Against the\ndauntless optimism of Hegel, he flatly denies that the universe is good,\nor happiness possible for man. On the contrary, at the heart of it and\nof him there lies an infinite unrest, never to be quieted until man\nhimself gives up the Will to Live and sinks back into the Unconscious\nfrom which he came.\n\nNow after Schopenhauer came Nietzsche, and though Nietzsche's influence\nmay have been exaggerated, yet undeniably it has been of immense\nimportance both for Germany and Europe. He is typical of the change that\nbegins to appear about the middle of the century. Reacting from the\noptimism of the idealists (which seemed to him both smug and false),\nNietzsche welcomed Schopenhauer's more Spartan view with a kind of\nfierce delight. But his criticism of Schopenhauer was fierce too, and he\ngave a strangely different turn to such parts of the doctrine as he did\naccept. To Schopenhauer, since it was folly to hope for real happiness\nin this life or any other, the wise course would be to kill outright, so\nfar as possible, the Will to Live itself. To Nietzsche the wise course\nwas to assert life, to claim it more and more abundantly, to face this\ntragic show with a courage so high that it could be gay, a courage that\ncould do without happiness, and yet that turned aside from none of\nlife's joys simply because they were fleeting, that was more than\ncontent to 'live dangerously', picking flowers, as it were, clear-eyed,\non the edge of the precipice. And this not merely in the temper of 'Let\nus eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' For him the motto would have\nrun, 'Let us be up and doing, for to-morrow we die', sustained by the\nbelief that the heroic struggle now would lead inevitably to the\nproduction of a nobler type of man, a man who would be something more\nthan man--the Super-man, to give him the name that every reader knows,\nif he knows nothing else about Nietzsche.\n\nEven this short statement shows how Nietzsche shared the admiration for\nlife and power characteristic of what I have called the Modern\nRenascence, and how deeply he was influenced by the doctrine of\nEvolution, and that in a not unhopeful form, the hope for an advance in\nthe race at least, if not in the individuals now living. And it shows\ntoo how mistaken those are who see in him nothing but a preacher of\nbrutal egotism. If he had been only that, he would never have won the\ninfluence he possessed and possesses. Yet there is important truth in\nthe cursory popular judgement. If his teaching has its heroic side, a\nside that has enabled him to give succour to many when other and sweeter\ngospels are spurned as flattering unctions, he has also a most ruthless\nelement. And this partly because of his very sincerity. Accept the\ndoctrine that men and women perish like candles blown out in the night,\naccept it really and fully, with intellect, imagination, and feeling,\nand then see how much light-heartedness can be got out of life, if we\nstill allow ourselves to pity men. Nietzsche had intellect, imagination,\nand feeling, and he saw plainly enough that, while even in such a\nuniverse there could be a grim happiness for the lives of heroes, there\ncould be nothing but infinite sadness for the countless failures who\nhave never been either happy or heroic. There was no immortality; these\nwretched beings would never have another chance. If joy was to be kept\n(and Nietzsche was avid for joy), if the universe was to be accepted\n(and Nietzsche desired above all to say Yes! to the universe), then he\nmust root out pity from his heart as an unmanly weakness. In this way\nwas sharpened the ruthlessness and savage arrogance latent in the man, a\nruthlessness and an arrogance that have done so much harm both to his\ncountry and the world.\n\nIn fairness, we must add that Nietzsche could not succeed in his own\nattempt; the struggle tore him to pieces and he died in madness.\n\nBut it is above all instructive to contrast him here with several of\nhis contemporaries and successors. Browning in England, Walt Whitman in\nAmerica, facing the same problems of joy and struggle, of life and\ndeath, of the few great and the many commonplace, of Man himself and the\nNature that seems at once his mother and his enemy, refused to give up\nthe hope of a solution, nay, they were sure they had found a solution,\nand for them it was bound up with the hope of immortality. They go even\nbeyond the earlier men in their insistence on the double ideal of\nPaganism and Christianity, but they have an insistence of their own on\nthe belief in unending life as alone giving man elbow-room, so to speak,\nfor working out his destiny. Browning claims eternity as the due of\nevery man, however mean; and if Whitman feels his foothold 'tenon'd and\nmortised in granite', it is because he can 'laugh at dissolution' and\nknows 'the amplitude of time'.\n\nBut in such insistence and such conviction they have not been followed,\nspeaking broadly, by our leading writers since. On the other hand, they\nhave been so followed, again speaking broadly, in their loyalty to the\ntwofold ideal. Here and there, no doubt, as I have said, writers like\nNietzsche, on the one hand, have tried to be satisfied with the splendid\ndevelopment of a Few, or, on the other hand, like Tolstoy, have flung\nback in a kind of despair to the old ideal of abnegation, of sheer\nbrotherly love and nothing else, turning their backs on all splendours\nof art, knowledge, or delight, that do not directly minister to the one\nthing they hold needful. But the earlier and wider ideal, the ideal of\nour Renascence, once envisaged by man, that has not been lost, and I\nbelieve never can be lost. Its own greatness will keep the foremost men\ntrue to it. Meredith is one of the men I mean. He is full of pity, but\nhe does not only pity men and women--he wants them to grow, and to grow\nfor themselves. His whole attitude towards Woman shows this: for the\nwomen's movement is nothing more and nothing less, as Ibsen also felt,\nthan one big stream of the general movement towards liberty and\nself-determination. So far Meredith marches with Browning and Whitman.\nBut he will never commit himself about immortality. It seems enough for\nhim to take part in the struggle for a finer life, at once heroic and\ntender, not caring overmuch whether we reach it or no. 'Spirit raves not\nfor a goal' is one of his hard and characteristic sayings, and here he\nseems to me typical both of modern thought in general and especially of\nEnglish thought, and that both for good and ill. We see in him the want\nof precision, the lack of logical coherence, that have prevented us from\never producing a philosopher of the first rank. At the same time there\nis something true and profound in his instinct that the moment has not\nyet come in which to formulate our faith. We all feel that we are on the\nbrink of tremendous, perhaps terrifying, discoveries; we resent any\ncut-and-dried solution, however pleasant, perhaps all the more if it is\npleasant, and we resent it because we feel that at bottom our hopes\nwould be travestied by any conception we, with our little intellect and\nminute knowledge, could at present frame. It was once said to me by a\nfar-seeing friend[74] that the modern dislike of church-going, the\nmodern incapacity to write a long coherent poem, the modern passion for\nmusic and for realism, even for sordid realism, all sprang from the same\nroots, from the thirst for an infinite harmony, the belief that\neverything was somehow involved in that harmony, and the conviction that\nall systems, as yet made or makeable, were entirely inadequate.\n\nAnd to the list we may add, I think, the modern passion for history and\nfor science. We study history not merely to be warned by failures or\ninspired by shining examples: at bottom we have a belief that somehow\nthe lives and struggles of those men in the distant past are still quite\nas important as our own. We follow the discoveries of science not only\nfor their commercial value or because we share the excitement of the\nchase, but because, deeper than all, we suspect that the universe is a\nglorious thing.\n\nAnd there is another matter, perhaps the most important of all, on which\nI would dwell as I draw to a close, where Meredith leads directly to the\ndominant thought of the present day. I mean his feeling that, if the\nuniverse is to be proved acceptable to man's conscience, it will be\nthrough the effort of man himself struggling towards his own ideal. It\nis as though the world itself had to be redeemed by man. This hope is\nthe real hope of our time. So far as the modern world believes the\ndoctrine of the Incarnation, it is in this sense that it believes.\n\nAnd this belief we find everywhere in all hopeful writers, great or\nsmall. It gives dignity to the latest writings of H.G. Wells, this faith\nin a spirit moving in man greater than man himself, worthy to fight and\nfit to overcome all that is wrong in the universe. Bernard Shaw's creed\nis just the same, sometimes thinly disguised under respect for 'the\nLife-Force', sometimes coming boldly forward in audacious, profound\nassertions that God needs Man to accomplish His own will and is helpless\nwithout him. 'There is something I want to do,' Shaw imagines his God as\nsaying, 'and I don't know what it is; I must make a brain, the human\nbrain, to find it out.' Rodin modelled a mighty hand, the Hand of God,\nholding within it Man and Woman. Shaw, it is reported, asked the\nsculptor: 'I suppose you meant your own hand after all?' 'Yes,' said\nRodin, 'as the tool.'\n\nThe same idea is at the base of what is most stimulating in Bergson,\nthe idea of what he calls Creative Evolution, an undefined splendour not\nyet fully existing, but, as it were, crying out to be born, and only to\nbe born through the struggle of man's spirit with matter. This is one\nfunction of matter, perhaps the supreme function, to be the material\nthrough which alone man's vague ideal can become definite and actual,\njust as an artist can only get close to his own conception through the\neffort to embody it in visible form or audible sound.\n\nFrom this point of view, the world is conceived as anything but\nready-made, rather it is in the process of making, and we ourselves are\namong the makers. Or, to take a metaphor that perhaps appeals more to\nthe modern world, it is a fight, and an unfinished fight. To quote\nWilliam James, 'It _feels_ like a real fight--as if there were something\nreally wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and\nfaithfulnesses, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our own\nhearts from atheisms and fears.' He goes on to confess that he himself\ndoes not know, and certainly cannot prove scientifically, that the\nredemption will surely be accomplished. Such proof, he admits, 'may not\nbe clear before the day of judgement (or some stage of being which that\nexpression may serve to symbolize)'. 'But the faithful fighters of this\nhour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may turn to\nthe faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with\nwhich Henry IV greeted the tardy Crillon after a great battle had been\ngained:\n\n      \"Hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques,\n    and you were not there!\"'[75]\n\nThus, if the idea of the splendour and perfection of the universe has\nsunk into the background, if the sense of worship and the feeling of\necstasy have been dimmed (and I think they have), at least the reverence\nfor heroism and for tenderness has not been impaired, and there after\nall lies the root of human majesty. There is deep pathos in the change,\nbut maybe, paradoxical as it sounds, deep hope as well. The world may\ngrow the stronger for having to live now by what Carlyle called\n'desperate hope' as distinct from 'hoping hope'. The triumphant harmony\nthat seemed attained a century ago by certain poets and thinkers may\nhave been, after all, too cheap and easy, if not for their own large\nspirits, at least for us, their lesser readers. Mystics have spoken of\n'The Dark Night of the Soul' as the stage inevitable before the crowning\nglory, and to-day some of those who call to us out of great darkness are\namong our greatest leaders.\n\nOf such certainly is a living writer, now beginning to be acclaimed as\nhe deserves, the writer Conrad. In some ways this noble novelist might\nstand as the special representative of modern feeling. A Pole by birth\nand more than half an Englishman by sympathy, his view of life is as\nwide as it is profound and grave. It has all the sternness of temper of\nwhich I have spoken, the determination to look facts in the face\nwhatever the consequences. Conrad would echo Sartor's noble cry for\nTruth--'Truth! though the Heavens crush me for following her;--no\nFalsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of\nApostasy!' This determination is fierce enough to be taken for cynicism,\nbut Conrad is far too tender ever to be a cynic. So also does his\npitifulness prevent him from ever falling into the errors of a\nNietzsche, but none the less he has all Nietzsche's ardour for heroism.\nThat to him is the core of life:--'to face it.' 'Keep on facing it,' so\nthe old skipper tells the young mate in _Typhoon_. And facing the\nmysterious universe, peering into the Darkness with steady alert eyes,\nConrad has at once an endless wistfulness and, or so it seems to me, a\nsecret unquenchable hope. Doubt certainly he has in plenty. The sea of\nwhich he is always dreaming is terrible and cruel in his eyes as well as\naugust and ennobling.\n\nBut he is sure of one thing: it is through the struggle with it and such\nas it that man alone can become Man. It is through facing the horrors of\na dead calm, with a sick crew on board and no medicine, that the young\nmaster of the sailing-vessel in the Pacific crosses successfully the\nShadow Line that divides youth from manhood. And it is through facing\nthe unleashed fury of the tornado that the old captain of the\n'full-powered steam-ship' in _Typhoon_ shows what he has in him,\ncompassion and kindness as well as shrewd knowledge of men, expert\nseamanship, and indomitable heroism. The whole thing is driven home with\na power, an incisiveness, and a delicate irradiating humour which I\nshould despair of conveying by mere criticism. The book must be read for\nitself, and read again and again. It is told, in one way, simply as a\nsailor's yarn, but it awakes in us the feeling that the struggle is a\nsymbol of man's life.\n\nThreatened by the advancing cyclone, Captain MacWhirr, 'the stupid man'\nof no imagination, decides, almost instinctively, that the only thing to\nbe done is to keep up steam and face the wind. By sheer force of\npersonality he holds the crew together and carries the ship through. And\nin the desperate struggle, every nerve on the strain for hours that seem\nunending, MacWhirr finds time to care for the miserable pack of\nterrified coolies on board, who have given way to panic and are fighting\nmadly in the hold. MacWhirr stops this, brings about order and a chance\nfor the Chinese, when the rest of his men, fine men as most of them\nare, can think of nothing but the safety of the ship. 'Had to do what's\nfair for all,' he mumbles stolidly to his clever grumbling mate, Jukes,\nduring a dead lull in the storm--'they are only Chinamen. Give them the\nsame chance with ourselves' ... 'Couldn't let that go on in my ship, if\nI knew she hadn't five minutes to live. Couldn't bear it, Mr. Jukes.' He\ndoes not know whether the ship will be lost or not--(and we do not know\nwhether mankind will be lost or not)--what he does know is how he must\nact. But also he never loses hope. 'She may come out of it yet': that is\nthe kind of answer the taciturn man gives when driven to speech. The\nchief mate, locked in his captain's arms to brace himself against the\nhurricane, scarcely able to make the other hear in the terrific gale\nthough he shouts close to his head, gets back such answers, and with\nthem the power to endure. He tells him the boats are gone: the captain\nyells back sensibly, 'Can't be helped.'\n\nAnd so noble is the power with which Conrad uses our tongue, the tongue\nhe has made his own by adoption and genius, that I must let him speak\nfor himself, and can find no better close for my own lame words. Jukes\nhas been shouting to his captain again:\n\n     'And again he heard that voice, forced and ringing feebly, but\n     with a penetrating effect of quietness in the enormous discord of\n     noises, as if sent out from some remote spot of peace beyond the\n     black wastes of the gale; again he heard a man's voice--the frail\n     and indomitable sound that can be made to carry an infinity of\n     thought, resolution, and purpose, that shall be pronouncing\n     confident words on the last day, when heavens fall and justice is\n     done--again he heard it, and it was crying to him, as if from\n     very, very far--\"All right.\"'\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 72: _Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre_, Bk. 8, c. 5.]\n\n[Footnote 73: By M.P. Follett (Longmans).]\n\n[Footnote 74: Professor A.C. Bradley, to whom also is due the passage\nabout Schubert and the parallel drawn between Beethoven, Hegel, and\nWordsworth.]\n\n[Footnote 75: From _The Will to Believe_, quoted in Bridges' _The Spirit\nof Man_, No. 425.]","title":"Recent Developments in European Thought","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":94409}