{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_51793/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_51793","id":"gutenberg_51793","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51793","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Other","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Free thought -- History"],"text":"A SHORT HISTORY\n OF\n FREETHOUGHT\n\n ANCIENT AND MODERN\n\n\n\n BY\n JOHN M. ROBERTSON\n\n\n\n THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND EXPANDED\n\n IN TWO VOLUMES\n\n Vol. I\n\n (ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED)\n\n London:\n WATTS & CO.,\n JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.\n\n 1915\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n TO\n SYDNEY ANSELL GIMSON\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nVOLUME I\n\n PAGE\n\n Preface xi\n\n Chap. I--Introductory\n\n \u00a7 1. Origin and Meaning of the word Freethought 1\n \u00a7 2. Previous histories 10\n \u00a7 3. The Psychology of Freethinking 15\n\n Chap. II--Primitive Freethinking 22\n\n Chap. III--Progress under Ancient Religions\n\n \u00a7 1. Early Association and Competition of Cults 44\n \u00a7 2. The Process in India 48\n \u00a7 3. Mesopotamia 61\n \u00a7 4. Ancient Persia 65\n \u00a7 5. Egypt 69\n \u00a7 6. Phoenicia 78\n \u00a7 7. Ancient China 82\n \u00a7 8. Mexico and Peru 88\n \u00a7 9. The Common Forces of Degeneration 91\n\n Chap. IV--Relative Freethought in Israel\n\n \u00a7 1. The Early Hebrews 97\n \u00a7 2. The manipulated prophetic literature 104\n \u00a7 3. The Post-Exilic Literature 109\n\n Chap. V--Freethought in Greece 120\n\n \u00a7 1. Beginnings of Ionic Culture 123\n \u00a7 2. Homer, Stesichoros, Pindar, and \u00c6schylus 126\n \u00a7 3. The Culture-Conditions 134\n \u00a7 4. From Thales to the Eleatic School 136\n \u00a7 5. Pythagoras and Magna Graecia 148\n \u00a7 6. Anaxagoras, Perikles, and Aspasia 152\n \u00a7 7. From Demokritos to Euripides 157\n \u00a7 8. Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle 168\n \u00a7 9. Post-Alexandrian Greece: Ephoros, Pyrrho,\n Zeno, Epicurus, Theodorus, Diagoras, Stilpo,\n Bion, Strato, Ev\u00eameros, Carneades, Clitomachos;\n The Sciences; Advance and Decline of Astronomy;\n Lucian, Sextus Empiricus, Polybius, Strabo;\n Summary 180\n\n Chap. VI--Freethought in ancient Rome\n\n \u00a7 1. Culture Beginnings, to Ennius and the Greeks 194\n \u00a7 2. Lucretius, Cicero, C\u00e6sar 201\n \u00a7 3. Decline under the Empire 207\n \u00a7 4. The higher Pagan ethics 215\n\n Chap. VII--Ancient Christianity and its Opponents\n\n \u00a7 1. Freethought in the Gospels: contradictory\n forces 218\n \u00a7 2. The Epistles: their anti-rationalism 224\n \u00a7 3. Anti-pagan rationalism. The Gnostics 224\n \u00a7 4. Rationalistic heresy. Arius. Pelagius.\n Jovinian. Aerius. Vigilantius. The religious\n wars 229\n \u00a7 5. Anti-Christian thought: its decline. Celsus.\n Last lights of critical thought. Macrobius.\n Theodore. Photinus. The expulsion of science.\n The appropriation of pagan endowments 235\n \u00a7 6. The intellectual and moral decadence. Boethius 243\n\n Chap. VIII--Freethought under Islam\n\n \u00a7 1. Mohammed and his contemporaries.\n Early \"Zendekism\" 248\n \u00a7 2. The Influence of the Koran 252\n \u00a7 3. Saracen freethought in the East. The\n Motazilites. The Spread of Culture.\n Intellectual Collapse 253\n \u00a7 4. Al-Ma'arri and Omar Khayy\u00e1m. Suf\u00eeism 261\n \u00a7 5. Arab Philosophy and Moorish freethought.\n Avempace. Abubacer. Averro\u00ebs. Ibn Khaldun 266\n \u00a7 6. Rationalism in later Islam. Suf\u00eeism. B\u00e2bism in\n contemporary Persia. Freethinking in Mohammedan\n India and Africa 272\n\n Chap. IX--Christendom in the Middle Ages 277\n\n \u00a7 1. Heresy in Byzantium. Iconoclasm. Leo. Photius.\n Michael. The early Paulicians 277\n \u00a7 2. Critical Heresy in the West. Vergilius.\n Claudius. Agobard. John Scotus. The case of\n Gottschalk. Berengar. Roscelin. Nominalism and\n Realism. Heresy in Florence and in France 282\n \u00a7 3. Popular Anti-Clerical Heresy. The Paulicians\n (Cathari) in Western Europe: their anticipation\n of Protestantism. Abuses of the Church and\n papacy. Vogue of anti-clerical heresy. Peter\n de Brueys. Eudo. Paterini. Waldenses 291\n \u00a7 4. Heresy in Southern France. The crusade against\n Albigensian heresy. Arrest of Proven\u00e7al\n civilization: Rise and character of the\n Inquisition 299\n \u00a7 5. Freethought in the Schools. The problem set to\n Anselm. Roscelin. Nominalism and Realism.\n Testimony of Giraldus Cambrensis: Simon of\n Tournay. William of Conches. Abailard. John of\n Salisbury 307\n \u00a7 6. Saracen and Jewish Influences. Maimonides. Ibn\n Ezra. Averro\u00efsts. Amalrich. David of Dinant.\n Thomas Aquinas. Unbelief at Paris University.\n Suppressive action of the Church. Judicial\n torture 315\n \u00a7 7. Freethought in Italy. Anti-clericalism in\n Florence. Frederick II. Michael Scotus. Dante's\n views. Pietro of Abano. Brunetto Latini. Cecco\n Stabili. Boccaccio. Petrarch. Averro\u00efsm 322\n \u00a7 8. Sects and Orders. Italian developments. The\n Brethren of the Free Spirit. Beghards, etc.\n Franciscans. Humiliati. Abbot Joachim.\n Segarelli and Dolcino 331\n \u00a7 9. Thought in Spain. Arab influences. Heresy under\n Alfonso X. The first Inquisition. Arnaldo of\n Villanueva. Enrique IV. Pedro do Osma. The New\n Inquisition. The causes of Spanish evolution 337\n \u00a7 10. Thought in England. Roger Bacon. Chaucer.\n Items in Piers Ploughman. Lollardry. Wiclif 342\n \u00a7 11. Thought in France. Fran\u00e7ois de Rues. Jean de\n Meung. Reynard the Fox. Paris university. The\n sects. The Templars. William of Occam. Marsiglio.\n Pierre Aureol. Nominalism and Realism. \"Double\n truth.\" Unbelief in the Paris schools 351\n \u00a7 12. Thought in the Teutonic Countries. The\n Minnesingers. Walter der Vogelweide. Master\n Eckhart. Sects. The Imitatio Christi 361\n\n Chap. X--Freethought in the Renaissance\n\n \u00a7 1. The Italian Evolution. Saracen Sources.\n Anti-clericalism. Discredit of the Church.\n Lorenzo Valla. Masuccio. Pulci. Executions\n for blasphemy. Averro\u00efsm. Nifo. Unbelief at\n Rome. Leonardo da Vinci. Platonism. Pico della\n Mirandola. Machiavelli. Guicciardini. Belief\n in witchcraft. Pomponazzi. Pomponio Leto. The\n survival of Averro\u00efsm. Jewish freethought 365\n \u00a7 2. The French Evolution. Desperiers. Rabelais.\n Dolet. The Vaudois massacres. Unbelieving\n Churchmen. Marguerite of Navarre. Ronsard.\n Bodin. Vall\u00e9e. Estienne. Pleas for tolerance.\n Revival of Stoicism 379\n \u00a7 3. The English Evolution. Reginald Pecock. Duke\n Humphrey. Unbelief in immortality 393\n \u00a7 4. The Remaining European Countries. Nicolaus of\n Cusa. Hermann van Ryswyck. Astrology and\n science. Summary 398\n\n Chap. XI--The Reformation Politically Considered\n\n \u00a7 1. The German Conditions. The New Learning.\n Economic Causation 403\n \u00a7 2. The Problem in Italy, Spain, and the\n Netherlands. Savonarola. Catholic reaction.\n The New Inquisition. Heresy in Italy. Its\n suppression. The Index Expurgatorius. Italian\n and northern \"character\" 407\n \u00a7 3. The Hussite Failure in Bohemia. Early\n anti-clericalism. Militz and his school. Huss\n and Jerome. The Taborite wars. Helchitsky 415\n \u00a7 4. Anti-Papalism in Hungary. Early\n anti-clericalism. Rapid success of the\n Reformation. Its decline. New heresy.\n Socinianism. Biandrata. Davides. Recovery\n of the Church 419\n \u00a7 5. Protestantism in Poland. Early anti-clericalism.\n Inroad of Protestantism. Growth of Unitarianism.\n Goniondzki. Pauli. Catholic reaction 422\n \u00a7 6. The Struggle in France. Attitude of King\n Francis. Economic issues. Pre-Lutheran\n Protestantism. Persecution. Berquin. Protestant\n violences. Fortunes of the cause in France 427\n \u00a7 7. The Political Process in Britain. England not\n specially anti-papal. The causation. Henry's\n divorce. Spoliation 431\n\n Chap. XII--The Reformation and Freethought\n\n \u00a7 1. Germany and Switzerland. Mutianus. Crotus.\n Bebel. Rise of Unitarianism. Luther and\n Melanchthon. Their anti-democratic politics.\n Their dogmatism. Zwingli. Calvin and his\n victims. Gruet. The Libertini. Servetus.\n Gripaldi. Calvin's polity. Ochino. Anthoine.\n Moral failure of Protestantism 434\n \u00a7 2. England. Henry and Wolsey. Advanced heresy.\n Persecution. Sir Thomas More 458\n \u00a7 3. The Netherlands. Calvinism and Arminianism.\n Reaction towards Catholicism. Barneveldt.\n Grotius 461\n \u00a7 4. Conclusion. The intellectual failure. Indirect\n gains to freedom 464\n\n Chap. XIII.--The Rise of Modern Freethought\n\n \u00a7 1. The Italian Influence. Deism. Unitarianism.\n Latitudinarianism. Aconzio. Nizolio. Pereira 466\n \u00a7 2. Spain. Huarte 470\n \u00a7 3. France. Treatises against atheism: De Mornay.\n New skepticism: Sanchez. Montaigne. Charron.\n The Satyre-Menipp\u00e9e. Garasse on the Beaux\n Esprits. Mersenne's attack 473\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThis, the third edition, represents a considerable expansion of the\nsecond (1906), which in its turn was a considerable expansion of the\nfirst (1899). The book now somewhat approximates, in point of fullness,\nto the modest ideal aimed at. Anything much fuller would cease to be a\n\"Short History.\"\n\nThe process of revision, carried on since the last issue, has,\nI hope, meant some further advance towards correctness, and some\nimprovement in arrangement--a particularly difficult matter in such\na book. As before, the many critical excursus have been so printed\nthat they may be recognized and skipped by those readers who care\nto follow only the narrative. The chapter on the nineteenth century,\nthough much expanded, like those on the eighteenth, remains, I fear,\nopen to objection on the score of scantiness. I can only plead that\nthe ample and excellent work of Mr. A. W. Benn has now substantially\nmet the need for a fuller survey of that period.\n\nIt is fitting that I should acknowledge the generous critical\nreception given by most reviewers to the previous editions of a\nbook which, breaking as it did new ground, lacked the gain from\nprevious example that accrues to most historical writing. My many\ndebts to historians of culture are, I trust, indicated in the notes;\nbut I have to repeat my former acknowledgments as to the Biographical\nDictionary of Freethinkers of my dead friend, J. M. Wheeler, inasmuch\nas the aid I have had from his manifold research does not thus appear\non the surface.\n\nIt remains to add my thanks to a number of friendly correspondents\nwho have assisted me by pointing out shortcomings and errors. Further\nassistance of the same kind will be gratefully welcomed. It is still\nmy hope that the book may help some more leisured student in the\nconstruction of a more massive record of the development of rational\nthought on the side of human life with which it deals.\n\nAn apology is perhaps due to the purchasers of the second edition,\nwhich is now superseded by a fuller record. I can but plead that I\nhave been unable otherwise to serve their need; and express a hope\nthat the low price of the present edition will be a compensation.\n\n\n J. M. R.\n\n September, 1914.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA SHORT HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nINTRODUCTORY\n\n\n\u00a7 1. ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE WORD\n\nThe words \"freethinking\" and \"freethinker\" first appear in English\nliterature about the end of the seventeenth century, and seem to\nhave originated there and then, as we do not find them earlier in\nFrench or in Italian, [1] the only other modern literatures wherein\nthe phenomena for which the words stand had previously arisen.\n\n\nThe title of \"atheist\" had been from time immemorial applied to every\nshade of serious heresy by the orthodox, as when the early Christians\nwere so described by the image-adoring polytheists around them; and\nin Latin Christendom the term infidelis, translating the apistos\nof the New Testament, which primarily applied to Jews and pagans,\n[2] was easily extensible, as in the writings of Augustine, to all\nwho challenged or doubted articles of ordinary Christian belief,\nall alike being regarded as consigned to perdition. [3] It is by\nthis line of descent that the term \"infidelity,\" applied to doubt\non such doctrines as that of the future state, comes up in England\nin the fifteenth century. [4] It implied no systematic or critical\nthinking. The label of \"deist,\" presumably self-applied by the bearers,\nbegins to come into use in French about the middle of the sixteenth\ncentury; [5] and that of \"naturalist,\" also presumably chosen by\nthose who bore it, came into currency about the same time. Lechler\ntraces the latter term in the Latin form as far back as the MS. of\nthe Heptaplomeres of Bodin, dated 1588; but it was common before that\ndate, as De Mornay in the preface to his De la V\u00e9rit\u00e9 de la religion\nchr\u00e9tienne (1581) declaims \"against the false naturalists (that is\nto say, professors of the knowledge of nature and natural things)\";\nand Montaigne in one of his later essays (1588) has the phrase \"nous\nautres naturalistes.\" [6] Apart from these terms, those commonly\nused in French in the seventeenth century were bel esprit (sometimes,\nthough not necessarily, connoting unbelief), esprit fort and libertin,\nthe latter being used in the sense of a religious doubter by Corneille,\nMoli\u00e8re, and Bayle. [7]\n\nIt seems to have first come into use as one of the hostile names\nfor the \"Brethren of the Free Spirit,\" a pantheistic and generally\nheretical sect which became prominent in the thirteenth century,\nand flourished widely, despite destructive persecution, till the\nfifteenth. Their doctrine being antinomian, and their practice\noften extravagant, they were accused by Churchmen of licentiousness,\nso that in their case the name Libertini had its full latitude of\napplication. In the sixteenth century the name of Libertines is found\nborne, voluntarily or otherwise, by a similar sect, probably springing\nfrom some remnant of the first, but calling themselves Spirituales,\nwho came into notice in Flanders, were favoured in France by Marguerite\nof Navarre, sister of Francis I, and became to some extent associated\nwith sections of the Reformed Church. They were attacked by Calvin\nin the treatise Contre la sects fanatique et furieuse des Libertins\n(1544 and 1545). [8] The name of Libertini was not in the sixteenth\ncentury applied by any Genevese writer to any political party; [9]\nbut by later historians it was in time either fastened on or adopted\nby the main body of Calvin's opponents in Geneva, who probably included\nsome members of the sect or movement in question. They were accused by\nhim of general depravity, a judgment not at all to be acquiesced in,\nin view of the controversial habits of the age; though they probably\nincluded antinomian Christians and libertines in the modern sense,\nas well as orthodox lovers of freedom and orderly non-Christians. As\nthe first Brethren of the Free Spirit, so-called, seem to have\nappeared in Italy (where they are supposed to have derived, like\nthe Waldenses, from the immigrant Paulicians of the Eastern Church),\nthe name Libertini presumably originated there. But in Renaissance\nItaly an unbeliever seems usually to have been called simply ateo,\nor infedele, or pagano. \"The standing phrase was non aver fede.\" [10]\n\nIn England, before and at the Reformation, both \"infidel\" and\n\"faithless\" usually had the theological force of \"non-Christian.\" Thus\nTyndale says of the Turks that though they \"knowledge one God,\" yet\nthey \"have erred and been faithless these eight hundred years\"; adding\nthe same of the Jews. [11] Throughout Elizabeth's reign, \"infidel\"\nseems thus to have commonly signified only a \"heathen\" or Jew or\nMohammedan. Bishop Jewel, for instance, writes that the Anglo-Saxon\ninvaders of Britain \"then were infidels\"; [12] and the word appears to\nbe normally used in that sense, or with a playful force derived from\nthat, by the divines, poets, and dramatists, including Shakespeare,\nas by Milton in his verse. [13] Ben Jonson has the phrase:\n\n\n I did not expect\n To meet an infidel, much less an atheist,\n Here in Love's list. [14]\n\n\nOne or two earlier writers, [15] indeed, use \"infidel\" in the modern\nsense; and it was at times so used by early Elizabethans. [16]\nBut Foxe brackets together \"Jews, Turks, or infidels\"; [17] and\nHooper, writing in 1547, speaks, like Jewel, of the heathen as\n\"the infidels.\" [18] Hooker (1553-1600), in his Fifth Sermon, \u00a7 9,\n[19] uses the word somewhat indefinitely, but in his margin makes\n\"Pagans and Infidels\" equivalent to \"Pagans and Turks.\" So also,\nin the Ecclesiastical Polity, [20] \"infidels\" means men of another\nreligion. On the title-page of Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft\n(1574), on the other hand, we have \"the infidelitie of atheists\";\nbut so late as 1600 we find \"J. H.\" [John Healy], the translator of\nAugustine's City of God, rendering infideles and homines infideles by\n\"unbelievers.\" [21] \"Infidelity,\" in the modern sense, occurs in Sir\nT. Browne. [22]\n\n\nIn England, as in the rest of Europe, however, the phenomenon of\nfreethought had existed, in specific form, long before it could express\nitself in propagandist writings, or find any generic name save those of\natheism and infidelity; and the process of naming was as fortuitous\nas it generally is in matters of intellectual evolution. Phrases\napproximating to \"free thought\" occur soon after the Restoration. Thus\nGlanvill repeatedly writes sympathetically of \"free philosophers\"\n[23] and \"free philosophy.\" [24] In 1667 we find Sprat, the historian\nof the Royal Society, describing the activity of that body as having\narisen or taken its special direction through the conviction that in\nscience, as in warfare, better results had been obtained by a \"free\nway\" than by methods not so describable. [25] As Sprat is careful to\ninsist, the members of the Royal Society, though looked at askance\nby most of the clergy [26] and other pietists, were not as such to be\nclassed as unbelievers, the leading members being strictly orthodox;\nbut a certain number seem to have shown scant concern for religion;\n[27] and while it was one of the Society's first rules not to debate\nany theological question whatever, [28] the intellectual atmosphere of\nthe time was such that some among those who followed the \"free way\"\nin matters of natural science would be extremely likely to apply it\nto more familiar problems. [29] At the same period we find Spinoza\ndevoting his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) to the advocacy of\nlibertas philosophandi; and such a work was bound to have a general\nEuropean influence. It was probably, then, a result of such express\nassertion of the need and value of freedom in the mental life that\nthe name \"freethinker\" came into English use in the last quarter of\nthe century.\n\n\n Before \"deism\" came into English vogue, the names for unbelief,\n even deistic, were simply \"infidelity\" and \"atheism\"--e.g.,\n Bishop Fotherby's Atheomastix (1622), Baxter's Unreasonableness\n of Infidelity (1655) and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1667),\n passim. Bishop Stillingfleet's Letter to a Deist (1677) appears to\n be the first published attack on deism by name. His Origines Sacr\u00e6\n (1662) deals chiefly with deistic views, but calls unbelievers\n in general \"atheists.\" Cudworth, in his True Intellectual System\n of the Universe (written 1671, published 1678), does not speak\n of deism, attacking only atheism, and was himself suspected of\n Socinianism. W. Sherlock, in his Practical Discourse of Religious\n Assemblies (2nd ed., 1682), attacks \"atheists and infidels,\" but\n says nothing of \"deists.\" That term, first coined, as we have\n seen, in French, seems first to have found common currency in\n France--e.g., on the title-pages of the apologetic works of Marin\n Mersenne, 1623 and 1624. The term \"atheist\" was often applied at\n random at this period; but atheism did exist.\n\n\nWhen the orthodox Boyle pushed criticism in physical science under\nsuch a title as The Sceptical Chemist, the principle could not well be\nwithheld from application to religion; and it lay in the nature of the\ncase that the name \"freethinker,\" like that of \"skeptic,\" should come\nto attach itself specially to those who doubted where doubt was most\nresented and most resisted. At length the former term became specific.\n\nIn the meantime the word \"rationalist,\" which in English has latterly\ntended to become the prevailing name for freethinkers, had made its\nappearance, without securing much currency. In a London news-letter\ndated October 14, 1646, it is stated, concerning the Presbyterians\nand Independents, that \"there is a new sect sprung up among them,\nand these are the rationalists; and what their reason dictates to\nthem in Church or State stands for good until they be convinced\nwith better.\" [30] On the Continent, the equivalent Latin term\n(rationalista) had been applied about the beginning of the century to\nthe Aristotelian humanists of the Helmstadt school by their opponents,\n[31] apparently in the same sense as that in which Bacon used the\nterm rationales in his Redargutio Philosophiarum--\"Rationales autem,\naranearum more, telas ex se conficiunt.\" Under this title he contrasts\n(as spiders spinning webs out of themselves) the mere Aristotelean\nspeculators, who framed \u00e0 priori schemes of Nature, with empiricists,\nwho, \"like ants, collect something and use it,\" preferring to both the\n\"bees\" who should follow the ideal method prescribed by himself. [32]\nThere is here no allusion to heterodox opinion on religion. [Bishop\nHurst, who (perhaps following the Apophthegms) puts a translation\nof Bacon's words, with \"rationalists\" for rationales, as one of the\nmottoes of his History of Rationalism, is thus misleading his readers\nas to Bacon's meaning.] In 1661 John Amos Comenius, in his Theologia\nNaturalis, applies the name rationalista to the Socinians and deists;\nwithout, however, leading to its general use in that sense. Later\nwe shall meet with the term in English discussions between 1680 and\n1715, applied usually to rationalizing Christians; but as a name\nfor opponents of orthodox religion it was for the time superseded,\nin English, by \"freethinker.\"\n\nIn the course of the eighteenth century the term was adopted in other\nlanguages. The first French translation (1714) of Collins's Discourse\nof Freethinking is entitled Discours sur la libert\u00e9 de penser; and the\nterm \"freethinkers\" is translated on the title-page by esprit fort,\nand in the text by a periphrasis of libert\u00e9 de penser. Later in the\ncentury, however, we find Voltaire in his correspondence frequently\nusing the substantive franc-pensant, a translation of the English term\nwhich subsequently gave way to libre penseur. The modern German term\nFreigeist, found as early as 1702 in the allusion to \"Alten Qu\u00e4cker\nund neuen Frey-Geister\" on the title-page of the folio Anabaptisticum\net Enthusiasticum Pantheon, probably derives from the old \"Brethren\nof the Free Spirit\"; while Sch\u00f6ngeist arose as a translation of bel\nesprit. In the middle of the eighteenth century Freidenker came into\nGerman use as a translation of the English term.\n\n\n In a general sense \"free thoughts\" was a natural expression,\n and we have it in Ben Jonson: \"Being free master of mine own free\n thoughts.\" [33] But not till about the year 1700 did the phrase\n begin to have a special application to religious matters. The\n first certain instance thus far noted of the use of the term\n \"freethinker\" is in a letter of Molyneux to Locke, dated April 6,\n 1697, [34] where Toland is spoken of as a \"candid freethinker.\" In\n an earlier letter, dated December 24, 1695, Molyneux speaks of\n a certain book on religion as somewhat lacking in \"freedom of\n thought\"; [35] and in Burnet's Letters [36] occurs still earlier\n the expression \"men ... of freer thoughts.\" In the New English\n Dictionary a citation is given from the title-page of S. Smith's\n brochure, The Religious Impostor ... dedicated to Doctor S-l-m-n\n and the rest of the new Religious Fraternity of Freethinkers,\n near Leather-Sellers' Hall. Printed ... in the first year of\n Grace and Freethinking, conjecturally dated 1692. It is thought to\n refer to the sect of \"Freeseekers\" mentioned in Luttrell's Brief\n Historical Relation (iii, 56) under date 1693. In that case it is\n not unbelievers that are in question. So in Shaftesbury's Inquiry\n Concerning Virtue (first ed. 1699) the expression \"freethought\"\n has a general and not a particular sense; [37] and in Baker's\n Reflections upon Learning, also published in 1699, in the remark:\n \"After the way of freethinking had been lai'd open by my Lord\n Bacon, it was soon after greedily followed\"; [38] the reference\n is, of course, to scientific and not to religious thought.\n\n But in Shaftesbury's Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour\n (1709) the phrases \"free-writers\" and \"a freethought\" [39]\n have reference to \"advanced\" opinions, though in his letters to\n Ainsworth (May 10, 1707) he had written, \"I am glad to find your\n love of reason and freethought. Your piety and virtue I know you\n will always keep.\" [40] Compare the Miscellaneous Reflections\n (v, 3) in the Characteristics [41] (1711), where the tendency to\n force the sense from the general to the special is incidentally\n illustrated. Shaftesbury, however, includes the term \"free liver\"\n among the \"naturally honest appellations\" that have become\n opprobrious.\n\n In Swift's Sentiments of a Church of England Man (1708) the\n specialized word is found definitely and abusively connoting\n religious unbelief: \"The atheists, libertines, despisers\n of religion--that is to say, all those who usually pass under\n the name of freethinkers\"; Steele and Addison so use it in the\n Tatler in 1709; [42] and Leslie so uses the term in his Truth of\n Christianity Demonstrated (1711). The anonymous essay, R\u00e9flexions\n sur les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant, by Deslandes\n (Amsterdam, 1712), is translated in English (1713) as Reflections\n on the Death of Free-thinkers, and the translator uses the term\n in his prefatory Letter to the Author, beside putting it in the\n text (pp. 50, 85, 97, 102, 106, etc.), where the original had\n esprit fort.\n\n\nIt was not till 1713, however, that Anthony Collins's Discourse\nof Freethinking, occasioned by the Rise and Growth of a Sect called\nFreethinkers, gave the word a universal notoriety, and brought it into\nestablished currency in controversy, with the normal significance of\n\"deist,\" Collins having entirely repudiated atheism. Even after this\ndate, and indeed in full conformity with the definition in Collins's\nopening sentence, Ambrose Philips took The Freethinker as the title\nof a weekly journal (begun in 1718) on the lines of the Spectator,\nwith no heterodox leaning, [43] the contributors including Boulter,\nafterwards Archbishop of Dublin, and the son of Bishop Burnet. But\ndespite this attempt to keep the word \"freethinking\" as a name for\nsimple freedom from prejudice in secular affairs, the tendency to\nspecialize it as aforesaid was irresistible. As names go, it was on\nthe whole a good one; and the bitterness with which it was generally\nhandled on the orthodox side showed that its implicit claim was felt\nto be disturbing, though some antagonists of course claimed from the\nfirst that they were as \"free\" under the law of right reason as any\nskeptic. [44] At this time of day the word may be allowed prescriptive\nstanding, as having no more drawbacks than most other names for schools\nof thought or attitudes of mind, and as having been admitted into most\nEuropean languages. The question-begging element is not greater in this\nthan in many other terms of similar intention, such as \"rationalism\";\nand it incurs no such charge of absurdity as lies against the invidious\nreligious term, \"infidelity.\" The term \"infidel\" invites \"fidel.\"\n\nA plausible objection may, indeed, arise on the score that such a term\nas \"freethought\" should not be set up by thinkers who almost invariably\nreject the term \"freewill\"--the rationalistic succession having for two\nhundred and fifty years been carried on mainly by determinists. But\nthe issues raised by the two terms are on wholly different planes;\nand while in both cases the imperfection of the instrument of language\nis apparent, it is not in the present case a cause of psychological\nconfusion, as it is in the discussion of the nature of will. The\nfreewill fallacy consists in applying universally to the process\nof judgment and preference (which is a process of natural causation\nlike another) a conception relevant only to human or animal action,\nas interfered with or unaffected by extraneous compulsion. To the\nprocesses of nature, organic or inorganic, the concepts \"free\" and\n\"bond\" are equally irrelevant: a tiger is no more \"free\" to crave\nfor grass and recoil from flesh than is water to flow uphill; while,\non the other hand, such \"appetites\" are not rationally to be described\nas forms of bondage. Only as a mode distinguishable from its contrary\ncan \"freedom\" be predicated of any procedure, and it is so predicated\nof actions; whereas the whole category of volitions is alleged and\ndenied by the verbal disputants to be \"free.\" Some attempt to save the\ncase by distinguishing between free and alleged \"unfree\" volitions;\nbut the latter are found to be simply cases of choices dictated\nby intense need, as in the case of deadly thirst. The difference,\ntherefore, is only one of degree of impulse, not in the fact of choice.\n\nThe term \"freewill,\" therefore, is irrational, as being wholly\nirrelevant to the conception of volition. But \"freethought,\" on the\nother hand, points to an actual difference in degree of employment of\nthe faculty of criticism. The proposition is that some men think more\n\"freely\" than others in that they are (a) not terrorized by any veto\non criticism, and (b) not hampered, or less hampered, by ignorant\npre-suppositions. In both cases there is a real discrimination. There\nis no allegation that, absolutely speaking, \"thought is free\" in\nthe sense of the orthodox formula; on the contrary, it is asserted\nthat the rationalist's critical course is specifically determined\nby his intellectual structure and his preparation, and that it is\nsometimes different structure, but more often different preparation,\nthat determines the anti-critical or counter-critical attitude of the\nbeliever. Change in the preparation, it is contended, will put the\nlatter in fuller use of his potential resources; his inculcated fear\nof doubt and docility of assent being simply acquiescences in vetoes\non his attention to certain matters for reflection--that is to say,\nin arbitrary limitations of his action. It is further implied that the\ninstructed man, other things being equal, is \"freer\" to think than\nthe uninstructed, as being less obstructed; but for the purpose of\nour history it is sufficient to posit the discriminations above noted.\n\nThe essential thing to be realized is the fact that from its earliest\nstages humanity has suffered from conventional or traditionary\nhindrances to the use of judgment. This holds good even as to the early\nplay of the simple inventive faculty, all innovations in implements\nbeing met by the inertia of habit; and when men reached the stages\nof ritual practice, social construction, and religious doctrine,\nthe forces of repression became powerful in proportion to the\nseriousness of the problem. It is only in modern times that freedom\nin these relations has come to be generally regarded as permissible;\nand it has always been over questions of religion that the strife\nhas been keenest.\n\nFor practical purposes, then, freethought may be defined as a conscious\nreaction against some phase or phases of conventional or traditional\ndoctrine in religion--on the one hand, a claim to think freely, in\nthe sense not of disregard for logic, but of special loyalty to it,\non problems to which the past course of things has given a great\nintellectual and practical importance; on the other hand, the actual\npractice of such thinking. This sense, which is substantially agreed\non, will on one or other side sufficiently cover those phenomena of\nearly or rudimentary freethinking which wear the guise of simple\nconcrete opposition to given doctrines or systems, whether by way\nof special demur or of the obtrusion of a new cult or doctrine. In\neither case, the claim to think in a measure freely is implicit in\nthe criticism or the new affirmation; and such primary movements\nof the mind cannot well be separated, in psychology or in history,\nfrom the fully conscious practice of criticism in the spirit of\npure truth-seeking, or from the claim that such free examination\nis profoundly important to moral and intellectual health. Modern\nfreethought, specially so-called, is only one of the developments of\nthe slight primary capacity of man to doubt, to reason, to improve on\npast thinking, to assert his personality as against sacrosanct and\nmenacing authority. Concretely considered, it has proceeded by the\nsupport and stimulus of successive accretions of actual knowledge;\nand the modern consciousness of its own abstract importance emerged\nby way of an impression or inference from certain social phenomena, as\nwell as in terms of self-asserting instinct. There is no break in its\nevolution from primitive mental states, any more than in the evolution\nof the natural sciences from primitive observation. What particularly\naccrues to the state of conscious and systematic discrimination, in\nthe one case as in the other, is just the immense gain in security\nof possession.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2. PREVIOUS HISTORIES\n\nIt is somewhat remarkable that in England this phenomenon has thus\nfar [45] had no general historic treatment save at the hands of\necclesiastical writers, who, in most cases, have regarded it solely\nas a form of more or less perverse hostility to their own creed. The\nmodern scientific study of religions, which has yielded so many\ninstructive surveys, almost of necessity excludes from view the\nspecific play of freethought, which in the religion-making periods\nis to be traced rather by its religious results than by any record\nof its expression. All histories of philosophy, indeed, in some\ndegree necessarily recognize it; and such a work as Lange's History\nof Materialism may be regarded as part--whether or not sound in its\nhistorical treatment--of a complete history of freethought, dealing\nspecially with general philosophic problems. But of freethought as a\nreasoned revision or rejection of current religious doctrines by more\nor less practical people, we have no regular history by a professed\nfreethinker, though there are many monographs and surveys of periods.\n\n\n The latest and freshest sketch of the kind is Professor\n J. B. Bury's brief History of Freedom of Thought (1913), notable\n for the force of its championship of the law of liberty. The useful\n compilation of the late Mr. Charles Watts, entitled Freethought:\n Its Rise, Progress, and Triumph (n. d.), deals with freethought\n in relation only to Christianity. Apart from treatises which\n broadly sketch the development of knowledge and of opinion,\n the nearest approaches to a general historic treatment are the\n Dictionnaire des Ath\u00e9es of Sylvain Mar\u00e9chal (1800: 3e \u00e9dit.,\n par J. B. L. Germond, 1853) and the Biographical Dictionary\n of Freethinkers by the late Joseph Mazzini Wheeler. The quaint\n work of Mar\u00e9chal, expanded by his friend Lalande, exhibits much\n learning, but is made partly fantastic by its sardonic plan of\n including a number of typical religionists (including Job, John,\n and Jesus Christ!), some of whose utterances are held to lead\n logically to atheism. Mr. Wheeler's book is in every respect the\n more trustworthy.\n\n In excuse of Mar\u00e9chal's method, it may be noted that the prevailing\n practice of Christian apologists had been to impute atheism to\n heterodox theistic thinkers of all ages. The Historia universalis\n Atheismi et Atheorum falso et merito suspectorum of J. F. Reimmann\n (Hildesi\u00e6, 1725) exhibits this habit both in its criticism and\n in its practice, as do the Theses de Atheismo et Superstitione\n of Buddeus (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1716). These were the standard\n treatises of their kind for the eighteenth century, and seem to\n be the earliest systematic treatises in the nature of a history\n of freethought, excepting a Historia Naturalismi by A. Tribbechov\n (Jen\u00e6, 1700) and a Historia Atheismi breviter delineata by Jenkinus\n Thomasius (Altdorf, 1692; Basile\u00e6, 1709; London, 1716). In the same\n year with Reimmann's Historia appeared J. A. Fabricius's Delectus\n Argumentorum et Syllabus scriptorum qui veritatem religionis\n Christian\u00e6 adversus Atheos, Epicureos, Deistas, seu Naturalistas\n ... asseruerunt (Hamburghi), in which it is contended (cap. viii)\n that many philosophers have been falsely described as atheists;\n but in the Freydenker Lexicon of J. A. Trinius (Leipzig, 1759),\n planned as a supplement to the work of Fabricius, are included\n such writers as Sir Thomas Browne and Dryden.\n\n The works of the late Rev. John Owen, Evenings with the Skeptics,\n Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, and Skeptics of the French\n Renaissance, which, though not constituting a literary whole,\n collectively cover a great deal of historical ground, must be\n expressly excepted from the above characterization of clerical\n histories of freethought, in respect of their liberality of\n view. They deal largely, however, with general or philosophical\n skepticism, which is a special development of freethought, often by\n way of reasonings in which many freethinkers do not acquiesce. (All\n strict skeptics, that is to say--as distinguished from religionists\n who profess skepticism up to a certain point by way of making\n a surrender to orthodox dogmatism [46]--are freethinkers;\n but most freethinkers are not strictly skeptics.) The history\n of philosophic skepticism, again, is properly and methodically\n treated in the old work of Carl Friedrich St\u00e4udlin, Geschichte\n und Geist des Skepticismus (2 Bde., Leipzig, 1794), the historic\n survey being divided into six periods: 1, Before Pyrrho; 2, from\n Pyrrho to Sextus; 3, from Sextus to Montaigne; 4, from Montaigne\n to La Mothe le Vayer; 5, from La Mothe le Vayer to Hume; 6, from\n Hume to Kant and Platner. The posthumous work of \u00c9mile Saisset,\n Le Scepticisme: \u00c6n\u00e9sid\u00e8me--Pascal--Kant (1865), is a fragment of\n a projected complete history of philosophic skepticism.\n\n St\u00e4udlin's later work, the Geschichte des Rationalismus und\n Supernaturalismus (1826), is a shorter but more general history\n of the strife between general freethought and supernaturalism\n in the Christian world and era. It deals cursorily with the\n intellectual attitude of the early Fathers, the early heretics,\n and the Scholastics; proceeding to a fuller survey of the\n developments since the Reformation, and covering Unitarianism,\n Latitudinarianism, English and French Deism, and German Rationalism\n of different shades down to the date of writing. St\u00e4udlin may be\n described as a rationalizing supernaturalist.\n\n Like most works on religious and intellectual history written\n from a religious standpoint, those of St\u00e4udlin treat the\n phenomena as it were in vacuo, with little regard to the\n conditioning circumstances, economic and political; critical\n thought being regarded purely as a force proceeding through\n its own proclivities. Saisset is at very much the same point of\n view. Needless to say, valuable work may be done up to a certain\n point on this method, which is seen in full play in Hegel; and\n high praise is due to the learned and thoughtful treatise of\n R. W. Mackay, The Progress of the Intellect as Exemplified in the\n Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews (2 vols. 1850),\n where it is partially but ably supplemented by the method of\n inductive science. That method, again, is freshly and forcibly\n applied to a restricted problem in W. A. Schmidt's Geschichte\n der Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit im ersten Jahrhundert der\n Kaiserherrschaft und des Christenthums (1847).\n\n Later come the Vorgeschichte des Rationalismus (1853-62) and\n Geschichte des Rationalismus (1865) of the theologian Tholuck. Of\n these the latter is unfinished, coming down only to the middle\n of the eighteenth century; while the former does not exactly\n fulfil its title, being composed of a volume (2 Abth. 1853, 1854)\n on Das akademische Leben des 17ten Jahrhunderts, and of one on\n Das kirchliche Leben des 17ten Jahrhunderts (2 Abth. 1861, 1862),\n both being restricted to German developments. They thus give much\n matter extraneous to the subject, and are not exhaustive as to\n rationalism even in Germany. Hagenbach's Die Kirchengeschichte\n des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (2 Th. 1848, 1849), a series of\n lectures, translated in English, abridged, under the title German\n Rationalism in its Rise, Progress, and Decline (1865), conforms\n fairly to the latter title, save as regards the last clause.\n\n Of much greater scholarly merit is the Geschichte der religi\u00f6sen\n Aufkl\u00e4rung im Mittelalter, vom Ende des achten Jahrhunderts bis\n zum Anfange des vierzehnten, by Hermann Reuter (1875, 1877). This\n is at once learned, judicious, and impartial. Its definition of\n \"Aufkl\u00e4rung\" is substantially in agreement with the working\n definition of Freethought given above.\n\n Among other surveys of periods of innovating thought, as\n distinguished from histories of ecclesiastical heresy, or\n histories of \"religious\" or theological thought which only\n incidentally deal with heterodox opinion, should be noted the\n careful Geschichte des englischen Deismus of G. F. Lechler\n (1841); the slighter sketch of E. Sayous, Les d\u00e9istes anglais\n et le Christianisme (1882); the somewhat diffuse work of\n Cesare Cant\u00f9, Gli eretici d'Italia (3 tom. 1865-67); the very\n intelligent study of Felice Tocco, L'Eresia nel medio evo (1884);\n Schmidt's Histoire des Cathares (2 tom. 1849); Chr. U. Hahn's\n learned Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter (3 Bde. 1845-50);\n and the valuable research of F. T. Perrens, Les Libertins en\n France au xviie si\u00e8cle (1896). A similar scholarly research for\n the eighteenth century in France is still lacking, and the many\n monographs on the more famous freethinkers leave a good deal\n of literary history in obscurity. Such a research has been very\n painstakingly made for England in the late Sir Leslie Stephen's\n History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols.,\n 2nd ed., 1881), which, however, ignores scientific thought. One\n of the best monographs of the kind is La Critique des traditions\n religieuses chez les Grecs, des origines au temps de Plutarque,\n by Professor Paul Decharme (1904), a survey at once scholarly\n and attractive. The brilliant treatise of Mr. F. M. Cornford,\n From Religion to Philosophy (1912), sketches on more speculative\n lines the beginnings of Greek rationalism in Ionia. The Geschichte\n des Monismus im Altertum of Prof. Dr. A. Drews (1913) is a wide\n survey, of great synthetic value.\n\n Contributions to the general history of freethought, further,\n have been made in the works of J. W. Draper (A History of the\n Intellectual Development of Europe, 2 vols, 1861, many reprints;\n and History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, 1873,\n many reprints), both full of suggestion and stimulus, but requiring\n thorough revision as to detail; in the famous Introduction\n to the History of Civilization in England of H. T. Buckle (2\n vols. 1857-61; new ed. in 1 vol. with annotations by the present\n writer, 1904); in the History of the Rise and Influence of the\n Spirit of Rationalism in Europe of W. E. H. Lecky (2 vols. 1865;\n R. P. A. rep. 1910), who was of Buckle's school, but fell below\n him in point of coherence; in the comprehensive History of the\n Warfare of Science with Theology of Professor Andrew D. White (2\n vols. 1896--a great expansion of his earlier essay, The Warfare of\n Science, 2nd ed. 1877); and in the essay of Mr. E. S. P. Haynes,\n Religious Persecution: A Study in Political Psychology (1904;\n R. P. A. rep. 1906), as well as in many histories of philosophy\n and of sciences.\n\n The so-called History of Rationalism of the American Bishop\n J. F. Hurst, first published in 1865, and \"revised\" in 1901,\n is in the main a work of odium theologicum, dealing chiefly\n with the evolution of theology and criticism in Germany since\n the Reformation. Even to that purpose it is very inadequate. Its\n preface alleges that \"happily the vital body of evangelical truth\n has received only comparatively weak and timorous attacks from the\n more modern representatives of the rank and rabid rationalism which\n reached its climax near the close of the eighteenth, and has had\n a continuous decline through the nineteenth, century.\" It urges,\n however, as a reason for defensive activity, the consideration that\n \"the work of Satan is never planless\"; and further pronounces that\n the work of rationalism \"must determine its character. This work\n has been most injurious to the faith and life of the Church, and\n its deeds must therefore be its condemnation\" (Introd. p. 3). Thus\n the latest approximation to a history of theological rationalism\n by a clerical writer is the most negligible.\n\n\nIn English, apart from studies of given periods and of the progress\nof science and culture, the only other approaches to a history of\nfreethought are those of Bishop Van Mildert, the Rev. J. E. Riddle,\nand the Rev. Adam Storey Farrar. Van Mildert's Historical View of the\nRise and Progress of Infidelity [47] constituted the Boyle Lectures for\n1802-05; Mr. Riddle's Natural History of Infidelity and Superstition\nin Contrast with Christian Faith formed part of his Bampton Lectures\nfor 1852; and Mr. Farrar produced his Critical History of Freethought\nin reference to the Christian Religion as the Bampton Lectures for\n1862. All three were men of considerable reading, and their works\ngive useful bibliographical clues; but the virulence of Van Mildert\ndeprives his treatise of rational weight; Mr. Riddle, who in any case\nprofesses to give merely a \"Natural History\" or abstract argument, and\nnot a history proper, is only somewhat more constrainedly hostile to\n\"infidelity\"; and even Mr. Farrar, the most judicial as well as the\nmost comprehensive of the three, proceeds on the old assumption that\n\"unbelief\" (from which he charitably distinguishes \"doubt\") generally\narises from \"antagonism of feeling, which wishes revelation untrue\"--a\nthesis maintained with vehemence by the others. [48]\n\nWriters so placed, indeed, could not well be expected to contemplate\nfreethought scientifically as an aspect of mental evolution common\nto all civilizations, any more than to look with sympathy on the\nfreethought which is specifically anti-Christian. The annotations to\nall three works, certainly, show some consciousness of the need for\nanother temper and method than that of their text, [49] which is too\nobviously, perhaps inevitably, composed for the satisfaction of the\nordinary orthodox animus of their respective periods; but even the best\nremains not so much a history as an indictment. In the present sketch,\nframed though it be from the rationalistic standpoint, it is proposed\nto draw up not a counter indictment, but a more or less dispassionate\naccount of the main historical phases of freethought, viewed on the\none hand as expressions of the rational or critical spirit, playing on\nthe subject-matter of religion, and on the other hand as sociological\nphenomena conditioned by social forces, in particular the economic\nand political. The lack of any previous general survey of a scientific\ncharacter will, it is hoped, be taken into account in passing judgment\non its schematic defects as well as its inevitable flaws of detail.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FREETHINKING\n\nThough it is no part of our business here to elaborate the psychology\nof doubt and belief, it may be well to anticipate a possible criticism\non the lines of recent psychological speculation, and to indicate\nat the outset the practical conception on which the present survey\nbroadly proceeds. To begin with, the conception of freethinking\nimplies that of hindrance, resistance, coercion, difficulty;\nand as regards objective obstacles the type of all hindrance is\nrestraint upon freedom of speech or publication. In other words,\nall such restraint is a check upon thinking. On reflection it soon\nbecomes clear that where men dare not say or write what they think,\nthe very power of thinking is at length impaired in the ablest, while\nthe natural stimulus to new thought is withdrawn from the rest. No\nman can properly develop his mind without contact with other minds,\nsuggestion and criticism being alike factors in every fruitful mental\nevolution; and though for some the atmosphere of personal intercourse\nis but slightly necessary to the process of mental construction, even\nfor these the prospect of promulgation is probably essential to the\nundertaking of the task; and the study of other writers is a condition\nof useful ratiocination. In any case, it is certain that the exercise\nof argument is a condition of intellectual growth. Not one man in\na million will or can argue closely with himself on issues on which\nhe knows he can say nothing and can never overtly act; and for the\naverage man all reasoning on great problems is a matter of prompting\nfrom without. The simple fact that the conversation of uneducated\npeople runs so largely to citation of what \"he says\" makes clear this\ndependence. Each brings something to the common store, and progress\nis set up by \"pooling\" the mass of small intellectual variations or\noriginalities. Thus in the long run freedom of speech is the measure\nof a generation's intellectual capacity; [50] and the promoters of\nsuch freedom are typically the truest servants of progress.\n\nOn the other hand, there is still a common disposition to ascribe\nto a species of intellectual malice the disturbance that criticism\ncauses to the holders of established beliefs. Recent writers have\npressed far the theorem that \"will\" enters as an element into every\nmental act, thus giving a momentary appearance of support to the\nold formula that unbelief is the result of an arbitrary or sinister\nperversity of individual choice. Needless to say, however, the new\ntheorem--which inverts without refuting Spinoza's denial of the entity\nof volition--applies equally to acts of belief; and it is a matter of\nthe simplest concrete observation that, in so far as will or wilfulness\nin the ordinary sense operates in the sphere of religion, it is at\nleast as obvious and as active on the side of belief [51] as on the\nother. A moment's reflection on the historic phenomena of orthodox\nresistance to criticism will satisfy any student that, whatever may\nhave been the stimulus on the side of heresy, the antagonism it arouses\nis largely the index of primary passion--the spontaneous resentment\nof the believer whose habits are disturbed. His will normally decides\nhis action, without any process of judicial deliberation.\n\nIt is another way of stating the same fact to point out the fallacy\nof the familiar assumption that freethinking represents a bias to\n\"negation.\" In the nature of the case, the believer has to do at least\nas much negation as his opponents; and if again we scan history in\nthis connection, we shall see cause to conclude that the temperamental\ntendency to negation--which is a form of variation like another--is\nabundantly common on the side of religious conservatism. Nowhere\nis there more habitual opposition to new ideas as such. At best the\nbeliever, so-called, rejects a given proposition or suggestion because\nit clashes with something he already believes. The new proposition,\nhowever, has often been reached by way not of preliminary negation of\nthe belief in question, but of constructive explanation, undertaken to\nbring observed facts into theoretic harmony. Thus the innovator has\nonly contingently put aside the old belief because it clashes with\nsomething he believes in a more vital way; and he has done this with\ncircumspection, whereas his opponent too often repels him without a\nsecond thought. The phenomena of the rise of the Copernican astronomy,\nmodern geology, and modern biology, all bear out this generalization.\n\nNor is the charge of negativeness any more generally valid against\nsuch freethinking as directly assails current doctrines. There may\nbe, of course, negative-minded people on that side as on the other;\nand such may fortuitously do something to promote freethought,\nor may damage it in their neighbourhood by their atmosphere. But\neverything goes to show that freethinking normally proceeds by way of\nintellectual construction--that is, by way of effort to harmonize one\nposition with another; to modify a special dogma to the general run of\none's thinking. Rationalism stands not for \"skepticism\" in the strict\nphilosophic sense, but for a critical effort to reach certainties. The\nattitude of pure skepticism on a wide scale is really very rare--much\nrarer even than the philosophic effort. So far from freethinkers\nbeing given to \"destroying without building up,\" they are, as a rule,\nunable to destroy a dogma either for themselves or for others without\nsetting a constructive belief in its place--a form of explanation,\nthat is; such being much more truly a process of construction than\nwould be the imposition of a new scheme of dogma. In point of fact,\nthey are often accused, and by the same critics, of an undue tendency\nto speculative construction; and the early atheists of Greece and\nof the modern period did so err. But that is only a proof the more\nthat their freethinking was not a matter of arbitrary volition or an\nundue negativeness.\n\nThe only explanation which ostensibly countervails this is the old\none above glanced at--that the unbeliever finds the given doctrine\ntroublesome as a restraint, and so determines to reject it. It is\nto be feared that this view has survived Mr. A. S. Farrar. Yet it\nis very clear that no man need throw aside any faith, and least of\nall Christianity, on the ground of its hampering his conduct. To say\nnothing of the fact that in every age, under every religion, at every\nstage of culture from that of the savage to that of the supersubtle\ndecadent or mystic, men have practised every kind of misconduct without\nabandoning their supernatural credences--there is the special fact that\nthe whole Christian system rests on the doctrine of forgiveness of sins\nto the believer. The theory of \"wilful\" disbelief on the part of the\nreprobate is thus entirely unplausible. Such disbelief in the terms\nof the case would be uneasy, as involving an element of incertitude;\nand his fear of retribution could never be laid. On the other hand,\nhe has but inwardly to avow himself a sinner and a believer, and he\nhas the assurance that repentance at the last moment will outweigh\nall his sins.\n\nIt is not, of course, suggested that such is the normal or frequent\ncourse of believing Christians; but it has been so often enough to make\nthe \"libertine\" theory of unbelief untenable. Indeed, the singular\ndiversity between profession and practice among Christians has in\nall periods called out declarations by the more fervid believers\nthat their average fellow-Christians are \"practical atheists.\" More\njudicial minds may be set asking instead how far men really \"believe\"\nwho do not act on their opinions. As one high authority has put it,\nin the Middle Ages the normal opposition of theory and practice\n\"was peculiarly abrupt. Men's impulses were more violent, and their\nconduct more reckless, than is often witnessed in modern society;\nwhile the absence of a criticizing and measuring spirit made them\nsurrender their minds more unreservedly than they would do now to a\ncomplete and imposing theory.... Resistance to God's Vicar might be,\nand indeed was admitted to be, a deadly sin, but it was one which\nnobody hesitated to commit.\" [52] And so with other sins, the sinner\nhaving somewhere in the rear of his consciousness the reflection that\nhis sins could be absolved.\n\nAnd, apart from such half-purposive forms of licence among Christians,\nthere have been countless cases of purposive licence. In all ages\nthere have been antinomian Christians, [53] whether of the sort that\nsimply rest on the \"seventy times seven\" of the Gospel, or of the more\narticulately logical kind who dwell on the doctrine of faith versus\nworks. For the rest, as the considerate theologian will readily see,\ninsistence on the possibility of a sinister motive for the unbeliever\nbrings up the equal possibility of a sinister motive on the part of the\nconvert to Christianity, ancient or modern. At every turn, then, the\ncharge of perversity of the will recoils on the advocate of belief;\nso that it would be the course of common prudence to abandon it,\neven were it not in itself, as a rule, so plainly an expression of\nirritated bias.\n\nOn the other hand, it need not be disputed that unbelief has been\noften enough associated with some species of libertinism to give\na passing colour for the pretence of causal connection. The fact,\nhowever, leads us to a less superficial explanation, worth keeping in\nview here. Freethinking being taken to be normally a \"variation\" of\nintellectual type in the direction of a critical demand for consistency\nand credibility in beliefs, its social assertion will be a matter\non the one side of force of character or degree of recklessness,\nand on the other hand of force of circumstances. The intellectual\npotentiality and the propagandist purpose will be variously developed\nin different men and in different surroundings. If we ask ourselves\nhow, in general, the critical tendency is to arise or to come into\nplay, we are almost compelled to suppose a special stimulus as\nwell as a special faculty. Critical doubt is made possible, broadly\nspeaking, by the accumulation of ideas or habits of certain kinds\nwhich insensibly undo a previous state of homogeneity of thought. For\ninstance, a community subsiding into peace and order from a state of\nwarfare and plunder will at length find the ethic of its daily life\nat variance with the conserved ethic of its early religion of human\nsacrifice and special family or tribal sanctions; or a community\nwhich has accumulated a certain amount of accurate knowledge of\nastronomy will gradually find such knowledge irreconcilable with its\nprimitive cosmology. A specially gifted person will anticipate the\ngeneral movement of thought; but even for him some standing-ground\nmust be supposed; and for the majority the advance in moral practice\nor scientific knowledge is the condition of any effective freethinking.\n\nBetween top and bottom, however, there are all grades of vivacity,\nearnestness, and courage; and on the side of the normal resistance\nthere are all varieties of political and economic circumstance. It\nfollows, then, that the avowed freethinker may be so in virtue either\nof special courage or of antecedent circumstances which make the\nattitude on his part less courageous. And it may even be granted\nto the quietist that the courage is at times that of ill-balanced\njudgment or heady temperament; just as it may be conceded to the\nconservative that it is at times that which goes with or follows on\ndisregard of wise ways of life. It is well that the full force of\nthis position be realized at the outset. When we find, as we shall,\nsome historic freethinkers displaying either extreme imprudence\nor personal indiscipline, we shall be prepared, in terms of this\npreliminary questioning, to realize anew that humanity has owed\na great deal to some of its \"unbalanced\" types; and that, though\ndiscipline is nearly the last word of wisdom, indiscipline may at\ntimes be the morbid accompaniment or excess of a certain openness of\nview and spontaneity of action which are more favourable to moral and\nintellectual advance than a cold prudence or a safe insusceptibility.\n\nBut cold or calm prudence in turn is not a vice; and it is hardly\npossible to doubt that there have been in all ages varying numbers of\nunbelievers who shrugged their shoulders over the follies of faith,\nand declined to tilt against the windmills of fanaticism. There is much\nreason for surmising that Shakespeare was a case in point. It is not\nto be supposed, then, because some freethinkers who came out into the\nopen were unbalanced types, that their psychology is the psychology of\nfreethought, any more than that of General Gordon or Francis of Assisi\nis to be reckoned typical on the side of belief. There must have been\nmyriads of quiet unbelievers, rational all round, whose unbelief was a\nstrictly intellectual process, undisturbed by temperament. In our own\nday such types abound, and it is rather in them than in the abnormal\ntypes of past freethought--the Brunos and the Voltaires--that the\naverage psychology of freethought is to be looked for and understood.\n\nAs for the case of the man who, already at odds with his fellows\nin the matter of his conduct, may in some phases of society feel it\nthe easier to brave them in the matter of his avowed creed, we have\nalready seen that even this does not convict him of intellectual\ndishonesty. And were such cases relatively as numerous as they are\nscarce--were the debauched deists even commoner than the vinous Steeles\nand Fieldings--the use of the fact as an argument would still be an\noblique course on the side of a religion which claims to have found\nits first and readiest hearing among publicans and sinners. For the\nrest, the harm done in the world's history by unbalanced freethinkers\nis as dust in the balance against the immeasurable evil deliberately\nwrought on serious religious motives, to say nothing of the constant\ndeviation of the mass of believers from their own professed code.\n\nIt may, finally, help a religious reader to a judicial view of the\nphenomenon of freethought if he is reminded that every step forward in\nthe alleged historic evolution of his own creed would depend, in the\ncase put, on the existence of persons capable of rejecting a current\nand prevailing code in favour of one either denounced as impious or\nmarked off by circumstances as dangerous. The Israelites in Egypt,\nthe prophets and their supporters, the Gospel Jesus and his adherents,\nall ostensibly stand in some degree for positions of \"negation,\"\nof hardy innovation, of disregard to things and persons popularly\nvenerated; wherefore Collins, in the Discourse above mentioned,\nsmilingly claimed at least the prophets as great freethinkers. On\nthat head it may suffice to say that some of the temperamental\nqualifications would probably be very much the same for those who\nof old brought about religious innovation in terms of supernatural\nbeliefs, and for those who in later times innovate by way of minimizing\nor repudiating such beliefs, though the intellectual qualifications\nmight be different. Bruno and Dolet and Vanini and Voltaire, faulty\nmen all four, could at least be more readily conceived as prophets\nin early Jewry, or reformers under Herod, than as Pharisees, or even\nSadducees, under either regimen.\n\nBe that as it may, however, the issues between freethought and creed\nare ultimately to be settled only in respect of their argumentative\nbases, as appreciable by men in society at any given time. It is with\nthe notion of making the process of judicial appreciation a little\neasier, by historically exhibiting the varying conditions under which\nit has been undertaken in the past, that these pages are written.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nPRIMITIVE FREETHINKING\n\n\nTo consider the normal aspects of primitive life, as we see them\nin savage communities and trace them in early literature, is to\nrealize the enormous hindrance offered to critical thinking in the\nprimary stages of culture by the mere force of habit. \"The savage,\"\nsays our leading anthropologist, \"by no means goes through life\nwith the intention of gathering more knowledge and framing better\nlaws than his fathers. On the contrary, his tendency is to consider\nhis ancestors as having handed down to him the perfection of wisdom,\nwhich it would be impiety to make the least alteration in. Hence among\nthe lower races there is obstinate resistance to the most desirable\nreforms, and progress can only force its way with a slowness and\ndifficulty which we of this century can hardly imagine.\" [54] Among\nthe Bantu of South Africa, before the spread of European rule, \"any\nperson in advance of his fellows was specially liable to suspicion\n[of sorcery], so that progress of any kind towards what we should\nterm higher civilization was made exceedingly difficult by this\nbelief.\" [55] The real or would-be sorcerer could thus secure the\nelimination of the honest inventor; fear of sorcery being most potent\nas against the supposed irregular practitioner. The relative obstinacy\nof conservatism in periods and places of narrow knowledge is again\nillustrated in Lane's account of the modern Egyptians in the first\nhalf of the nineteenth century: \"Some Egyptians who had studied for\na few years in France declared to me that they could not instil any\nof the notions which they had there acquired even into the minds\nof their most intimate friends.\" [56] So in modern Japan there were\nmany assassinations of reformers, and some civil war, before Western\nideas could gain a footing. [57] The less the knowledge, in short,\nthe harder to add to it.\n\nIt is hardly possible to estimate with any confidence the relative\nrates of progress; but, though all are extremely slow, it would\nseem that reason could sooner play correctively on errors of secular\npractice [58] than on any species of proposition in religion--taking\nthat word to connote at once mythology, early cosmology, and ritual\nethic. Mere disbelief in a particular medicine-man or rain-maker\nwho failed would not lead to any reflective disbelief in all; any\nmore than the beating or renunciation of his fetish by a savage or\nbarbarian means rejection of his fetishism, or than the renunciation\nof a particular saint by a modern Catholic [59] means abandonment of\nprayer to saints for intercession.\n\n\n The question as to whether savages do beat their idols is a matter\n in some dispute. Sir A. B. Ellis, a high authority, offers a\n notable denial to the current belief that negroes \"beat their\n Gods if their prayers are unanswered.\" \"After an experience\n of the Gold Coast extending over thirteen years,\" he writes,\n \"I have never heard of, much less witnessed, anything of the\n kind, although I have made inquiries in every direction\" (The\n Tshi-speaking Peoples, 1887, p. 194). Other anthropologists have\n collected many instances in other races--e.g., Fr. Schultze, Der\n Fetischismus, 1871, p. 130. In one case, a priest beats a fetish\n in advance, to secure his careful attention. (Id. pp. 90-91,\n citing the personal narrative of Bastian.) It seems to be a\n matter of psychic stage. The more primitive negro is as it were\n too religious, too much afraid of his Gods, who are not for him\n \"idols,\" but spirits residing in images or objects. Where the\n state of fear is only chronic another temper may arise. Among the\n Bataks of Sumatra disappointed worshippers often scold a God;\n and their legends tell of men who declared war on a deity and\n shot at him from a mountain. (Warneck, Die Religion des Batak,\n 1909, p. 7. Cp. Gen. ii, 4-9.) A temper of defiance towards\n deity has been noted in an Aryan Kafir of the Hindu-Kush. (Sir\n G. S. Robertson, The K\u00e1firs of the Hindu-Kush, 1899, p. 182.) Some\n peoples go much further. Among the Polynesians, when a God failed\n to cure a sick chief or notable, he \"was regarded as inexorable,\n and was usually banished from the temple and his image destroyed\"\n (W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, 2nd ed. 1831, i, 350). So among\n the Chinese, \"if the God does not give rain they will threaten\n and beat him; sometimes they publicly depose him from the rank\n of deity\" (Frazer, Lectures on the Early History of Kingship,\n 1905, pp. 98-101. Cp. Ross, Pansebeia, 4th ed., 1672, p. 80).\n\n There are many analogous phenomena. In old Samoa, in the ritual\n of mourning for the dead, the family God was first implored to\n restore the deceased, and then fiercely abused and menaced. [60]\n See, too, the story of the people of Niue or Savage Island\n in the South Pacific, who in the time of a great pestilence,\n thinking the sickness was caused by a certain idol, broke it in\n pieces and threw it away (Turner, Samoa a Hundred Years Ago, 1884,\n p. 306). See further the cases cited by Constant, De la religion,\n 1824, vol. i, ptie. ii, pp. 32-34; and by Peschel, The Races of\n Man, Eng. tr. 1876, pp. 247-8, in particular that of Rastus,\n the last pagan Lapp in Europe, who quarrelled with his fetish\n stone for killing his reindeer in revenge for the withholding\n of its customary offering of brandy, and \"immediately embraced\n Christianity.\" (Compare E. Rae, The White Sea Peninsula, 1881,\n p. 276.) See again the testimony of Herman Melville in his Typee,\n ch. xxiv; and that of T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, ed. 1858,\n i, 236: \"Sometimes the natives get angry with their deities, and\n abuse and even challenge them to fight.\" Herodotos has similar\n stories of barbarians who defy their own and other deities\n (iv, 172, 183, 184). Compare the case of King Rum Bahadur of\n Nepaul, who cannonaded his Gods. Spencer, Study of Sociology,\n pp. 301-2. Also the anecdote cited by Spencer (Id. p. 160)\n from Sir R. Burton's Goa, p. 167. Here there is no disbelief, no\n reflection, but simple resentment. Compare, too, the amusing story\n of a blasphemy by Rossini, told by Louis Viardot, Libre Examen,\n 6e \u00e9d. pp. 166-67, note. That threats against the Gods are possible\n at a semi-civilized stage is proved by various passages in medieval\n literature. Thus in Caxton's Charles the Grete, a translation from\n an older French original, Charles is made to say: \"O lord God,\n if ye suffre that Olyver be overcome and that my ryght at thys\n tyme be loste and defyled, I make a vowe that al Crystyante shal be\n destroyed. I shal not leve in Fraunce chirche ne monasterye, ymage\n ne aulter,\" etc. (Early Eng. Text Soc. rep. 1881, pp. 70-71.) Such\n language was probably used by not a few medieval kings in moments\n of fury; and there is even record that at the battle of Dunbar\n certain of the Scots Presbyterian clergy intimated to their deity\n that he would not be their God if he failed them on that day.\n\n If such flights be reckoned possible for Christian kings\n and clerics in the Christian era, there would seem to be no\n unlikelihood about the many stories of God-beating and God-defying\n among contemporary savages, though so good an observer as Sir\n A. B. Ellis may not have witnessed them in the part of Africa best\n known to him. The conclusion reached by Sir A. B. Ellis is that\n the negroes of the Gold Coast are not properly to be described\n as fetishists. Fetishism, on his view, is a worship of objects as\n in themselves endowed with magical power; whereas the Gold Coast\n negro ascribes no virtue to the object commonly called his fetish,\n regarding it simply as inhabited by a supernatural power. This\n writer sees \"true fetishism\" in the attitude of Italian peasants\n and fishermen who beat and ill-treat their images when prayers\n are not answered, and in that of Spaniards who cover the faces of\n their images or turn them to the wall when about to do anything\n which they think the saint or deity would disapprove of. On this\n view, fetishism is a later yet lower stage of religious evolution\n than that of the negro. On the other hand, Miss Kingsley takes\n fetishism to be the proper name of the attitude of the negro\n towards particular objects as divinely inhabited, and represents\n it as a kind of pantheism (West African Studies, 2nd ed. 1901,\n ch. v). And since, by her definition, \"Gods of fetish\" do not\n necessarily \"require a material object to manifest themselves in\"\n (p. 96), the term \"fetish\" is thus detached from all of its former\n meanings. It seems expedient, as a matter of terminology, to let\n fetishism mean both object- or image-worship and the belief in the\n special inhabiting of objects by deities, with a recognition that\n the beliefs may be different stages in an evolution, though, on the\n other hand, they are obviously likely to coalesce or concur. In\n the \"Obeah\" system of the negroes of the West Indies the former\n belief in the indwelling spirit has become, or has coalesced with,\n belief in the magical powers of the object (Keane, Man, Past and\n Present, 1900, p. 57).\n\n As to defiance or contumely towards the Gods, finally, we have the\n testimony of the Swiss missionary Junod that the South African\n Thonga, whom he studied very closely, have in their ritual \"a\n regular insulting of the Gods.\" (Life of a South African Tribe,\n ii, 1912, p. 384.) Why not? \"Prayers to the ancestors ... are\n ... absolutely devoid of awe\" (p. 385), though \"the ancestor-Gods\n are certainly the most powerful spiritual agency acting on man's\n life\" (p. 361); and \"the spirits of the ancestors are the main\n objects of religious worship\" (p. 344). The Thonga, again, use\n \"neither idolatry nor fetishism,\" having no \"idols\" (p. 388),\n though they recognize \"hidden virtues\" in plants, animals, and\n stones (p. 345). They simply regard their ancestor-Gods very\n much as they do their aged people, whom they generally treat with\n little consideration. But the dead can do harm, and must therefore\n be propitiated--as savages propitiate, with fear or malice or\n derision in their hearts, as the case may be. (Cp. p. 379.) On the\n other hand, despite the denial of their \"fetishism,\" they believe\n that ancestor-Gods may come in the shape of animals; and they so\n venerate a kind of palladium (made up like a medicine-man's amulet)\n as to raise the question whether this kind of belief is not just\n that which Miss Kingsley called \"fetish.\" (Junod, pp. 358, 373-74.)\n\n\nWhatever may be the essence, or the varieties, of fetishism, it\nis clear that the beating of idols or threatening of Gods does not\namount to rational doubt concerning the supernatural. Some general\napproach to that attitude may perhaps be inferred in the case of an\neconomic revolt against the burdens of a highly specialized religious\nsystem, which may often have occurred in unwritten history. We shall\nnote a recorded instance of the kind in connection with the question\nwhether there are any savage tribes without religion. But it occurs\nin the somewhat highly evolved barbarism of pre-Christian Hawaii;\nand it can set up no inference as to any development of critical\nunbelief at lower levels. In the long stage of lower savagery, then,\nthe only approach to freethinking that would seriously affect general\nbelief would presumably be that very credulity which gave foothold\nto religious beliefs to begin with. That is to say, without anything\nin the nature of general criticism of any story or doctrine, one such\nmight to some extent supersede another, in virtue of the relative gift\nof persuasion or personal weight of the propounders. Up to a certain\npoint persons with a turn for myth or ritual-making would compete,\nand might even call in question each other's honesty, as well as each\nother's inspiration.\n\nSince the rise of scientific hierology there has been a disposition\namong students to take for granted the good faith of all early\nreligion-makers, and to dismiss entirely that assumption of fraud\nwhich was so long made by Christian writers concerning the greater\npart of every non-Christian system. The assumption had been passed\non from the freethinkers of antiquity who formulated the view that\nall religious doctrine had been invented by politicians in order to\ncontrol the people. [61] Christian polemists, of course, applied it to\nall systems but their own. When, however, all systems are seen to be\nalike natural in origin, such charges are felt to recoil on the system\nwhich makes them; and latterly [62] Christian writers, seeing as much,\nhave been fain to abandon the conception of \"priestcraft,\" adroitly\nrepresenting it as an extravagance of rationalism. It certainly\nserved rationalistic purposes, and the title of the supposititious\nmedieval work on \"The Three Impostors\" points to its currency among\nunbelievers long ago; but when we first find it popularly current in\nthe seventeenth century, it is in a Christian atmosphere. [63] Some\nof the early deists and others have probably in turn exaggerated the\namount of deliberate deceit involved in the formation of religious\nsystems; but nevertheless \"priestcraft\" is a demonstrable factor in\nthe process. What is called the psychology of religion has been much\nobscured in response to the demand of religious persons to have it so\npresented as to flatter them in that capacity. [64] Such a claim cannot\nbe permitted to overrule the fair inductions of comparative science.\n\nAnthropological evidence suggests that, while religion clearly\nbegins in primordial fear and fancy, wilful fraud must to some\nextent have entered into all religious systems alike, even in the\nperiod of primeval credulity, were it only because the credulity\nwas so great. One of the most judicial and sympathetic of the\nChristian scholars who have written the history of Greece treats\nas unquestionable the view that alike in pagan and Christian cults\n\"priestcraft\" has been \"fertile in profitable devices, in the invention\nof legends, the fabrication of relics, and other modes of imposture\";\n[65] and the leading hierologist of the last generation pronounces\ndecisively as to an element of intentional deceit in the Koran-making\nof Mohammed [66]--a judgment which, if upheld, can hardly fail to be\nextended to some portions of all other sacred books. However that\nmay be, we have positive evidence that wilful and systematic fraud\nenters into the doctrine of contemporary savages, and that among some\n\"primitives\" known myths are deliberately propounded to the boys\nand women by the male adults. [67] Indeed, the majority of modern\ntravellers among primitives seem to have regarded their priests\nand sorcerers in the mass as conscious deceivers. [68] If, then, we\ncan point to deliberate imposture alike in the charm-mongering and\nmyth-mongering of contemporary savages and in the sacred-book-making\nof the higher historical systems, it seems reasonable to hold that\nconscious deceit, as distinguished from childlike fabrication, would\nchronically enter into the tale-making of primitive men, as into their\nsimpler relations with each other. It is indeed impossible to conceive\nhow a copious mythology could ever arise without the play of a kind\nof imaginativeness that is hardly compatible with veracity; and it is\nprobably only the exigencies of ecclesiastical life that cause modern\ncritics still to treat the most deliberate fabrications and forgeries\nin the Hebrew sacred books as somehow produced in a spirit of the\ndeepest concern for truth. An all-round concern for truth is, in fact,\na late intellectual development, the product of much criticism and much\ndoubt; hence, perhaps, the lenity of the verdicts under notice. Certain\nwild tribes here and there, living in a state of great simplicity, are\nin our own day described as remarkably truthful; [69] but they are not\nremarkable for range of supernatural belief; and their truthfulness is\nto be regarded as a product of their special stability and simplicity\nof life. The trickery of a primitive medicine-man, of course, is a\nmuch more childlike thing than the frauds of educated priesthoods;\nand it is compatible with so much of spontaneous pietism as is implied\nin the common passing of the operator into the state of convulsion\nand trance--a transition which comes easily to many savages. [70]\nBut even at that stage of psychosis, and in a community where simple\nsecular lying is very rare, the professional wizard-priest becomes\nan adept in playing upon credulity. [71]\n\nIt belongs, in short, to the very nature of the priestly function,\nin its earlier forms, to develop in a special degree the normal bias\nof the undisciplined mind to intellectual fraud. Granting that there\nare all degrees of self-consciousness in the process, we are bound to\nrecognize that in all of us there is \"the sophist within,\" who stands\nbetween us and candour in every problem either of self-criticism\nor of self-defence. And, if the instructed man recognizes this\nclearly and the uninstructed does not, none the less is the latter\nan exemplification of the fact. His mental obliquities are not any\nless real because of his indifference to them than are the acts of\nthe hereditary thief because he does them without shame. And if we\nconsider how the fetish-priest is at every turn tempted to invent\nand prevaricate, simply because his pretensions are fundamentally\npreposterous; and how in turn the priest of a higher grade, even\nwhen he sincerely \"believes\" in his deity, is bound to put forward\nas matters of knowledge or revelation the hypotheses he frames to\naccount for either the acts or the abstentions of the God, we shall\nsee that the priestly office is really as incompatible with a high\nsincerity in the primitive stages as in those in which it is held\nby men who consciously propound falsities, whether for their mere\ngain or in the hope of doing good. It may be true that the priestly\nclaim of supernatural sanction for an ethical command is at times\nmotived by an intense conviction of the rightness of the course of\nconduct prescribed; but none the less is such a habit of mind fatal\nto intellectual sincerity. Either there is sheer hallucination or\nthere is pious fraud.\n\nGiven, however, the tendency to deceit among primitive folk, distrust\nand detection in a certain number of cases would presumably follow,\nconstituting a measure of simple skepticism. By force partly of this\nand partly of sheer instability of thought, early belief would be apt\nto subsist for ages like that of contemporary African tribes, [72]\nin a state of flux. [73] Comparative fixity would presumably arise\nwith the approach to stability of life, of industry, and of political\ninstitutions, whether with or without a special priesthood. The\nusages of early family worship would seem to have been no less rigid\nthan those of the tribal and public cults. For primitive man as for\nthe moderns definite organization and ritual custom must have been a\ngreat establishing force as regards every phase of religious belief;\n[74] and it may well have been that there was thus less intellectual\nliberty of a kind in the long ages of what we regard as primitive\ncivilization than in those of savagery and barbarism which preceded\nthem. On that view, systems which are supposed to represent in the\nfullest degree the primeval spontaneity of religion may have been in\npart priestly reactions against habits of freedom accompanied by a\ncertain amount of skepticism. A modern inquirer [75] has in some such\nsense advanced the theory that in ancient India, in even the earlier\nperiod of collection of the Rig-Veda, which itself undermined the\nmonarchic character of the pre-Vedic religion, there was a decay of\nbelief, which the final redaction served to accelerate. Such a theory\ncan hardly pass beyond the stage of hypothesis in view of the entire\nabsence of history proper in early Indian literature; but we seem\nat least to have the evidence of the Veda itself that while it was\nbeing collected there were deniers of the existence of its Gods. [76]\n\nThe latter testimony alone may serve as ground for raising afresh\nan old question which recent anthropology has somewhat inexactly\ndecided--that, namely, as to whether there are any savages without\nreligious beliefs.\n\n\n [For old discussions on the subject see Cicero, De natura\n deorum, i, 23; Cumberland, Disquisitio de legibus natur\u00e6, 1672,\n introd. (rejecting negative view as resting on inadequate\n testimony); Locke, Essay on the Human Understanding, Bk. I,\n ch. iii, \u00a7 9; ch. iv, \u00a7 8 (accepting negative view); protests\n against it by Vico (Scienza Nuova, 1725, as cited above, p. 26);\n by Shaftesbury (Letters to a Student, 1716, rep. in Letters, 1746,\n pp. 32-33); by Rev. John Milne, An Account of Mr. Lock's Religion\n (anon.), 1700, pp. 5-8; and by Sir W. Anstruther, Essays Moral\n and Divine, Edinburgh, 1701, p. 24; further protests by Lafitau\n (Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains compar\u00e9es aux moeurs des premiers\n temps, 1724, i, 5), following Boyle, to the effect that the very\n travellers and missionaries who denied all religion to savages\n avow facts which confute them; and general view by Fabricius,\n Delectus argumentorum et Syllabus scriptorum, Hamburghi, 1725,\n ch. viii. Cp. also Swift, Discourse Concerning the Mechanical\n Operation of the Spirit, \u00a7 2.\n\n B\u00fcchner (Force and Matter, ch. on \"The Idea of God\"); Lord Avebury\n = Sir John Lubbock (Prehistoric Times, 5th ed., pp. 574-80;\n Origin of Civilization, 5th ed., pp. 213-17); and Mr. Spencer\n (Principles of Sociology, iii, \u00a7 583) have collected modern\n travellers' testimonies as to the absence of religious ideas in\n certain tribes. Cp. also J. A. St. John's (Bohn) ed. of Locke,\n notes on passages above cited, and on Bk. IV, ch. x, \u00a7 6. As Lord\n Avebury points out, the word \"religion\" is by some loosely or\n narrowly used to signify only a higher theology as distinct from\n lower supernaturalist beliefs. He himself, however, excludes from\n the field of \"religion\" a belief in evil spirits and in magic--here\n coinciding with the later anthropologists who represented magic\n and religion as fundamentally \"opposed\"--a view rejected even by\n some religionists. Cp. Avebury, Marriage, Totemism, and Religion,\n (1911), p. 116 sq.; Rev. E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, 1902, p. 3;\n Prof. T. Witten Davies, Magic, Divination, and Demonology, 1898,\n pp. 18-24. The proved erroneousness of many of the negative\n testimonies has been insisted on by Benjamin Constant (De la\n Religion, 1824, i, 3-4); Theodore Parker (Discourse of Matters\n Pertaining to Religion, 1842 and 1855, ed. 1877, p. 16); G. Roskoff\n (Das Religionswesen der rohesten Naturv\u00f6lker, 1880, Abschn. I\n and II); Dr. Tylor (Primitive Culture, 3rd ed., i, pp. 417-25);\n and Dr. Max M\u00fcller (Introd. to the Science of Religion, ed. 1882,\n p. 42 sq.; Hibbert Lectures, p. 91 sq.; Natural Religion, 1889,\n pp. 81-89; Anthropological Religion, 1892, pp. 428-35.)\n\n The Rev. H. A. Junod (Life of a South African Tribe, vol. ii,\n 1913, p. 346) shows how easily misconception on the subject may\n arise. Galton (Narrative of an Explorer, ch. viii, ed. 1891,\n p. 138) writes: \"I have no conception to this day whether or\n no the Ovampo have any religion, for Click was frightened and\n angry if the subject of death was alluded to.\" The context shows\n that the native regarded all questions on religious matters with\n suspicion. Schweinfurth, again, contradicts himself twice within\n three pages as to the beliefs of the Bongo in a \"Supreme Being\"\n and in a future state; and thus leaves us doubting his statement\n that the neighbouring race, the Dyoor, \"put no faith at all in\n any witchcraft\" (The Heart of Africa, 3rd ed. i, 143-45). Much\n of the confusion turns on the fact that savages who practise no\n worship have religious beliefs (cp. Max M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures,\n ed. 1878, p. 17, citing Monsignor Salvado; and Carl Lumholtz, Among\n Cannibals, 1889, p. 284). The dispute, as it now stands, mainly\n turns on the definition of religion (cp. Chantepie de la Saussaye,\n Manual of the Science of Religion, Eng. tr. 1891, pp. 16-18,\n where Lubbock's position is partly misunderstood). Dr. Tylor,\n while deciding that no tribes known to us are religionless,\n leaves open the question of their existence in the past.\n\n A notable example of the prolongation of error on this subject\n through orthodox assumptions is seen in Dr. A. W. Howitt's\n otherwise valuable work on The Native Tribes of South Australia\n (1904). Dr. Howitt produces (pp. 488-508) abundant evidence to show\n that a number of tribes believe in a \"supernatural anthropomorphic\n being,\" variously named Nurrundere, Nurelli, Bunjil, Mungan-ngaua,\n Daramalun, and Baiame (\"the same being under different names,\"\n writes Dr. Howitt, p. 499). This being he describes as \"the\n tribal All-Father,\" \"a venerable kindly Headman of a tribe,\n full of knowledge and tribal wisdom, and all-powerful in magic,\n of which he is the source, with virtues, failings, and passions\n such as the aborigines regard them\" (pp. 500-1). But he insists\n (p. 506) that \"in this being, though supernatural, there is\n no trace of a divine nature,\" and, again, that \"the Australian\n aborigines do not recognize any divinity, good or evil\" (p. 756),\n though (p. 501) \"it is most difficult for one of us to divest\n himself of the tendency to endow such a supernatural being [as\n the All-Father] with a nature quasi-divine, if not altogether\n so.\" Dr. Howitt does not name any European deity who satisfies\n him on the point of divinity! Obviously the Australian deities\n have evolved in exactly the same way as those of other peoples,\n Yahweh included. Dr. Howitt, indeed, admits (p. 507) that the\n Australian notions \"may have been at the root of monotheistic\n beliefs.\" They certainly were; and when he adds that, \"although\n it cannot be alleged that these aborigines have consciously any\n form of religion, it may be said that their beliefs are such that,\n under favourable conditions, they might have developed into an\n actual religion,\" he indicates afresh the confusion possible from\n unscientific definitions. The sole content of his thesis is,\n finally, that a \"supernatural\" being is not \"divine\" till the\n priests have somewhat trimmed him, and that a religion is not\n \"actual\" till it has been sacerdotally formulated. Dr. Howitt's\n negations are as untenable as Mr. Andrew Lang's magnification of\n the Australian All-Father into a perfect Supreme Being.\n\n The really important part of Dr. Howitt's survey of the problem\n is his conclusion that the kind of belief he has described exists\n only in a specified area of Australia, and that this area is \"the\n habitat of tribes ... where there has been the advance from group\n marriage to individual marriage, from descent in the female line\n to that in the male line\" (p. 500). Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's\n denial of the existence of any belief in a personal deity among\n the tribes of Central Australia (Northern Tribes, 1904, p. 491)\n appears to stand for actual fact.\n\n As to the \"divinity\" of the ancestor-gods of the primitives,\n see Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. p. 41 sq.]\n\n\nThe problem has been unduly narrowed to the question whether there are\nany whole tribes so developed. It is obviously pertinent to ask whether\nthere may not be diversity of opinion within a given tribe. Such\ntestimonies as those collected by Sir John Lubbock [Lord Avebury]\nand others, as to the existence of religionless savages, are held to\nbe disposed of by further proof that tribes of savages who had been\nset down as religionless on the evidence of some of themselves had in\nreality a number of religious beliefs. Travellers' questions had been\nfalsely answered, either on the principle that non-initiates must not\nbe told the mysteries, or from that sudden perception of the oddity\nof their beliefs which comes even to some civilized people when they\ntry to state them to an unbelieving outsider. Questions, again, could\neasily be misunderstood, and answers likewise. We find, for instance,\nthat savages who scout the idea that the dead can \"rise again\" do\nbelieve in the continued disembodied existence of all their dead,\nand even at times conceive of them as marrying and procreating! On\nthe whole, they conceive of a continuity of spirit-life on earth in\nhuman shape. To speak of such people as having no idea of \"a life\nbeyond the grave\" would obviously be misleading, though they have no\nnotion of a judgment day or of future rewards or punishments. [77]\n\nUndoubtedly, then, the negative view of savage religion had in a number\nof cases been hastily taken; but there remains the question, as a\nrule surprisingly ignored, whether some of the savages who disavowed\nall belief in things supernatural may not have been telling the\nsimple truth about themselves, or even about their families and their\ncomrades. As one sympathetic traveller notes of the Samoyedes: \"There\ncan be no such thing as strict accuracy of grammar or expression among\nan illiterate people; nor can there be among these simple creatures\nany consistent or fixed appreciation even of their own forms of\n... belief.... Having no object in arriving at a common view of such\nmatters, each Samoyede, if questioned separately, will give more or\nless his own disconnected impression of his faith.\" [78] And this holds\nof unfaith. A savage asked by a traveller, \"Do you believe\" so-and-so,\nmight very well give a true negative answer for himself; [79] and the\ntraveller's resulting misconception would be due to his own arbitrary\nassumption that all members of any tribe must think alike.\n\n\n A good witness expressly testifies: \"In the tribe [of Australians]\n with which I was best acquainted, while the blacks had a term\n for ghost and believed that there were departed spirits who were\n sometimes to be seen among the foliage, individual men would tell\n you upon inquiry that they believed that death was the last of\n them\" (Eaglehawk and Crow: A Study of the Australian Aborigines,\n by John Mathew, M.A., B.D., 1899, p. 146). As to the risk of\n wrong negative inferences, on the other hand, see pp. 145, 147.\n\n One of the best of our missionary witnesses, H. A. Junod, in his\n valuable study of the South African Thonga, testifies both to\n the commonness of individual variation in the way of religious\n fancy and the occurrence of sporadic unbelief, usually ended by\n fear. Individuals freely indulge in concrete speculations--e.g.,\n as to the existence of animal souls--which do not win vogue\n (Life of a South African Tribe, vol. ii, 1913, p. 342 sq.),\n though the reporter seems to overlook the possibility that\n such ideas may be adopted by a tribe. Freethinking ideas have,\n of course, by far the least chance of currency. \"The young\n folks of Libombo used to blaspheme in their hearts, saying,\n 'There are no Gods.' But,\" added the witness, \"we very soon saw\n that there were some, when they killed one of us,\" who trod on\n a snake (work cited, pp. 354-55). That testimony illustrates\n well the difficulties of rational progress in a primitive\n community. But at times the process may be encouraged by the\n environment. The early missionary Ellis gives an instance of a\n community in Hawaii that had abandoned all religious practices:\n \"We asked them who was their God. They said they had no God;\n formerly they had many: but now they had cast them all away. We\n asked them if they had done well in abolishing them. They said\n 'Yes,' for tabu had occasioned much labour and inconvenience,\n and drained off the best of their property. We asked them if it\n was a good thing to have no God.... They said perhaps it was;\n for they had nothing to provide for the great sacrifices, and were\n under no fear of punishment for breaking tabu; that now one fire\n cooked their food, and men and women ate together the same kind\n of provisions.\" (W. Ellis, Tour Through Hawaii or Owhyhee, 1827,\n p. 100.) The community in question had in their own way reached\n the Lucretian verdict, Tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum.\n\n\nUnless, again, such witnesses as Moffat be unfaithful reporters as\nwell as mistaken in their inferences, some of the natives with whom\nthey dealt were all but devoid of the ordinary religious notions [80]\nwhich in the case of other natives have enabled the missionaries to\nplant their doctrines. Nor is there anything hard of belief in the idea\nthat, just as special religious movements spread credence in certain\nperiods, a lack of active teachers in certain tribes may for a time\nhave let previously common beliefs pass almost out of knowledge. If\nit be true that the Black Death wrought a great decline in the\necclesiastical life of England in the fourteenth century, [81] a long\nperiod of life-destroying conditions might eliminate from the life of\na savage tribe all lore save that of primary self-preservation. Moffat\nincidentally notes the significant fact that rain-makers in his time\nwere usually foreigners to the tribes in which they operated. [82]\n\nThe explanation is partly that given by him later, that \"a rain-maker\nseldom dies a natural death,\" [83] most being executed as impostors\nfor their failures. To this effect there are many testimonies. [84]\nAmong the Bushmen, says Lichtenstein, when a magician \"happens to\nhave predicted falsely several times in succession, he is thrust out\nof the kraal, and very likely burned or put to death in some other\nway.\" [85] \"A celebrated magician,\" says Burton again, \"rarely if\never dies a natural death.\" [86] And it is told of the people of\nNiue, or Savage Island, in the South Pacific, that \"of old they had\nkings; but as they were the high priests as well, and were supposed\nto cause the food to grow, the people got angry with them in times\nof scarcity, and killed them; and as one after the other was killed,\nthe end of it was that no one wished to be king.\" [87] So, in Uganda,\nif a chief and his medicine-men cannot make rain, \"his whole existence\nis at stake in times of distress.\" One chief was actually driven out;\nand the rain-doctors always live on sufferance. [88] In such a state\nof things religion might well lose vogue.\n\nAmong some peoples of the Slave Coast, it appears, the regular\npriests, despite their power and prestige, are always under suspicion\nby reason of their frequent miscarriages; and they are--or were--not\nunfrequently put to death. [89] Here there is disbelief in the priest\nwithout disbelief in the God. But a disbelief in the priest which\ntended to exterminate him might well diminish religion.\n\nOn the other hand, a relative indifference to religion in a given\ntribe might result from the influence of one or more leading men who\nspontaneously doubted the religious doctrine offered to them, as many\nin Israel, on the face of the priestly records, disbelieved in the\nwhole theocratic polity. In modern times preachers are constantly\nfound charging \"unbelief\" on their own flocks, in respect not of\nany criticism of religious narrative or dogma, but of simple lack\nof ostensible faith in doctrines of prayer and Providence nominally\naccepted. [90] Among peasants who have never seen a freethinking book\nor heard a professed freethinker's arguments may be heard expressions\nof spontaneous unfaith in current doctrines of Providence.\n\nThis is but a type of variations possible in primitive\nsocieties. Despite the social potency of primitive custom, variation\nmay be surmised to occur in the mental as in the physical life at all\nstages; and what normally happens in savagery and low civilization\nappears to be a cancelment of the skeptical variation by the total\ncircumstances--the strength of the general lead to supernaturalism,\nthe plausibility of such beliefs to the average intelligence, and\nthe impossibility of setting up skeptical institutions to oppose\nthe others. In civilized ages skeptical movements are repeatedly\nseen to dwindle for simple lack of institutions; which, however,\nare spontaneously set up by and serve as sustainers of religious\nsystems. On the simpler level of savagery, skeptical personalities\nwould in the long run fail to affirm themselves as against the\ninstitutions of ordinary savage religion--the seasonal feasts,\nthe ceremonies attending birth and death, the use of rituals,\nimages, charms, sorcery, all tending to stimulate and conserve\nsupernatural beliefs in general. Only the abnormally courageous would\ndare outspokenly to doubt or deny at all; and their daring would put\nthem in special jeopardy. [91] The ancient maxim, Primus in orbe deos\nfecit timor, is verified by all modern study of primitive life. [92]\nIt is a recent traveller who gives the definition: \"Fetishism is the\nresult of the efforts of the savage intelligence seeking after a theory\nwhich will account for the apparent hostility of nature to man.\" [93]\nAnd this incalculable force of fear is constantly exploited by the\nreligious bias from the earliest stages of sorcery. [94]\n\nThe check to intellectual evolution would here be on all fours with\nsome of the checks inferribly at work in early moral evolution,\nwhere the types with the higher ideals would seem often to be\npositively endangered by their peculiarity, and would thus be the\nless likely to multiply. And what happened as between man and man\nwould further tend to happen at times as between communities. Given\nthe possible case of a tribe so well placed as to be unusually little\naffected by fear of enemies and the natural forces, the influence\nof rationalistic chiefs or of respected tribesmen might set up for\na time a considerable anti-religious variation, involving at least\na minimizing of religious doctrine and practices. Such a case is\nactually seen among the prosperous peoples of the Upper Congo, some of\nwhom, like the poorer tribes known to Moffat, have no \"medicine-men\"\nof their own, and very vague notions of deity. [95] But when such a\ntribe did chance to come into conflict with others more religious, it\nwould be peculiarly obnoxious to them; and, being in the terms of the\ncase unwarlike, its chance of survival on the old lines would be small.\n\n\n Such a possibility is suggested with some vividness by the familiar\n contrast between the modern communities of Fiji and Samoa--the\n former cruel, cannibalistic, and religious, the latter much less\n austerely religious and much more humane. The ferocious Fijians\n \"looked upon the Samoans with horror, because they had no religion,\n no belief in any such deities [as the Fijians'], nor any of the\n sanguinary rites which prevailed in other islands\" (Spencer,\n Study of Sociology, pp. 293-94, following J. Williams, Narrative\n of Missionary Enterprise in the South Sea Islands, ed. 1837,\n pp. 540-41; cp. the Rev. A. W. Murray, Forty Years' Mission Work,\n 1876, p. 171). The \"no religion\" is, of course, only relatively\n true. Mr. Lang has noticed the error of the phrase \"the godless\n Samoans\" (cp. Turner, Samoa a Hundred Years Ago, 1884, pp. 16-17);\n but, while suggesting that the facts are the other way, he admits\n that in their creed \"the religious sentiment has already become\n more or less self-conscious, and has begun to reason on its own\n practices\" (Myth, Ritual, and Religion, ii, 34; 2nd ed., ii, 58).\n\n\nTaking the phenomena all along the line of evolution, we are led to the\ngeneralization that the rationalistic tendency, early or late, like\nthe religious tendency, is a variation which prospers at different\ntimes in different degrees relatively to the favourableness of the\nenvironment. This view will be set forth in some detail in the course\nof our history.\n\nIt is not, finally, a mere surmise that individual savages\nand semi-savages in our own time vary towards disbelief in the\nsupernaturalism of their fellows. To say nothing of the rational\nskepticism exhibited by the Zulu converts of Bishop Colenso, which was\nthe means of opening his eyes to the incredibility of the Pentateuch,\n[96] or of the rationalism of the African chief who debated with\nSir Samuel Baker the possibility of a future state, [97] we have the\nexpress missionary record that the forcible suppression of idolatry and\ntabu and the priesthood by King Rihoriho in the island of Hawaii, in\n1819, was accomplished not only \"before the arrival of any missionary,\"\nbut on purely common-sense grounds, and with no thought of furthering\nChristianity, though he had heard of the substitution of Christianity\nfor the native religion by Pomare in Tahiti. Rihoriho simply desired\nto save his wives and other women from the cruel pressure of the tabu\nsystem, and to divert the priests' revenues to secular purposes;\nand he actually had some strong priestly support. [98] Had not the\nmissionary system soon followed, however, the old worship, which\nhad been desperately defended in battle at the instigation of the\nconservative priests, would in all probability have grown up afresh,\nthough perhaps with modifications. The savage and semi-savage social\nconditions, taken as a whole, are fatally unpropitious to rationalism.\n\nA parallel case to that of Rihoriho is that of King Finow of the Tonga\nIslands, described by Mariner, who was his intimate. Finow was noted\nfor his want of religion. \"He used to say that the Gods would always\nfavour that party in war in which there were the greatest chiefs and\nwarriors\"--the European mot strictly adapted to Fiji conditions. \"He\ndid not believe that the Gods paid much attention in other respects\nto the affairs of mankind; nor did he think that they could have any\nreason for doing so--no more than men could have any reason or interest\nin attending to the affairs of the Gods.\" For the rest, \"it is certain\nthat he disbelieved most of the oracles delivered by the priests,\"\nthough he carefully used them for political and military purposes;\nand he acquiesced in the usage of human sacrifices--particularly on\nhis own account--while professing to deplore the taste of the Gods\nin these matters. His own death seems to have been the result of\npoisoning by a priest, whom the king had planned to strangle. The\nking's daughter was sick, and the priest, instead of bringing about\nher recovery by his prayers, hardily explained that the illness was\nthe act of the Gods in punishment of the king's frequent disrespect\nto them. Daughter and father were alternately ill, till the former\ndied; and then it was that the king, by disclosing his resolve to\nstrangle the priest, brought on his own death (1810). A few warriors\nwere disposed to take revenge on the priest; but the majority, on\nlearning the facts, shuddered at the impious design of the late king,\nand regarded his death as the natural vengeance of the Gods. But,\nthough such \"impiety\" as his was very rare, his son after him decided\nto abolish the priestly office of \"divine chieftain,\" on the score\nthat it was seen to avail for nothing, while it cost a good deal;\nand the chiefs and common people were soon brought to acquiesce in\nthe policy. [99]\n\nSuch cases appear to occur in many barbarous communities. It is\nrecorded of the Kaffir chief Go that he was perfectly aware of the\nhollowness of the pretensions of the magicians and rain-makers of his\ntribe, though he held it impolitic to break with them, and called them\nin and followed their prescriptions, as did his subjects. [100] Of the\nGaleka chief Segidi it is similarly told that, while his medicine-men\nwent into trances for occult knowledge preparatory to a military\nexpedition, he carefully obtained real information through spies,\nand, while liberally rewarding his wizards, sent his sons to school\nat Blythswood. [101] Yet again, in Bede's Ecclesiastical History,\nwe have the story of King Edwin's priest, Coifi, na\u00efvely avowing that\nhe saw no virtue in his religion, [102] inasmuch as many men received\nmore royal favours than he, who had been most diligent in serving the\nGods. [103] Such a declaration might very well have been arranged\nfor by the Christian Bishop Paulinus, who was converting the king,\nand would naturally provide for Coifi; but on any view a process of\nskepticism had taken place in the barbarian's mind. [104]\n\nOther illustrations come from the history of ancient Scandinavia. Grimm\nnotes in several Norse sagas and songs expressions of contempt\nfor various Gods, which appear to be independent of Christian\ninfluence; [105] and many warriors continued alike the Christian\nand the Pagan deities. In the saga of King Olaf Tryggvason, who\nenforced Christianity on Norway, it is declared by one chief that\nhe relied much more on his own arm than on Thor and Odin; while\nanother announced that he was neither Christian nor Pagan, adding:\n\"My companions and I have no other religion than the confidence of\nour own strength and in the good success which always attends us in\nwar.\" Similar sentiments are recorded to have been uttered by Rolf\nKrake, a legendary king of Denmark (circa 500); [106] and we have in\nthe \u00c6neid the classic type--doubtless drawn from barbaric life--of\nMezentius, divum contemptor, who calls his right arm his God, and in\ndying declares that he appeals to no deity. [107] Such utterances,\nindeed, do not amount to rational freethinking; but, where some\ncould be thus capable of anti-theism, it is reasonable to surmise\nthat among the more reflective there were some capable of simple\natheism or non-belief, and of the prudence of keeping the fact to\nthemselves. Partial skepticism, of course, would be much more common,\nas among the Aryan Kafirs of the Hindu-Kush, with whom, before their\nconquest by the Ameer of Afghanistan, a British agent found among\nthe younger men an inclination to be skeptical about some sacred\nceremonies, while very sincere in their worship of their favourite\ndeity, the God of war. [108]\n\nIt is thus seen to be inaccurate to say, as has been said by\nan accomplished antagonist of apriorism, that \"under the yoke of\ntribal custom skepticism can hardly arise: there is no place for the\nhalf-hearted: as all men feel alike, so all think alike: skepticism\narises when beliefs are put into formal propositions.\" [109] It is\nbroadly true that \"there is no place for\" the doubter as such in\nthe tribal society; but doubters do exist. Skepticism--in the sense\nin which the term is here used, that of rational disbelief--may\neven be commoner in some stages of the life of tribal customs than\nin some stages of backward civilization loaded with formulated\ncreeds. What is true is that in the primitive life the rationalism\nnecessarily fails, for lack of culture and institutions, to diffuse\nand establish itself, whereas superstition succeeds, being naturally\ninstitution-making. Under such conditions skepticism is but a recurrent\nvariation. [110]\n\nIt is significant, further, that in the foregoing cases of unbelief\nat the lower levels of civilization it is only the high rank of the\ndoubter that secures publication for the fact of the doubt. In Hawaii,\nor Tonga, only a king's unbelief could make itself historically\nheard. So in the familiar story of the doubting Inca of Peru, who\nin public religious assembly is said to have avowed his conclusion\nthat the deified Sun was not really a living thing, it is the\nstatus of the speaker that gives his words a record. The doubt had\nin all likelihood been long current among the wise men of Peru;\nit is indeed ascribed to two or three different Incas; [111] but,\nsave for the Incas' promulgation of it, history would bear no trace\nof Peruvian skepticism. So again in the Acolhuan State of Tezcuco,\nthe most civilized in the New World before the Spanish conquest,\nthe great King Netzahualcoyotl is found opposing the cults of human\nsacrifice and worshipping an \"unknown God,\" without an image and with\nonly incense for offering. [112] Only the king in such an environment\ncould put on record such a conception. There is, in fact, reason to\nbelieve that all ancient ameliorations of bloody rites were the work\nof humane kings or chiefs, [113] as they are known to have been among\nsemi-savages in our own day. [114] In bare justice we are bound to\nsurmise that similar developments of rationalism have been fairly\nfrequent in unwritten history, and that there must have been much of\nit among the common folk; though, on the other hand, the very position\nof a savage king, and the special energy of character which usually\ngoes to secure it, may count for much in giving him the courage to\nthink in defiance of custom. In modern as in early Christian times,\nit is always to the chief or king of a savage or barbarous tribe\nthat the missionary looks for permission to proceed against the\nforce of popular conservatism. [115] Apart from kings and chiefs,\nthe priesthood itself would be the likeliest soil for skepticism,\nthough, of course, not for the open avowal of it.\n\nThere are to be noted, finally, the facts collected as to marked\nskeptical variation among children; [116] and the express evidence\nthat \"it has not been found in a single instance that an uneducated\ndeaf-mute has had any conception of the existence of a Supreme\nBeing as the Creator and Ruler of the Universe.\" [117] These latter\nphenomena do not, of course, entitle us to accept Professor Gruppe's\nsweeping theorem that it is the religious variation that is abnormal,\nand that religion can have spread only by way of the hereditary\nimposition of the original insanity of one or two on the imagination\nof the many. [118] Deaf-mutes are not normal organisms. But all\nthe facts together entitle us to decide that religion, broadly\nspeaking, is but the variation that has chiefly flourished, by\nreason of its adaptation to the prevailing environment thus far;\nand to reject as unscientific the formulas which, even in the face\nof the rapidly-spreading rationalism of the more civilized nations,\nstill affirm supernaturalist beliefs to be a universal necessity of\nthe human mind.\n\nOn the same grounds, we must reject the claim--arbitrarily set up by\none historian in the very act of showing how religion historically\noppugns science--that all sacred books as such \"are true because they\nhave been developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolution\nof truth in human history; and because in poem, chronicle, code,\nlegend, myth, apologue, or parable, they reflect this development\nof what is best in the onward march of humanity.\" [119] In this\nproposition the opening words, \"are true because\" are strictly\nmeaningless. All literature whatever has been developed under the\nsame general laws. But if it be meant that sacred books were specially\nlikely to garner truth as such, the claim must be negated. In terms of\nthe whole demonstration of the bias of theology against new truth in\nmodern times, the irresistible presumption is that in earlier times\nalso the theological and theocratic spirit was in general hostile\nto every process by which truth is normally attained. And if the\nthesis be limited to moral truth, it is still less credible. It is,\nin fact, inconceivable that literature so near the popular level as\nto suit whole priesthoods should be morally the best of which even\nthe age producing it is capable; and nothing is more certain than\nthat enlightened ethic has always had to impeach or explain away the\nbarbarisms of some sacred books. The true summary is that in all cases\nthe accepted sacred books have of necessity fallen short not only of\nscientific truth and of pure ethic, but even of the best speculation\nand the best ethic of the time of their acceptance, inasmuch as they\nexcluded the criticism of the freethinking few on the sacred books\nthemselves. There is sociological as well as physical science, and\nthe former is flouted when the whole freethinking of the human race in\nthe period of Bible-making is either ignored or treated as worthless.\n\nIt is probable, for instance, that in all stages of primitive religion\nthere have been disbelievers in the value of sacrifice, who might or\nmight not dare to denounce the practice. The demurrers to it in the\nHebrew prophetic literature are probably late; but they were in all\nlikelihood anticipated in early times. Among the Fijians, for whom\ncannibalism was an essentially religious act, and the privilege of\nthe males of the aristocracy, there were a number of the latter who,\nbefore and apart from the entrance of Christianity, abominated and\ndenounced the practice, reasoning against it also on utilitarian\ngrounds, while the orthodox made it out to be a social duty. There\nwere even whole towns which revolted against it and made it tabu;\nand it was by force mainly of this rationalistic reaction that the\nmissionaries succeeded so readily in putting down the usage. [120]\nIt is impossible to estimate how often in the past such a revolt of\nreason against religious insanity has been overborne by the forces\nof pious habit.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nPROGRESS UNDER ANCIENT RELIGIONS\n\n\n\u00a7 1. EARLY ASSOCIATION AND COMPETITION OF CULTS\n\nWhen religion has entered on the stage of quasi-civilized organization,\nwith fixed legends or documents, temples, and the rudiments of\nhierarchies, the increased forces of terrorism and conservatism\nare in nearly all cases seen to be in part countervailed by the\nsimple interaction of the systems of different communities. There\nis no more ubiquitous force in the whole history of the subject,\noperating as it does in ancient Assyria, in the life of Vedic India\nand Confucian China, and in the diverse histories of progressive\nGreece and relatively stationary Egypt, down through the Christian\nMiddle Ages to our own period of comparative studies.\n\nIn ages when any dispassionate comparative study was impossible,\nreligious systems appear to have been considerably modified by the\ninfluence of those of conquered peoples on those of their conquerors,\nand vice vers\u00e2. Peoples who while at arm's length would insult and\naffect to despise each other's Gods, and would deride each other's\nmyths, [121] appear frequently to have altered their attitude when\none had conquered the other; and this not because of any special\ngrowth of sympathy, but by force of the old motive of fear. In the\nstage of natural polytheism no nation really doubted the existence\nof the Gods of another; at most, like the Hebrews of the early\nhistoric period, it would set its own God above the others, calling\nhim \"Lord of Lords.\" But, every community having its own God, he\nremained a local power even when his own worshippers were conquered,\nand his cult and lore were respected accordingly. This procedure,\nwhich has been sometimes attributed to the Romans in particular as\na stroke of political sagacity, was the normal and natural course\nof polytheism. Thus in the Hebrew books the Assyrian conqueror is\nrepresented as admitting that it is necessary to leave a priest who\nknows \"the manner of the God of the land\" among the new inhabitants\nhe has planted there.\n\n\n See 2 Kings xvii, 26. Cp. Ruth i, 16, and Judges xvii, 13. The\n account by Herodotos (ii, 171) of the preservation of the\n Pelasgic rites of D\u00eam\u00eat\u00ear by the women of Arcadia points to the\n same principle. See also hereinafter, ch. vi, \u00a7 1; K. O. M\u00fcller,\n Introd. to a Sci. Study of Mythol., Eng. trans., p. 193; Adolf\n Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, 1860, i, 189; Rhys,\n Celtic Britain, 2nd ed., p. 69; Max M\u00fcller, Anthropological\n Religion, p. 164; Gibbon, ch. xxxiv--Bohn ed., iii, 554, note;\n Tylor, Primitive Culture, i, 113-15; and Dr. F. B. Jevons's\n Introd. to the Hist. of Relig., 1896, pp. 36-40, where the fear\n felt by conquering races for the occult powers of the conquered is\n limited to the sphere of \"magic.\" But when Dr. Jevons so defines\n magic as to admit of his proposition (p. 38) that \"the hostility\n from the beginning between religion and magic is universally\n admitted,\" he throws into confusion the whole phenomena of the\n early official-religious practice of magic, of which sacrifice\n and prayer are the type-forms that have best survived. And in\n the end he upsets his definition by noting (p. 40) how magic,\n \"even where its relation to religion is one of avowed hostility,\"\n will imitate religion. Obviously magic is a function or aspect or\n element of primitive religion (cp. Roskoff, Das Religionswesen der\n rohesten Naturv\u00f6lker, 1880, p. 144; Sayce, pp. 315, 319, 327, and\n passim; and Tiele, Egyptian Rel., pp. 22, 32); and any \"hostility,\"\n far from being universal, is either a social or a philosophical\n differentiation. On the whole question compare the author's Pagan\n Christs, 2nd ed., pp. 11-38. In the opinion of Weber (Hist. of\n Ind. Lit., p. 264) the magic arts \"found a more and more fruitful\n soil as the religious development of the Hindus progressed\";\n \"so that they now, in fact, reign almost supreme.\" See again\n Dr. Jevons's own later admission, p. 395, where the exception of\n Christianity is somewhat arbitrary. On this compare Kant, Religion\n innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, B. iv, Th. ii, \u00a7 3.\n\n\nSimilar cases have been noted in primitive cults still surviving. Fear\nof the magic powers of \"lower\" or conquered races is in fact normal\nwherever belief in wizardry survives; and to the general tendency may\nbe conjecturally ascribed such phenomena as that of the Saturnalia,\nin which masters and slaves changed places, and the institution of the\nLevites among the Hebrews, otherwise only mythically explained. But if\nconquerors and conquered thus tended to amalgamate or associate their\ncults, equally would allied tribes tend to do so; and, when particular\nGods of different groups were seen to correspond in respect of special\nattributes, a further analysis would be encouraged. Hence, with every\nextension of every State, every advance in intercourse made in peace\nor through war, there would be a further comparison of credences,\na further challenge to the reasoning powers of thoughtful men.\n\n\n On the normal tendency to defer to local deities, compare Tylor,\n Primitive Culture, as last cited; B. Thomson, The Fijians,\n 1908, p. 112; A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-Speaking Peoples of the Gold\n Coast, 1887, p. 147, and The Ewe-Speaking Peoples, 1890, p. 55;\n P. Wurm, Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2te Aufl., p. 43 (as to\n Madagascar); Sir H. Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate, 1902, ii,\n 589; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturv\u00f6lker, iii, 186; P. Kropotkin,\n Memoirs of a Revolutionist, ed. 1908, p. 191; W. W. Skeat, Malay\n Magic, 1900, pp. 56, 84; Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern\n India, 1909, i, 86-87, 94, 100; iii, 188; iv, 170; v, 467-68;\n W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, 1906, p. 263; Rae, The White Sea\n Peninsula, 1881, p. 262; \u00c9lie Reclus, Primitive Folk, pp. 254-56;\n Grant Allen, Evolution of the Idea of God, 1897, pp. 289, 301-302;\n Castr\u00e9n, Vorlesungen \u00fcber die Finnische Mythologie, 1853, p. 281;\n Gummere, Germanic Origins, 1892, p. 140, citing Weinhold, Deutsche\n Frauen, i, 105; Gobineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans\n l'Asie centrale, 2e \u00e9d. p. 67; E. Higgins, Hebrew Idolatry and\n Superstition, 1893, pp. 20, 24; Robertson Smith, Religion of\n the Semites, 1889, p. 77; Wellhausen, Heidenthum, pp. 129, 183,\n cited by Smith, p. 79; Lang, Making of Religion, p. 65; Frazer,\n Golden Bough, 2nd ed. ii, 72. Above all, see the record in Old New\n Zealand, \"by a Pakeha Maori\" (2nd ed. Auckland, 1863, p. 154),\n of the believing resort of some white men to native wizards in\n New Zealand.\n\n Stevenson, again, is evidently proceeding upon observation\n when he makes his trader in The Beach of Fales\u00e0 say: \"We\n laugh at the natives and their superstitions; but see how many\n traders take them up, splendidly educated white men that have\n been bookkeepers (some of them) and clerks in the old country\"\n (Island Nights' Entertainments, 1893, pp. 104-105). In Abyssinia,\n \"Galla sorceresses are frequently called in by the Christians of\n Shoa to transfer sickness or to rid the house of evil spirits\"\n (Major W. Cornwallis Harris, The Highlands of Aethiopia, 1844,\n iii, 50). On the other hand, some Sudanese tribes \"believe in the\n virtue both of Christian and Moslem amulets, but have hitherto lent\n a deaf ear to the preachers of both these religions\" (A. H. Keane,\n Man, Past and Present, 1900, p. 50).\n\n This tendency did not exclude, but would in certain cases\n conflict with, the strong primitive tendency to associate every\n God permanently with his supposed original locality. Tiele writes\n (Hist. of the Egypt. Relig., Eng. trans. introd. p. xvii) that in\n no case was a place given to the Gods of one nation in another's\n pantheon \"if they did not wholly alter their form, character,\n appearance, and not seldom their very name.\" This seems an\n over-statement, and is inconsistent with Tiele's own statement\n (Hist. compar\u00e9e des anc. relig. \u00e9gyptiennes et s\u00e9mitiques,\n French trans., 1882, pp. 174-80) as to the adoption of Sumerian\n and Akkadian Gods and creeds by the Semites. What is clear is\n that local cults resisted the removal of their Gods' images;\n and the attempt to deport such images to Babylon, thus affecting\n the monopoly of the God of Babylon himself, was a main cause of\n the fall of Nabonidos, who was driven out by Cyrus. (E. Meyer,\n Geschichte des Alterthums, i (1884), 599.) But the Assyrians\n invoked Bel Merodach of Babylon, after they had conquered Babylon,\n in terms of his own ritual; even as Israelites often invoked\n the Gods of Canaan (cp. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, Relig. of the\n Anc. Babylonians, p. 123). And King Mardouk-nadinakhe of Babylon,\n in the twelfth century B.C., carried off statues of the Assyrian\n Gods from the town of Hekali to Babylon, where they were kept\n captive for 418 years (Maspero, Hist. anc. des peuples de l'orient,\n 4e \u00e9d. p. 300). A God could migrate with his worshippers from city\n to city (Meyer, iii, 169; Sayce, p. 124); and the Assyrian scribe\n class maintained the worship of their special God Nebo wherever\n they went, though he was a local God to start with (Sayce, pp. 117,\n 119, 121). And as to the recognition of the Gods of different\n Egyptian cities by politic kings, see Tiele's own statement,\n p. 36. Cp. his Outlines, pp. 73, 84, 207.\n\n\nA concrete knowledge of the multiplicity of cults, then, was\nobtruded on the leisured and travelled men of the early empires and\nof such a civilization as that of Hellas; [122] and when to such\nknowledge there was added a scientific astronomy (the earliest to be\nconstituted of the concrete sciences), a revision of beliefs by such\nmen was inevitable. [123] It might take the form either of a guarded\nskepticism or of a monarchic theology, answering to the organization\nof the actual earthly empire; and the latter view, in the nature of\nthe case, would much the more easily gain ground. The freethought of\nearly civilization, then, would be practically limited for a long time\nto movements in the direction of co-ordinating polytheism, to the end\nof setting up a supreme though not a sole deity; the chief God in any\ngiven case being apt to be the God specially affected by the reigning\nmonarch. Allocation of spheres of influence to the principal deities\nwould be the working minimum of plausible adjustment, since only\nin some such way could the established principle of the regularity\nof the heavens be formally accommodated to the current worship; and\nwherever there was monarchy, even if the monarch were polytheistic,\nthere was a lead to gradation among the Gods. [124] A pantheistic\nconception would be the highest stretch of rationalism that could\nhave any vogue even among the educated class. All the while every\nadvance was liable to the ill-fortune of overthrow or arrest at the\nhands of an invading barbarism, which even in adopting the system of an\nestablished priesthood would be more likely to stiffen than to develop\nit. Early rationalism, in short, would share in the fluctuations of\nearly civilization; and achievements of thought would repeatedly be\nswept away, even as were the achievements of the constructive arts.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2. THE PROCESS IN INDIA\n\nThe process thus deducible from the main conditions is found actually\nhappening in more than one of the ancient cultures, as their history\nis now sketched. In the Rig-Veda, which if not the oldest is the least\naltered of the Eastern Sacred Books, the main line of change is obvious\nenough. It remains so far matter of conjecture to what extent the early\nVedic cults contain matter adopted from non-Aryan Asiatic peoples; but\nno other hypothesis seems to account for the special development of the\ncult of Agni in India as compared with the content and development of\nthe other early Aryan systems, in which, though there are developments\nof fire worship, the God Agni does not appear. [125] The specially\npriestly character of the Agni worship, and the precedence it takes\nin the Vedas over the solar cult of Mitra, which among the kindred\nAryans of Iran receives in turn a special development, suggest some\nsuch grafting, though the relations between Aryans and the Hindu\naborigines, as indicated in the Veda, seem to exclude the possibility\nof their adopting the fire-cult from the conquered inhabitants, [126]\nwho, besides, are often spoken of in the Vedas as \"non-sacrificers,\"\n[127] and at times as \"without Gods.\" [128] But this is sometimes\nasserted even of hostile Aryans. [129] In any case the carrying\non of the two main cults of Agni and Indra side by side points to\nan original and marked heterogeneity of racial elements; while the\nvarying combination with them of the worship of other deities, the\nold Aryan Varuna, the three forms of the Sun-God Aditya, the Goddess\nAditi and the eight Adityas, the solar Mitra, Vishnu, Rudra, and\nthe Maruts, imply the adaptation of further varieties of hereditary\ncreed. The outcome is a sufficiently chaotic medley, in which the\nattributes and status of the various Gods are reducible to no code,\n[130] the same feats being assigned to several, and the attributes\nof all claimed for almost any one. Here, then, were the conditions\nprovocative of doubt among the critical; and while it is only in the\nlater books of the Rig-Veda that such doubt finds priestly expression,\nit must be inferred that it was current in some degree among laymen\nbefore the hymn-makers avowed that they shared it. The God Soma,\nthe personification of wine, identified with the Moon-God Chandra,\n[131] \"hurls the irreligious into the abyss.\" [132] This may mean that\nhis cult, like that of his congener Dionysos in Greece, was at first\nforcibly resisted, and forcibly triumphed. At an earlier period doubt\nis directed against the most popular God, Indra, perhaps on behalf of a\nrival cult. [133] Later it seems to take the shape of a half-skeptical,\nhalf-mystical questioning as to which, if any, God is real.\n\n\n From the Catholic standpoint, Dr. E. L. Fischer has argued that\n \"Varuna is in the ontological, physical, and ethical relation\n the highest, indeed the unique, God of ancient India\"; and that\n the Nature-Gods of the Veda can belong only to a later period in\n the religious consciousness (Heidenthum und Offenbarung, 1878,\n pp. 36-37). Such a development, had it really occurred, might\n be said to represent a movement of primitive freethought from\n an unsatisfying monotheism to a polytheism that seemed better\n to explain natural facts. A more plausible view of the process,\n however, is that of von Bradke, to the effect that \"the old\n Indo-Germanic polytheism, with its pronounced monarchic apex, which\n ... constituted the religion of the pre-Vedic [Aryan] Hindus, lost\n its monarchic apex shortly before and during the Rig-Veda period,\n and set up for itself the so-called Henotheism [worship of deities\n severally as if each were the only one], which thus represented\n in India a time of religious decline; a decline that, at the end\n of the period to which the Rig-Veda hymns belong, led to an almost\n complete dissolution of the old beliefs. The earlier collection of\n the hymns must have promoted the decline; and the final redaction\n must have completed it. The collected hymns show only too plainly\n how the very deity before whom in one song all the remaining\n Gods bow themselves, in the next sinks almost in the dust before\n another. Then there sounds from the Rig-Veda (x, 121) the wistful\n question: Who is the God whom we should worship?\" (Dy\u00e2us Asura,\n Ahuramazda, und die Asuras, Halle, 1885, p. 115; cp. note, supra,\n p. 30). On this view the growth of monotheism went on alongside\n of a growth of critical unbelief, but, instead of expressing that,\n provoked it by way of reaction. Dr. Muir more specifically argues\n (Sanskrit Texts, v, 116) that in the Vedic hymns Varuna is a God\n in a state of decadence; and, despite the dissent of M. Barth\n (Religions of India, p. 18), this seems true. But the recession\n of Varuna is only in the normal way of the eclipse of the old\n Supreme God by a nearer deity, and does not suffice to prove a\n growth of agnosticism. M. Fontane (Inde V\u00e9dique, 1881, p. 305)\n asserts on other grounds a popular movement of negation in the\n Vedic period, but offers rather slender evidence. There is better\n ground for his account of the system as one in which different\n cults had the upper hand at different times, the devotees of\n Indra rejecting Agni, and so on (pp. 310-11).\n\n\nTo meet such a doubt, a pantheistic view of things would naturally\narise, and in the Vedas it often emerges. [134] Thus \"Agni is all\nthe Gods\"; and \"the Gods are only a single being under different\nnames.\" [135] For ancient as for more civilized peoples such a doctrine\nhad the attraction of nominally reconciling the popular cult with the\nskepticism it had aroused. Rising thus as freethought, the pantheistic\ndoctrine in itself ultimately became in India a dogmatic system, the\nmonopoly of a priestly caste, whose training in mystical dialectic\nmade them able to repel or baffle amateur criticism. Such fortifying\nof a sophisticated creed by institutions--of which the Brahmanic caste\nsystem is perhaps the strongest type--is one of the main conditions\nof relative permanence for any set of opinions; yet even within\nthe Brahmanic system, by reason, presumably, of the principle that\nthe higher truth was for the adept and need not interfere with the\npopular cult, there were again successive critical revisions of the\npantheistic idea.\n\n\n Prof. Garbe (Philosophy of Anc. India, sect. on Hindu Monism)\n argues that all monistic, and indeed all progressive, thinking in\n ancient India arose not among the Brahmans, who were conscienceless\n oppressors, but among the warrior caste; citing stories in the\n Upanishads in which Brahmans are represented as receiving such\n ideas from warriors. The thesis is much weakened by the Professor's\n acceptance of Krishna as primarily a historic character, of the\n warrior class. But there is ground for his general thesis, which\n recognizes (p. 78) that the Brahmans at length assimilated the\n higher thought of laymen. Max M\u00fcller puts it that \"No nation was\n ever so completely priestridden as the Hindus were under the sway\n of the Brahmanic law. Yet, on the other side, the same people were\n allowed to indulge in the most unrestrained freedom of thought,\n and in the schools of their philosophy the very names of their\n Gods were never mentioned. Their existence was neither denied\n nor asserted....\" (Selected Essays, 1881, ii, 244). \"Sankhya\n philosophy\" [on which Buddhism is supposed to be based], \"in\n its original form, claims the name of an-\u00eesvara, 'lordless' or\n 'atheistic,' as its distinctive title\" (ibid. p. 283).\n\n Of the nature of a freethinking departure, among the early\n Brahmanists as in other societies, was the substitution of\n non-human for human sacrifices--a development of peaceful\n life-conditions which, though not primitive, must have ante-dated\n Buddhism. See Tiele, Outlines, pp. 126-27 and refs.; Barth,\n Religions of India, pp. 57-59; and M\u00fcller, Physical Religion,\n p. 101. Prof. Robertson Smith (Religion of the Semites, p. 346)\n appears to hold that animal sacrifice was never a substitute\n for human; but his ingenious argument, on analysis, is found to\n prove only that in certain cases the idea of such a substitution\n having taken place may have been unhistorical. If it be granted\n that human sacrifices ever occurred--and all the evidence goes\n to show that they were once universal--substitution would be an\n obvious way of abolishing them. Historical analogy is in favour\n of the view that the change was forced on the priesthood from the\n outside, and only after a time accepted by the Brahmans. Thus\n we find the Kh\u00e2rv\u00e2kas, a school of freethinkers, rising in the\n Alexandrian period, making it part of their business to denounce\n the Brahmanic doctrine and practice of sacrifice, and to argue\n against all blood sacrifices; but they had no practical success\n (Tiele, p. 126) until Buddhism triumphed (Mitchell, Hinduism, 1885,\n p. 106; Rhys Davids, tr. of Dialogues of the Buddha, 1899, p. 165).\n\n\nIn the earliest Upanishads the World-Being seems to have been figured\nas the totality of matter, [136] an atheistic view associated in\nparticular with the teaching of Kapila, [137] who himself, however, was\nat length raised to divine status, [138] though his system continues\nto pass as substantially atheistic. [139] This view being open to all\nmanner of anti-religious criticism, which it incurred even within the\nBrahmanic pale, [140] there was evolved an ideal formula in which\nthe source of all things is \"the invisible, intangible, unrelated,\ncolourless one, who has neither eyes nor ears, neither hands nor feet,\neternal, all-pervading, subtile, and undecaying.\" [141] At the same\ntime, the Upanishads exhibit a stringent reaction against the whole\ncontent of the Vedas. Their ostensible object is \"to show the utter\nuselessness--nay, the mischievousness--of all ritual performances;\nto condemn every sacrificial act which has for its motive a desire or\nhope of reward; to deny, if not the existence, at least the exceptional\nand exalted character of the Devas; and to teach that there is no hope\nof salvation and deliverance except by the individual self recognizing\nthe true and universal self and finding rest there, where alone rest\ncan be found.\" [142]\n\nAnd the critical development does not end there. \"In the old\nUpanishads, in which the hymns and sacrifices of the Veda are looked\nupon as useless, and as superseded by the higher knowledge taught by\nthe forest-sages, they are not yet attacked as mere impositions. That\nopposition, however, sets in very decidedly in the Sutra period. In\nthe Nirukta (i, 15) Y\u00e2ska quotes the opinion of Kautsa, that the hymns\nof the Veda have no meaning at all.\" [143] In short, every form of\ncritical revolt against incredible doctrine that has arisen in later\nEurope had taken place in ancient India long before the Alexandrian\nconquest. [144] And the same attitude continued to be common within the\npost-Alexandrian period; for Panini, who must apparently be dated then,\n[145] \"was acquainted with infidels and nihilists\"; [146] and the\nteaching of Brihaspati, [147] on which was founded the system of the\nKh\u00e2rv\u00e2kas--apparently one of several sections of a freethinking school\ncalled the Lok\u00e2yatas [148] or Lok\u00e2yatikas--is extremely destructive of\nVedic pretensions. \"The Veda is tainted by the three faults of untruth,\nself-contradiction, and tautology.... The impostors who call themselves\nVedic pandits are mutually destructive.... The three authors of the\nVedas were buffoons, knaves, and demons: All the well-known formulas\nof the pandits, and all the horrid rites for the queen commanded\nin the Asvamedha--these were invented by buffoons, and so all the\nvarious kinds of presents to the priests; while the eating of flesh\nwas similarly commanded by night-prowling demons.\" [149]\n\nTo what extent such aggressive rationalism ever spread it is now\nquite impossible to ascertain. It seems probable that the word\nLok\u00e2yata, defined by Sanskrit scholars as signifying \"directed\nto the world of sense,\" [150] originally, or about 500 B.C.,\nsignified \"Nature-lore,\" and that this passed as a branch of Brahman\nlearning. [151] Significantly enough, while the lore was not extensive,\nit came to be regarded as disposing men to unbelief, though it does\nnot seem to have suggested any thorough training. At length, in the\neighth century of our era, it is found applied as a term of abuse,\nin the sense of \"infidel,\" by Kum\u00e2rila in controversy with opponents\nas orthodox as himself; and about the same period Sankara connects\nwith it a denial of the existence of a separate and immortal soul;\n[152] though that opinion had been debated, and not called Lok\u00e2yata,\nlong before, when the word was current in the broader sense. [153]\nLatterly, in the fourteenth century, on the strength of some doggerel\nverses which cannot have belonged to the early Brahmanic Lok\u00e2yata,\nit stands for extreme atheism and a materialism not professed by any\nknown school speaking for itself. [154] The evidence, such as it is,\nis preserved only in Sarva-darsana-samgraha, a compendium of all\nphilosophical systems, compiled in the fourteenth century by the\nVedantic teacher M\u00e2dhav\u00e2ch\u00e2ra. [155] One source speaks of an early\ntext-book of materialism, the Sutras of Brihaspati; [156] but this has\nnot been preserved. Thus in Hindu as in later European freethought for\na long period we have had to rely for our knowledge of freethinkers'\nideas upon the replies made by their opponents. It is reasonable to\nconclude that, save insofar as the arguments of Brihaspati were common\nto the Kh\u00e2rv\u00e2kas and the Buddhists, [157] such doctrine as his or that\nof the later Lok\u00e2yatikas cannot conceivably have been more than the\nrevolt of a thoughtful minority against official as well as popular\nreligion; and to speak of a time when \"the Aryan settlers in India\nhad arrived at the conviction that all their Devas or Gods were mere\nnames\" [158] is to suggest a general evolution of rational thought\nwhich can no more have taken place in ancient India than it has done\nto-day in Europe. The old creeds would always have defenders; and\nevery revolt was sure to incur a reaction. In the Hitopadesa or \"Book\nof Good Counsel\" (an undated recension of the earlier Panchatantra,\n\"The Five Books,\" which in its first form may be placed about the fifth\ncentury of our era) there occur both passages disparaging mere study\nof the Sacred Books [159] and passages insisting upon it as a virtue\nin itself [160] and otherwise insisting on ritual observances. [161]\nThey seem to come from different hands.\n\n\n The phenomenon of the schism represented by the two divisions\n of the Yazur Veda, the \"White\" and the \"Black,\" is plausibly\n accounted for as the outcome of the tendencies of a new and an\n old school, who selected from their Brahmanas, or treatises of\n ritual and theology, the portions which respectively suited\n them. The implied critical movement would tend to affect\n official thought in general. This schism is held by Weber to\n have arisen only in the period of ferment set up by Buddhism;\n but other disputes seem to have taken place in abundance in the\n Brahmanical schools before that time. (Cp. Tiele, Outlines,\n p. 123; Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., pp. 10, 27, 232; Max M\u00fcller,\n Anthropol. Relig., 1892, pp. 36-37; and Rhys Davids, Buddhism,\n p. 34.) Again, the ascetic and penance-bearing hermits, who were\n encouraged by the veneration paid them to exalt themselves above\n all save the highest Gods, would by their utterances of necessity\n affect the course of doctrine. Compare the same tendency as seen\n in Buddhism and Jainism (Tiele, pp. 135, 140).\n\n\nBut in the later form of the Ved\u00e2nta, \"the end of the Veda,\" a monistic\nand pantheistic teaching holds its ground in our own day, after all\nthe ups and downs of Brahmanism, alongside of the aboriginal cults\nwhich Brahmanism adopted in its battle with Buddhism; alongside,\ntoo, of the worship of the Veda itself as an eternal and miraculous\ndocument. \"The leading tenets [of the Ved\u00e2nta] are known to some\nextent in every village.\" [162] Yet the Ved\u00e2ntists, again, treat\nthe Upanishads in turn as a miraculous and inspired system, [163]\nand repeat in their case the process of the Vedas: so sure is the law\nof fixation in religious thought, while the habit of worship subsists.\n\nThe highest activity of rationalistic speculation within the Brahmanic\nfold is seen to have followed intelligibly on the most powerful\nreaction against the Brahmans' authority. This took place when their\nsphere had been extended from the region of the Punjaub, of which alone\nthe Rig-Veda shows knowledge, to the great kingdoms of Southern India,\npointed to in the Sutras, [164] or short digests of ritual and law\ndesigned for general official use. In the new environment \"there was a\nwell-marked lay-feeling, a widespread antagonism to the priests, a real\nsense of humour, a strong fund of common sense. Above all there was\nthe most complete and unquestioned freedom of thought and expression\nin religious matters that the world had yet witnessed.\" [165]\n\nThe most popular basis for rejection of a given system--belief in\nanother--made ultimately possible there the rise of a practically\natheistic system capable, wherever embraced, of annulling the\nburdensome and exclusive system of the Brahmans, which had been\nobtruded in its worst form, [166] though not dominantly, in the new\nenvironment. Buddhism, though it cannot have arisen on one man's\ninitiative in the manner claimed in the legends, even as stripped of\ntheir supernaturalist element, [167] was in its origin essentially\na movement of freethought, such as could have arisen only in the\natmosphere of a much mixed society [168] where the extreme Brahmanical\nclaims were on various grounds discredited, perhaps even within their\nown newly-adjusted body. It was stigmatized as \"the science of reason,\"\na term equivalent to \"heresy\" in the Christian sphere; [169] and its\ndefinite rejection of the Vedas made it anti-sacerdotal even while\nit retained the modes of speech of polytheism. The tradition which\nmakes the Buddha [170] a prince suggests an upper-class origin for\nthe reaction; and there are traces of a chronic resistance to the\nBrahmans' rule among their fellow-Aryans before the Buddhist period.\n\n\n \"The royal families, the warriors, who, it may be supposed,\n strenuously supported the priesthood so long as it was a question\n of robbing the people of their rights, now that this was effected\n turned against their former allies, and sought to throw off the\n yoke that was likewise laid upon them. These efforts were, however,\n unavailing: the colossus was too firmly established. Obscure\n legends and isolated allusions are the only records left to us\n in the later writings of the sacrilegious hands which ventured\n to attack the sacred and divinely consecrated majesty of the\n Brahmans; and these are careful to note at the same time the\n terrible punishments which befel those impious offenders\" (Weber,\n Hist. Ind. Lit., p. 19).\n\n\nThe circumstances, however, that the Buddhist writings were from the\nfirst in vernacular dialects, not in Sanskrit, [171] and that the\nmythical matter which accumulated round the story of the Buddha is\nin the main aboriginal, and largely common to the myth of Krishna,\n[172] go to prove that Buddhism spread specially in the non-Aryan\nsphere. [173] Its practical (not theoretic) [174] atheism seems to\nhave rested fundamentally on the conception of Karma, the transition\nof the soul, or rather of the personality, through many stages up to\nthat in which, by self-discipline, it attains the impersonal peace\nof Nirvana; and of this conception there is no trace in the Vedas,\n[175] though it became a leading tenet of Brahmanism.\n\n\n To the dissolvent influence of Greek culture may possibly be\n due some part of the success of Buddhism before our era, and\n even later. Hindu astronomy in the Vedic period was but slightly\n developed (Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., pp. 246, 249, 250); and \"it\n was Greek influence that first infused a real life into Indian\n astronomy\" (Id. p. 251; cp. Letronne, M\u00e9langes d'\u00c9rudition, 1860\n (?), p. 40; Narrien, Histor. Acc. of Orig. and Prog. of Astron.,\n p. 33, and Lib. Use. Kn. Hist. of Astron., c. ii). This implies\n other interactions. It is presumably to Greek stimulus that we must\n trace the knowledge by Aryabhata (Colebrooke's Essays, ed. 1873,\n ii, 404; cp. Weber, p. 257) of the doctrine of the earth's\n diurnal revolution on its axis; and the fact that in India as in\n the Mediterranean world the truth was later lost from men's hands\n may be taken as one of the proofs that the two civilizations alike\n retrograded owing to evil political conditions. In the progressive\n period (from about 320 B.C. onwards for perhaps some centuries)\n Greek ideas might well help to discredit traditionalism; and their\n acceptance at royal courts would be favourable to toleration\n of the new teaching. At the same time, Buddhism must have been\n favoured by the native mental climate in which it arose.\n\n\nThe main differentiation of Buddhism from Brahmanism, again, is its\nethical spirit, which sets aside formalism and seeks salvation in an\ninward reverie and discipline; and this element in turn can hardly\nbe conceived as arising save in an old society, far removed from the\nwarlike stage represented by the Vedas. Whatever may have been its\nearly association with Brahmanism [176] then, it must be regarded\nas essentially a reaction against Brahmanical doctrine and ideals;\na circumstance which would account for its early acceptance in the\nPunjaub, where Brahmanism had never attained absolute power and was\njealously resisted by the free population. [177] And the fact that\nJainism, so closely akin to Buddhism, has its sacred books in a dialect\nbelonging to the region in which Buddhism arose, further supports the\nview that the reaction grew out of the thought of a type of society\ndiffering widely from that in which Brahmanism arose. Jainism, like\nBuddhism, is substantially atheistic, [178] and like it has an ancient\nmonkish organization to which women were early admitted. The original\ncrypto-atheism or agnosticism of the Buddhist movement thus appears as\na product of a relatively high, because complex, moral and intellectual\nevolution. It certainly never impugned the belief in the Gods; on\nthe contrary, the Buddha is often represented as speaking of their\nexistence, [179] and at times as approving of their customary worship;\n[180] but he is never said to counsel his own order to pray to them;\nhe makes light of sacrifice; and above all he is made quite negative\nas to a future life, preaching the doctrine of Karma in a sense which\nexcludes individual immortality. [181] \"It cannot be denied that\nif we call the old Gods of the Veda--Indra and Agni and Yama--Gods,\nBuddha was an atheist. He does not believe in the divinity of these\ndeities. What is noteworthy is that he does not by any means deny\ntheir bare existence.... The founder of Buddhism treats the old Gods\nas superhuman beings.\" [182] Thus it is permissible to say both that\nBuddhism recognizes Gods and that it is practically atheistic.\n\n\n \"The fact cannot be disputed away that the religion of Buddha\n was from the beginning purely atheistic. The idea of the Godhead\n ... was for a time at least expelled from the sanctuary of the\n human mind, [183] and the highest morality that was ever taught\n before the rise of Christianity was taught by men with whom the\n Gods had become mere phantoms, without any altars, not even an\n altar to the unknown God\" (Max M\u00fcller, Introd. to the Science of\n Religion, ed. 1882, p. 81. Cp. the same author's Selected Essays,\n 1881, ii, 300.)\n\n \"He [Buddha] ignores God in so complete a way that he does not even\n seek to deny him; he does not suppress him, but he does not speak\n of him either to explain the origin and anterior existence of man\n or to explain the present life, or to conjecture his future life\n and definitive deliverance. The Buddha knows God in no fashion\n whatever\" (Barth\u00e9lemy Saint-Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion,\n 1866, p. v).\n\n \"Buddhism and Christianity are indeed the two opposite poles with\n regard to the most essential points of religion: Buddhism ignoring\n all feeling of dependence on a higher power, and therefore denying\n the very existence of a supreme deity\" (M\u00fcller, Introd. to Sc. of\n Rel., p. 171).\n\n \"Lastly, the Buddha declared that he had arrived at [his]\n conclusions, not by study of the Vedas, nor from the teachings\n of others, but by the light of reason and intuition alone\"\n (Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 48). \"The most ancient Buddhism\n despises dreams and visions\" (Id., p. 177). \"Agnostic atheism\n ... is the characteristic of his [Buddha's] system of philosophy\"\n (Id., p. 207).\n\n \"Belief in a Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe,\n is unquestionably a modern graft upon the unqualified atheism of\n S\u00e1kya Muni: it is still of very limited recognition. In none of\n the standard authorities ... is there the slightest allusion to\n such a First Cause, the existence of which is incompatible with\n the fundamental Buddhist dogma of the eternity of all existence\"\n (H. H. Wilson, Buddha and Buddhism, in Essays and Lectures,\n ed. by Dr. R. Rost, 1862, ii, 361. Cp. p. 363).\n\n\nOn the other hand, the gradual colouring of Buddhism with popular\nmythology, the reversion (if, indeed, this were not early) to\nadoration and worship of the Buddha himself, and the final collapse\nof the system in India before the pressure of Brahmanized Hinduism,\nall prove the potency of the sociological conditions of success and\nfailure for creeds and criticisms. Buddhism took the monastic form\nfor its institutions, thus incurring ultimate petrifaction alike\nmorally and intellectually; and in any case the normal Indian social\nconditions of abundant population, cheap food, and general ignorance\ninvolved an overwhelming vitality for the popular cults. These the\northodox Brahmans naturally took under their protection as a means\nof maintaining their hold over the multitude; [184] and though their\nown highest philosophy has been poetically grafted on that basis,\nas in the epic of the Mah\u00e2bh\u00e2rata and in the Bhagavat Gita, [185]\nthe ordinary worship of the deities of these poems is perforce\nutterly unphilosophical, varying between a primitive sensualism\nand an emotionalism closely akin to that of popular forms of\nChristianity. Buddhism itself, where it still prevails, exhibits\nsimilar tendencies. [186]\n\n\n It is disputed whether the Brahman influence drove Buddhism\n out of India by physical force, or whether the latter decayed\n because of maladaptation to its environment. Its vogue for some\n seven hundred years, from about 300 B.C. to about 400 A.C.,\n seems to have been largely due to its protection and final\n acceptance as a State religion by the dynasty of Chandragupta\n (the Sandracottos of the Greek historians), whose grandson\n Asoka showed it special favour. His rock-inscribed edicts (for\n which see Max M\u00fcller, Introd. to Science of Rel., pp. 5-6, 23;\n Anthrop. Relig., pp. 40-43; Rhys Davids, Buddhism, pp. 220-28;\n Wheeler's Hist. of India, vol. iii, app. 1; Asiatic Society's\n Journals, vols. viii and xii; Indian Antiquary, 1877, vol. vi)\n show a general concern for natural ethics, and especially for\n tolerance; but his mention of \"The Terrors of the Future\" among\n the religious works he specially honours shows (if genuine) that\n normal superstition, if ever widely repudiated (which is doubtful),\n had interpenetrated the system. The king, too, called himself\n \"the delight of the Gods,\" as did his contemporary the Buddhist\n king of Ceylon (Davids, Buddhism, p. 84). Under Asoka, however,\n Buddhism was powerful enough to react somewhat on the West, then\n in contact with India as a result of the Alexandrian conquest\n (cp. Mahaffy, Greek World under Roman Sway, ch. ii; Weber's\n lecture on Ancient India, Eng. tr., pp. 25-26; Indische Skizzen,\n p. 28 [cited in the present writer's Christianity and Mythology,\n p. 165]; and Weber's Hist of Ind. Lit., p. 255 and p. 309, note);\n and the fact that after his time it entered on a long conflict\n with Brahmanism proves that it remained practically dangerous to\n that system. In the fifth and sixth centuries of our era Buddhism\n in India \"rapidly declined\"--a circumstance hardly intelligible\n save as a result of violence. Tiele, after expressly asserting the\n \"rapid decline\" (Outlines, p. 139), in the next breath asserts that\n there are no satisfactory proofs of such violence, and that, \"on\n the contrary, Buddhism appears to have pined away slowly\" (p. 140:\n contrast his Egypt. Rel., p. xxi). Rhys Davids, in his Buddhism,\n p. 246 (so also Max M\u00fcller, Anthrop. Rel., p. 43), argues for a\n process of violent extinction; but in his later work, Buddhist\n India, he retracts this view and decides for a gradual decline\n in the face of a Brahmanic revival. The evidences for violence\n and persecution are, however, pretty strong. (See H. H. Wilson,\n Essays, as cited, ii, 365-67.) Internal decay certainly appears\n to have occurred. Already in Gautama's own life, according to the\n legends, there were doctrinal disputes within his party (M\u00fcller,\n Anthrop. Rel., p. 38); and soon heresies and censures abounded\n (Introd. to Sc. of Rel., p. 23), till schisms arose and no fewer\n than eighteen sects took shape (Davids, Buddhism, pp. 213-18).\n\n\nThus early in our inquiry we may gather, from a fairly complete\nhistorical case, the primary laws of causation as regards alike the\nprogress and the decadence of movements of rationalistic thought. The\nfundamental economic dilemma, seen already in the life of the savage,\npresses at all stages of civilization. The credent multitude, save\nin the very lowest stages of savage destitution, always feeds and\nhouses those who furnish it with its appropriate mental food; and\nso long as there remains the individual struggle for existence,\nthere will always be teachers ready. If the higher minds in any\npriesthood, awaking to the character of their traditional teaching,\nwithdraw from it, lower minds, howbeit \"sincere,\" will always take\ntheir place. The innovating teacher, in turn, is only at the beginning\nof his troubles when he contrives, on whatever bases, to set up a new\norganized movement. The very process of organization, on the one hand,\nsets up the call for special economic sustenance--a constant motive\nto compromise with popular ignorance--and, on the other hand, tends to\nestablish merely a new traditionalism, devoid of the critical impulse\nin which it arose. [187] And without organization the innovating\nthought cannot communicate itself, cannot hold its own against the\nhuge social pressures of tradition.\n\nIn ancient society, in short, there could be no continuous progress\nin freethinking: at best, there could but be periods or lines of\nrelative progress, the result of special conjunctures of social and\npolitical circumstance. So much will appear, further, from the varying\ninstances of still more ancient civilizations, the evolution of which\nmay be the better understood from our survey of that of India.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3. MESOPOTAMIA\n\nThe nature of the remains we possess of the ancient Babylonian and\nAssyrian religions is not such as to yield a direct record of their\ndevelopment; but they suffice to show that there, as elsewhere,\na measure of rationalistic evolution occurred. Were there no other\nground for the inference, it might not unreasonably be drawn from\nthe post-exilic monotheism of the Hebrews, who, drawing so much of\ntheir cosmology and temple ritual from Babylon, may be presumed to\nhave been influenced by the higher Semitic civilizations in other\nways also. [188] But there is concrete evidence. What appears to\nhave happened in Babylonia and Assyria, whose religious systems were\ngrafted on that of the more ancient Sumer-Akkadian civilization,\nis a gradual subordination of the numerous local Gods (at least in\nthe thought of the more philosophic, including some of the priests)\nto the conception of one all-pervading power. This process would be\nassisted by that of imperialism; and in the recently-recovered code of\nHammurabi we actually find references to Ilu \"God\" (as in the European\nlegal phrase, \"the act of God\") without any further God-name. [189]\nOn the other hand, the unifying tendency would be resisted by the\nstrength of the traditions of the Babylonian cities, all of which\nhad ancient cults before the later empires were built up. [190]\nYet, again, peoples who failed in war would be in some measure led\nto renounce their God as weak; while those who clung to their faith\nwould be led, as in Jewry, to recast its ethic. The result was a\nset of compromises in which the provincial and foreign deities were\neither treated genealogically or grouped in family or other relations\nwith the chief God or Gods of the time being. [191] Certain cults,\nagain, were either kept always at a higher ethical level than the\npopular one, or were treated by the more refined and more critical\nworshippers in an elevated spirit; [192] and this tendency seems to\nhave led to conceptions of purified deities who underlay or transcended\nthe popular types, the names of the latter being held to point to one\nwho was misconceived under their grosser aspects. [193] Astronomical\nknowledge, again, gave rise to cosmological theories which pointed to\na ruling and creating God, [194] who as such would have a specially\nethical character. In some such way was reached a conception of a\nCreator-God as the unity represented by the fifty names of the Great\nGods, who lost their personality when their names were liturgically\ngiven to him [195]--a conception which in some statements even had\na pantheistic aspect [196] among a \"group of priestly thinkers,\" and\nin others took the form of an ideal theocracy. [197] There is record\nthat the Babylonian schools were divided into different sects, [198]\nand their science was likely to make some of these rationalistic. [199]\nProfessor Sayce even goes so far as to say that in the later cosmogony,\n\"under a thin disguise of theological nomenclature, the Babylonian\ntheory of the universe has become a philosophical materialism.\" [200]\n\n\n It might be taken for granted, further, that disbelief would\n be set up by such a primitive fraud as the alleged pretence of\n the priests of Bel Merodach that the God cohabited nightly with\n the concubine set apart for him (Herodotos, i, 181-82), as was\n similarly pretended by the priests of Amun at Thebes. Herodotos\n could not believe the story, which, indeed, is probably a late\n Greek fable; but there must have been some skeptics within the\n sphere of the Semitic cult of sacred prostitution.\n\n As regards freethinking in general, much would depend on the\n development of the Chald\u00e6an astronomy. That science, growing out of\n primitive astrology (cp. Whewell, Hist. of the Induct. Sciences,\n 3rd ed. i, 108), would tend to discredit, among its experts,\n much of the prevailing religious thought; and they seem to have\n carried it so far as to frame a scientific theory of comets\n (Seneca, citing Apollonius Myndius, Quaest. Nat., vii, 3;\n cp. Lib. Use. Kn. Hist. of Astron., c. 3; E. Meyer, Gesch. des\n Alterthums, i, 186; and Weber, Ind. Lit., p. 248). Such knowledge\n would greatly favour skepticism, as well as monotheism and\n pantheism. It was sought to be astrologically applied; but, as\n the horoscopes varied, this was again a source of unbelief (Meyer,\n p. 179). Medicine, again, made little progress (Herod., i, 197).\n\n It can hardly be doubted, finally, that in Babylonia and Assyria\n there were idealists who, like the Hebrew prophets, repudiated\n alike image-worship and the religion of sacrifices. The latter\n repudiation occurs frequently in later Greece and Rome. There,\n as in Jerusalem, it could make itself heard in virtue of the\n restrictedness of the power of the priests, who in imperial\n Babylonia and Assyria, on the other hand, might be trusted to\n suppress or override any such propaganda, as we have seen was\n done in Brahmanical India.\n\n Concerning image-worship, apart from the proved fact of pantheistic\n doctrine, and the parallels in Egypt and India, it is to be noted\n that Isaiah actually puts in the mouth of the Assyrian king\n a tirade against the \"kingdoms of the idols\" or \"false gods,\"\n including in these Jerusalem and Samaria (Isa. x, 10, 11). The\n passage is dramatic, but it points to the possibility that in\n Assyria just as in Israel a disbelief in idols could arise from\n reflection on the spectacle of their multitude.\n\n\nThe chequered political history of Babylon and Assyria, however, made\nimpossible any long-continued development of critical and philosophical\nthought. Their amalgamations of creeds and races had in a measure\nfavoured such development; [201] and it was probably the setting up\nof a single rule over large populations formerly at chronic war that\nreduced to a minimum, if it did not wholly abolish, human sacrifice\nin the later pre-Persian empires; [202] but the inevitably subject\nstate of the mass of the people, and the chronic military upset\nof the government, were conditions fatally favourable to ordinary\nsuperstition. The new universalist conceptions, instead of dissolving\nthe special cults in pantheism, led only to a fresh competition of\ncults on cosmopolitan lines, all making the same pretensions, and\nstressing their most artificial peculiarities as all-important. Thus,\nwhen old tribal or local religions went proselytizing in the enlarged\nimperial field, they made their most worthless stipulations--as Jewish\ncircumcision and abstinence from pork, and the self-mutilation of\nthe followers of Cybel\u00ea--the very grounds of salvation. [203] Culture\nremained wholly in the hands of the priestly and official class, [204]\nwho, like the priesthoods of Egypt, were held to conservatism by their\nvast wealth. [205] Accordingly we find the early religion of sorcery\nmaintaining itself in the literature of the advanced empires. [206]\nThe attitude of the Semitic priests and scribes towards the old Akkadic\nas a sacred language was in itself, like the use of sacred books in\ngeneral, long a check upon new thought; [207] and though the Assyrian\nlife seems to have set this check aside, by reason of the lack of a\nculture class in Assyria, the later Babylonian kingdom which rose on\nthe fall of Assyria was too short-lived to profit much by the gain,\nbeing in turn overthrown in the second generation by Cyrus. It is\nsignificant that the conqueror was welcomed by the Babylonian priests\nas against their last king, the inquiring and innovating Nabonidos\n[208] (Nabu-nahid), who had aimed at a monarchic polytheism or\nquasi-monotheism. He is described as having turned away from Mardouk\n(Merodach), the great Babylonian God, who accordingly accepted Cyrus\nin his stead. It is thus clear that Cyrus, who restored the old\nstate of things, was no strict monotheist of the later Persian type,\nbut a schemer who relied everywhere on popular religious interests,\nand conciliated the polytheists and henotheists of Babylon as he did\nthe Yahweh-worshipping Jews. [209] The Persian quasi-monotheism and\nanti-idolatry, however, already existed, and it is conceivable that\nthey may have been intensified among the more cultured through the\npeculiar juxtaposition of cults set up by the Persian conquest.\n\n\n Mr. Sayce's dictum (Hib. Lect., p. 314), that the later ethical\n element in the Akkado-Babylonian system is \"necessarily\" due\n to Semitic race elements, is seen to be fallacious in the light\n of his own subsequent admission (p. 353) as to the lateness of\n the development among the Semites. The difference between early\n Akkadian and later Babylonian was simply one of culture-stage. See\n Mr. Sayce's own remarks on p. 300; and compare E. Meyer (Gesch. des\n Alt., i, 178, 182, 183), who entirely rejects the claim made for\n Semitic ethics. See, again, Tiele, Outlines, p. 78, and Mr. Sayce's\n own account (Anc. Em. of the East, p. 202) of the Phoenician\n religion as \"impure and cruel.\" Other writers take the line of\n arguing that the Phoenicians were \"not Semites,\" and that they\n differed in all things from the true Semites (cp. Dr. Marcus\n Dods, Israel's Iron Age, 1874, p. 10, and Farrar, as there\n cited). The explanation of such arbitrary judgments seems to be\n that the Semites are assumed to have had a primordial religious\n gift as compared with \"Turanians,\" and that the Hebrews in turn\n are assumed to have been so gifted above other Semites. We shall\n best guard against \u00e0 priori injustice to the Semites themselves,\n in the conjunctures in which they really advanced civilization,\n by entirely discarding the unscientific method of explaining the\n history of races in terms of hereditary character (see below, \u00a7\n 6, end).\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4. ANCIENT PERSIA\n\nThe Mazdean system, or worship of Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), of which we\nfind in Herodotos positive historical record as an anti-idolatrous\nand nominally monotheistic creed [210] in the fifth century B.C., is\nthe first to which these aspects can be ascribed with certainty. As\nthe Jews are found represented in the Book of Jeremiah [211] (assumed\nto have been written in the sixth century B.C.) worshipping numerous\nGods with images: and as polytheistic and idolatrous practices are\nstill described in the Book of Ezekiel [212] (assumed to have been\nwritten during or after the Babylonian Captivity), it is inadmissible\nto accept the unauthenticated writings of ostensibly earlier prophets\nas proving even a propaganda of monotheism on their part, the so-called\nMosaic law being known to be in large part of late invention and of\nBabylonian derivation. [213] In any case, the mass of the people were\nclearly image-worshippers. The Persians, on the other hand, can be\ntaken with certainty to have had in the sixth century an imageless\nworship (though images existed for other purposes), with a supreme\nGod set above all others. The Magian or Mazdean creed, as we have\nseen, was not very devoutly held by Cyrus; but Dareios a generation\nlater is found holding it with zeal; and it cannot have grown in a\ngeneration to the form it then bore. It must therefore be regarded as\na development of the religion of some section of the \"Iranian\" race,\ncentering as it does round some deities common to the Vedic Aryans.\n\nThe Mazdean system, as we first trace it in history, was the religion\nof the Medes, a people joined with the Persians proper under Cyrus;\nand the Magi or priests were one of the seven tribes of the Medes,\n[214] as the Levites were one of the tribes of Israel. It may then be\nconjectured that the Magi were the priests of a people who previously\nconquered or were conquered by the Medes, who had then adopted their\nreligion, as did the Persians after their conquest by or union with\nthe Medes. Cyrus, a semi-Persian, may well have regarded the Medes\nwith some racial distrust, and, while using them as the national\npriests, would naturally not be devout in his adherence at a time\nwhen the two peoples were still mutually jealous. When, later,\nafter the assassination of his son Smerdis (Bardes or Bardija) by\nthe elder son, King Cambyses, and the death of the latter, the Median\nand Magian interest set up the \"false Smerdis,\" Persian conspirators\noverthrew the pretender and crowned the Persian Dareios Hystaspis,\nmarking their sense of hostility to the Median and Magian element\nby a general massacre of Magi. [215] Those Magi who survived would\nnaturally cultivate the more their priestly influence, the political\nbeing thus for the time destroyed; though they seem to have stirred up\na Median insurrection in the next century against Dareios II. [216]\nHowever that may be, Dareios I became a zealous devotee of their\ncreed, [217] doubtless finding that a useful means of conciliating\nthe Medes in general, who at the outset of his reign seem to have\ngiven him much trouble. [218] The richest part of his dominions [219]\nwas East-Iran, which appears to have been the original home of the\nworship of Ahura-Mazda. [220]\n\n\n Such is the view of the case derivable from Herodotos, who\n remains the main authority; but recent critics have raised some\n difficulties. That the Magians were originally a non-Median tribe\n seems clear; Dr. Tiele (Outlines, pp. 163, 165) even decides that\n they were certainly non-Aryan. Compare Ed. Meyer (Gesch. des Alt.,\n i, 530, note, 531, \u00a7\u00a7 439, 440), who holds that the Mazdean system\n was in its nature not national but abstract, and could therefore\n take in any race. Several modern writers, however (Canon Rawlinson,\n ed. of Herodotos, i, 426-31; Five Great Monarchies, 2nd ed. ii,\n 345-55, iii, 402-404; Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, Eng. tr. pp. 197,\n 218-39; Sayce, Anc. Emp. of the East, p. 248), represent the\n Magians as not only anti-Aryan (= anti-Persian), but opposed to the\n very worship of Ormazd, which is specially associated with their\n name. It seems difficult to reconcile this view with the facts; at\n least it involves the assumption of two opposed sets of Magi. The\n main basis for the theory seems to be the allusion in the Behistun\n inscription of Dareios to some acts of temple-destruction by the\n usurping Magian Gomates, brother and controller of the pretender\n Smerdis. (See the inscription translated in Records of the Past,\n i, 111-15.) This Meyer sets aside as an unsettled problem, without\n inferring that the Magians were anti-Mazdean (cp. \u00a7 449 and \u00a7\n 511, note). As to the massacre, however, Meyer decides (i, 613)\n that Herodotos blundered, magnifying the killing of \"the Magus\"\n into a slaughter of \"the Magi.\" But this is one of the few points\n at which Herodotos is corroborated by Ktesias (cp. Grote, iii, 440,\n note). A clue to a solution may perhaps be found in the facts that,\n while the priestly system remained opposed to all image-worship,\n Dareios made emblematic images of the Supreme God (Meyer, i,\n 213, 617) and of Mithra; and that Artaxerxes Mnemon later put an\n image of Mithra in the royal temple of Susa, besides erecting many\n images to Anaitis. (Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, iii, 320-21,\n 360-61.) There may have been opposing tendencies; the conquest of\n Babylon being likely to have introduced new elements. The Persian\n art now arising shows the most marked Assyrian influences.\n\n\nThe religion thus imposed on the Persians seems to have been imageless\nby reason of the simple defect of art among its cultivators; [221]\nand to have been monotheistic only in the sense that its chief deity\nwas supreme over all others, including even the great Evil Power,\nAhriman (Angra Mainyu). Its God-group included Mithra, once the\nequal of Ahura-Mazda, [222] and later more prominent than he; [223]\nas well as a Goddess, Anahita, apparently of Akkadian origin. Before\nthe period of Cyrus, the eastern part of Persia seems to have been but\nlittle civilized; [224] and it was probably there that its original\nlack of images became an essential element in the doctrine of its\npriests. As we find it in history, and still more in its sacred book,\nthe Zendavesta, which as we have it represents a late liturgical\ncompilation, [225] Mazdeism is a priest-made religion rather than\nthe work of one Zarathustra or any one reformer; and its rejection\nof images, however originated, is to be counted to the credit of its\npriests, like the pantheism or nominal monotheism of the Mesopotamian,\nBrahmanic, and Egyptian religions. The original popular faith had\nclearly been a normal polytheism. [226] For the rest, the Mazdean ethic\nhas the usual priestly character as regards the virtue it assigns to\nsacrifice; [227] but otherwise compares favourably with Brahmanism.\n\n\n As to this cult being priest-made, see Meyer, i, 523, 540,\n 541. Tiele (Outlines, pp. 167, 178) assumes a special reformation\n such as is traditionally associated with Zarathustra, holding\n that either a remarkable man or a sect must have established\n the monotheistic idea. Meyer (i, 537) holds with M. Darmesteter\n that Zarathustra is a purely mythical personage, made out of a\n Storm-God. Dr. Menzies (Hist. of Relig. p. 384) holds strongly\n by his historic actuality. The problem is analogous to those\n concerning Moses and Buddha; but though the historic case of\n Mohammed bars a confident decision in the negative, the balance\n of presumption is strongly against the traditional view. See the\n author's Pagan Christs, pp. 286-88.\n\n\nThere is no reason to believe, however, that among the Persian peoples\nthe higher view of things fared any better than elsewhere. [228] The\npriesthood, however enlightened it may have been in its inner culture,\nnever slackened the practice of sacrifice and ceremonial; and the\nworship of subordinate spirits and the propitiation of demons figured\nas largely in their beliefs as in any other. In time the cult of the\nSaviour-God Mithra came to the front very much as did that of Jesus\nlater; and in the one case as in the other, despite ethical elements,\nsuperstition was furthered. When, still later, the recognition of\nAhriman was found to endanger the monotheistic principle, an attempt\nseems to have been made under the Sassanian dynasty, in our own era,\nto save it by positing a deity who was father of both Ahura-Mazda\nand Angra-mainyu; [229] but this last slight effort of freethinking\nspeculation came to nothing. Social and political obstacles determined\nthe fate of Magian as of other ancient rationalism.\n\n\n According to Rawlinson, Zoroastrianism under the Parthian\n (Arsacide) empire was gradually converted into a complex system\n of idolatry, involving a worship of ancestors and dead kings\n (Sixth Orient. Mon. p. 399; Seventh Mon. pp. 8-9, 56). Gutschmid,\n however, following Justin (xli, 3, 5-6), pronounces the Parthians\n zealous followers of Zoroastrianism, dutifully obeying it in\n the treatment of their dead (Geschichte Irans von Alexander bis\n zum Untergang der Arsakiden, 1888, pp. 57-58)--a law not fully\n obeyed even by Dareios and his dynasty (Heeren, Asiatic Nations,\n Eng. tr. i, 127). Rawlinson, on the contrary, says the Parthians\n burned their dead--an abomination to Zoroastrians. Certainly\n the name of the Parthian King Mithradates implies acceptance of\n Mazdeism. At the same time Rawlinson admits that in Persia itself,\n under the Parthian dynasty, Zoroastrianism remained pure (Seventh\n Mon. pp. 9-10), and that, even when ultimately it became mixed\n up with normal polytheism, the dualistic faith and the supremacy\n of Ormazd were maintained (Five Monarchies, 2nd ed. iii, 362-63;\n cp. Darmesteter, Zendavesta, i, lxvi, 2nd ed.).\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 5. EGYPT\n\nThe relatively rich store of memorials left by the Egyptian religions\nyields us hardly any more direct light on the growth of religious\nrationalism than do those of Mesopotamia, though it supplies much\nfuller proof that such a growth took place. All that is clear is that\nthe comparison and competition of henotheistic cults there as elsewhere\nled to a measure of relative skepticism, which took doctrinal shape in\na loose monism or pantheism. The language is often monotheistic, but\nnever, in the early period, is polytheism excluded; on the contrary,\nit is affirmed in the same breath. [230] The alternate ascendancy\nof different dynasties, with different Gods, forced on the process,\nwhich included, as in Babylon, a priestly grouping of deities in\nfamilies and triads [231]--the latter arrangement, indeed, being only\na return to a primitive African conception. [232] It involved further\na syncretism or a combining of various Gods into one, [233] and also\nan esoteric explanation of the God-myths as symbolical of natural\nprocesses, or else of mystical ideas. [234] There are even evidences\nof quasi-atheism in the shape of materialistic hymns on Lucretian\nlines. [235] At the beginning of the New Kingdom (1500 B.C.) it had\nbeen fully established for all the priesthoods that the Sun-God was\nthe one real God, and that it was he who was worshipped in all the\nothers. [236] He in turn was conceived as a pervading spiritual force,\nof anthropomorphic character and strong moral bias. [237] This seems to\nhave been by way of a purification of one pre-eminent compound deity,\nAmen-Ra, to begin with, whose model was followed in other cults. [238]\n\"Theocracies of this kind could not have been formed unconsciously. Men\nknew perfectly well that they were taking a great step in advance of\ntheir fathers.\" [239] There had occurred, in short, among the educated\nand priestly class a considerable development, going on through\nmany centuries, alike in philosophical and in ethical thought; the\nethics of the Egyptian \"Book of the Dead\" being quite as altruistic\nas those of any portion of the much later Christian Gospels. [240]\nSuch a development could arise only in long periods of peace and\nlaw-abiding life; though it is found to be accelerated after the\nPersian conquest, which would force upon the Egyptian priesthood\nnew comparisons and accommodations. [241] And yet all this was done\n\"without ever sacrificing the least particle of the beliefs of the\npast.\" [242] The popular polytheism, resting on absolute ignorance,\nwas indestructible; and the most philosophic priests seem never to have\ndreamt of unsettling it, though, as we shall see, a masterful king did.\n\nAn eminent Egyptologist has written that, \"whatever literary treasures\nmay be brought to light in the future as the result of excavations\nin Egypt, it is most improbable that we shall ever receive from\nthat country any ancient Egyptian work which can properly be classed\namong the literature of atheism or freethought; the Egyptian might be\nmore or less religious according to his nature and temperament, but,\njudging from the writings of his priests and teachers which are now\nin our hands, the man who was without religion and God in some form\nor other was most rare, if not unknown.\" [243] It is not clear what\nsignificance the writer attaches to this statement. Unquestionably the\nmass of the Egyptians were always na\u00eff believers in all that was given\nthem as religion; and among the common people even the minds which,\nas elsewhere, varied from the norm of credulity would be too much\ncowed by the universal parade of religion to impugn it; while their\nignorance and general crudity of life would preclude coherent critical\nthought on the subject. But to conclude that among the priesthood and\nthe upper classes there was never any \"freethinking\" in the sense\nof disbelief in the popular and official religion, even up to the\npoint of pantheism or atheism, is to ignore the general lesson of\nculture history elsewhere. Necessarily there was no \"literature of\natheism or freethought.\" Such literature could have no public, and,\nas a menace to the wealth and status of the priesthood, would have\nbrought death on the writer. But in such a multitudinous priesthood\nthere must have been, at some stages, many who realized the mummery\nof the routine religion, and some who transcended the commonplaces\nof theistic thought. From the former, if not from the latter, would\ncome esoteric explanations for the benefit of the more intelligent\nof the laity of the official class, who could read; and it is idle\nto decide that deeper unbelief was privately \"unknown.\"\n\nIt is contended, as against the notion of an esoteric and an exoteric\ndoctrine, that the scribes \"did not, as is generally supposed, keep\ntheir new ideas carefully concealed, so as to leave to the multitude\nnothing but coarse superstitions. The contrary is evident from a\nnumber of inscriptions which can be read by anybody, and from books\nwhich anyone can buy.\" [244] But the assumption that \"anyone\" could\nread or buy books in ancient Egypt is a serious misconception. Even in\nour own civilization, where \"anyone\" can presumably buy freethought\njournals or works on anthropology and the history of religions,\nthe mass of the people are so placed that only by chance does such\nknowledge reach them; and multitudes are so little cultured that they\nwould pass it by with uncomprehending indifference were it put before\nthem. In ancient Egypt, however, the great mass of the people could\nnot even read; and no man thought of teaching them.\n\n\n This fact alone goes far to harmonize the ancient Greek testimonies\n as to the existence of an esoteric teaching in Egypt with Tiele's\n contention to the contrary. See the pros and cons set forth and\n confusedly pronounced upon by Professor Chantepie de la Saussaye,\n Manual of the Science of Religion, Eng. tr. pp. 400-401. We\n know from Diodorus (i, 81), what we could deduce from our other\n knowledge of Egyptian conditions, that, apart from the priests\n and the official class, no one received any literary culture save\n in some degree the higher grades of artificers, who needed some\n little knowledge of letters for their work in connection with\n monuments, sepulchres, mummy-cases, and so forth. Cp. Maspero,\n Hist. anc. des peuples de l'orient, p. 285. Even the images of\n the higher Gods were shown to the people only on festival-days\n (Meyer Gesch. des Alterthums, i, 82).\n\n\nThe Egyptian civilization was thus, through all its stages, obviously\nconditioned by its material basis, which in turn ultimately determined\nits polity, there being no higher contemporary civilization to\nlead it otherwise. An abundant, cheap, and regular food supply\nmaintained in perpetuity a dense and easily-exploited population,\nwhose lot through thousands of years was toil, ignorance, political\nsubjection, and a primitive mental life. [245] For such a population\ngeneral ideas had no light and no comfort; for them was the simple\nhuman worship of the local natural Gods or the presiding Gods of the\nkingdom, alike confusedly conceived as great powers, figured often\nas some animal, which for the primeval mind signified indefinite\ncapacity and unknown possibility of power and knowledge. [246] Myths\nand not theories, magic and not ethics, were their spiritual food,\nalbeit their peaceful animal lives conformed sufficiently to their\ncode. And the life-conditions of the mass determined the policy of\npriest and king. The enormous priestly revenue came from the people,\nand the king's power rested on both orders.\n\n\n As to this revenue see Diodorus Siculus, i, 73; and Erman, Handbook\n of Egyptian Religion, Eng. tr. 1907, p. 71. According to Diodorus,\n a third of the whole land of the kingdom was allotted to the\n priesthoods. About a sixth of the whole land seems to have been\n given to the Gods by Ramessu III alone, besides 113,000 slaves,\n 490,000 cattle, and immense wealth of other kinds (Flinders\n Petrie, Hist. of Egypt, iii (1905), 154-55). The bulk of the\n possessions here enumerated seems to have gone to the temple\n of Amen at Thebes and that of the Sun-God at Heliopolis (Erman,\n as cited). It is to be noted, however, that the priestly order\n included all the physicians, lawyers, clerks, schoolmasters,\n sculptors, painters, land measurers, drug sellers, conjurers,\n diviners, and undertakers. Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians,\n ed. Birch, 1878, i, 157-58; Sharpe, Egypt. Mythol. p. 26;\n Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, \u00a7 68. \"The sacred domains included\n herds of cattle, birds, fishermen, serfs, and temple servants\"\n (Flinders Petrie, as cited, iii, 42). When the revenues assigned\n for a temple of Seti I were found to be misappropriated, and the\n building stopped, his son, Ramessu II, assigned a double revenue\n for the completion of the work and the worship (id.). Like the\n later priesthood of Christendom, that of Egypt forged documents\n to establish claims to revenue (id. p. 69). Captured cattle in\n great quantities were bestowed on temples of Amen (id. p. 149),\n whose priests were especially grasping (id. p. 153). Thus in the\n one reign of Ramessu III they received fifty-six towns of Egypt\n and nine of Syria and 62,000 serfs (id. p. 155).\n\n\nThis was fully seen when King Akhunaton (otherwise Echnaton, or\nIcheniton, or Akhunaton, or Akhunaten, or Chuenaten, or Khu-en-aten, or\nKku-n-aten, or Khouniatonou, or Khounaton!) = Amen-hetep or Amun-hotep\n(or Amenophis) IV, moved by monotheistic zeal, departed so far from the\ncustomary royal policy as to put under the ban all deities save that he\nhad chosen for himself, repudiating the God-name Amen in his own name,\nand making one from that of his chosen Sun-God, Aten (\"the sun's disk\")\nor Aton or Atonou [247] or Iton [248] (latterly held to be = the Syrian\nAdon, \"the Lord,\" symbolized by the sun's disk). There is reason to\nthink that his was not a mere Sun-worship, but the cult of a deity,\n\"Lord of the Disk,\" who looked through the sun's disk as through a\nwindow. [249] In any interpretation, however, the doctrine was wholly\ninacceptable to a priesthood whose multitudinous shrines its success\nwould have emptied. Of all the host of God-names, by one account only\nthat of the old Sun-God Ra-Harmachis was spared, [250] as being held\nidentical with that of Aten; and by one account [251] the disaffection\nof priests and people rose to the point of open rebellion. At length\nAkhunaton, \"Glory of the Disk,\" as he elected to name himself, built\nfor himself and his God a new capital city in Middle Egypt, Akhet-Aten\n(or Khut-Aten), the modern Tell-el-Amarna, where he assembled around\nhim a society after his own heart, and carried on his Aten-worship,\nwhile his foreign empire was crumbling. The \"Tell-el-Amarna tablets\"\nwere found in the ruins of his city, which was deserted a generation\nafter his death. Though the king enforced his will while he lived,\nhis movement \"bore no fruit whatever,\" his policy being reversed\nafter his family had died out, and his own monuments and capital city\nrazed to the ground by orthodox successors. [252] In the same way the\nearlier attempt of the alien Hyksos to suppress the native polytheism\nand image-worship had come to nothing. [253]\n\n\n The history of Akhunaton is established by the later\n Egyptology. Sharpe makes no mention of it, though the point had\n been discussed from 1839 onwards. Cp. Lepsius, Letters from Egypt,\n etc., Bohn trans. 1853, p. 27; and Nott and Gliddon's Types\n of Mankind, 1854, p. 147, and Indigenous Races of the Earth,\n 1857, pp. 116-17, in both of which places will be found the\n king's portrait. See last reference for the idle theory that he\n had been emasculated, as to which the confutation by Wiedemann\n (Aegyptische Geschichte, p. 397, cited by Budge, Hist. of Egypt,\n 1902, iv, 128) is sufficient. In point of fact, he figures in\n the monuments as father of three or seven children (Wiedemann,\n Rel. of Anc. Eg. p. 37; Erman, p. 69; Budge, iv, 123, 127).\n\n Dispute still reigns as to the origin of the cult to which\n he devoted himself. A theory of its nature and derivation,\n based on that of Mr. J. H. Breasted (History of Egypt, 1906,\n p. 396), is set forth in an article by Mr. A. E. P. Weigall\n on \"Religion and Empire in Ancient Egypt\" in the Quarterly\n Review, Jan. 1909. On this view Aten or Aton is simply Adon =\n \"the Lord\"--a name ultimately identified with Adonis, the Syrian\n Sun-God and Vegetation-God. The king's grandfather was apparently\n a Syrian, presumably of royal lineage; and Queen Tii or Thiy, the\n king's mother, who with her following had wrought a revolution\n against the priesthood of Amen, brought him up as a devotee of\n her own faith. On her death he became more and more fanatical,\n getting out of touch with people and priesthood, so that \"his\n empire fell to pieces rapidly.\" Letters still exist (among the\n Tell-el-Amarna tablets) which were sent by his generals in Asia,\n vainly imploring help. He died at the age of twenty-eight; and\n if the body lately found, and supposed to be his, is really so,\n his malady was water on the brain.\n\n Mr. Breasted, finding that Akhunaton's God is described by him in\n inscriptions as \"the father and the mother of all that he made,\"\n ranks the cult very high in the scale of theism. Mr. Weigall\n (art. cited, p. 60; so also Budge, Hist. iv, 125) compares a hymn\n of the king's with Ps. civ, 24 sq., and praises it accordingly. The\n parallel is certainly close, but the document is not thereby\n certificated as philosophic. On the strength of the fact that\n Akhunaton \"had dreamed that the Aton religion would bind the\n nations together,\" Mr. Weigall credits him with harbouring \"an\n illusive ideal towards which, thirty-two centuries later, mankind\n is still struggling in vain\" (p. 66). The ideal of subjugating\n the nations to one God, cherished later by Jews, and still later\n by Moslems, is hardly to be thus identified with the modern ideal\n of international peace. Brugsch, in turn, credits the king with\n having \"willingly received the teaching about the one God of\n Light,\" while admitting that Aten simply meant the sun's disk\n (Hist. of Egypt, 1-vol. ed. p. 216).\n\n Maspero, again, declares Tii to have been an Egyptian of old\n stock, and the God \"Atonou\" to have been the deity of her\n tribe (Hist. anc., as cited, p. 249); and he pronounces the\n cult probably the most ancient variant of the religions of Ra\n (p. 250). Messrs. King and Hall, who also do not accept the theory\n of a Syrian derivation, coincide with Messrs. Breasted and Weigall\n in extolling Akhunaton's creed. In a somewhat summary fashion\n they pronounce (work cited, p. 383) that, \"given an ignorance of\n the true astronomical character of the sun, we see how eminently\n rational a religion\" was this. The conception of a moving window\n in the heavens, which appears to be the core of it, seems rather\n a darkening than a development of the \"philosophical speculations\n of the priests of the Sun at Heliopolis,\" from which it is held by\n Messrs. King and Hall to have been derived. Similarly ill-warranted\n is the decision (id. p. 384) that in Akhunaton's heresy \"we see\n ... the highest attitude [? altitude] to which religious ideas had\n attained before the days of the Hebrew prophets.\" Alike in India\n and in Egypt, pantheistic ideas of a larger scope than his or those\n of the Hebrew prophets had been attained before Akhunaton's time.\n\n Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, on the other hand, points out that the cult\n of the Aten is really an ancient one in Egypt, and was carried\n on by Thothmes III, father of Amen-hetep II, a century before\n Akhunaton (Amen-hetep IV), its \"original home\" being Heliopolis\n (History of Egypt, 1902, iv, 48, 119). So also von Bissing,\n Gesch. Aeg. in Umriss, p. 52 (reading \"Iton\"). Rejecting the view\n that \"Aten\" is only a form of \"Adon,\" Dr. Budge pronounces that\n \"as far as can be seen now the worship of Aten was something\n like a glorified materialism\"--whatever that may be--\"which had\n to be expounded by priests who performed ceremonies similar\n to those which belonged to the old Heliopolitan sun-worship,\n without any connection whatsoever with the worship of Yahweh;\n and a being of the character of the Semitic God Ad\u00f4n had no place\n in it anywhere.\" Further, he considers that it \"contained no\n doctrines on the unity or oneness of Aten similar to those which\n are found in the hymns to Ra, and none of the beautiful ideas\n on the future life with which we are familiar from the hymns and\n other compositions in the Book of the Dead\" (Ib. pp. 120-21).\n\n By Prof. Flinders Petrie Queen Tii or Thiy is surmised to have\n been of Armenian origin (see Budge, iv, 96-98, as to her being\n \"Mesopotamian\"); and Prof. Petrie, like Mr. Breasted, has\n inferred that she brought with her the cult of which her son\n became the devotee. (So also Brugsch, p. 214.) Messrs. King and\n Hall recognize that the cult had made some headway before Akhunaton\n took it up; but deny that there is any reason for supposing Queen\n Tii to have been of foreign origin; adding: \"It seems undoubted\n that the Aten cult was a development of pure Egyptian religious\n thought.\" Certainty on such an issue seems hardly possible; but\n it may be said, as against the theory of a foreign importation,\n that there is no evidence whatever of any high theistic cult of\n Adonis in Syria at the period in question. Adonis was primarily\n a Vegetation-God; and the older view that Aten simply means\n \"the sun's disk\" is hardly disposed of. It is noteworthy that\n under Akhunaton's patronage Egyptian sculpture enjoyed a term\n of freedom from the paralyzing convention which reigned before\n and after (King and Hall, as cited, pp. 383-84). This seems to\n have been the result of the innovating taste of the king (Budge,\n Hist. iv, 124-26).\n\n\nAs the centuries lapsed the course of popular religion was rather\ndownward than upward, if it can be measured by the multiplication of\nsuperstitions. [254] When under the Ramesside dynasty the high-priests\nof Amen became by marriage with the royal family the virtual rulers,\nsacerdotalism went from bad to worse. [255] The priests, who held the\nallegorical key to mythology, seem to have been the main multipliers of\nmagic and fable, mummery, ceremonial, and symbol; and they jealously\nguarded their specialty against lay competition. [256] Esoteric and\nexoteric doctrine flourished in their degrees side by side, [257] the\ninstructed few apparently often accepting or acting upon both; and\nprimitive rites all the while flourished on the level of the lowest\nsavagery, [258] though the higher ethical teaching even improves,\nas in India.\n\nConflicts, conquests, and changes of dynasties seem to have made\nlittle difference in the life of the common people. [259] Religion was\nthe thread by which any ruler could lead them; and after the brief\ndestructive outbreak of Cambyses, [260] himself at first tolerant,\nthe Persian conquerors allowed the old faiths to subsist, caring only,\nlike their predecessors, to prevent strife between the cults which\nwould not tolerate each other. [261] The Ptolemies are found adopting\nand using the native cults as the native kings had done ages before\nthem; [262] and in the learned Greek-speaking society created by their\ndynasty at Alexandria there can have been at least as little concrete\nbelief as prevailed in the priesthood of the older civilization. It\ndeveloped a pantheistic philosophy which ultimately, in the hands\nof Plotinus, compares very well with that of the Upanishads and of\nlater European systems. But this was a hot-house flower; and in the\nopen world outside, where Roman rule had broken the power of the\nancient priesthood and Greek immigration had overlaid the native\nelement, Christianity found an easy entrance, and in a declining\nsociety flourished at its lowest level. [263] The ancient ferment,\nindeed, produced many stirrings of relative freethought in the\nform of Christian heresies to be noted hereafter; one of the most\nnotable being that of Arius, who, like his antagonist Athanasius,\nwas an Alexandrian. But the cast of mind which elaborated the dogma\nof the Trinity is as directly an outcome of Egyptian culture-history\nas that which sought to rationalize the dogma by making the popular\ndeity a created person; [264] and the long and manifold internecine\nstruggles of the sects were the due duplication of the older strifes\nbetween the worshippers of the various sacred animals in the several\ncities. [265] In the end the entire population was but so much clay\nto take the impress of the Arab conquerors, with their new fanatic\nmonotheism standing for the minimum of rational thought.\n\nFor the rest, the higher forms of the ancient religion had been\nable to hold their own till they were absolutely suppressed, with\nthe philosophic schools, by the Byzantine government, which at the\nsame time marked the end of the ancient civilization by destroying\nor scattering the vast collection of books in the Serapeion,\nannihilating at once the last pagan cult and the stored treasure\nof pagan culture. With that culture too, however, there had been\nassociated to the last the boundless credulity which had so long kept\nit company. In the second century of our era, under the Antonines,\nwe have Apuleius telling of Isis worshipped as \"Nature, parent of\nthings, mistress of all elements, the primordial birth of the ages,\nhighest of divinities, queen of departed spirits, first of the heavenly\nones, the single manifestation of all Gods and Goddesses,\" who rules\nall things in earth and heaven, and who stands for the sole deity\nworshipped throughout the world under many names; [266] the while\nher worshipper cherishes all manner of the wildest superstitions,\nwhich even the subtle philosophy of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonic\nschool did not discard. All alike, with the machinery of exorcism,\nwere passed on to the worship of the Christian Queen of Heaven, leaving\nout only the pantheism; and when that worship in turn was overthrown,\nthe One God of Islam enrolled in his train the same host of ancient\nhallucinations. [267] The fatality of circumstance was supreme.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 6. PHOENICIA\n\nOf the inner workings of thought in the Phoenician religion we know\neven less, directly, than can be gathered as to any other ancient\nsystem of similar notoriety, [268] so completely did the Roman conquest\nof Carthage, and the Macedonian conquest of Tyre and Sidon, blot out\nthe literary remains of their peoples. Yet there are some indirect\nclues of a remarkable sort.\n\nIt is hardly to be doubted, in the first place, that Punic speculation\ntook the same main lines as the early thought of Egypt and Mesopotamia,\nwhose cultures, mixing in Syria as early as the fifteenth century\nB.C., had laid the basis of the later Phoenician civilization. [269]\nThe simple fact that among the Syro-Phoenicians was elaborated the\nalphabet adopted by all the later civilizations of the West almost\nimplies a special measure of intellectual progress. We can indeed\ntrace the normal movement of syncretism in the cults, and the normal\ntendency to improve their ethics. The theory of an original pure\nmonotheism [270] is no more tenable here than anywhere else; we\ncan see that the general designation of the chief God of any city,\nusually recognizable as a Sun-God, by a title rather than a name,\n[271] though it pointed to a general worship of a pre-eminent power,\nin no sense excluded a belief in minor powers, ranking even as\ndeities. It did not do so in the admittedly polytheistic period;\nand it cannot therefore be supposed to have done so previously.\n\n\n The chief Phoenician Gods, it is admitted, were everywhere called\n by one or several of the titles Baal (Lord), Ram or Rimmon\n (High), Melech or Molech (King), Melkarth (King of the City),\n Eliun (Supreme), Adonai (Lord), Bel-Samin (Lord of Heaven),\n etc. (Cp. Rawlinson, History of Phoenicia, p. 231; Tiele,\n Hist. comp. des anc. relig., etc., Fr. tr. 1882, ch. iii,\n pp. 281-87; Outlines, p. 82; Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 246,\n and art. \"Phoenicia\" in Encyc. Biblica, iii, 3742-5; Sayce,\n Ancient Empires, p. 200.) The just inference is that the Sun-God\n was generally worshipped, the sun being for the Semitic peoples\n the pre-eminent Nature-power. \"He alone of all the Gods is by\n Philo explained not as a deified man, but as the sun, who had\n been invoked from the earliest times\" (Meyer, last cit.). (All\n Gods were not Baals: the division between them and lesser powers\n corresponded somewhat, as Tiele notes, to that between Theoi\n and Daimones with the Greeks, and Ases and Vanes with the old\n Scandinavians. So in Babylonia and India the Bels and Asuras\n were marked off from lesser deities.) The fact that the Western\n Semites thus carried with them the worship of their chief deities\n in all their colonies would seem to make an end of the assumption\n (Gomme, Ethnology of Folklore, p. 68; Menzies, History of Religion,\n pp. 284, 250) that there is something specially \"Aryan\" in the\n \"conception of Gods who could and did accompany the tribes\n wheresoever they travelled.\" Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. iii, 169.\n\n The worship of the Baal, however, being that of a special\n Nature-power, cannot in early any more than in later times have\n been monotheistic. What happened was a preponderance of the\n double cult of the God and Goddess, Baal and Ashtoreth, as in\n the unquestionably polytheistic period (Rawlinson, p. 323; Tiele,\n Hist. Comp., as cited, p. 319).\n\n\nApart from this normal tendency to identify Gods called by the same\ntitle (a state of things which, however, in ancient as in modern\nCatholic countries, tended at the same time to set up special adoration\nof a given image), there is seen in the later religion of Phoenicia\na spirit of syncretism which operated in a manner the reverse of that\nseen in later Jewry. In the latter case the national God was ultimately\nconceived, however fanatically, as universal, all others being negated:\nin commercial Phoenicia, many foreign Gods were adopted, [272] the\ntendency being finally to conceive them as all manifestations of one\nPower. [273] And there is reason to suppose that in the cosmopolitan\nworld of the Phoenician cities the higher intelligence reached a yet\nmore subversive, though still fallacious, theory of religion. The\npretended ancient Phoenician cosmogony of Sanchoniathon, preserved\nby Eusebius, [274] while worthless as a record of the most ancient\nbeliefs, [275] may be taken as representing views current not only in\nthe time and society of Philo of Byblos (100 C.E.), who had pretended\nto translate it, but in a period considerably earlier. This cosmogony\nis, as Eusebius complains, deliberately atheistic; and it further\nsystematically explains away all God stories as being originally true\nof remarkable men.\n\nWhere this primitive form of atheistic rationalism originated we\ncannot now tell. But it was in some form current before the time of\nthe Greek Ev\u00eameros, who systematically developed it about 300 B.C.;\nfor in a monotheistic application it more or less clearly underlies\nthe redaction of much of the Hebrew Bible, where both patriarchal and\nregal names of the early period are found to be old God-names; and\nwhere the Sun-God Samson is made a \"judge\" [276]--having originally\nbeen the Judge-God. In the Byblian writer, however, the purpose\nis not monotheistic, but atheistic; and the problem is whether\nthis or that was the earlier development of the method. The natural\npresumption seems to be that the Hebrew adaptors of the old mythology\nused an already applied method, as the Christian Fathers later used\nthe work of Ev\u00eameros; and the citation from Thallos by Lactantius\n[277] suggests that the method had been applied in Chaldea, as it\nwas spontaneously applied by the Greek epic poets who made memorable\nmortals out of the ancient deities Odysseus and \u00c6neas, [278] Helen,\nCastor and Pollux, Achilles, and many more. [279] It is in any case\ncredible enough that among the much-travelling Phoenicians, with their\nopen pantheon, an atheistic Ev\u00eamerism was thought out by the skeptical\ntypes before Ev\u00eameros; and that the latter really drew his principles\nfrom Phoenicia. [280] At any rate, they were there received, doubtless\nby a select few, as a means of answering the customary demand for\n\"something in place of\" the rejected Gods. Concerning the tradition\nthat an ancient Phoenician, Moschus, had sketched an atomic theory,\nwe may again say that, though there is no valid evidence for the\nstatement, it counts for something as proof that the Phoenicians had\nan old repute for rationalism.\n\n\n The Byblian cosmogony may be conceived as an atheistic refinement\n on those of Babylon, adopted by the Jews. It connects with\n the theogony ascribed to Hesiod (which has Asiatic aspects),\n in that both begin with Chaos, and the Gods of Hesiod are born\n later. But whereas in Hesiod Chaos brings forth Erebos and\n Night (Eros being causal force), and Night bears \u00c6ther and Day\n to Erebos, while Earth virginally brings forth Heaven (Uranos)\n and the Sea, and then bears the first Gods in union with Heaven,\n the Phoenician fragment proceeds from black chaos and wind, after\n long ages, through Eros or Desire, to a kind of primeval slime,\n from which arise first animals without intelligence, who in\n turn produce some with intelligence. The effort to expel Deity\n must have been considerable, for sun and moon and stars seem\n to arise uncreated, and the sun's action spontaneously produces\n further developments. The first man and his wife are created by\n male and female principles of wind, and their offspring proceed\n to worship the Sun, calling him Beel Samin. The other Gods are\n explained as eminent mortals deified after their death. See the\n details in Cory's Ancient Fragments, Hodges' ed. pp. 1-22. As to\n Moschus, cp. Renouvier, Manuel de philos. ancienne, 1844, i, 238;\n and Mosheim's ed. of Cudworth's Intellectual System, Harrison's\n tr. i, 20; also Cudworth's Eternal and Immutable Morality, same\n ed. iii, 548. On the general question of Phoenician rationalism,\n compare Pausanias's account (vii, 23) of his discussion with a\n Sidonian, who explained that Apollo was simply the sun, and his\n son \u00c6sculapius simply the healing art.\n\n\nAt the same time there are signs even in Phoenician worship of an\neffort after an ethical as well as an intellectual purification of the\ncommon religion. To call \"the\" Phoenician religion \"impure and cruel\"\n[281] is to obscure the fact that in all civilizations certain types\nand cults vary from the norm. In Phoenicia as in Israel there were\nhumane anti-sensualists who either avoided or impugned the sensual\nand the cruel cults around them; as well as ascetics who stood by\nhuman sacrifice while resisting sexual licence. That the better types\nremained the minority is to be understood in terms of the balance\nof the social and cultural forces of their civilization, not of any\nracial bias or defect, intellectual or moral.\n\n\n The remark of E. Meyer (Gesch. des Alt. i, 211, \u00a7 175), that\n an ethical or mystical conception of the God was \"entirely\n alien\" to \"the Semite,\" reproduces the old fallacy of definite\n race-characters; and Mr. Sayce, in remarking that \"the immorality\n performed in the name of religion was the invention of the Semitic\n race itself\" (Anc. Emp. p. 203; contrast Tiele, Outlines, p. 83),\n after crediting the Semitic race with an ethical faculty alien to\n the Akkadian (above, p. 66), suggests another phase of the same\n error. There is nothing special to the Semites in the case save\n degree of development, similar phenomena being found in many savage\n religions, in Mexico, and in India. (Meyer in later passages and\n in his article on Ba'al in Boscher's Lexikon modifies his position\n as to Semitic versus other religions.) On the other hand, there\n was a chaste as well as an unchaste worship of the Phoenician\n Ashtoreth. Ashtoreth Karnaim, or Tanit, the Virgin, as opposed to\n Atergates and Annit, the Mother-Goddesses, had the characteristics\n of Artemis. Cp. Tiele, Religion compar\u00e9e, as cited, pp. 318-19;\n Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 159, 168-71; Kuenen, Religion of\n Israel, i, 91; Smith, Religion of the Semites, pp. 292, 458. [In\n Rome, Venus Cloacina, sometimes ignorantly described as a Goddess\n of Vice, was anciently \"the Goddess of chaste and holy matrimony\"\n (Ettore Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman History, Eng. tr. 1906,\n p. 199)]. For the rest, the cruelty of the Phoenician cults,\n in the matter of human sacrifice, was fully paralleled among\n the early Teutons. See Tiele, Outlines, p. 199; and the author's\n Pagan Christs, Pt. ii, ch. i, \u00a7 4.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 7. ANCIENT CHINA\n\nOf all the ancient Asiatic systems that of China yields us the\nfirst clear biographical trace of a practical rationalist, albeit\na rationalist stamped somewhat by Chinese conservatism. Confucius\n(Kung-fu-tse = Kung the Master) is a tangible person, despite some\nmythic accretions, whereas Zarathustra and Buddha are at best but\ndoubtful possibilities, and even Lao-Tsze (said to have been born\n604 B.C.) is somewhat elusive.\n\nBefore Confucius (551-478 B.C.), it is evident, there had been a\nslackening in religious belief among the governing classes. It is\nclaimed for the Chinese, as for so many other races, that they had\nanciently a \"pure\" monotheism; [282] but the ascription, as usual,\nis misleading. They saw in the expanse of heaven the \"Supreme\"\nPower, not as a result of reflection on the claims of other deities\namong other races, but simply as expressing their primordial tribal\nrecognition of that special God, before contact with the God-ideas\nof other peoples. Monotheistic in the modern sense they could not\nbe. Concerning them as concerning the Semites we may say that the\nclaim of a primary monotheism for them \"is also true of all primitive\ntotemistic or clannish communities. A man is born into a community\nwith such a divine head, and the worship of that God is the only one\npossible to him.\" [283] Beside the belief in the Heaven-God, there\nstood beliefs in heavenly and earthly spirits, and in ancestors,\nwho were worshipped with altars. [284]\n\n\n The remark of Professor Legge (Religions of China, p. 11), that\n the relation of the names Shang-Ti = Supreme Ruler, and T'ien =\n the sky, \"has kept the monotheistic element prominent in the\n religion proper of China down to the present time,\" may serve\n to avert disputation. It may be agreed that the Chinese were\n anciently \"monotheists\" in the way in which they are at present,\n when they worship spirits innumerable. When, however, Professor\n Legge further says (p. 16) that the ancient monotheism five\n thousand years ago was \"in danger of being corrupted\" by nature\n worship and divination, he puts in doubt the meaning of the other\n expression above cited. He states several times (pp. 46, 51, 52)\n that the old monotheism remains; but speaks (p. 84) of the mass of\n the people as \"cut off from the worship of God for themselves.\" And\n see p. 91 as to ancestor-worship by the Emperor. Tiele (Outlines,\n p. 27) in comparison somewhat overstresses the polytheistic aspect\n of the Chinese religion in his opening definition; but he adds the\n essential facts. Dr. Legge's remark that \"the idea of revelation\n did not shock\" the ancient Chinese (p. 13) is obscure. He is\n dealing with the ordinary Akkado-Babylonian astrology. Pauthier,\n on the contrary (Chine Moderne, 1853, p. 250), asserts that in\n China \"no doctrine has ever been put forth as revealed.\"\n\n\nAs regards ancestral worship, we have record of a display of disregard\nfor it by the lords of L\u00fb in Confucius's time; [285] and the general\nattitude of Confucius himself, religious only in his adherence to\nold ceremonies, is incompatible with a devout environment. It has\nbeen disputed whether he makes a \"skeptic denial of any relation\nbetween man and a living God\"; [286] but an authority who disputes\nthis complains that his \"avoiding the personal name of T\u00ee, or God,\nand only using the more indefinite term Heaven,\" suggests \"a coldness\nof temperament and intellect in the matter of religion.\" [287] He was,\nindeed, above all things a moralist; and concerning the spirits in\ngeneral he taught that \"To give one's self to the duties due to men,\nand, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be\ncalled wisdom.\" [288] He would never express an opinion concerning the\nfate of souls, [289] or encourage prayer; [290] and in his redaction of\nthe old records he seems deliberately to have eliminated mythological\nexpressions. [291] \"I would say,\" writes Dr. Legge (who never forgets\nto be a missionary), \"that he was unreligious rather than irreligious;\nyet, by the coldness of his temperament and intellect in this matter,\nhis influence is unfavourable to the development of true religious\nfeeling among the Chinese people generally, and he prepared the way\nfor the speculations of the literati of medieval and modern times,\nwhich have exposed them to the charge of atheism.\" [292]\n\n\n The view that there was a very early \"arrest of growth\" in\n the Chinese religion (Menzies, History of Religion, p. 108),\n \"before the ordinary developments of mythology and doctrine,\n priesthood,\" etc., had \"time to take place,\" is untenable as to\n the mythology. The same writer had previously spoken (p. 107) of\n the Chinese system before Confucius as having \"already parted with\n all savage and irrational elements.\" That Confucius would seek\n to eliminate these seems likely enough, though the documentary\n fact is disputed.\n\n\nIn the elder contemporary of Confucius, Lao-Tsze (\"Old Philosopher\"),\nthe founder of Taouism, may be recognized another and more remarkable\nearly freethinker of a different stamp, in some essential respects\nmuch less conservative, and in intellectual cast markedly more\noriginal. Where Confucius was an admirer and student of antiquity,\nLao-Tsze expressly put such concern aside, [293] seeking a law of\nlife within himself, in a manner suggestive of much Indian and other\nOriental thought. So far as our records go, he is the first known\nphilosopher who denied that men could form an idea of deity, that\nbeing the infinite; and he avowedly evolved, by way of makeshift,\nthe idea of a primordial and governing Reason (Tau), closely analogous\nto the Logos of later Platonism. Since the same idea is traceable in\nmore primitive forms alike in the Babylonian and Brahmanic systems,\n[294] it is arguable that he may have derived it from one of these\nsources; but the problem is very obscure. In any case, his system is\none of rationalistic pantheism. [295]\n\nHis personal relation to Confucius was that of a self-poised sage,\nimpatient of the other's formalism and regard to prescription and\nprecedent. Where they compare is in their avoidance of supernaturalism,\nand in the sometimes singular rationality of their views of social\nscience; in which latter respect, however, they were the recipients\nand transmitters of an already classic tradition. [296] Thus both had\na strong bias to conservatism; and in Lao-Tsze it went the length of\nprescribing that the people should not be instructed. [297] Despite\nthis, it is not going too far to say that no ancient people appears\nto have produced sane thinkers and scientific moralists earlier than\nthe Chinese. The Golden Rule, repeatedly formulated by Confucius,\nseems to be but a condensation on his part of doctrine he found in the\nolder classics; [298] and as against Lao-Tsze he is seen maintaining\nthe practical form of the principle of reciprocity. The older man,\nlike some later teachers, preached the rule of returning kindness for\nevil, [299] without leaving any biographical trace of such practice on\nhis own part. Confucius, dealing with human nature as it actually is,\nargued that evil should be met by justice, and kindness with kindness,\nelse the evil were as much fostered as the good. [300]\n\n\n It is to be regretted that Christian writers should keep up the\n form of condemning Confucius (so Legge, Religions of China,\n p. 144; Life and Teachings of Confucius, 4th ed. p. 111 sq.;\n Douglas, p. 144) for a teaching the practice of which is normally\n possible, and is never transcended in their own Church, where the\n profession of returning good for evil merely constitutes one of\n the great hypocrisies of civilization. Dr. Legge does not scruple\n to resort to a bad sophism in this connection. \"If,\" he says,\n \"we only do good to them that do good to us, what reward have\n we?\" He thus insinuates that Confucius vetoed any spontaneous act\n of benevolence. The question is not of such acts, but of kind acts\n to those who seek to injure us. On the other hand, Mr. Chalmers,\n who dedicates his translation of Lao-Tsze to Dr. Legge,\n actually taunts Lao-Tsze (p. 38) with absurdity in respect of\n his doctrine. Such is the sincerity of orthodox polemic. How\n little effect the self-abnegating teaching of Lao-Tsze, in turn,\n has had on his followers may be gathered from their very legends\n concerning him (Douglas, p. 182). There is a fallacy, further,\n in the Christian claim that Confucius (Analects, v, 11; xv, 23)\n put the Golden Rule in a lower form than that of the Gospels, in\n that he gave it the negative form, \"Do not that which ye would not\n have done unto you.\" This is really the rational and valid form of\n the Rule. The positive form, unless construed in the restrictive\n sense, would merely prescribe a non-moral doing of favours in\n the hope of receiving favours in return. It appears, further,\n from the passage in the Analects, v, 11, that the doctrine in\n this form was familiar before Confucius.\n\n\nLao-Tsze, on his part, had reduced religion to a minimum. \"There is\nnot a word in the T\u00e2o T\u00eah King [by Lao-Tsze] of the sixth century\nB.C. that savours either of superstition or religion.\" [301] But the\nquietist and mystical philosophy of Lao-Tsze and the practicality\nof Confucius alike failed to check the growth of superstition among\nthe ever-increasing ignorant Chinese population. Says our Christian\nauthority: \"In the works of Lieh-Tsze and Chwang-Tsze, followers of\nLao-Tsze, two or three centuries later, we find abundance of grotesque\nsuperstition, though we are never sure how far those writers really\nbelieved the things they relate.\" In point of fact, Lieh-Tsze is now\ncommonly held by scholars to be an imaginary personage, whose name is\ngiven to a miscellaneous collection of teachings and moral tales, much\ninterpolated and added to long after the date assigned to him--circa\n400 B.C. [302] It contains a purely pantheistic statement of the cosmic\nproblem, [303] and among the apologues is one in which a boy of twelve\nyears is made tersely and cogently to rebut the teleological view of\nthings. [304] The writers of such sections are not likely to have held\nthe superstitions set forth in others. But that superstition should\nsupervene upon light where the means of light were dwindling was a\nmatter of course. It was but the old fatality, seen in Brahmanism,\nin Buddhism, in Egypt, in Islam, and in Christianity.\n\nConfucius himself was soon worshipped. [305] A reaction against him\nset in after a century or two, doctrines of pessimism on the one hand,\nand of universal love on the other, finding a hearing; [306] but the\ninfluence of the great Confucian teacher Mencius (Meng-Tse) carried\nhis school through the struggle. \"In his teaching, the religious\nelement retires still further into the background\" [307] than in that\nof Confucius; and he is memorable for his insistence on the remarkable\nprinciple of Confucius, that \"the people are born good\"; that they are\nthe main part of the State; and that it is the ruler's fault if they\ngo astray. [308] Some rulers seem to have fully risen to this view\nof things, for we have an account of a rationalistic duke, who lived\nearlier than 250 B.C., refusing to permit the sacrifice of a man as\na scapegoat on his behalf; and in the year 166 B.C. such sacrifices\nwere permanently abolished by the Han Emperor Wen. [309] But Mencius,\nwho, as a sociologist, excels not only Lao-Tsze but Confucius, put his\nfinger on the central force in Chinese history when he taught that \"it\nis only men of education who, without a certain livelihood, are able to\nmaintain a fixed heart. As to the people, if they have not a certain\nlivelihood, it follows that they will not have a fixed heart.\" [310]\nSo clearly was the truth seen in China over two thousand years ago. But\nwhether under feudalism or under imperialism, under anarchy or under\npeace--and the teachings of Lao-Tsze and Mencius combined to discredit\nmilitarism [311]--the Chinese mass always pullulated on cheap food,\nat a low standard of comfort, and in a state of utter ignorance. Hence\nthe cult of Confucius was maintained among them only by recognizing\ntheir normal superstition; but on that basis it has remained secure,\ndespite competition, and even a term of early persecution. One\niconoclastic emperor, the founder of the Ch'in or Ts'in dynasty\n(221 or 212 B.C.), sought to extirpate Confucianism as a means to a\nrevolution in the government; but the effort came to nothing. [312]\n\nIn the same way Lao-Tsze came to be worshipped as a God [313] under\nthe religion called Taouism, a title sometimes mistranslated as\nrationalism, \"a name admirably calculated to lead the mind astray as\nto what the religion is.\" [314] It would seem as if the older notion\nof the Tau, philosophically purified by Lao-Tsze, remained a popular\nbasis for his school, and so wrought its degradation. The Taoists or\nTao-sse \"do their utmost to be as unreasonable as possible.\" [315]\nThey soon reverted from the philosophic mysticism of Lao-Tsze,\nafter a stage of indifferentism, [316] to a popular supernaturalism,\n[317] which \"the cultivated Chinese now regard with unmixed contempt\";\n[318] the crystallized common-sense of Confucius, on the other hand,\nallied as it is with official ceremonialism, retaining its hold as\nan esoteric code for the learned. The evolution has thus closely\nresembled that which took place in India.\n\nNowhere, perhaps, is our sociological lesson more clearly to be\nread than in China. Centuries before our era it had a rationalistic\nliterature, an ethic no less earnest and far more sane that that of\nthe Hebrews, and a line of known teachers as remarkable in their way\nas those of ancient Greece who flourished about the same period. But\nwhere even Greece, wrought upon by all the other cultures of antiquity,\nultimately retrograded, till under Christianity it stayed at a Chinese\nlevel of unprogressiveness for a thousand years, isolated China,\nhelped by no neighbouring culture adequate to the need, has stagnated\nas regards the main mass of its life, despite some political and other\nfluctuations, till our own day. Its social problem, like that of India,\nis now more or less dependent, unfortunately, on the solutions that\nmay be reached in Europe, where the problem is only relatively more\nmature, not fundamentally different.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 8. MEXICO AND PERU\n\nIn the religions of pre-Christian Mexico and Peru we have peculiarly\ninteresting examples of \"early\" religious systems, flourishing at\nsome such culture-level as the ancient Akkadian, in full play at\nthe time of the European Renaissance. In Mexico a partly \"high\"\nethical code, as the phrase goes, went concurrently with the most\nfrightful indulgence in human sacrifice, sustained by the continuous\npractice of indecisive war for the securing of captives, and by the\ninterest of a vast priesthood. In this system had been developed all\nthe leading features of those of the Old World--the identification\nof all the Gods with the Sun; the worship of fire, and the annual\nrenewal of it by special means; the conception of God-sacrifice and of\ncommunion with the God by the act of eating his slain representative;\nthe belief in a Virgin-Mother-Goddess; the connection of humanitarian\nethic with the divine command; the opinion that celibacy, as a state\nof superior virtue, is incumbent on most priests and on all would-be\nsaints; the substitution of a sacramental bread for the \"body and\nblood\" of the God-Man; the idea of an interceding Mother-Goddess;\nthe hope of a coming Saviour; the regular practice of prayer;\nexorcism, special indulgences, confession, absolution, fasting, and\nso on. [319] In Peru, also, many of those conceptions were in force;\nbut the limitation of the power and numbers of the priesthood by the\nimperial system of the Incas, and the state of peace normal in their\ndominions, prevented the Mexican development of human sacrifice.\n\nIt seems probable that the Toltecs, who either fled before or were\nfor the most part subdued or destroyed by the barbarian Chichimecs\n(in turn subdued by the Aztecs) a few centuries before Cortes, were\non the whole a less warlike and more civilized people, with a less\nbloody worship. [320] Their God, Quetzalcoatl, retained through fear\nby the Aztecs, [321] was a comparatively benign deity opposed to\nhuman sacrifice, apparently rather a late purification or partial\nrationalization of an earlier God-type than a primitively harmless\nconception. [322] Insofar as they were sundered by quarrels between\nthe sectaries of the God Quetzalcoatl and the God Votan, though\ntheir religious wars seem to have been as cruel as those of the\nearly Christians of North Africa, there appears to have been at work\namong them a movement towards unbloody religion. In any case their\noverthrow seems to stand for the military inferiority of the higher\nand more rational civilization [323] to the lower and more religious,\nwhich in turn, however, was latterly being destroyed by its enormously\nburdensome military and priestly system, and may even be held to have\nbeen ruined by its own superstitious fears. [324]\n\nAmong the recognizable signs of normal progress in the ordinary Aztec\nreligion were (1) the general recognition of the Sun as the God really\nworshipped in all the temples of the deities with special names;\n[325] (2) the substitution in some cults of baked bread-images for a\ncrucified human victim. The question arises whether the Aztecs, but\nfor their overwhelming priesthood, might conceivably have risen above\ntheir system of human sacrifices, as the Aryan Hindus had done in an\nearlier age. Their material civilization, which carried on that of\nthe kindred Toltecs, was at several points superior to that which the\nSpaniards put in its place; and their priesthood, being a leisured\nand wealthy class, might have developed intellectually as did the\nBrahmans, [326] if its economic basis had been changed. But only a\nconquest or other great political convulsion could conceivably have\noverturned the vast cultus of human sacrifice, which overran all life,\nand cherished war as a means of procuring victims.\n\nIn the kindred State of Tezcuco, civilization seems to have gone\nfurther than in Aztec Anahuac; and about the middle of the fifteenth\ncentury one Tezcucan king, the conqueror Netzahualcoyotl, who has\nleft writings in both prose and verse, is seen attaining to something\nlike a philosophic creed, of a monotheistic stamp. [327] He is said\nto have rejected all idol-worship, and erected, as aforesaid, an\naltar \"to the Unknown God,\" [328] forbidding all sacrifices of blood\nin that worship. But among the Tezcucans these never ceased; three\nhundred slaves were sacrificed at the obsequies of the conqueror's son,\nNetzahualpilli; and the Aztec influence over the superior civilization\nwas finally complete.\n\nIn Peru, again, we find civilization advancing in respect of the\ninnovation of substituting statuettes for wives and slaves in the\ntombs of the rich; and we have already noted [329] the remarkable\nrecords of the avowed unbelief of several Incas in the divinity of\nthe nationally worshipped Sun. For the rest, there was the dubious\nquasi-monotheistic cult of the Creator-God, Pachacamac, concerning\nwhom every fresh discussion raises fresh doubt. [330]\n\n\n Mr. Lang, as usual, leans to the view that Pachacamac\n stands for a primordial and \"elevated\" monotheism (Making of\n Religion, pp. 263-70), while admitting the slightness of the\n evidence. Garcilasso, the most eminent authority, who, however,\n is contradicted by others, represents that the conception\n of Pachacamac as Creator, needing no temple or sacrifice, was\n \"philosophically\" reached by the Incas and their wise men (Lang,\n p. 262). The historical fact seems to be that a race subdued\n by the Incas, the Yuncas, had one temple to this deity; and\n that the Incas adopted the cult. Garcilasso says the Yuncas had\n human sacrifices and idols, which the Incas abolished, setting up\n their monotheistic cult in that one temple. This is sufficiently\n unlikely; and it may very well have been the fact that the Yuncas\n had offered no sacrifices. But if they did not, it was because\n their material conditions, like those of the Australians and\n Fuegians, had not facilitated the practice; and in that case\n their \"monotheism\" likewise would merely represent the ignorant\n simplicity of a clan-cult. (Compare Tylor, Primitive Culture,\n ii, 335 sq.; Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 52.) On the\n other hand, if the Incas had set up a cult without sacrifices\n to a so-called One God, their idea would be philosophical, as\n taking into account the multitude of clan-cults as well as their\n own national worships, and transcending these.\n\n\nBut the outstanding sociological fact in Incarial Peru was the\nabsolute subjection of the mass of the people; and though its material\ndevelopment and political organization were comparable to those of\nancient Persia under the Akhamenid\u00e6, so that the Spanish Conquest\nstood here for mere destruction, there is no reason to think that at\nthe best its intellectual life could have risen higher than that of\npre-Alexandrian Egypt, to which it offers so many resemblances. The\nIncas' schools were for the nobility only. [331] Rationalistic Incas\nand high priests might have ruled over a docile, unlettered multitude,\ngradually softening their moral code, in connection with their rather\nhighly-developed doctrine (resembling the Egyptian) of a future\nstate. But these seem the natural limits, in the absence of contact\nwith another civilization not too disparate for a fruitful union.\n\nIn Mexico, on the other hand, an interaction of native cultures had\nalready occurred to some purpose; and the strange humanitarianism of\nthe man-slaying priests, who made free public hospitals of part of\ntheir blood-stained temples, [332] suggests a possibility of esoteric\nmental culture among them. They had certainly gone relatively far in\ntheir moral code, as apart from their atrocious creed of sacrifice,\neven if we discount the testimony of the benevolent priest Sahagun;\n[333] and they had the beginnings of a system of education for the\nmiddle classes. [334] But unless one of the States which habitually\nwarred for captives should have conquered the others--in which case\na strong ruler might have put an end to the wholesale religious\nslaughter of his own subjects, as appears to have been done anciently\nin Mesopotamia--the priests in all likelihood would never have\ntranscended their hideous hallucination of sacrifice. Their murdered\ncivilization is thus the \"great perhaps\" of sociology; organized\nreligion being the most sinister factor in the problem.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 9. THE COMMON FORCES OF DEGENERATION\n\nIt is implied more or less in all the foregoing summaries that there\nis an inherent tendency in all systematized and instituted religion to\ndegenerate intellectually and morally, save for the constant corrective\nactivity of freethought. It may be well, however, to note specifically\nthe forms or phases of the tendency.\n\n1. Dogmatic and ritual religion being, to begin with, a more or\nless general veto on fresh thinking, it lies in its nature that the\nreligious person is as such less intelligently alive to all problems of\nthought and conduct than he otherwise might be--a fact which at least\noutweighs, in a whole society, the gain from imposing a terrorized\nconformity on the less well-biassed types. Wherever conduct is a matter\nof sheer obedience to a superhuman code, it is ipso facto uncritical\nand unprogressive. Thus the history of most religions is a record of\ndeclines and reformations, each new affirmation of moral freethought\nad hoc being in turn erected into a set of sheer commands. To set\nup the necessary ferment of corrective thought even for a time,\nthere seems to be needed (a) a provocation to the intelligence, as\nin the spectacle of conflict of cults; and (b) a provocation to the\nmoral sense and to self-interest through a burdensome pressure of\nrites or priestly exactions. An exceptional personality, of course,\nmay count for much in the making of a movement; though the accident\nof the possession of kingly power by a reformer seems to count for\nmuch more than does genius.\n\n2. The fortunes of such reactions are determined by socio-economic or\npolitical conditions. They are seen to be at a minimum, as to energy\nand social effect, in the conditions of greatest social invariability,\nas in ancient Egypt, where progress in thought, slow at best, was\nconfined to the priestly and official class, and never affected\npopular culture.\n\n3. In the absence of social conditions fitted to raise popular\nlevels of life and thought, every religious system tends to\nworsen intellectually in the sense of adding to its range of\nsuperstition--that is, of ignorant and unreasoning belief. Credulity\nhas its own momentum. Even the possession of limitary sacred books\ncannot check this tendency--e.g., Hinduism, Judaism, Mohammedanism,\nMazdeism, Christianity up till the age of doubt and science, and the\nsystems of ancient Egypt, Babylon, and post-Confucian China. This\nworsening can take place alongside of a theoretic purification of\nbelief within the sphere of the educated theological class.\n\n\n Christian writers have undertaken to show that such deterioration\n went on continuously in India from the beginning of the Vedic\n period, popular religion sinking from Varuna to Indra, from Indra\n to the deities of the Atharva Veda, and from these to the Puranas\n (cp. Dr. J. Murray Mitchell, Hinduism Past and Present, 1885,\n pp. 22, 25, 26, 54). The argument, being hostile in bias from the\n beginning, ignores or denies the element of intellectual advance in\n the Upanishads and other later literature; but it holds good of the\n general phenomena. It holds good equally, however, of the history\n of Christianity in the period of the supremacy of ignorant faith\n and absence of doubt and science; and is relatively applicable\n to the religion of the uneducated mass at any time and place.\n\n On the other hand, it is not at all true that religious\n history is from the beginning, in any case, a process of\n mere degeneration from a pure ideal. Simple statements as to\n primitive ideas are found to be misleading because of their\n simplicity. They can connote only the ethic of the life conditions\n of the worshipper. Now, we have seen (p. 28) that small primitive\n peoples living at peace and in communism, or in some respects well\n placed, may be on that account in certain moral respects superior\n to the average or mass of more civilized and more intelligent\n peoples. [As to the kindliness and unselfishness of some savages,\n living an almost communal life, and as to the scrupulous honesty\n of others, there is plenty of evidence--e.g., as to Andaman\n islanders, Max M\u00fcller, Anthrop. Relig., citing Colonel Cadell,\n p. 177; as to Malays and Papuans, Dr. Russel Wallace, Malay\n Archipelago, p. 595 (but cp. pp. 585, 587, 589); as to Esquimaux,\n Keane, Man, p. 374; Reclus, Primitive Folk, pp. 15, 37, 115 (but\n cp. pp. 41-42). In these and other cases unselfishness within the\n tribe is the concomitant of the communal life, and represents no\n conscious ethical volition, being concurrent with phases of the\n grossest tribal egoism, in some cases with cannibalism, and with\n the perpetual oppression of women. In the case of the preaching\n of unselfishness to the young by the old among the Australians,\n where Lubbock and his authorities see \"the tyranny of the old\"\n (Origin of Civilization, 5th ed. pp. 451-52) Mr. Lang sees a pure\n primeval ethic. Obviously the other is the true explanation. The\n closest and best qualified observers testify, as regards a number\n of tribes: \"So far as anything like moral precepts are concerned\n in these tribes ... it appears to us to be most probable that\n they have originated in the first instance in association with\n the purely selfish ideas of the older men to keep all the best\n things for themselves, and in no case whatever are they supposed\n to have the sanction of a superior being\" (Spencer and Gillen,\n North. Tribes of Cent. Australia, 1904, p. 504).]\n\n The transition from that state to one of war and individualism\n would be in a sense degeneration; but on the other hand\n the entirely communistic societies are unprogressive. Broadly\n speaking, it is by the path of social individuation that progress\n in civilization has been made, the early city States and the later\n large military States ultimately securing within themselves some\n of the conditions for special development of thought, arts, and\n knowledge. The residual truth is that the simple religion of the\n harmless tribe is pro tanto superior to the instituted religion\n of the more civilized nation with greater heights and lower depths\n of life, the popular religion in the latter case standing for the\n worse conditions. But the simple religion did not spring from any\n higher stage of knowledge. The old theorem revived by Mr. Lang\n (Making of Religion), as to religion having originally been a\n pure and highly ethical monotheism, from which it degenerated\n into animism and non-moral polytheism, is at best a misreading of\n the facts just stated. Mr. Lang never asks what \"Supreme Being\"\n and \"monotheism\" mean for savages who know nothing of other men's\n religions: he virtually takes all the connotations for granted. And\n as regards the most closely studied of contemporary savages\n our authorities come to an emphatic conclusion that they have\n no notion whatever of anything like a Supreme Being (Spencer and\n Gillen, North. Tribes of Cent. Austr. pp. 491-92. Cp. A. H. Keane,\n Man, p. 395, as to the \"Great Spirit\" of the Redskins). For the\n rest, Mr. Lang's theory is demonstrably wrong in its ethical\n interpretation of many anthropological facts, and as it stands\n is quite irreconcilable with the law of evolution, since it\n assumes an abstract monotheism as primordial. In general it\n approximates scientifically to the eighteenth-century doctrine of\n the superiority of savagery to civilization. (See it criticized\n in the author's Studies in Religious Fallacy, and Christianity\n and Mythology, 2nd ed. pp. 37-43, 46 sq.)\n\n\n4. Even primary conditions of material well-being, if not reacted upon\nby social science or a movement of freethought, may in a comparatively\nadvanced civilization promote religious degeneration. Thus abundance\nof food is favourable to multiplication of sacrifice, and so to\npriestly predominance. [335] The possession of domesticated animals,\nso important to civilization, lends itself to sacrifice in a specially\ndemoralizing degree. But abundant cereal food-supply, making abundant\npopulation, may greatly promote human sacrifice--e.g., Mexico.\n\n\n The error of Mr. Lang's method is seen in the use he makes\n (work cited, pp. 286-289, 292) of the fact that certain \"low\"\n races--as the Australians, Andamanese, Bushmen, and Fuegians--offer\n no animal sacrifice. He misses the obvious significance of the\n facts that these unwarlike races have as a rule no domesticated\n animals and no agriculture, and that their food supply is thus\n in general precarious. The Andamanese, sometimes described\n (Malthus, Essay on Population, ch. iii, and refs.; G. W. Earl,\n Papuans, 1853, pp. 150-51) as very ill-fed, are sometimes said\n to be well supplied with fish and game (Peschel, Races of Man,\n Eng. tr. 1876, p. 147; Max M\u00fcller, Anthrop. Rel. citing Cadell,\n p. 177); but in any case they have had no agriculture, and seem\n to have only occasional animal food in the shape of a wild hog\n (Colebrooke in Asiatic Researches, iv, 390). The Australians and\n Fuegians, again, have often great difficulty in feeding themselves\n (Peschel, pp. 148, 159, 334; Darwin, Voyage, ch. 10). It is argued\n concerning the Australian aborigines that \"as a rule they have an\n abundance\" (A. F. Calvert, The Aborigines of Western Australia,\n 1894, p. 24); but this abundance is made out by cataloguing the\n whole edible fauna and flora of the coasts and the interior,\n and ignores the fact that for all hunting peoples food supply\n is precarious. For the Australian, \"the difficulty of capturing\n game with his primitive methods compels him to give his whole\n time to the quest of food\" (Keane, Man, p. 148). In the contrary\n case of the primitive Vedic Aryans, well supplied with animals,\n sacrifices were abundant, and tended to become more so (M\u00fcller,\n Nat. Relig. pp. 136, 185; Physical Relig. p. 105; but cp. pp. 98,\n 101; Mitchell, Hinduism, p. 43; Lefmann, Geschichte des alten\n Indiens, in Oncken's series, 1890, pp. 49, 430-31). Of these\n sacrifices that of the horse seems to have been in Aryan use\n in a most remote period (cp. M. M\u00fcller, Nat. Rel. pp. 524-25;\n H. B\u00f6ttger, Sonnencult der Indogermanen, Breslau, 1891, pp. 41-44;\n Preller, R\u00f6mische Mythologie, ed. K\u00f6hler, pp. 102, 299, 323;\n Griechische Mythologie, 2te Aufg. i, 462; Frazer, Golden Bough,\n ii, 315). Max M\u00fcller's remark (Physical Religion, p. 106), that\n \"the idea of sacrifice did not exist at a very early period,\"\n because there is no common Aryan term for it, counts for nothing,\n as he admits (p. 107) that the Sanskrit word cannot be traced\n back to any more general root; and he concedes the antiquity\n of the practice. On this cp. Mitchell, Hinduism, pp. 37-38; and\n the author's Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. p. 122. The reform in Hindu\n sacrifice, consummated by Buddhism, has been noted above.\n\n\n5. Even scientific knowledge, while enabling the thoughtful to correct\ntheir religious conceptions, in some forms lends itself easily to\nthe promotion of popular superstition. Thus the astronomy of the\nBabylonians, while developing some skepticism, served in general to\nencourage divination and fortune-telling; and seems to have had the\nsame effect when communicated to the Chinese, the Hindus, and the\nHebrews, all of whom, however, practised divination previously on\nother bases.\n\n6. Finally, the development of the arts of sculpture and painting,\nunaccompanied by due intellectual culture, tends to keep religion at\na low anthropomorphic level, and worsens its psychology by inviting\nimage-worship. [336] It is not that the earlier and non-artistic\nreligions are not anthropomorphic, but that they give more play\nfor intellectual imagination than does a cult of images. But where\nthe arts have been developed, idolatry has always arisen save when\nresisted by a special activity or revival of freethought to that end;\nand even in Protestant Christendom, where image-worship is tabooed,\nreligious pictures now promote popular credulity and ritualism as they\ndid in the Italian Renaissance. [337] So manifold are the forces of\nintellectual degeneration--degeneration, that is, from an attained\nideal or stage of development, not from any primordial knowledge.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nRELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL\n\n\nThe modern critical analysis of the Hebrew Sacred Books has made it\nsufficiently clear that in Jewish as in all other ancient history\nprogress in religion was by way of evolving an ethical and sole deity\nout of normal primitive polytheism. [338] What was special to the\nHebrews was the set of social conditions under which the evolution took\nplace. Through these conditions it was that the relative freethought\nwhich rejected normal polytheism was so far favoured as to lead to a\npronounced monotheistic cultus, though not to a philosophic monotheism.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 1\n\nAs seen in their earliest historical documents (especially portions\nof the Book of Judges), the Hebrews are a group of agricultural and\npastoral but warlike tribes of Semitic speech, with household Gods\nand local deities, [339] living among communities at the same or a\nhigher culture stage. Their ancestral legends show similar religious\npractice. [340] Of the Hebrew tribes some may have sojourned for\na time in Egypt; but this is uncertain, the written record being a\nlate and in large part deliberately fictitious construction. [341]\nAt one time twelve such tribes may have confederated, in conformity\nwith a common ancient superstition, seen in Arab and Greek history\nas well as in the Jewish, as to the number twelve. As they advanced\nin civilization, on a basis of city life existing among a population\nsettled in Canaan before them, parts of which they conquered, one\nof their public cults, that of Yahu or Yahweh, finally fixed at\nJerusalem, became politically important. The special worshippers of\nthis God (supposed to have been at first a Thunder-God or Nature-God)\n[342] were in that sense monotheists; but not otherwise than kindred\nneighbouring communities such as the Ammonites and Moabites and\nEdomites, each of which had its special God, like the cities of\nBabylonia and Egypt. But that the earlier conceptions of the people\nhad assumed a multiplicity of Gods is clear from the fact that even\nin the later literary efforts to impose the sole cult of Yahweh on the\npeople, the plural name Elohim, \"Powers\" or \"Gods\" (in general, things\nto be feared), [343] is retained, either alone or with that of Yahweh\nprefixed, though cosmology had previously been written in Yahweh's\nname. The Yahwists did not scruple to combine an Elohistic narrative,\nvarying from theirs in cosmology and otherwise, with their own. [344]\n\n\n As to the original similarity of Hebraic and other Canaanite\n religions cp. E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. \u00a7\u00a7 309-11 (i, 372-76);\n Kuenen, i, 223; Wellhausen, Israel, p. 440; Winckler,\n Gesch. Israels, passim; R\u00e9ville, Prol\u00e9g. de l'hist. des\n relig. 1881, p. 85. \"Before being monotheistic, Israel was\n simply monolatrous, and even that only in its religious \u00e9lite\"\n (R\u00e9ville). \"Their [the Canaanites'] worship was the same in\n principle as that of Israel, but it had a higher organization\"\n (Menzies, Hist. of Rel. p. 179; cp. Tiele, Outlines, pp. 85-89). On\n the side of the traditional view, Mr. Lang, while sharply\n challenging most of the propositions of the higher critics,\n affirms that \"we know that Israel had, in an early age, the\n conception of the moral Eternal; we know that, at an early age,\n the conception was contaminated and anthropomorphized; and we\n know that it was rescued, in a great degree, from this corruption,\n while always retaining its original ethical aspect and sanction\"\n (Making of Religion, p. 295). If \"we know\" this, the discussion\n is at an end. But Mr. Lang's sole documentary basis for the\n assertion is just the fabricated record, reluctantly abandoned\n by theological scholars as such. When this is challenged,\n Mr. Lang falls back on the position that such low races as\n the Australians and Fuegians have a \"moral Supreme Being,\"\n and that therefore Israel \"must\" have had one (p. 309). It will\n be found, however, that the ethic of these races is perfectly\n primitive, on Mr. Lang's own showing, and that his estimate is a\n misinterpretation. As to their Supreme Beings, it might suffice\n to compare Mr. Lang's Making of Religion, chs. ix, xii, with his\n earlier Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i, 168, 335; ii, 6, etc.;\n but, as we have seen (above, p. 93), the Supreme Being of the\n Australians eludes the closest search in a number of tribes; and\n the \"moral\" factor is equally intangible. Mr. Lang in his later\n reasoning has merely added the ambiguous and misleading epithet\n \"Supreme,\" stressing it indefinitely, to the ordinary God-idea\n of the lower races. (Cp. Cox, Mythol. of Aryan Races, ed. 1882,\n p. 155; and K. O. M\u00fcller, Introd. to Sci. Mythol. Eng. tr. p. 184.)\n\n There being thus no highly imagined \"moral Eternal\" in the\n religion of primitive man, the Hebrews were originally in the\n ordinary position. Their early practice of human sacrifice is\n implied in the legend of Abraham and Isaac, and in the story of\n Jephthah. (Cp. Micah vi, 7, and Kuenen on the passage, i, 237.) In\n their reputed earliest prophetic books we find them addicted to\n divination (Hosea iv, 12; Micah v, 12. Cp. the prohibition in\n Lev. xx, 6; also 2 Kings xxiii, 24, and Isa. iii, 2; as to the\n use of the ephod, teraphim, and urim and thummim, see Kuenen,\n Relig. of Israel, Eng. tr. i, 97-100) and to polytheism. (Amos v,\n 26, viii, 14; Hosea i, 13, 17, etc. Cp. Jud. viii, 27; 1 Sam. vii,\n 3.) These things Mr. Lang seems to admit (p. 309, note), despite\n his previous claim; but he builds (p. 332) on the fact that\n the Hebrews showed little concern about a future state--that\n \"early Israel, having, so far as we know, a singular lack of\n interest in the future of the soul, was born to give himself up\n to developing, undisturbed, the theistic conception, the belief\n in a righteous Eternal\"--whereas later Greeks and Romans, like\n Egyptians, were much concerned about life after death. Mr. Lang's\n own general theory would really require that all peoples at a\n certain stage should act like the Israelites; but he suspends it\n in the interest of the orthodox view as to the early Hebrews. At\n the same time he omits to explain why the Hebrews failed to\n adopt the future-state creed when they were \"contaminated\"--a\n proposition hardly reconcilable, on any view, with the sentence\n just quoted. The solution, however, is simple. Israel was not\n at all \"singular\" in the matter. The early (Homeric) Greeks\n and Romans (cp. as to Hades the Iliad, passim; Odyssey, bk. xi,\n passim; Tiele, Outlines, p. 209, as to the myth of Persephone;\n and Preller, R\u00f6mische Mythologie, ed. K\u00f6hler, 1865, pp. 452-55,\n as to the early Romans), like the early Vedic Aryans (Tiele,\n Outlines, p. 117; M\u00fcller, Anthropol. Relig. p. 269), and the\n early Babylonians and Assyrians (Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 181-82;\n Sayce, Hib. Lect. p. 364) took little thought of a future state.\n\n \"Homer knows no influence of the Psyche on the realm of the\n visible, and also no cult implying it.... A later poet, who made\n the last addition to the Odyssey, first introduced Hermes the\n 'leader of souls' [perhaps taken from a popular belief in some part\n of Hellas].... Underneath, in the gloomy shades, the souls waver,\n unconscious or at the best in a glimmering half-consciousness,\n endowed with faint voices, feeble, indifferent.... To speak,\n as do many old and recent scholars, of the 'immortal life' of\n such souls, is erroneous. They live rather as the spectre of the\n living in a mirror.... If the Psyche outlives her visible mate (the\n body), she is powerless without him.... Thus is the Homeric world\n free from ghosts (for after the burning of the body the Psyche\n appears no more even in dream).... The living has peace from the\n dead.... No d\u00e6monic power is at work apart from or against the\n Gods; and the night gives to the disembodied spirits no freedom\"\n (Rohde, Psyche, 4te Aufl. 1907, pp. 9-11).\n\n This minimization of the normal primitive belief in spirits is\n one of the reasons for seeing in the Homeric poems the outcome\n of a period of loosened belief. It is not to be supposed that the\n pre-Homeric Greeks, like the easterns with whom the Greeks met in\n Ionia, had not the usual ghost-lore of savages and barbarians;\n and it may be that for all the early civilizations under notice\n the explanation is that primitive ghost-cults were abandoned by\n migrating and conquering races, who rejected the ghost-cults of\n the races whom they conquered, though they ostensibly accepted\n their Gods. In any case they made little religious account of a\n future state for themselves.\n\n This attitude has again been erroneously regarded (e.g.,\n Dickinson, The Greek View of Life, p. 35) as peculiar to the\n Greeks. Mr. Lang's assumption may, in fact, be overthrown by the\n single case of the Phoenicians, who showed no more concern about\n a future life than did the Hebrews (see Canon Rawlinson's History\n of Phoenicia, 1889, pp. 351-52), but who are not pretended to have\n given themselves up much to \"developing, undisturbed, the belief\n in a righteous Eternal.\" The truth seems to be that in all the\n early progressive and combative civilizations the main concern\n was as to the continuance of this life. On that head the Hebrews\n were as solicitous as any (cp. Kuenen, i, 65); and they habitually\n practised divination on that score. Further, they attached the\n very highest importance to the continuance of the individual in\n his offspring. The idea of a future state is first found highly\n developed in the long-lived cults of the long-civilized but\n unprogressive Egyptians; and the Babylonians were developing in\n the same direction. Yet the Hebrews took it up (see the evidence\n in Sch\u00fcrer, Jewish People in the Time of Jesus, Eng. tr. Div. II,\n vol. ii, p. 179) just when, according to Mr. Lang, their cult was\n \"rescued, in a great degree, from corruption\"; and, generally\n speaking, it was in the stage of maximum monotheism that they\n reached the maximum of irrationality. For the rest, belief in\n \"immortality\" is found highly developed in a sociologically\n \"degenerate\" and unprogressive people such as the Tasmanians\n (M\u00fcller, Anthrop. Rel. p. 433), who are yet primitively pure on\n Mr. Lang's hypothesis; and is normal among negroes and Australian\n blackfellows.\n\n\nThis primary polytheism is seen to the full in that constant resort\nof Israelites to neighbouring cults, against which so much of the\nHebrew doctrine is directed. To understand their practice the modern\nreader has to get rid of the hallucination imposed on Christendom by\nits idea of revelation. The cult of Yahweh was no primordial Hebrew\ncreed, deserted by backsliding idolaters, but a finally successful\ntyranny of one local cult over others. It is probable that it was\noriginally not Palestinian, but Sinaitic, and that Yahweh became the\nGod of Caleb-Judah only under David. [345] Therefore, without begging\nthe question as to the moral sincerity of the prophets and others\nwho identified Yahwism with morality, we must always remember that\nthey were on their own showing devotees of a special local worship,\nand so far fighting for their own influence. Similar prophesying may\nconceivably have been carried on in connection with the same or other\nGod-names in other localities, and the extant prophets freely testify\nthat they had Yahwistic opponents; but the circumstance that Yahweh\nwas worshipped at Jerusalem without any image might be an important\ncause of differentiation in the case of that cult. In any case it must\nhave been through simple \"exclusivism\" that they reached any form of\n\"monotheism.\" [346]\n\nThe inveterate usage, in the Bible-making period, of forging and\ninterpolating ancient or pretended writings, makes it impossible\nto construct any detailed history of the rise of Yahwism. We can\nbut proceed upon data which do not appear to lend themselves to the\npurposes of the later adaptors. In that way we see cause to believe\nthat at one early centre the so-called ark of Yahweh contained\nvarious objects held to have supernatural virtue. [347] In the older\nhistoric documents it has, however, no such sacredness as accrues\nto it later, [348] and no great traditional prestige. This ark,\npreviously moved from place to place as a fetish, [349] is said to\nhave been transferred to Jerusalem by the early king David, [350]\nwhose story, like that of his predecessors Saul and his son Solomon,\nis in part blended with myth.\n\n\n As to David, compare 1 Sam. xvi, 18, with xvii, 33, 42. Daoud\n (= Dodo = Dumzi = Tammuz = Adonis) was a Semitic deity (Sayce,\n Hib. Lec. pp. 52-57, and art. \"The Names of the First Three Kings\n of Israel,\" in Modern Review, Jan. 1884), whom David resembles as\n an inventor of the lyre (Amos, vi, 5; cp. Hitzig, Die Psalmen,\n 2 Theil, 1836, p. 3). But Saul and Solomon also were God-names\n (Sayce, as cited), as was Samuel (id. pp. 54, 181; cp. Lenormant,\n Chaldean Magic, Eng. tr. p. 120); and when we note these data,\n and further the plain fact that Samson is a solar myth, being a\n personage Evemerized from Samas, the Sun-God, we are prepared\n to find further traces of Evemeristic redaction in the Hebrew\n books. To say nothing of other figures in the Book of Judges,\n we find that Jacob and Joseph were old Canaanitish deities\n (Sayce, Lectures, p. 51; Records of the Past, New Series, v,\n 48; Hugo Winckler, Geschichte Israels, ii, 57-77); and that\n Moses, as might be expected, was a name for more than one\n Semitic God (Sayce, pp. 46-47), and in particular stood for a\n Sun-God. Abraham and Isaac in turn appear to be ancient deities\n (Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 374, \u00a7 309; Winckler, Gesch. Israels,\n ii, 20-49). Miriam was probably in similar case (cp. Pagan Christs,\n 2nd ed. pp. 165-66). On an analysis of the Joshua myth as redacted,\n further, we may surmise another reduction of an ancient cult to\n the form of history, perhaps obscuring the true original of the\n worship of Mary and Jesus.\n\n It seems probable, finally, that such figures as Elijah, who\n ascends to heaven in a fiery chariot, and Elisha, the \"bald head\"\n and miracle-worker, are similar constructions of personages out\n of Sun-God lore. In such material lies part of the refutation of\n the thesis of Renan (Hist, des langues s\u00e9mit. 2e \u00e9dit. pp. 7,\n 485) that the Semites were natural monotheists, devoid of\n mythology. [Renan is followed in whole or in part by N\u00f6ldeke,\n Sketches from Eastern Hist. Eng. tr. p. 6; Soury, Relig. of\n Israel, Eng. tr. pp. 2, 10; Spiegel, Er\u00e2nische Alterthumskunde, i,\n 389; also Roscher, Draper, Peschel, and Bluntschli, as cited by\n Goldziher, Mythology Among the Hebrews, Eng. tr. p. 4, note. On\n the other side compare Goldziher, ch. i; Steinthal's Prometheus\n and Samson, Eng. tr. (with Goldziher), pp. 391, 428, etc., and his\n Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und den R\u00f6mern,\n 1863, pp. 15-17; Kuenen, Rel. of Israel, i, 225; Smith, Rel. of the\n Semites, p. 49; Ewald, Hist. of Israel, Eng. tr. 4th ed. i, 38-40;\n M\u00fcller, Chips, i, 345 sq.; Selected Essays, 1881, ii, 402 sq.;\n Nat. Rel. p. 314.] Renan's view seems to be generally connected\n with the assumption that life in a \"desert\" makes a race for ever\n unimaginative or unitary in its thought. The Arabian Nights might\n be supposed a sufficient proof to the contrary. The historic truth\n seems to be that, stage for stage, the ancient Semites were as\n mythological as any other race; but that (to say nothing of the\n Babylonians and Assyrians) the mythologies of the Hebrews and\n of the Arabs were alike suppressed as far as possible in their\n monotheistic stage. Compare Renan's own admissions, pp. 27, 110,\n 475, and Hist. du peuple d'Isra\u00ebl, i, 49-50.\n\n\nAt other places, however, Yahweh was symbolized and worshipped in the\nimage of a young bull, [351] a usage associated with the neighbouring\nSemitic cult of Molech, but probably indigenous, or at least early,\nin the case of Yahweh also. A God, for such worshippers, needed to be\nrepresented by something, if he were to be individualized as against\nothers; and where there was not an ark or a sacred stone or special\ntemple or idol there could be no cult at all. \"The practices of ancient\nreligion require a fixed meeting-place between the worshippers and\ntheir God.\" [352] The pre-Exilic history of Yahweh-worship seems\nto be in large part that of a struggle between the devotees of the\nimageless worship fixed to the temple at Jerusalem, and other worships,\nwith or without images, at other and less influential shrines.\n\nSo far as can be gathered from the documents, it was long before\nmonotheistic pretensions were made in connection with Yahwism. They\nmust in the first instance have seemed not only tyrannical but\nblasphemous to the devotees of the old local shrines, who in\nthe earlier Hebrew writings figure as perfectly good Yahwists;\nand they clearly had no durable success before the period of the\nExile. Some three hundred years after the supposed period of David,\n[353] and again eighty years later, we meet with ostensible traces\n[354] of a movement for the special aggrandizement of the Yahweh\ncult and the suppression of the others which competed with it, as\nwell as of certain licentious and vicious practices carried on in\nconnection with Yahweh worship. Concerning these, it could be claimed\nby those who had adhered to the simpler tradition of one of the early\nworships that they were foreign importations. They were, in fact,\nspecialties of a rich ancient society, and were either native to\nCanaanite cities which the Hebrews had captured, or copied by them\nfrom such cities. But the fact that they were thus, on the showing of\nthe later Yahwistic records, long associated with Yahwist practice,\nproves that there was no special elevation about Yahwism originally.\n\n\n Even the epithet translated \"Holy\" (Kadosh) had originally no high\n moral significance. It simply meant \"set apart,\" \"not common\"\n (cp. Kuenen, Religion of Israel, i, 43; Wellhausen, Israel, in\n Prolegomena vol. p. 499); and the special substantive (Kadesh and\n Kedeshah) was actually the name for the most degraded ministrants\n of both sexes in the licentious worship (see Deut. xxiii, 17,\n 18, and marg. Rev. Vers. Cp. 1 Kings xiv, 25; xv, 12; 2 Kings\n xxiii, 7). On the question of early Hebrew ethics it is somewhat\n misleading to cite Wellhausen (so Lang, Making of Religion,\n p. 304) as saying (Israel, p. 437) that religion inspired law\n and morals in Israel with exceptional purity. In the context\n Wellhausen has said that the starting-point of Israel was normal;\n and he writes in the Prolegomena (p. 302) that \"good and evil\n in Hebrew mean primarily nothing more than salutary and hurtful:\n the application of the words to virtue and sin is a secondary one,\n these being regarded as serviceable or hurtful in their effects.\"\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2\n\nGiven the co-existence of a multitude of local cults, and of\nvarious local Yahweh-worships, it is conceivable that the Yahwists\nof Jerusalem, backed by a priest-ridden king, should seek to limit\nall worship to their own temple, whose revenues would thereby be\nmuch increased. But insoluble perplexities are set up as to the\nalleged movement by the incongruities in the documents. Passing over\nfor the moment the prophets Amos and Hosea and others who ostensibly\nbelong to the eighth century B.C., we find the second priestly reform,\n[355] consequent on a finding or framing of \"the law,\" represented as\noccurring early in the reign of Josiah (641-610 B.C.). But later in\nthe same reign are placed the writings of Jeremiah, who constantly\ncontemns the scribes, prophets, and priests in mass, and makes\nlight of the ark, [356] besides declaring that in Judah [357] there\nare as many Gods as towns, and in Jerusalem as many Baal-altars as\nstreets. The difficulty is reduced by recognizing the quasi-historical\nnarrative as a later fabrication; but other difficulties remain as to\nthe prophetic writings; and for our present purpose it is necessary\nbriefly to consider these.\n\n1. The \"higher criticism,\" seeking solid standing-ground at the\nbeginning of the tangible historic period, the eighth century,\nsingles out [358] the books of Amos and Hosea, setting aside,\nas dubious in date, Nahum and Joel; and recognizing in Isaiah a\ncomposite of different periods. If Amos, the \"herdsman of Tekoa,\"\ncould be thus regarded as an indubitable historical person, he would\nbe a remarkable figure in the history of freethought, as would his\nnominal contemporary Hosea. Amos is a monotheist, worshipping not a\nGod of Israel but a Yahweh or Elohim of Hosts, called also by the name\nAdon or Adonai, \"the Lord,\" who rules all the nations and created the\nuniverse. Further, the prophet makes Yahweh \"hate and despise\" the\nfeasts and burnt-offerings and solemn assemblies of his worshippers;\n[359] and he meddles impartially with the affairs of the kingdoms\nof Judah and Israel. In the same spirit Hosea menaces the solemn\nassemblies, and makes Yahweh desire \"mercy and not sacrifice.\" [360]\nSimilar doctrine occurs in the reputedly genuine or ancient parts of\nIsaiah, [361] and in Micah. [362] Isaiah, too, disparages the Sabbath\nand solemn meetings, staking all upon righteousness.\n\n2. These utterances, so subversive of the priestly system, are yet held\nto have been preserved through the ages--through the Assyrian conquest,\nthrough the Babylonian Captivity, through the later period of priestly\nreconstruction--by the priestly system itself. In the state of things\npictured under Ezra and Nehemiah, only the zealous adherents of the\npriestly law can at the outset have had any letters, any literature;\nit must have been they, then, who treasured the anti-priestly and\nanti-ritual writings of the prophets--unless, indeed, the latter were\npreserved by the Jews remaining at Babylon.\n\n3. The perplexity thus set up is greatly deepened when we remember\nthat the period assigned to the earlier prophets is near the beginning\nof the known age of alphabetic writing, [363] and before the known\nage of writing on scrolls. A herdsman of Judea, with a classic and\nflowing style, is held to have written out his hortatory addresses at\na time when such writing is not certainly known to have been practised\nanywhere else; [364] and the pre-eminent style of Isaiah is held to\nbelong to the same period.\n\n\n \"His [Amos's] language, with three or four insignificant\n exceptions, is pure, his style classical and refined. His\n literary power is shown in the regularity of structure which often\n characterizes his periods ... as well as in the ease with which\n he evidently writes.... Anything of the nature of roughness or\n rusticity is wholly absent from his writings\" (Driver, Introd. to\n Lit. of Old Test. ch. vi, \u00a7 3, p. 297, ed. 1891). Isaiah, again,\n is in his own narrow field one of the most gifted and skilful\n writers of all antiquity. The difficulty is thus nearly as great\n as that of the proposition that the Hebrew of the Pentateuch is a\n thousand years older than that of the latest prophetical books,\n whose language is substantially the same. (Cp. Andrews Norton,\n The Pentateuch, ed. 1863, pp. 47-48; Renan, Hist. des langues\n s\u00e9mit. 2e \u00e9dit. p. 118.)\n\n\n4. The specialist critics, all trained as clergymen, and mostly\nloth to yield more than is absolutely necessary to skepticism,\nhave surrendered the antiquity claimed for Joel, recognizing that\nthe arguments for that are \"equally consistent with a date after\nthe Captivity.\" [365] One of the conclusions here involved is that\n\"Egypt is probably mentioned only as the typical instance of a Power\nhostile to Judah.\" Thus, when we remember the later Jewish practice of\nspeaking of Rome as \"Babylon,\" or \"Edom,\" allusions by Amos and Hosea\nto \"Assyria\" have no evidential force. The same reasoning applies to\nthe supposed ancient portions of Isaiah.\n\n5. Even on the clerical side, among the less conservative critics, it\nis already conceded that there are late \"insertions\" in Amos. Some of\nthese insertions are among, or analogous to, the very passages relied\non by Kuenen to prove the lofty monotheism of Amos. If these passages,\nhowever, suggest a late date, no less do the others disparaging\nsacrifices. The same critics find interpolations and additions in\nHosea. But they offer no proof of the antiquity of what they retain.\n\n\n The principal passages in Amos given up as insertions by\n Dr. Cheyne, the most perspicacious of the English Hebraists, are:\n iv, 13; v, 8-9; ix, 5-6; and ix, 8-15. See his introduction to 1895\n ed. of Prof. Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel, p. xv; and his\n art. on Amos in the Encyclop\u00e6dia Biblica. Compare Kuenen, i, 46,\n 48. Dr. Cheyne regards as insertions in Hosea the following: i,\n 10-ii, 1; \"and David their King\" in iii, 5; viii, 14; and xiv,\n 1-9 (as cited, pp. xviii-xix). Obviously these admissions entail\n others.\n\n\n6. The same school of criticism, while adhering to the traditional\ndating of Amos and Hosea, has surrendered the claim for the Psalms,\nplacing most of these in the same age with the books of Job,\nProverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ecclesiasticus. [366] Now, the sentiment\nof opposition to burnt-offerings is found in some of the Psalms in\nlanguage identical with that of the supposed early prophets. [367]\nInstead of taking the former for late echoes of the latter, we may\nreasonably suspect that they belong to the same culture-stage.\n\n\n The principle is in effect recognized by Dr. Cheyne when he writes:\n \"Just as we infer from the reference to Cyrus in xliv, 28; xlv,\n 1, that the prophecy containing it proceeds from the age of the\n conqueror, so we may infer from the fraternal feeling towards\n Egypt and Assyria (Syria) in xix, 23-25, that the epilogue was\n written when hopes of the union and fusion of Israelitish and\n non-Israelitish elements first became natural for the Jews--i.e.,\n in the early Jewish period\" (Introd. to the Book of Isaiah, 1895,\n pp. 109-10).\n\n\n7. From the scientific point of view, finally, the element of\nhistorical prediction in the prophets is one of the strongest grounds\nfor presuming that they are in reality late documents. In regard\nto similar predictions in the gospels (Mt. xxiv, 15; Mk. xiii, 2;\nLk. xxi, 20), rational criticism decides that they were written after\nthe event. No other course can consistently be taken as to early\nHebrew predictions of captivity and restoration; and the adherence\nof many Biblical scholars at this point to the traditional view\nis psychologically on a par with their former refusal to accept a\nrational estimate of the Pentateuchal narrative.\n\n\n On some points, such as the flagrant pseudo-prediction in\n Isaiah xix, 18, all reasonable critics surrender. Thus \"K\u00f6nig\n sees rightly that xix, 18, can refer only to Jewish colonies in\n Egypt, and refrains from the arbitrary supposition that Isaiah\n was supernaturally informed of the future establishment of\n such colonies\" (Cheyne, Introd. to Smith's Prophets of Israel,\n p. xxxiii). But in other cases Dr. Cheyne's own earlier positions\n appear to involve such an \"arbitrary supposition,\" as do Kuenen's;\n and Smith explicitly posited it as to the prophets in general. And\n even as to Isaiah xix, 18, whereas Hitzig, as Havet later,\n rightly brings the date down to the actual historic time of the\n establishment of the temple at Heliopolis by Onias (Josephus,\n Ant. xiii, 3, 1; Wars, vii, 10, 2), about 160 B.C., Dr. Cheyne\n (Introd. to Isaiah, p. 108) compromises by dating it about 275 B.C.\n\n The lateness of the bulk of the prophetical writings has been\n ably argued by Ernest Havet (Le Christianisme et ses Origines,\n vol. iv, 1878, ch. vi; and in the posthumous vol., La Modernit\u00e9\n des Proph\u00e8tes, 1891), who supports his case by many cogent\n reasonings. For instance, besides the argument as to Isaiah xix,\n 18, above noted: (1) The frequent prediction of the ruin of Tyre\n by Nebuchadnezzar (Isa. ch. xxiii; Jer. xxv, 22; Ezek. xxvi, 7;\n ch. xxvii), false as to him (a fact which might be construed as\n a proof of the fallibility of the prophets and the candour of\n their transcribers), is to be understood in the light of other\n post-predictions as referring to the actual capture of the city\n by Alexander. (2) Hosea's prediction of the fall of Judah as well\n as of Israel, and of their being united, places the passage after\n the Exile, and may even be held to bring it down to the period\n of the Asmoneans. So with many other details: the whole argument\n deserves careful study. M. Havet's views were, of course, scouted\n by the conservative specialists, as their predecessors scouted the\n entire hypothesis of Graf, now taken in its essentials as the basis\n of sound Biblical criticism. M. Scherer somewhat unintelligently\n objected to him (\u00c9tudes sur la litt. contemp. vii, 268) that he was\n not a Hebraist. There is no question of philology involved. It was\n non-Hebraists who first pointed out the practical incredibility\n of the central Pentateuchal narrative, on the truth of which\n Kuenen himself long stood with other Hebraists. (Cp. Wellhausen,\n Proleg. pp. 39, 347; also his (4th) ed. of Bleek's Einleit. in das\n alte Test. 1878, p. 154; and Kuenen, Hexateuch, Eng. tr. pp. xv,\n 43.) Colenso's argument, in the gist of which he was long preceded\n by lay freethinkers, was one of simple common sense. The weak side\n of M. Havet's case is his undertaking to bring the prophets bodily\n down to the Maccabean period. This is claiming too much. But his\n negative argument is not affected by the reply (Darmesteter, Les\n Proph\u00e8tes d'Isra\u00ebl, 1895, pp. 128-31) to his constructive theory.\n\n [Since the above was written, two French critics, MM. Dujardin\n and Maurice Vernes, have sought vigorously to reconstruct the\n history of the prophetic books upon new lines. I have been unable\n to acquiesce in their views at essential points, but would refer\n the reader to the lucid and interesting survey of the problem in\n Mr. T. Whittaker's Priests, Philosophers, and Prophets (Black,\n 1911), ch. vi.]\n\n\nIt is true that where hardly any documentary datum is intrinsically\nsure, it is difficult to prove a negative for one more than for\nanother. The historical narratives being systematically tampered with\nby one writer after another, and even presumptively late writings being\ninterpolated by still later scribes, we can never have demonstrative\nproof as to the original date of any one prophet. Thus it is arguable\nthat fragments of utterance from eighth-century prophets may have\nsurvived orally and been made the nucleus of later documents. This\nview would be reconcilable with the fact that the prophets Isaiah,\nHosea, Amos, and Micah are all introduced with some modification of\nthe formula that they prophesied \"in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz,\nand Hezekiah, kings of Judah,\" Jeroboam's name being added in the cases\nof Hosea and Amos. But that detail is also reconcilable with absolute\nfabrication. To say nothing of sheer bad faith in a community whose\nmoral code said nothing against fraud save in the form of judicial\nperjury, the Hebrew literature is profoundly compromised by the simple\nfact that the religious development of the people made the prestige\nof antiquity more essential there for the purposes of propaganda\nthan in almost any other society known to us. Hence an all-pervading\nprinciple of literary dissimulation; and what freethinking there was\nhad in general to wear the guise of the very force of unreasoning\ntraditionalism to which it was inwardly most opposed. Only thus could\nnew thought find a hearing and secure its preservation at the hands\nof the tribe of formalists. Even the pessimist Koheleth, wearied with\ngroping science, yet believing nothing of the doctrine of immortality,\nmust needs follow precedent and pose as the fabulous King Solomon,\nson of the half-mythic David.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3\n\nWe are forced, then, to regard with distrust all passages in the\n\"early\" prophets which express either a disregard of sacrifice\nand ritual, or a universalism incongruous with all that we know\nof the native culture of their period. The strongest ground for\nsurmising a really \"high\" development of monotheism in Judah before\nthe Captivity is the stability of the life there as compared with\nnorthern Israel. [368] In this respect the conditions might indeed be\nconsidered favourable to priestly or other culture; but, on the other\nhand, the records themselves exhibit a predominant polytheism. The\npresumption, then, is strong that the \"advanced\" passages in the\nprophets concerning sacrifice belong to an age when such ideas had\nbeen reached in more civilized nations, with whose thought travelled\nJews could come in contact.\n\n\n It is true that some such ideas were current in Egypt many\n centuries before the period under notice--a fact which alone\n discounts the ethical originality claimed for the Hebrew\n prophets. E.g., the following passage from the papyrus of Ani,\n belonging to the Nineteenth Dynasty, not later than 1288 B.C.:\n \"That which is detestable in the sanctuary of God is noisy feasts;\n if thou implore him with a loving heart of which all the words\n are mysterious, he will do thy matters, he hears thy words, he\n accepts thine offerings\" (Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt,\n by Flinders Petrie, 1898, p. 160). The word rendered \"mysterious\"\n here may mean \"magical\" or \"liturgical,\" or may merely prescribe\n privacy or silence; and this last is the construction put\n upon it by Renouf (Hibbert Lectures, 2nd ed. p. 102) and Erman\n (Handbook of Eg. Relig. Eng. tr. p. 84). The same doctrine is put\n in a hymn to Thoth (id.). But in any case we must look for later\n culture-contacts as the source of the later Hebrew radicalism under\n notice, though Egyptian sources are not to be wholly set aside. See\n Kuenen, i, 395; and Brugsch, as there cited; but cp. Wellhausen,\n Israel, p. 440.\n\n\nIt is clear that not only did they accept a cosmogony from the\nBabylonians, but they were influenced by the lore of the Zoroastrian\nPersians, with whom, as with the monotheists or pantheists of Babylon,\nthey would have grounds of sympathy. It is an open question whether\ntheir special hostility to images does not date from the time of\nPersian contact. [369] Concerning the restoration, it has been argued\nthat only a few Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem \"both under Cyrus\nand under Dareios\"; and that, though the temple was rebuilt under\nDareios Hystaspis, the builders were not the Gola or returned exiles,\nbut that part of the Judahite population which had not been deported\nto Babylon. [370] The problem is obscure; [371] but, at least, the\nseparatist spirit of the redacted narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah\n(which in any case tell of an opposite spirit) is not to be taken as\na decisive clue to the character of the new religion. For the rest,\nthe many Jews who remained in Babylon or spread elsewhere in the\nPersian Empire, and who developed their creed on a non-local basis,\nwere bound to be in some way affected by the surrounding theology. And\nit is tolerably certain that not only was the notion of angels derived\nby the Jews from either the Babylonians or the Persians, but their\nrigid Sabbath and their weekly synagogue meetings came from one or\nboth of these sources.\n\n\n That the Sabbath was an Akkado-Babylonian and Assyrian institution\n is now well established (G. Smith, Assyrian Eponym Canon, 1875,\n p. 20; Jastrow, Relig. of Bab. and Assyria, p. 377; Sayce,\n Hib. Lect. p. 76, and in Variorum Teacher's Bible, ed. 1885,\n Aids, p. 71). It was before the fact was ascertained that Kuenen\n wrote of the Sabbath (i, 245) as peculiar to Israel. The Hebrews\n may have had it before the Exile; but it was clearly not then a\n great institution; and the mention of Sabbaths in Amos (viii,\n 5) and Isaiah (i, 13) is one of the reasons for doubting the\n antiquity of those books. The custom of synagogue meetings on\n the Sabbath is post-exilic, and may have arisen either in Babylon\n itself (so Wellhausen, Israel, p. 492) or in imitation of Parsee\n practice (so Tiele, cited by Kuenen, iii, 35). Compare E. Meyer,\n Gesch. des Alt. iii (1901), \u00a7 131. The same alternative arises\n with regard to the belief in angels, usually regarded as certainly\n Persian in origin (cp. Kuenen, iii, 37; Tiele, Outlines, p. 90;\n and Sack, Die altj\u00fcdische Religion, 1889, p. 133). This also could\n have been Babylonian (Sayce, in Var. Bible, as cited, p. 71); even\n the demon Asmodeus in the Book of Tobit, usually taken as Persian,\n being of Babylonian derivation (id.). Cp. Darmesteter's introd. to\n Zendavesta, 2nd ed. ch. v. On the other hand, the conception of\n Satan, the Adversary, as seen in 1 Chr. xxi, 1; Zech. iii, 1,\n 2, seems to come from the Persian Ahriman, though the Satan of\n Job has not Ahriman's status. Such a modification would come of\n the wish to insist on the supremacy of the good God. And this\n quasi-monotheistic view, again, we are led to regard, in the\n case of the prophets, as a possible Babylonian derivation, or\n at least as a result of the contact of Yahwists with Babylonian\n culture. To a foreign influence, finally, must be definitely\n attributed the later Priestly Code, over-ruling Deuteronomy,\n lowering the Levites, setting up a high priest, calling the\n dues into the sanctuary, resting on the Torah the cultus which\n before was rested on the patriarchs, and providing cities and\n land for the Aaronidae and the Levites (Wellhausen, Prolegomena,\n pp. 123, 127, 147, 149, 347; Israel, pp. 495, 497)--the latter\n an arrangement impossible in mountainous Palestine, as regards\n the land-measurements (id. Proleg. p. 159, following Gramberg and\n Graf), and clearly deriving from some such country as Babylonia\n or Persia. As to the high-priest principle in Babylon and Assyria,\n see Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 59-61; Jastrow, as cited, p. 658.\n\n\nOf the general effect of such contacts we have clear traces in two\nof the most remarkable of the later books of the Old Testament, Job\nand Ecclesiastes, both of which clearly belong to a late period in\nreligious development. The majority of the critics still confidently\ndescribe Job as an original Hebrew work, mainly on the ground,\napparently, that it shows no clear marks of translation, though\nits names and its local colour are all non-Jewish. In any case it\nrepresents, for its time, a cosmopolitan culture, and contains the\nwork of more than one hand, the prologue and epilogue being probably\nolder than the rest; while much of the dialogue is obviously late\ninterpolation.\n\n\n Compare Cheyne, Job and Solomon, 1887, p. 72; Bradley,\n Lectures on Job, p. 171; Bleek-Wellhausen, Einleitung, \u00a7 268\n (291), ed. 1878, p. 542; Driver, Introd. pp. 405-8; Cornill,\n Einleit. in das alte Test. 2te. Aufl. 1892, \u00a7\u00a7 38, 42; Sharpe,\n Hist. of the Hebrew Nation, 4th ed. p. 282 sq.; Dillon, Skeptics\n of the Old Test. 1895, pp. 36-39. Renan's dating of the book six\n or seven centuries before Ecclesiastes (L'Eccl\u00e9siaste, p. 26;\n Job, pp. xv-xliii) is oddly uncritical. It must clearly be dated\n after Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Dillon, as cited); and Cornill even\n ascribes it to the fourth or third century B.C. Dr. Cheyne notes\n that in the skeptical passages the name Yahweh is very seldom used\n (only once or twice, as in xii, 9; xxviii, 28); and Dr. Driver\n admits that the whole book not only abounds in Aramaic words,\n but has a good many \"explicable only from the Arabic.\" Other\n details in the book suggest the possible culture-influence of\n the Himyarite Arabs, who had reached a high civilization before\n 500 B.C. Dr. Driver's remark that \"the thoughts are thoroughly\n Hebraic\" burkes the entire problem as to the manifest innovation\n the book makes in Hebrew thought and literary method alike. Sharpe\n (p. 287) is equally arbitrary. Cp. Renan, Job, 1859, pp. xxv,\n where the newness of the whole treatment is admitted.\n\n Dr. Dillon (pp. 43-59), following Bickell, has pointed out more or\n less convincingly the many interpolations made in the book after,\n and even before, the making of the Septuagint translation, which\n originally lacked 400 lines of the matter in the present Hebrew\n version. The discovery of the Saidic version of the LXX text of\n Job decides the main fact. (See Professor Bickell's Das Buch Job,\n 1894.) \"It is quite possible even now to point out, by the help\n of a few disjointed fragments still preserved, the position, and\n to divine the sense, of certain spiteful and defiant passages,\n which, in the interest of 'religion and morals,' were remorselessly\n suppressed; to indicate others which were split up and transposed;\n and to distinguish many prolix discourses, feeble or powerful\n word-pictures, and trite commonplaces, which were deliberately\n inserted later on, for the sole purpose of toning down the most\n audacious piece of rationalistic philosophy which has ever yet\n been clothed in the music of sublime verse\" (Dillon, pp. 45-46).\n\n \"Besides the four hundred verses which must be excluded on the\n ground that they are wanting in the Septuagint version, and were\n therefore added to the text at a comparatively recent period, the\n long-winded discourse of Elihu must be struck out, most [? much]\n of which was composed before the book was first translated into\n Greek.... In the prologue in prose ... Elihu is not once alluded\n to; and in the epilogue, where all the [other] debaters are named\n and censured, he ... is absolutely ignored.... Elihu's style is\n toto coelo different from that of the other parts of the poem;\n ... while his doctrinal peculiarities, particularly his mention\n of interceding angels, while they coincide with those of the New\n Testament, are absolutely unknown to Job and his friends.... The\n confusion introduced into the text by this insertion is bewildering\n in the extreme; and yet the result is but a typical specimen of\n the ... tangle which was produced by the systematic endeavour of\n later and pious editors to reduce the poem to the proper level\n of orthodoxy\" (id. pp. 55-57). Again: \"Ch. xxiv, 5-8, 10-24,\n and ch. xxx, 3-7, take the place of Job's blasphemous complaint\n about the unjust government of the world.\"\n\n It need hardly be added here that not only the Authorized but\n the Revised Version is false in the text \"I know that my redeemer\n liveth,\" etc. (xix, 25-27), that being a perversion dating from\n Jerome. The probable meaning is given in Dr. Dillon's version:--\n\n\n But I know that my avenger liveth;\n Though it be at the end upon my dust,\n My witness will avenge these things,\n And a curse alight upon mine enemies.\n\n\n The original expressed a complete disbelief in a future life\n (ch. xiv). Compare Dr. Dillon's rhythmic version of the restored\n text.\n\n\nWhat marks off the book of Job from all other Hebrew literature\nis its dramatic and reflective handling of the ethical problem of\ntheism, which the prophets either evade or dismiss by declamation\nagainst Jewish sins. Not that it is solved in Job, where the r\u00f4le of\nSatan is an inconclusive resort to the Persian dualistic solution,\nand where the deity is finally made to answer Job's freethinking\nby sheer literary thunder, much less ratiocinative though far more\nartistic than the theistic speeches of the friends. But at least the\nwriter or writers of Job's speeches consciously grasped the issue;\nand the writer of the epilogue evidently felt that the least Yahweh\ncould do was to compensate a man whom he had allowed to be wantonly\npersecuted. The various efforts of ancient thought to solve the same\nproblem will be found to constitute the motive power in many later\nheterodox systems, theistic and atheistic.\n\nBroadly speaking, it is solved in practice in terms of the fortunes\nof priests and worshippers. At all stages of religious evolution\nextreme ill-fortune tends to detach men from the cults that have\nfailed to bring them succour. Be it in the case of African indigenes\nslaying their unsuccessful rain-doctor, Anglo-Saxon priests welcoming\nChristianity as a surer source of income than their old worship,\npagans turning Christian at the fall of Julian, or Christians going\nover to Islam at the sight of its triumph--the simple primary motive\nof self-interest is always potent on this as on other sides; and at\nall stages of Jewish history, it is evident, there were many who held\nby Yahweh because they thought he prospered them, or renounced him\nbecause he did not. And the very vicissitude of things would breed\na general skepticism. [372] In Zephaniah (i, 12) there is a specific\nallusion to those \"that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good,\nneither will he do evil.\"\n\nJudaism is thus historically a series of socio-political selections\nrather than a sequence of hereditary transmission. The first definite\nand exclusive Yahwistic cult was an outcome of special political\nconditions; and its priests would adhere to it in adversity insofar\nas they had no other economic resort. Every return of sunshine, on the\nother hand, would minister to faith; and while many Jews in the time of\nAssyro-Babylonian ascendancy decided that Yahweh could not save, those\nYahwists who in the actual Captivity prospered commercially in the new\nlife would see in such prosperity a fresh proof of Yahweh's support,\n[373] and would magnify his name and endow his priests accordingly. For\nsimilar reasons, the most intense development of Judaism occurs after\nthe Maccabean revolt, when the military triumph of the racial remnant\nover its oppressors inspired a new and enduring enthusiasm.\n\nOn the other hand, foreign influences would chronically tend to promote\ndoubt, especially where the foreigner was not a mere successful\nvotary exalting his own God, but a sympathetic thinker questioning\nall the Godisms alike. This consideration is a reason the more for\nsurmising a partly foreign source for the book of Job, where, as in\nthe passage cited from Zephaniah, there is no thought of one deity\nbeing less potent than another, but rather an impeachment of divine\nrule in terms of a conceptual monotheism. In any case, the book stands\nfor more than Jewish reverie; and where it is finally turned to an\nirrelevant and commonplace reaffirmation of the goodness of deity, a\ncertain number of sincerer thinkers in all likelihood fell back on an\n\"agnostic\" solution of the eternal problem.\n\nIn certain aspects the book of Job speaks for a further reach of\nearly freethinking than is seen in Ecclesiastes (Koheleth), which,\nhowever, at its lower level of conviction, tells of an unbelief that\ncould not be overborne by any rhetoric. It unquestionably derives\nfrom late foreign influences. It is true that even in the book of\nMalachi, which is commonly dated about 400 B.C., there is angry\nmention of some who ask, \"Where is the God of judgment?\" and say,\n\"It is vain to serve God\"; [374] even as others had said it in the\ndays of Assyrian oppression; [375] but in Malachi these sentiments\nare actually associated with foreign influences, and in Koheleth such\ninfluences are implicit. By an increasing number of students, though\nnot yet by common critical consent, the book is dated about 200 B.C.,\nwhen Greek influence was stronger in Jewry than at any previous time.\n\n\n Gr\u00e4tz even puts it as late as the time of Herod the Great. But\n compare Dillon, p. 129; Tyler, Ecclesiastes, 1874, p. 31;\n Plumptre's Ecclesiastes, 1881, introd. p. 34; Renan, L'Eccl\u00e9siaste,\n 1882, pp. 54-59; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, iii, 82; Driver,\n Introduction, pp. 446-47; Bleek-Wellhausen, Einleitung,\n p. 527. Dr. Cheyne and some others still put the date before\n 332 B.C. Here again we are dealing with a confused and corrupted\n text. The German Prof. Bickell has framed an ingenious and highly\n plausible theory to the effect that the present incoherence of\n the text is mainly due to a misplacing of the leaves of the copy\n from which the current transcript was made. See it set forth by\n Dillon, pp. 92-97; cp. Cheyne, Job and Solomon, p. 273 sq. There\n has, further, been some tampering. The epilogue, in particular,\n is clearly the addition of a later hand--\"one of the most timid\n and shuffling apologies ever penned\" (Dillon, p. 118, note).\n\n\nBut the thought of the book is, as Renan says, profoundly fatigued;\nand the sombre avowals of the absence of divine moral government\nare ill-balanced by sayings, probably interpolated by other hands,\naverring an ultimate rectification even on earth. What remains\nunqualified is the deliberate rejection of the belief in a future\nlife, couched in terms that imply the currency of the doctrine; [376]\nand the deliberate caution against enthusiasm in religion. Belief\nin a powerful but remote deity, with a minimum of worship and vows,\nis the outstanding lesson. [377]\n\n\n \"To me, Koheleth is not a theist in any vital sense in\n his philosophic meditations\" (Cheyne, Job and Solomon,\n p. 250). \"Koheleth's pessimistic theory, which has its roots\n in secularism, is utterly incompatible with the spirit of\n Judaism.... It is grounded upon the rejection of the Messianic\n expectations, and absolute disbelief in the solemn promises of\n Jahveh himself.... It would be idle to deny that he had far more\n in common with the 'impious' than with the orthodox\" (Dillon,\n pp. 119-20).\n\n\nThat there was a good deal of this species of tired or stoical\nsemi-rationalism among the Jews of the Hellenistic period may be\ninferred from various traces. The opening verses of the thirtieth\nchapter of the book of Proverbs, attributed to Agur, son of Jakeh,\nare admittedly the expression of a skeptic's conviction that God\ncannot be known, [378] the countervailing passages being plainly the\nadditions of a believer. Agur's utterances probably belong to the close\nof the third century B.C. Here, as in Job, there are signs of Arab\ninfluence; [379] but at a later period the main source of skepticism\nfor Israel was probably the Hellenistic civilization. It is told in the\nTalmud that in the Maccabean period there came into use the formula,\n\"Cursed be the man that cherisheth swine; and cursed be the man that\nteacheth his son the wisdom of the Greeks\"; and there is preserved\nthe saying of Rabbi Simeon, son of Gamaliel, that in his father's\nschool five hundred learnt the law, and five hundred the wisdom of\nthe Greeks. [380] Before Gamaliel, the Greek influence had affected\nJewish philosophic thought; and it is very probable that among the\nSadducees who resisted the doctrine of resurrection there were some\nthinkers of the Epicurean school. To that school may have belonged\nthe unbelievers who are struck at in several Rabbinical passages\nwhich account for the sin of Adam as beginning in a denial of the\nomnipresence of God, and describe Cain as having said: \"There is\nno judgment; there is no world to come, and there is no reward for\nthe just, and no punishment for the wicked.\" [381] But of Greek or\nother atheism there is no direct trace in the Hebrew literature;\n[382] and the rationalism of the Sadducees, who were substantially\nthe priestly party, [383] was like the rationalism of the Brahmans\nand the Egyptian priests--something esoteric and withheld from the\nmultitude. In the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, which belongs to\nthe first century A.C., the denial of immortality, so explicit in\nEcclesiastes, is treated as a proof of utter immorality, though the\ndeniers are not represented as atheists. [384] They thus seem to have\nbeen still numerous, and the imputation of wholesale immorality to\nthem is of course not to be credited; [385] but there is no trace of\nany constructive teaching on their part.\n\nSo far as the literature shows, save for the confused Judaic-Platonism\nof Philo of Alexandria, there is practically no rational progress in\nJewish thought after Koheleth till the time of contact with revived\nGreek thought in Saracen Spain. The mass of the people, in the usual\nway, are found gravitating to the fanatical and the superstitious\nlevels of the current creed. The book of Ruth, written to resist\nthe separatism of the post-Exilic theocracy, [386] never altered\nthe Jewish practice, though allowed into the canon. The remarkable\nLevitical legislation providing for the periodical restoration of\nthe land to the poor never came into operation, [387] any more than\nthe very different provision giving land and cities to the children\nof Aaron and the Levites. None of the more rationalistic writings\nin the canon seems ever to have counted for much in the national\nlife. To conceive of \"Israel,\" in the fashion still prevalent, as\nbeing typified in the monotheistic prophets, whatever their date,\nis as complete a misconception as it would be to see in Mr. Ruskin\nthe expression of the everyday ethic of commercial England. The\nanti-sacrificial and universalist teachings in the prophets and in the\nPsalms never affected, for the people at large, the sacrificial and\nlocalized worship at Jerusalem; though they may have been esoterically\nreceived by some of the priestly or learned class there, and though\nthey may have promoted a continual exodus of the less fanatical\ntypes, who turned to other civilizations. Despite the resistance of\nthe Sadducees and the teaching of Job and Ecclesiastes, the belief\nin a resurrection rapidly gained ground [388] in the two or three\ncenturies before the rise of Jesuism, and furnished a basis for\nthe new creed; as did the Messianic hope and the belief in a speedy\nending of the world, with both of which Jewish fanaticism sustained\nitself under the long frustration of nationalistic faith before the\nMaccabean interlude and after the Roman conquest. It was in vain that\nthe great teacher Hillel declared, \"There is no Messiah for Israel\";\nthe rest of the race persisted in cherishing the dream. [389] With the\nmajor hallucination thus in full possession, the subordinate species of\nsuperstition flourished as in Egypt and India; so that at the beginning\nof our era the Jews were among the most superstitious peoples in the\nworld. [390] When their monotheism was fully established, and placed\non an abstract footing by the destruction of the temple, it seems\nto have had no bettering influence on the practical ethics of the\nGentiles, though it may have furthered the theistic tendency of the\nStoic philosophy. Juvenal exhibits to us the Jew proselyte at Rome as\nrefusing to show an unbeliever the way, or guide him to a spring. [391]\nSectarian monotheism was thus in part on a rather lower ethical and\nintellectual [392] plane than the polytheism, to say nothing of the\nEpicureanism or the Stoicism, of the society of the Roman Empire.\n\nIt cannot even be said that the learned Rabbinical class carried on a\nphilosophic tradition, while the indigent multitude thus discredited\ntheir creed. In the period after the fall of Jerusalem, the narrow\nnationalism which had always ruled there seems to have been even\nintensified. In the Talmud \"the most general representation of the\nDivine Being is as the chief Rabbi of Heaven; the angelic host being\nhis assessors. The heavenly Sanhedrim takes the opinion of living\nsages in cases of dispute. Of the twelve hours of the day three are\nspent by God in study, three in the government of the world (or rather\nin the exercise of mercy), three in providing food for the world,\nand three in playing with Leviathan. But since the destruction of\nJerusalem all amusements were banished from the courts of heaven,\nand three hours were employed in the instruction of those who had\ndied in infancy.\" [393] So little can a nominal monotheism avail,\non the basis of a completed Sacred Book, to keep thought sane when\nfreethought is lacking.\n\nFinally, Judaism played in the world's thought the great reactionary\nand obscurantist part by erecting into a dogma the irrational\nconception that its deity made the universe \"out of nothing.\" At\nthe time of the redaction of the book of Genesis this dogma had not\nbeen glimpsed: the Hebrew conception was the Babylonian--that of a\npre-existent Chaos put into shape. But gradually, in the interests of\nmonotheism, the anti-scientific doctrine was evolved [394] by way of\nnegative to that of the Gentiles; and where the great line of Ionian\nthinkers passed on to the modern world the developed conception of\nan eternal universe, [395] Judaism passed on through Christianity,\nas well as in its own \"philosophy,\" the contrary dogma, to bar the\nway of later science.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nFREETHOUGHT IN GREECE\n\n\nThe highest of all the ancient civilizations, that of Greece,\nwas naturally the product of the greatest possible complex of\nculture-forces; [396] and its rise to pre-eminence begins after\nthe contact of the Greek settlers in \u00c6olia and Ionia with the higher\ncivilizations of Asia Minor. [397] The great Homeric epos itself stands\nfor the special conditions of \u00c6olic and Ionic life in those colonies;\n[398] even Greek religion, spontaneous as were its earlier growths, was\nsoon influenced by those of the East; [399] and Greek philosophy and\nart alike draw their first inspirations from Eastern contact. [400]\nWhatever reactions we may make against the tradition of Oriental\norigins, [401] it is clear that the higher civilization of antiquity\nhad Oriental (including in that term Egyptian) roots. [402] At no point\ndo we find a \"pure\" Greek civilization. Alike the \"Mycen\u00e6an\" and the\n\"Minoan\" civilizations, as recovered for us by modern excavators,\nshow a composite basis, in which the East is implicated. [403] And\nin the historic period the connection remains obvious. It matters\nnot whether we hold the Phrygians and Karians of history to have\nbeen originally an Aryan stock, related to the Hellenes, and thus\nto have acted as intermediaries between Aryans and Semites, or to\nhave been originally Semites, with whom Greeks intermingled. [404]\nOn either view, the intermediaries represented Semitic influences,\nwhich they passed on to the Greek-speaking races, though they in turn\ndeveloped their deities in large part on psychological lines common\nto them and the Semites. [405]\n\n\n As to the obvious Asiatic influences on historic Greek\n civilization, compare Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man, 1872,\n p. 64; Von Ihering, Vorgeschichte der Indo-Europ\u00e4er, Eng. tr. (\"The\n Evolution of the Aryan\"), p. 73; Sch\u00f6mann, Griech. Alterth\u00fcmer,\n 2te Aufl. 1861, i, 10; E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii, 155;\n A. Bertrand, \u00c9tudes de mythol. et d'arch\u00e9ol. grecques, 1858,\n pp. 40-41; Bury, introd. p. 3. It seems clear that the Egyptian\n influence is greatly overstated by Herodotos (ii. 49-52, etc.),\n who indeed avows that he is but repeating what the Egyptians\n affirm. The Egyptian priests made their claim in the spirit\n in which the Jews later made theirs. Herodotos, besides, would\n prefer an Egyptian to an Asiatic derivation, and so would his\n audience. But it must not be overlooked that there was an Egyptian\n influence in the \"Minoan\" period.\n\n\nA Hellenistic enthusiasm has led a series of eminent scholars to carry\nso far their resistance to the tradition of Oriental beginnings [406]\nas to take up the position that Greek thought is \"autochthonous.\" [407]\nIf it were, it could not conceivably have progressed as it did. Only\nthe tenacious psychological prejudice as to race-characters and racial\n\"genius\" could thus long detain so many students at a point of view so\nmuch more nearly related to supernaturalism than to science. It is safe\nto say that if any people is ever seen to progress in thought, art, and\nlife, with measurable rapidity, its progress is due to the reactions of\nforeign intercourse. The primary civilizations, or what pass for such,\nas those of Akkad and Egypt, are immeasurably slow in accumulating\nculture-material; the relatively rapid developments always involve\nthe stimulus of old cultures upon a new and vigorous civilization,\nwell-placed for social evolution for the time being. There is no\npoint in early Greek evolution, so far as we have documentary trace\nof it, at which foreign impact or stimulus is not either patent or\ninferrible. [408] In the very dawn of history the Greeks are found\nto be a composite stock, [409] growing still more composite; and the\nvery beginnings of its higher culture are traced to the non-Grecian\npeople of Thrace, [410] who worshipped the Muses. As seen by Herodotos\nand Thucydides, \"the original Hellenes were a particular conquering\ntribe of great prestige, which attracted the surrounding tribes to\nfollow it, imitate it, and call themselves by its name. The Spartans\nwere, to Herodotos, Hellenic; the Athenians, on the other hand,\nwere not. They were Pelasgian, but by a certain time 'changed into\nHellenes and learnt their language.' In historical times we cannot\nreally find any tribe of pure Hellenes in existence.\" [411] The later\nsupremacy of the Greek culture is thus to be explained in terms not\nof an abnormal \"Greek genius,\" [412] but of the special evolution of\nintelligence in the Greek-speaking stock, firstly through constant\ncrossing with others, and secondarily through its furtherance by the\nspecial social conditions of the more progressive Greek city-states,\nof which conditions the most important were their geographical\ndividedness and their own consequent competition and interaction. [413]\n\n\n The whole problem of Oriental \"influence\" has been obscured, and\n the solution retarded, by the old academic habit of discussing\n questions of mental evolution in vacuo. Even the reaction against\n idolatrous Hellenism proceeded without due regard to historical\n sequence; and the return reaction against that is still somewhat\n lacking in breadth of inference. There has been too much on\n one side of assumption as to early Oriental achievement; and\n too much tendency on the other to assume that the positing of\n an \"influence\" on the Greeks is a disparagement of the \"Greek\n mind.\" The superiority of that in its later evolution seems too\n obvious to need affirming. But that hardly justifies so able a\n writer as Professor Burnet in concluding (Early Greek Philosophy,\n 2nd ed. introd. pp. 22-23) that \"the\" Egyptians knew no more\n arithmetic than was learned by their children in the schools;\n or in saying (id. p. 26) that \"the\" Babylonians \"studied and\n recorded celestial phenomena for what we call astrological\n purposes, not from any scientific interest.\" How can we have\n the right to say that no Babylonians had a scientific interest\n in the data? Such interest would in the nature of the case miss\n the popular reproduction given to astrological lore. But it might\n very well subsist.\n\n Professor Burnet, albeit a really original investigator, has\n not here had due regard to the early usage of collegiate or\n corporate culture, in which arcane knowledge was reserved for the\n few. Thus he writes (p. 26) concerning the Greeks that \"it was not\n till the time of Plato that even the names of the planets were\n known.\" Surely they must have been \"known\" to some adepts long\n before: how else came they to be accepted? As Professor Burnet\n himself notes (p. 34), \"in almost every department of life we find\n that the corporation at first is everything and the individual\n nothing. The peoples of the East hardly got beyond this stage at\n all: their science, such as it is, is anonymous, the inherited\n property of a caste or guild, and we still see clearly in some\n cases that it was once the same among the Hellenes.\" Is it not then\n probable that astronomical knowledge was so ordered by Easterns,\n and passed on to Hellenes?\n\n There still attaches to the investigation of early Greek philosophy\n the drawback that the philosophical scholars do not properly posit\n the question: What was the early Ionic Greek society like? How did\n the Hellenes relate to the older polities and cultures which they\n found there? Professor Burnet makes justifiable fun (p. 21, note)\n of Dr. Gomperz's theory of the influence of \"native brides\"; but he\n himself seems to argue that the Greeks could learn nothing from the\n men they conquered, though he admits (p. 20) their derivation of\n \"their art and many of their religious ideas from the East.\" If\n religion, why not religious speculation, leading to philosophy\n and science? This would be a more fruitful line of inquiry than\n one based on the assumption that \"the\" Babylonians went one way\n and \"the\" Greeks another. After all, only a few in each race\n carried on the work of thought and discovery. We do not say that\n \"the English\" wrote Shakespeare. Why affirm always that \"the\"\n Greeks did whatever great Greeks achieved?\n\n On the immediate issue Professor Burnet incidentally concedes what\n is required. After arguing that the East perhaps borrowed more\n from the West than did the West from the East, he admits (p. 21):\n \"It would, however, be quite another thing to say that Greek\n philosophy originated quite independently of Oriental influence.\"\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 1\n\nBy the tacit admission of one of the ablest opponents of the theory\nof foreign influence, Hellenic religion as fixed by Homer for the\nHellenic world was partly determined by Asiatic influences. Ottfried\nM\u00fcller decided not only that Homer the man (in whose personality he\nbelieved) was probably a Smyrnean, whether of \u00c6olic or Ionic stock,\n[414] but that Homer's religion must have represented a special\nselection from the manifold Greek mythology, necessarily representing\nhis local bias. [415] Now, the Greek cults at Smyrna, as in the other\n\u00c6olic and Ionic cities of Asia Minor, would be very likely to reflect\nin some degree the influence of the Karian or other Asiatic cults\naround them. [416] The early Attic conquerors of Miletos allowed\nthe worship of the Karian Sun-God there to be carried on by the old\npriests; and the Attic settlers of Ephesos in the same way adopted the\nneighbouring worship of the Lydian Goddess (who became the Artemis\nor \"Great Diana\" of the Ephesians), and retained the ministry of\nthe attendant priests and eunuchs. [417] Smyrna was apparently not\nlike these a mixed community, but one founded by Achaians from the\nPeloponnesos; but the genera] Ionic and \u00c6olic religious atmosphere,\nset up by common sacrifices, [418] must have been represented in an\nepic brought forth in that region. The Karian civilization had at\none time spread over a great part of the \u00c6gean, including Delos and\nCyprus. [419] Such a civilization must have affected that of the Greek\nconquerors, who only on that basis became civilized traders. [420]\n\nIt is not necessary to ask how far exactly the influence may have\ngone in the Iliad: the main point is that even at that stage of\ncomparatively simple Hellenism the Asiatic environment, Karian\nor Phoenician, counted for something, whether in cosmogony or in\nfurthering the process of God-grouping, or in conveying the cult of\nCyprian Aphrodite, [421] or haply in lending some characteristics to\nZeus and Apollo and Ath\u00ean\u00ea, [422] an influence none the less real\nbecause the genius of the poet or poets of the Iliad has given to\nthe whole Olympian group the artistic stamp of individuality which\nthenceforth distinguishes the Gods of Greece from all others. Indeed,\nthe very creation of a graded hierarchy out of the independent local\ndeities of Greece, the marrying of the once isolated Pelasgic H\u00ear\u00ea\nto Zeus, the subordination to him of the once isolated Ath\u00ean\u00ea and\nApollo--all this tells of the influence of a Semitic world in which\neach Baal had his wife, and in which the monarchic system developed on\nearth had been set up in heaven. [423] But soon the Asiatic influence\nbecomes still more clearly recognizable. There is reason to hold\nwith Schrader that the belief in a mildly blissful future state,\nas seen even in the Odyssey [424] and in the Theogony ascribed to\nHesiod, [425] is \"a new belief which is only to be understood in\nview of oriental tales and teaching.\" [426] In the Theogony, again,\nthe Semitic element increases, [427] Kronos being a Semitic figure;\n[428] while Semel\u00ea, if not Dionysos, appears to be no less so. [429]\nBut we may further surmise that in Homer, to begin with, the conception\nof Okeanos, the earth-surrounding Ocean-stream, as the origin of all\nthings, [430] comes from some Semitic source; and that Hesiod's more\ncomplicated scheme of origins from Chaos is a further borrowing of\noriental thought--both notions being found in ancient Babylonian lore,\nwhence the Hebrews derived their combination of Chaos and Ocean in\nthe first verses of Genesis. [431] It thus appears that the earlier\noriental [432] influence upon Greek thought was in the direction\nof developing religion, [433] with only the germ of rationalism\nconveyed in the idea of an existence of matter before the Gods, [434]\nwhich we shall later find scientifically developed. But the case is\nobscure. Insofar as the Theogony, for instance, partly moralizes the\nmore primitively savage myths, [435] it may be that it represents\nthe spontaneous need of the more highly evolved race to give an\nacceptable meaning to divine tales which, coming from another race,\nhave not a quite sacrosanct prescription, though the tendency is to\naccept them. On the other hand, it may have been a further foreign\ninfluence that gave the critical impulse.\n\n\n \"It is plain enough that Homer and Hesiod represent, both\n theologically and socially, the close of a long epoch, and\n not the youth of the Greek world, as some have supposed. The\n real signification of many myths is lost to them, and so is\n the import of most of the names and titles of the elder Gods,\n which are archaic and strange, while the subordinate personages\n generally have purely Greek names\" (Professor Mahaffy, History\n of Classical Greek Literature, 1880, i, 17).\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2\n\nWhatever be the determining conditions, it is clear that the Homeric\nepos stands for a new growth of secular song, distinct from the earlier\npoetry, which by tradition was \"either lyrical or oracular.\" The\npoems ascribed to the pre-Homeric bards \"were all short, and they\nwere all strictly religious. In these features they contrasted\nbroadly with the epic school of Homer. Even the hexameter metre\nseems not to have been used in these old hymns, and was called a new\ninvention of the Delphic priests. [436] Still further, the majority\nof these hymns are connected with mysteries apparently ignored by\nHomer, or with the worship of Dionysos, which he hardly knew.\" [437]\nIntermediate between the earlier religious poetry and the Homeric\nepic, then, was a hexametric verse, used by the Delphic priesthood;\nand to this order of poetry belongs the Theogony which goes under\nthe name of Hesiod, and which is a sample of other and older works,\n[438] probably composed by priests. And the distinctive mark of the\nHomeric epos is that, framed as it was to entertain feudal chiefs and\ntheir courts, it turned completely away from the sacerdotal norm and\npurpose. \"Thus epic poetry, from having been purely religious, became\npurely secular. After having treated men and heroes in subordination\nto the Gods, it came to treat the Gods in relation to men. Indeed,\nit may be said of Homer that in the image of man created he God.\" [439]\n\n\n As to the non-religiousness of the Homeric epics, there is a\n division of critical opinion. Meyer insists (Gesch. des Alt. ii,\n 395) that, as contrasted with the earlier religious poetry, \"the\n epic poetry is throughout secular (profan); it aims at charming\n its hearers, not at propitiating the Gods\"; and he further sees in\n the whole Ionian mood a certain cynical disillusionment (id. ii,\n 723). Cp. Benn, Philos. of Greece, p. 40, citing Hegel. E. Curtius\n (G. G. i, 126) goes so far as to ascribe a certain irony to the\n portraiture of the Gods (Ionian Apollo excepted) in Homer, and to\n trace this to Ionian levity. To the same cause he assigns the lack\n of any expression of a sense of stigma attaching to murder. This\n sense he holds the Greek people had, though Homer does not\n hint it. (Cp. Grote, i, 24, whose inference Curtius implicitly\n impugns.) Girard (Le Sentiment religieux en Gr\u00e8ce, 1869), on the\n contrary, appears to have no suspicion of any problem to solve,\n treating Homer as unaffectedly religious. The same view is taken\n by Prof. Paul Decharme. \"On chercherait vainement dans l'Iliade et\n dans l'Odyss\u00e9e les premi\u00e8res traces du scepticisme grec \u00e0 l'\u00e9gard\n des fables des dieux. C'est avec une foi enti\u00e8re en la r\u00e9alit\u00e9\n des \u00e9v\u00e9nements mythiques que les po\u00e8tes chantent les l\u00e9gendes ...;\n c'est en toute simplicit\u00e9 d'\u00e2me aussi que les auditeurs de l'\u00e9pop\u00e9e\n \u00e9coutent....\" (La critique des traditions religieuses chez les\n grecs, 1904, p. 1.) Thus we have a kind of balance of contrary\n opinions, German against French. Any verdict on the problem must\n recognize on the one hand the possibilities of na\u00efve credulity in\n an unlettered age, and on the other the probability of critical\n perception on the part of a great poet. I have seen both among\n Boers in South Africa. On the general question of the mood of\n the Homeric poems compare Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek\n Religion, 1912, p. 77, and Hist. of Anc. Greek Lit. pp. 34, 35;\n and A. Benn, The Philosophy of Greece in Relation to the Character\n of its People, 1898, pp. 29-30.\n\n\nStill, it cannot be said that in the Iliad there is any clear hint of\nreligious skepticism, though the Gods are so wholly in the likeness of\nmen that the lower deities fight with heroes and are worsted, while\nZeus and H\u00ear\u00ea quarrel like any earthly couple. In the Odyssey there\nis a bare hint of possible speculation in the use of the word atheos;\nbut it is applied only in the phrase ouk atheei, \"not without a\nGod,\" [440] in the sense of similar expressions in other passages\nand in the Iliad. [441] The idea was that sometimes the Gods directly\nmeddled. When Odysseus accuses the suitors of not dreading the Gods,\n[442] he has no thought of accusing them of unbelief. [443] Homer\nhas indeed been supposed to have exercised a measure of relative\nfreethought in excluding from his song the more offensive myths about\nthe Gods, [444] but such exclusion may be sufficiently explained on\nthe score that the epopees were chanted in aristocratic dwellings,\nin the presence of womenkind, without surmising any process of doubt\non the poet's part.\n\nOn the other hand, it was inevitable that such a free treatment of\nthings hitherto sacred should not only affect the attitude of the\nlay listener towards the current religion, but should react on the\nreligious consciousness. God-legends so fully thrust on secular\nattention were bound to be discussed; and in the adaptations of\nmyth for liturgical purposes by Stesichoros (fl. circa 600 B.C.) we\nappear to have the first open trace of a critical revolt in the\nGreek world against immoral or undignified myths. [445] In his\nwork, it is fair to say, we see \"the beginning of rationalism\":\n\"the decisive step is taken: once the understanding criticizes the\nsanctified tradition, it raises itself to be the judge thereof;\nno longer the common tradition but the individual conviction is the\nground of religious belief.\" [446] Religious, indeed, the process\nstill substantially is. It is to preserve the credit of Helena as\na Goddess that Stesichoros repudiates the Homeric account of her,\n[447] somewhat in the spirit in which the framers of the Hesiodic\ntheogony manipulated the myths without rejecting them, or the Hebrew\nredactors tampered with their text. But in Stesichoros there is a new\ntendency to reject the myth altogether; [448] so that at this stage\nfreethought is still part of a process in which religious feeling,\npressed by an advancing ethical consciousness, instinctively clears\nits standing ground.\n\nIt is in Pindar, however (518-442 B.C.), that we first find such a\nmental process plainly avowed by a believer. In his first Olympic\nOde he expressly declares the need for bringing afterthought to bear\non poetic lore, that so men may speak nought unfitting of the Gods;\nand he protests that he will never tell the tale of the blessed ones\nbanqueting on human flesh. [449] In the ninth Ode he again protests\nthat his lips must not speak blasphemously of such a thing as strife\namong the immortals. [450] Here the critical motive is ethical, though,\nwhile repudiating one kind of scandal about the Gods, Pindar placidly\naccepts others no less startling to the modern sense. His critical\nrevolt, in fact, is far from thoroughgoing, and suggests rather a\nreligious man's partial response to pressure from others than any\nindependent process of reflection. [451]\n\n\n \"He [Pindar] was honestly attached to the national religion and to\n its varieties in old local cults. He lived a somewhat sacerdotal\n life, labouring in honour of the Gods, and seeking to spread a\n reverence for old traditional beliefs. He, moreover, shows an\n acquaintance with Orphic rites and Pythagorean mysteries, which\n led him to preach the doctrine of immortality, and of rewards\n and punishments in the life hereafter. [Note.--The most explicit\n fragment (thr\u00eanoi, 3), is, however, not considered genuine by\n recent critics.]... He is indeed more affected by the advance of\n freethinking than he imagines; he borrows from the neologians the\n habit of rationalizing myths, and explaining away immoral acts\n and motives in the Gods; but these things are isolated attempts\n with him, and have no deep effect upon his general thinking\"\n (Mahaffy, Hist. of Greek Lit. i, 213-14).\n\n\nFor such a development we are not, of course, forced to assume a\nforeign influence: mere progress in refinement and in mental activity\ncould bring it about; yet none the less it is probable that foreign\ninfluence did quicken the process. It is true that from the beginnings\nof the literary period Greek thought played with a certain freedom on\nmyth, partly perhaps because the traditions visibly came from various\nraces, and there was no strong priesthood to ossify them. After Homer\nand Hesiod, men looked back to those poets as shaping theology to\ntheir own minds. [452] But all custom is conservative, and Pindar's\nmind had that general cast. On the other hand, external influence was\nforthcoming. The period of Pindar and \u00c6schylus [525-455 B.C.] follows\non one in which Greek thought, stimulated on all sides, had taken\nthe first great stride in its advance beyond all antiquity. Egypt\nhad been fully thrown open to the Greeks in the reign of Psammetichos\n[453] (650 B.C.); and a great historian, who contends that the \"sheer\ninherent and expansive force\" of \"the\" Greek intellect, \"aided but\nby no means either impressed or provoked from without,\" was the true\ncause, yet concedes that intercourse with Egypt \"enlarged the range\nof their thoughts and observations, while it also imparted to them\nthat vein of mysticism which overgrew the primitive simplicity of the\nHomeric religion,\" and that from Asia Minor in turn they had derived\n\"musical instruments and new laws of rhythm and melody,\" as well as\n\"violent and maddening religious rites.\" [454] And others making\nsimilar \u00e0 priori claims for the Greek intelligence are forced likewise\nto admit that the mental transition between Homer and Herodotos cannot\nbe explained save in terms of \"the influence of other creeds, and the\nnecessary operation of altered circumstances and relations.\" [455]\nIn the Persae of \u00c6schylus we even catch a glimpse of direct contact\nwith foreign skepticism; [456] and again in the Agamemnon there is\na reference to some impious one who denied that the Gods deigned\nto have care of mortals. [457] It seems unwarrantable to read as\n\"ridicule of popular polytheism\" the passage in the same tragedy:\n[458] \"Zeus, whosoever he be; if this name be well-pleasing to\nhimself in invocation, by this do I name him.\" It may more fitly be\nread [459] as an echo of the saying of Herakleitos that \"the Wise\n[= the Logos?] is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of\nZeus.\" [460] But in the poet's thought, as revealed in the Prometheus,\nand in the Agamemnon on the theme of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, there\nhas occurred an ethical judgment of the older creeds, an approach to\npantheism, a rejection of anthropomorphism, and a growth of pessimism\nthat tells of their final insufficiency.\n\n\n The leaning to pantheism is established by the discovery that\n the disputed lines, \"Zeus is sky, earth, and heaven: Zeus is all\n things, yea, greater than all things\" (Frag. 443), belonged to the\n lost tragedy of the Heliades (Haigh, Tragic Drama of the Greeks,\n 1896, p. 88). For the pessimism see the Prometheus, 247-51. The\n anti-anthropomorphism is further to be made out from the lines\n ascribed to \u00c6schylus by Justin Martyr (De Monarchia, c. 2)\n and Clemens Alexandrinus (Stromata, v, 14). They are expressly\n pantheistic; but their genuineness is doubtful. The story that\n \u00c6schylus was nearly killed by a theatre audience on the score\n that he had divulged part of the mysteries in a tragedy (Haigh,\n The Attic Theatre, 1889, p. 316; Tragic Drama, pp. 49-50)\n does not seem to have suggested to Aristotle, who tells it\n (Nicomachean Ethics, iii, 2), any heterodox intention on the\n tragedian's part; but it is hard to see an orthodox believer\n in the author either of the Prometheus, wherein Zeus is posed\n as brutal might crucifying innocence and beneficence, or of\n the Agamemnon, where the father, perplexed in the extreme, can\n but fall back helplessly on formulas about the all-sufficiency\n of Zeus when called upon to sacrifice his daughter. Cp. Haigh,\n Tragic Drama, p. 86 sq. \"Some critics,\" says Mr. Haigh (p. 88),\n \"have been led to imagine that there is in \u00c6schylus a double\n Zeus--the ordinary God of the polytheistic religion and the one\n omnipotent deity in whom he really believed. They suppose that he\n had no genuine faith in the credibility of the popular legends,\n but merely used them as a setting for his tragedies; and that his\n own convictions were of a more philosophical type,\" as seen in\n the pantheistic lines concerning Zeus. To this Mr. Haigh replies\n that it is \"most improbable that there was any clear distinction\n in the mind of \u00c6schylus\" between the two conceptions of Zeus;\n going on, however, to admit that \"much, no doubt, he regarded\n as uncertain, much as false. Even the name 'Zeus' was to him a\n mere convention.\" Mr. Haigh in this discussion does not attempt\n to deal with the problem of the Prometheus.\n\n The hesitations of the critics on this head are noteworthy. Karl\n Ottfried M\u00fcller, who is least himself in dealing with fundamental\n issues of creed, evades the problem (Lit. of Anc. Greece, 1847,\n p. 329) with the bald suggestion that \"\u00c6schylus, in his own\n mind, must have felt how this severity [of Zeus], a necessary\n accompaniment of the transition from the Titanic period to the\n government of the Gods of Olympus, was to be reconciled with the\n mild wisdom which he makes an attribute of Zeus in the subsequent\n ages of the world. Consequently, the deviation from right ... would\n all lie on the side of Prometheus.\" This nugatory plea--which is\n rightly rejected by Burckhardt (Griech. Culturgesch. ii, 25)--is\n ineffectually backed by the argument that the friendly Oceanides\n recur to the thought, \"Those only are wise who humbly reverence\n Adrasteia (Fate)\"--as if the positing of a supreme Fate were not\n a further belittlement of Zeus.\n\n Other critics are similarly evasive. Patin (Eschyle, \u00e9d. 1877,\n p. 250 sq.), noting the vagaries of past criticism, hostile and\n other, avowedly leaves the play an unsolved enigma, affirming only\n the commonly asserted \"piety\" of \u00c6schylus. Girard (Le sentiment\n religieux en Gr\u00e8ce, pp. 425-29) does no better, while dogmatically\n asserting that the poet is \"the Greek faithful to the faith of his\n fathers, which he interprets with an intelligent and emotional\n (\u00e9mue) veneration.\" Meyer (iii, \u00a7\u00a7 257-58) draws an elaborate\n parallel between \u00c6schylus and Pindar, affirming in turn the \"tiefe\n Fr\u00f6mmigkeit\" of the former--and in turn leaves the enigma of the\n Prometheus unsolved. Professor Decharme, rightly rejecting the\n fanciful interpretations of Quinet and others who allegorize\n Prometheus into humanity revolting against superstition,\n offers a very unsatisfying explanation of his own (p. 107),\n which practically denies that there is any problem to solve.\n\n Prof. Mahaffy, with his more vivacious habit of thought, comes\n to the evaded issue. \"How,\" he asks, \"did the Athenian audience,\n who vehemently attacked the poet for divulging the mysteries,\n tolerate such a drama? And still more, how did \u00c6schylus, a pious\n and serious thinker, venture to bring such a subject on the\n stage with a moral purpose?\" The answers suggested are: (1) that\n in all old religions there are tolerated anomalous survivals;\n (2) that \"a very extreme distortion of their Gods will not\n offend many who would feel outraged at any open denial of them\";\n (3) that all Greeks longed for despotic power for themselves,\n and that \"no Athenian, however he sympathized with Prometheus,\n would think of blaming Zeus for ... crushing all resistance to his\n will.\" But even if these answers--of which the last is the most\n questionable--be accepted, \"the question of the poet's intention\n is far more difficult, and will probably never be satisfactorily\n answered.\" Finally, we have this summing-up: \"\u00c6schylus was, indeed,\n essentially a theologian ... but, what is more honourable and\n exceptional, he was so candid and honest a theologian that he did\n not approach men's difficulties for the purpose of refuting them\n or showing them weak and groundless. On the contrary, though an\n orthodox and pious man, though clearly convinced of the goodness\n of Providence, and of the profound truth of the religion of\n his fathers, he was ever stating boldly the contradictions and\n anomalies in morals and in myths, and thus naturally incurring\n the odium and suspicion of the professional advocates of religion\n and their followers. He felt, perhaps instinctively, that a vivid\n dramatic statement of these problems in his tragedies was better\n moral education than vapid platitudes about our ignorance, and\n about our difficulties being only caused by the shortness of our\n sight\" (Hist. of Greek Lit. i, 260-61, 273-74).\n\n Here, despite the intelligent handling, the enigma is merely\n transferred from the great tragedian's work to his character: it is\n not solved. No solution is offered of the problem of the pantheism\n of the fragment above cited, which is quite irreconcilable with\n any orthodox belief in Greek religion, though such sayings are\n at times repeated by unthinking believers, without recognition\n of their bearing. That the pantheism is a philosophical element\n imported into the Greek world from the Babylonian through the early\n Ionian thinkers seems to be the historical fact (cp. Whittaker,\n as last cited): that the importation meant the dissolution of\n the national faith for many thinking men seems to be no less\n true. It seems finally permissible, then, to suggest that the\n \"piety\" of \u00c6schylus was either discontinuous or a matter of\n artistic rhetoric and public spirit, and that the Prometheus is\n a work of profound and terrible irony, unburdening his mind of\n reveries that religion could not conjure away. The discussion\n on the play has unduly ignored the question of its date. It is,\n in all probability, one of the latest of the works of \u00c6schylus\n (K. O. M\u00fcller, Lit. of Anc. Greece, p. 327; Haigh, Tragic Drama,\n p. 109). M\u00fcller points to the employment of the third actor--a\n late development--and Haigh to the overshadowing of the choruses\n by the dialogue; also to the mention (ll. 366-72) of the eruption\n of Etna, which occurred in 475 B.C. This one circumstance goes\n far to solve the dispute. Written near the end of the poet's life\n the play belongs to the latest stages of his thinking; and if it\n departs widely in its tone from the earlier plays, the reasonable\n inference is that his ideas had undergone a change. The Agamemnon,\n with its desolating problem, seems to be also one of his later\n works. Rationalism, indeed, does not usually emerge in old age,\n though Voltaire was deeply shaken in his theism by the earthquake\n of Lisbon; but \u00c6schylus is unique even among men of genius; and\n the highest flight of Greek drama may well stand for an abnormal\n intellectual experience.\n\n\nIn this primary entrance of critical doubt into drama we have one of\nthe sociological clues to the whole evolution of Greek thought. It\nhas been truly said that the constant action of the tragic stage, the\ndramatic putting of arguments and rejoinders, pros and cons--which\nin turn was a fruit of the actual daily pleadings in the Athenian\ndikastery--was a manifold stimulus alike to ethical feeling and\nto intellectual effort, such as no other ancient civilization ever\nknew. \"The appropriate subject-matter of tragedy is pregnant not only\nwith ethical sympathy, but also with ethical debate and speculation,\"\nto an extent unapproached in the earlier lyric and gnomic poetry\nand the literature of aphorism and precept. \"In place of unexpanded\nresults, or the mere communication of single-minded sentiment, we\nhave even in \u00c6schylus, the earliest of the great tragedians, a large\nlatitude of dissent and debate--a shifting point of view--a case\nbetter or worse--and a divination of the future advent of sovereign\nand instructed reason. It was through the intermediate stage of\ntragedy that Grecian literature passed into the Rhetoric, Dialectics,\nand Ethical speculation which marked the fifth century B.C.\" [461]\n\nThis development was indeed autochthonous, save insofar as the\ngerm of the tragic drama may have come from the East in the cult\nof Dionysos, with its vinous dithyramb: the \"Greek intellect\"\nassuredly did wonderful things at Athens, being placed, for a time,\nin civic conditions peculiarly fitted for the economic evocation of\ncertain forms of genius. But the above-noted developments in Pindar\nand in \u00c6schylus had been preceded by the great florescence of early\nIonian philosophy in the sixth century, a growth which constrains\nus to look once more to Asia Minor for a vital fructification of the\nGreek inner life, of a kind that Athenian institutions could not in\nthemselves evoke. For while drama flourished supremely at Athens,\nscience and philosophy grew up elsewhere, centuries before Athens\nhad a philosopher of note; and all the notable beginnings of Hellenic\nfreethought occurred outside of Hellas proper.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3\n\nThe Greeks varied from the general type of culture-evolution seen\nin India, Persia, Egypt, and Babylon, and approximated somewhat to\nthat of ancient China, in that their higher thinking was done not by\nan order of priests pledged to cults, but by independent laymen. In\nGreece, as in China, this line of development is to be understood as a\nresult of early political conditions--in China, those of a multiplicity\nof independent feudal States; in Greece, those of a multiplicity of\nCity States, set up first by the geographical structure of Hellas,\nand reproduced in the colonies of Asia Minor and Magna Graecia by\nreason of the acquired ideal and the normal state of commercial\ncompetition. To the last, many Greek cults exhibited their original\ncharacter as the sacra of private families. Such conditions prevented\nthe growth of a priestly caste or organization. [462] Neither China\nnor Pagan Greece was imperialized till there had arisen enough of\nrationalism to prevent the rise of a powerful priesthood; and the\nlater growth of a priestly system in Greece in the Christian period\nis to be explained in terms first of a positive social degeneration,\naccompanying a complete transmutation of political life, and secondly\nof the imposition of a new cult, on the popular plane, specially\norganized on the model of the political system that adopted it. Under\nimperialism, however, the two civilizations ultimately presented a\nsingular parallel of unprogressiveness.\n\nIn the great progressive period, the possible gains from the absence of\na priesthood are seen in course of realization. For the Greek-speaking\nworld in general there was no dogmatic body of teaching, no written\ncode of theology and moral law, no Sacred Book. [463] Each local\ncult had its own ancient ritual, often ministered by priestesses,\nwith myths, often of late invention, to explain it; [464] only\nHomer and Hesiod, with perhaps some of the now lost epics, serving\nas a general treasury of myth-lore. The two great epopees ascribed\nto Homer, indeed, had a certain Biblical status; and the Homerids\nor other bards who recited them did what in them lay to make the\nold poetry the standard of theological opinion; but they too lacked\norganized influence, and could not hinder higher thinking. [465] The\nspecial priesthood of Delphi, wielding the oracle, could maintain\ntheir political influence only by holding their function above all\napparent self-seeking or effort at domination. [466] It only needed,\nthen, such civic conditions as should evolve a leisured class, with\na bent towards study, to make possible a growth of lay philosophy.\n\nThose conditions first arose in the Ionian cities; because there first\ndid Greek citizens attain commercial wealth, [467] as a result of\nadopting the older commercial civilization whose independent cities\nthey conquered, and of the greater rapidity of development which\nbelongs to colonies in general. [468] There it was that, in matters\nof religion and philosophy, the comparison of their own cults with\nthose of their foreign neighbours first provoked their critical\nreflection, as the age of primitive warfare passed away. And there\nit was, accordingly, that on a basis of primitive Babylonian science\nthere originated with Thales of Miletos (fl. 586 B.C.), a Phoenician by\ndescent, [469] the higher science and philosophy of the Greek-speaking\nrace. [470]\n\n\n It is historically certain that Lydia had an ancient and close\n historical connection with Babylonian and Assyrian civilization,\n whether through the \"Hittites\" or otherwise (Sayce, Anc. Emp. of\n the East, 1884, pp. 217-19; Curtius, Griech. Gesch. i, 63, 207;\n Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. i, 166, 277, 299, 305-10; Soury,\n Br\u00e9viaire de l'hist. du mat\u00e9rialisme, 1881, pp. 30, 37 sq. Cp. as\n to Armenia, Edwards, The Witness of Assyria, 1893, p. 144); and in\n the seventh century the commercial connection between Lydia and\n Ionia, long close, was presumably friendly up to the time of the\n first attacks of the Lydian Kings, and even afterwards (Herodotos\n i, 20-23), Alyattes having made a treaty of peace with Miletos,\n which thereafter had peace during his long reign. This brings us\n to the time of Thales (640-548 B.C.). At the same time, the Ionian\n settlers of Miletos had from the first a close connection with the\n Karians (Herod. i, 146, and above pp. 120-21), whose near affinity\n with the Semites, at least in religion, is seen in their practice\n of cutting their foreheads at festivals (id. ii, 61; cp. Grote,\n ed. 1888, i, 27, note; E. Curtius, i, 36, 42; Busolt, i, 33;\n and Spiegel, Eranische Alterthumskunde, i, 228). Thales was thus\n in the direct sphere of Babylonian culture before the conquest\n of Cyrus; and his Milesian pupils or successors, Anaximandros\n and Anaximenes, stand for the same influences. Herakleitos in\n turn was of Ephesus, an Ionian city in the same culture-sphere;\n Anaxagoras was of Klazomenai, another Ionian city, as had been\n Hermotimos, of the same philosophic school; the Eleatic school,\n founded by Xenophanes and carried on by Parmenides and the elder\n Zeno, come from the same matrix, Elea having been founded by\n exiles from Ionian Phokaia on its conquest by the Persians; and\n Pythagoras, in turn, was of the Ionian city of Samos, in the same\n sixth century. Finally, Protagoras and Demokritos were of Abdera,\n an Ionian colony in Thrace; Leukippos, the teacher of Demokritos,\n was either an Abderite, a Milesian, or an Elean; and Archelaos,\n the pupil of Anaxagoras and a teacher of Sokrates, is said to\n have been a Milesian. Wellhausen (Israel, p. 473 of vol. of\n Prolegomena, Eng. tr.) has spoken of the rise of philosophy\n on the \"threatened and actual political annihilation of Ionia\"\n as corresponding to the rise of Hebrew prophecy on the menace\n and the consummation of the Assyrian conquest. As regards Ionia,\n this may hold in the sense that the stoppage of political freedom\n threw men back on philosophy, as happened later at Athens. But\n Thales philosophized before the Persian conquest.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4\n\nThales, like Homer, starts from the Babylonian conception of a\nbeginning of all things in water; but in Thales the immediate motive\nand the sequel are strictly cosmological and neither theological\nnor poetical, though we cannot tell whether the worship of a God\nof the Waters may not have been the origin of a water-theory of the\ncosmos. The phrase attributed to him, \"that all things are full of\nGods,\" [471] clearly meant that in his opinion the forces of things\ninhered in the cosmos, and not in personal powers who spasmodically\ninterfered with it. [472] It is probable that, as was surmised by\nPlutarch, a pantheistic conception of Zeus existed for the Ionian\nGreeks before Thales. [473] To the later doxographists he \"seems to\nhave lost belief in the Gods.\" [474] From the mere second-hand and\noften unintelligent statements which are all we have in his case,\nit is hard to make sure of his system; but that it was pantheistic\n[475] and physicist seems clear. He conceived that matter not only\ncame from but was resolvable into water; that all phenomena were\nruled by law or \"necessity\"; and that the sun and planets (commonly\nregarded as deities) were bodies analogous to the earth, which he\nheld to be spherical but \"resting on water.\" [476] For the rest, he\nspeculated in meteorology and in astronomy, and is credited with having\npredicted a solar eclipse [477]--a fairly good proof of his knowledge\nof Chaldean science [478]--and with having introduced geometry into\nGreece from Egypt. [479] To him, too, is ascribed a wise counsel to\nthe Ionians in the matter of political federation, [480] which, had\nit been followed, might have saved them from the Persian conquest;\nand he is one of the many early moralists who laid down the Golden\nRule as the essence of the moral law. [481] With his maxim, \"Know\nthyself,\" he seems to mark a broadly new departure in ancient thought:\nthe balance of energy is shifted from myth and theosophy, prophecy\nand poesy, to analysis of consciousness and the cosmic process.\n\nFrom this point Greek rationalism is continuous, despite reactions,\ntill the Roman conquest, Miletos figuring long as a general source\nof skepticism. Anaximandros (610-547 B.C.), pupil and companion\nof Thales, was like him an astronomer, geographer, and physicist,\nseeking for a first principle (for which he may or may not have\ninvented the name [482]); rejecting the idea of a single primordial\nelement such as water; affirming an infinite material cause, without\nbeginning and indestructible, [483] with an infinite number of worlds;\nand--still showing the Chaldean impulse--speculating remarkably on\nthe descent of man from something aquatic, as well as on the form and\nmotion of the earth (figured by him as a cylinder [484]), the nature\nand motions of the solar system, and thunder and lightning. [485]\nIt seems doubtful whether, as affirmed by Eudemus, he taught the\ndoctrine of the earth's motion; but that this doctrine was derived\nfrom the Babylonian schools of astronomy is so probable that it may\nhave been accepted in Miletos in his day. Only by inferring a prior\nscientific development of remarkable energy can we explain the striking\nforce of the sayings of Anaximandros which have come down to us. His\ndoctrine of evolution stands out for us to-day like the fragment of a\ngreat ruin, hinting obscurely of a line of active thinkers. The thesis\nthat man must have descended from a different species because, \"while\nother animals quickly found food for themselves, man alone requires\na long period of suckling: had he been originally such as he is now,\nhe could never have survived,\" is a quite masterly anticipation of\nmodern evolutionary science. We are left asking, how came an early\nIonian Greek to think thus, outgoing the assimilative power of the\nlater age of Aristotle? Only a long scientific evolution can readily\naccount for it; and only in the Mesopotamian world could such an\nevolution have taken place. [486]\n\nAnaximenes (fl. 548 B.C.), yet another Milesian, pupil or at least\nfollower in turn of Anaximandros, speculates similarly, making his\ninfinite and first principle the air, in which he conceives the earth\nto be suspended; theorizes on the rainbow, earthquakes, the nature\nand the revolution of the heavenly bodies (which, with the earth, he\nsupposed to be broad and flat); and affirms the eternity of motion and\nthe perishableness of the earth. [487] The Ionian thought of the time\nseems thus to have been thoroughly absorbed in problems of natural\norigins, and only in that connection to have been concerned with the\nproblems of religion. No dogma of divine creation blocked the way:\nthe trouble was levity of hypothesis or assent. Thales, following a\nSemitic lead, places the source of all things in water. Anaximandros,\nperhaps following another, but seeking a more abstract idea, posited\nan infinite, the source of all things; and Anaximenes in turn reduces\nthat infinite to the air, as being the least material of things. He\ncannot have anticipated the chemical conception of the reduction\nof all solids to gases: the thesis was framed either \u00e0 priori or in\nadaptation of priestly claims for the deities of the elements; and\nothers were to follow with the guesses of earth and fire and heat and\ncold. Still, the speculation is that of bold and far-grasping thinkers,\nand for these there can have been no validity in the ordinary God-ideas\nof polytheism.\n\nThere is reason to think that these early \"schools\" of thought\nwere really constituted by men in some way banded together, [488]\nthus supporting each other against the conservatism of religious\nignorance. The physicians were so organized; the disciples of\nPythagoras followed the same course; and in later Greece we shall\nfind the different philosophic sects formed into societies or\ncorporations. The first model was probably that of the priestly\ncorporation; and in a world in which many cults were chronically\ndisendowed it may well have been that the leisured old priesthoods,\nphilosophizing as we have seen those of India and Egypt and Mesopotamia\ndoing, played a primary part in initiating the work of rational\nsecular thought.\n\n\n The recent work of Mr. F. M. Cornford, From Philosophy to Religion\n (1912), puts forth an interesting and ingenious theory to the\n effect that early Greek philosophy is a reduction to abstract\n terms of the practice of totemistic tribes. On this view, when\n the Gods are figured in Homer as subject to Moira (Destiny),\n there has taken place an impersonation of Nomos, or Law; and just\n as the divine cosmos or polity is a reflection of the earthly,\n so the established conception of the absolute compulsoriness of\n tribal law is translated into one of a Fate which overrules the\n Gods (p. 40 sq.). So, when Anaximandros posits the doctrine of\n four elements [he did not use the word, by the way; that comes\n later; see Burnet, ch. i, p. 56, citing Diels], \"we observe that\n this type of cosmic structure corresponds to that of a totemic\n tribe containing four clans\" (p. 62). On the other hand, the\n totemistic stage had long before been broken down. The \"notion\n of the group-soul\" had given rise to the notion of God (p. 90);\n and the primitive \"magical group\" had dissolved into a system of\n families (p. 93), with individual souls. On this prior accumulation\n of religious material early philosophy works (p. 138).\n\n It does not appear why, thus recognizing that totemism was at\n least a long way behind in Thales's day, Mr. Cornford should\n trace the Ionian four elements straight back to the problematic\n four clans of the totemistic tribe. Dr. Frazer gives him no data\n whatever for Aryan totemism; and the Ionian cities, like those\n of Mesopotamia and Egypt, belong to the age of commerce and of\n monarchies. It would seem more plausible, on Mr. Cornford's own\n premises, to trace the rival theories of the four elements to\n religious philosophies set up by the priests of four Gods of water,\n earth, air, and fire. If the early philosophers \"had nothing but\n theology behind them\" (p. 138), why not infer theologies for the\n old-established deities of Mesopotamia? Mr. Cornford adds to the\n traditional factors that of \"the temperaments of the individual\n philosophers, which made one or other of those schemes the more\n congenial to them.\" Following Dr. F. H. Bradley, he pronounces\n that \"almost all philosophic arguments are invented afterwards, to\n recommend, or defend from attack, conclusions which the philosopher\n was from the outset bent on believing before he could think of\n any arguments at all. That is why philosophical reasonings are\n so bad, so artificial, so unconvincing.\"\n\n Upon this very principle it is much more likely that the\n philosophic cults of water, earth, air, and fire originated in\n the worships of Gods of those elements, whose priests would tend\n to magnify their office. It is hard to see how \"temperament\"\n could determine a man's bias to an air-theory in preference to a\n water-theory. But if the priests of Ea the Water-God and those\n of Bel the God of Air had framed theories of the kind, it is\n conceivable that family or tribal ties and traditions might set\n men upon developing the theory quasi-philosophically when the\n alien Gods came to be recognized by thinking men as mere names\n for the elements. [489] (Compare Flaubert's Salammb\u00f4 as to the\n probable rivalry of priests of the Sun and Moon.) A pantheistic\n view, again, arose as we saw among various priesthoods in the\n monarchies where syncretism arose out of political aggregations.\n\n\nWhat is clear is that the religious or theistic basis had ceased to\nexist for many educated Greeks in that environment. The old God-ideas\nhave disappeared, and a quasi-scientific attitude has been taken\nup. It is apparently conditioned, perhaps fatally, by prior modes of\nthought; but it operates in disregard of so-called religious needs,\nand negates the normal religious conception of earthly government\nor providence. Nevertheless, it was not destined to lead to the\nrationalization of popular thought; and only in a small number of\ncases did the scientific thinkers deeply concern themselves with the\nenlightenment of the mass.\n\nIn another Ionian thinker of that age, indeed, we find alongside of\nphysical and philosophical speculation on the universe the most direct\nand explicit assault upon popular religion that ancient history\npreserves. Xenophanes of Kolophon (? 570-470), a contemporary\nof Anaximandros, was forced by a Persian invasion or by some\nrevolution to leave his native city at the age of twenty-five; and\nby his own account his doctrines, and inferribly his life, had gone\n\"up and down Greece\"--in which we are to include Magna Graecia--for\nsixty-seven years at the date of writing of one of his poems. [490]\nThis was presumably composed at Elea (Hyela or Velia), founded\nabout 536 B.C., on the western Italian coast, south of Paestum, by\nunsubduable Phokaians seeking a new home after the Persian conquest,\nand after they had been further defeated in the attempt to live as\npirates in Corsica. [491] Thither came the aged Xenophanes, perhaps\nalso seeking freedom. He seems to have lived hitherto as a rhapsode,\nchanting his poems at the courts of tyrants as the Homerids did the\nIliad. It is hard indeed to conceive that his recitations included the\nanti-religious passages which have come down to us; but his resort in\nold age to the new community of Elea is itself a proof of a craving\nand a need for free conditions of life. [492]\n\nSetting out on his travels, doubtless, with the Ionian predilection for\na unitary philosophy, he had somewhere and somehow attained a pantheism\nwhich transcended the concern for a \"first principle\"--if, indeed,\nit was essentially distinct from the doctrine of Anaximandros. [493]\n\"Looking wistfully upon the whole heavens,\" says Aristotle, [494]\n\"he affirms that unity is God.\" From the scattered quotations which\nare all that remain of his lost poem, On Nature (or Natural Things),\n[495] it is hard to deduce any full conception of his philosophy;\nbut it is clear that it was monistic; and though most of his later\ninterpreters have acclaimed him as the herald of monotheism, it is only\nin terms of pantheism that his various utterances can be reconciled. It\nis clearly in that sense that Aristotle and Plato [496] commemorate\nhim as the first of the Eleatic monists. Repeatedly he speaks of\n\"the Gods\" as well as of \"God\"; and he even inculcates the respectful\nworship of them. [497] The solution seems to be that he thinks of the\nforces and phenomena of Nature in the early way as Gods or Powers, but\nresolves them in turn into a whole which includes all forms of power\nand intelligence, but is not to be conceived as either physically or\nmentally anthropomorphic. \"His contemporaries would have been more\nlikely to call Xenophanes an atheist than anything else.\" [498]\n\n\n The common verdict of the historians of philosophy, who find\n in Xenophanes an early and elevated doctrine of \"Monotheism,\"\n is closely tested by J. Freudenthal, Ueber die Theologie des\n Xenophanes, 1886. As he shows, the bulk of them (cited by him,\n pp. 2-7) do violence to Xenophanes's language in making him\n out the proclaimer of a monotheistic doctrine to a polytheistic\n world. That he was essentially a pantheist is now recognized by\n a number of writers. Cp. Windelband, as cited, p. 48; Decharme,\n as cited, p. 46 sq. Br\u00e9ton, Po\u00e9sie philos. en Gr\u00e8ce, pp. 47,\n 64 sq., had maintained the point, against Cousin, in 1882,\n before Freudenthal. But Freudenthal in turn glosses part of the\n problem in ascribing to Xenophanes an acceptance of polytheism\n (cp. Burnet, p. 142), which kept him from molestation throughout\n his life; whereas Anaxagoras, who had never attacked popular\n belief with the directness of Xenophanes, was prosecuted for\n atheism. Anaxagoras was of a later age, dwelling in an Athens in\n which popular prejudice took readily to persecution, and political\n malice resorted readily to religious pretences. Xenophanes\n could hardly have published with impunity in Periklean Athens\n his stinging impeachments of current God-ideas; and it remains\n problematic whether he ever proclaimed them in face of the\n multitude. It is only from long subsequent students that we get\n them as quotations from his poetry; there is no record of their\n effect on his contemporaries. That his God-idea was pantheistic\n is sufficiently established by his attacks on anthropomorphism,\n taken in connection with his doctrine of the All.\n\n\nWhether as teaching meant for public currency or as a philosophic\nmessage for the few, the pantheism of Xenophanes expressed itself in\nan attack on anthropomorphic religion, no less direct and much more\nratiocinative than that of any Hebrew prophet upon idolatry. \"Mortals,\"\nhe wrote, in a famous passage, \"suppose that the Gods are born, and\nwear man's clothing, [499] and have voice and body. But if cattle\nor lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and make works\nof art as men do, they would paint their Gods and give them bodies\nlike their own--horses like horses, cattle like cattle.\" And again:\n\"Ethiopians make their Gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say\ntheirs have reddish hair and blue eyes; so also they conceive the\nspirits of the Gods to be like themselves.\" [500] On Homer and Hesiod,\nthe myth-singers, his attack is no less stringent: \"They attributed\nto the Gods all things that with men are of ill-fame and blame;\nthey told of them countless nefarious things--thefts, adulteries,\nand deception of each other.\" [501] It is recorded of him further\nthat, like Epicurus, he absolutely rejected all divination. [502]\nAnd when the Eleans, perhaps somewhat shaken by such criticism, asked\nhim whether they should sacrifice and sing a dirge to Leukothea,\nthe child-bereft Sea-Goddess, he bade them not to sing a dirge if\nthey thought her divine, and not to sacrifice if she were human. [503]\n\nBeside this ringing radicalism, not yet out of date, the physics of\nthe Eleatic freethinker is less noticeable. His resort to earth as a\nmaterial first principle was but another guess or disguised theosophy\nadded to those of his predecessors, and has no philosophic congruity\nwith his pantheism. It is interesting to find him reasoning from\nfossil-marks that what was now land had once been sea-covered, and\nbeen left mud; and that the moon is probably inhabited. [504] Yet,\nwith all this alertness of speculation, Xenophanes sounds the note\nof merely negative skepticism which, for lack of fruitful scientific\nresearch, was to become more and more common in Greek thought: [505]\n\"no man,\" he avows in one verse, \"knows truly anything, and no man\never will.\" [506] More fruitful was his pantheism or pankosmism. \"The\nAll (oulos)\" he declared, \"sees, thinks, and hears.\" [507]\n\"It was thus from Xenophanes that the doctrine of Pankosmism first\nobtained introduction into Greek philosophy, recognizing nothing real\nexcept the universe as an indivisible and unchangeable whole.\" [508]\nHis negative skepticism might have guarded later Hellenes against\nbaseless cosmogony-making if they had been capable of a systematic\nintellectual development. His sagacity, too, appears in his protest\n[509] against that extravagant worship of the athlete which from\nfirst to last kept popular Greek life-philosophy unprogressive. But\nhere least of all was he listened to.\n\nIt is after a generation of such persistent questioning of Nature\nand custom by pioneer Greeks that we find in Herakleitos of Ephesus\n(fl. 500 B.C.)--still in the Ionian culture-sphere--a positive and\nunsparing criticism of the prevailing beliefs. No sage among the\nIonians (who had already produced a series of powerful thinkers) left\na deeper impression than he of massive force and piercing intensity:\nabove all of the gnomic utterances of his age, his have the ring of\ncharacter and the edge of personality; and the gossiping Diogenes,\nafter setting out by calling him the most arrogant of men, concedes\nthat the brevity and weight of his expression are not to be matched. It\nwas due rather to this, probably, than to his metaphysic--though that\nhas an arresting quality--that there grew up a school of Herakliteans\ncalling themselves by his name. And though doubt attaches to some of\nhis sayings, and even to his date, there can be small question that\nhe was mordantly freethinking, though a man of royal descent. He has\nstern sayings about \"bringing forth untrustworthy witnesses to confirm\ndisputed points,\" and about eyes and ears being \"bad witnesses for\nmen, when their souls lack understanding.\" [510] \"What can be seen,\nheard, and learned, this I prize,\" is one of his declarations; and\nhe is credited with contemning book-learning as having failed to\ngive wisdom to Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hekataios. [511]\nThe belief in progress, he roundly insists, stops progress. [512] From\nhis cryptic utterances it maybe gathered that he too was a pantheist;\n[513] and from his insistence on the immanence of strife in all things,\n[514] as from others of his sayings, that he was of the Stoic mood. It\nwas doubtless in resentment of immoral religion that he said [515]\nHomer and Archilochos deserved flogging; as he is severe on the\nphallic worship of Dionysos, [516] on the absurdity of prayer to\nimages, and on popular pietism in general. [517] One of his sayings,\n\u00eathos anthr\u00f4p\u00f4 daim\u00f4n, [518] \"character is a man's d\u00e6mon,\" seems\nto be the definite assertion of rationalism in affairs as against\nthe creed of special providences.\n\n\n A confusion of tradition has arisen between the early Herakleitos,\n \"the Obscure,\" and the similarly-named writer of the first century\n of our era, who was either one Herakleides or one using the\n name of Herakleitos. As the later writer certainly allegorized\n Homer--reducing Apollo to the Sun, Athen\u00ea to Thought, and so\n on--and claimed thus to free him from the charge of impiety,\n it seems highly probable that it is from him that the scholiast\n on the Iliad, xv, 18, cites the passage scolding the atheists\n who attacked the Homeric myths. The theme and the tone do not\n belong to 500 B.C., when only the boldest--as Herakleitos--would\n be likely to attack Homer, and when there is no other literary\n trace of atheism. Grote, however (i, 374, note), cites the\n passages without comment as referring to the early philosopher,\n who is much more probably credited, as above, with denouncing\n Homer himself. Concerning the later Herakleitos or Herakleides,\n see Dr. Hatch's Hibbert Lectures on The Influence of Greek Ideas\n and Usages upon the Christian Church, 1890, pp. 61, 62.\n\n But even apart from the confusion with the late Herakleides,\n there is difficulty in settling the period of the Ephesian\n thinker. Diogenes La\u00ebrtius states that he flourished about\n the 69th Olympiad (504-500 B.C.). Another account, preserved by\n Eusebius, places him in the 80th or 81st Olympiad, in the infancy\n of Sokrates, and for this date there are other grounds (Ueberweg,\n i, 40); but yet other evidences carry us back to the earlier. As\n Diogenes notes five writers of the name--two being poets, one a\n historian, and one a \"serio-comic\" personage--and there is record\n of many other men named Herakleitos and several Herakleides,\n there is considerable room for false attributions. The statement\n of Diogenes that the Ephesian was \"wont to call opinion the\n sacred disease\" (i, 6, \u00a7 7) is commonly relegated to the spurious\n sayings of Herakleitos, and it suggests the last mentioned of his\n namesakes. But see Max M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures on Indian Religion,\n p. 6, for the opinion that it is genuine, and that by \"opinion\"\n was meant \"religion.\" The saying, says Dr. M\u00fcller, \"seems to me\n to have the massive, full, and noble ring of Herakleitos.\" It is\n hardly for rationalists to demur.\n\n\nMuch discussion has been set up by the common attribution\nto Herakleitos in antiquity of the doctrine of the ultimate\nconflagration of all things. But for this there is no ground in any\nactual passage preserved from his works; and it appears to have\nbeen a mere misconception of his doctrine in regard to Fire. His\nmonistic doctrine was, in brief, that all the opposing and contrasted\nthings in the universe, heat and cold, day and night, evil and good,\nimply each other, and exist only in the relation of contrast; and he\nconceived fire as something in which opposites were solved. [519]\nUpon this stroke of mysticism was concentrated the discussion\nwhich might usefully have been turned on his criticism of popular\nreligion; his negative wisdom was substantially ignored, and his\nobscure speculation, treated as his main contribution to thought,\nwas misunderstood and perverted.\n\nA limit was doubtless soon set to free speech even in Elea; and the\nEleatic school after Xenophanes, in the hands of his pupil Parmenides\n(fl. 500 B.C.), Zeno (fl. 464), Melissos of Samos (fl. 444), and\ntheir successors, is found turning first to deep metaphysic and\nthen to verbal dialectic, to discussion on being and not being,\nthe impossibility of motion, and the trick-problem of Achilles and\nthe tortoise. It is conceivable that thought took these lines because\nothers were socially closed. Parmenides, a notably philosophic spirit\n(whom Plato, meeting him in youth, felt to have \"an exceptionally\nwonderful depth of mind,\" but regarded as a man to be feared as well\nas reverenced), [520] made short work of the counter-sense of not\nbeing, but does not seem to have dealt at close quarters with popular\ncreeds. Melissos, a man of action, who led a successful sally to\ncapture the Athenian fleet, [521] was apparently the most pronounced\nfreethinker of the three named, [522] in that he said of the Gods\n\"there was no need to define them, since there was no knowledge of\nthem.\" [523] Such utterance could not be carried far in any Greek\ncommunity; and there lacked the spirit of patient research which\nmight have fruitfully developed the notable hypothesis of Parmenides\nthat the earth is spherical in form. [524] But he too was a loose\nguesser, adding categories of fire and earth and heat and cold to the\nformative and material \"principles\" of his predecessors; and where he\ndivagated weaker minds could not but lose themselves. From Melissos\nand Parmenides there is accordingly a rapid descent in philosophy\nto professional verbalism, popular life the while proceeding on the\nold levels.\n\nIt was in this epoch of declining energy and declining freedom that\nthere grew up the nugatory doctrine, associated with the Eleatic\nschool, [525] that the only realities are mental, [526] a formula\nwhich eluded at once the problems of Nature and the crudities\nof religion, and so made its fortune with the idle educated\nclass. Meant to support the cause of reason, it was soon turned,\nas every slackly-held doctrine must be, to a different account. In\nthe hands of Plato it developed into the doctrine of ideas, which in\nthe later Christian world was to play so large a part, as \"Realism,\"\nin checking scientific thought; and in Greece it fatally fostered\nthe indolent evasion of research in physics. [527] Ultimately this\nmade for supernaturalism, which had never been discarded by the main\nbody even of rationalizing thinkers. [528] Thus the geographer and\nhistorian Hekataios of Miletos (fl. 500 B.C.), living at the great\ncentre of rationalism, while rejecting the mass of Greek fables as\n\"ridiculous,\" and proceeding in a fashion long popular to translate\nthem into historical facts, yet affected, in the poetic Greek fashion,\nto be of divine descent. [529] At the same time he held by such fables\nas that of the floating island in the Nile and that of the supernormal\nHyperboreans. This blending of old and new habits of mind is indeed\nperhaps the strongest ground for affirming the genuineness of his\nfragments, which has been disputed. [530] But from his time forward\nthere are many signs of a broad movement of criticism, doubt, inquiry,\nand reconstruction, involving an extensive discussion of historical\nas well as religious tradition. [531] There had begun, in short,\nfor the rapidly-developing Greeks, a \"discovery of man\" such as is\nascribed in later times to the age of the Italian Renaissance. In the\nnext generation came the father of humanists, Herodotos, who implicitly\ncarries the process of discrimination still further than did Hekataios;\nwhile Sophocles [496-405 B.C.], without ever challenging popular faith,\nwhether implicitly as did \u00c6schylus, or explicitly as did Euripides,\n\"brought down the drama from the skies to the earth; and the drama\nstill follows the course which Sophocles first marked out for it. It\nwas on the Gods, the struggles of the Gods, and on destiny that\n\u00c6schylus dwelt; it is with man that Sophocles is concerned.\" [532]\n\nStill, there was only to be a partial enlightenment of the race,\nsuch as we have seen occurring, perhaps about the same period, in\nIndia. Sophocles, even while dramatizing the cruel consequences of\nGreek religion, never made any sign of being delivered from the\nordinary Greek conceptions of deity, or gave any help to wiser\nthought. The social difference between Greece and the monarchic\ncivilizations was after all only one of degree: there, as elsewhere,\nthe social problem was finally unsolved; and the limits to Greek\nprogress were soon approached. But the evolution went far in many\nplaces, and it is profoundly interesting to trace it.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 5\n\nCompared with the early Milesians and with Xenophanes, the elusive\nPythagoras (fl. 540-510 B.C.) is not so much a rationalistic as a\ntheosophic freethinker; but to freethought his name belongs insofar\nas the system connected with it did rationalize, and discarded\nmythology. If the biographic data be in any degree trustworthy,\nit starts like Milesian speculation from oriental precedents. [533]\nPythagoras was of Samos in the \u00c6gean; and the traditions have it that\nhe was a pupil of Pherekydes the Syrian, and that before settling at\nKr\u00f4ton, in Italy, he travelled in Egypt, and had intercourse with the\nChaldean Magi. Some parts of the Pythagorean code of life, at least,\npoint to an eastern derivation.\n\n\n The striking resemblance between the doctrine and practice of the\n Pythagoreans and those of the Jewish Essenes has led Zeller to\n argue (Philos. der Griechen, Th. iii, Abth. 2) that the latter were\n a branch of the former. Bishop Lightfoot, on the other hand, noting\n that the Essenes did not hold the specially prominent Pythagorean\n doctrines of numbers and of the transmigration of souls, traces\n Essenism to Zoroastrian influence (Ed. of Colossians, App. on\n the Essenes, pp. 150-51; rep. in Dissertations on the Apostolic\n Age, 1892, pp. 369-72). This raises the issue whether both\n Pythagoreanism and Essenism were not of Persian derivation; and\n Dr. Sch\u00fcrer (Jewish People in the Time of Jesus, Eng. tr. Div. II,\n vol. ii, p. 218) pronounces in favour of an oriental origin for\n both. The new connection between Persia and Ionia just at or before\n the time of Pythagoras (fl. 530 B.C.) squares with this view;\n but it is further to be noted that the phenomenon of monasticism,\n common to Pythagoreans and Essenes, arises in Buddhism about the\n Pythagorean period; and as it is hardly likely that Buddhism\n in the sixth century B.C. reached Asia Minor, there remains\n the possibility of some special diffusion of the new ideal\n from the Babylonian sphere after the conquest by Cyrus, there\n being no trace of a Persian monastic system. The resemblances\n to Orphicism likewise suggest a Babylonian source, as does the\n doctrine of numbers, which is not Zoroastrian. As to Buddhism,\n the argument for a Buddhist origin of Essenism shortly before our\n era (cp. A. Lillie, Buddhism in Christendom and The Influence of\n Buddhism on Primitive Christianity; E. Bunsen, The Angel-Messiah;\n or, Buddhists, Essenes, and Christians--all three to be read\n with much caution) does not meet the case of the Pythagorean\n precedents for Essenism. Prof. Burnet (Early Greek Philos. 2nd\n ed. p. 102) notes close Indian parallels to Pythagoreanism,\n but overlooks the intermediate Persian parallels, and falls back\n very unnecessarily on the bald notion that \"the two systems were\n independently evolved from the same primitive systems.\"\n\n\nAs regards the mystic doctrine that numbers are, as it were, the moving\nprinciple in the cosmos--another thesis not unlikely to arise in that\nBabylonian world whence came the whole system of numbers for the later\nancients [534]--we can but pronounce it a development of thought in\nvacuo, and look further for the source of Pythagorean influence in\nthe moral and social code of the movement, in its science, in its\npantheism, [535] its contradictory dualism, [536] and perhaps in its\ndoctrine of transmigration of souls. On the side of natural science,\nits absurdities [537] point to the fatal lack of observation which\nso soon stopped progress in Greek physics and biology. [538] Yet in\nthe fields of astronomy, mathematics, and the science of sound the\nschool seems to have done good scientific work; being indeed praised\nby the critical Aristotle for doing special service in that way. [539]\nIt is recorded that Philolaos, the successor of Pythagoras, was the\nfirst to teach openly (about 460 B.C.) the doctrine of the motion\nof the earth [540]--which, however, as above noted, was also said\nto have been previously taught by Anaximandros [541] (from whom some\nincline to derive the Pythagorean theory of numbers in general [542])\nand by Hiketas or Iketas (or Niketas) of Syracuse. [543] Ekphantos,\nof that city, is also credited with asserting the revolution of\nthe earth on its axis; and he too is grouped with the Pythagoreans,\nthough he seems to have had a pantheism of his own. [544] Philolaos\nin particular is said to have been prosecuted for his teaching, [545]\nwhich for many was a blasphemy; and it may be that this was the reason\nof its being specially ascribed to him, though current in the East\nlong before his day. In the fragments ascribed to him is affirmed,\nin divergence from other Pythagoreans, the eternity of the earth; and\nin other ways he seems to have been an innovator. [546] In any case,\nthe Pythagorean conception of the earth's motion was a speculative\none, wide of the facts, and not identical with the modern doctrine,\nsave insofar as Pythagoras--or Philolaos--had rightly conceived the\nearth as a sphere. [547]\n\n\n It is noteworthy, however, that in conjecturing that the whole\n solar system moves round a \"central fire,\" Pythagoras carried his\n thought nearly as far as the moderns. The fanciful side of his\n system is seen in his hypothesis of a counter-earth (Anti-chthon)\n invented to bring up the number of celestial bodies in our system\n to ten, the \"complete\" number. (Berry, as cited.) Narrien (p. 163)\n misses this simple explanation of the idea.\n\n\nAs to politics, finally, it seems hard to solve the anomaly that\nPythagoras is pronounced the first teacher of the principle of\ncommunity of goods, [548] and that his adherents at Kr\u00f4ton formed an\naristocratic league, so detested by the people for its anti-democratism\nthat its members were finally massacred in their meeting-place,\ntheir leader, according to one tradition, being slain with them,\nwhile according to a better grounded account he had withdrawn\nand died at Metapontion. The solution seems to be that the early\nmovement was in no way monastic or communistic; that it was, however,\na secret society; that it set up a kind of puritanism or \"methodism\"\nwhich repelled conservative people; and that, whatever its doctrines,\nits members were mostly of the upper class. [549] If they held by the\ngeneral rejection of popular religion attributed to Pythagoras, they\nwould so much the more exasperate the demos; for though at Kr\u00f4ton,\nas in the other Grecian colonial cities, there was considerable\nfreedom of thought and speech, the populace can nowhere have been\nfreethinking. [550] In any case, it was after its political overthrow,\nand still more in the Italian revival of the second century B.C.,\nthat the mystic and superstitious features of Pythagoreanism were\nmost multiplied; and doubtless the master's teachings were often much\nperverted by his devotees. It was only too easy. He had laid down, as\nso many another moralist, that justice consisted in reciprocity; but\nhe taught of virtue in terms of his theory of numbers [551]--a sure way\nof putting conduct out of touch with reality. Thus we find some of the\nlater Pythagoreans laying it down as a canon that no story once fully\ncurrent concerning the Gods was to be disbelieved [552]--the complete\nnegation of philosophical freethought and a sharp contradiction of the\nother view which represented the shade of Pythagoras as saying that he\nhad seen in Tartaros the shade of Homer hanged to a tree, and that of\nHesiod chained to a pillar of brass, for the monstrous things they had\nascribed to the Gods. [553] It must have taken a good deal of decadence\nto bring an innovating sect to that pass; and even about 200 B.C. we\nfind the freethinking Ennius at Rome calling himself a Pythagorean;\n[554] but the course of things in Magna Graecia was mostly downward\nafter the sixth century; the ferocious destruction of Sybaris by the\nKrotoniates helping to promote the decline. [555] Intellectual life,\nin Magna Graecia as in Ionia, obeyed the general tendency.\n\n\n An opposite view of the Pythagorean evolution is taken by\n Professor Burnet. He is satisfied that the long list of the\n Pythagorean taboos, which he rightly pronounces to be \"of a\n thoroughly primitive type\" (p. 105), and not at all the subtle\n \"symbols\" which they were latterly represented to be, were\n really the lore of Pythagoras. It is not easy thus to conceive a\n thinker of the great Ionian age as holding by thoroughly primitive\n superstitions. Perhaps the solution lies in Aristotle's statement\n that Pythagoras was first a mathematician, and only in later\n life a Pherekydean miracle-monger (Burnet, p. 107, note 3). He\n may actually have started the symbolic view of the taboos which\n he imposed.\n\n\nBefore the decadence comes, however, the phenomenon of rationalism\noccurs on all sides in the colonial cities, older and younger alike;\nand direct criticism of creed kept pace with the indirect. About\n520 B.C. Theagenes of Rhegion, in Southern Italy, had begun for\nthe Greeks the process of reducing the unacceptable God-stories in\nHomer and Hesiod--notably the battle of the Gods in the Iliad--to\nmere allegories of the cosmic elements [556]--a device natural to\nand practised by liberal conservatives in all religious systems\nunder stress of skeptical attack, and afterwards much employed in\nthe Hellenic world. [557] Soon the attack became more stringent. At\nSyracuse we find the great comic dramatist Epicharmos, about 470\nB.C., treating the deities on the stage in a spirit of such audacious\nburlesque [558] as must be held to imply unbelief. Aristophanes, at\nAthens, indeed, shows a measure of the same spirit while posing as\na conservative in religion; but Epicharmos was professedly something\nof a Pythagorean and philosopher, [559] and was doubtless protected by\nHiero, at whose court he lived, against any religious resentment he may\nhave aroused. The story of Simonides's answer to Hiero's question as\nto the nature of the Gods--first asking a day to think, then two days,\nthen four, then avowing that meditation only made the problem harder\n[560]--points to the prevalent tone among the cultured.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 6\n\nAt last the critical spirit finds utterance, in the great Periklean\nperiod, at Athens, but first by way of importation from Ionia,\nwhere Miletos had fallen in the year 494. Anaxagoras of Klazomenai\n(fl. 480-450 B.C.; d. 428) is the first freethinker historically\nknown to have been legally prosecuted and condemned [561] for his\nfreethought; and it was in the Athens of Perikles, despite Perikles's\nprotection, that the attack was made. Coming of the Ionian line\nof thinkers, and himself a pupil of Anaximenes of Miletos, he held\nfirmly by the scientific view of the cosmos, and taught that the sun,\ninstead of being animated and a deity as the Athenians believed, was\n\"a red-hot mass many times larger than the Peloponnesos\" [562]--and\nthe moon a fiery (or earthy) solid body having in it plains and\nmountains and valleys--this while asserting that infinite mind was\nthe source and introducer of all the motion in the infinite universe;\n[563] infinite in extent and infinitely divisible. This \"materialistic\"\ndoctrine as to the heavenly bodies was propounded, as Sokrates tells in\nhis defence, in books that in his day anyone could buy for a drachma;\nand Anaxagoras further taught, like Theagenes, that the mythical\npersonages of the poets were mere abstractions invested with name\nand gender. [564] Withal he was no brawler; and even in pious Athens,\nwhere he taught in peace for many years, he might have died in peace\nbut for his intimacy with the most renowned of his pupils, Perikles.\n\n\n The question of the deity of the sun raised an interesting\n sociological question. Athenians saw no blasphemy in saying that\n G\u00ea (Gaia) or D\u00eam\u00eater was the earth: they had always understood as\n much; and the earth was simply for them a Goddess; a vast living\n thing containing the principle of life. They might similarly have\n tolerated the description of the sun as a kind of red-hot earth,\n provided that its divinity were not challenged. The trouble lay\n rather in the negative than in the positive assertion, though\n the latter must for many have been shocking, inasmuch as they had\n never been wont to think about the sun as they did about the earth.\n\n\nIt is told of Perikles (499-429 B.C.) by the pious Plutarch,\nhimself something of a believer in portents, that he greatly admired\nAnaxagoras, from whom he \"seems to have learned to despise those\nsuperstitious fears which the common phenomena of the heavens produce\nin those who, ignorant of their cause, and knowing nothing about\nthem, refer them all to the immediate action of the Gods.\" [565]\nAnd even the stately eloquence and imperturbable bearing of the great\nstatesman are said to have been learned from the Ionian master, whom he\nfollowed in \"adorning his oratory with apt illustrations from physical\nscience.\" [566] The old philosopher, however, whom men called \"Nous\"\nor Intelligence because of the part the name played in his teaching,\nleft his property to go to ruin in his devotion to ideas; and it is\ntold, with small probability, that at one time, old and indigent,\nhe covered his head with his robe and decided to starve to death;\ntill Perikles, hearing of it, hastened to beseech him to live to give\nhis pupil counsel. [567]\n\nAt length it occurred to the statesman's enemies to strike at him\nthrough his guide, philosopher, and friend. They had already procured\nthe banishment of another of his teachers, Damon, as \"an intriguer and\na friend of despotism\"; [568] and one of their fanatics, Diopeithes,\na priest and a violent demagogue, [569] laid the way for an attack\non Anaxagoras by obtaining the enactment of a law that \"prosecutions\nshould be laid against all who disbelieved in religion and held\ntheories of their own about things on high.\" [570] Anaxagoras was\nthus open to indictment on the score alike of his physics and of his\nmythology; though, seeing that his contemporary Diogenes of Apollonia\n(who before Demokritos taught \"nothing out of nothing: nothing\ninto nothing,\" and affirmed the sphericity of the earth) was also\nin some danger of his life at Athens, [571] it is probable that the\nprosecution was grounded on his physicist teaching. Saved by Perikles\nfrom the death punishment, but by one account fined five talents,\n[572] he either was exiled or chose to leave the intolerant city;\nand he made his home at Lampsakos, where, as the story runs, he won\nfrom the municipality the favour that every year the children should\nhave a holiday in the month in which he died. [573] It is significant\nof his general originality that he was reputed the first Greek who\nwrote a book in prose. [574]\n\nPhilosophically, however, he counted for less than he did as an\ninnovating rationalist. His doctrine of Nous amounted in effect to a\nreaffirmation of deity; and he has been not unjustly described [575]\nas the philosophic father of the dualistic deism or theism which,\nwhether from within or from without the Christian system, has been the\nprevailing form of religious philosophy in the modern world. It was, in\nfact, the only form of theistic philosophy capable of winning any wide\nassent among religiously biassed minds; and it is the more remarkable\nthat such a theist should have been prosecuted because his notion of\ndeity was mental, and excluded the divinization of the heavenly bodies.\n\nIn the memorable episode of his expulsion from Athens we have a\nfinger-post to the road travelled later by Greek civilization. At\nAthens itself the bulk of the free population was ignorant and bigoted\nenough to allow of the law being used by any fanatic or malignant\npartisan against any professed rationalist; and there is no sign\nthat Perikles dreamt of applying the one cure for the evil--the\nsystematic bestowal of rationalistic instruction on all. The fatal\nmaxim of ancient skepticism, that religion is a necessary restraint\nupon the multitude, brought it about that everywhere, in the last\nresort, the unenlightened multitude became a restraint upon reason and\nfreethought. [576] In the more aristocratically ruled colonial cities,\nas we have seen, philosophic speech was comparatively free: it was\nthe ignorant Athenian democracy that brought religious intolerance\ninto Greek life, playing towards science, in form of law, the part\nthat the fanatics of Egypt and Palestine had played towards the\nworshippers of other Gods than their own.\n\nWith a baseness of which the motive may be divided between the\ninstincts of faction and of faith, the anti-Periklean party carried\ntheir attack yet further; and on their behalf a comic playwright,\nHermippos, brought a charge of impiety against the statesman's unwedded\nwife, Aspasia. [577] There can be no doubt that that famous woman\ncordially shared the opinions and ideals of her husband, joining as\nshe habitually did in the philosophic talk of his home circle. As a\nMilesian she was likely enough to be a freethinker; and all that was\nmost rational in Athens acknowledged her culture and her charm. [578]\nPerikles, who had not taken the risk of letting Anaxagoras come to\ntrial, himself defended Aspasia before the dikastery, his indignation\nbreaking through his habitual restraint in a passion of tears, which,\naccording to the jealous \u00c6schines, [579] won an acquittal.\n\nPlaced as he was, Perikles could but guard his own head and heart,\nleaving the evil instrument of a religious inquisition to subsist. How\nfar he held with Anaxagoras we can but divine. [580] There is probably\nno truth in Plutarch's tale that \"whenever he ascended the tribune\nto speak he used first to pray to the Gods that nothing unfitted for\nthe occasion might fall from his lips.\" [581] But as a party leader\nhe, as a matter of course, observed the conventions; and he may have\nreasoned that the prosecutions of Anaxagoras and Aspasia, like that\ndirected against Pheidias, stood merely for contemporary political\nmalice, and not for any lasting danger to mental freedom. However\nthat might be, Athens continued to remain the most aggressively\nintolerant and tradition-mongering of Hellenic cities. So marked\nis this tendency among the Athenians that for modern students\nHerodotos, whose history was published in 445 B.C., is relatively\na rationalist in his treatment of fable, [582] bringing as he did\nthe spirit of Ionia into things traditional and religious. But even\nHerodotos remains wedded to the belief in oracles or prophecies,\nclaiming fulfilment for those said to have been uttered by Bakis;\n[583] and his small measure of spontaneous skepticism could avail\nlittle for critical thought. To no man, apparently, did it occur to\nresist the religious spirit by systematic propaganda: that, like the\nprinciple of representative government, was to be hit upon only in a\nlater age. [584] Not by a purely literary culture, relating life merely\nto poetry and myth, tradition and superstition, were men to be made\nfit to conduct a stable society. And the spirit of pious persecution,\nonce generated, went from bad to worse, crowning itself with crime,\ntill at length the overthrow of Athenian self-government wrought a\nforlorn liberty of scientific speech at the cost of the liberty of\npolitical action which is the basis of all sound life.\n\nWhatever may have been the private vogue of freethinking at Athens\nin the Periklean period, it was always a popular thing to attack\nit. Some years before or after the death of Perikles there came\nto Athens the alien Hippo, the first specifically named atheist\n[585] of Greek antiquity. The dubious tradition runs that his tomb\nbore the epitaph: \"This is the grave of Hippo, whom destiny, in\ndestroying him, has made the equal of the immortal Gods.\" [586] If,\nas seems likely, he was the Hippo of Rhegion mentioned by Hippolytos,\n[587] he speculated as to physical origins in the manner of Thales,\nmaking water generate fire, and that in turn produce the world. [588]\nBut this is uncertain. Upon him the comic muse of Athens turned its\nattacks very much as it did upon Socrates. The old comic poet Kratinos,\na notorious wine-bibber, produced a comedy called The Panoptai (the\n\"all-seers\" or \"all eyes\"), in which it would appear that the chorus\nwere made to represent the disciples of Hippo, and to wear a mask\ncovered with eyes. [589] Drunkenness was a venial fault in comparison\nwith the presumption to speculate on physics and to doubt the sacred\nlore of the populace. The end of the rule of ignorance was that a\ntheistic philosopher who himself discouraged scientific inquiry was\nto pay a heavier penalty than did the atheist Hippo.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 7\n\nWhile Athens was gaining power and glory and beauty without popular\nwisdom, the colonial city of Abdera, in Thrace, founded by Ionians,\nhad like others carried on the great impulse of Ionian philosophy,\nand had produced in the fifth century some of the great thinkers of\nthe race. Concerning the greatest of these, Demokritos, and the next\nin importance, Protagoras, we have no sure dates; [590] but it is\nprobable that the second, whether older or younger, was influenced\nby the first, who indeed has influenced all scientific philosophy\ndown to our own day. How much he learned from his master Leukippos\ncannot now be ascertained. [591] The writings which went under\nhis name appear to have been the productions of the whole Abderite\nschool; [592] and Epicurus declared that Leukippos was an imaginary\nperson. [593] What passes for his teaching was constructive science\nof cardinal importance; for it is the first clear statement of the\natomic theory; the substitution of a real for an abstract foundation of\nthings. Whoever were the originator of the theory, there is no doubt as\nto the assimilation of the principle by Demokritos, who thus logically\ncontinued the non-theistic line of thought, and developed one of the\nmost fruitful of all scientific principles. That this idea again is a\ndirect development from Babylonian science is not impossible; at least\nthere seems to be no doubt that Demokritos had travelled far and wide,\n[594] whether or not he had been brought up, as the tradition goes,\nby Persian magi; [595] and that he told how the cosmic views of\nAnaxagoras, which scandalized the Athenians, were current in the\nEast. [596] But he stands out as one of the most original minds in\nthe whole history of thought. No Greek thinker, not Aristotle himself,\nhas struck so deep as he into fundamental problems; though the absurd\nlabel of \"the laughing philosopher,\" bestowed on him by some peculiarly\nunphilosophic mind, has delayed the later recognition of his greatness,\nclear as it was to Bacon. [597] The vital maxim, \"Nothing from nothing:\nnothing into nothing,\" derives substantially from him. [598]\n\nHis atomic theory, held in conjunction with a conception of\n\"mind-stuff\" similar to that of Anaxagoras, may be termed the\nhigh-water mark of ancient scientific thought; and it is noteworthy\nthat somewhat earlier in the same age Empedokles of Agrigentum,\nanother product of the freer colonial life, threw out a certain\nglimmer of the Darwinian conception--perhaps more clearly attained\nby Anaximandros--that adaptations prevail in nature just because the\nadaptations fit organisms to survive, and the non-adapted perish. [599]\nIn his teaching, too, the doctrine of the indestructibility of\nmatter is clear and firm; [600] and the denial of anthropomorphic\ndeity is explicit. [601] But Empedokles wrought out no solid system:\n\"half-mystic and half-rationalist, he made no attempt to reconcile the\ntwo inconsistent sides of his intellectual character\"; [602] and his\nexplicit teaching of metempsychosis [603] and other Pythagoreanisms\ngave foothold for more delusion than he ever dispelled. [604] On the\nwhole, he is one of the most remarkable personalities of antiquity,\nmoving among men with a pomp and gravity which made them think of\nhim as a God, denouncing their sacrifices, and no less their eating\nof flesh; and checking his notable self-exaltation by recalling the\ngeneral littleness of men. But he did little to enlighten them; and\nAristotle passed on to the world a fatal misconception of his thought\nby ascribing to him the notion of automatism where he was asserting a\n\"necessity\" in terms of laws which he avowedly could not explain. [605]\nAgainst such misconception he should have provided. Demokritos,\nhowever, shunned dialectic and discussion, and founded no school;\n[606] and although his atomism was later adopted by Epicurus, it was\nno more developed on a basis of investigation and experiment than was\nthe biology of Empedokles. His ethic, though wholly rationalistic,\nleant rather to quietism and resignation than to reconstruction,\n[607] and found its application only in the later static message of\nEpicurus. Greek society failed to set up the conditions needed for\nprogress beyond the point gained by its unguided forces.\n\nThus when Protagoras ventured to read, at the house of the freethinking\nEuripides, a treatise of his own, beginning with the avowal that he\noffered no opinion as to the existence of the Gods, life being too\nshort for the inquiry, [608] the remark got wind, and he had to fly\nfor his life, though Euripides and perhaps most of the guests were\nvery much of the same way of thinking. [609] In the course of his\nflight, the tradition goes, the philosopher was drowned; [610] and\nhis book was publicly burned, all who possessed copies being ordered\nby public proclamation to give them up--the earliest known instance\nof \"censorship of the press.\" [611] Partisan malice was doubtless\nat work in his case as in that of Anaxagoras; for the philosophic\ndoctrine of Protagoras became common enough. It is not impossible,\nthough the date is doubtful, that the attack on him was one of the\nresults of the great excitement in Athens in the year 415 B.C. over\nthe sacrilegious mutilation of the figures of Hermes, the familial or\nboundary-God, in the streets by night. It was about that time that the\npoet Diagoras of Melos was proscribed for atheism, he having declared\nthat the non-punishment of a certain act of iniquity proved that\nthere were no Gods. [612] It has been surmised, with some reason,\nthat the iniquity in question was the slaughter of the Melians by\nthe Athenians in 416 B.C., [613] and the Athenian resentment in\nthat case was personal and political rather than religious. [614]\nFor some time after 415 the Athenian courts made strenuous efforts\nto punish every discoverable case of impiety; and parodies of the\nEleusinian mysteries (resembling the mock Masses of Catholic Europe)\nwere alleged against Alkibiades and others. [615] Diagoras, who was\nfurther charged with divulging the Eleusinian and other mysteries,\nand with making firewood of an image of Herakles, telling the God thus\nto perform his thirteenth labour by cooking turnips, [616] became\nthenceforth one of the proverbial atheists of the ancient world,\n[617] and a reward of a silver talent was offered for killing him,\nand of two talents for his capture alive; [618] despite which he seems\nto have escaped. But no antidote to the bane of fanaticism was found\nor sought; and the most famous publicist in Athens was the next victim.\n\nThe fatality of the Athenian development is seen not only in\nthe direct hostility of the people to rational thought, but in\ntheir loss of their hold even on their public polity. For lack\nof political judgment, moved always by the passions which their\nliterary culture cherished, they so mishandled their affairs in the\nlong and demoralizing Peloponnesian war that they were at one time\ncowed by their own aristocracy, on essentially absurd pretexts,\ninto abandoning the democratic constitution. Its restoration was\nfollowed at the final crisis by another tyranny, also short-lived,\nbut abnormally bloody and iniquitous; and though the people at its\noverthrow showed a moderation in remarkable contrast to the cruelty and\nrapacity of the aristocrats, the effect of such extreme vicissitude\nwas to increase the total disposition towards civic violence and\ncoercion. And while the people menaced freethinking in religion,\nthe aristocracies opposed freethinking in politics. Thus under the\nThirty Tyrants all intellectual teaching was forbidden; and Kritias,\nhimself accused of having helped Alkibiades to parody the mysteries,\nsharply interdicted the political rationalism of Sokrates, [619]\nwho according to tradition had been one of his own instructors.\n\nIt was a result of the general movement of mind throughout the\nrest of the Hellenic world that freethinkers of culture were still\nnumerous. Archelaos of Miletos, the most important disciple of\nAnaxagoras; according to a late tradition, the master of Sokrates;\nand the first systematic teacher of Ionic physical science in Athens,\ntaught the infinity of the universe, grasped the explanation of\nthe nature of sound, and set forth on purely rationalistic lines\nthe social origin and basis of morals, thus giving Sokrates his\npractical lead. [620] Another disciple of Anaxagoras, Metrodoros of\nLampsakos (not to be confounded with Metrodoros of Chios, and the\nother Metrodoros of Lampsakos who was the friend of Epicurus, both\nalso freethinkers), carried out zealously his master's teaching as to\nthe deities and heroes of Homer, resolving them into mere elemental\ncombinations and physical agencies, and making Zeus stand for mind,\nand Athen\u00ea for art. [621] And in the belles lettres of Athens itself,\nin the dramas of Euripides [480-406 B.C.], who is said to have been\nthe ardent disciple of Anaxagoras, [622] to have studied Herakleitos,\n[623] and to have been the friend of Sokrates and Protagoras, there\nemerge traces enough of a rationalism not to be reconciled with the\nold belief in the Gods. If Euripides has nowhere ventured on such\na terrific paradox as the Prometheus, he has in a score of passages\nrevealed a stress of skepticism which, inasmuch as he too uses all the\nforms of Hellenic faith, [624] deepens our doubt as to the beliefs of\n\u00c6schylus. Euripides even gave overt proof of his unbelief, beginning\nhis Melanippe with the line: \"Zeus, whoever Zeus be, for I know not,\nsave by report,\" an audacity which evoked a great uproar. In a later\nproduction the passage was prudently altered; [625] but he never put\nmuch check on his native tendency to analyse and criticize on all\nissues--a tendency fostered, as we have seen, [626] by the constant\nexample of real and poignant dialectic in the Athenian dikastery, and\nthe whole drift of the Athenian stage. In his case the tendency even\noverbalances the artistic process; [627] but it has the advantage of\ninvolving a very bold handling of vital problems. Not satisfied with\na merely dramatic presentment of lawless Gods, Euripides makes his\ncharacters impeach them as such, [628] or, again, declare that there\ncan be no truth in the \"miserable tales of poets\" which so represent\nthem. [629] Not content with putting aside as idle such a fable as\nthat of the sun's swerving from his course in horror at the crime of\nAtreus, [630] and that of the Judgment of Paris, [631] he attacks\nwith a stringent scorn the whole apparatus of oracles, divination,\nand soothsaying. [632] And if the Athenian populace cried out at\nthe hardy opening of the Melanippe, he nonetheless gave them again\nand again his opinion that no man knew anything of the Gods. [633]\nOf orthodox protests against freethinking inquiry he gives a plainly\nironical handling. [634] As regards his constructive opinions, we\nhave from him many expressions of the pantheism which had by his time\npermeated the thought of perhaps most of the educated Greeks. [635]\n\nHere again, as in the case of \u00c6schylus, there arises the problem of\ncontradiction; for Euripides, too, puts often in the mouths of his\ncharacters emphatic expressions of customary piety. The conclusion in\nthe two cases must be broadly the same--that whereas an unbelieving\ndramatist may well make his characters talk in the ordinary way of\ndeity and of religion, it is unintelligible that a believing one should\neither go beyond the artistic bounds of his task to make them utter an\nunbelief which must have struck the average listener as strange and\nnoxious, or construct a drama of which the whole effect is to insist\non the odiousness of the action of the Supreme God. And the real\ndrift of Euripides is so plain that one modern and Christian scholar\nhas denounced him as an obnoxious and unbelieving sophist who abused\nhis opportunity as a producer of dramas under religious auspices to\n\"shake the ground-works of religion\" [636] and at the same time of\nmorals; [637] while another and a greater scholar, less vehement in his\northodoxy, more restrainedly condemns the dramatist for employing myths\nin which he did not believe, instead of inventing fresh plots. [638]\nChristian scholars are thus duly unready to give him credit for his\nmany-sided humanity, nobly illustrated in his pleas for the slave and\nhis sympathy with suffering barbarians. [639] Latterly the recognition\nof Euripides's freethinking has led to the description of him as\n\"Euripides the Rationalist,\" in a treatise which represents him as a\nsystematic assailant of the religion of his day. Abating somewhat of\nthat thesis, which imputes more of system to the Euripidean drama than\nit possesses, we may sum up that the last of the great tragedians of\nAthens, and the most human and lovable of the three, was assuredly\na rationalist in matters of religion. It is noteworthy that he used\nmore frequently than any other ancient dramatist the device of a\ndeus ex machina to end a play. [640] It was probably because for him\nthe conception had no serious significance. [641] In the Alkestis its\n[non-mechanical] use is one of the most striking instances of dramatic\nirony in all literature. The dead Alkestis, who has died to save the\nlife of her husband, is brought back from the Shades by Herakles,\nwho figures as a brawling bully. Only the thinkers of the time could\nrealize the thought that underlay such a tragi-comedy.\n\n\n Dr. Verrall's Euripides the Rationalist, 1897, is fairly summed up\n by Mr. Haigh (Tragic Drama of the Greeks, pp. 262, 265, notes):\n \"He considers that Euripides was a skeptic of the aggressive\n type, whose principal object in writing tragedy was to attack the\n State religion, but who, perceiving that it would be dangerous\n to pose as an open enemy, endeavoured to accomplish his ends by\n covert ridicule.... His plays ... contain in reality two separate\n plots--the ostensible and superficial plot, which was intended\n to satisfy the orthodox, and the rationalized modification which\n lay half concealed beneath it, and which the intelligent skeptic\n would easily detect.\" For objections to this thesis see Haigh, as\n cited; Jevons, Hist. of Greek Lit. p. 222, note; and Dr. Mozley's\n article in the Classical Review, Nov. 1895, pp. 407-13. As to the\n rationalism of Euripides in general see many of the passages cited\n by Bishop Westcott in his Essays in the Hist. of Relig. Thought\n in the West, 1891, pp. 102-27. And cp. Dickinson, The Greek View\n of Life, pp. 46-49; Grote, Hist. i, 346-48; Zeller, Socrates and\n the Socratic Schools, Eng. tr. 3rd ed. p. 231; Murray, Anc. Greek\n Lit. pp. 256, 264-66.\n\n Over the latest play of Euripides, the Bacch\u00e6, as over one\n of the last plays of \u00c6schylus, the Prometheus, there has been\n special debate. It was probably written in Macedonia (cp. ll.,\n 408, 565), whither the poet had gone on the invitation of King\n Archelaos, when, according to the ancient sketch of his life,\n \"he had to leave Athens because of the malicious exultation over\n him of nearly all the city.\" The trouble, it is conjectured, \"may\n have been something connected with his prosecution for impiety,\n the charge on which Socrates was put to death a few years after\"\n (Murray, Euripides translated into English Rhyming Verse, 1902,\n introd. essay, p. lii). Inasmuch as the play glorifies Dionysos,\n and the \"atheist\" Pentheus (l. 995) who resists him is slain by the\n maddened Bacchantes, led by his own mother, it is seriously argued\n that the drama \"may be regarded as in some sort an apologia and\n an eirenicon, or as a confession on the part of the poet that\n he was fully conscious that in some of the simple legends of\n the popular faith there was an element of sound sense (!) which\n thoughtful men must treat with forbearance, resolved on using it,\n if possible, as an instrument for inculcating a truer morality,\n instead of assailing it with a presumptuous denial\" (J. E. Sandys,\n The Bacch\u00e6 of Euripides, 1880, introd. pp. lxxv-vi). Here we have\n the conformist ethic of the average English academic brought to\n bear on, and ascribed to, the personality of the Greek dramatist.\n\n An academic of the same order, Prof. Mahaffy, similarly\n suggests that \"among the half-educated Macedonian youth, with\n whom literature was coming into fashion, the poet may have\n met with a good deal of that insolent second-hand skepticism\n which is so offensive to a deep and serious thinker, and he\n may have wished to show them that he was not, as they doubtless\n hailed him, the apostle of this random speculative arrogance\"\n (Euripides in Class. Writ. Ser. 1879, p. 85). As against the\n eminently \"random\" and \"speculative arrogance\" of this particular\n passage--a characteristic product of the obscurantist functions\n of some British university professors in matters of religion,\n and one which may fitly be pronounced offensive to honest men--it\n may be suggested on the other hand that, if Euripides got into\n trouble in Athens by his skepticism, he would be likely in\n Macedonia to encounter rather a greater stress of bigotry than\n a freethinking welcome, and that a non-critical presentment of\n the savage religious legend was forced on him by his environment.\n\n Much of the academic discussion on the subject betrays a singular\n slowness to accept the dramatic standpoint. Even Prof. Murray,\n the finest interpreter of Euripides, dogmatically pronounces\n (introd. cited p. lvii) that \"there is in the Bacch\u00e6 real\n and heartfelt glorification of Dionysus,\" simply because of\n the lyrical exaltation of the Bacchic choruses. But lyrical\n exaltation was in character here above all other cases; and it\n was the dramatist's business to present it. To say that \"again\n and again in the lyrics you feel that the M\u00e6nads are no longer\n merely observed and analysed: the poet has entered into them\n and they into him,\" is nothing to the purpose. That the words\n which fall from the Chorus or its Leader are at times \"not the\n words of a raving Bacchante, but of a gentle and deeply musing\n philosopher,\" is still nothing to the purpose. The same could\n be said of Shakespeare's handling of Macbeth. What, in sooth,\n would the real words of a raving Bacchante be like? If Milton lent\n dignity to Satan in Puritan England, was Euripides to do less for\n Dionysos in Macedonia? That he should make Pentheus unsympathetic\n belongs to the plot. If he had made a noble martyr of the victim\n as well as an impassive destroyer of the God, he might have had\n to leave Macedonia more precipitately than he left Athens.\n\n Prof. Murray recognizes all the while that \"Euripides never\n palliates things. He leaves this savage story as savage as he\n found it\"; that he presents a \"triumphant and hateful Dionysus,\"\n who gives \"a helpless fatalistic answer, abandoning the moral\n standpoint,\" when challenged by the stricken Agav\u00ea, whom the\n God has moved to dismember her own son; and that, in short,\n \"Euripides is, as usual, critical or even hostile to the myth that\n he celebrates\" (as cited, pp. liv-lvi). To set against these solid\n facts, as does Mr. Sandys (as cited, pp. lxxiii-iv), some passages\n in the choruses (ll. 395, 388, 427, 1002), and in a speech of\n Dionysos (1002), enouncing normal platitudes about the wisdom of\n thinking like other people and living a quiet life, is to strain\n very uncritically the elastic dramatic material. So far from being\n \"not entirely in keeping\" with the likely sentiments of a chorus of\n Asiatic women, the first-cited passages--telling that cleverness\n is not wisdom, and that true wisdom acquiesces in the opinions\n of ordinary people--are just the kind of mock-modest ineptitudes\n always current among the complacent ignorant; and the sage language\n ascribed to the heartless God is simply a presentment of deity\n in the fashion in which all Greeks expected to have it presented.\n\n The fact remains that the story of the Bacch\u00e6, in which the\n frenzied mother helps to tear to pieces her own son, and the God\n can but say it is all fated, is as revolting to the rational moral\n sense as the story of the Prometheus. If this be an eirenicon,\n it is surely the most ironical in literary history. To see\n in the impassive delineation of such a myth an acceptance\n by the poet of popular \"sound sense,\" and \"a desire to put\n himself right with the public in matters on which he had been\n misunderstood,\" seems possible only to academics trained to a\n particular handling of the popular creed of their own day. This\n view, first put forward by Tyrwhitt (Conjectur\u00e6 in \u00c6schylum,\n etc. 1822), was adopted by Schoone (p. 20 of his ed. cited\n by Sandys). Lobeck, greatly daring wherever rationalism was\n concerned, suggested that Euripides actually wrote against the\n rationalists of his time, in commendation of the Bacchic cult,\n and to justify the popular view in religious matters as against\n that of the cultured (Aglaophamus--passages quoted by Sandys,\n p. lxxvi). Musgrave, following Tyrwhitt, makes the play out\n to be an attack on Kritias, Alkibiades, and other freethinkers,\n including even Sokrates! K. O. M\u00fcller, always ineptly conventional\n in such matters, finds Euripides in this play \"converted into a\n positive believer, or, in other words, convinced that religion\n should not be exposed to the subtilties of reasoning; that the\n understanding of man cannot subvert ancestral traditions which\n are as old as time,\" and so on; and in the Polonius-platitudes\n of Tiresias and the worldly-wise counsels of Cadmus he finds\n \"great impressiveness\" (Hist. Lit. Anc. Greece, p. 379).\n\n The bulk of the literature of the subject, in short, suggests\n sombre reflections on the moral value of much academic\n thinking. There are, however, academic suffrages on the side of\n common sense. Mr. Haigh (Tragic Drama of the Greeks, pp. 313-14)\n gently dismisses the \"recantation\" theory; Hartung points out\n (Euripides restitutus, 1844, ii, 542, cited by Sandys) that\n Euripides really treats the legend of Pentheus very much as\n he treats the myth of Hippolytos thirty years earlier, showing\n no change of moral attitude. E. Pfander (cited by Sandys) took\n a similar view; as did Mr. Tyrrell in his edition of the play\n (1871), though the latter persisted in taking the commonplaces\n of the chorus about true wisdom (395) for the judgments of\n the dramatist. Euripides could hardly have been called \"the\n philosopher of the stage\" (Athen\u00e6us, iv, 48) on the strength\n of sentiments which are common to the village wiseacres of all\n ages. The critical method which ascribes to Euripides a final\n hostility to rationalism would impute to Shakespeare the religion\n of Isabella in Measure for Measure, when the talk of the Duke as a\n friar counselling a condemned man is wholly \"pagan\" or unbelieving.\n\n In his admirable little book, Euripides and his Age (1913),\n Prof. Murray repeats his account of the Bacch\u00e6 with some additions\n and modifications. He adheres to the \"heartfelt glorification\n of Dionysus,\" but adds (p. 188): \"No doubt it is Dionysus\n in some private sense of the poet's own ... some spirit of\n ... inspiration and untrammelled life. The presentation is not\n consistent, however magical the poetry.\" As to the theory that\n \"the veteran free-lance of thought ... now saw the error of his\n ways and was returning to orthodoxy,\" he pronounces that \"Such\n a view strikes us now as almost childish in its incompetence\"\n (p. 190). He also reminds us that \"the whole scheme of the play\n is given by the ancient ritual.... All kinds of small details\n which seemed like ... rather fantastic invention on the part\n of Euripides are taken straight from \u00c6schylus or the ritual,\n or both.... The Bacch\u00e6 is not free invention; it is tradition\"\n (pp. 182-84). And in sum: \"It is well to remember that, for all\n his lucidity of language, Euripides is not lucid about religion\"\n (p. 190).\n\n In conclusion we may ask, How could he be? He wrote plays for the\n Greek stage, which had its very roots in religious tradition, and\n was run for the edification of a crudely believing populace. It is\n much that in so doing Euripides could a hundred times challenge\n the evil religious ethic given him for his subject-matter; and\n his lasting vogue in antiquity showed that he had a hold on the\n higher Greek conscience which no other dramatist ever possessed.\n\n\nBut while Euripides must thus have made a special appeal to the\nreflecting minority even in his own day, it is clear that he was not\nat first popular with the many; and his efforts, whatever he may have\nhoped to achieve, could not suffice to enlighten the democracy. The\nribald blasphemies of his enemy, the believing Aristophanes,\n[642] could avail more to keep vulgar religion in credit than the\ntragedian's serious indictment could effect against it; and they served\nat the same time to belittle Euripides for the multitude in his own\nday. Aristophanes is the typical Tory in religion; non-religious\nhimself, like Swift, he hates the honestly anti-religious man; and\nhe has the crowd with him. The Athenian faith, as a Catholic scholar\nremarks, [643] \"was more disposed to suffer the buffooneries of a\ncomedian than the serious negation of a philosopher.\" The average\nGreek seemed to think that the grossest comic impiety did no harm,\nwhere serious negation might cause divine wrath. [644] And so there\ncame no intellectual salvation for Athens from the drama which was\nher unique achievement. The balance of ignorance and culture was\nnot changed. Evidently there was much rationalism among the studious\nfew. Plato in the Laws [645] speaks both of the man-about-town type of\nfreethinker and of those who, while they believe in no Gods, live well\nand wisely and are in good repute. But with Plato playing the superior\nmind and encouraging his fellow-townsmen to believe in the personality\nof the sun, moon, and planets, credulity could easily keep the upper\nhand. [646] The people remained politically unwise and religiously\nsuperstitious, the social struggle perpetuating the division between\nleisure and toil, even apart from the life of the mass of slaves;\nwhile the eternal pre-occupation of militarism left even the majority\nof the upper class at the intellectual level natural to military life\nin all ages. There came, however, a generation of great intellectual\nsplendour following on that of the supreme development of drama just\nbefore the fall of Greek freedom. Athens had at last come into the\nheritage of Greek philosophic thought; and to the utterance of that\ncrowning generation the human retrospect has turned ever since. This\nmuch of renown remains inalienable from the most renowned democracy\nof the ancient world.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 8\n\nThe wide subject of the teaching of Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle must\nhere be noticed briefly, with a view only to our special inquiry. All\nthree must be inscribed in any list of ancient freethinkers; and\nyet all three furthered freethought only indirectly, the two former\nbeing in different degrees supernaturalists, while the last touched\non religious questions only as a philosopher, avoiding all question\nof practical innovation.\n\n\n The same account holds good of the best of the so-called Sophists,\n as Gorgias the Sicilian (? 485-380), who was a nihilistic skeptic;\n Hippias of Elis, who, setting up an emphatic distinction between\n Nature and Convention, impugned the political laws and prejudices\n which estranged men of thought and culture; and Prodikos of Kos\n (fl. 435), author of the fable of Herakles at the Parting of\n the Ways, who seems to have privately criticized the current\n Gods as mere deifications of useful things and forces, and\n was later misconceived as teaching that the things and forces\n were Gods. Cp. Cicero, De nat. Deorum, i, 42; Sextus Empiricus,\n Adv. Mathematicos, ix, 52; Ueberweg, vol. i, p. 78; Renouvier, i,\n 291-93. Cicero saw very well that if men came to see in D\u00eam\u00eat\u00ear\n merely a deification of corn or bread, in Dionysos wine, in\n Hephaistos fire, and in Poseidon only water, there was not much\n left in religion. On the score of their systematic skepticism,\n that is, their insistence on the subjectivity of all opinion,\n Prof. Drews pronounces the Sophists at once the \"Aufkl\u00e4rer\"\n and the Pragmatists of ancient Greece (Gesch. des Monismus,\n p. 209). But their thought was scarcely homogeneous.\n\n\n1. Sokrates [468-399] was fundamentally and practically a freethinker,\ninsofar as in most things he thought for himself, definitely turning\naway from the old ideal of mere transmitted authority in morals. [647]\nStarting in all inquiries from a position of professed ignorance, he\nat least repudiated all dogmatics. [648] Being, however, preoccupied\nwith public life and conduct, he did not carry his critical thinking\nfar beyond that sphere. In regard to the extension of solid science,\none of the prime necessities of Greek intellectual life, he was quite\nreactionary, drawing a line between the phenomena which he thought\nintelligible and traceable and those which he thought past finding\nout. \"Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, belonged to the divine\nclass of phenomena in which human research was insane, fruitless,\nand impious.\" [649] Yet at the same time he formulated, apparently\nof his own motion, the ordinary design argument. [650] The sound\nscientific view led up to by so many previous thinkers was set forth,\neven in religious phraseology, by his great contemporary Hippokrates,\n[651] and he opposed it. While partially separating himself in practice\nfrom the popular worships, he held by the belief in omens, though not\nin all the ordinary ones; and in one of the Platonic dialogues he is\nmade to say he holds by the ordinary versions of all the myths, on\nthe ground that it is a hopeless task to find rational explanations\nfor them. [652] He hoped, in short, to rationalize conduct without\nseeking to rationalize creed--the dream of Plato and of a thousand\nreligionists since.\n\nHe had indeed the excuse that the myth-rationalizers of the time\nafter Hekataios, following the line of least psychic resistance, like\nthose of England and Germany in the eighteenth century, explained\naway myths by reducing them to hypothetical history, thus asking\ncredence for something no better verified than the myth itself. But\nthe rationalizers were on a path by which men might conceivably have\njourneyed to a truer science; and Sokrates, by refusing to undertake\nany such exploration, [653] left his countrymen to that darkening\nbelief in tradition which made possible his own execution. There\nwas in his cast of mind, indeed--if we can at all accept Plato's\npresentment of him--something unfavourable to steady conviction. He\ncannot have had any real faith in the current religion; yet he never\nexplicitly dissented. In the Republic he accepts the new festival\nto the Thracian Goddess Bendis; and there he is made by Plato to\ninculcate a quite orthodox acceptance of the Delphic oracle as the\nsource of all religious practice. But it is impossible to say how much\nof the teaching of the Platonic Sokrates is Sokratic. And as to Plato\nthere remains the problem of how far his conformities were prudential,\nafter the execution of Sokrates for blasphemy.\n\n\n The long-debated issue as to the real personality of Sokrates\n is still open. It is energetically and systematically handled\n by Prof. August D\u00f6ring in Die Lehre des Sokrates als sociales\n Reformsystem (1895), and by Dr. Hubert R\u00f6ck in Der unverf\u00e4lschte\n Sokrates (1903). See, in particular, D\u00f6ring, pp. 51-79, and\n R\u00f6ck, pp. 357-96. From all attempts to arrive at a conception\n of a consistent Sokrates there emerges the impression that the\n real Sokrates, despite a strong critical bent of mind, had no\n clearly established body of opinions, but was swayed in different\n directions by the itch for contradiction which was the driving\n power of his dialectic. For the so-called Sokratic \"method\" is\n much less a method for attaining truth than one for disturbing\n prejudice. And if in Plato's hands Sokrates seldom reaches a\n conclusion that his own method might not overthrow, we are not\n entitled to refuse to believe that this was characteristic of\n the man.\n\n\nConcerning Sokrates we have Xenophon's circumstantial account [654]\nof how he reasoned with Aristodemos, \"surnamed the Little,\" who\n\"neither prayed nor sacrificed to the Gods, nor consulted any oracle,\nand ridiculed those who did.\" Aristodemos was a theist, believing in\na \"Great Architect\" or \"Artist,\" or a number of such powers--on this\nhe is as vague as the ancient theists in general--but does not think\nthe heavenly powers need his devotions. Sokrates, equally vague as\nto the unity or plurality of the divine, puts the design argument in\nthe manner familiar throughout the ages, [655] and follows it up with\nthe plea, among others, that the States most renowned for wisdom and\nantiquity have always been the most given to pious practices, and that\nprobably the Gods will be kind to those who show them respect. The\nwhole philosopheme is pure empiricism, on the ordinary plane of\npolytheistic thought, and may almost be said to exhibit incapacity\nfor the handling of philosophic questions, evading as it does even\nthe elementary challenge of Aristodemos, against whom Sokrates parades\npious platitudes without a hint of \"Sokratic\" analysis. Unless such a\nperformance were regarded as make-believe, it is difficult to conceive\nhow Athenian pietists could honestly arraign Sokrates for irreligion\nwhile Aristodemos and others of his way of thinking went unmolested.\n\nTaken as illustrating the state of thought in the Athenian community,\nthe trial and execution of Sokrates for \"blasphemy\" and \"corrupting\nthe minds of the young\" go far to prove that there prevailed among the\nupper class in Athens nearly as much hypocrisy in religious matters\nas exists in the England of to-day. Doubtless he was liable to death\nfrom the traditionally orthodox Greek point of view, [656] having\npractically turned aside from the old civic creed and ideals; but\nthen most educated Athenians had in some degree done the same. [657]\nEuripides, as we have seen, is so frequently critical of the old\ntheology and mythology in his plays that he too could easily have been\nindicted; and Aristophanes, who attacked Euripides in his comedies\nas scurrilously as he did Sokrates, would no doubt have been glad to\nsee him prosecuted. [658] The psychology of Aristophanes, who freely\nridiculed and blasphemed the Gods in his own comedies while reviling\nall men who did not believe in them, is hardly intelligible save\nin the light of parts of the English history of our own time, when\nunbelieving indifferentists on the Conservative side have been seen\nready to join in turning the law against a freethinking publicist\nfor purely party ends. In the case of Sokrates the hostility was\nostensibly democratic, for, according to \u00c6schines, Sokrates was\ncondemned because he had once given lessons to Kritias, [659] one\nof the most savage and unscrupulous of the Thirty Tyrants. Inasmuch\nas Kritias had become entirely alienated from Sokrates, and had even\nput him to silence, such a ground of hostility would only be a fresh\nillustration of that collective predilection of men to a gregarious\niniquity which is no less noteworthy in the psychology of groups\nthan their profession of high moral standards. And such proclivities\nare always to be reckoned with in such episodes. Anytos, the leading\nprosecutor, seems to have been a typical bigot, brainless, spiteful,\nand thoroughly self-satisfied. Not only party malice, however, but\nthe individual dislikes which Sokrates so industriously set up,\n[660] must have counted for much in securing the small majority\nof the dikastery that pronounced him guilty--281 to 276; and his\nown clear preference for death over any sort of compromise did the\nrest. [661] He was old, and little hopeful of social betterment;\nand the temperamental obstinacy which underlay his perpetual and\npertinacious debating helped him to choose a death that he could easily\nhave avoided. But the fact remains that he was not popular; that the\nmass of the voters as well as of the upper class disliked his constant\ncross-examination of popular opinion, [662] which must often have led\nlogical listeners to carry on criticism where he left off; and that\nafter all his ratiocination he left Athens substantially irrational, as\nwell as incapable of justice, on some essential issues. His dialectic\nmethod has done more to educate the later world than it did for Greece.\n\n\n Upon the debate as to the legal punishability of Sokrates turns\n another as to the moral character of the Athenians who forced\n him to drink the hemlock. Professor Mahaffy, bent on proving\n the superiority of Athenian culture and civilization to those\n of Christendom, effectively contrasts the calm scene in the\n prison-chamber of Sokrates with the hideous atrocities of the\n death penalty for treason in the modern world and the \"gauntness\n and horror of our modern executions\" (Social Life in Greece,\n 3rd. ed. pp. 262-69); and Mr. Bleeckly (Socrates and the Athenians,\n 1884, pp. 55-63) similarly sets against the pagan case that of the\n burning of heretics by the Christian Church, and in particular the\n auto da f\u00e9 at Valladolid in 1559, when fifteen men and women--the\n former including the conscientious priests who had proposed to\n meet the hostility of Protestant dissent in the Netherlands by\n reforms in the Church: the latter including delicately-nurtured\n ladies of high family--were burned to death before the eyes of\n the Princess Regent of Spain and the aristocracy of Castile. It\n is certainly true that this transaction has no parallel in the\n criminal proceedings of pagan Athens. Christian cruelty has been as\n much viler than pagan, culture for culture, as the modern Christian\n environment is uglier than the Athenian. Before such a test the\n special pleaders for the civilizing power of Christianity can\n but fall back upon alternative theses which are the negation of\n their main case. First we are told that \"Christianity humanizes\n men\"; next that where it does not do so it is because they are\n too inhuman to be made Christians.\n\n But while the orthodoxy of pagan Athens thus comes very well off\n as against the frightful crime-roll of organized Christianity,\n the dispassionate historian must nonetheless note the dehumanizing\n power of religion in Athens as in Christendom. The pietists of\n Athens, in their less brutish way, were as hopelessly denaturalized\n as those of Christian Europe by the dominion of a traditional\n creed, held as above reason. It matters not whether or not we\n say with Bishop Thirlwall (Hist. of Greece, 2nd ed. iv, 556) that\n \"there never was a case in which murder was more clearly committed\n under the forms of legal procedure than in the trial of Socrates,\"\n or press on the other side the same writer's admission that in\n religious matters in Athens \"there was no canon, no book by which\n a doctrine could be tried; no living authority to which appeal\n could be made for the decision of religious controversies.\" The\n fact that Christendom had \"authorities\" who ruled which of two\n sets of insane dogmas brought death upon its propounder, does\n not make less abominable the slaying of Bruno and Servetus,\n or the immeasurable massacre of less eminent heretics. But the\n less formalized homicides sanctioned by the piety of Periklean\n Athens remain part of the proof that unreasoning faith worsens\n men past calculation. If we slur over such deeds by generalities\n about human frailty, we are but asserting the impossibility\n of rationally respecting human nature. If, putting aside all\n moral censure, we are simply concerned to trace and comprehend\n causation in human affairs, we have no choice but to note how\n upon occasion religion on one hand, like strong drink on another,\n can turn commonplace men into murderers.\n\n\nIn view of the limitations of Sokrates, and the mental measure of\nthose who voted for putting him to death, it is not surprising that\nthrough all Greek history educated men (including Aristotle) continued\nto believe firmly in the deluge of Deukalion [663] and the invasion of\nthe Amazons [664] as solid historical facts. Such beliefs, of course,\nare on all fours with those current in the modern religious world\ndown till the present century: we shall, in fact, best appraise the\nrationality of Greece by making such comparisons. The residual lesson\nis that where Greek reason ended, modern social science had better\nbe regarded as only beginning. Thukydides, the greatest of all the\nancient historians, and one of the great of all time, treated human\naffairs in a spirit so strictly rationalistic that he might reasonably\nbe termed an atheist on that score even if he had not earned the name\nas a pupil of Anaxagoras. [665] But his task was to chronicle a war\nwhich proved that the Greeks were to the last children of instinct for\nthe main purposes of life, and that the rule of reason which they are\ncredited with establishing [666] was only an intermittent pastime. In\nthe days of Demosthenes we still find them politically consulting the\nPythian oracle, despite the consciousness among educated men that the\noracle is a piece of political machinery. We can best realize the stage\nof their evolution by first comparing their public religious practice\nwith that of contemporary England. No one now regards the daily prayers\nof the House of Commons as more than a reverent formality. But Nikias\nat Syracuse staked the fortunes of war on the creed of omens. We can\nperhaps finally conceive with fair accuracy the subordination of Greek\nculture and politics to superstition by likening the thought-levels\nof pre-Alexandrian Athens to those of England under Cromwell.\n\n2. The decisive measure of Greek accomplishment is found in the career\nof Plato [429-347]. One of the great prose writers of the world, he\nhas won by his literary genius--that is, by his power of continuous\npresentation as well as by his style--no less than by his service to\nsupernaturalist philosophy in general, a repute above his deserts as a\nthinker. In Christian history he is the typical philosopher of Dualism,\n[667] his prevailing conception of the universe being that of an\ninert Matter acted on or even created by a craftsman-God, the \"Divine\nArtificer,\" sometimes conceived as a Logos or divine Reason, separately\npersonalized. Thus he came to be par excellence the philosopher of\ntheism, as against Aristotle and those of the Pythagoreans who affirmed\nthe eternity of the universe. [668] In the history of freethought\nhe figures as a man of genius formed by Sokrates and reflecting\nhis limitations, developing the Sokratic dialectic on the one hand\nand finally emphasizing the Sokratic dogmatism to the point of utter\nbigotry. If the Athenians are to be condemned for putting Sokrates to\ndeath, it must not be forgotten that the spirit, if not the letter, of\nthe Laws drawn up by Plato in his old age fully justified them. [669]\nThat code, could it ever have been put in force, would have wrought\nthe death of every honest freethinker as well as most of the ignorant\nbelievers within its sphere. Alone among the great serious writers of\nGreece does he implicate Greek thought in the gospel of intolerance\npassed on to modern Europe from antiquity. It is recorded of him [670]\nthat he wished to burn all the writings of Demokritos that he could\ncollect, and was dissuaded only on the score of the number of copies.\n\nWhat was best in Plato, considered as a freethinker, was his early love\nof ratiocination, of \"the rendering and receiving of reasons.\" Even\nin his earlier dialogues, however, there are signs enough of an\narbitrary temper, as well as of an inability to put science in place\nof religious prejudice. The obscurantist doctrine which he put in\nthe mouth of Sokrates in the Ph\u00e6drus was also his own, as we gather\nfrom the exposition in the Republic. In that brilliant performance he\nobjects, as so many believers and freethinkers had done before him,\nto the scandalous tales in the poets concerning the Gods and the sons\nof Gods; but he does not object to them as being untrue. His position\nis that they are unedifying. [671] For his own part he proposes that\nhis ideal rulers frame new myths which shall edify the young: in his\nUtopia it is part of the business of the legislator to choose the right\nfictions; [672] and the systematic imposition of an edifying body of\npious fable on the general intelligence is part of his scheme for the\nregeneration of society. [673] Honesty is to be built up by fraud,\nand reason by delusion. What the Hebrew Bible-makers actually did,\nPlato proposed to do. The one thing to be said in his favour is that\nby thus telling how the net is to be spread in the sight of the bird\nhe put the decisive obstacle--if any were needed--in the way of his\nplan. It is, indeed, inconceivable that the author of the Republic\nand the Laws dreamt that either polity as a whole would ever come\ninto existence. His plans of suppressing all undesirable poetry,\narranging community of women, and enabling children to see battles,\nare the fancy-sketches of a dilettant. He had failed completely as a\nstatesman in practice; as a schemer he does not even posit the first\nconditions of success.\n\n\n As to his practical failure see the story of his and his pupils'\n attempts at Syracuse (Grote, History, ix, 37-123). The younger\n Dionysios, whom they had vainly attempted to make a model ruler,\n seems to have been an audacious unbeliever to the extent of\n plundering the temple of Persephone at Lokris, one of Jupiter in\n the Peloponnesos, and one of \u00c6sculapius at Epidaurus. Clement of\n Alexandria (Protrept. c. 4) states that he plundered \"the statue\n of Jupiter in Sicily.\" Cicero (De nat. Deorum, iii, 33, 34) and\n Valerius Maximus (i, 1) tell the story of the elder Dionysios;\n but of him it cannot be true. In his day the plunder of the\n temples of D\u00eam\u00eat\u00ear and Persephone in Sicily by the Carthaginians\n was counted a deadly sin. See Freeman, History of Sicily, iv,\n 125-47, and Story of Sicily, pp. 176-80. In Cicero's dialogue it\n is noted that after all his impieties Dionysios [the elder, of\n whom the stories are mistakenly told] died in his bed. Athen\u00e6us,\n however, citing the biographer Klearchos, tells that the younger\n Dionysios, after being reduced to the r\u00f4le of a begging priest\n of Kybel\u00ea, ended his life very miserably (xii, 60).\n\n\nNonetheless, the prescription of intolerance in the Laws [674] classes\nPlato finally on the side of fanaticism, and, indeed, ranks him with\nthe most sinister figures on that side, since his earlier writing\nshows that he would be willing to punish men alike for repeating\nstories which they believed, and for rejecting what he knew to be\nuntruths. [675] By his own late doctrine he vindicated the slayers of\nhis own friend. His psychology is as strange as that of Aristophanes,\nbut strange with a difference. He seems to have practised \"the will\nto believe\" till he grew to be a fanatic on the plane of the most\nignorant of orthodox Athenians; and after all that science had done\nto enlighten men on that natural order the misconceiving of which had\nbeen the foundation of their creeds, he inveighs furiously in his old\nage against the impiety of those who dared to doubt that the sun and\nmoon and stars were deities, as every nurse taught her charges. [676]\nAnd when all is said, his Gods satisfy no need of the intelligence;\nfor he insists that they only partially rule the world, sending the few\ngood things, but not the many evil [677]--save insofar as evil may be\na beneficent penalty and discipline. At the same time, while advising\nthe imprisonment or execution of heretics who did not believe in the\nGods, Plato regarded with even greater detestation the man who taught\nthat they could be persuaded or propitiated by individual prayer and\nsacrifice. [678] Thus he would have struck alike at the freethinking\nfew and at the multitude who held by the general religious beliefs of\nGreece, dealing damnation on all save his own clique, in a way that\nwould have made Torquemada blench. [679] In the face of such teaching\nas this, it may well be said that \"Greek philosophy made incomparably\ngreater advances in the earlier polemic period [of the Ionians]\nthan after its friendly return to the poetry of Homer and Hesiod\"\n[680]--that is, to their polytheistic basis. It is to be said for\nPlato, finally, that his embitterment at the downward course of things\nin Athens is a quite intelligible source for his own intellectual\ndecadence: a very similar spectacle being seen in the case of our own\ngreat modern Utopist, Sir Thomas More. But Plato's own writing bears\nwitness that among the unbelievers against whom he declaimed there\nwere wise and blameless citizens; [681] while in the act of seeking to\nlay a religious basis for a good society he admitted the fundamental\nimmorality of the religious basis of the whole of past Greek life.\n\n3. Aristotle [384-322], like Sokrates, albeit in a very different way,\nrendered rather an indirect than a direct service to Freethought. Where\nSokrates gave the critical or dialectic method or habit, \"a process of\neternal value and of universal application,\" [682] Aristotle supplied\nthe great inspiration of system, partly correcting the Sokratic\ndogmatism on the possibilities of science by endless observation and\nspeculation, though himself falling into scientific dogmatism only too\noften. That he was an unbeliever in the popular and Platonic religion\nis clear. Apart from the general rationalistic tenor of his works,\n[683] there was a current understanding that the Peripatetic school\ndenied the utility of prayer and sacrifice; [684] and though the\nessentially partisan attempt of the anti-Macedonian party to impeach\nhim for impiety may have turned largely on his hyperbolic hymn to his\ndead friend Hermeias (who was a eunuch, and as such held peculiarly\nunworthy of being addressed as on a level with semi-divine heroes),\n[685] it could hardly have been undertaken at all unless he had given\nsolider pretexts. The threatened prosecution he avoided by leaving the\ncity, dying shortly afterwards. Siding as he did with the Macedonian\nfaction, he had put himself out of touch with the democratic instincts\nof the Athenians, and so doubly failed to affect their thinking. But\nnonetheless the attack upon him by the democrats was a political\nstratagem. The prosecution for blasphemy had now become a recognized\nweapon in politics for all who had more piety than principle, and\nperhaps for some who had neither. And Aristotle, well aware of the\ntemper of the population around him, had on the whole been so guarded\nin his utterance that a fantastic pretext had to be fastened on for\nhis undoing.\n\n\n Prof. Bain (Practical Essays, p. 273), citing Grote's remark on the\n \"cautious prose compositions of Aristotle,\" comments thus: \"That is\n to say, the execution of Sokrates was always before his eyes; he\n had to pare his expressions so as not to give offence to Athenian\n orthodoxy. We can never know the full bearings of such a disturbing\n force. The editors of Aristotle complain of the corruption of\n his text: a far worse corruption lies behind. In Greece Sokrates\n alone had the courage of his opinions. While his views as to a\n future life, for example, are plain and frank, the real opinion\n of Aristotle on the question is an insoluble problem.\" (See,\n however, the passage in the Metaphysics cited below.)\n\n The opinion of Grote and Bain as to Aristotle's caution is fully\n coincided in by Lange, who writes (Gesch. des Mater. i, 63):\n \"More conservative than Plato and Sokrates, Aristotle everywhere\n seeks to attach himself as closely as possible to tradition, to\n popular notions, to the ideas embodied in common speech, and his\n ethical postulates diverge as little as may be from the customary\n morals and laws of Greek States. He has therefore been at all times\n the favourite philosopher of conservative schools and movements.\"\n\n\nIt is clear, nevertheless, if we can be sure of his writings,\nthat he was a monotheist, but a monotheist with no practical\nreligion. \"Excluding such a thing as divine interference with Nature,\nhis theology, of course, excludes the possibility of revelation,\ninspiration, miracles, and grace.\" [686] In a passage in the\nMetaphysics, after elaborating his monistic conception of Nature,\nhe dismisses in one or two terse sentences the whole current religion\nas a mass of myth framed to persuade the multitude, in the interest of\nlaw and order. [687] His influence must thus have been to some extent,\nat least, favourable to rational science, though unhappily his own\nscience is too often a blundering reaction against the surmises of\nearlier thinkers with a greater gift of intuition than he, who was\nrather a methodizer than a discoverer. [688] What was worst in his\nthinking was its tendency to apriorism, which made it in a later age\nso adaptable to the purposes of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus his\ndoctrines of the absolute levity of fire and of nature's abhorrence\nof a vacuum set up a hypnotizing verbalism, and his dictum that the\nearth is the centre of the universe was fatally helpful to Christian\nobscurantism. For the rest, while guiltless of Plato's fanaticism,\nhe had no scheme of reform whatever, and was as far as any other\nGreek from the thought of raising the mass by instruction. His own\nscience, indeed, was not progressive, save as regards his collation of\nfacts in biology; and his political ideals were rather reactionary;\nhis clear perception of the nature of the population problem leaving\nhim in the earlier attitude of Malthus, and his lack of sympathetic\nenergy making him a defender of slavery when other men had condemned\nit. [689] He was in some aspects the greatest brain of the ancient\nworld; and he left it, at the close of the great Grecian period,\nwithout much faith in man, while positing for the modern world its\nvaguest conception of Deity. Plato and Aristotle between them had\nreduced the ancient God-idea to a thin abstraction. Plato would not\nhave it that God was the author of evil, thus leaving evil unaccounted\nfor save by sorcery. Aristotle's God does nothing at all, existing\nmerely as a potentiality of thought. And yet upon those positions were\nto be founded the theisms of the later world. Plato had not striven,\nand Aristotle had failed, to create an adequate basis for thought in\nreal science; and the world gravitated back to religion.\n\n\n [In previous editions I remarked that \"the lack of fresh science,\n which was the proximate cause of the stagnation of Greek thought,\n has been explained like other things as a result of race qualities:\n 'the Athenians,' says Mr. Benn (The Greek Philosophers, i, 42),\n 'had no genius for natural science: none of them were ever\n distinguished as savans.... It was, they thought, a miserable\n trifling [and] waste of time.... Pericles, indeed, thought\n differently....' On the other hand, Lange decides (i, 6) \"that\n with the freedom and boldness of the Hellenic spirit was combined\n ... the talent for scientific deduction. These contrary views,\"\n I observed, \"seem alike arbitrary. If Mr. Benn means that other\n Hellenes had what the Athenians lacked, the answer is that only\n special social conditions could have set up such a difference,\n and that it could not be innate, but must be a mere matter of\n usage.\" Mr. Benn has explained to me that he does not dissent from\n this view, and that I had not rightly gathered his from the passage\n I quoted. In his later work, The Philosophy of Greece considered\n in relation to the character and history of its people (1898),\n he has pointed out how, in the period of Hippias and Prodikos,\n \"at Athens in particular young men threw themselves with ardour\n into the investigation of\" problems of cosmography, astronomy,\n meteorology, and comparative anatomy (p. 138). The hindering\n forces were Athenian bigotry (pp. 113-14, 171) and the mischievous\n influence of Sokrates (pp. 165, 173).\n\n Speaking broadly, we may say that the Chaldeans were forward in\n astronomy because their climate favoured it to begin with, and\n religion and their superstitions did so later. Hippokrates of Kos\n became a great physician because, with natural capacity, he had\n the opportunity to compare many practices. The Athenians failed\n to carry on the sciences, not because the faculty or the taste\n was lacking among them, but because their political and artistic\n interests, for one thing, preoccupied them--e.g., Sokrates and\n Plato; and because, for another, their popular religion, popularly\n supported, menaced the students of physics. But the Ionians,\n who had savans, failed equally to progress after the Alexandrian\n period; the explanation being again not stoppage of faculty, but\n the advent of conditions unfavourable to the old intellectual\n life, which in any case, as we saw, had been first set up by\n Babylonian contacts. (Compare, on the ethnological theorem of\n Cousin, G. Br\u00e9ton, Essai sur la po\u00e9sie philos. en Gr\u00e8ce, p. 10.) On\n the other hand, Lange's theory of gifts \"innate\" in the Hellenic\n mind in general is the old racial fallacy. Potentialities are\n \"innate\" in all populations, according to their culture stage,\n and it was their total environment that specialized the Greeks\n as a community.]\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 9\n\nThe overthrow of the \"free\" political life of Athens was followed by\na certain increase in intellectual activity, the result of throwing\nback the remaining store of energy on the life of the mind. By this\ntime an almost open unbelief as to the current tales concerning the\nGods would seem to have become general among educated people, the\nwithdrawal of the old risk of impeachment by political factions being\nso far favourable to outspokenness. It is on record that the historian\nEphoros (of Cum\u00e6 in \u00c6olia: fl. 350 B.C.), who was a pupil of Isocrates,\nopenly hinted in his work at his disbelief in the oracle of Apollo, and\nin fabulous traditions generally. [690] In other directions there were\nsimilar signs of freethought. The new schools of philosophy founded\nby Zeno the Stoic (fl. 280: d. 263 or 259) and Epicurus (341-270),\nwhatever their defects, compare not ill with those of Plato and\nAristotle, exhibiting greater ethical sanity and sincerity if less\nmetaphysical subtlety. Of metaphysics there had been enough for the\nage: what it needed was a rational philosophy of life. But the loss\nof political freedom, although thus for a time turned to account,\nwas fatal to continuous progress. The first great thinkers had all\nbeen free men in a politically free environment: the atmosphere of\ncowed subjection, especially after the advent of the Romans, could\nnot breed their like; and originative energy of the higher order\nsoon disappeared. Sane as was the moral philosophy of Epicurus, and\naustere as was that of Zeno, they are alike static or quietist, [691]\nthe codes of a society seeking a regulating and sustaining principle\nrather than hopeful of new achievement or new truth. And the universal\nskepticism of Pyrrho has the same effect of suggesting that what is\nwanted is not progress, but balance. It is significant that he, who\ncarried the Sokratic profession of Nescience to the typical extreme of\ndoctrinal Nihilism, was made high-priest of his native town of Elis,\nand had statues erected in his honour. [692]\n\nConsidered as freethinkers, all three men tell at once of the critical\nand of the reactionary work done by the previous age. Pyrrho, the\nuniversal doubter, appears to have taken for granted, with the whole\nof his followers, such propositions as that some animals (not insects)\nare produced by parthenogenesis, that some live in the fire, and that\nthe legend of the Phoenix is true. [693] Such credences stood for\nthe arrest of biological science in the Sokratic age, with Aristotle,\nso often mistakenly, at work; while, on the other hand, the Sokratic\nskepticism visibly motives the play of systematic doubt on the\ndogmas men had learned to question. Zeno, again, was substantially a\nmonotheist; Epicurus, adopting but not greatly developing the science\nof Demokritos, [694] turned the Gods into a far-off band of glorious\nspectres, untroubled by human needs, dwelling for ever in immortal\ncalm, neither ruling nor caring to rule the world of men. [695] In\ncoming to this surprising compromise, Epicurus, indeed, probably did\nnot carry with him the whole intelligence even of his own school. His\nfriend, the second Metrodoros of Lampsakos, seems to have been the most\nstringent of all the censors of Homer, wholly ignoring his namesake's\nattempts to clear the bard of impiety. \"He even advised men not to be\nashamed to confess their utter ignorance of Homer, to the extent of not\nknowing whether Hector was a Greek or a Trojan.\" [696] Such austerity\ntowards myths can hardly have been compatible with the acceptance of\nthe residuum of Epicurus. That, however, became the standing creed of\nthe sect, and a fruitful theme of derision to its opponents. Doubtless\nthe comfort of avoiding direct conflict with the popular beliefs had\na good deal to do with the acceptance of the doctrine.\n\nThis strange retention of the theorem of the existence of\nanthropomorphic Gods, with a flat denial that they did anything in the\nuniverse, might be termed the great peculiarity of average ancient\nrationalism, were it not that what makes it at all intelligible for\nus is just the similar practice of modern non-Christian theists. The\nGods of antiquity were non-creative, but strivers and meddlers and\nanswerers of prayer; and ancient rationalism relieved them of their\nstriving and meddling, leaving them no active or governing function\nwhatever, but for the most part cherishing their phantasms. The God of\nmodern Christendom had been at once a creator and a governor, ruling,\nmeddling, punishing, rewarding, and hearing prayer; and modern theism,\nunable to take the atheistic or agnostic plunge, relieves him of all\ninterference in things human or cosmic, but retains him as a creative\nabstraction who somehow set up \"law,\" whether or not he made all things\nout of nothing. The psychological process in the two cases seems to\nbe the same--an erection of \u00e6sthetic habit into a philosophic dogma,\nand an accommodation of phrase to popular prejudice.\n\nWhatever may have been the logical and psychological crudities\nof Epicureanism, however, it counted for much as a deliverance of\nmen from superstitious fears; and nothing is more remarkable in the\nhistory of ancient philosophy than the affectionate reverence paid to\nthe founder's memory [697] on this score through whole centuries. The\npowerful Lucretius sounds his highest note of praise in telling how\nthis Greek had first of all men freed human life from the crashing\nload of religion, daring to pass the flaming ramparts of the world,\nand by his victory putting men on an equality with heaven. [698]\nThe laughter-loving Lucian two hundred years later grows gravely\neloquent on the same theme. [699] And for generations the effect of the\nEpicurean check on orthodoxy is seen in the whole intellectual life of\nthe Greek world, already predisposed in that direction. [700] The new\nschools of the Cynics and the Cyrenaics had alike shown the influence\nin their perfect freedom from all religious preoccupation, when they\nwere not flatly dissenting from the popular beliefs. Antisthenes,\nthe founder of the former school (fl. 400 B.C.), though a pupil of\nSokrates, had been explicitly anti-polytheistic, and an opponent of\nanthropomorphism. [701] Aristippos of Cyrene, also a pupil of Socrates,\nwho a little later founded the Hedonic or Cyrenaic sect, seems to have\nput theology entirely aside. One of the later adherents of the school,\nTheodoros, was like Diagoras labelled \"the Atheist\" [702] by reason\nof the directness of his opposition to religion; and in the Rome of\nCicero he and Diagoras are the notorious atheists of history. [703]\nTo Theodoros, who had a large following, is attributed an influence\nover the thought of Epicurus, [704] who, however, took the safer\nposition of a verbal theism. The atheist is said to have been menaced\nby Athenian law in the time of Demetrius Phalereus, who protected him;\nand there is even a story that he was condemned to drink hemlock; [705]\nbut he was not of the type that meets martyrdom, though he might go\nfar to provoke it. [706] Roaming from court to court, he seems never\nto have stooped to flatter any of his entertainers. \"You seem to me,\"\nsaid the steward of Lysimachos of Thrace to him on one occasion,\n\"to be the only man who ignores both Gods and kings.\" [707]\n\nIn the same age the same freethinking temper is seen in Stilpo of\nMegara (fl. 307), of the school of Euclides, who is said to have\nbeen brought before the Areopagus for the offence of saying that\nthe Pheidian statue of Ath\u00ean\u00ea was \"not a God,\" and to have met\nthe charge with the jest that she was in reality not a God but a\nGoddess; whereupon he was exiled. [708] The stories told of him make\nit clear that he was an unbeliever, usually careful not to betray\nhimself. Euclides, too, with his optimistic pantheism, was clearly a\nheretic; though his doctrine that evil is non-ens [709] later became\nthe creed of some Christians. Yet another professed atheist was the\nwitty Bion of Borysthenes, pupil of Theodoros, of whom it is told,\nin a fashion familiar to our own time, that in sickness he grew pious\nthrough fear. [710] Among his positions was a protest or rather satire\nagainst the doctrine that the Gods punished children for the crimes of\ntheir fathers. [711] In the other schools, Speusippos (fl. 343), the\nnephew of Plato, leant to monotheism; [712] Strato of Lampsakos, the\nPeripatetic (fl. 290), called \"the Naturalist,\" taught sheer pantheism,\nanticipating Laplace in declaring that he had no need of the action\nof the Gods to account for the making of the world; [713] Dikaiarchos\n(fl. 326-287), another disciple of Aristotle, denied the existence\nof separate souls, and the possibility of foretelling the future;\n[714] and Aristo and Cleanthes, disciples of Zeno, varied likewise in\nthe direction of pantheism; the latter's monotheism, as expressed in\nhis famous hymn, being one of several doctrines ascribed to him. [715]\n\nContemporary with Epicurus and Zeno and Pyrrho, too, was Ev\u00eameros\n(Euhemerus), whose peculiar propaganda against Godism seems to imply\ntheoretic atheism. As an atheist he was vilified in a manner familiar\nto modern ears, the Alexandrian poet Callimachus labelling him an\n\"arrogant old man vomiting impious books.\" [716] His lost work, of\nwhich only a few extracts remain, undertook to prove that all the\nGods had been simply famous men, deified after death; the proof,\nhowever, being by way of a fiction about old inscriptions found in\nan imaginary island. [717] As above noted, [718] the idea may have\nbeen borrowed from skeptical Phoenicians, the principle having already\nbeen monotheistically applied by the Bible-making Jews, [719] though,\non the other hand, it had been artistically and to all appearance\nuncritically acted on in the Homeric epopees. It may or may not then\nhave been by way of deliberate or reasoning Ev\u00eamerism that certain\nearly Greek and Roman deities were transformed, as we have seen, into\nheroes or hetairai. [720] In any case, the principle seems to have had\nconsiderable vogue in the later Hellenistic world; but with the effect\nrather of paving the way for new cults than of setting up scientific\nrationalism in place of the old ones. Quite a number of writers like\nPalaiphatos, without going so far as Ev\u00eameros, sought to reduce myths\nto natural possibilities and events, by way of mediating between the\ncredulous and the incredulous. [721] Their method is mostly the na\u00eff\none revived by the Abb\u00e9 Banier in the eighteenth century of reducing\nmarvels to verbal misconceptions. Thus for Palaiphatos the myth of\nKerberos came from the facts that the city Trikarenos was commonly\nspoken of as a beautiful and great dog; and that Geryon, who lived\nthere, had great dogs called Kerberoi; Act\u00e6on was \"devoured by his\ndogs\" in the sense that he neglected his affairs and wasted his time\nin hunting; the Amazons were shaved men, clad as were the women in\nThrace, and so on. [722] Palaiphatos and the Herakleitos who also\nwrote De Incredibilibus agree that Pasiphae's bull was a man named\nTauros; and the latter writer similarly explains that Scylla was a\nbeautiful hetaira with avaricious hangers-on, and that the harpies\nwere ladies of the same profession. If the method seems childish, it\nis to be remembered that as regards the explanation of supernatural\nevents it was adhered to by German theologians of a century ago;\nand that its credulity in incredulity is still to be seen in the\ncurrent view that every narrative in the sacred books is to be taken\nas necessarily standing for a fact of some kind.\n\nOne of the inferrible effects of the Ev\u00eamerist method was to facilitate\nfor the time the adoption of the Egyptian and eastern usage of deifying\nkings. It has been plausibly argued that this practice stands not\nso much for superstition as for skepticism, its opponents being\nprecisely the orthodox believers, and its promoters those who had\nlearned to doubt the actuality of the traditional Gods. Ev\u00eamerism\nwould clinch such a tendency; and it is noteworthy that Ev\u00eameros\nlived at the court of Kassander (319-296 B.C.) in a period in which\nevery remaining member of the family of the deified Alexander had\nperished, mostly by violence; while the contemporary Ptolemy I of\nEgypt received the title of Sot\u00ear, \"Saviour,\" from the people of\nRhodes. [723] It is to be observed, however, that while in the next\ngeneration Antiochus I of Syria received the same title, and his\nsuccessor Antiochus II that of Theos, \"God,\" the usage passes away;\nPtolemy III being named merely Everget\u00eas, \"the Benefactor\" (of the\npriests), and even Antiochus III only \"the Great.\" Superstition was\nnot to be ousted by a political exploitation of its machinery. [724]\n\nIn Athens the democracy, restored in a subordinate form by Kassander's\nopponent, Demetrius Poliork\u00eates (307 B.C.), actually tried to put\ndown the philosophic schools, all of which, but the Aristotelian in\nparticular, were anti-democratic, and doubtless also comparatively\nirreligious. Epicurus and some of his antagonists were exiled within a\nyear of his opening his school (306 B.C.); but the law was repealed in\nthe following year. [725] Theophrastos, the head of the Aristotelian\nschool, was indicted in the old fashion for impiety, which seems to\nhave consisted in denouncing animal sacrifice. [726] These repressive\nattempts, however, failed; and no others followed at Athens in that\nera; though in the next century the Epicureans seem to have been\nexpelled from Lythos in Crete and from Messen\u00ea in the Peloponnesos,\nnominally for their atheism, in reality probably on political\ngrounds. [727] Thus Zeno was free to publish a treatise in which,\nbesides far out-going Plato in schemes for dragooning the citizens into\nan ideal life, he proposed a State without temples or statues of the\nGods or law courts or gymnasia. [728] In the same age there is trace of\n\"an interesting case of rationalism even in the Delphic oracle.\" [729]\nThe people of the island of Astypalaia, plagued by hares or rabbits,\nsolemnly consulted the oracle, which briefly advised them to keep\ndogs and take to hunting. About the same time we find Lachares,\ntemporarily despot at Athens, plundering the shrine of Pallas of its\ngold. [730] Even in the general public there must have been a strain of\nsurviving rationalism; for among the fragments of Menander (fl. 300),\nwho, in general, seems to have leant to a well-bred orthodoxy, [731]\nthere are some speeches savouring of skepticism and pantheism. [732]\n\nIt was in keeping with this general but mostly placid and non-polemic\nlatitudinarianism that the New Academy, the second birth, or rather\ntransformation, of the Platonic school, in the hands of Arkesilaos\nand the great Carneades (213-129), and later of the Carthaginian\nClitomachos, should be marked by that species of skepticism thence\ncalled Academic--a skepticism which exposed the doubtfulness of current\nreligious beliefs without going the Pyrrhonian length of denying that\nany beliefs could be proved, or even denying the existence of the Gods.\n\n\n For the arguments of Carneades against the Stoic doctrine of\n immortality see Cicero, De natura Deorum, iii, 12, 17; and for\n his argument against theism see Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. ix,\n 172, 183. Mr. Benn pronounces this criticism of theology \"the most\n destructive that has ever appeared, the armoury whence religious\n skepticism ever since has been supplied\" (The Philosophy of\n Greece, etc., p. 258). This seems an over-statement. But it is\n just to say, as does Mr. Whittaker (Priests, Philosophers, and\n Prophets, 1911, p. 60; cp. p. 86), that \"there has never been\n a more drastic attack than that of Carneades, which furnished\n Cicero with the materials for his second book, On Divination\";\n and, as does Prof. Martha (\u00c9tudes Morales sur l'antiquit\u00e9, 1889,\n p. 77), that no philosophic or religious school has been able to\n ignore the problems which Carneades raised.\n\n\nAs against the essentially uncritical Stoics, the criticism of\nCarneades is sane and sound; and he has been termed by judicious\nmoderns \"the greatest skeptical mind of antiquity\" [733] and \"the Bayle\nof Antiquity\"; [734] though he seems to have written nothing. [735]\nThere is such a concurrence of testimony as to the victorious power\nof his oratory and the invincible skill of his dialectic [736] that\nhe must be reckoned one of the great intellectual and rationalizing\nforces of his day, triumphing as he did in the two diverse arenas\nof Greece and Rome. His disciple and successor Clitomachos said of\nhim, with Cicero's assent, that he had achieved a labour of Hercules\n\"in liberating our souls as it were of a fierce monster, credulity,\nconjecture, rash belief.\" [737] He was, in short, a mighty antagonist\nof thoughtless beliefs, clearing the ground for a rational life;\nand the fact that he was chosen with Diogenes the Peripatetic and\nCritolaos the Stoic to go to Rome to plead the cause of ruined\nAthens, mulcted in an enormous fine, proved that he was held\nin high honour at home. Athens, in short, was not at this stage\n\"too superstitious.\" Unreasoning faith was largely discredited by\nphilosophy.\n\nOn this basis, in a healthy environment, science and energy might\nhave reared a constructive rationalism; and for a time astronomy, in\nthe hands of Aristarchos of Samos (third century B.C.), Eratosthenes\nof Cyrene, the second keeper of the great Alexandrian library (2nd\ncent. B.C.), and above all of Hipparchos of Nikaia, who did most of\nhis work in the island of Rhodes, was carried to a height of mastery\nwhich could not be maintained, and was re-attained only in modern\ntimes. [738] Thus much could be accomplished by \"endowment of research\"\nas practised by the Ptolemies at Alexandria; and after science had\ndeclined with the decline of their polity, and still further under\nRoman rule, the new cosmopolitanism of the second century of the\nempire reverted to the principle of intelligent evocation, producing\nunder the Antonines the \"Second\" School of Alexandria.\n\nBut the social conditions remained fundamentally bad; and the earlier\ngreatness was never recovered. \"History records not one astronomer\nof note in the three centuries between Hipparchos and Ptolemy\"; and\nPtolemy (fl. 140 C.E.) not only retrograded into astronomical error,\nbut elaborated on oriental lines a baseless fabric of astrology. [739]\nOther science mostly decayed likewise. The Greek world, already led\nto lower intellectual levels by the sudden ease and wealth opened\nup to it through the conquests of Alexander and the rule of his\nsuccessors, was cast still lower by the Roman conquest. Pliny,\nextolling Hipparchos with little comprehension of his work, must\nneeds pronounce him to have \"dared a thing displeasing to God\" in\nnumbering the stars for posterity. [740] In the air of imperialism,\nstirred by no other, original thought could not arise; and the mass\nof the Greek-speaking populations, rich and poor, gravitated to the\nlevel of the intellectual [741] and emotional life of more or less\nwell-fed slaves. In this society there rapidly multiplied private\nreligious associations--thiasoi, eranoi, orgeones--in which men and\nwomen, denied political life, found new bonds of union and grounds of\ndivision in cultivating worships, mostly oriental, which stimulated\nthe religious sense and sentiment. [742]\n\nSuch was the soil in which Christianity took root and flourished;\nwhile philosophy, after the freethinking epoch following on the\nfall of Athenian power, gradually reverted to one or other form\nof mystical theism or theosophy, of which the most successful was\nthe Neo-Platonism of Alexandria. [743] When the theosophic Julian\nrejoiced that Epicureanism had disappeared, [744] he was exulting in\na symptom of the intellectual decline that made possible the triumph\nof the faith he most opposed. Christianity furthered a decadence\nthus begun under the auspices of pagan imperialism; and \"the fifth\ncentury of the Christian era witnessed an almost total extinction of\nthe sciences in Alexandria\" [745]--an admission which disposes of the\ndispute as to the guilt of the Arabs in destroying the great library.\n\nHere and there, through the centuries, the old intellectual flame burns\nwhitely enough: the noble figure of Epictetus in the first century of\nthe new era, and that of the brilliant Lucian in the second, in their\nwidely different ways remind us that the evolved faculty was still\nthere if the circumstances had been such as to evoke it. Menippos in\nthe first century B.C. had played a similar part to that of Lucian,\nin whose freethinking dialogues he so often figures; but with less\nof subtlety and intellectuality. Lucian's was indeed a mind of the\nrarest lucidity; and the argumentation of his dialogue Zeus Trag\u00e6dos\ncovers every one of the main aspects of the theistic problem. There\nis no dubiety as to his atheistic conclusion, which is smilingly\nimplicit in the reminder he puts in the mouth of Hermes, that,\nthough a few men may adopt the atheistic view, \"there will always be\nplenty of others who think the contrary--the majority of the Greeks,\nthe ignorant many, the populace, and all the barbarians.\" But the\nmoral doctrine of Epictetus is one of endurance and resignation;\nand the almost unvarying raillery of Lucian, making mere perpetual\nsport of the now moribund Olympian Gods, was hardly better fitted\nthan the all-round skepticism of the school of Sextus Empiricus to\ninspire positive and progressive thinking.\n\nThis latter school, described by Cicero as dispersed and extinct\nin his day, [746] appears to have been revived in the first century\nby \u00c6nesidemos, who taught at Alexandria. [747] It seems to have been\nthrough him in particular that the Pyrrhonic system took the clear-cut\nform in which it is presented at the close of the second century by\nthe accomplished Sextus \"Empiricus\"--that is, the empirical (i.e.,\nexperiential) physician, [748] who lived at Alexandria and Athens\n(fl. 175-205 C.E.). As a whole, the school continued to discredit\ndogmatism without promoting knowledge. Sextus, it is true, strikes\nacutely and systematically at ill-founded beliefs, and so makes for\nreason; [749] but, like the whole Pyrrhonian school, he has no idea\nof a method which shall reach sounder conclusions. As the Stoics\nhad inculcated the control of the passions as such, so the skeptics\nundertook to make men rise above the prejudices and presuppositions\nwhich swayed them no less blindly than ever did their passions. But\nSextus follows a purely skeptical method, never rising from the\ndestruction of false beliefs to the establishment of true. His aim is\nataraxia, a philosophic calm of non-belief in any dogmatic affirmation\nbeyond the positing of phenomena as such; and while such an attitude\nis beneficently exclusive of all fanaticism, it unfortunately never\nmakes any impression on the more intolerant fanatic, who is shaken only\nby giving him a measure of critical truth in place of his error. And\nas Sextus addressed himself to the students of philosophy, not to\nthe simple believers in the Gods, he had no wide influence. [750]\nAvowedly accepting the normal view of moral obligations while rejecting\ndogmatic theories of their basis, the doctrine of the strict skeptics\nhad the effect, from Pyrrho onwards, of giving the same acceptance\nto the common religion, merely rejecting the philosophic pretence\nof justifying it. Taken by themselves, the arguments against current\ntheism in the third book of the Hypotyposes [751] are unanswerable;\nbut, when bracketed with other arguments against the ordinary belief\nin causation, they had the effect of leaving theism on a par with\nthat belief. Against religious beliefs in particular, therefore,\nthey had no wide destructive effect.\n\nLucian, again, thought soundly and sincerely on life; his praise\nof the men whose memories he respected, as Epicurus and Demonax (if\nthe Life of Demonax attributed to him be really his), is grave and\nheartfelt; and his ridicule of the discredited Gods was perfectly\nright so far as it went. It is certain that the unbelievers and the\nskeptics alike held their own with the believers in the matter of\nright living. [752] In the period of declining pagan belief, the maxim\nthat superstition was a good thing for the people must have wrought\na quantity and a kind of corruption that no amount of ridicule of\nreligion could ever approach. Polybius (fl. 150 B.C.) agrees with\nhis complacent Roman masters that their greatness is largely due\nto the carefully cultivated superstition of their populace, and\ncharges with rashness and folly those who would uproot the growth;\n[753] and Strabo, writing under Tiberius--unless it be a later\ninterpolator of his work--confidently lays down the same principle\nof governmental deceit, [754] though in an apparently quite genuine\npassage he vehemently protests the incredibility of the traditional\ntales about Apollo. [755] So far had the doctrine evolved since Plato\npreached it. But to countervail it there needed more than a ridicule\nwhich after all reached only the class who had already cast off the\nbeliefs derided, leaving the multitude unenlightened. The lack of the\nneeded machinery of enlightenment was, of course, part of the general\nfailure of the Gr\u00e6co-Roman civilization; and no one man's efforts could\nhave availed, even if any man of the age could have grasped the whole\nsituation. Rather the principle of esoteric enlightenment, the ideal\nof secret knowledge, took stronger hold as the mass grew more and more\ncomprehensively superstitious. Even at the beginning of the Christian\nera the view that Homer's deities were allegorical beings was freshly\npropounded in the writings of Herakleides and Cornutus (Phornutus);\nbut it served only as a kind of mystical Gnosis, on all fours with\nChristian Gnosticism, and was finally taken up by Neo-Platonists,\nwho were no nearer rationalism for adopting it. [756]\n\nSo with the rationalism to which we have so many uneasy or hostile\nallusions in Plutarch. We find him resenting the scoffs of Epicureans\nat the doctrine of Providence, and recoiling from the \"abyss of\nimpiety\" [757] opened up by those who say that \"Aphrodite is simply\ndesire, and Hermes eloquence, and the Muses the arts and sciences,\nand Ath\u00ean\u00ea wisdom, and Dionysos merely wine, Hephaistos fire, and\nD\u00eam\u00eat\u00ear corn\"; [758] and in his essay On Superstition he regretfully\nrecognizes the existence of many rational atheists, confessing that\ntheir state of mind is better than that of the superstitious who abound\naround him, with their \"impure purifications and unclean cleansings,\"\ntheir barbaric rites, and their evil Gods. But the unbelievers, with\ntheir keen contempt for popular folly, availed as little against it as\nPlutarch himself, with his doctrine of a just mean. The one effectual\ncure would have been widened knowledge; and of such an evolution the\nsocial conditions did not permit.\n\nTo return to a state of admiration for the total outcome of Greek\nthought, then, it is necessary to pass from the standpoint of\nsimple analysis to that of comparison. It is in contrast with the\nrelatively slight achievement of the other ancient civilizations\nthat the Greek, at its height, still stands out for posterity as a\nwonderful growth. That which, tried by the test of ideals, is as a\nwhole only one more tragic chapter in the record of human frustration,\nyet contains within it light and leading as well as warning; and\nfor long ages it was as a lost Paradise to a darkened world. It has\nbeen not untruly said that \"the Greek spirit is immortal, because\nit was free\": [759] free not as science can now conceive freedom,\nbut in contrast with the spiritual bondage of Jewry and Egypt, the\nhalf-barbaric tradition of imperial Babylon, and the short flight\nof mental life in Rome. Above all, it was ever in virtue of the\nfreedom that the high things were accomplished; and it was ever the\nfalling away from freedom, the tyranny either of common ignorance\nor of mindless power, that wrought decadence. There is a danger,\ntoo, of injustice in comparing Athens with later States. When a high\nauthority pronounces that \"the religious views of the Demos were of\nthe narrowest kind,\" [760] he is not to be gainsaid; but the further\nverdict that \"hardly any people has sinned more heavily against the\nliberty of science\" is unduly lenient to Christian civilization. The\nheaviest sins of that against science, indeed, lie at the door of\nthe Catholic Church; but to make that an exoneration of the modern\n\"peoples\" as against the ancient would be to load the scales. And\neven apart from the Catholic Church, which practically suppressed\nall science for a thousand years, the attitude of Protestant leaders\nand Protestant peoples, from Luther down to the second half of the\nnineteenth century, has been one of hatred and persecution towards\nall science that clashed with the sacred books. [761] In the Greek\nworld there was more scientific discussion in the three hundred\nyears down to Epicurus than took place in the whole of Christian\nEurope in thirteen hundred; and the amount of actual violence used\ntowards innovators in the pagan period, though lamentable enough,\nwas trifling in comparison with that recorded in Christian history,\nto say nothing of the frightful annals of witch-burning, to which\nthere is no parallel in civilized heathen history. The critic, too,\ngoes on to admit that, while \"Sokrates, Anaxagoras, and Aristotle\nfell victims in different degrees to the bigotry of the populace,\"\n\"of course their offence was political rather than religious. They\nwere condemned not as heretics, but as innovators in the state\nreligion.\" And, as we have seen, all three of the men named taught in\nfreedom for many years till political faction turned popular bigotry\nagainst them. The true measure of Athenian narrowness is not to be\nreached, therefore, without keeping in view the long series of modern\noutrages and maledictions against the makers and introducers of new\nmachinery, and the multitude of such episodes as the treatment of\nPriestley in Christian Birmingham, little more than a century ago. On\na full comparison the Greeks come out not ill.\n\nIt was, in fact, impossible that the Greeks should either stifle\nor persecute science or freethought as it was either stifled or\npersecuted by ancient Jews (who had almost no science by reason of\ntheir theology) or by modern Christians, simply because the Greeks\nhad no anti-scientific hieratic literature. It remains profoundly\nsignificant for science that the ancient civilization which on the\nsmallest area evolved the most admirable life, which most completely\ntranscended all the sources from which it originally drew, and left a\nrecord by which men are still charmed and taught, was a civilization\nas nearly as might be without Sacred Books, without an organized\npriesthood, and with the largest measure of democratic freedom that\nthe ancient world ever saw.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nFREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME\n\n\n\u00a7 1\n\nThe Romans, so much later than the Greeks in their intellectual\ndevelopment, were in some respects peculiarly apt--in the case of\ntheir upper class--to accept freethinking ideas when Greek rationalism\nat length reached them. After receiving from their Greek neighbours\nin Southern Italy, in the pre-historic period, the germs of higher\nculture, in particular the alphabet, they rather retrograded than\nprogressed for centuries, the very alphabet degenerating for lack\nof literary activity [762] in the absence of any culture class, and\nunder the one-idea'd rule of the landowning aristocracy, whose bent\nto military aggression was correlative to the smallness of the Roman\nfacilities for commerce. In the earlier ages nearly everything in\nthe nature of written lore was a specialty of a few priests, and was\nlimited to their purposes, which included some keeping of annals. [763]\nThe use of writing for purposes of family records seems to have been\nthe first literary development among the patrician laity. [764]\nIn the early republican period, however, the same conditions of\nrelative poverty, militarism, and aristocratic emulation prevented\nany development even of the priesthood beyond the rudimentary stage\nof a primitive civic function; and the whole of these conditions in\ncombination kept the Roman Pantheon peculiarly shadowy, and the Roman\nmythology abnormally undeveloped.\n\n\n The character of the religion of the Romans has been usually\n explained in the old manner, in terms of their particular \"genius\"\n and lack of genius. On this view the Romans primordially tended\n to do whatever they did--to be slightly religious in one period,\n and highly so in another. Teuffel quite unconsciously reduces\n the theorem to absurdity in two phrases: \"As long as the peculiar\n character of the Roman nation remained unaltered\" ... (Hist. of\n Roman Lit. ed. Schwabe, Eng. tr. 1900, i, 2): \"the peculiar Roman\n character had now come to an end, and for ever\" (id. p. 123). By\n no writer has the subject been more unphilosophically treated than\n by Mommsen, whose chapter on Roman religion (vol. i, ch. xii) is\n an insoluble series of contradictions. (See the present writer's\n Christianity and Mythology, pp. 115-17.) M. Boissier contradicts\n himself hardly less strangely, alternately pronouncing the Latin\n religion timid and confident, prostrate and dignified (La religion\n romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins, 4e \u00e9dit. i, 7, 8, 26, 28). Both\n writers ascribe every characteristic of Roman religion to the\n character of \"the Romans\" in the lump--a method which excludes\n any orderly conception. It must be abandoned if there is to be\n any true comprehension of the subject.\n\n Other verdicts of this kind by Ihne, Jevons, and others, will no\n better bear examination. (See Christianity and Mythology, pt. i,\n ch. iii, \u00a7 3.) Dr. Warde Fowler, the latest English specialist\n to handle the question, confidently supports the strange thesis\n (dating from Schwartz) that the multitude of deities and daimons\n of the early Latins were never thought of as personal, or as\n possessing sex, until Greek mythology and sculpture set the\n fashion of such conceptions, whereupon \"this later and foreign\n notion of divinity so completely took possession of the minds of\n the Romans of the cosmopolitan city that Varro is the only writer\n who has preserved the tradition of the older way of thinking\"\n (The Religious Experience of the Roman People, 1911, p. 147). That\n is to say, the conception of the Gods in the imageless period was\n an \"older way of thinking,\" in which deities called by male and\n female names, and often addressed as Pater and Mater, were not\n really thought of as anthropomorphic at all! How the early Romans\n conceived their non-imaged deities Dr. Fowler naturally does not\n attempt to suggest. We get merely the unreasoned and unexplained\n negative formula that \"we may take it as certain that even the\n greater deities of the calendar, Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus,\n and Vesta, were not thought of as existing in any sense in human\n form, nor as personal beings having any human characteristics. The\n early Romans were destitute of mythological fancy....\"\n\n Either, then, the early Romans were psychologically alien to\n every other primitive or barbaric people, as known to modern\n anthropology, or, by parity of reasoning, all anthropomorphism\n is the spontaneous creation of sculptors, who had no ground\n whatever in previous psychosis for making images of Gods. The\n Greeks, on this view, had no anthropomorphic notion of their\n deities until suddenly sculptors began to make images of them,\n whereupon everybody promptly and obediently anthropomorphized!\n\n The way out of this hopeless theorem is indicated for Dr. Fowler\n by his own repeated observation that the Roman jus divinum, in\n which he finds so little sign of normal \"mythological fancy,\"\n represented the deliberately restrictive action of an official\n priesthood for whom all religio was a kind of State magic or\n \"medicine.\" He expressly insists (p. 24) on \"the wonderful work\n done by the early authorities from the State in eliminating from\n their rule of worship (jus divinum) almost all that was magical,\n barbarous, or, as later Romans would have called it, superstitious\"\n (Lect. ii, p. 24; cp. Lect. iii.). He even inclines to the view\n that the patrician religion \"was really the religion of an\n invading race, like that of the Ach\u00e6ans in Greece, engrafted\n on the religion of a primitive and less civilized population\"\n (pp. viii, 23). This thesis is not necessary to the rebuttal of\n his previous negation; but it obviously resists it, unless we are\n to make the word \"Roman\" apply only to patricians. An invading\n tribe might, in the case of Rome as in that of the Homeric Greeks,\n abandon ordinary and localized primitive beliefs which it had held\n in its previous home, and thereafter be officially reluctant to\n recognize the local superstitions of its conquered plebs.\n\n But the Roman case can be understood without assuming any\n continuity of racial divergence. Livy shows us that the Latin\n peasantry were, if possible, more given to superstitious fears and\n panics than any other, constantly reporting portents and prodigia\n which called for State ritual, and embarrassing military policy by\n their apprehensions. A patrician priesthood, concerned above all\n things for public polity, would in such circumstances naturally\n seek to minimize the personal side of the popular mythology,\n treating all orders of divinity as mere classes of powers to be\n appeased. The fact (id. p. 29) that among the early Romans, as\n among other primitives, women were rigidly excluded from certain\n sacra points to a further ground for keeping out of official\n sight the sex life of the Gods. But the very ritual formula of\n the Fratres Arvales, Sive deus sive dea (p. 149), proves that the\n deities were habitually thought of as personal, and male or female.\n\n Dr. Fowler alternately and inconsistently argues that the\n \"vulgar mind was ready to think of God-couples\" (p. 152), and\n that the conjunctions of masculine and feminine names in the\n Roman Pantheon \"do not represent popular ideas of the deities,\n but ritualistic forms of invocation\" (p. 153). The answer is that\n the popular mind is the matrix of mythology, and that if a State\n ritual given to minimizing mythology recognized a given habit\n of myth-making it was presumably abundant outside. In short,\n the whole academic process of reducing early Roman religion to\n something unparalleled in anthropology is as ill-founded in the\n data as it is repugnant to scientific thought.\n\n The differentiation of Greek and Roman religion is to be explained\n by the culture-history of the two peoples; and that, in turn,\n was determined by their geographical situation and their special\n contacts. Roman life was made systematically agricultural and\n militarist by its initial circumstances, where Greek life in\n civilized Asia Minor became industrial, artistic, and literary. The\n special \"genius\" of Homer, or of various members of an order of\n bards developed by early colonial-feudal Grecian conditions, would\n indeed count for much by giving permanent artistic definiteness\n of form to the Greek Gods, where the early Romans, leaving all\n the vocal arts mainly to the conservative care of their women\n and children as something beneath adult male notice, missed the\n utilization of poetic genius among them till they were long past\n the period of romantic simplicity (cp. Mommsen, bk. i, ch. 15;\n Eng. tr. 1894, vol. i, pp. 285-300). Hence the comparative\n abstractness of their unsung Gods (cp. Schwegler, R\u00f6mische\n Geschichte, i, 225-28, and refs.; Boissier, La religion romaine,\n as cited, i, 8), and the absence of such a literary mythology as\n was evolved and preserved in Greece by local patriotisms under\n the stimulus of the great epopees and tragedies. The doctrine that\n \"the Italian is deficient in the passion of the heart,\" and that\n therefore \"Italian\" literature has \"never produced a true epos\n or a genuine drama\" (Mommsen, ch. 15, vol. i, p. 284), is one of\n a thousand samples of the fallacy of explaining a phenomenon in\n terms of itself. Teuffel with equal futility affirms the contrary:\n \"Of the various kinds of poetry, dramatic poetry seems after all\n to be most in conformity with the character of the Roman people\"\n (as cited, p. 3; cp. p. 28 as to the epos). On the same verbalist\n method, Mommsen decides as to the Etruscan religion that \"the\n mysticism and barbarism of their worship had their foundation\n in the essential character of the Etruscan people\" (ch. 12,\n p. 232). Schwegler gives a more objective view of the facts, but,\n like other German writers whom he cites, errs in speaking of early\n deities like Picus as \"only aspects of Mars,\" not realizing that\n Mars is merely the surviving or developed deity of that type. He\n also commits the conventional error of supposing that the early\n Roman religion is fundamentally monotheistic or pantheistic,\n because the multitudinous \"abstract\" deities are \"only\" aspects\n of the general force of Nature. The notion that the Romans did\n not anthropomorphize their deities like all other peoples is a\n surprising fallacy.\n\n\nThus when Rome, advancing in the career of conquest, had developed\na large aristocratic class, living a city life, with leisure for\nintellectual interests, and had come in continuous contact with\nthe conquered Grecian cities of Southern Italy, its educated men\nunderwent a literary and a rationalistic influence at the same time,\nand were the more ready to give up all practical belief in their\nown slightly-defined Gods when they found Greeks explaining away\ntheirs. Here we see once more the primary historic process by which\nmen are led to realize the ill-founded character of their hereditary\ncreeds: the perception is indirectly set up by the reflective\nrecognition of the creeds of others, and all the more readily when the\nothers give a critical lead. Indeed, Greek rationalism was already old\nwhen the Romans began to develop a written and artistic literature: it\nhad even taken on the popular form given to it by Ev\u00eameros a century\nbefore the Romans took it up. Doubtless there was skepticism among\nthe latter before Ennius: such a piece of religious procedure as the\ninvention of a God of Silver (Argentinus), son of the God of Copper\n(\u00c6sculanus), on the introduction of a silver currency, 269 B.C.,\nmust have been smiled at by the more intelligent. [765]\n\n\n Mommsen states (ii, 70) that at this epoch the Romans kept\n \"equally aloof from superstition and unbelief,\" but this is\n inaccurate on both sides. The narrative of Livy exhibits among\n the people a boundless and habitual superstition. The records\n of absurd prodigies of every sort so throng his pages that he\n himself repeatedly ventures to make light of them. Talking oxen,\n skies on fire, showers of flesh, crows and mice eating gold, rivers\n flowing blood, showers of milk--such were the reports chronically\n made to the Roman government by its pious subjects, and followed\n by anxious religious ceremonies at Rome (cp. Livy, iii, 5, 10; x,\n 27; xi, 28-35; xxiv, 44; xxvii, 4, 11, 23, etc., etc. In the index\n to Drakenborch's Livy there are over five columns of references\n to prodigia). On the other hand, though superstition was certainly\n the rule, there are traces of rationalism. On the next page after\n that cited, Mommsen himself admits that the faith of the people had\n already been shaken by the interference allowed to the priestly\n colleges in political matters; and in another chapter (bk. ii,\n ch. 13; vol. ii, 112) he recalls that a consul of the Claudian\n gens had jested openly at the auspices in the first Punic war,\n 249 B.C. The story is told by Cicero, De natura Deorum, ii, 3,\n and Suetonius, Tiberius, c. 2. The sacred poultry, on being let\n out of their coop on board ship, would not feed, so that the\n auspices could not be taken; whereupon the consul caused them to\n be thrown into the water, etiam per jocum Deos inridens, saying\n they might drink if they would not eat. His colleague Junius in\n the same war also disregarded the auspices; and in both cases,\n according to Balbus the Stoic in Cicero's treatise, the Roman\n fleets were duly defeated; whereupon Claudius was condemned by\n the people, and Junius committed suicide. Cp. Valerius Maximus,\n l. i, c. iv, \u00a7 3.\n\n Such stories would fortify the age-long superstition as to auspices\n and omens, which was in full force among Greek commanders as late\n as Xenophon, when many cultured Greeks were rationalists. But it\n was mainly a matter of routine, in a sphere where freethought\n is slow to penetrate. There was probably no thought of jesting\n when, in the year 193 B.C., after men had grown weary alike of\n earthquakes and of the religious services prescribed on account\n of them; and after the consuls had been worn out by sacrifices and\n expiations, it was decreed that \"if on any day a service had been\n arranged for a reported earthquake, no one should report another\n on that day\" (Livy, xxxiv, 55). Cato, who would never have dreamt\n of departing from a Roman custom, was the author of the saying\n (Cicero, De Div. ii, 24) that haruspices might well laugh in each\n other's faces. He had in view the Etruscan practice, being able to\n see the folly of that, though not of his own. Cp. Mommsen, iii,\n 116. As to the Etruscan origin of the haruspices, in distinction\n from the augurs, see Schwegler, i, 276, 277; Ihne, Eng. ed. i,\n 82-83, note; and O. M\u00fcller as there cited.\n\n\nBut it is with the translation of the Sacred History of Ev\u00eameros\nby Ennius, about 200 B.C., that the literary history of Roman\nfreethought begins. In view of the position of Ennius as a teacher\nof Greek and belles lettres (he being of Greek descent, and born\nin Calabria), it cannot be supposed that he would openly translate\nan anti-religious treatise without the general acquiescence of his\naristocratic patrons. Cicero says of him that he \"followed\" as well\nas translated Ev\u00eameros; [766] and his favourite Greek dramatists\nwere the freethinking Euripides and Epicharmos, from both of whom\nhe translated. [767] The popular superstitions, in particular those\nof soothsaying and divination, he sharply attacked. [768] If his\npatrons all the while stood obstinately to the traditional usages\nof official augury and ritual, it was in the spirit of political\nconservatism that belonged to their class and their civic ideal,\nand on the principle that religion was necessary for the control of\nthe multitude. In Etruria, where the old culture had run largely\nto mysticism and soothsaying on quasi-oriental lines, the Roman\ngovernment took care to encourage it, by securing the theological\nmonopoly of the upper-class families, [769] and thus set up a standing\nhot-bed of superstition. In the same spirit they adopted from time\nto time popular cults from Greece, that of the Phrygian Mother of the\nGods being introduced in the year 204 B.C. The attempt (186 B.C.) to\nsuppress the Bacchic mysteries, of which a distorted and extravagant\naccount [770] is given by Livy, was made on grounds of policy and\nnot of religion; and even if the majority of the senate had not been\ndisposed to encourage the popular appetite for emotional foreign\nworships, the multitude of their own accord would have introduced\nthe latter, in resentment of the exclusiveness of the patricians in\nkeeping the old domestic and national cults in their own hands. [771]\nAs now eastern conquests multiplied the number of foreign slaves\nand residents in Rome, the foreign worships multiplied with them;\nand with the worships came such forms of freethought as then existed\nin Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt. In resistance to these, as to the\norgiastic worships, political and religious conservatism for a time\ncombined. In 173 B.C. the Greek Epicurean philosophers Alkaios and\nPhiliskos were banished from the city, [772] a step which was sure to\nincrease the interest in Epicureanism. Twelve years later the Catonic\nparty carried a curt decree in the Senate against the Greek rhetors,\n[773] uti Romae ne essent; and in 155 the interest aroused by Carneades\nand the other Athenian ambassadors led to their being suddenly\nsent home, on Cato's urging. [774] It seems certain that Carneades\nmade converts to skepticism, among them being the illustrious Scipio\n\u00c6milianus. [775] In the sequel the Greeks multiplied, especially after\nthe fall of Macedonia, [776] and in the year 92 we find the censors\nvetoing the practices of the Latin rhetors as an unpleasing novelty,\n[777] thus leaving the Greeks in possession of the field. [778] But,\nthe general social tendency being downwards, it was only a question of\ntime when the rationalism should be overgrown by the superstition. In\n137 there had been another vain edict against the foreign soothsayers\nand the worshippers of Sabazius; [779] but it was such cults that\nwere to persist, while the old Roman religion passed away, [780]\nsave insofar as it had a non-literary survival among the peasantry.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2\n\nWhile self-government lasted, rationalism among the cultured classes\nwas fairly common. The great poem of Lucretius, On the Nature of\nThings, with its enthusiastic exposition of the doctrine of Epicurus,\nremains to show to what a height of sincerity and ardour a Roman\nfreethinker could rise. No Greek utterance that has come down to us\nmakes so direct and forceful an attack as his on religion as a social\ninstitution. He is practically the first systematic freethinking\npropagandist; so full is he of his purpose that after his stately\nprologue to alma Venus, who is for him but a personification of the\ngenetic forces of Nature, he plunges straight into his impeachment of\nreligion as a foul tyranny from which thinking men were first freed\nby Epicurus. The sonorous verse vibrates with an indignation such as\nShelley's in Queen Mab: religion is figured as horribili super aspectu\nmortalibus instans; a little further on its deeds are denounced as\nscelerosa atque impia, \"wicked and impious,\" the religious term being\nthus turned against itself; and a moving picture of the sacrifice of\nIphigeneia justifies the whole. \"To so much of evil could religion\npersuade.\" It is with a bitter consciousness of the fatal hold of the\nhated thing on most men's ignorant imagination that he goes on to speak\nof the fears [781] so assiduously wrought upon by the vates, and to\nset up with strenuous speed the vividly-imagined system of Epicurean\nscience by which he seeks to fortify his friend against them. That\nno thing comes from nothing, or lapses into nothing; that matter is\neternal; that all things proceed \"without the Gods\" by unchanging law,\nare his insistent themes; and for nigh two thousand years a religious\nworld has listened with a reluctant respect. His influence is admitted\nto have been higher and nobler than that of the religion he assailed.\n\n\n \"Lucretius was the first not only to reveal a new power, beauty,\n and mystery in the world, but also to communicate to poetry a\n speculative impulse, opening up, with a more impassioned appeal\n than philosophy can do, the great questions underlying human\n life--such as the truth of all religious tradition, the position\n of man in the universe, and the attitude of mind and course of\n conduct demanded by that position.\" (Sellar, Roman Poets of the\n Republic: Virgil, 1877, p. 199.)\n\n \"In the eyes of Lucretius all worship seemed prompted by fear\n and based on ignorance of natural law.... But it is nevertheless\n true that Lucretius was a great religious poet. He was a prophet,\n in deadly earnest, calling men to renounce their errors both of\n thought and conduct.... We may be certain that he was absolutely\n convinced of the truth of all that he wrote.\" (W. Warde Fowler,\n Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, 1909, pp. 327-28.)\n\n\nAnd yet throughout the whole powerful poem we have testimony to the\npupillary character of Roman thought in relation to Grecian. However\nmuch the earnest student may outgo his masters in emphasis and zeal of\nutterance, he never transcends the original irrationality of asserting\nthat \"the Gods\" exist; albeit it is their glory to do nothing. It is\nin picturing their ineffable peace that he reaches some of his finest\nstrains of song, [782] though in the next breath he repudiates every\nidea of their control of things cosmic or human. He swears by their\nsacred breasts, proh sancta deum pectora, and their life of tranquil\njoy, when he would express most vehemently his scorn of the thought\nthat it can be they who hurl the lightnings which haply destroy their\nown temples and strike down alike the just and the unjust. It is a\nsurvival of a quite primitive conception of deity, [783] alongside\nof an advanced anti-religious criticism.\n\nThe explanation of the anomaly seems to be twofold. In the first\nplace, Roman thought had not lived long enough--it never did live\nlong enough--to stand confidently on its own feet and criticize\nits Greek teachers. In Cicero's treatise On the Nature of the Gods,\nthe Epicurean and the Stoic in turn retail their doctrine as they\nhad it from their school, the Epicurean affirming the existence\nand the inaction of the Gods with equal confidence, and repeating\nwithout a misgiving the formula about the Gods having not bodies\nbut quasi-bodies, with not blood but quasi-blood; the Stoic, who\nstands by most of the old superstitions, professing to have his\nphilosophical reasons for them. Each sectarian derides the beliefs\nof the other; neither can criticize his own creed. It would seem\nas if in the habitually militarist society, even when it turns to\nphilosophy, there must prevail a militarist ethic and psychosis in the\nintellectual life, each man choosing a flag or a leader and fighting\nthrough thick and thin on that side henceforth. On the other hand,\nthe argumentation of the high-priest Cotta in the dialogue turns to\nsimilar purpose the kindred principle of civic tradition. He argues\nin turn against the Epicurean's science and the Stoic's superstition,\ncontesting alike the claim that the Gods are indifferent and the\nclaim that they govern; and in the end he brazenly affirms that,\nwhile he sees no sound philosophic argument for religious beliefs and\npractices, he thinks it is justifiable to maintain them on the score\nof prescription or ancestral example. Here we have the senatorial\nor conservative principle, [784] availing itself of the skeptical\ndialectic of Carneades. In terms of that ideal, which prevailed alike\nwith believers and indifferentists, [785] and mediated between such\nrival schools as the Epicurean and Stoic, we may partly explain the\nEpicurean theorem itself. For the rest, it is to be understood as an\noutcome partly of surviving sentiment and partly of forced compromise\nin the case of its Greek framers, and of the habit of partizan loyalty\nin the case of its Roman adherents.\n\nIn the arguments of Cotta, the unbelieving high-priest, we presumably\nhave the doctrine of Cicero himself, [786] who in the Academica avows\nhis admiration of Carneades's reasoning, and in the De Divinatione\nfollows it, but was anchored by officialism to State usage. With\nhis vacillating character, his forensic habit, and his genius for\nmere speech, he could not but betray his own lack of intellectual\nconviction; and such weakness as his found its natural support in\nthe principle of use and wont, the practice and tradition of the\ncommonwealth. On that footing he had it in him to boast like any\npedigreed patrician of the historic religiousness of Rome, he himself\nthe while being devoid of all confident religious belief. His rhetoric\non the subject can hardly be otherwise estimated than as sheer hustings\nhypocrisy. Doubtless he gave philosophic colour to his practice by\nnoting the hopeless conflict of the creeds of the positive sects,\nvery much as in our own day conservative dialectic finds a ground for\nreligious conformity in the miscarriages of the men of science. [787]\nBut Cicero does not seem even to have had a religious sentiment to\ncover the nakedness of his political opportunism. Not only does he in\nthe Tusculan Disputations put aside in the Platonic fashion all the\nHomeric tales which anthropomorphize and discredit the Gods; [788]\nbut in his treatise On Divination he shows an absolute disbelief in\nall the recognized practices, including the augury which he himself\nofficially practised; and his sole excuse is that they are to be\nretained \"on account of popular opinion and of their great public\nutility.\" [789] As to prodigies, he puts in germ the argument later\nmade famous by Hume: either the thing could happen (in the course of\nnature) or it could not; if it could not, the story is false; if it\ncould, non esse mirandum--there is no miracle. [790] In his countless\nprivate letters, again, he shows not a trace of religious feeling,\n[791] or even of interest in the questions which in his treatises\nhe declares to be of the first importance. [792] Even the doctrine\nof immortality, to which he repeatedly returns, seems to have been\nfor him, as for so many Christians since, only a forensic theme,\nnever a source of the private consolation he ascribed to it. [793]\nIn Cicero's case, in fine, we reach the conclusion that either the\nnoted inconstancy of his character pervaded all his thinking, or\nthat his gift for mere utterance, and his demoralizing career as an\nadvocate, overbore in him all sincere reflection. But, indeed, the\npractical subversion of all rational ethic in the public life of late\nrepublican Rome, wherein men claimed to be free and self-governing,\nyet lived by oppressing the rest of the world, was on all hands fatal\nto the moral rectitude which inspires a critical philosophy.\n\n\n Modern scholarship still clings to the long-established view that\n Cicero was practically right, and that Lucretius was practically\n wrong. Augustus, says Dr. Warde Fowler, was fortunate in finding\n in Virgil \"one who was in some sense a prophet as well as a poet,\n who could urge the Roman by an imaginative example to return\n to a living pietas--not merely to the old religious forms,\n but to the intelligent sense of duty to God and man which\n had built up his character and his empire. In Cicero's day\n there was also a great poet, he too in some sense a prophet;\n but Lucretius could only appeal to the Roman to shake off the\n slough of his old religion, and such an appeal was at the time\n both futile and dangerous. Looking at the matter historically,\n and not theologically, we ought to sympathize with the attitude\n of Cicero and Scaevola towards the religion of the State. It was\n based on a statesmanlike instinct; and had it been possible for\n that instinct to express itself practically in a positive policy\n like that of Augustus, it is quite possible that much mischief\n might have been averted\" (Social Life at Rome, pp. 325-26).\n\n It is necessary to point out (1) that the early Roman's \"sense of\n duty to God and man\" was never of a kind that could fitly be termed\n \"intelligent\"; and (2) that it was his character that made his\n creed, and not his creed his character, though creed once formed\n reacts on conduct. Further, it may be permitted to suggest that\n we might consider historical problems morally, and to deprecate\n the academic view that \"statesmanship\" is something necessarily\n divorced from veracity. The imperfect appeal of Lucretius to the\n spirit of truth in an ignorant and piratical community, living\n an increasingly parasitic life, was certainly \"futile\"; but it is\n a strange sociology that sees in it something \"dangerous,\" while\n regarding the life of perpetual conquest and plunder as a matter\n of course, and the practice of systematic deceit as wholesome.\n\n The summary of the situation is that Cicero's policy of religious\n make-believe could no more have \"saved\" Rome than Plato's could\n have saved Athens, or than that of Augustus did save the empire. It\n went downhill about as steadily after as before him; and it\n continued to do so under Christianity as under paganism. The\n decline was absolutely involved in the policy of universal\n conquest; and neither creeds nor criticism of creeds could have\n \"averted\" the result while the cause subsisted. But there is\n something gratuitously anti-rational in the thesis that such\n a decay might have been prevented by a politic manipulation\n of beliefs known to be false, and that some regeneration\n was really worked in Rome by the tale of pious \u00c6neas. In his\n Religious Experience of the Roman People (1911) Dr. Fowler is\n more circumspect.\n\n\nIn the upper-class Rome of Cicero's day his type seems to have been\npredominant, [794] the women alone being in the mass orthodox, [795]\nand in their case the tendency was to add new superstitions to the\nold. Among public men there subsisted a clear understanding that public\nreligion should continue for reasons of State. When we find an eminent\npolitician like the elder M. \u00c6milius Scaurus prosecuted in the year 103\nB.C. on a charge of neglecting certain religious ceremonies connected\nwith his offices, we know that there had been neither conscientious\nabstention on his part nor sincere religious resentment on the other\nside, but merely a resort by political enemies, after Greek precedent,\nto a popular means of blackening an antagonist; for the same Scaurus,\nwho was a member of the college of augurs, had actually rebuilt or\nrestored the temple of Fides, said to have been founded by Numa, and\nthat of Mens (Prudence), which had been set up after the great defeat\nof the Romans at the Trasimene lake; [796] the early and the late\nprocedure alike illustrating the political and pragmatic character\nof the State religion. [797] In the supreme figure of Julius C\u00e6sar\nwe see the Roman brain at its strongest; and neither his avowed\nunbelief in the already popular doctrine of immortality, [798] nor\nhis repeatedly expressed contempt for the auspices, [799] withheld\nhim from holding and fulfilling the function of high pontiff. The\nprocess of skepticism had been rapid among the men of action. The\nilliterate Marius carried about with him a Syrian prophetess; of\nSulla, who unhesitatingly plundered the temple of Delphi, it was\nsaid that he carried a small figure of Apollo as an amulet; [800]\nof C\u00e6sar, unless insofar as it may be true that in his last years,\nlike Napoleon, he grew to believe in omens as his powers failed,\nunder the stress of perpetual conflict, [801] it cannot be pretended\nthat he was aught but a convinced freethinker. [802] The greatest and\nmost intellectual man of action in the ancient world had no part in\nthe faith which was supposed to have determined the success of the\nmost powerful of all the ancient nations.\n\n\n Dean Merivale, noting that C\u00e6sar \"professed without reserve\n the principles of the unbelievers,\" observes that, \"freethinker\n as he was, he could not escape from the universal thraldom of\n superstition in which his contemporaries were held\" (Hist. of\n the Romans under the Empire, ed. 1865, ii, 424). The reproach,\n from a priest, is piquant, but misleading. All the stories\n on which it is founded apply to the last two or three years\n of C\u00e6sar's life; and supposing them to be all true, which is\n very doubtful, they would but prove what has been suggested\n above--that the overstrained soldier, rising to the dizzy height\n of a tremendous career, partly lost his mental balance, like so\n many another. (Cp. Mackail, Latin Literature, 1895, p. 80.) Such\n is the bearing of the doubtful story (Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxviii,\n 2) that after the breaking down of a chariot (presumably the\n casualty which took place in his fourfold triumph; see Dio\n Cassius, xlviii, 21) he never mounted another without muttering\n a charm. M. Boissier (i, 70) makes the statement of Pliny apply\n to C\u00e6sar's whole life; but although Pliny gives no particulars,\n even Dean Merivale (p. 372) connects it with the accident in the\n triumph. To the same time belongs the less challengeable record\n (Dio Cassius, lx, 23) of his climbing on his knees up the steps of\n the Capitol to propitiate Nemesis. The very questionable legend,\n applied so often to other captains, of his saying, I have thee,\n Africa, when he stumbled on landing (Sueton. Jul. 59), is a\n proof not of superstition but of presence of mind in checking\n the superstitious fears of the troops, and was so understood by\n Suetonius; as was the rather flimsy story of his taking with him\n in Africa a man nicknamed Salutio (Sueton. ibid.) to neutralize the\n luck of the opposing Cornelii. The whole turn given to the details\n by the clerical historian is arbitrary and unjudicial. Nor is he\n accurate in saying that C\u00e6sar \"denied the Gods\" in the Senate. He\n actually swore by them, per Deos immortales, in the next sentence\n to that in which he denied a future state. The assertion of\n the historian (p. 423), that in denying the immortality of the\n soul C\u00e6sar denied \"the recognized foundation of all religion,\"\n is a no less surprising error. The doctrine never had been so\n recognized in ancient Rome. A Christian ecclesiastic might have\n been expected to remember that the Jewish religion, believed by\n him to be divine, was devoid of the \"recognized foundation\" in\n question, and that the canonical book of Ecclesiastes expressly\n discards it. Of course C\u00e6sar offered sacrifices to Gods in whom\n he did not believe. That was the habitual procedure of his age.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3\n\nIt is significant that the decay of rationalism in Rome begins and\nproceeds with the Empire. Augustus, whose chosen name was sacerdotal\nin its character, [803] made it part of his policy to restore as far\nas possible the ancient cults, many of which had fallen into extreme\nneglect, between the indifference of the aristocratic class [804]\nand the devotion of the populace, itself so largely alien, to the\nmore attractive worships introduced from Egypt and the East. That\nhe was himself a habitually superstitious man seems certain; [805]\nbut even had he not been, his policy would have been natural from the\nRoman point of view. A historian of two centuries later puts in the\nmouth of M\u00e6cenas an imagined counsel to the young emperor to venerate\nand enforce the national religion, to exclude and persecute foreign\ncults, to put down alike atheism and magic, to control divination\nofficially, and to keep an eye on the philosophers. [806] What\nthe empire sought above all things was stability; and a regimen of\nreligion, under imperial control, seemed one of the likeliest ways\nto keep the people docile. Julius himself had seemed to plan such a\npolicy, [807] though he also planned to establish public libraries,\n[808] which would hardly have promoted faith among the educated.\n\nAugustus, however, aimed at encouraging public religion of every\ndescription, repairing or rebuilding eighty-two temples at Rome\nalone, giving them rich gifts, restoring old festivals and ceremonies,\nreinstituting priestly colleges, encouraging special foreign worships,\nand setting up new civic cults; himself playing high pontiff and\njoining each new priesthood, to the end of making his power and\nprestige so far identical with theirs; [809] in brief, anticipating\nthe later ruling principle of the Church of Rome. The natural upshot\nof the whole process was the imperial apotheosis, or raising of each\nemperor to Godhead at death. The usage of deifying living rulers was\nlong before common in Egypt and the east, [810] and had been adopted\nby the conquering Spartan Lysander in Asia Minor as readily as by the\nconquering Alexander. Julius C\u00e6sar seems to have put it aside as a\nnauseous flattery; [811] but Augustus wrought it into his policy. It\nwas the consummation at once of the old political conception of\nreligion and of the new autocracy.\n\nIn a society so managed, all hope of return to self-government having\nceased, the level of thought sank accordingly. There was practically\nno more active freethought. Livy, indeed, speaks so often of the\ncontempt shown in his own day for tales of prodigies, and of what\nhe calls contempt for the Gods, [812] that there can be no question\nof the lack of religion among the upper classes at the beginning\nof the empire. But even in Livy's day unbelief had ceased to go\nbeyond a shrugging of the shoulders. Horace, with his credat Jud\u00e6us\nApella, and his frank rejection of the fear of the Deos tristes,\n[813] was no believer, but he was not one to cross the emperor,\n[814] and he was ready to lend himself to the official policy of\nreligion. [815] Ovid could satirize [816] the dishonest merchant who\nprayed to the Gods to absolve his frauds; but he hailed Augustus as\nthe sacred founder and restorer of temples, [817] prayed for him as\nsuch, busied himself with the arch\u00e6ology of the cults, and made it,\nnot quite without irony, a maxim to \"spare an accepted belief.\" [818]\nVirgil, at heart a pantheist with rationalistic leanings, [819] but\nsadly divided between Lucretius and Augustus, his poetical and his\npolitical masters, [820] tells all the transition from the would-be\nscientific to the newly-credulous age in the two wistful lines:--\n\n\n Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas ...\n Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes [821]\n\n\n--\"happy he who has been able to learn the causes of things;\nfortunate also he who has known the rural Gods.\" The Gods, rural\nand other, entered on their due heritage in a world of decadence;\nVirgil's epic is a religious celebration of antiquity; and Livy's\nhistory is written in the credulous spirit, or at least in the tone,\nof an older time, with a few concessions to recent common sense. [822]\nIn the next generation Seneca's monotheistic aversion to the popular\nsuperstitions is the high-water mark of the period, and represents\nthe elevating power of the higher Greek Stoicism. On this score he\nbelongs to the freethinking age, while his theistic apriorism belongs\nto the next. [823] All the while his principle of conformity to all\nlegal observances [824] leaves him powerless to modify the environment.\n\nAs the empire proceeds, the echoes of the old freethought become\nfewer and fewer. It is an entire misconception to suppose that\nChristianity came into the Roman world as a saving counter-force to\nlicentious unbelief. Unbelief had in large part disappeared before\nChristianity made any headway; and that creed came as one of many\npopular cults, succeeding in terms of its various adaptations to\nthe special conditions, moral and economic. It was easy for the\npopulace of the empire to deify a ruler: as easy as for those of\nthe East to deify Jesus; or for the early Romans to deify Romulus;\nat Rome it was the people, now so largely of alien stock, who had\nmost insisted on deifying C\u00e6sar. [825] But the upper class soon kept\npace with them in the zest for religion. In the first century, the\nelder Pliny recalls the spirit of Lucretius by the indignant eloquence\nwith which he protests against the burdensome belief in immortality;\n[826] and the emphasis with which he scouts alike the polytheism of\nthe multitude, the universal worship of Fortune, and the idea that\nman can know the infinite divinity which is the universe; [827]\nbut, though Seneca and others reject the fear of future torment,\nPliny is the last writer to repudiate with energy the idea of a\nfuture state. [828] A number of epitaphs still chime with his view;\nbut already the majority are on the other side; [829] and the fear of\nhell was normally as active as the hope of heaven; while the belief\nin an approaching end of the world was proportionally as common as it\nwas later under Christianity. [830] And though Pliny, discussing the\nbases of magic, of which he recognized the fraudulence, ranks among\nthem the influences of religion, as to which he declared mankind\nto be still in extreme darkness, [831] we have seen how he in turn,\non theistic grounds, frowned upon Hipparchos for daring to number the\nstars. [832] Thus, whatever may be the truth as to the persecutions of\nthe Christians in the first two centuries of the empire, the motive\nwas in all cases certainly political or moral, as in the earlier\ncase of the Bacchic mysteries, not rationalistic hostility to its\ndoctrines as apart from Christian attacks on the established worships.\n\nSome unbelievers there doubtless were after Petronius, whose perdurable\nmaxim that \"Fear first made Gods in the world,\" [833] adopted in\nthe next generation by Statius, [834] was too pregnant with truth\nto miss all acceptance among thinking men. The fact that Statius in\nhis verse ranked Domitian with the Gods made its truth none the less\npointed. The Alexandrian rationalist Chaeremon, who had been appointed\none of the tutors of Nero, had explained the Egyptian religion as\na mere allegorizing of the physical order of the universe. [835]\nIt has been remarked too that in the next century the appointment of\nthe freethinking Greek Lucian by Marcus Aurelius to a post of high\nauthority in Egypt showed that his writings gave no great offence\nat court, [836] where, indeed, save under the two great Antonines,\nreligious seriousness was rare. These, however, were the exceptions:\nthe whole cast of mind developed under the autocracy, whether in the\ngood or in the bad, made for belief and acquiescence or superstition\nrather than for searching doubt and sustained reasoning.\n\n\n The statement of Mosheim or of his commentators (Eccles. Hist. 1\n Cent. Pt. I, ch. i, \u00a7 21, note; Murdock's trans. Reid's ed.) that\n Juvenal (Sat. xiii, 86) \"complains of the many atheists at Rome\" is\n a perversion of the passage cited. Juvenal's allusion to those who\n put all things down to fortune and deny a moral government of the\n world begins with the phrase \"sunt qui,\" \"there are (those) who\";\n he makes far more account of the many superstitious, and never\n suggests that the atheists are numerous in his day. Neither does he\n \"complain\"; on the contrary, his allusion to the atheists as such\n is non-condemnatory as compared with his attacks on pious rogues,\n and is thus part of the ground for holding that he was himself\n something of a freethinker--one of the last among the literary\n men. In the tenth Satire (346 sqq.) he puts the slightly theistic\n doctrine, sometimes highly praised (ed. Ruperti, 1817, in loc.),\n that men should not pray for anything, but leave the decision to\n the Gods, to whom man is dearer than to himself. There too occurs\n the famous doctrine (356) that if anything is to be prayed for it\n should be the mens sana in corpore sano, and the strong soul void\n of the fear of death. The accompanying phrase about offering \"the\n intestines and the sacred sausages of a whitish pig\" is flatly\n contemptuous of religious ceremonial; and the closing lines,\n placing the source of virtue and happiness within, are strictly\n naturalistic. In the two last:--\n\n\n Nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia; nos [or sed] te\n Nos facimus, Fortuna, Deam, coeloque locamus,\n\n\n the frequent reading abest for habes seems to make the better\n sense: \"No divinity is wanting, if there be prudence; but it\n is we, O fortune, who make thee a Goddess, and throne thee in\n heaven.\" In any case, the insistence is on man's lordship of\n himself. (The phrase occurs again in Sat. xiv, 315.) But the\n worship of Fortune--which Pliny declares to be the prevailing\n faith of his day (Hist. Nat. II, v (vii), 7)--was itself a cult\n like another, with temples and ritual; and the astrology which, he\n adds, is beginning to supersede Fortune-worship among the learned\n and the ignorant alike, was but a reversion to an older Eastern\n religion. His own preference is for sun-worship, if any; but he\n falls back on the conviction that the power of God is limited,\n and that God is thus seen to be simply Nature (id. 8).\n\n The erroneous notion that the Roman aristocracy ran mainly to\n atheism was widely propagated by Voltaire, who made it part\n of his argument against the atheism of his own day (Jenni;\n art. Ath\u00e9isme, in the Dict. Philos., etc.). It will not bear\n examination. As regards the general tone of Roman literature\n from the first century onwards, the summing-up of Renan is\n substantially just: \"The freethinkers ... diminish little by\n little, and disappear.... Juvenal alone continues in Roman\n society, down to the time of Hadrian, the expression of a frank\n incredulity.... Science dies out from day to day. From the death\n of Seneca, it may be said that there is no longer a thoroughly\n rationalistic scholar. Pliny the Elder is inquisitive, but\n uncritical. Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, avoid commenting\n on the inanity of the most ridiculous inventions. Pliny the Younger\n (Ep. vii, 27) believes in puerile stories of ghosts; Epictetus\n (xxxi, 5) would have all practise the established worship. Even\n a writer so frivolous as Apuleius feels himself bound to take\n the tone of a rigid conservative about the Gods (Florida, i,\n 1; De Magia, 41, 55, 56, 63). A single man, about the middle of\n this century, seems entirely exempt from supernatural beliefs;\n that is Lucian. The scientific spirit, which is the negation of\n the supernatural, exists only in a few; superstition invades all,\n enfeebling all reason\" (Les \u00c9vangiles, ed. 1877, pp. 406-407).\n\n\nThat the mental paralysis connects causally with the political\nconditions will perhaps not now be denied. A censorship of\nthe written word belongs congenitally to autocracy; and only the\npersonal magnanimity of C\u00e6sar and the prudence of Augustus delayed its\ndevelopment in Rome. Soon it became an irresistible terrorism. Even\nC\u00e6sar, indeed, so far forgot one of the great rules of his life as\nto impeach before the Senate the tribunes who had quite justifiably\nprosecuted some of the people who had hailed him as king; [837]\nand the fact that the Senate was already slavish enough to eject\nthem gives the forecast of the future. Augustus long showed a notable\nforbearance to all manner of verbal opposition, and even disparagement;\nbut at length he also began to prosecute for private aspersions,\n[838] and even to suppress histories of a too critical stamp. Tiberius\nbegan his reign with the high-pitched sentiment that \"in a free State\ntongue and mind should be free\"; [839] and for a time he bore himself\nwith an exemplary restraint; but he too, in turn, took the colour\nof his place, and became murderously resentful of any semblance of\naspersion on himself. [840] The famous sentiment ascribed to him in\nthe Annals of Tacitus, Deorum injuriae diis curae [841]--\"the Gods'\nwrongs are the Gods' business\"--is not noted by Suetonius, and has\nan un-Roman sound. What Suetonius tells is [842] that he was \"very\nnegligent concerning the Gods and religions,\" yet addicted to the\nastrologers, and a believer in fate. The fact remains that while,\nas aforesaid, there must have been still a number of unbelievers,\nthere is no sign after Lucretius of any Roman propaganda against\nreligion; and the presumption is that the Augustan policy of promoting\nthe old cults was extended to the maintenance of the ordinary Roman\nview that disrespect to the Gods was a danger to the State. In the\nreign of Nero we find trace of a treatise De religionis erroribus\nby Fabricius Vejento, [843] wherein was ridiculed the zeal of the\npriests to proclaim mysteries which they did not understand; but,\nwhether or not its author was exiled and the book burnt on their\nprotest, such literature was not further produced. [844]\n\nThere was, in fact, no spirit left for a Lucretian polemic against\nfalse beliefs. Everything in the nature of a searching criticism\nof life was menaced by the autocracy; Nero decreeing that no man\nshould philosophize at Rome, [845] after slaying or banishing\na series of philosophers; [846] Domitian crucifying the very\nscribes who copied the work of Hermogenes of Tarsus, in which he was\nobliquely criticized. [847] When men in the mass crouched before such\ntyranny, helplessly beholding emperor after emperor overtaken by the\nmadness that accrues to absolute power, they were disabled for any\ndisinterested warfare on behalf of truth. All serious impeachment of\nreligion proceeds upon an ethical motive; and in imperial Rome there\nwas no room for any nobility of ethic save such as upbore the Stoics\nin their austere pursuit of self-control, in a world too full of evil\nto be delighted in.\n\nThus it came about that the C\u00e6sars, who would doubtless have protected\ntheir co-operating priesthoods from any serious attack on the official\nreligion, [848] had practically no occasion to do so. Lucian's jests\nwere cast at the Gods of Greece, not at those of the Roman official\ncults; hence his immunity. What the C\u00e6sars were concerned to do was\nrather to menace any alien religion that seemed to undermine the\nsolidarity of the State; and of such religions, first the Jewish,\nand later the Christian, were obvious examples. Thus we have it\nthat Tiberius \"put down foreign religions\" (externas ceremonias),\nin particular the Egyptian and Judaic rites; pulling down the temple\nof Isis, crucifying her priests, expelling from Rome all Jews and\nproselytes, and forcing the Jewish youth to undergo military service\nin unhealthy climates. [849] Even the astrologers, in whose lore he\nbelieved, he expelled until they promised to renounce their art--a\nprecedent partly set up by Augustus, [850] and followed with varying\nseverity by all the emperors, pagan and Christian alike.\n\nAnd still the old Italian religion waned, as it must. On the one\nhand, the Italic population was almost wholly replaced or diluted by\nalien stocks, slave or free, with alien cults and customs; on the\nother, the utter insincerity of the official cults, punctiliously\nconserved by well-paid, unbelieving priests, invited indifference. In\nthe nature of things, an unchanging creed is moribund; life means\nadaptation to change; and it was only the alien cults that in Rome\nadapted themselves to the psychic mutation. Among the educated,\nwho had read their Lucretius, the spectacle of the innumerable cults\nof the empire conduced either to entire but tacit unbelief, or to a\nspecies of vaguely rationalistic [851] yet sentimental monotheism,\nin which Reason sometimes figured as universal Deity. [852] Among the\nuneducated the progression was constant towards one or other of the\nemotional and ritualistic oriental faiths, so much better adapted to\ntheir down-trodden life.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4\n\nOne element of betterment there was in the life of declining Rome,\nuntil the Roman ideals were superseded by oriental. Even the Augustan\npoets, Horace and Ovid, had protested like the Hebrew prophets, and\nlike Plato and like Cicero, against the idea that rich sacrifices\navailed with the Gods above a pure heart; and such doctrine, while\npaganism lasted, prevailed more and more. [853] At the same time,\nHorace rejects the Jud\u00e6o-Stoic doctrine, adopted in the gospels,\nthat all sins are equal, and lays down the rational moral test of\nutility--Utilitas justi prop\u00e8 mater et aequi. [854] The better and\nmore thoughtful men who grew up under the autocracy, though inevitably\nfeebler and more credulous in their thinking than those of the later\ncommonwealth, developed at length a concern for conduct, public and\nprivate, which lends dignity to the later philosophic literature,\nand lustre to the imperial rule of the Antonines. This concern it\nwas that, linking Greek theory to Roman practice, produced a code\nof rational law which could serve Europe for a thousand years. This\nconcern too it was, joined with the relatively high moral quality of\ntheir theism, that ennobled the writing of Seneca [855] and Epictetus\nand Maximus of Tyre; and irradiates the words as well as the rule\nof Marcus Aurelius. In them was anticipated all that was good [856]\nin the later Christian ethic, even as the popular faiths anticipated\nthe Christian dogmas; and they cherished a temper of serenity that\nthe Fathers fell far short of. To compare their pages with those\nof the subsequent Christian Fathers--Seneca with Lactantius, \"the\nChristian Cicero\"; Maximus with Arnobius; Epictetus with Tertullian;\nthe admirable Marcus, and his ideal of the \"dear city of Zeus,\"\nwith the shrill polemic of Augustine's City of God and the hysteria\nof the Confessions--is to prove a rapid descent in magnanimity,\nsanity, self-command, sweetness of spirit, and tolerance. What\nfigures as religious intolerance in the C\u00e6sars was, as we have seen,\nalways a political, never a religious, animosity. Any prosecution of\nChristians under the Antonines was certainly on the score of breach\nof law, turbulence, or real or supposed malpractices, not on that of\nheresy--a crime created only by the Christians themselves, in their\nown conflicts.\n\nThe scientific account of the repellent characteristics of the Fathers,\nof course, is not that their faith made them what they were, but that\nthe ever-worsening social and intellectual conditions assorted such\ntypes into their ecclesiastical places, and secured for them their\ninfluence over the types now prevailing among the people. They too\nstand for the intellectual dissolution wrought by imperialism. When\nall the higher forms of intellectual efficiency were at an end, it\nwas impossible that on any religious impulse whatever there should\nbe generated either a higher code of life or a saner body of thought\nthan those of the higher paganism of the past. Their very arguments\nagainst paganism are largely drawn from old \"pagan\" sources. Those\nwho still speak of the rise of Christianity in the ancient world as\na process of \"regeneration\" are merely turning historical science\nout of doors. The Christian Fathers had all the opportunity that\na life of quasi-intellectual specialism could supply; and their\nliberty of criticism as regarded the moribund pagan creeds was a\nfurther gymnastic; but nothing could countervail the insanity of\ntheir intellectual presuppositions, which they could not transcend.\n\nInheriting the Judaic hypnotism of the Sacred Book, they could reason\nonly as do railers; and the moral readjustment which put them in revolt\nagainst the erotic element in pagan mythology was a mere substitution\nof an ascetic neurosis for the old disease of imagination. Strictly\nspeaking, their asceticism, being never rationalized, never rose\nto the level of ethic as distinguished from mere taboo or sacrosanct\ncustom. As we shall see, they could not wholly escape the insurgence of\nthe spirit of reason; but they collectively scouted it with a success\nattained by no other ostensibly educated priesthood of antiquity. They\nintellectually represent, in fact, the consummation of the general\nMediterranean decadence.\n\nFor the rest, the \"triumph\" of the new faith was simply the\nsurvival of the forms of thought, and, above all, of the form of\nreligious community, best fitted to the political and intellectual\nenvironment. The new Church organization was above all things a\ngreat economic endowment for a class of preachers, polemists, and\npropagandists; and between the closing of the old spheres of public\nlife and the opening of the new, [857] the new faith was established\nas much by political and economic conditions as by its intellectual\nadaptation to an age of mental twilight.\n\nOf the religion of the educated pagans in its last forms, then,\nit is finally to be said that it was markedly rationalistic as\ncompared with the Christianity which followed, and has been on that\nground stigmatized by Christian orthodoxy down till our own day. The\nreligion of Marcus Aurelius is self-reverence, self-study, self-rule,\nplus faith in Deity; and it is not to be gainsaid that, next to his\nadoptive father Antoninus Pius, he remains the noblest monarch in\nancient history; the nearest parallel being the more superstitious but\nstill noble Julian, the last of the great pagan rulers. In such rulers\nthe antique philosophy was in a measure justified of its children;\nand if it never taught them to grapple with the vast sociological\nproblem set up by the Empire, and so failed to preserve the antique\ncivilization, it at least did as much for them in that regard as the\nnew faith did for its followers.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS\n\n\n\u00a7 1\n\nThe Christian gospels, broadly considered, stand for a certain\nmeasure of freethinking reaction against the Jewish religion, and are\naccordingly to be reckoned with in the present inquiry; albeit their\npractical outcome was only an addition to the world's supernaturalism\nand traditional dogma. To estimate aright their share of freethought,\nwe have but to consider the kind and degree of demand they made on the\nreason of the ancient listener, as apart, that is, from the demand made\non their basis for the recognition of a new Deity. When this is done it\nwill be found that they express in parts a process of reflection which\noutwent even critical common sense in a kind of ecstatic Stoicism,\nan oriental repudiation of the tyranny of passions and appetites; in\nother parts a mysticism that proceeds as far beyond the credulity of\nordinary faith. Socially considered, they embody a similar opposition\nbetween an anarchistic and a partly orthodox or regulative ideal. The\nplain inference is that they stand for many independent movements\nof thought in the Gr\u00e6co-Roman world. It is actually on record that\nthe reduction of the whole law to love of one's neighbour [858] was\ntaught before the Christian era by the famous Rabbi Hillel; [859]\nand the gospel itself [860] shows that this view was current. In\nanother passage [861] the reduction of the ten commandments to five\nagain indicates a not uncommon disregard for the ecclesiastical side\nof the law. But the difference between the two passages points of\nitself to various forces of relative freethought.\n\nAny attentive study of the gospels discloses not merely much glossing\nand piecing and interpolating of documents, but a plain medley\nof doctrines, of ideals, of principles; and to accept the mass of\ndisconnected utterances ascribed to \"the Lord,\" many of them associated\nwith miracles, as the oral teaching of any one man, is a proceeding\nso uncritical that in no other study could it now be followed. The\nsimple fact that the Pauline Epistles (by whomsoever written) show\nno knowledge of any Jesuine miracles or teachings whatever, except\nas regards the Last Supper (1 Cor. xi, 24-25--a passage obviously\ninterpolated), admits of only three possible interpretations: (1)\nthe Jesus then believed in had not figured as a teacher at all; or\n(2) the writer or writers gave no credit or attached no importance to\nreports of his teachings. Either of these views (of which the first is\nplainly the more plausible) admits of (3) the further conclusion that\nthe Pauline Jesus was not the Gospel Jesus, but an earlier one--a fair\nenough hypothesis; but on that view the mass of Dominical utterances in\nthe gospels is only so much the less certificated. When, then, it is\nadmitted by all open-minded students that the events in the narrative\nare in many cases fictitious, even when they are not miraculous,\nit is wholly inadmissible that the sayings should be trustworthy,\nas one man's teachings.\n\nAnalysing them in collation, we find even in the Synoptics, and without\ntaking into account the Fourth Gospel, such wide discrepancies as\nthe following:--\n\n\n 1. The doctrine: \"the Kingdom of God is among you\" (Lk. xvii,\n 21), side by side with promises of the speedy arrival of the Son\n of Man, whose coming = the Kingdom of God (cp. Mt. iii, 2, 3;\n iv, 17; Mk. i, 15).\n\n 2. The frequent profession to supersede the Law (Mt. v, 21, 33,\n 38, 43, etc.); and the express declaration that not one jot or\n tittle thereof is to be superseded (Mt. v, 17-20).\n\n 3. Proclamation of a gospel for the poor and the enslaved (Lk. iv,\n 18); with the tacit acceptance of slavery (Lk. xvii, 7, 9, 10;\n where the word translated \"servant\" in the A.V., and let pass\n by McClellan, Blackader, and other reforming English critics,\n certainly means \"slave\").\n\n 4. Stipulation for the simple fulfilment of the Law as a passport\n to eternal life, with or without further self-denial (Mt. xix,\n 16-21; Lk. x, 28; xviii, 22); on the other hand a stipulation\n for simple benevolence, as in the Egyptian ritual (Mt. xxv;\n cp. Lk. ix, 48); and yet again stipulations for blind faith\n (Mt. x, 15) and for blood redemption (Mt. xxvi, 28).\n\n 5. Alternate promise (Mt. vi, 33; xix, 29) and denial (Mt. x,\n 34-39) of temporal blessings.\n\n 6. Alternate commands to secrecy (Mt. xii, 16; viii, 4; ix, 30;\n Mk. iii, 12; v, 43; vii, 36) and to publicity (Mt. vii, 7-8;\n Mk. v, 19) concerning miracles, with a frequent record of their\n public performance.\n\n 7. Specific restriction of salvation to Israelites (Mt. x, 5, 6;\n xv, 24; xix, 28); equally specific declaration that the Kingdom of\n God shall be to another nation (Mt. xxii, 43); no less specific\n assurance that the Son of Man (not the Twelve as in Mt. xix,\n 28) shall judge all nations, not merely Israel (Mt. xxv, 32;\n cp. viii, 11).\n\n 8. Profession to teach all, especially the simple and the childlike\n (Mt. xviii, 3; xi, 25, 28-30; Mk. x, 15); on the contrary, a flat\n declaration (Mt. xiii, 10-16; Mk. iv, 11; Lk. viii, 10; cp. Mk. iv,\n 34) that the saving teaching is only for the special disciples;\n yet again (Mt. xv, 16; Mk. vi, 52; viii, 17, 18) imputations of\n lack of understanding to them.\n\n 9. Companionship of the Teacher with \"publicans and sinners\"\n (Mt. ix, 10); and, on the other hand, a reference to the publicans\n as falling far short of the needed measure of loving-kindness\n (Mt. v, 46).\n\n 10. Explicit contrarieties of phrase, not in context (Mt. xii,\n 30; Lk. xi, 50).\n\n 11. Flat contradictions of narrative as to the Teacher's local\n success (Mt. xiii, 54-58; Lk. iv, 23).\n\n 12. Insistence that the Messiah is of the Davidic line (Mt. i;\n xxi, 15; Lk. i, 27; ii, 4), and that he is not (Mt. xxii, 43-45;\n Mk. xii, 35-37; Lk. xx).\n\n 13. Contradictory precepts as to limitation and non-limitation\n of forgiveness (Mt. xviii, 17, 22).\n\n\nSuch variously serious discrepancies count for more than even the\nchronological and other divergences of the records concerning the\nBirth, the Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, as proofs\nof diversity of source; and they may be multiplied indefinitely. The\nonly course for criticism is to admit that they stand for the ideas of\na variety of sects or movements, or else for an unlimited manipulation\nof the documents by individual hands. Many of them may very well have\ncome from various so-called \"Lords\" and \"Messiahs\"; but they cannot\nbe from a single teacher.\n\nThere remains open the fascinating problem as to whether some if\nnot all of the more notable teachings may not be the utterances of\none teacher of commanding originality, whose sectaries were either\nunable to appreciate or unable to keep separate his doctrine. [862]\nUndoubtedly some of the better teachings came first from men of\nsuperior capacity and relatively deep ethical experience. The veto\non revenge, and the inculcation of love to enemies, could not come\nfrom commonplace minds; and the saying preserved from the Gospel\nAccording to the Hebrews, \"Unless ye cease from sacrificing the\nwrath shall not cease from you,\" has a remarkable ring. [863] But\nwhen we compare the precept of forgiveness with similar teachings in\nthe Hebrew books and the Talmud, [864] we realize that the capacity\nfor such thought had been shown by a number of Jewish teachers,\nand that it was a specific result of the long sequence of wrong\nand oppression undergone by the Jewish people at the hands of their\nconquerors. The unbearable, consuming pain of an impotent hate, and\nthe spectacle of it in others--this experience among thoughtful men,\nand not an unconditioned genius for ethic in one, is the source of a\nteaching which, categorically put as it is in the gospels, misses its\nmeaning with most who profess to admire it; the proof being the entire\nfailure of most Christians in all ages to act on it. To say nothing of\nsimilar teaching in Old Testament books and in the Talmud, we have it\nin the most emphatic form in the pre-Christian \"Slavonic Enoch.\" [865]\n\nA superior ethic, then, stands not for one man's supernormal insight,\nbut for the acquired wisdom of a number of wise men. And it is now\nutterly impossible to name the individual framers of the gospel\nteachings, good or bad. The central biography dissolves at every\npoint before critical tests; it is a mythical construction. [866]\nOf the ideas in the Sermon on the Mount, many are ancient; of the\nparabolic and other teachings, some of the most striking occur only\nin the third gospel, and are unquestionably late. And when we are\nasked to recognize a unique personality behind any one doctrine, such\nas the condemnation of sacrifice in the uncanonical Hebrew Gospel,\nwe can but answer (1) that on the face of the case this doctrine\nappears to come from a separate circle; (2) that the renunciation\nof sacrifice was made by many Greek and Roman writers, [867] and by\nearlier teachers among the Hebrews; [868] and (3) that in the Talmud,\nand in such a pre-Christian document as the \"Slavonic Enoch,\" there\nare teachings which, had they occurred in the gospels, would have been\nconfidently cited as unparalleled in ancient literature. The Talmudic\nteachings, so vitally necessary in Jewry, that \"it is better to be\npersecuted than persecutor,\" and that, \"were the persecutor a just\nman and the persecuted an impious, God would still be on the side of\nthe persecuted,\" [869] are not equalled for practical purposes by any\nin the Christian sacred books; and the Enochic beatitude, \"Blessed\nis he who looks to raise his own hand for labour,\" [870] is no less\nremarkable. But it is impossible to associate these teachings with\nany outstanding personality, or any specific movements; and to posit\na movement-making personality in the sole case of certain scattered\nsayings in the gospels is critically inadmissible.\n\nThere is positively no ground for supposing that any selected set\nof teachings constituted the basis or the original propaganda of\nany single Christian sect, primary or secondary; and the whole known\nhistory of the cult tells against the hypothesis that it ever centred\nround those teachings which to-day specially appeal to the ethical\nrationalist. Such teachings are more likely to be adventitious than\nfundamental, in a cult of sacrificial salvation. When an essentially\nrationalistic note is struck in the gospels, as in the insistence\n[871] that a notable public catastrophe is not to be regarded in the\nold Jewish manner as a punishment for sin, it is cancelled in the\nnext sentence by an interpolation which unintelligently reaffirms\nthe very doctrine denied. [872] So with the teaching [873] that the\ncoming worship is to be neither Judaic nor Samaritan: the next sentence\nreaffirms Jewish particularism in the crudest way. The main movement,\nthen, was clearly superstitious.\n\nIt remains to note the so-far rationalistic character of such\nteachings as the protests against ceremonialism and sabbatarianism,\nthe favouring of the poor and the outcast, the extension of the\nfuture life to non-Israelites, and the express limitation of prayer\n(Mt. vi, 9; Lk. xi, 2) to a simple expression of religious feeling--a\nprescription which has been absolutely ignored through the whole\nhistory of the Church, despite the constant use of the one prayer\nprescribed--itself a compilation of current Jewish phrases.\n\n\n The expression in the Dominical prayer translated \"Give us this\n day [or day by day] our daily bread\" (Mt. vi, 11; Lk. xi, 3) is\n pointless and tautological as it stands in the English and other\n Protestant versions. In verse 8 is the assurance that the Father\n knows beforehand what is needed; the prayer is, therefore, to be a\n simple process of communion or advocation, free of all verbiage;\n then, to make it specially ask for the necessary subsistence,\n without which life would cease, and further to make the demand\n each day, when in the majority of cases there would be no need\n to offer such a request, is to stultify the whole. If the most\n obvious necessity is to be urged, why not all the less obvious? The\n Vulgate translation, \"Give us to-day our super-substantial bread,\"\n though it has the air of providing for the Mass, is presumptively\n the original sense; and is virtually supported by McClellan\n (N. T. 1875, ii, 645-47), who notes that the repeated use of the\n article, ton arton h\u00eam\u00f4n ton epiousion, implies a special meaning,\n and remarks that of all the suggested translations \"daily\" is \"the\n very one which is mostly manifestly and utterly condemned.\" Compare\n the bearing of the verses Mt. vi, 25-26, 31-34, which expressly\n exclude the idea of prayer for bread, and Lk. xi, 13. The idea of\n a super-substantial bread seems already established in Philo, De\n Legum Allegor. iii, 55-57, 59-61. Naturally the average theologian\n (e.g., Bishop Lightfoot, cited by McClellan) clings to the\n conception of a daily appeal to the God for physical sustenance;\n but in so doing he is utterly obscuring the original doctrine.\n\n Properly interpreted, the prayer forms a curious parallel to\n the close of the tenth satire of Juvenal, above cited, where all\n praying for concrete boons is condemned, on the ground that the\n Gods know best, and that man is dearer to them than to himself;\n but where there is permitted (of course, illogically) an appeal\n for soundness of mind and spiritual serenity. The documents would\n be nearly contemporary, and, though independent, would represent\n kindred processes of ethical and rational improvement on current\n religious practice. On the other hand, the prayer, \"lead us not\n into temptation, but deliver us from evil\"--which again rings alien\n to the context--would have been scouted by Juvenal as representing\n a bad survival of the religion of fear. Several early citations\n and early MSS., it should be noted, give a briefer version of the\n prayer, beginning, \"Father, hallowed be thy name,\" and dropping the\n \"Thy will be done\" clause, as well as the \"deliver us from evil,\"\n though including the \"lead us not into temptation.\"\n\n\nIt may or may not have been that this rationalization of religion\nwas originally preached by the same sect or school as gave the\nexalted counsel to resist not evil and to love enemies--a line of\nthought found alike in India and in China, and, in the moderate\nform of a veto on retaliation, in Greece and Rome. [874] But it is\ninconceivable that the same sect originally laid down the doctrines\nof the blood sacrifice and the final damnation of those who did\nnot accept the Messiah (Mt. x). The latter dogmas, with the myths,\nnaturally became the practical creed of the later Church, for which\nthe counsel of non-solicitous prayer and the love of enemies were\nunimaginable ideals. [875] Equally incapable of realization by a\nState Church was the anti-Pharisaical and \"Bohemian\" attitude ascribed\nto the founder, and the spirit of independence towards the reigning\npowers. For the rest, the occult doctrine that a little faith might\nsuffice to move mountains--a development from the mysticisms of the\nHebrew prophets--could count for nothing save as an incitement to\nprayer in general. The freethinking elements in the gospels, in short,\nwere precisely those which historic Christianity inevitably cast aside.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2\n\nAlready in the Epistles the incompatibility of the original critical\nspirit with sectarian policy has become clear. Paul--if the first\nepistle to the Thessalonians be his--exhorts his converts to \"prove\nall things, hold fast what is good\"; [876] and by way of making out\nthe Christist case against unpliable Jews he argues copiously in his\nown way; but as soon as there is a question of \"another Jesus\" [877]\nbeing set up, he is the sectarian fanatic pure and simple, and he no\nmore thinks of applying the counsel of criticism to his dogma [878]\nthan of acting on his prescription of love in controversy. \"Reasonings\"\n(logismous) are specially stigmatized: they must be \"cast down.\" [879]\nThe attitude towards slavery now becomes a positive fiat in its\nsupport; [880] and all political freethinking is superseded by a\ncounsel of conformity. [881] The slight touch of rationalism in the\nJudaic epistle of James, where the principle of works is opposed\nto that of faith, is itself quashed by an anti-rational conception\nof works. [882] From a sect so taught, freethinking would tend\nto disappear. It certainly obtruded itself early, for we have the\nPauline complaint [883] that \"some among you say there is no rising\nfrom the dead\"; but men of that way of thinking had no clear ground\nfor belonging to the community, and would soon be preached out of it,\nleaving only so much of the spirit of criticism as produced heresies\nwithin the sphere of supernaturalism.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3\n\nWhen the new creed, spreading through the Empire, comes actively in\ncontact with paganism, the rationalistic principle of anti-idolatry,\nstill preserved by the Jewish impulse, comes into prominence; and\ninsofar as they criticized pagan myths and pagan image-worship,\nthe early Christians may be said to have rationalized. [884]\nPolytheists applied the term \"atheistical\" alike to them [885]\nand the Jews. [886] As soon as the cult was joined by lettered men,\nthe primitive rationalism of Ev\u00eameros was turned by them to account;\nand a series of Fathers, including Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius,\nLactantius, and Augustine, pressed the case against the pagan creeds\nwith an unflagging malice which, if exhibited by later rationalists\ntowards their own creed, Christians would characterize in strong\nterms. But the practice of criticism towards other creeds was,\nwith the religious as with the philosophical sects, no help to\nself-criticism. The attitude of the Christian mass towards pagan\nidols and the worship of the Emperor was rather one of frenzy [887]\nthan of intellectual superiority; [888] and the Fathers never seem\nto have found a rationalistic discipline in their polemic against\npagan beliefs. Where the unbelieving Lucian brightly banters, they\ntaunt and asperse, in the temper of barbarians deriding the Gods\nof the enemy. None of them seems to realize the bearing against his\nown creed of the pagan argument that to die and to suffer is to give\nproof of non-deity. [889] In the end, the very image-worship which\nhad been the main ground of their rational attack on paganism became\nthe universal usage of their own Church; and its worship of saints\nand angels, of Father, Son, and Virgin Mother, made it more truly\na polytheism than the creed of the later pagans had been. [890]\nIt is therefore rather to the heresies within the Church than to\nits attacks on the old polytheism that we are to look for early\nChristian survivals of ancient rationalism; and for the most part,\nafter the practically rationalistic refusal of the early Ebionites\nto accept the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, [891] these heresies were\nbut combinations of other theosophies with the Christian.\n\nAlready in the spurious Epistles to Timothy we have allusion to the\n\"antitheses of the gnosis\" [892] or pretended occult knowledge; and\nto early Gnostic influences may be attributed those passages in the\ngospel, above cited, which affirm that the Messiah's teaching is not\nfor the multitude but for the adepts. [893] All along, Gnosticism\n[894] stood for the influence of older systems on the new faith;\nan influence which among Gentiles, untrained to the cult of sacred\nbooks, must have seemed absolutely natural. In the third century\nAmmonios Saccas, of Alexandria, said to have been born of Christian\nparents, set up a school which sought to blend the Christian and the\npagan systems of religion and philosophy into a pantheistic whole,\nin which the old Gods figured as subordinate d\u00e6mons or as allegorical\nfigures, and Christ as a reformer. [895] The special leaning of the\nschool to Plato, whose system, already in vogue among the scholars\nof Alexandria, had more affinity than any of its rivals [896] to\nChristianity, secured for it adherents of many religious shades,\n[897] and enabled it to develop an influence which permanently\naffected Christian theology; this being the channel through which the\ndoctrine of the Trinity entered. According to Mosheim, almost no other\nphilosophy was taught at Alexandria down to the sixth century. [898]\nOnly when the regulative zeal of the Church had begun to draw the\nlines of creed definitely [899] on anti-philosophic lines did the\nsyncretic school, as represented by Plotinus, Porphyry, and Hierocles,\n[900] declare itself against Christianity.\n\nAmong the Church sects, as distinguished from the philosophic, the\nsyncretic tendency was hardly less the vogue. Some of the leading\nFathers of the second century, in particular Clement of Alexandria\nand Origen, show the Platonic influence strongly, [901] and are\ngiven, the latter in particular, to a remarkably free treatment of\nthe sacred books, seeing allegory wherever credence had been made\ndifficult by previous science, [902] or inconvenient by accepted\ndogma. But in the multiplicity of Gnostic sects is to be seen the\nmain proof of the effort of Christians, before the complete collapse\nof the ancient civilization, to think with some freedom on their\nreligious problems. [903] In the terms of the case--apart from the\nJudaizing of the Elcesaites and Clemens Romanus--the thought is an\nadaptation of pagan speculation, chiefly oriental and Egyptian; and\nthe commonest characteristics are: (1) in theology, an explanation of\nthe moral confusion of the world by assuming two opposed Powers, [904]\nor by setting a variety of good and bad subordinate powers between the\nworld and the Supreme Being; and (2) in ethics, an insistence either\non the inherent corruptness of matter or on the incompatibility of\nholiness with physical pleasure. [905] The sects influenced chiefly\nfrom Asia teach, as a rule, a doctrine of two great opposing Powers;\nthose influenced from Egypt seek rather the solution of gradation\nof power under one chief God. All alike showed some hostility to the\npretensions of the Jews. Thus:--\n\n\n 1. Saturninus of Antioch (second century) taught of a Good and\n an Evil Power, and that the world and man were made by the seven\n planetary spirits, without the knowledge or consent of either\n Power; both of whom, however, sought to take control, the Good God\n giving men rational souls, and subjecting them to seven Creators,\n one of whom was the God of the Jews. Christ was a spirit sent to\n bring men back to the Good God; but only their asceticism could\n avail to consummate the scheme. (Iren\u00e6us, Against Heresies, i,\n 24; Epiphanius, H\u00e6reses, xxiii.)\n\n 2. Similarly, Marcion (son of a bishop of Pontus) placed between\n the good and bad Powers the Creator of the lower world, who was the\n God and Lawgiver of the Jews, a mixed nature, but just: the other\n nations being subjects of the Evil Power. Jesus, a divine spirit\n sent by the Supreme God to save men, was opposed by both the God of\n the Jews and the Evil Power; and asceticism is the way to carry out\n his saving purpose. Of the same cast were the sects of Bardesanes\n and Tatian. (Iren\u00e6us, Against Heresies, i, 27, 28; Epiphanius,\n H\u00e6reses, c. 56; Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. iv, 30. Mosheim, E. H. 2\n Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7\u00a7 7-9. As to Marcion, see Harnack, Outlines,\n ch. v; Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, pt. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 7,\n 12, 13; Iren\u00e6us, iv, 29, 30; Tertullian, Against Marcion.)\n\n 3. The Manichean creed (attributed to the Persian Mani or\n Manich\u00e6us, third century) proceeded on the same dualistic\n lines. In this the human race had been created by the Power\n of Evil or Darkness, who is the God of the Jews, and hence the\n body and its appetites are primordially evil, the good element\n being the rational soul, which is part of the Power of Light. By\n way of combining Christism and Mithraism, Christ is virtually\n identified with Mithra, and Manich\u00e6us claims to be the promised\n Paraclete. Ultimately the Evil Power is to be overcome, and\n kept in eternal darkness, with the few lost human souls. Here\n again the ethic is extremely ascetic, and there is a doctrine of\n purgatory. (Milman, Hist. of Christianity, bk. iii, ch. i; Mosheim,\n E. H. 3 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7\u00a7 2-11; Beausobre, Hist. Critique de\n Manich\u00e9e et du Manich\u00e9isme, 1734; Lardner, Cred. of the Gospels,\n pt. ii, ch. lxiii.)\n\n 4. Among the Egyptian Gnostics, again, Basilides taught that\n the one Supreme God produced seven perfect secondary Powers,\n called \u00c6ons (Ages), two of whom, Dynamis and Sophia (Power and\n Wisdom), procreated superior angels, who built a heaven, and in\n turn produced lower grades of angels, which produced others, till\n there were 365 grades, all ruled by a Prince named Abraxas (whose\n name yields the number 365). The lowest grades of angels, being\n close to eternal matter (which was evil by nature), made thereof\n the world and men. The Supreme God then intervened, like the Good\n Power in the oriental system, to give men rational souls, but left\n them to be ruled by the lower angels, of whom the Prince became God\n of the Jews. All deteriorated, the God of the Jews becoming the\n worst. Then the Supreme God sent the Prince of the \u00c6ons, Christ,\n to save men's souls. Taking the form of the man Jesus, he was\n slain by the God of the Jews. Despite charges to the contrary,\n this system too was ascetic, though lenient to paganism. Similar\n tenets were held by the sects of Carpocrates and Valentinus, all\n rising in the second century; Valentinus setting up Thirty \u00c6ons,\n male and female, in pairs, with four unmarried males, guardians\n of the Pleroma or Heaven--namely, Horus, Christ, the Holy Spirit,\n and Jesus. The youngest \u00c6on, Sophia, brought forth a daughter,\n Achamoth (Scientia), who made the world out of rude matter,\n and produced Demiourgos, the Artificer, who further manipulated\n matter. (Iren\u00e6us, bk. i, chs. 24, 25; bk. ii.)\n\n These sects in turn split into others, with endless peculiarities.\n\n\nSuch was the relative freethought of credulous theosophic fantasy,\n[906] turning fictitious data to fresh purpose by way of solving\nthe riddle of the painful earth. The problem was to account for evil\nconsistently with a Good God; and the orientals, inheriting a dualistic\nreligion, adapted that; while the Egyptians, inheriting a syncretic\nmonotheism, set up grades of Powers between the All-Ruler and men,\non the model of the grades between the Autocrat, ancient or modern,\nand his subjects. The Manich\u00e6ans, the most thoroughly organized of\nall the outside sects, appear to have absorbed many of the adherents\nof the great Mithraic religion, and held together for centuries,\ndespite fierce persecution and hostile propaganda, their influence\nsubsisting till the Middle Ages. [907] The other Gnosticisms fared\nmuch worse. Lacking sacred books, often setting up a severe ethic\nas against the frequently loose practice of the churches, [908] and\noffering a creed unsuited to the general populace, all alike passed\naway before the competition of the organized Church, which founded\non the Canon [909] and the concrete dogmas, with many pagan rites\nand beliefs [910] and a few great pagan abracadabras added.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4\n\nMore persistently dangerous to the ancient Church were the successive\nefforts of the struggling spirit of reason within to rectify in some\nsmall measure its most arbitrary dogmas. Of these efforts the most\nprominent were the quasi-Unitarian doctrine of Arius (fourth century),\nand the opposition by Pelagius and his pupil C\u00e6lestius (early in fifth\ncentury) to the doctrine of hereditary sin and predestinate salvation\nor damnation--a Judaic conception dating in the Church from Tertullian,\nand unknown to the Greeks. [911]\n\nThe former was the central and one of the most intelligible conflicts\nin the vast medley of early discussion over the nature of the Person\nof the Founder--a theme susceptible of any conceivable formula, when\nonce the principle of deification was adopted. Between the Gnosticism\nof Athenagoras, which made the Logos the direct manifestation of\nDeity, and the Judaic view that Jesus was \"a mere man,\" for stating\nwhich the Byzantine currier Theodotos was excommunicated at Rome\nby Bishop Victor [912] in the third century, there were a hundred\npossible fantasies of discrimination; [913] and the record of them\nis a standing revelation of the intellectual delirium in the ancient\nChurch. Theodotos the currier is said to have made disciples [914]\nwho induced one Natalius to become \"a bishop of this heresy\"; and\nhis doctrine was repeatedly revived, notably by Artemon. According\nto a trinitarian opponent, they were much given to science, in\nparticular to geometry and medicine. [915] But such an approach to\nrationalism could not prosper in the atmosphere in which Christianity\narose. Arianism itself, when put on its defence, pronounced Jesus to\nbe God, after beginning by declaring him to be merely the noblest of\ncreated beings, and thus became merely a modified mysticism, fighting\nfor the conception homoiousios (of similar nature) as against that of\nhomoousios (of the same nature). [916] Even at that, the sect split up,\nits chief dissenters ranking as semi-Arians, and many of the latter\nat length drifting back to Nicene orthodoxy. [917] At first strong in\nthe east, where it persecuted when it could, it was finally suppressed,\nafter endless strifes, by Theodosius at the end of the fourth century;\nonly to reappear in the west as the creed of the invading Goths and\nLombards. In the east it had stood for ancient monotheism; in the\nwest it prospered by early missionary and military chance till the\nPapal organization triumphed. [918] Its suppression meant the final\nrepudiation of rationalism; though it had for the most part subsisted\nas a fanaticism, no less than did the Nicene creed.\n\nMore philosophical, and therefore less widespread, was the doctrine\nassociated in the second century with the name of Praxeas, in\nthe third with those of Sabellius and Paul of Samosata, and in the\nfourth with that of Photinus. Of this the essence was the conception\nof the triune deity as being not three persons but three modes or\naspects of one person--a theorem welcomed in the later world by such\ndifferent types of believer as Servetus, Hegel, and Coleridge. Far\ntoo reasonable for the average believer, and far too unpropitious to\nritual and sacraments for the average priest, it was always condemned\nby the majority, though it had many adherents in the east, until the\nestablishment of the Church made Christian persecution a far more\neffective process than pagan persecution had ever been.\n\nPelagianism, which unlike Arianism was not an ecclesiastical but a\npurely theological division, [919] fared better, the problem at issue\ninvolving the permanent crux of religious ethics. Augustine, whose\nsupreme talent was for the getting up of a play of dialectic against\nevery troublesome movement in turn, without regard to his previous\npositions, [920] undertook to confute Pelagius and C\u00e6lestius as he\ndid every other innovator; and his influence was such that, after\nthey had been acquitted of heresy by a church council in Palestine\nand by the Roman pontiff, the latter was induced to change his ground\nand condemn them, whereupon many councils followed suit, eighteen\nPelagian bishops being deposed in Italy. At that period Christendom,\nfaced by the portent of the barbarian conquest of the Empire, was\nwell adjusted to a fatalistic theology, and too uncritical in its\nmood to realize the bearing of such doctrine either on conduct or on\nsacerdotal pretensions. But though the movement in its first form was\nthus crushed, and though in later forms it fell considerably short of\nthe measure of ethical rationalism seen in the first, it soon took\nfresh shape in the form of so-called semi-Pelagianism, and so held\nits ground while any culture subsisted; [921] while Pelagianism on the\ntheme of the needlessness of \"prevenient grace,\" and the power of man\nto secure salvation of his own will, has been chronic in the Church.\n\n\n For a concise view of the Pelagian tenets see Murdock's note\n on Mosheim, following Walch and Schlegel (Reid's edition,\n pp. 208-209). They included (1) denial that Adam's sin was\n inherited; (2) assertion that death is strictly natural, and not\n a mere punishment for Adam's sin; (3) denial that children and\n virtuous adults dying unbaptized are damned, a middle state being\n provided for them; (4) assertion that good acts come of a good\n will, and that the will is free; grace being an enlightenment of\n the understanding, and not indispensable to all men. The relative\n rationalism of these views is presumptively to be traced to\n the facts that Pelagius was a Briton and C\u00e6lestius an Irishman,\n and that both were Greek scholars. (When tried in Palestine they\n spoke Greek, like the council, but the accuser could speak only\n Latin.) They were thus bred in an atmosphere not yet laden with\n Latin dogma. In \"confuting\" them Augustine developed the doctrine\n (intelligible as that of an elderly polemist in a decadent society)\n that all men are predestined to salvation or damnation by God's\n \"mere good pleasure\"--a demoralizing formula which he at times\n hedged with illogical qualifications. (Cp. Murdock's note on\n Mosheim, as cited, p. 210; Gieseler, \u00a7 87.) But an orthodox\n champion of Augustine describes him as putting the doctrine without\n limitations (Rev. W. R. Clarke, St. Augustine, in \"The Fathers\n for English Readers\" series, p. 132). It was never adopted in the\n east (Gieseler, p. 387), but became part of Christian theology,\n especially under Protestantism. On the other hand, the Council of\n Trent erected several Pelagian doctrines into articles of faith;\n and the Protestant churches have in part since followed. See Sir\n W. Hamilton's Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, 1852,\n pp. 493-94, note; and Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, i,\n 142, 149.\n\n\nThe Latin Church thus finally maintained in religion the tradition\nof sworn adherence to sectarian formulas which has been already noted\nin the Roman philosophic sects, and in so doing reduced to a minimum\nthe exercise of the reason, alike in ethics and in philosophy. Its\ndogmatic code was shaped under the influence of (1) Iren\u00e6us and\nTertullian, who set scripture above reason and, when pressed by\nheretics, tradition above even scripture, [922] and (2) Augustine,\nwho had the same tendencies, and whose incessant energy secured him\na large influence. That influence was used not only to dogmatize\nevery possible item of the faith, but to enforce in religion another\nRoman tradition, formerly confined to politics--that of systematic\ncoercion of heretics. Before and around Augustine there had indeed been\nabundant mutual persecution of the bitterest kind between the parties\nof the Church as well as against pagans; the Donatists, in particular,\nwith their organization of armed fanatics, the Circumcelliones, had\ninflicted and suffered at intervals all the worst horrors of civil\nwar in Africa during a hundred years; Arians and Athanasians came\nagain and again to mutual bloodshed; and the slaying of the pagan\ngirl-philosopher, Hypatia, [923] by the Christian monks of Alexandria\nis one of the vilest episodes in the whole history of religion. On\nthe whole, it is past question that the amount of homicide wrought by\nall the pagan persecution of the earlier Christians was not a tithe of\nthat wrought by their successors in their own quarrels. But the spirit\nwhich had so operated, and which had been repudiated even by the bitter\nTertullian, was raised by Augustine to the status of a Christian dogma,\n[924] which, of course, had sufficient support in the sacred books,\nJudaic and Jesuist, and which henceforth inspired such an amount of\nmurderous persecution in Christendom as the ancient world had never\nseen. When, the temple revenues having been already confiscated, the\npagan worships were finally overthrown and the temples appropriated\nby the edict of Honorius in the year 408, Augustine, \"though not\nentirely consistent, disapproved of the forcible demolition of\nthe temples.\" [925] But he had nothing to say against the forcible\nsuppression of their worship, and of the festivals. Ambrose went\nas far; [926] and such men as Firmicus Maternus would have had the\nemperors go much further. [927]\n\nEconomic interest had now visibly become at least as potent in the\nshaping of the Christian course as it had ever been in building up a\npagan cult. For the humble conditions in which the earlier priests\nand preachers had gained a livelihood by ministering to scattered\ngroups of poor proselytes, there had been substituted those of a State\nChurch, adopted as such because its acquired range of organization\nhad made it a force fit for the autocrat's purposes when others had\nfailed. The sequent situation was more and more unfavourable to both\nsincerity of thought and freedom of speech. Not only did thousands\nof wealth-seekers promptly enter the priesthood to profit by the\nnew endowments allotted by Constantine to the great metropolitan\nchurches. Almost as promptly the ideal of toleration was renounced;\nand the Christians began against the pagans a species of persecution\nthat proceeded on no higher motive than greed of gain. Not only were\nthe revenues of the temples confiscated as we have seen, but a number\nof Christians took to the business of plundering pagans in the name\nof the laws of Constantius forbidding sacrifice, and confiscating the\nproperty of the temples. Libanius, in his Oration for the Temples [928]\n(390), addressed to Theodosius, circumstantially avers that the bands\nof monks and others who went about demolishing and plundering temples\nwere also wont to rob the peasants, adding:--\n\n\n They also seize the lands of some, saying \"it is sacred\"; and\n many are deprived of their paternal inheritance upon a false\n pretence. Thus those men thrive upon other people's ruin who say\n \"they worship God with fasting.\" And if they who are wronged\n come to the pastor in the city ... he commends (the robbers)\n and rejects the others.... Moreover, if they hear of any land\n which has anything that can be plundered, they cry presently,\n \"Such an one sacrificeth, and does abominable things, and\n a troop ought to be sent against him.\" And presently the\n self-styled reformers (s\u00f4phronistai) are there.... Some of these\n ... deny their proceedings.... Others glory and boast and tell\n their exploits.... But they say, \"We have only punished those\n who sacrifice and thereby transgress the law which forbids\n sacrifice.\" O emperor, when they say this, they lie.... Can\n it be thought that they who are not able to bear the sight of a\n collector's cloak should despise the power of your government?... I\n appeal to the guardians of the law [to confirm the denial]. [929]\n\n\nThe whole testimony is explicit and weighty, [930] and, being\ncorroborated by Ammianus Marcellinus, is accepted by clerical\nhistorians. [931] Ammianus declares that some of the courtiers of\nthe Christian emperors before Julian were \"glutted with the spoils\nof the temples.\" [932]\n\nThe official creed, with its principle of rigid uniformity and\ncompulsion, is now recognizable as the only expedient by which\nthe Church could be held together for its economic ends. Under the\nEastern Empire, accordingly, when once a balance of creed was attained\nin the Church, the same coercive ideal was enforced, with whatever\ndifferences in the creed insisted on. Whichever phase of dogma was in\npower, persecution of opponents went on as a matter of course. [933]\nAthanasians and Arians, Nestorians and Monophysites, used the same\nweapons to the utmost of their scope; Cyril of Alexandria led his\nfanatics to the pillage and expulsion of the Jews, as his underling\nPeter led them to the murder of Hypatia; other bishops wrought the\ndestruction of temples throughout Egypt; [934] Theodosius, Marcian,\nSt. Leo, Zeno, Justinian, all used coercion against every heresy\nwithout a scruple, affirming every verbal fantasy of dogma at the\npoint of the sword. It was due to no survival of the love of reason\nthat some of the more stubborn heresies, driven into communion with\nthe new civilization of the Arabs, were the means of carrying some\nof the seeds of ancient thought down the ages, to fructify ultimately\nin the mental soil of modern Europe.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 5\n\nAgainst the orthodox creed, apart from social and official hostility,\nthere had early arisen critics who reasoned in terms of Jewish and\npagan beliefs, and in terms of such rationalism as survived. Of the two\nformer sorts some remains have been preserved, despite the tendency of\nthe Church to destroy their works. Of the latter, apart from Lucian,\nwe have traces in the Fathers and in the Neo-Platonists.\n\nThus Tertullian and Lactantius tell of the many who believe in a\nnon-active and passionless God, [935] and disdain those who turn\nChristian out of fear of a hereafter; and again [936] of Stoics\nwho deride the belief in demons. A third-century author quoted by\nEusebius [937] speaks of apistoi who deny the divine authorship\nof the holy scriptures, in such a fashion as to imply that this was\ndone by some who were not merely pagan non-Christians but deniers of\ninspiration. Jamblichos, too, [938] speaks of opponents of the worship\nof the Gods in his day (early in the fourth century). [939] In the\nfifth century, again, Augustine complains bitterly of those impious\nand reckless persons who dare to say that the evangelists differ among\nthemselves. [940] He argues no less bitterly against the increduli and\ninfideles who would not believe in immortality and the possibility of\neternal torment; [941] and he meets them in a fashion which constantly\nrecurs in Christian apologetics, pointing to natural anomalies, real\nor alleged, and concluding that since we cannot understand all we see\nwe should believe all we hear--from the Church. Those who derided the\nstory of Jonah and the whale he meets by accusing them of believing\nthe story of Arion and the dolphin. [942] In the same way he meets\n[943] their protest against the iniquity of eternal punishment by a\njuggle over the ostensible anomaly of long punishments by human law\nfor short misdeeds. Whatever may have been his indirect value of his\nhabit of dialectic, he again and again declares for prone faith and\nagainst the resort to reason; and to this effect may be cited a long\nseries of Fathers and ecclesiastics, all eager to show that only in\na blind faith could there be any moral merit. [944]\n\nSuch arguments were doubtless potent to stupefy what remained of\ncritical faculty in the Roman world. In the same period Salvian makes\na polemic against those who in Christian Gaul denied that God exercised\nany government on earth. [945] They seem, however, to have been normal\nChristians, driven to this view by the barbarian invasions. Fronto,\nthe tutor of Marcus Aurelius, again, seems to have attacked the\nChristians partly as rationalist, partly as conservative. [946]\n\nIn general, the orthodox polemic is interesting only insofar as\nit preserves that of the opposition. The Dialogue with Trypho by\nJustin Martyr (about 150) is a mere documental discussion between a\nChristian and a Jew, each founding on the Hebrew Scriptures, and the\nChristian doing nearly all of the argument. There is not a scintilla\nof independent rationalism in the whole tedious work. [947] Justin\nwas a type of the would-be \"philosopher\" who confessedly would take\nno trouble to study science or philosophize, but who found his sphere\nin an endless manipulation of the texts of sacred books. But the work\nof the learned Origen Against Celsus preserves for us a large part of\nthe True Discourse of Celsus, a critical and extremely well-informed\nargument against Christianity by a pagan of the Platonic [948] school\nin the time of Marcus Aurelius, [949] on grounds to a considerable\nextent rationalistic. [950] The line of rejoinder followed by Origen,\none of the most cultured of the Christian Fathers, is for the most\npart otherwise. When Celsus argues that it makes no difference by what\nname the Deity is called, Origen answers [951] that on the contrary\ncertain God-names have a miraculous or magical virtue for the casting\nout of evil spirits; that this mystery is known and practised by\nthe Egyptians and Persians; and that the mere name of Jesus has been\nproved potent to cast out many such demons. When, on the other hand,\nCelsus makes a Jew argue against the Christist creed on the basis\nof the Jewish story that the founder's birth was illegitimate, [952]\nthe Father's answer begins in sheer amiable ineptitude, [953] which\nsoon passes into shocked outcry. [954] In other passages he is more\nsuccessful, as when he convicts Celsus's Jew of arguing alternately\nthat the disciples were deceived, and that they were deceivers. [955]\nThis part of the discussion is interesting chiefly as showing how\neducated Jews combated the gospels in detail, at a level of criticism\nnot always above that of the believers. Sometimes the Jew's case is\nshrewdly put, as when he asks, [956] \"Did Jesus come into the world\nfor this purpose, that we should not believe him?\"--a challenge not to\nbe met by Origen's theology. One of the acutest of Celsus's thrusts\nis the remark that Jesus himself declared that miracles would be\nwrought after him by followers of Satan, and that the argument from\nmiracles is thus worthless. [957] To this the rejoinder of Origen\nis suicidal; but at times the assailant, himself a believer in all\nmanner of miracles, gives away his advantage completely enough.\n\nOf a deeper interest are the sections in which Celsus (himself a\nbeliever in a Supreme Deity and a future state, and in a multitude of\nlower Powers, open to invocation) rests his case on grounds of general\nreason, arguing that the true Son of God must needs have brought home\nhis mission to all mankind; [958] and sweeps aside as foolish the\nwhole dispute between Jews and Christians, [959] of which he had given\na sample. Most interesting of all are the chapters [960] in which\nthe Christian cites the pagan's argument against the homo-centric\ntheory of things. Celsus insists on the large impartiality of Nature,\nand repudiates the fantasy that the whole scheme is adjusted to the\nwell-being and the salvation of man. Here the Christian, standing for\nhis faith, may be said to carry on, though in the spirit of a new\nfanaticism, the anti-scientific humanism first set up by Sokrates;\nwhile the pagan, though touched by religious apriorism, and prone to\nlapse from logic to mysticism in his turn, approaches the scientific\nstandpoint of the elder thinkers who had set religion aside. [961]\nNot for thirteen hundred years was his standpoint to be regained among\nmen. His protest against the Christian cultivation of blind faith,\n[962] which Origen tries to meet on rationalistic lines, would in\na later age be regarded as conveying no imputation. Even the simple\ndefensive subtleties of Origen are too rationalistic for the succeeding\ngenerations of the orthodox. The least embittered of the Fathers,\nhe is in his way the most reasonable; and in his unhesitating resort\nto the principle of allegory, wherever his documents are too hard\nfor belief, we see the last traces of the spirit of reason as it\nhad been in Plato, not yet paralysed by faith. Henceforth, till a\nnew intellectual life is set up from without, Christian thought is\nmore and more a mere disputation over the unintelligible, in terms\nof documents open always to opposing constructions.\n\nAgainst such minds the strictest reason would be powerless; and it\nwas fitting enough that Lucian, the last of the great freethinkers of\nthe Hellenistic world, should merely turn on popular Christianity\nsome of his serene satire [963]--more, perhaps, than has come\ndown to us; though, on the other hand, his authorship of the De\nMorte Peregrini, which speaks of the \"crucified sophist,\" has been\ncalled in question. [964] The forcible-feeble dialogue Philopatris,\nfalsely attributed to Lucian, and clearly belonging to the reign of\nJulian, is the last expression of general skepticism in the ancient\nliterature. The writer, a bad imitator of Lucian, avows disbelief\nalike in the old Gods and in the new, and professes to respect,\nif any, the \"Unknown God\" of the Athenians; but he makes no great\nimpression of intellectual sincerity. Apart from this, and the lost\nanti-Christian work [965] of Hierocles, Governor of Bithynia under\nDiocletian, the last direct literary opponents of ancient Christianity\nwere Porphyry and Julian. As both were believers in many Gods, and\nopposed Christianity because it opposed these, neither can well\nrank on that score as a freethinker, even in the sense in which\nthe speculative Gnostics were so. The bias of both, like that of\nPlutarch, seems to have been to the utmost latitude of religious\nbelief; and, apart from personal provocations and the ordinary temper\nof religious conservatism, it was the exiguity of the Christian creed\nthat repelled them. Porphyry's treatise, indeed, was answered by four\nFathers, [966] all of whose replies have disappeared, doubtless in\nfulfilment of the imperial edict for the destruction of Porphyry's\nbook--a dramatic testimony to the state of mental freedom under\nTheodosius II. [967] What is known of his argument is preserved in the\nincidental replies of Jerome, Augustine, Eusebius, and others. [968]\nThe answer of Cyril to Julian has survived, probably in virtue of\nJulian's status. His argumentations against the unworthy elements, the\nexclusiveness, and the absurdities of the Jewish and Christian faith\nare often reasonable enough, as doubtless were those of Porphyry;\n[969] but his own theosophic positions are hardly less vulnerable;\nand Porphyry's were probably no better, to judge from his preserved\nworks. Yet it is to be said that the habitual tone and temper of the\ntwo men compares favourably with that of the polemists on the other\nside. They had inherited something of the elder philosophic spirit,\nwhich is so far to seek in patristic literature, outside of Origen.\n\nThe latest expressions of rationalism among churchmen were to the\nfull as angrily met by the champions of orthodoxy as the attacks of\nenemies; and, indeed, there was naturally something of bitterness\nin the resistance of the last few critical spirits in the Church to\nthe fast-multiplying insanities of faith. Thus, at the end of the\nfourth century, the Italian monk Jovinian fought against the creed\nof celibacy and asceticism, and was duly denounced, vituperated,\necclesiastically condemned, and banished, penal laws being at the\nsame time passed against those who adhered to him. [970] Contemporary\nwith him was the Eastern Aerius, who advocated priestly equality as\nagainst episcopacy, and objected to prayers for the dead, to fasts,\nand to the too significant practice of slaying a lamb at the Easter\nfestival. [971] In this case matters went the length of schism. With\nless of practical effect, in the next century, Vigilantius of Aquitaine\nmade a more general resistance to a more manifold superstition,\ncondemning and ridiculing the veneration of tombs and bones of martyrs,\npilgrimages to shrines, the miracle stories therewith connected, and\nthe practices of fasting, celibacy, and the monastic life. He too\nwas promptly put down, largely by the efforts of his former friend\nJerome, the most voluble and the most scurrilous pietist of his age,\nwho had also denounced the doctrine of Jovinian. [972] For centuries\nno such appeal was heard in the western Church.\n\nThe spirit of reason, however, is well marked at the beginning of\nthe fifth century in a pagan writer who belongs more truly to the\nhistory of freethought than either Julian or Porphyry. Macrobius, a\nRoman patrician of the days of Honorius, works out in his Saturnalia,\nwith an amount of knowledge and intelligence which for the time is\nremarkable, the principle that all the Gods are but personifications\nof aspects or functions of the Sun. But such doctrine must have been\nconfined, among pagans, to the cultured few; and the monotheism of\nthe same writer's treatise On the Dream of Scipio was probably not\ngeneral even among the remaining pagans of the upper class. [973]\n\nAfter Julian, open rationalism being already extinct, anti-Christian\nthought was simply tabooed; and though the leading historians for\ncenturies were pagans, they only incidentally venture to betray the\nfact. It is told, indeed, that in the days of Valens and Valentinian\nan eminent physician named Posidonius, son of a great physician and\nbrother of another, was wont to say, \"that men do not grow fanatic by\nthe agency of evil spirits, but merely by the superfluity of certain\nevil humours; and that there is no power in evil spirits to assail the\nhuman race\"; [974] but though that opinion may be presumed to have\nbeen held by some other physicians, the special ascription of it to\nPosidonius is a proof that it was rarely avowed. With public lecturing\nforbidden, with the philosophic schools at Athens closed and plundered\nby imperial force, [975] with heresy ostracized, with pagan worship,\nincluding the strong rival cult of Mithraism, outwardly suppressed by\nthe same power, [976] unbelief was naturally little heard of after the\nfifth century. About its beginning we find Chrysostom boasting [977]\nthat the works of the anti-Christian writers had persuaded nobody,\nand had almost disappeared. As regarded open teaching, it was only too\ntrue, though the statement clashes with Chrysostom's own complaint that\nPorphyry had led many away from the faith. [978] Proclus was still to\ncome (410-485), with his eighteen Arguments against the Christians,\nproceeding on the principle, still cherished from the old science,\nthat the world was eternal. But such teaching could not reach even\nthe majority of the more educated; and the Jewish dogma of creation\nex nihilo became sacrosanct truth for the darkening world. In the\neast Eusebius, [979] and in the west Lactantius, [980] expressed for\nthe whole Church a boundless contempt of everything in the nature of\nscientific research or discussion; and it was in fact at an end for\nthe Christian world for well-nigh a thousand years. For Lactantius,\nthe doctrine of a round earth and an antipodes was mere nonsense;\nhe discusses the thesis with the horse-laughter of a self-satisfied\nsavage. [981] Under the feet of arrogant and blatant ignorance we\nsee trampled the first form of the doctrine of gravitation, not to be\nrecovered for an \u00e6on. Proclus himself cherished some of the grossest\npagan superstitions; and the few Christians who had in them something\nof the spirit of reason, as Cosmas \"Indicopleustes,\" \"the Indian\nnavigator,\" who belongs to the sixth century, were turned away from\nwhat light they had by their sacred books. Cosmas was a Nestorian,\ndenying the divinity of Mary, and a rational critic as regards the\northodox fashion of applying Old Testament prophecies to Jesus. [982]\nBut whereas pagan science had inferred that the earth is a sphere,\nhis Bible taught him that it is an oblong plain; and the great aim\nof his Topographia Christiana, sive Christianorum opinio de mundo,\nwas to prove this against those who still cultivated science.\n\nSuch pleadings were not necessary for the general Christian public,\nwho knew nothing save what their priests taught them. In Chrysostom's\nday this was already the case. There remained but a few rational\nheresies. One of the most notable was that of Theodore of Mopsuestia,\nthe head of the school of Antioch and the teacher of Nestorius, who\ntaught that many of the Old Testament prophecies commonly applied\nto Jesus had reference to pre-Christian events, and discriminated\ncritically among the sacred books. That of Job he pronounced to be\nmerely a poem derived from a pagan source, and the Song of Songs he\nheld to be a mere epithalamium of no religious significance. In his\nopinion Solomon had the logos gn\u00f4se\u00f4s the love of knowledge, but not\nthe logos sophias the love of wisdom. [983] No less remarkable was\nthe heresy of Photinus, who taught that the Trinity was a matter not of\npersons, but of modes of deity. [984] Such thinking must be pronounced\nthe high-water mark of rational criticism in the ancient Church; and\nits occurrence in an age of rapid decay is memorable enough. But in\nthe nature of things it could meet with only the scantiest support;\nand the only critical heresy which bulked at all largely was that of\nthe Unitarian Anomoeans or Eunomians, [985] who condemned the worship\nof relics, [986] and made light of scriptural inspiration when texts,\nespecially from the Old Testament, were quoted against them. [987]\nNaturally Chrysostom himself denounced them as unbelievers. Save\nfor these manifestations, the spirit of sane criticism had gone from\nthe Christian world, with science, with art, with philosophy, with\nculture. But the verdict of time is given in the persistent recoil\nof the modern spirit from the literature of the age of faith to that\nof the elder age of nascent reason; and the historical outcome of the\nstate of things in which Chrysostom rejoiced was the re-establishment\nof universal idolatry and practical polytheism in the name of the\ncreed he had preached. Every species of superstition known to paganism\nsubsisted, slightly transformed. While the emperors savagely punished\nthe pagan soothsayers, the Christians held by the same fundamental\ndelusion; and against the devices of pagan magic, in the reality\nof which they unquestioningly believed, they professed triumphantly\nto practise their own sorceries of holy water, relics, prayer, and\nexorcism, no man daring to impugn the insanities of faith. [988]\nOn the face of religious life, critical reason was extinct.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 6\n\nIt might safely have been inferred, but it is a matter of proved fact,\nthat while the higher intellectual life was thus being paralysed,\nthe primary intellectual virtues were attained. As formerly in Jewry,\nso now in Christendom, the practice of pious fraud became normal: all\nearly Christian literature, and most of the ecclesiastical history of\nmany succeeding centuries, is profoundly compromised by the habitual\nresort to fiction, forgery, and interpolation. The mystical poetry\nof the pagans, the Jewish history of Josephus, the gospels, the\nEpistles, all were interpolated in the same spirit as had inspired\nthe production of new Gospels, new Epistles, new books of Acts, new\nSibylline verses. And even where to this tendency there was opposed\nthe growing demand of the organized Church for a faithful text, when\nthe documents had become comparatively ancient, the disposition to\ninvent and suppress, to reason crookedly, to delude and mislead, was\nnormal among churchmen. This is the verdict of orthodox ecclesiastical\nhistory, a dozen times repeated. [989] It of course carries no surprise\nfor those who have noted the religious doctrine of Plato, of Polybius,\nof Cicero, of Varro, of Strabo, of Dio Cassius.\n\nWhile intelligence thus retrograded under the reign of faith, it\nis impossible to maintain, in the name of historical science, the\nconventional claim that the faith wrought a countervailing good. What\nmoral betterment there was in the decaying Roman world was a matter\nof the transformed social conditions, and belongs at least as much\nto paganism as to Christianity: even the asceticism of the latter,\nwhich in reality had no reformative virtue for society at large,\nwas a pre-Christian as well as an anti-Christian phenomenon. It\nis indeed probable that in the times of persecution the Christian\ncommunity would be limited to the more serious and devoted types\n[990]--that is to say, to those who would tend to live worthily under\nany creed. But that the normal Christian community was superior in\npoint of morals is a poetic hallucination, set up by the legends\nconcerning the martyrs and by the vauntings of the Fathers, which\nare demonstrably untrustworthy. The assertion, still at times made\nby professed Positivists, that the discredit of the marriage tie in\nRoman life necessitated a new religion, and that the new religion\nwas regenerative, is only a quasi-scientific variation of the legend.\n\n\n The evidence as to the failure of the faith to reform its adherents\n is continuous from the first generation onwards. \"Paul\" complains\n bitterly of the sexual licence among his first Corinthian converts\n (1 Cor. v, 1, 2), and seeks to check it by vehement commands, some\n mystical (id. v. 5), some prescribing ostracism (vv. 9-13)--a\n plain confession of failure, and a complete reversal of the\n prescription in the gospel (Mt. xviii, 22). If that could be\n set aside, the command as to divorce could be likewise. Justin\n Martyr (Dial. with Trypho, ch. 141) describes the orthodox Jews\n of his day as of all men the most given to polygamy and arbitrary\n divorce. (Cp. Deut. xxiv, 1; Edersheim, History, p. 294.) Then\n the Christian assumption as to Roman degeneration and Eastern\n virtue cannot be sustained.\n\n At the beginning of the third century we have the decisive\n evidence of Tertullian that many of the charges of immorality\n made by serious pagans against Christians were in large part\n true. First he affirms (Ad Nationes, l. i, c. 5) that the pagan\n charges are not true of all, \"not even of the greatest part\n of us.\" In regard to the charge of incest (c. 16), instead of\n denying it as the earlier apologist Minucius Felix had done in\n the age of persecution, he merely argues that the same offence\n occurs through ignorance among the pagans. The chapter concludes\n by virtually admitting the charge with regard to misconduct in\n \"the mysteries.\" Still later, when he has turned Montanist,\n Tertullian explicitly charges his former associates with sexual\n licence (De Jejuniis, cc. 1, 17: De Virginibus Velandis, c. 14),\n pointing now to the heathen as showing more regard for monogamy\n than do the Christians (De Exhort. Castitatis, c. 13).\n\n From the fourth century onward the history of the Church reveals\n at every step a conformity on the part of its members to average\n pagan practice. The third canon of the Nicene Council forbids\n clerics of all ranks from keeping as companions or housekeepers\n women who are not their close blood relations. In the fifth\n century Salvian denounces the Christians alike of Gaul and Africa\n as being boundlessly licentious in comparison with the Arian\n barbarians (De Gubernatione Dei, lib. 5, 6, 7). They do not even,\n he declares, deny the charge, contenting themselves with claiming\n superior orthodoxy. (Cp. Bury, Hist. of the Later Roman Empire,\n i, 198-99, and Finlay, ii, 219, for another point of view.) On\n all hands heresy was reckoned the one deadly sin (Gieseler, \u00a7 74,\n p. 295, and refs.), and all real misdeeds came to seem venial by\n comparison. As to sexual vice and crime among the Christianized\n Germans, see Gieseler, \u00a7 125, vol. ii, 158-60.\n\n In the East the conditions were the same. The story of the\n indecent performances of Theodora on the stage (Gibbon, ch. xl),\n probably untrue of her, implies that such practices openly\n occurred. Milman (Hist. of Chr. bk. iv, ch. ii. ed. cited, ii,\n 327) recognizes general indecency, and notes that Zosimus charged\n it on Christian rule. Salvian speaks of unlimited obscenity in the\n theatres of Christian Gaul (De Gub. Dei, l. 6). Cp. Gibbon as to\n the character of the devout Justinian's minister Trebonian; who,\n however, was called an atheist. (Suidas, s.v.) On the collapse\n of the iconoclastic movement, licence became general (Finlay,\n Hist. of Greece, ed. Tozer, ii, 162). But even in the fourth\n century Chrysostom's writings testify to the normality of all the\n vices, as well as the superstitions, that Christianity is supposed\n to have banished; the churches figuring, like the ancient temples,\n as places of assignation. (Cp. the extracts of Lavoll\u00e9e, Les\n Moeurs Byzantines, in Essais de litt\u00e9rature et d'histoire, 1891,\n pp. 48-62, 89; the S.P.C.K.'s St. Chrysostom's Picture of his Age,\n 1875, pp. 6, 94, 96, 98, 100, 102-104, 108, 194; Chrysostom's\n Homilies, Eng. tr. 1839, Hom. xii on 1st Cor. pp. 159-64;\n Jerome, Adv. Vigilantium, cited by Gieseler, ii, 66, note 19,\n and in Gilly's Vigilantius and his Times, 1844, pp. 406-407.) The\n clergy were among the most licentious of all, and Chrysostom had\n repeatedly to preach against them (Lavoll\u00e9e, ch. iv; Mosheim, as\n last cited; Gibbon, ch. xlvii, Bohn ed. iv, 232). The position of\n women was practically what it had been in post-Alexandrian Greece\n and Asia-Minor (Lavoll\u00e9e, ch. v; cp. St. Chrysostom's Picture of\n his Age, pp. 180-82); and the practice corresponded. In short,\n the supposition that the population of Constantinople as we see\n it under Justinian, or that of Alexandria in the same age, could\n have been morally austere, is fantastic.\n\n\nIt would indeed be unintelligible that intellectual decline without\nchange of social system should put morals on a sound footing. The\nvery asceticism which seeks to mortify the body is an avowal of the\nvice from which it recoils, and insofar as this has prevailed under\nChristianity it has specifically hindered general temperance, [991]\ninasmuch as the types capable of self-rule thus leave no offspring.\n\nOn the other hand, with the single exception of the case of the\ngladiatorial combats (which had been denounced in the first century\nby the pagan Seneca, [992] and in the fourth by the pagan Libanius,\nbut lasted in Rome long after Christianity had become the State\nreligion; [993] while the no less cruel combats of men with wild\nbeasts were suppressed only when the finances of the falling Empire\ncould no longer maintain them), [994] the vice of cruelty seems to\nhave been in no serious degree cast out. [995] Cruelty to slaves was\ncertainly not less than in the Rome of the Antonines; and Chrysostom\n[996] denounces just such atrocities by cruel mistresses as had been\ndescribed by Horace and Juvenal. The story of the slaying of Hypatia,\nindeed, is decisive as to Christian ferocity. [997]\n\nIn fine, the entire history of Christian Egypt, Asia, and Africa,\nprogressively decadent till their easy conquest by the Saracens,\nand the entire history of the Christian Byzantine empire, at best\nstagnant in mental and material life during the thousand years of its\nexistence, serve conclusively to establish the principle that in the\nabsence of freethought no civilization can progress. More completely\nthan any of the ancient civilizations to which they succeeded, they\ncast out or were denuded of the spirit of free reason. The result was\nstrictly congruous. The process, of course, was one of socio-political\ncausation throughout; and the rule of dogma was a symptom or effect of\nthe process, not the extraneous cause. But that is only the clinching\nof the sociological lesson.\n\nOf a deep significance, in view of the total historical movement,\nis the philosophical teaching of the last member of the ancient Roman\nworld who exhibited philosophical capacity--the long famous Boethius,\nminister of the conqueror Theodoric, who put him to death in the\nyear 525. Ostensibly from the same hand we have the De Consolatione\nPhilosophiae, which is substantially non-Christian, and a number\nof treatises expounding orthodox Christian dogma. In the former\n\"we find him in strenuous opposition ... to the Christian theory of\ncreation; and his Dualism is at least as apparent as Plato's. We find\nhim coquetting with the anti-Christian doctrine of the immortality\nof the world, and assuming a position with regard to sin which is\nultra-Pelagian and utterly untenable by a Christian theologian. We\nfind him, with death before his eyes, deriving consolation not from\nany hopes of a resurrection ... but from the present contempt of all\nearthly pain and ill which his divine mistress, 'the perfect solace\nof wearied souls,' has taught him.\" [998] Seeing that Theodoric,\nthough a professed admirer of the ancient life, had absolutely put\ndown, on pain of death, [999] every remaining religious practice of\npaganism, it is certain that Boethius must have officially professed\nChristianity; but his book seems to make it certain that he was\nnot a believer. The only theory on which the expounder of such an\nessentially pagan philosophy can be conceived as really the author\nof the Christian tractates ascribed to Boethius is that, under the\nstroke of undeserved ruin and unjust doom, the thinker turned away\nfrom the creed of his official life and sought healing in the wisdom\nof the older world. [1000] Whether we accept this solution or, in\ndespite of the specific testimony, reject the theological tractates as\nfalsely ascribed--either by their writer or by others--to Boethius,\n[1001] the significant fact remains that it was not the Christian\ntracts but the pagan Consolation that passed down to the western\nnations of the Middle Ages as the last great intellectual legacy from\nthe ancient world. It had its virtue for an age of mental bondage,\nbecause it preserved some pulse of the spirit of free thought.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nFREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM [1002]\n\n\n\u00a7 1\n\nThe freethinking of Mohammed may be justly said to begin and end with\nhis rejection of popular polytheism and his acceptance of the idea of\na single God. That idea he ostensibly held as a kind of revelation,\nnot as a result of any traceable process of reasoning; and he affirmed\nit from first to last as a fanatic. One of the noblest of fanatics\nhe may be, but hardly more. Denouncing all idolatry, he anchored\nhis creed to the Ka'aba, the sacred black stone of the remote past,\nwhich is to this day its most revered object.\n\nThat the monotheistic idea, in its most vivid form, reached him in\nmiddle age by way of a vision is part of the creed of his followers;\nand that it derived in some way from Jews, or Persians, or Christians,\nas the early unbelievers declared, [1003] is probable enough. But\nthere is evidence that among his fellow-Arabs the idea had taken some\nslight root before his time, even in a rationalistic form, and it is\nclear that there were before his day many believers, though also many\nunbelievers, in a future state. [1004] There is no good ground for the\noft-repeated formula about the special monotheistic and other religious\nproclivities of \"the Semite\"; [1005] Semites being subject to religious\ninfluences like other peoples, in terms of culture and environment. The\nMoslems themselves preserved a tradition that one Zaid, who died\nfive years before the Prophet received his first inspiration, had\nof his own accord renounced idolatry without becoming either Jew or\nChristian; but on being told by a Jew to become a Hanyf, [1006] that\nis to say, of the religion of Abraham, who worshipped nothing but God,\nhe at once agreed. [1007] In the oldest extant biography of Mohammed\nan address of Zaid's has been preserved, of which six passages are\nreproduced in the Koran; [1008] and there are other proofs [1009]\nthat the way had been partly made for Mohammedanism before Mohammed,\nespecially at Medina, to which he withdrew (the Hej'ra) with his\nearly followers when his fellow-tribesmen would not accept his\nmessage. He uses the term Hanyf repeatedly as standing for his own\ndoctrine. [1010] In some of the Arab poetry of the generation before\nMohammed, again, there is \"a deep conviction of the unity of God,\nand of his elevation over all other beings,\" as well as a clearly\ndeveloped sense of moral responsibility. [1011] The doctrine of a\nSupreme God was indeed general; [1012] and Mohammed's insistence on\nthe rejection of the lesser deities or \"companions of God\" was but\na preaching of unitarianism to half-professed monotheists who yet\npractised polytheism and idolatry. The Arabs at his time, in short,\nwere on the same religious plane as the Christians, but with a good\ndeal of unbelief; \"Zendekism\" or rationalistic deism (or atheism)\nbeing charged in particular on Mohammed's tribe, the Koreish;\n[1013] and the Prophet used traditional ideas to bring them to\nhis unitary creed. In one case he even temporarily accepted their\npolytheism. [1014] The several tribes were further to some extent\nmonolatrous, [1015] somewhat as were the Semitic tribes of Palestine;\nand before Mohammed's time a special worshipper of the star Sirius\nsought to persuade the Koreish to give up their idols and adore\nthat star alone. Thus between their partially developed monotheism,\ntheir partial familiarity with Hanyf monotheism, and their common\nintercourse with the nominally monotheistic Jews and Christians, many\nArabs were in a measure prepared for the Prophet's doctrine; which,\nfor the rest, embodied many of their own traditions and superstitions\nas well as many orally received from Christians and Jews.\n\n\n \"The Koran itself,\" says Palmer, \"is, indeed, less the invention\n or conception of Mohammed than a collection of legends and moral\n axioms borrowed from desert lore and couched in the language\n and rhythm of desert eloquence, but adorned with the additional\n charm of enthusiasm. Had it been merely Mohammed's own invented\n discourses, bearing only the impress of his personal style, the\n Koran could never have appealed with so much success to every\n Arab-speaking race as a miracle of eloquence.\" [1016]\n\n Kuenen challenges Sprenger's conclusions and sums up: \"We need\n not deny that Mohammed had predecessors; but we must deny that\n tradition gives us a faithful representation of them, or is correct\n in calling them hanyfs. [1017] On the other hand, he concedes that\n \"Mohammed made Islam out of elements which were supplied to him\n very largely from outside, and which had a whole history behind\n them already, so that he could take them up as they were without\n further elaboration.\" [1018]\n\n \"During the first century of Islam the forging of Traditions\n became a recognized political and religious weapon, of which\n all parties availed themselves. Even men of the strictest piety\n practised this species of fraud, and maintained that the end\n justified the means.\" [1019]\n\n\nThe final triumph of the religion, however, was due neither to the\nelements of its Sacred Book nor to the moral or magnetic power of\nthe Prophet. This power it was that won his first adherents, who were\nmostly his friends and relatives, or slaves to whom his religion was a\nspecies of enfranchisement. [1020] From that point forward his success\nwas military--thanks, that is, to the valour of his followers--his\nfellow citizens never having been won in mass to his teaching. [1021]\nSuch success as his might conceivably be gained by a mere military\nchief. Nor could the spread of Islam after his death have taken place\nsave in virtue of the special opportunities for conquest lying before\nits adherents--opportunities already seen by Mohammed, either with the\neye of statesmanship or with that of his great general, Omar. [1022]\nIt is an error to assume, as is still commonly done, that it was the\nunifying and inspiring power of the religion that wrought the Saracen\nconquests. Warlike northern barbarians had overrun the Western Empire\nwithout any such stimulus; the prospect of booty and racial kinship\nsufficed them for the conquest of a decadent community; and the same\nconditions existed for the equally warlike Saracens, [1023] who also,\nbefore Mohammed, had learned something of the military art from the\nGr\u00e6co-Romans. [1024] Their religious ardour would have availed them\nlittle against the pagan legions of the unbelieving C\u00e6sar; and as\na matter of fact they could never conquer, though they curtailed,\nthe comparatively weak Byzantine Empire; its moderate economic\nresources and traditional organization sufficing to sustain it, despite\nintellectual decadence, till the age of Saracen greatness was over. Nor\ndid their faith ever unify them save ostensibly for purposes of common\nwarfare against the racial foe--a kind of union attained in all ages\nand with all varieties of religion. Fierce domestic strifes broke out\nas soon as the Prophet was dead. It would be as true to say that the\ncommon racial and military interest against the Gr\u00e6co-Roman and Persian\nStates unified the Moslem parties, as that Islam unified the Arab\ntribes and factions. Apart from the inner circle of converts, indeed,\nthe first conquerors were in mass not at all deeply devout, and many of\nthem maintained to the end of their generation, and after his death,\nthe unbelief which from the first met the Prophet at Mecca. [1025]\nAgainst the creed of Mohammed \"the conservative and material instincts\nof the people of the desert rose in revolt; and although they became\nMoslems en masse, the majority of them neither believed in Islam nor\nknew what it meant. Often their motives were frankly utilitarian:\nthey expected that Islam would bring them luck.... If things went ill,\nthey blamed Islam and turned their backs on it.\" [1026] It is told of\na Moslem chief of the early days that he said: \"If there were a God,\nI would swear by his name that I did not believe in him.\" [1027]\nA general fanaticism grew up later. But had there been no Islam,\nenterprising Arabs would probably have overrun Syria and Persia and\nAfrica and Spain all the same. [1028] Attila went further, and he is\nnot known to have been a monotheist or a believer in Paradise. Nor\nwere Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane indebted to religious faith for\ntheir conquests.\n\nOn the other hand, when a Khalifate was anywhere established\nby military force, the faith would indeed serve as a nucleus of\nadministration, and further as a means of resisting the insidious\npropaganda of the rival faith, which might have been a source of\npolitical danger. It was their Sacred Book and Prophet that saved\nthe Arabs from accepting the religion of the states they conquered\nas did the Goths and Franks. The faith thus so far preserved their\nmilitary polity when that was once set up; but it was not the faith\nthat made the polity possible, or gave the power of conquest, as is\nconventionally held. At most, it partly facilitated their conquests\nby detaching a certain amount of purely superstitious support from\nthe other side. And it never availed to unify the race, or the Islamic\npeoples. On the fall of Othman \"the ensuing civil wars rent the unity\nof Islam from top to bottom, and the wound has never healed.\" [1029]\nThe feud between Northern and Southern Arabs \"rapidly developed and\nextended into a permanent racial enmity.\" [1030] And when, after\nthe Ommayade dynasty had totally failed to unify Semite and Aryan in\nPersia, the task was partially accomplished by the Abassides, it was\nnot through any greater stress of piety, but by way of accepting the\ninevitable, after generations of division and revolt. [1031]\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2\n\nIt may perhaps be more truly claimed for the Koran that it was the\nbasis of Arab scholarship; since it was in order to elucidate its\ntext that the first Arab grammars and dictionaries and literary\ncollections were made. [1032] Here again, however, the reflection\narises that some such development would have occurred in any case, on\nthe basis of the abundant pre-Islamic poetry, given but the material\nconquests. The first conquerors were illiterate, and had to resort\nto the services and the organization of the conquered [1033] for\nall purposes of administrative writings, using for a time even the\nGreek and Persian languages. There was nothing in the Koran itself\nto encourage literature; and the first conquerors either despised or\nfeared that of the conquered. [1034]\n\nWhen the facts are inductively considered, it appears that the Koran\nwas from the first rather a force of intellectual fixation than one\nof stimulus. As we have seen, there was a measure of rationalism as\nwell as of monotheism among the Arabs before Mohammed; and the Prophet\nset his face violently against all unbelief. The word \"unbeliever\"\nor \"infidel\" in the Koran normally signifies merely \"rejector of\nMohammed\"; but a number of passages [1035] show that there were\nspecific unbelievers in the doctrine of a future state as well as in\nmiracles; and his opponents put to him challenges which showed that\nthey rationally disbelieved his claim to inspiration. [1036] Hence,\nclearly, the scarcity of miracles in his early legend, on the Arab\nside. On a people thus partly \"refined, skeptical, incredulous,\"\n[1037] much of whose poetry showed no trace of religion, [1038]\nthe triumph of Islam gradually imposed a tyrannous dogma, entailing\nabundance of primitive superstition under the \u00e6gis of monotheistic\ndoctrine. Some moral service it did compass, and for this the credit\nseems to be substantially due to Mohammed; though here again he\nwas not an innovator. Like previous reformers, [1039] he vehemently\ndenounced the horrible practice of burying alive girl children; and\nwhen the Koran became law his command took effect. His limitation of\npolygamy too may have counted for something, despite the unlimited\npractice of his latter years. For the rest, he prescribes, in the\ntraditional eastern fashion, liberal almsgiving; this, with normal\nintegrity and patience, and belief in \"God and the Last Day, and the\nAngels, and the Scriptures, and the Prophets,\" [1040] is the gist\nof his ethical and religious code, with much stress on hell-fire\nand the joys of Paradise, and at the same time on predestination,\nand with no reasoning on any issue.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3\n\nThe history of Saracen culture is the history of the attainment\nof saner ideas and a higher plane of thought. Within a century of\nthe Hej'ra [1041] there had arisen some rational skepticism in the\nMoslem schools, as apart from the chronic schisms and strifes of the\nfaithful. A school of theology had been founded by Hasan-al-Basri at\nBassorah; and one of his disciples, Wasil ibn Att\u00e2, following some\nprevious heretics--Mabad al Jhoni, Ghailan of Damascus, and Jonas al\nAswari [1042]--rejected the predestination doctrine of the Koran as\ninconsistent with the future judgment; arguing for freewill and at the\nsame time for the humane provision of a purgatory. From this beginning\ndates the Motazileh or class of Motazilites (or Mu`tazilites), [1043]\nthe philosophic reformers and moderate freethinkers of Islam. Other\nsects of a semi-political character had arisen even during the last\nillness of the Prophet, and others soon after his death. [1044] One\nparty sought to impose on the faithful the \"Sunna\" or \"traditions,\"\nwhich really represented the old Arabian ideas of law, but were\npretended to be unwritten sayings of Mohammed. [1045] To this the\nparty of Ali (the Prophet's cousin) objected; whence began the long\ndispute between the Shiah or Sh\u00eeites (the anti-traditionists), and\nthe Sunnites; the conquered and oppressed Persians tending to stand\nwith the former, and generally, in virtue of their own thought,\nto supply the heterodox element under the later Khalifates. [1046]\nThus Sh\u00eeites were apt to be Motazilites. [1047] On Ali's side, again,\nthere broke away a great body of Kharejites or Separatists, who claimed\nthat the Imaum or head of the Faith should be chosen by election,\nwhile the Sh\u00eeites stood for succession by divine right. [1048] All\nthis had occurred before any schools of theology existed.\n\nThe Motazilites, once started, divided gradually into a score of\nsects, [1049] all more or less given to rationalizing within the\nlimits of monotheism. [1050] The first stock were named Kadarites,\nbecause insisting on man's power (kadar) over his acts. [1051]\nAgainst them were promptly ranged the Jabarites, who affirmed that\nman's will was wholly under divine constraint (jabar). [1052] Yet\nanother sect, the Sifatites, opposed both of the others, some of them\n[1053] standing for a literal interpretation of the Koran, which is\nin part predestinationist, and in parts assumes freewill; while the\nmain body of orthodox, following the text, professed to respect as\ninsoluble mystery the contradictions they found in it. [1054] The\nhistory of Islam in this matter is strikingly analogous to that of\nChristianity from the rise of the Pelagian heresy.\n\nIt is to be noted that, while the heretics in time came under Greek\nand other foreign influences, their criticism of the Koran was\nat the outset their own. [1055] The Sh\u00eeites, becoming broadly the\nparty of the Persians, admitted in time Persian, Jewish, Gnostic,\nManich\u00e6an, and other dualistic doctrines, and generally tended\nto interpret the Koran allegorically. [1056] A particular school\nof allegorists, the Bathenians, even tended to purify the idea of\ndeity in an agnostic direction. [1057] All of these would appear\nto have ranked genetically as Motazilites; and the manifold play\nof heretical thought gradually forced a certain habit of reasoning\non the orthodox, [1058] who as usual found their advantage in the\ndissidences of the dissenters. On the other hand, the Motazilites\nfound new resources in the study and translation of Greek works,\nscientific and philosophical. [1059] They were thus the prime factors,\non the Arab side, in the culture-evolution which went on under the\nearlier of the Abasside Khalifs (750-1258). Greek literature reached\nthem mainly through the Syrian Christians, in whose hands it had been\nput by the Nestorians, driven out of their scientific school at Edessa\nand exiled by Leo the Isaurian (716-741); [1060] possibly also in part\nthrough the philosophers who, on being exiled from Athens by Justinian,\nsettled for a time in Persia. [1061] The total result was that already\nin the ninth century, within two hundred years of the beginning of\nMohammed's preaching, the Saracens in Persia had reached not only a\nremarkable height of material civilization, their wealth exceeding\nthat of Byzantium, but a considerable though quasi-secret measure of\nscientific knowledge and rational thought, [1062] including even some\nmeasure of pure atheism. All forms of rationalism alike were called\nzendekism by the orthodox, the name having the epithetic force of\nthe Christian terms \"infidelity\" and \"atheism\". [1063]\n\nSecrecy was long imposed on the Motazilites by the orthodoxy\nof the Khalifs, [1064] who as a rule atoned for many crimes and\nabundant breaches of the law of the Koran by a devout profession\nof faith. Freethinking, however, had its periods of political\nprosperity. Even under the Ommayade dynasty, the Khalif Al Walid Ibn\nYazid (the eleventh of the race) was reputed to be of no religion,\nbut seems to have been rather a ruffian than a rationalist. [1065]\nUnder the Abassides culture made much more progress. The Khalif\nAl Mansour, though he played a very orthodox part, [1066] favoured\nthe Motazilites (754-775), being generally a patron of the sciences;\nand under him were made the first translations from the Greek. [1067]\nDespite his orthodoxy he encouraged science; and it was as insurgents\nand not as unbelievers that he destroyed the sect of Rewandites (a\nbranch of the anti-Moslem Ismailites), who are said to have believed\nin metempsychosis. [1068] Partly on political but partly also on\nreligious grounds his successor Al Mahdi made war on the Ismailites,\nwhom he regarded as atheists, and who appear to have been connected\nwith the Motazilite \"Brethren of Purity,\" [1069] destroying their\nbooks and causing others to be written against them. [1070] They were\nanti-Koranites; hardly atheists; but a kind of informal rationalism\napproaching to atheism, and involving unbelief in the Koran and the\nProphet, seems to have spread considerably, despite the slaughter\nof many unbelievers by Al Mahdi. Its source seems to have been\nPersian aversion to the alien creed. [1071] The great philosophic\ninfluence, again, was that of Aristotle; and though his abstract\nGod-idea was nominally adhered to, the scientific movement promoted\nabove all things the conception of a reign of law. [1072] Al Hadi,\nthe successor of Al Mahdi, persecuted much and killed many heretics;\nand Haroun Al Raschid (Aaron the Orthodox) menaced with death those\nwho held the moderately rational tenet that \"the Koran was created,\"\n[1073] as against the orthodox dogma (on all fours with the Brahmanic\ndoctrine concerning the Veda) that it was eternal in the heavens and\nuncreated. One of the rationalists, Al Mozdar, accused the orthodox\nparty of infidelity, as asserting two eternal things; and there was\ncurrent among the Motazilites of his day the saying that, \"had God\nleft men to their natural liberty, the Arabians could have composed\nsomething not only equal but superior to the Koran in eloquence,\nmethod, and purity of language.\" [1074]\n\nHaroun's crimes, however, consisted little in acts of persecution. The\nPersian Barmekides (the family of his first Vizier, surnamed Barmek)\nwere regarded as protectors of Motazilites; [1075] and one of the\nsons, Jaafer, was even suspected of atheism, all three indeed being\ncharged with it. [1076] Their destruction, on other grounds, does not\nseem to have altered the conditions for the thinkers; but Haroun's\nincompetent son Emin was a devotee and persecutor. His abler brother\nand conqueror Al Mamoun (813-833), on the other hand, directly favoured\nthe Motazilites, partly on political grounds, to strengthen himself\nwith the Persian party, but also on the ground of conviction. [1077]\nHe even imprisoned some of the orthodox theologians who maintained that\nthe Koran was not a created thing, though, like certain persecutors of\nother faiths, he had expressly declared himself in favour of persuasion\nas against coercion. [1078] In one case, following usage, he inflicted\na cruel torture. \"His fatal error,\" says a recent scholar, \"was that\nhe invoked the authority of the State in matters of the intellectual\nand religious life.\" [1079] Compared with others, certainly, he did\nnot carry his coercion far, though, on being once publicly addressed\nas \"Ameer of the Unbelievers,\" he caused the fanatic who said it to\nbe put to death. [1080] In private he was wont to conduct meetings\nfor discussion, attended by believers and unbelievers of every shade,\nat which the only restriction was that the appeal must be to reason,\nand never to the Koran. [1081] Concerning his personal bias, it\nis related that he had received from Kabul a book in old Persian,\nThe Eternal Reason, which taught that reason is the only basis for\nreligion, and that revelation cannot serve as a standing ground. [1082]\nThe story is interesting, but enigmatic, the origin of the book being\nuntraceable. Whatever were his views, his coercive policy against the\northodox extremists had the usual effect of stimulating reaction on\nthat side, and preparing the ultimate triumph of orthodoxy. [1083]\nThe fact remains, however, that Mamoun was of all the Khalifs the\ngreatest promoter of science [1084] and culture; the chief encourager\nof the study and translation of Greek literature; [1085] and, despite\nhis coercion of the theologians on the dogma of the eternity of the\nKoran, tolerant enough to put a Christian at the head of a college\nat Damascus, declaring that he chose him not for his religion but for\nhis science. In the same spirit he permitted the free circulation of\nthe apologetic treatise of the Armenian Christian Al Kindy, in which\nIslam and the Koran are freely criticized. As a ruler, too, he ranks\namong the best of his race for clemency, justice, and decency of life,\nalthough orthodox imputations were cast on his subordinates. His\nsuccessors Motasim and Wathek were of the same cast of opinion, the\nlatter being, however, fanatical on behalf of his rationalistic view\nof the Koran as a created thing. [1086]\n\nA violent orthodox reaction set in under the worthless and Turk-ruled\nKhalif Motawakkel [1087] (847-861), by whose time the Khalifate\nwas in a state of political decadence, partly from the economic\nexhaustion following on its tyrannous and extortionate rule; partly\nfrom the divisive tendencies of its heterogeneous sections; partly\nfrom the corrupting tendency of all despotic power. [1088] Despite\nthe official restoration of orthodoxy, the private cultivation\nof science and philosophy proceeded for a time; the study and\ntranslation of Greek books continued; [1089] and rationalism of a\nkind seems to have subsisted more or less secretly to the end. In\nthe tenth century it is said to have reached even the unlearned; and\nthough the Motazilites gradually drifted into a scholastic orthodoxy,\ndownright unbelief came up alongside, [1090] albeit secretly. Faith\nin Mohammed's mission and law began again to shake; and the learned\ndisregarded its prescriptions. Mystics professed to find the way\nto God without the Koran. Many decided that religion was useful for\nregulating the people, but was not for the wise. On the other side,\nhowever, the orthodox condemned all science as leading to unbelief,\n[1091] and developed an elaborate and quasi-systematic theology. It\nwas while the scientific encyclopedists of Bassorah were amassing the\nknowledge which, through the Moors, renewed thought in the West, that\nAl Ashari built up the Kal\u00e2m or scholastic theology which thenceforth\nreigned in the Mohammedan East; [1092] and the philosopher Al Gazzali\n(or Gazel), on his part, employed the ancient and modern device of\nturning a profession of philosophical scepticism to the account of\northodoxy. [1093]\n\nIn the struggle between science and religion, in a politically\ndecadent State, the latter inevitably secured the administrative\npower. [1094] Under the Khalifs Motamid (d. 892) and Motadhed (d. 902)\nall science and philosophy were proscribed, and booksellers were put\nupon their oath not to sell any but orthodox books. [1095] Thus, though\nphilosophy and science had secretly survived, when the political end\ncame the popular faith was in much the same state as it had been under\nHaroun Al Raschid. Under Islam as under all the faiths of the world,\nin the east as in the west, the mass of the people remained ignorant\nas well as poor; and the learning and skill of the scholars served\nonly to pass on the saved treasure of Greek thought and science to\nthe new civilization of Europe. The fact that the age of military and\npolitical decadence was that of the widest diffusion of rationalism\nis naturally fastened on as giving the explanation of the decline;\nbut the inference is pure fallacy. The Bagdad Khalifate declined as\nthe Christianized Roman Empire declined, from political and external\ncauses; and the Turks who overthrew it proceeded to overthrow Christian\nByzantium, where rationalism never reared its head.\n\n\n The conventional view is thus set forth in a popular work (The\n Saracens, by Arthur Gilman, 1887, p. 385): \"Unconsciously Mamun\n began a process by which that implicit faith which had been\n at once the foundation and the inspiration of Islam, which had\n nerved its warriors in their terrible warfare, and had brought\n the nation out of its former obscurity to the foremost position\n among the peoples of the world, was to be taken from them.\" We\n have seen that this view is entirely erroneous as regards the\n rise of the Saracen power; and it is no less so as regards\n the decline. At the outset there had been no \"implicit faith\"\n among the conquerors. The Eastern Saracens, further, had been\n decisively defeated by the Byzantines in the very first flush of\n their fanaticism and success; and the Western had been routed by\n Charles Martel long before they had any philosophy. There was\n no overthrow of faith among the warriors of the Khalifate. The\n enlistment of Turkish mercenaries by Mamoun and Motasim, by way of\n being independent of the Persian and Arab factions in the army and\n the State, introduced an element which, at first purely barbaric,\n became as orthodox as the men of Haroun's day had been. Yet the\n decadence, instead of being checked, was furthered.\n\n Nor were the strifes set up by the rationalistic view of the Koran\n nearly so destructive as the mere faction-fights and sectarian\n insurrections which began with Motawakkel. The falling-away\n of cities and provinces under the feeble Moktader (908-932)\n had nothing whatever to do with opinions, but was strictly\n analogous to the dissolution of the kingdom of Charlemagne under\n his successors, through the rise of new provincial energies;\n and the tyranny of the Turkish mercenaries was on all fours with\n that of the Pretorians of the Roman Empire, and with that of the\n Janissaries in later Turkey. The writer under notice has actually\n recorded (p. 408) that the warlike sect of Ismailitic Karmathians,\n who did more than any other enemy to dismember the Khalifate, were\n unbelievers in the Koran, deniers of revelation, and disregarders\n of prayer. The later Khalifs, puppets in the hands of the Turks,\n were one and all devout believers.\n\n On the other hand, fresh Moslem and non-Moslem dynasties arose\n alternately as the conditions and opportunities determined. Jenghiz\n Khan, who overran Asia, was no Moslem; neither was Tamerlane;\n but new Moslem conquerors did overrun India, as pagan Alexander\n had done in his day. Theological ideas counted for as little in\n one case as in the other. Sultan Mahmoud of Ghazni (997-1030), who\n reared a new empire on the basis of the province of Khorassan and\n the kingdom of Bokhara, and who twelve times successfully invaded\n India, happened to be of Turkish stock; but he is also recorded\n to have been in his youth a doubter of a future state, as well as\n of his personal legitimacy. His later parade of piety (as to which\n see Baron De Slane's tr. of Ibn Khallikan's Biog. Dict. iii, 334)\n is thus a trifle suspect (British India, in Edin. Cab. Lib. 3rd\n ed. i, 189, following Ferishta); and his avarice seems to have\n animated him to the full as much as his faith, which was certainly\n not more devout than that of the Brahmans of Somnauth, whose\n hold he captured. (Cp. Prof. E. G. Browne, A Literary History\n of Persia, ii (1906), 119.) During his reign, besides, unbelief\n was rife in his despite (Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen, iii, 72),\n though he burned the books of the Motazilites, besides crucifying\n many Isma\u00eflian heretics (Browne, p. 160). The conventional theorem\n as to the political importance of faith, in short, will not bear\n investigation. Even Freeman here sets it aside (Hist. and Conq. of\n the Saracens, p. 124).\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4\n\nIt is in the later and nominally decadent ages of the Bagdad Khalifate,\nwhen science and culture and even industry relatively prospered by\nreason of the personal impotence of the Khalifs, that we meet with\nthe most pronounced and the most perspicacious of the Freethinkers of\nIslam. In the years 973-1057 there dwelt in the little Syrian town\nof Marratun-Numan the blind poet Abu'l-ala-al-Ma'arri, who wrote a\nparody of the Koran, [1096] and in his verse derided all religions as\nalike absurd, and yet was for some reason never persecuted. He has\nbeen pronounced \"incomparably greater\" than Omar Khayy\u00e1m \"both as\na poet and as an agnostic.\" [1097] One of his sayings was that \"The\nworld holds two classes of men--intelligent men without religion, and\nreligious men without intelligence.\" [1098] He may have escaped on the\nstrength of a character for general eccentricity, for he was an ardent\nvegetarian and an opponent of all parentage, declaring that to bring\na child into the world was to add to the sum of suffering. [1099]\nThe fact that he was latterly a man of wealth, yet in person an\nascetic and a generous giver, may be the true explanation. Whatever\nbe the explanation of his immunity, the frankness of his heterodoxy\nis memorable. Nourished perhaps by a temper of protest set up in him\nby the blindness which fell upon him in childhood after smallpox, the\nspirit of reason seems to have been effectually developed in him by a\nstay of a year and a-half at Bagdad, where, in the days of Al Mansour,\n\"Christians and Jews, Buddhists and Zoroastrians, Sabians and Sufis,\nmaterialists and rationalists,\" met and communed. [1100] Before his\nvisit, his poems are substantially orthodox; later, their burden\nchanges. He denies a resurrection, and is \"wholly incredulous of any\ndivine revelation. Religion, as he conceives it, is a product of the\nhuman mind, in which men believe through force of habit and education,\nnever stopping to consider whether it is true.\" \"His belief in God\namounted, as it would seem, to little beyond a conviction that all\nthings are governed by inexorable Fate.\" Concerning creeds he sings\nin one stave:--\n\n\n Now this religion happens to prevail\n Until by that one it is overthrown;\n Because men will not live with men alone,\n But always with another fairy-tale [1101]--\n\n\na summing-up not to be improved upon here.\n\nA century later still, and in another region, we come upon the (now)\nmost famous of all Eastern freethinkers, Omar Khayy\u00e1m. He belonged to\nNaish\u00e1p\u00far in Khorassan, a province which had long been known for its\nrationalism, [1102] and which had been part of the nucleus of the great\nAsiatic kingdom created by Sultan Mahmoud of Ghazni at the beginning\nof the eleventh century, soon after the rise of the Fatimite dynasty\nin Egypt. Under that Sultan flourished Ferdusi (Firdausi), one of\nthe chief glories of Persian verse. After Mahmoud's death, his realm\nand parts of the Khalifate in turn were overrun by the Seljuk Turks\nunder Togrul Beg; under whose grandson Malik it was that Omar Khayy\u00e1m,\nastronomer and poet, studied and sang in Khorassan. The Turk-descended\nShah favoured science as strongly as any of the Abassides; and when he\ndecided to reform the calendar, Omar was one of the eight experts he\nemployed to do it. Thus was set up for the East the Jal\u00e1li calendar,\nwhich, as Gibbon has noted, [1103] \"surpasses the Julian and approaches\nthe accuracy of the Gregorian style.\" Omar was, in fact, one of the\nablest mathematicians of his age. [1104]\n\nHis name, Omar ibn Ibrahim al-Khayy\u00e1mi, seems to point to Arab\ndescent. \"Al-Khayy\u00e1mmi\" means \"the tent-maker\"; but in no biographic\naccount of him is there the slightest proof that he or his father ever\nbelonged to that or any other handicraft. [1105] Always he figures\nas a scholar and a man of science. Since, therefore, the patronymic\nal-Khayy\u00e1mi is fairly common now among Arabs, and also among the still\nnomadic tribes of Khuzistan and Luristan, the reasonable presumption\nis that it was in his case a patronymic also. [1106] His father being\na man of some substance, he had a good schooling, and is even described\nin literary tradition as having become an expert Koran scholar, by the\nadmission of the orthodox Al Gazzali, who, however, is represented\nin another record as looking with aversion on Omar's scientific\nlore. [1107] The poet may have had his lead to freethought during his\ntravels after graduating at Naishapur, when he visited Samarkhand,\nBokhara, Ispahan, and Balk. [1108] He seems to have practised astrology\nfor a living, even as did Kepler in Europe five hundred years later;\nand he perhaps dabbled somewhat in medicine. [1109] A hostile orthodox\naccount of him, written in the thirteenth century, represents him as\n\"versed in all the wisdom of the Greeks,\" and as wont to insist on\nthe necessity of studying science on Greek lines. [1110] Of his prose\nworks, two, which were of standard authority, dealt respectively with\nprecious stones and climatology. [1111]\n\nBeyond question the poet-astronomer was undevout; and his astronomy\ndoubtless helped to make him so. One contemporary writes: \"I did not\nobserve that he had any great belief in astrological predictions;\nnor have I seen or heard of any of the great (scientists) who had such\nbelief.\" [1112] The biographical sketch by Ibn al Kifti, before cited,\ndeclares that he \"performed pilgrimages not from piety but from fear,\"\nhaving reason to dread the hostility of contemporaries who knew or\ndivined his unbelief; and there is a story of a treacherous pupil\nwho sought to bring him into public odium. [1113] In point of fact he\nwas not, any more than Abu' l-Ala, a convinced atheist, but he had no\nsympathy with popular religion. \"He gave his adherence to no religious\nsect. Agnosticism, not faith, is the keynote of his works.\" [1114]\nAmong the sects he saw everywhere strife and hatred in which he could\nhave no part. His earlier English translators, reflecting the tone\nof the first half of the last century, have thought fit to moralize\ncensoriously over his attitude to life; and the first, Prof. Cowell,\nhas austerely decided that Omar's gaiety is \"but a risus sardonicus\nof despair.\" [1115] Even the subtler Fitzgerald, who has so admirably\nrendered some of the audacities which Cowell thought \"better left in\nthe original Persian,\" has the air of apologizing for them when he\npartly concurs in the same estimate. But despair is not the name for\nthe humorous melancholy which Omar, like Abu' l-Ala, weaves around\nhis thoughts on the riddle of the universe. Like Abu' l-Ala, again,\nhe talks at times of God, but with small signs of faith. In epigrams\nwhich have seldom been surpassed for their echoing depth, he disposes\nof the theistic solution and the lure of immortality; whereafter,\ninstead of offering another shibboleth, he sings of wine and roses,\nof the joys of life and of their speedy passage; not forgetting\nto add a stipulation for beneficence. [1116] It was his way of\nturning into music the undertone of all mortality; and that it is\nnow preferable, for any refined intelligence, to the affectation of\nzest for a \"hereafter\" on which no one wants to enter, would seem to\nbe proved by the remarkable vogue he has secured in modern England,\nchiefly through the incomparable version of Fitzgerald. Much of the\nattraction, certainly, is due to the canorous cadence and felicitous\nphrasing of those singularly fortunate stanzas; and a similar handling\nmight have won as high a repute among us for Abu' l-Ala, whom, as we\nhave seen, some of our Orientalists set higher, and whose verse as\nrecently rendered into English has an indubitable charm. Fitzgerald,\non the other hand, has added much to Omar. But the thoughts of Omar\nremain the kernels of Fitzgerald's verses; and whereas the counsel,\n\"Gather ye roses while ye may,\" is common enough, it must be the\nweightier bearing of his deeper and more daring ideas that gives\nthe quatrains their main hold to-day. In the more exact rendering of\nthose translators who closely reproduce the original he remains beyond\nquestion a freethinker, [1117] placing ethic above creed, though much\ngiven to the praise of wine. Never popular in the Moslem world, [1118]\nhe has had in ours an unparalleled welcome; and it must be because\nfrom his scientific vantage ground in the East, in the period of the\nNorman Conquest, he had attained in some degree the vision and chimed\nwith the mood of a later and larger age.\n\nThat Omar in his day and place was not alone in his mood lies on\nthe face of his verse. Many quatrains ascribed to him, indeed,\nare admittedly assignable to other Persian poets; and one of his\nEnglish editors notes that \"the poetry of rebellion and revolt from\northodox opinion, which is supposed to be peculiar to him, may be\ntraced in the works of his predecessor Avicenna, as well as in those\nof Afdal-i-K\u00e1sh\u00ed, and others of his successors.\" [1119] The allusions\nto the tavern, a thing suspect and illicit for Islam, show that he\nwas in a society more Persian than Arab, one in which was to be found\nnearly all of the free intellectual life possible in the Moslem East;\n[1120] and doubtless Persian thought, always leaning to heresy, and\ncharged with germs of scientific speculation from immemorial antiquity,\nprepared his rationalism; though his monism excludes alike dualism\nand theism. \"One for two I never did misread\" is his summing up of\nhis philosophy. [1121]\n\nBut the same formula might serve for the philosophy of the sect of\nSufis, [1122] who in all ages seem to have included unbelievers as\nwell as devoutly mystical pantheists. Founded, it is said, by a woman,\nRabia, in the first century of the Hej'ra, [1123] the sect really\ncarries on a pre-Mohammedan mysticism, and may as well derive from\nGreece [1124] as from Asia. Its original doctrine of divine love, as a\nreaction against Moslem austerity, gave it a fixed hold in Persia, and\nbecame the starting point of innumerable heterodox doctrines. [1125]\nUnder the Khalif Moktader, a Persian Sufi is recorded to have been\ntortured and executed for teaching that every man is God. [1126] In\nlater ages, Sufiism became loosely associated with every species of\nindependent thinking; and there is reason to suspect that the later\npoets Sadi (fl. thirteenth century) and Hafiz [1127] (fl. fourteenth\ncentury), as well as hundreds of lesser status, held under the name of\nSufiism views of life not far removed from those of Omar Khayy\u00e1m; who,\nhowever, had bantered the Sufis so unmercifully that they are said to\nhave dreaded and hated him. [1128] In any case, Sufiism has included\nsuch divergent types as Al Gazzali, [1129] the skeptical defender of\nthe faith; devout pantheistic poets such as J\u00e2mi; [1130] and singers\nof love and wine such as Hafiz, whose extremely concrete imagery is\ncertainly not as often allegorical as serious Sufis assert, though no\ndoubt it is sometimes so. [1131] It even became nominally associated\nwith the destructive Isma\u00eflitism of the sect of the Assassins, whose\nfounder, Hassan, had been the schoolfellow of Omar Khayy\u00e1m. [1132]\n\nOf Sufiism as a whole it may be said that whether as inculcating\nquietism, or as widening the narrow theism of Islam into pantheism,\nor as sheltering an unaggressive rationalism, it has made for freedom\nand humanity in the Mohammedan world, lessening the evils of ignorance\nwhere it could not inspire progress. [1133] It long anticipated\nthe semi-rationalism of those Christians who declare heaven and\nhell to be names for bodily or mental states in this life. [1134]\nOn its more philosophic side too it connects with the long movement\nof speculation which, passing into European life through the Western\nSaracens, revived Greek philosophic thought in Christendom after the\nnight of the Middle Ages, at the same time that Saracen science passed\non the more precious seeds of real knowledge to the new civilization.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 5\n\nThere is the less need to deal at any length in these pages with the\nprofessed philosophy of the eastern Arabs, seeing that it was from\nfirst to last but little associated with any direct or practical\nrepudiation of dogma and superstition. [1135] What freethought there\nwas had only an unwritten currency, and is to be traced, as so often\nhappens in later European history, through the protests of orthodox\napologists. Thus the Persian Al Gazzali, in the preface to his work,\nThe Destruction of the Philosophers, declares of the subjects of\nhis attack that \"the source of all their errors is the trust they\nhave in the names of Sokrates, Hippokrates, Plato, and Aristotle; the\nadmiration they profess for their genius and subtlety; and the belief,\nfinally, that those great masters have been led by the profundity of\ntheir faculty to reject all religion, and to regard its precepts as\nthe product of artifice and imposture.\" [1136] This implies an abundant\nrationalism, [1137] but, as always, the unwritten unbelief lost ground,\nits non-publication being the proof that orthodoxy prevailed against\nit. Movements which were originally liberal, such as that of the\nMotecallem\u00een, ran at length to mere dialectic defence of the faith\nagainst the philosophers. Fighting the Aristotelian doctrine of the\neternity of matter, they sought to found a new theistic creationism\non the atoms of Demokritos, making God the creator of the atoms, and\nnegating the idea of natural law. [1138] Eastern Moslem philosophy\nin general followed some such line of reaction and petrifaction. The\nrationalistic Al Kindi (fl. 850) seems to have been led to philosophize\nby the Motazilite problems; but his successors mostly set them\naside, developing an abstract logic and philosophy on Greek bases,\nor studying science for its own sake, though as a rule professing a\ndevout acceptance of the Koran. [1139] Such was Avicenna (Ibn Sina:\nd. 1037), who taught that men should revere the faith in which they\nwere educated; though in comparison with his predecessor Al Farabi,\nwho leant to Platonic mysticism, he is a rationalistic Aristotelian,\n[1140] with a strong leaning to pantheism. Of him an Arabic historian\nwrites that in his old age he attached himself to the court of the\nheretical Ala-ud-Dawla at Ispahan, in order that he might freely\nwrite his own heretical works. [1141] After Al Gazzali (d. 1111),\nwho attacked both Avicenna [1142] and Al Farabi somewhat in the spirit\nof Cicero's skeptical Cotta attacking the Stoics and the Epicureans,\n[1143] there seems to have been a further development of skepticism,\nthe skeptical defence of the faith having the same unsettling tendency\nin his as in later hands. Ibn Khaldun seems to denounce in the name\nof faith his mixture of pietism and philosophy; and Makrisi speaks\nof his doctrines as working great harm to religion [1144] among the\nMoslems. But the socio-political conditions were too unpropitious\nto permit of any continuous advance on rational lines. Ere long an\nuncritical orthodoxy prevailed in the Eastern schools, and it is\nin Moorish Spain that we are to look for the last efforts of Arab\nphilosophy.\n\nThe course of culture-evolution there broadly corresponds with that\nof the Saracen civilization in the East. In Spain the Moors came into\ncontact with the Roman imperial polity, and at the same time with the\ndifferent culture elements of Judaism and Christianity. To both of\nthese faiths they gave complete toleration, thus strengthening their\nown in a way that no other policy could have availed to do. Whatever\nwas left of Gr\u00e6co-Roman art, handicraft, and science, saving the\narts of portraiture, they encouraged; and whatever of agricultural\nscience remained from Carthaginian times they zealously adopted and\nimproved. Like their fellow-Moslems in the East, they further learned\nall the science that the preserved literature of Greece could give\nthem. The result was that under energetic and enlightened khalifs\nthe Moorish civilization became the centre of light and knowledge\nas well as of material prosperity for medieval Europe. Whatever of\nscience the world possessed was to be found in their schools; and\nthither in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries flocked students\nfrom the Christian States of western and northern Europe. It was in\nwhole or in part from Saracen hands that the modern world received\nastronomy, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, botany, jurisprudence,\nand philosophy. They were, in fact, the revivers of civilization after\nthe age of barbarian Christianity. [1145] And while the preservation\nof Greek science, lost from the hands of Christendom, would have been\na notable service enough, the Arabs did much more. Alhazen (d. 1038)\nis said to have done the most original work in optics before Newton,\n[1146] and in the same century Arab medicine and chemistry made\noriginal advances. [1147]\n\nWhile the progressive period lasted, there was of course an abundance\nof practical freethought. But after a marvellously rapid rise, the\nMoorish civilization was arrested and paralysed by the internal and the\nexternal forces of anti-civilization--religious fanaticism within and\nChristian hostility without. Everywhere we have seen culture-progress\ndepending more or less clearly on the failure to find solutions for\npolitical problems. The most fatal defect of all Arab civilization--a\ndefect involved in its first departure by way of conquest, and in\nits fixedly hostile relation to the Christian States, which kept it\nconstantly on a military basis--was the total failure to substitute any\nmeasure of constitutional rule for despotism. It was thus politically\nunprogressive, even while advancing in other respects. But in other\nrespects also it soon reached the limits set by the conditions.\n\nWhereas in Persia the Arabs overran an ancient civilization,\ncontaining many elements of rationalism which acted upon their own\ncreed, the Moors in Spain found a population only slightly civilized,\nand predisposed by its recent culture, as well as by its natural\nconditions, [1148] to fanatical piety. Thus when, under their tolerant\nrule, Jews and Christians in large numbers embraced Islam, the new\nconverts became the most fanatical of all. [1149] All rationalism\nexisted in their despite, and, abounding as they did, they tended to\ngain power whenever the Khalif was weak, and to rebel furiously when\nhe was hostile. When, accordingly, the growing pressure of the feudal\nChristian power in Northern Spain at length became a menacing danger\nto the Moorish States, weakened by endless intestine strife, the one\nresource was to call in a new force of Moslem fanaticism in the shape\nof the Almoravide [1150] Berbers, who, to the utmost of their power,\nput down everything scientific and rationalistic, and established\na rigid Koranolatry. After a time they in turn, growing degenerate\nwhile remaining orthodox, were overrun by a new influx of conquering\nfanatics from Africa, the Almohades, who, failing to add political\nscience to their faith, went down in the thirteenth century before\nthe Christians in Spain, in a great battle in which their prince sat\nin their sight with the Koran in his hand. [1151] Here there could\nbe no pretence that \"unbelief\" wrought the downfall. The Jonah of\nfreethought, so to speak, had been thrown overboard; and the ship\nwent down with the flag of faith flying at every masthead. [1152]\n\nIt was in the last centuries of Moorish rule that there lived the\nphilosophers whose names connect it with the history of European\nthought, retaining thus a somewhat factitious distinction as compared\nwith the men of science, many of them nameless, who developed and\ntransmitted the sciences. The pantheistic Avempace (Ibn Badja:\nd. 1138), who defended the reason against the theistic skepticism\nof Al Gazzali, [1153] was physician, astronomer, and mathematician,\nas well as metaphysician; as was Abubacer (Abu Bekr, also known as\nIbn Tophail: d. 1185), who regarded religious systems as \"only a\nnecessary means of discipline for the multitude,\" [1154] and as being\nmerely symbols of the higher truth reached by the philosopher. Both\nmen, however, tended rather to mysticism than to exact thought;\nand Abubacer's treatise, The Self-taught Philosopher, which has\nbeen translated into Latin (by Pococke in 1671), English, Dutch,\nand German, has had the singular fortune of being adopted by the\nQuakers as a work of edification. [1155]\n\nVery different was the part played by Averro\u00ebs (Ibn Roshd), the\nmost famous of all Moslem thinkers, because the most far-reaching\nin his influence on European thought. For the Middle Ages he was\npre-eminently the expounder of Aristotle, and it is as setting forth,\nin that capacity, the pantheistic doctrine which affirms the eternity\nof the material universe and makes the individual soul emanate from\nand return to the soul of all, that he becomes important alike in\nMoslem and Christian thought. Diverging from the asceticism and\nmysticism of Avempace and Abubacer, and strenuously opposing the\nanti-rationalism of Al Gazzali, against whose chief treatise he penned\nhis own Destruction of the Destruction of the Philosophers, Averro\u00ebs is\nthe least mystical and the most rational of the Arab thinkers. [1156]\nAt nearly all vital points he oppugns the religious view of things,\ndenying bodily resurrection, which he treats (here following all his\npredecessors in heretical Arab philosophy) as a vulgar fable; [1157]\nand making some approach to a scientific treatment of the problem of\n\"Freewill\" as against, on the one hand, the ethic-destroying doctrine\nof the Motecallem\u00een, who made God's will the sole standard of right,\nand affirmed predestination (Jabarism); and against, on the other hand,\nthe anti-determinism of the Kadarites. [1158] Even in his politics\nhe was original; and in his paraphrase of Plato's Republic he has\nsaid a notable word for women, pointing out how small an opening is\noffered for their faculties in Moslem society. [1159] Of all tyrannies,\nhe boldly declared, the worst is that of priests.\n\nIn time, however, a consciousness of the vital hostility of his\ndoctrine to current creeds, and of the danger he consequently ran,\nmade him, like so many of his later disciples, anxious to preserve\npriestly favour. As regards religion he was more complaisant than\nAbubacer, pronouncing Mohammedanism the most perfect of all popular\nsystems, [1160] and preaching a patriotic conformity on that score\nto philosophic students.\n\nFrom him derives the formula of a two-fold truth--one truth for\nscience or philosophy, and another for religion--which played so\nlarge a part in the academic life of Christendom for centuries. [1161]\nIn two of his treatises, On the harmony of religion with philosophy\nand On the demonstration of religious dogmas, he even takes up a\nconservative attitude, proclaiming that the wise man never utters a\nword against the established creed, and going so far as to say that\nthe freethinker who attacks it, inasmuch as he undermines popular\nvirtue, deserves death. [1162] Even in rebutting, as entirely absurd,\nthe doctrine of the creation of the world, and ascribing its currency\nto the stupefying power of habit, he takes occasion to remark piously\nthat those whose religion has no better basis than faith are frequently\nseen, on taking up scientific studies, to become utter zendeks. [1163]\nBut he lived in an age of declining culture and reviving fanaticism;\nand all his conformities could not save him from proscription, at\nthe hands of a Khalif who had long favoured him, for the offence\nof cultivating Greek antiquity to the prejudice of Islam. All study\nof Greek philosophy was proscribed at the same time, and all books\nfound on the subject were destroyed. [1164] Disgraced and banished\nfrom court, Averro\u00ebs died at Morocco in 1198; other philosophers were\nsimilarly persecuted; [1165] and soon afterwards the Moorish rule in\nSpain came to an end in the odour of sanctity. [1166]\n\nSo complete was now the defeat of the intellectual life in Western\nIslam that the ablest writer produced by the Arab race in the period\nof the Renaissance, Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (1332-1406), writes as a\nbigoted believer in revelation, though his writings on the science of\nhistory were the most philosophic since the classic period, being out\nof all comparison superior to those of the Christian chroniclers of\nhis age. [1167] So rationalistic, indeed, is his method, relatively\nto his time, that it is permissible to suspect him of seeking to\npropitiate the bigots. [1168] But neither they nor his race in general\ncould learn the sociological lessons he had it in him to teach. Their\ndevelopment was arrested for that period.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 6\n\nOf later freethought under Islam there is little to record as regards\nliterary output, but the phenomenon has never disappeared. Buckle,\nin his haste, declared that he could write the history of Turkish\ncivilization on the back of his hand; [1169] but even in Turkey,\nat a time of minimum friendly contact with other European life,\nthere have been traces of a spirit of freethinking nearly as active\nas that astir in Christendom at the same period. Thus at the end of\nthe seventeenth century we have circumstantial testimony to the vogue\nof a doctrine of atheistic Naturalism at Constantinople. The holders\nof this doctrine were called Muserin, a term said to mean \"The true\nsecret is with us.\" They affirmed a creative and all-sustaining\nNature, in which Man has his place like the plants and like the\nplanets; and they were said to form a very large number, including\nCadis and other learned as well as some renegade persons. [1170] But\nTurkish culture-conditions in the eighteenth century were not such as\nto permit of intellectual progress on native lines; and to this day\nrationalism in that as in other Moslem countries is mainly a matter of\nreflex action set up by the impact of European scientific knowledge,\nor social contact. There is no modern rationalistic literature.\n\nMotazilism, so-called, is still heard of in Arabia itself. [1171]\nIn the Ottoman Empire, indeed, it is little in evidence, standing\nnow as it does for a species of broad-church liberalism, analogous\nto Christian Unitarianism; [1172] but in Persia the ancient leaning\nto rationalism is still common. The old-world pantheism which we\nhave seen conserved in Omar Khayy\u00e1m gave rise in later centuries to\nsimilar developments among the Parsees both in Persia and in India;\nand from the sixteenth century onwards there are clear traces among\nthem of a number of rationalizing heresies, varying from pantheism\nand simple deism to atheism and materialism. [1173] In Persia to-day\nthere are many thinkers of these casts of thought. [1174] About 1830 a\nBritish traveller estimated that, assuming there were between 200,000\nand 300,000 Sufis in the country, those figures probably fell greatly\nshort of the number \"secretly inclined to infidelity.\" [1175] Whatever\nbe the value of the figures, the statement is substantially confirmed\nby later observers; [1176] missionaries reporting independently that\nin Persia \"most of the higher class, of the nobility, and of the\nlearned professions ... are at heart infidels or sceptics.\" [1177]\nPersian freethought is of course, in large part, the freethought of\nignorance, and seems to co-exist with astrological superstition;\n[1178] but there is obviously needed only science, culture, and\nmaterial development to produce, on such a basis, a renascence as\nremarkable as that of modern Japan.\n\nThe verdict of Vamb\u00e9ry is noteworthy: \"In all Asia, with the exception\nof China, there is no land and no people wherein there is so little\nof religious enthusiasm as in Persia; where freethinkers are so\nlittle persecuted, and can express their opinions with so little\ndisturbance; and where, finally, as a natural consequence, the old\nreligious structure can be so easily shattered by the outbreak of new\nenthusiasts. Whoever has read Khayy\u00e1m's blasphemies against God and\nthe prophet, his jesting verses against the holiest ceremonies and\ncommandments of Islam; and whoever knows the vogue of this book and\nother works directed against the current religion, will not wonder\nthat B\u00e2b with the weapon of the Word won so many hearts in so short\na time.\" [1179]\n\nThe view that B\u00e2bism affiliates to rationalism is to be understood in\nthe sense that the atmosphere of the latter made possible the growth of\nthe former, its adherents being apparently drawn rather from the former\northodox. [1180] The young founder of the sect, Mirza-Ali-Mohammed,\ndeclared himself \"The B\u00e2b,\" i.e. \"the Gate\" (to the knowledge of God),\nas against the orthodox Moslem teachers who taught that \"since the\ntwelve Im\u00e2ms, the Gate of Knowledge is closed.\" Hence the name of\nthe sect. Mirza-Ali, who showed a strong tendency to intolerance,\nquickly created an aggressive movement, which was for a time put down\nby the killing of himself and many of his followers.\n\nSince his execution the sect has greatly multiplied and its doctrines\nhave much widened. For a time the founder's intolerant teachings\nwere upheld by Ez\u00e9l, the founder of one of the two divisions into\nwhich the party speedily fell; while his rival B\u00e9ha, who gave himself\nout as the true Prophet, of whom the B\u00e2b was merely the precursor,\ndeveloped a notably cosmopolitan and equalitarian doctrine, including a\nvague belief in immortality, without heaven, hell, or purgatory. Ez\u00e9l\neventually abandoned his claims, and his followers now number less\nthan two thousand; while the B\u00e9ha\u00eftes number nearly three millions\nout of the seven millions of the Persian population, and some two\nmillions in the adjacent countries. The son of B\u00e9ha, Abbas Effendi,\nwho bears the title of \"The Great Branch,\" now rules the cult, which\npromises to be the future religion of Persia. [1181] One of the most\nnotable phenomena of the earlier movement was the entrance of a young\nwoman, daughter of a leading ulema, who for the first time in Moslem\nhistory threw off the regulation veil and preached the equality of\nthe sexes. [1182] She was one of those first executed. Persecution,\nhowever, has long ceased, and as a result of her lead the position\nof woman in the cult is exceptionally good. Thus the last century\nhas witnessed within the sphere of Islam, so commonly supposed to\nbe impervious to change, one of the most rapid and radical religious\nchanges recorded in history. There is therefore no ground for holding\nthat in other Moslem countries progress is at an end.\n\nEverything depends, broadly speaking, on the possibilities of\nculture-contact. The changes in Persia are traceable to the element\nof heretical habit which has persisted from pre-Moslem times; future\nand more scientific development will depend upon the assimilation\nof European knowledge. In Egypt, before the period of European\nintervention, freethinking was at a minimum; and though toleration\nwas well developed as regarded Christians and Jews, freethinking\nMoslems dared not avow themselves. [1183] Latterly rationalism tends to\nspread in Egypt as in other Moslem countries; even under Mohammed Ali\nthe ruling Turks had begun to exhibit a \"remarkable indifference to\nreligion,\" and had \"begun to undermine the foundations of El-Islam\";\nand so shrewd and dispassionate an observer as Lane expected that\nthe common people would \"soon assist in the work,\" and that \"the\noverthrow of the whole fabric may reasonably be expected to ensue at\na period not very remote.\" [1184] To evolve such a change there will\nbe required a diffusion of culture which is not at all likely to be\nrapid under any Government; but in any case the ground that is being\nlost by Islam in Egypt is not being retaken by Christianity.\n\nIn the other British dominions, Mohammedans, though less ready than\neducated Hindus to accept new ideas, cannot escape the rationalizing\ninfluence of European culture. Nor was it left to the British to\nintroduce the rationalistic spirit in Moslem India. At the end of\nthe sixteenth century the eclectic Emperor Akbar, [1185] himself a\ndevout worshipper of the Sun, [1186] is found tolerantly comparing\nall religions, [1187] depreciating Islam, [1188] and arriving at\nsuch general views on the equivalence of all creeds, and on the\nimprobability of eternal punishment, [1189] as pass for liberal\namong Christians in our own day. If such views could be generated\nby a comparison of the creeds of pre-British India they must needs\nbe encouraged now. The Mohammedan mass is of course still deeply\nfanatical, and habitually superstitious; but not any more immovably so\nthan the early Saracens. In the eighteenth century arose the fanatical\nWahabi sect, which aims at a puritanic restoration of primeval Islam,\nfreed from the accretions of later belief, such as saint-worship; but\nthe movement, though variously estimated, has had small success, and\nseems destined to extinction. [1190] Of the traditional seventy-three\nsects in Islam only four to-day count as orthodox. [1191]\n\nIt may be worth while, in conclusion, to note that the comparative\nprosperity or progressiveness of Islam as a proselytizing and\ncivilizing force in Africa--a phenomenon regarded even by some\nChristians with satisfaction, and by some with alarm [1192]--is not\nstrictly or purely a religious phenomenon. Moslem civilization suits\nwith negro life in Africa in virtue not of the teaching of the Koran,\nbut of the comparative nearness of the Arab to the barbaric life. He\ninterbreeds with the natives, fraternizes with them (when not engaged\nin kidnapping them), and so stimulates their civilization; where\nthe European colonist, looking down on them as an inferior species,\nisolates, depresses, and degrades them. It is thus conceivable that\nthere is a future for Islam at the level of a low culture-stage; but\nthe Arab and Turkish races out of Africa are rather the more likely\nto concur in the rationalistic movement of the higher civilization.\n\nEven in Africa, however, a systematic observer notes, and predicts the\nextension of, \"a strong tendency on the part of the Mohammedans towards\nan easy-going rationalism, such as is fast making way in Algeria, where\nthe townspeople and the cultivators in the more settled districts,\nconstantly coming in contact with Europeans, are becoming indifferent\nto the more inconvenient among their Mohammedan observances, and\nare content to live with little more religion than an observance of\nthe laws, and a desire to get on well with their neighbours.\" [1193]\nThus at every culture-level we see the persistence of that force of\nintellectual variation which is the subject of our inquiry.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nCHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES\n\n\nIt would be an error, in view of the biological generalization\nproceeded on and the facts noted in this inquiry, to suppose that\neven in the Dark Ages, so called, [1194] the spirit of critical\nreason was wholly absent from the life of Christendom. It had simply\ngrown very rare, and was the more discountenanced where it strove\nto speak. But the most systematic suppression of heresies could\nnot secure that no private heresy should remain. As Voltaire has\nremarked, there was \"nearly always a small flock separated from the\ngreat.\" [1195] Apart too from such quasi-rationalism as was involved\nin semi-Pelagianism, [1196] critical heresy chronically arose even\nin the Byzantine provinces, which by the curtailment of the Empire\nhad been left the most homogeneous and therefore the most manageable\nof the Christian States. It is necessary to note those survivals of\npartial freethinking, when we would trace the rise of modern thought.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 1. HERESY IN BYZANTIUM\n\nIt was probably from some indirect influence of the new anti-idolatrous\nreligion of Islam that in the eighth century the soldier-emperor,\nLeo the Isaurian, known as the Iconoclast, derived his aversion\nto the image-worship [1197] which had long been as general in\nthe Christian world as ever under polytheism. So gross had the\nsuperstition become that particular images were frequently selected\nas god-parents; of others the paint was partly scratched off to be\nmixed with the sacramental wine; and the bread was solemnly put in\ncontact with them. [1198] Leo began (726) by an edict simply causing\nthe images to be placed so high that they could not be kissed, but\non being met with resistance and rebellion he ordered their total\nremoval (730). One view is that he saw image-worship to be the\nmain hindrance to the spread of the faith among Jews and Moslems,\nand took his measures accordingly. [1199] Save on this one point he\nwas an orthodox Christian and Trinitarian, and his long effort to\nput down images and pictures was in itself rather fanatical [1200]\nthan rationalistic, though a measure of freethinking was developed\namong the religious party he created. [1201] Of this spirit, as\nwell as of the aversion to image-worship, [1202] something must\nhave survived the official restoration of idolatry; but the traces\nare few. The most zealous iconoclasts seem never to have risen above\nthe flat inconsistency of treating the cross and the written gospels\nwith exactly the same adoration that their opponents paid to images;\n[1203] and their appeal to the scriptures--which was their first and\nlast argument--was accordingly met by the retort that they themselves\naccepted the authority of tradition, as did the image-worshippers. The\nremarkable hostility of the army to the latter is to be explained,\napparently, by the local bias of the eastern regions from which the\nsoldiers were mainly recruited.\n\nIn the ninth century, when Saracen rivalry had stung the Byzantines\ninto some partial revival of culture and science, [1204] the\nall-learned Patriarch Photius (c. 820-891), who reluctantly accepted\necclesiastical office, earned a dangerous repute for freethinking\nby declaring from the pulpit that earthquakes were produced by\nearthly causes and not by divine wrath. [1205] But this was an\nalmost solitary gleam of reason in a generation wholly given up to\nfurious strife over the worship of images, and Photius was one of\nthe image-worshippers. The battle swung from extreme to extreme. The\nemperor Michael II, \"the Stammerer\" (820-828), held a medium position,\nand accordingly acquired the repute of a freethinker. A general under\nLeo V, \"the Armenian,\" he had conspired against him, and when on the\nverge of execution had been raised to the throne in place of Leo, who\nwas assassinated at the altar. The new emperor aimed above all things\nat peace and quietness; but his methods were thoroughly Byzantine,\nand included the castration of the four sons of Leo. Michael himself\nis said to have doubted the future resurrection of men, to have\nmaintained that Judas was saved, and to have doubted the existence\nof Satan because he is not named in the Pentateuch [1206]--a species\nof freethinking not far removed from that of the Iconoclasts, whose\ngrounds were merely Biblical. A generation later came Michael IV, \"the\nSot,\" bred a wastrel under the guardianship of his mother, Theodora\n(who in 842 restored image-worship and persecuted the Paulicians),\nand her brother Bardas, who ultimately put her in a convent. Michael,\nrepeatedly defeated by the Saracens, long held his own at home. Taking\ninto favour Basil, who married his (Michael's) mistress, he murdered\nBardas, and a year later (867) was about to murder Basil in turn,\nwhen the latter anticipated him, murdered the emperor, and assumed the\npurple. It was under Basil, who put down the Iconoclasts, that Photius,\nafter formally deposing and being deposed by the Pope of Rome (864-66)\nwas really deposed and banished (868), to be restored to favour and\noffice ten years later. In 886, on the death of Basil, he was again\ndeposed, dying about 891. In that kaleidoscope of plot and faction,\nfanaticism and crime, there is small trace of sane thinking. Michael\nIV, in his disreputable way, was something of a freethinker, and\ncould even with impunity burlesque the religious processions of\nthe clergy, [1207] the orthodox populace joining in the laugh;\nbut there was no such culture at Constantinople as could develop\na sober rationalism, or sustain it against the clergy if it showed\nits head. Intelligence in general could not rise above the plane of\nthe wrangle over images. While the struggle lasted, it was marked by\nall the ferocity that belonged from the outset to Christian strifes;\nand in the end, as usual, the more irrational bias triumphed.\n\nIt was in a sect whose doctrine at one point coincided with iconoclasm\nthat there were preserved such rude seeds of oriental rationalism\nas could survive the rule of the Byzantine emperors, and carry the\nstimulus of heresy to the west. The rise of the Paulicians in Armenia\ndates from the seventh century, and was nominally by way of setting\nup a creed on the lines of Paul as against the paganized system of the\nChurch. Rising as they did on the borders of Persia, they were probably\naffected from the first by Mazdean influences, as the dualistic\nprinciple was always affirmed by their virtual founder, Constantine,\nafterwards known as Sylvanus. [1208] Their original tenets seem to have\nbeen anti-Manichean, anti-Gnostic (though partly Marcionite), opposed\nto the worship of images and relics, to sacraments, to the adoration\nof the Virgin, of saints, and of angels, and to the acceptance of the\nOld Testament; and in an age in which the reading of the Sacred Books\nhad already come to be regarded as a privilege of monks and priests,\nthey insisted on reading the New Testament for themselves. [1209]\nIn this they were virtually founding on the old pagan conception\nof religion, under which all heads of families could offer worship\nand sacrifice without the intervention of a priest, as against the\nJud\u00e6o-Christian sacerdotalism, which vetoed anything like a private\ncultus. In the teaching of Sylvanus, further, there were distinct\nManichean and Gnostic characteristics--notably, hostility to Judaism;\nthe denial that Christ had a real human body, capable of suffering; and\nthe doctrine that baptism and the communion were properly spiritual and\nnot physical rites. [1210] In the ninth century, when they had become\na powerful and militant sect, often at war with the empire, they were\nstill marked by their refusal to make any difference between priests\nand laymen. Anti-ecclesiasticism was thus a main feature of the whole\nmovement; and the Byzantine Government, recognizing in its doctrine\na particularly dangerous heresy, had at once bloodily attacked it,\ncausing Sylvanus to be stoned to death. [1211] Still it grew, even\nto the length of exhibiting the usual phenomena of schism within\nitself. One section obtained the protection of the first iconoclastic\nemperor, who agreed with them on the subject of images; and a later\nleader, Sergius or Tychicus, won similar favour from Nicephorus I;\nbut Leo the Armenian (suc. 813), fearing the stigma of their other\nheresies, and having already trouble enough from his iconoclasm,\nset up against them, as against the image-worshippers, a new and\ncruel persecution. [1212] They were thus driven over to the Saracens,\nwhose advance-guard they became as against the Christian State; but the\niconoclast Constantine Copronymus sympathetically [1213] transplanted\nmany of them to Constantinople and Thrace, thus introducing their\ndoctrine into Europe. The Empress Theodora (841-855), who restored\nimage-worship, [1214] sought to exterminate those left in Armenia,\nslaying, it is said, a hundred thousand. [1215] Many of the remnant\nwere thus forced into the arms of the Saracens; and the sect did the\nempire desperate mischief during many generations. [1216]\n\nMeantime those planted in Thrace, in concert with the main body,\ncarried propaganda into Bulgaria, and these again were further\nreinforced by refugees from Armenia in the ninth century, and in the\ntenth by a fresh colony transplanted from Armenia by the emperor\nJohn Zimisces, who valued them as a bulwark against the barbarous\nSlavs. [1217] Fresh persecution under Alexius I at the end of the\neleventh century failed to suppress them; and imperial extortion\nconstantly drove to their side numbers of fresh adherents, [1218]\nwhile the Bulgarians for similar reasons tended in mass to adopt\ntheir creed as against that of Constantinople. So greatly did the\ncult flourish that at its height it had a regular hierarchy, notably\nrecalling that of the early Manicheans--with a pope, twelve magistri,\nand seventy-two bishops, each of whom had a filius major and filius\nminor as his assistants. Withal the democratic element remained strong,\nthe laying on of the hands of communicants on the heads of newcomers\nbeing part of the rite of reception into full membership. Thus it\ncame about that from Bulgaria there passed into western Europe, [1219]\npartly through the Slavonic sect called Bogomiles or Bogomilians [1220]\n(= Theophiloi, \"lovers of God\"), who were akin to the Paulicians,\npartly by more general influences, [1221] a contagion of democratic\nand anti-ecclesiastical heresy; so that the very name Bulgar became\nthe French bougre = heretic--and worse. [1222] It specified the most\nobvious source of the new anti-Romanist heresies of the Albigenses,\nif not of the Vaudois (Waldenses).\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2. CRITICAL HERESY IN THE WEST\n\nIn the west, meanwhile, where the variety of social elements was\nfavourable to new life, heresy of a rationalistic kind was not wholly\nlacking. About the middle of the eighth century we find one Feargal\nor Vergilius, an Irish priest in Bavaria, accused by St. Boniface,\nhis enemy, of affirming, \"in defiance of God and his own soul,\"\nthe doctrine of the antipodes, [1223] which must have reached him\nthrough the ancient Greek lore carried to Ireland in the primary\nperiod of Christianization of that province. Of that influence we\nhave already seen a trace in Pelagius and Coelestius; and we shall\nsee more later in John the Scot. After being deposed by the Pope,\nVergilius was reinstated; was made Bishop of Salzburg, and held the\npost till his death; and was even sainted afterwards; but the doctrine\ndisappeared for centuries from the Christian world.\n\nOther heresies, however, asserted themselves. Though image-worship\nfinally triumphed there as in the east, it had strong opponents,\nnotably Claudius, bishop of Turin (fl. 830) under the emperor Louis\nthe Pious, son of Charlemagne, and his contemporary Agobard, bishop\nof Lyons. [1224] It is a significant fact that both men were born\nin Spain; and either to Saracen or to Jewish influence--the latter\nbeing then strong in the Moorish and even in the Christian [1225]\nworld--may fairly be in part attributed their marked bias against\nimage-worship. Claudius was slightly and Agobard well educated in\nLatin letters, so that an early impression [1226] would seem to have\nbeen at work in both cases. However that may be, they stood out as\nsingularly rationalistic theologians in an age of general ignorance\nand superstition. Claudius vehemently resisted alike image-worship,\nsaint-worship, and the Papal claims, and is recorded to have termed a\ncouncil of bishops which condemned him \"an assembly of asses.\" [1227]\nAgobard, in turn, is quite extraordinary in the thoroughness of his\nrejection of popular superstition, being not only an iconoclast but an\nenemy to prayer for change in the weather, to belief in incantations\nand the power of evil spirits, to the ordeal by fire, to the wager\nof battle, [1228] and to the belief in the verbal inspiration of the\nSacred Books. In an age of enormous superstition and deep ignorance,\nhe maintained within the Church that Reason was the noble gift of\nGod. [1229] He was a rationalist born out of due time. [1230]\n\nA grain of rationalism, as apart from professional self-interest,\nmay also have entered into the outcry made at this period by the\nclergy against the rigidly predestinarian doctrine of the monk\nGottschalk. [1231] His enemy, Rabanus or Hrabanus (called \"the\nMoor\"), seems again to represent some Saracen influence, inasmuch\nas he reproduced the scientific lore of Isidore of Seville. [1232]\nBut the philosophic semi-rationalism of John Scotus (d. 875), later\nknown as Erigena (John the Scot = of Ireland--the original \"Scots\"\nbeing Irish), seems to be traceable to the Greek studies which had\nbeen cherished in Christianized Ireland while the rest of western\nEurope lost them, and represents at once the imperfect beginning\nof the relatively rationalistic philosophy of Nominalism [1233] and\nthe first western revival of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle,\nhowbeit by way of accommodation to the doctrine of the Church. [1234]\n\n\n That John the Scot was an Irishman remains practically certain,\n even if we give up the term \"Erigena,\" which, as has been shown by\n Floss, the most careful editor of his works, is not found in the\n oldest MSS. The reading there is Ierugena, which later shades into\n Erugena and Eriugena. (Cp. Ueberweg, i, 359; Poole, pp. 55-56,\n note; Dr. Th. Christlieb, Leben und Lehre des Johannes Scotus\n Erigena, 1860, p. 14 sq.; and Huber, Johannes Scotus Erigena:\n ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie im\n Mittelalter, 1861, pp. 38-40.) From this elusive cognomen no\n certain inference can be drawn, too many being open; though the\n fact that John had himself coined the term Graiugena for a late\n Greek writer makes it likely that he called himself Ierugena in\n the sense of \"born in the holy (island)\" = Ireland. But the name\n Scotus, occurring without the Ierugena, is common in old MSS.;\n and it is almost impossible that any save a Scot of Ireland should\n have possessed the scholarship of John in the ninth century. In\n the west, Greek scholarship and philosophy had been special to\n Ireland from the time of Pelagius; and it is from Greek sources\n that John draws his inspiration and cast of thought. M. Taillandier\n not unjustly calls the Ireland of that era \"l'\u00eele des saints,\n mais aussi l'\u00eele des libres penseurs.\" (Scot \u00c9rig\u00e8ne et la\n philosophie scolastique, 1843, p. 64.) To the same effect Huber,\n pp. 40-41. In writing that Johannes \"was of Scottish nationality,\n but was probably born and brought up in Ireland,\" Ueberweg (i,\n 358) obscures the fact that the people of Ireland were the Scoti\n of that period. All the testimony goes to show \"that Ireland\n was called Scotia, and its ruling people Scoti, from the first\n appearance of these names down to the eleventh century. But that\n [the] present Scotland was called Scotia, or its people Scoti,\n before the eleventh century, not so much as one single authority\n can be produced\" (Pinkerton, Enquiry into the History of Scotland,\n 1789, ii, 237). Irish Scots gave their name to Scotland, and it\n was adopted by the Teutonic settlers.\n\n While the land of John the Scot's birth is thus fairly certain, the\n place of his death remains a mystery. Out of a statement by Asser\n that King Alfred made one John, a priest, Abbot of Athelney, and\n that the said Abbot was murdered at the altar by hired assassins,\n there grew a later story that Alfred made John the Scot Abbot of\n Malmesbury, and that he was slain with the styli of two of his\n pupils. It is clear that the John of Asser was an \"Old Saxon,\"\n and not the philosopher; and it is difficult to doubt that the\n second story, which arises in the twelfth century, is a hearsay\n distortion of the first. Cp. Christlieb, who argues (p. 42 sq.) for\n two Johns, one of them Scotus, and both assassinated, with Huber,\n who sets forth (p. 108 sq.) the view here followed. There is really\n no adequate ground for believing that John the Scot was ever a\n priest. We know not where or when he died; but the presumption\n is that it was in France, and not long after the death of his\n patron Charles--877. (Huber, p. 121.)\n\n\nCalled in by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, himself a normally\nsuperstitious believer, [1235] to answer Gottschalk, John Scotus in\nturn was accused of heresy, as he well might be on many points of his\ntreatise, De Praedestinatione [1236] (851). He fiercely and not very\nfairly condemned Gottschalk as a heretic, charging him with denying\nboth divine grace and freewill, but without disposing of Gottschalk's\npositive grounds; and arguing that God could not be the cause of sin,\nas if Gottschalk had not said the same thing. His superior speculative\npower comes out in his undertaking to show that for the Divine Being\nsin is non-ens; and that therefore that Being cannot properly be said\neither to foreknow or to predestinate, or to punish. But the argument\nbecomes inconsistent inasmuch as it further affirms Deity to have\nso constituted the order of things that sin punishes itself. [1237]\nIt is evident that in assimilating his pantheistic conceptions he\nhad failed to think out their incompatibility with any theistic\ndogma whatever; his reasoning, on the whole, being no more coherent\nthan Gottschalk's. He had in fact set out from an arbitrary theistic\nposition that was at once Judaic, Christian, and Platonic, and went\nback on one line to the Gnostics; while on another his argument\nthat sin has no real existence is a variant from an old thesis--made\ncurrent, as we saw, by Euclides of Megara--with which orthodoxy had\nmet the Manicheans. [1238] But to the abstract doctrine he gave a new\npractical point by declaring that the doctrine of hell-fire was a mere\nallegory; that heaven and hell alike were states of consciousness,\nnot places. [1239] And if such concrete freethinking were not enough\nto infuriate the orthodox, they had from him the most explicit\ndeclarations that authority is derivable solely from reason. [1240]\n\nIn philosophy proper he must be credited, despite his inconsistency,\nwith deep and original thought. [1241] Like every theologian of\nphilosophic capacity before and since, he passes into pantheism\nas soon as he grapples closely with the difficulties of theism,\nand \"the expressions which he uses are identical with those which\nwere afterwards employed by Spinoza.... It was a tradition of the\nfourth or fifth century transferred to the ninth, an echo from\nAlexandria.\" [1242] Condemned by Pope Nicholas I and by two Church\nCouncils, [1243] his writings none the less availed to keep that echo\naudible to later centuries.\n\nThe range and vigour of his practical rationalism may be gathered from\nhis attitude in the controversy begun by the abbot Paschasius Radbert\n(831) on the nature of the Eucharist. Paschasius taught that there was\na real transformation of the bread and wine into the divine body and\nblood; and the doctrine, thus nakedly put, startled the freer scholars\nof the time, who were not yet habituated to Latin orthodoxy. Another\nlearned monk, Ratramnus, who had written a treatise on predestination\nat the request of the rationalizing emperor, Charles the Bald\n(discussing the problem in Gottschalk's sense [1244] without naming\nhim), produced on the same monarch's invitation a treatise in which\ntransubstantiation was denied, and the \"real presence\" was declared\nto be spiritual [1245]--a view already known to Paschasius as being\nheld by some. [1246] John Scotus, also asked by the emperor to write\non the subject, went so far as to argue that the bread and wine were\nmerely symbols and memorials. [1247] As usual, the irrational doctrine\nbecame that of the Church; [1248] but the other must have wrought for\nreason in secret. For the rest, he set forth the old \"modal\" view of\nthe Trinity, resolving it into the different conceptual aspects of\nthe universe, and thus propounding one more vital heresy. [1249]\n\nNothing but a succession of rationalizing emperors could have secured\ncontinuance for such teaching as that of Ratramnus and John the\nScot. For a time, the cruelty meted out to Gottschalk kept up feeling\nin favour of his views; Bishop Remigius of Lyons condemned Hincmar's\ntreatment of him; and others sought to maintain his positions, with\nmodifications, though Hincmar carried resolutions condemning them at\nthe second Synod of Chiersy. On the other hand, Archbishop Wenilo of\nSens, Bishop Prudentius of Troyes, and Florus, a deacon of Lyons,\nall wrote against the doctrines of John the Scot; and the second\nSynod of Valence (855), while opposing Hincmar and affirming duplex\npredestination, denounced with fury the reasonings of John the Scot,\nascribing them to his nation as a whole. [1250] The pope taking the\nsame line, the fortunes of the rationalistic view of the eucharist and\nof hell-fire were soon determined for the Middle Ages, though in the\nyear 950 we find the Archbishop of Canterbury confronted by English\necclesiastics who asserted that there was no transubstantiation, the\nelements being merely a figure of the body and blood of Christ. [1251]\n\nThe economic explanation clearly holds alike as regards the attack\non John and the condemnation of Gottschalk for a doctrine which had\nactually been established for centuries, on the authority of Augustine,\nas strict orthodoxy. In Augustine's time, the determining pressures\nwere not economic: a bankrupt world was seeking to explain its fate;\nand Augustine had merely carried a majority with him against Pelagius,\npartly by his personal influence, partly by force of the fatalist\nmood of the time. But in the renascent world of Gottschalk's day the\neconomic exploitation of fear had been carried several stages forward\nby the Church; and the question of predestination had a very direct\nfinancial bearing. The northern peoples, accustomed to compound for\ncrimes by money payments, had so readily played into the hands of\nthe priesthood by their eagerness to buy surcease of purgatorial\npain that masses for the dead and \"penitential certificates\" were\nmain sources of ecclesiastical revenue. Therefore the condemnations\nof such abuses passed by the Councils, on the urging of the more\nthoughtful clergy, were constantly frustrated by the plain pecuniary\ninterest of the priests. [1252] It even appears that the eucharist\nwas popularly regarded not as a process of religious \"communion,\"\nbut as a magical rite objectively efficacious for bodily preservation\nin this life and the next. Thus it came about that often \"priests\npresented the offering of the mass alone and by themselves, without\nany participation of the congregation.\" [1253]\n\nIf then it were to be seriously understood that the future lot of\nall was foreordained, all expenditure on masses for the dead, or to\nsecure in advance a lightening of purgatorial penance, or even to buy\noff penance on earth, was so much waste; and the Teutons were still\nas ready as other barbarians to make their transactions with Church,\nGod, and the saints a matter of explicit bargain. [1254] Gottschalk,\naccordingly, had to be put down, in the general interests of the\nChurch. It could not truthfully be pretended that he deviated from\nAugustine, for he actually held by the \"semi-Pelagian\" inconsistency\nthat God predestinates good, but merely foreknows evil. [1255]\nThere was in fact no clear opposition between his affirmations and\nthose of Rabanus Maurus, who also professed to be an Augustinian;\nbut the latter laid forensic stress on the \"desire\" of God that all\nmen should be saved, and on the formula that Christ died for all;\nwhile Gottschalk, more honestly, insisted that predestination is\npredestination, and applied the principle not merely, as had been\ncustomary, to the future state of the good, but to that of the bad,\n[1256] insisting on a pr\u00e6destinatio duplex. His own fate was thus\neconomically predestinate; and he was actually tortured by the scourge\ntill he cast into the fire his written defence, \"a document which\ncontained nothing but a compilation of testimonies from Scripture,\nand from the older church-teachers.\" [1257]\n\n\n Gottschalk later challenged a fourfold ordeal of \"boiling water,\n oil, and pitch.\" His primary doctrine had been the immutability\n of the divine will; but he brought himself to the belief that\n God would work a miracle in his favour. His conception of\n \"foreordination\" was thus framed solely with regard to the\n conception of a future state. The ordeal was not granted, the\n orthodox party fearing to try conclusions, and he died without\n the sacraments, rather than recant. Then began the second reaction\n of feeling against his chief persecutor, Hincmar. Neander, vi, 190.\n\n A recent writer, who handles very intelligently and temperately\n the problem of persecution, urges that in that connection \"one\n ought not to lay great stress on the old argument of the Hallam\n and Macaulay school as to the strength of vested interests, though\n it has a certain historical importance, because the priest must\n subsist somehow\" (Religious Persecution: a Study in Psychology,\n by E. S. P. Haynes, 1904, p. 4). If the \"certain importance\" be in\n the ratio of the certainty of the last adduced fact, the legitimate\n \"stress\" on the argument in question would seem sufficient for most\n purposes. The writer adds the note: \"It is not unfair, however,\n to quote the case of Dr. Middleton, who, writing to Lord Radnor\n in 1750 in respect of his famous work on Miracles, admits frankly\n enough that he would never have given the clergy any trouble, had\n he received some good appointment in the church.\" If the essayist\n has met with no other historic fact illustrative of the play of\n vested interests in ecclesiastical history, it is extremely candid\n of him to mention that one. Later on, however, he commits himself\n to the proposition that \"the history of medieval persecution leads\n one to infer that the clergy as a whole were roused to much greater\n activity by menaces to their material comforts in this world than\n by an altruistic anxiety for the fate of lay souls in the next\"\n (id. p. 60. Cp. p. 63). This amount of \"stress\" on vested interests\n will probably satisfy most members of the Hallam and Macaulay\n school; and is ample for the purposes of the present contention.\n\n\nFrom this point onward, the slow movement of new ideas may for\na time be conveniently traced on two general lines--one that of\nthe philosophic discussion in the schools, reinforced by Saracen\ninfluences, the other that of partially rationalistic and democratic\nheresy among the common people, by way first of contagion from\nthe East. The latter was on the whole as influential for sane\nthought as the former, apart from such ecclesiastical freethinking\nas that of Berengar of Tours and Roscelin (Rousselin), Canon of\nCompi\u00e8gne. Berengar (c. 1050) was led by moral reflection [1258]\nto doubt the priestly miracle of the Eucharist, and thenceforth he\nentered into a stormy controversy on the subject, in the course of\nwhich he twice recanted under bodily fear, but passionately returned\nto his original positions. Fundamentally sincere, and indignantly\nresentful of the gross superstition prevailing in the Church, he\nstruck fiercely in his writings at Popes Leo IX and Nicholas II and\nArchbishop Lanfranc, [1259] all of whom had opposed him. At length,\nafter much strife, he threw up the contest, spending the latter part\nof his long life in seclusion; Pope Gregory VII, who was personally\nfriendly to him, having finally shielded him from persecution. It\nseems clear that, though accused, with others of his school, of\nrejecting certain of the gospel miracles, [1260] he never became a\ndisbeliever; his very polemic testifying to the warmth of his belief\non his own lines. His teaching, however, which went far by reason of\nthe vividness of his style, doubtless had the effect of promoting not\nonly the rationalistic-Christian view of the Eucharist, [1261] but a\ncriticism which went further, inasmuch as his opponents forced on the\nbystanders the question as to what reality there was in the Christian\ncreed if his view were true. [1262] All such influences, however, were\nbut slight in total mass compared with the overwhelming weight of the\neconomic interest of the priesthood; and not till the Reformation was\nBerengar's doctrine accepted by a single organized sect. The orthodox\ndoctrine, in fact, was all-essential to the Catholic Church. Given the\ndaily miracle of the \"real presence,\" the Church had a vital hold on\nthe Christian world, and the priest was above all lay rivalry. Seeing\nas much, the Council of the Lateran (1059) met the new criticism by\nestablishing the technical doctrine of the real presence for the\nfirst time as an article of faith; and as such it will doubtless\nstand while there is a Catholic priesthood. Berengar's original view\nmust have been shared by thousands; but no Catholic carried on his\npropaganda. The question had become one of life and death.\n\n\n Berengar's forced prevarications, which are unsympathetically\n set forth by Mosheim (11 Cent., pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 13-18), are\n made much more intelligible in the sympathetic survey of Neander\n (vi, 225-60). See also the careful inquiry of Reuter, Gesch. der\n religi\u00f6sen Aufkl\u00e4rung im Mittelalter, i, 91 sq. As to Berengar's\n writings, see further Murdock's note to Mosheim, last cit.,\n \u00a7 18. The formal compromise forced on him by Pope Hildebrand,\n who was personally friendly to him, consisted in adding to his\n denial of the change of the bread and wine into \"body and blood\"\n the doctrine that the body and blood were \"superadded to the bread\n and wine in and by their consecration.\" This formula, of course,\n did not represent the spirit of Berengar's polemic. As to the\n disputes on the subject, which ran to the most unseemly length\n of physiological detail, see Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs,\n ch. xlv. It is noteworthy that Augustine had very expressly\n set forth a metaphorical interpretation of the Eucharist--De\n doctrina christiana, l. iii, c. 16. But just as the Church later\n set aside the verdict of Thomas Aquinas that the Virgin Mary was\n \"born in sin,\" so did it reverse Augustine's judgment on the\n Eucharist. Always the more irrational view carried the day,\n as being more propitious to sacerdotal claims.\n\n\nSo far as the Church by her keenly self-regarding organization\ncould attain it, all opinion was kept within the strict bounds of her\nofficial dogma, in which life in the Middle Ages so long stagnated. For\ncenturies, despite the turmoil of many wars--which, indeed, helped\nto arrest thought--the life of the mind presented a uniformity hardly\nnow conceivable. The common expectation of the ending of the world, in\nthe year 1000, in particular had an immense prepotency of paralysing\nmen's spirits; and the grooves of habit thus fixed were hard to\nalter. For most men, the notion of possible innovation in thought did\nnot exist: the usual was the sacred: the very ideal of an improvement\nor reformation, when it arose, was one of reaching back to a far-away\nperfection of the past, never of remoulding things on lines laid\ndown by reason. Yet even into this half-stifled world there entered,\nby eastern ways, and first in the guise of rude demotic departures\nfrom priestly prescription, the indestructible spirit of change.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3. POPULAR ANTI-CLERICAL HERESY\n\nThe first Western traces of the imported Paulician heresy are about the\nyear 1000, [1263] when a rustic of Ch\u00e2lons is heard of as destroying a\ncross and a religious picture, and asserting that the prophets are not\nwholly to be believed. [1264] From this time forward, the world having\nbegun to breathe again after the passing of the year 1000 without any\nsign of the Day of Judgment, heresy begins to multiply, the chief\nmovers being \"distinguished by a tendency to rationalism.\" [1265]\nIn 1010 there is a trace of it in Aquitaine. [1266] In the year\n1022 (or, as the date is sometimes put, in 1017) we hear of the\nunveiling of a secret society of rationalizing mystics at Orleans,\nten canons of one church being members. [1267] An Italian woman\nwas said to be the founder, and thirteen were burned alive on their\nrefusal to recant. According to the records, they denied all miracles,\nincluding the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection; rejected baptism and\nthe miracle of the Eucharist; took the old \"Docetic\" view of Jesus,\ndenying his actual humanity; and affirmed the eternity of matter and\nthe non-creation of the world. They were also accused, like the first\nChristians, of promiscuous nocturnal orgies and of eating sacrificed\ninfants; but unless such charges are to be held valid in the other\ncase, they cannot be here. [1268] The stories told of the Manichean\ncommunity who lived in the castle of Monforte, near Asti in Lombardy,\nin the years 1025-1040, and who at length were likewise burned alive,\nare similarly mixed with fable. [1269] On this case it is recorded\nthat, while the Archbishop of Milan investigated the heresy, the\nburning of the victims was the work of the fanatical populace of Milan,\nand was done against his will.\n\nA less savage treatment may have made possible the alleged success\nof Gerhard, bishop of Cambray and Arras, in reconciling to the\nChurch at Arras, in 1025 or 1030, a number of laymen--also said to\nhave been taught by an Italian--who as a body rejected all external\nworship, setting aside priestly baptism and the sacraments, penance\nand images, funeral rites, holy oil, church bells, cross-worship,\naltars, and even churches, and denied the necessity of an order\nof priests. [1270] Few of the Protestants of a later age were so\nthorough-going; but the fact that many of the sect stood to the old\nMarcionite veto on marriage and the sexual instinct gives to their\npropaganda its own cast of fanaticism. This last tenet it seemingly\nwas that gave the Paulicians their common Greek name of cathari,\n[1271] \"the pure,\" corrupted or assimilated in Italian to gazzari,\nwhence presumably the German word for heretic, Ketzer. [1272] Such\na doctrine had the double misfortune that if acted on it left the\nsect without the normal recruitment of members' children, while if\ndeparted from it brought on them the stigma of wanton hypocrisy; and\nas a matter of fact every movement of the kind, ancient and modern,\nseems to have contained within it the two extremes of asceticism and\nlicence, the former generating the latter.\n\nIt could hardly, however, have been the ascetic doctrine that won for\nthe new heresy its vogue in medieval Europe; nor is it likely that the\nmajority of the heretics even professed it. If, on the other hand, we\nask how it was that in an age of dense superstition so many uneducated\npeople were found to reject so promptly the most sacrosanct doctrines\nof the Church, it seems hardly less difficult to account for the\nphenomenon on the bare ground of their common sense. Critical common\nsense there must have been, to allow of it at all; but it is reasonable\nto suppose that then, as clearly happened later at the Reformation,\ncommon sense had a powerful stimulus in pecuniary interest.\n\nWith the evidence as to Christian practice in the fourth century\non the one hand, and the later evidence as to clerical life on the\nother, we are certain of a common play of financial motive throughout\nthe Middle Ages. And whereas it is intelligible that such rapacity\nas we have seen described by Libanius should evoke a heresy which\nrejected alike religious ceremonial and the claims of the priest,\nit is further reasonable to surmise that resentment of priestly\nrapacity and luxury helped men to similar heresy in Western Europe\nwhen the doctrine reached them. If any centuries are to be singled\nout as those of maximum profligacy and extortion among the clergy,\nthey are the ninth and the three following. [1273] It had been part of\nthe policy of Charlemagne everywhere to strengthen the hands of the\nclergy by way of checking the power of the nobles; [1274] and in the\ndisorder after his death the conflicting forces were in semi-anarchic\ncompetition. The feudal habit of appointing younger sons and underlings\nto livings wherever possible; the disorders and strifes of the papacy;\nand the frequent practice of dispossessing priests to reward retainers,\nthereby driving the dispossessed to plunder on their own account, must\ntogether have created a state of things almost past exaggeration. It\nwas a matter of course that the clergy on their part should make the\nutmost possible use of their influence over men's superstitious fears\nin order to acquire bequests of lands; [1275] and such bequests in\nturn exasperated the heirs thus disinherited.\n\nThus orthodoxy and heterodoxy alike had strong economic motives;\nand in these may be placed a main part of the explanation of the\ngross savagery of persecution now normal in the Church. Such a heresy\nas that of Gottschalk, we saw, by denying to the priest all power\nof affecting the predestined course of things here or hereafter,\nlogically imperilled the very existence of the whole hierarchy, and\nwas by many resented accordingly. The same principle entered into\nthe controversies over the Eucharist. Still more would the clergy\nresent the new Manichean heresy, of which every element, from the\nEuchite tenet of the necessity of personal prayer and mortification,\nas against the innate demon, to the rejection of all the rites of\nnormal worship and all the pretensions of priests, was radically\nhostile to the entire organization of the Church. When the heretics\nin due course developed a priestly system of their own, [1276] the\nhostility was only the more embittered.\n\nThe crisis was the more acute, finally, because in the latter part of\nthe tenth century the common expectation that the world would end with\nthe year 1000 had inspired enormous donations to the Church, [1277]\nwith a proportionally oppressive effect on the general population,\nmoving them to economic self-defence. It is in fact clear that\nan anti-clerical element entered largely into the beginnings of\nthe communal movement in France in the eleventh century. In 1024\nwe find the citizens of Cambrai forming a league to drive out the\ncanons; [1278] and though that beginning of revolt was crushed out\nby massacre, the same spirit expressed itself in heresy. The result\nwas that religious persecution ere long eclipsed political. Bishop\nWazon of L\u00fcttich (d. 1048) in vain protested against the universal\npractice of putting the heretics to death. [1279] Manicheans who\nwere detected in 1052 at Goslar, in Germany, were hanged, [1280]\na precedent being thus established in the day of small things.\n\nAll this went on while the course of the papacy was so scandalous\nto the least exacting moral sense that only the ignorance of the\nera could sustain any measure of reverence for the Church as an\ninstitution. In the year 963 the ablest of the emperors of that\nage, Otto the Great, had the consent of the people of Rome to his\ndeposition of Pope John XII, a disorderly youth of twenty-five,\n\"the most profligate if not the most guilty of all who have worn\nthe tiara,\" [1281] and to his appointing the Pope in future; but\nTeutonic administration soon drove the populace to repeated revolt,\nquenched by massacre, till at length John returned, speedily to\nbe slain by a wronged husband. Economic interest entered largely\ninto the subsequent attempts of the Romans to choose their own\nPope and rule their own city, and into the contrary claim of the\nemperors to do both; and in the nature of things the usually absent\nemperors could only spasmodically carry their point. The result was\nan epoch of riotous disorder in the papacy. Between John and Leo IX\n(955-1048) six popes were deposed, two murdered, and one mutilated;\n[1282] and the Church was a mere battle-ground of the factions of the\nRoman and Italian nobility. [1283] At last, in 1047, \"a disgraceful\ncontest between three claimants of the papal chair shocked even the\nreckless apathy of Italy\"; [1284] and the emperor Henry III deposed\nthem all and appointed a pope of his own choosing, the clergy again\nconsenting. Soon, however, as before, the local claim was revived;\nand in the papacy of the powerful Gregory VII, known as Hildebrand,\nthe head of the Church determinedly asserted its autonomy and his own\nautocracy. Then came the long \"war of the investitures\" between the\npopes and the emperors, in which the former were substantially the\ngainers. The result was, in addition to the endless miseries set up\nby war, a systematic development of that financial corruption which\nalready had been scandalous enough. The cathedral chapters and the\nnobles traded in bishoprics; the popes sold their ratifications for\ngreat sums; the money was normally borrowed by the bishops from the\npapal usurers; and there was witnessed throughout Europe the spectacle\nof the Church denouncing all usury as sin, while its own usurers were\nscrupulously protected, the bishops paying to them their interest\nfrom the revenues they were able to extort. [1285] Satirical comment\nnaturally abounded wherever men had any knowledge of the facts; and\nwhat current literature there was reflected the feeling on all sides.\n\nThe occurrence of the first and second crusades, the work\nrespectively of Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard, created a period\nof new fanaticism, somewhat unfavourable to heresy; but even in that\nperiod the new sects were at work, [1286] and in the twelfth century,\nwhen crusading had become a mere feudal conspiracy of conquest and\nplunder, [1287] heresy reappeared, to be duly met by slaughter. A\nperfect ferment of anti-clerical heresy had arisen in Italy, France,\nand Flanders. [1288] At Orvieto, in Italy, the heretics for a time\nactually had the mastery, and were put down only after a bloody\nstruggle. [1289] In France, for a period of twenty years from 1106,\nPeter de Brueys opposed infant baptism, the use of churches, holy\ncrosses, prayers for the dead (the great source of clerical income),\nand the doctrine of the Real Presence in the eucharist (the main\nsource of their power), and so set up the highly heretical sect of\nPetrobrussians. [1290] Driven from his native district of Vallonise,\nhe long maintained himself in Gascony, till at length he was seized\nand burned (1126 or 1130). The monk Henry (died in prison 1148)\ntook a similar line, directly denouncing the clergy in Switzerland\nand France; as did Tanquelin in Flanders (killed by a priest, 1125);\nthough in his case there seems to have been as much of religious\nhallucination as of the contrary. [1291] A peasant, Eudo of Stella\n(who died in prison), is said to have half-revolutionized Brittany\nwith his anti-ecclesiastical preaching. [1292] The more famous monk\nArnold of Brescia (strangled and burned in 1155), a pupil of Abailard,\nbut orthodox in his theology and austere in his life, simplified his\nplan of reform (about 1139) into a proposal that the whole wealth of\nthe clergy, from the pope to the monks, should be transferred to the\ncivil power, leaving churchmen to lead a spiritual life on voluntary\nofferings. [1293] For fifteen years the stir of his movement lasted\nin Lombardy, till at length his formation of a republic at Rome forced\nthe papacy to combine with the Emperor Frederick II, who gave Arnold up\nto death. But though his movement perished, anti-clericalism did not;\nand heretical sects of some kind persisted here and there, in despite\nof the Church, till the age of the Reformation. In Italy, during\nthe age of the Renaissance, all alike were commonly called paterini\nor patarini--a nickname which seems to come from pataria, a Milanese\nword meaning \"popular faction\" or \"rowdies.\" [1294] Thus in the whole\nmovement of fresh popular thought there is a manifest connection with\nthe democratic movement in politics, though in the schools the spirit\nof discussion and dialectic had no similar relationship.\n\nDuring the first half of the century its warfare with the emperors,\nand the frequent appointment of anti-popes, prevented any systematic\npolicy on the part of the Holy See, [1295] repression being mostly\nleft to the local ecclesiastical authorities. It was in 1139 that\nInnocent II issued the first papal decree against Cathari, expelling\nthem from the Church and calling on the temporal power to give full\neffect to their excommunication. [1296] In 1163 Pope Alexander III,\nbeing exiled from Rome by Frederick I and the anti-pope Victor, called\na great council at Tours, where again a policy of excommunication was\ndecided on, the secular authorities being commanded to imprison the\nexcommunicated and confiscate their property, but not to slay them. In\nthe same year some Cathari arrested at Cologne had been sentenced to\nbe burned; but the Council did not go so far. As a result the decree\nhad little or no effect. [1297]\n\nSo powerless was the Church at this stage that in 1167 the Cathari held\na council of their own near Toulouse; a bishop of their order, Nicetas,\ncoming from Constantinople to preside; and a whole system of French\nsees was set on foot. [1298] So numerous had the Cathari now become\nthat their highest grade, the perfecti, alone was reckoned to number\n4,000; [1299] and from this time it is of Cathari that we read in the\nrolls of persecution. About 1170 four more of them, from Flanders, were\nburned at Cologne; and others, of the higher grade called bos homes\n(= boni homines, \"good men\"), at Toulouse. In 1179, the heresy still\ngaining ground, an oecumenical council (the Third Lateran) was held at\nRome under Pope Alexander III, decreeing afresh their excommunication,\nand setting up a new machinery of extirpation by proclaiming a\ncrusade at once against the orderly heretics of southern France and\nthe companies of openly irreligious freebooters who had arisen as a\nresult of many wars and much misgovernment. To all who joined in the\ncrusade was offered an indulgence of two years. In the following year\nHenry of Clairvaux, Cardinal of Albano, took the matter in hand as\npapal plenipotentiary; and in 1181 he raised a force of horse and foot\nand fell upon the ill-defended territory of the Viscount of Beziers,\nwhere many heretics, including the daughter of Raymond of Toulouse,\nhad taken refuge. The chief stronghold was captured, with two Catharist\nbishops, who renounced their heresy, and were promptly given prebends\nin Toulouse. Many others submitted; but as soon as the terms for which\nthe crusaders had enlisted were over and the army disbanded, they\nreturned to their heretical practices. [1300] Two years later an army\ncollected in central France made a campaign against the freebooters,\nslaying thousands in one battle, hanging fifteen hundred after another,\nand blinding eighty more. But freebooting also continued. [1301]\n\nThe first crusade against heresy having failed, it was left by the\npapacy for a number of years to itself; though anti-pope Lucius III in\n1184 sought to set up an Inquisition; and in 1195 a papal legate held a\ncouncil at Montpellier, seeking to create another crusade. The zeal of\nthe faithful was mainly absorbed in Palestine; while the nobles at home\nwere generally at war with each other. Heresy accordingly continued to\nflourish, though there was never any suspension of local persecution\noutside of Provence, where the heretics were now in a majority,\nhaving more theological schools and scholars than the Church. [1302]\nIn France in particular, in the early years of the reign of Philip\nAugustus (suc. 1180), many paterini were put to death by burning;\n[1303] and the clergy at length persuaded the king to expel the Jews,\nthe work being done almost as cruelly as it was two centuries later\nin Spain. In England, where there was thus far little heresy, it\nwas repressed by Henry II. Some thirty rustics came from Flanders\nin 1166, fleeing persecution, and vainly sought to propagate their\ncreed. Zealous to prove his orthodoxy in the period of his quarrel\nwith Becket, Henry presided over a council of bishops called by him\nat Oxford to discuss the case; and the heretics were condemned to\nbe scourged, branded in the face, and driven forth--to perish in the\nwinter wilds. \"England was not hospitable to heresy;\" and practically\nher orthodoxy was \"unsullied until the rise of Wiclif.\" [1304]\n\nIn southern Europe and northern Italy in the last quarter of\nthe century a foremost place began to be taken by the sect of the\nWaldenses, or Vaudois (otherwise the Poor Men of Lyons), which--whether\nderiving from ancient dissent surviving in the Vaux or Valleys of\nPiedmont, [1305] or taking its name and character from the teaching\nof the Lyons merchant, Peter Waldus, or an earlier Peter of Vaux\nor Valdis [1306]--conforms substantially to the general heretical\ntendencies of that age, in that it rejected the papal authority,\ncontended for the reading of the Bible by the laity, condemned tithes,\ndisparaged fasting, stipulated for poverty on the part of priests\nand denied their special status, opposed prayers for the dead,\nand preached peace and non-resistance. In 1199, at Metz, they were\nfound in possession of a French translation of the New Testament,\nthe Psalms, and the book of Job--a new and startling invasion of the\npriestly power in the west. Above all, their men and women alike went\nabout preaching in the towns, in the houses, and in the churches,\nand administered the eucharist without priests. [1307] Thus Cathari,\nPaterini, Manicheans, and non-Manichean Albigenses and Waldenses were\non all fours for the Church, as opponents of its economic claims;\nand when at length, under Celestine III and Innocent III, the Holy\nSee began to be consolidated after a long period of incessant change,\n[1308] desperate measures began to be contemplated. Organized heresy\nwas seen to be indestructible save by general extirpation; and on\neconomic grounds it was not to be tolerated. At Orvieto the heresy\nstamped out with blood in 1125 was found alive again in 1150; was\nagain put down in 1163 by burning, hanging, and expulsion; and yet\nwas again found active at the close of the century. [1309] In 1198\nInnocent III is found beginning a new Inquisition among the Albigenses;\nand in 1199, while threatening them with exile and confiscation, [1310]\nhe made a last diplomatic attempt to force the obstinately heretical\npeople of Orvieto to take an oath of fidelity in the year 1199. It\nended in the killing of his representative by the people. [1311]\nThe papacy accordingly laid plans to destroy the enemy at its centre\nof propagation.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4. HERESY IN SOUTHERN FRANCE\n\nIn Provence and Languedoc, the scene of the first great papal crusade\nagainst anti-clerical heresy, there were represented all the then\nexisting forces of popular freethought; and the motives of the crusade\nwere equally typical of the cause of authority.\n\n1. In addition to the Paulician and other movements of religious\nrationalism above noted, the Languedoc region was a centre of\nsemi-popular literary culture, which was to no small extent\nanti-clerical, and by consequence somewhat anti-religious. The\nLatin-speaking jongleurs or minstrels, known as Goliards, [1312]\npossessing as they did a clerical culture, were by their way of\nlife committed to a joyous rather than an ascetic philosophy;\nand though given to blending the language of devotion with that of\nthe drinking-table, very much after the fashion of Hafiz, they were\ncapable of burlesquing the mass, the creed, hymns to the Virgin, the\nLord's Prayer, confessions, and parts of the gospels, as well as of\nkeenly satirizing the endless abuses of the Church. [1313] \"One is\nastonished to meet, in the Middle Ages, in a time always represented\nas crushed under the yoke of authority, such incredible audacities on\nthe papacy, the episcopacy, chivalry, on the most revered dogmas of\nreligion, such as paradise, hell, etc.\" [1314] The rhymers escaped\nsimply because there was no police that could catch them. Denounced\nby some of the stricter clergy, they were protected by others. They\nwere, in fact, the minstrels of the free-living churchmen. [1315]\n\nOf this type is Guiot of Provence, a Black Friar, the author of La\nBible Guiot, written between 1187 and 1206. He is a lover of good\nliving, a champion of aristocrats, a foe of popular movements, [1316]\nand withal a little of a buffoon. But it is to be counted to him for\nrighteousness that he thought the wealth devoured by the clergy might\nbe more usefully spent on roads, bridges, and hospitals. [1317] He has\nalso a good word for the old pagans who lived \"according to reason\";\nand as to his own time, he is sharply censorious alike of princes,\npope, and prelates. The princes are rascals who \"do not believe in\nGod,\" and depress their nobility; and the breed of the latter has sadly\ndegenerated. The pope is to be prayed for; but he is ill counselled\nby his cardinals, who conform to the ancient tendency of Rome to\neverything evil; many of the archbishops and bishops are no better;\nand the clergy in general are eaten up by greed and simony. [1318]\nThis is in fact the common note. [1319]\n\nA kindred spirit is seen in much of the verse alike of the northern\nTrouv\u00e8res and the southern Troubadours. A modern Catholic historian\nof medieval literature complains that their compositions \"abound with\nthe severest ridicule of such persons and of such things as, in the\ntemper of the age, were highly estimated and most generally revered,\"\nand notes that in consequence they were ranked by the devout as\n\"lewd and impious libertines.\" [1320] In particular they satirized\nthe practice of excommunication and the use made by the Church of\nhell and purgatory as sources of revenue. [1321] Their anti-clerical\npoetry having been as far as possible destroyed by the Inquisition, its\ncharacter has to be partly inferred from the remains of the northern\ntrouv\u00e8res--e.g., Ruteboeuf and Raoul de Houdan, of whom the former\nwrote a Voya de Paradis, in which Sloth is a canon and Pride a bishop,\nboth on their way to heaven; while Raoul has a Songe d'enfer in which\nhell is treated in a spirit of the most audacious burlesque. [1322]\nIn a striking passage of the old tale Aucassin et Nicolette there is\nna\u00efvely revealed the spontaneous revolt against pietism which underlay\nall these flings of irreverence. \"Into paradise,\" cries Aucassin,\n\"go none but ... those aged priests, and those old cripples, and\nthe maimed, who all day long and all night cough before the altars,\nand in the crypts beneath the churches; those ... who are naked and\nbarefoot and full of sores.... Such as these enter in paradise, and\nwith them have I nought to do. But in hell will I go. For to hell\ngo the fair clerks and the fair knights who are slain in the tourney\nand the great wars, and the stout archer and the loyal man. With them\nwill I go. And there go the fair and courteous ladies [of many loves];\nand there pass the gold and the silver, the ermine and all rich furs,\nharpers and minstrels, and the happy of the world. With these will I\ngo....\" [1323] It was such a temper, rather than reasoned unbelief,\nthat inspired the blasphemous parodies in Reynard the Fox and other\npopular works of the Middle Ages.\n\nThe Proven\u00e7al literature, further, was from the first influenced by\nthe culture of the Saracens, [1324] who held Sicily and Calabria in\nthe ninth and tenth centuries, and had held part of Languedoc itself\nfor a few years in the eighth. On the passing of the duchy of Provence\nto Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, at the end of the eleventh\ncentury, not only were the half-Saracenized Catalans mixed with the\nProven\u00e7als, but Raymond and his successors freely introduced the arts\nand science of the Saracens into their dominion. [1325] In the Norman\nkingdom of Sicily too the Saracen influence was great even before\nthe time of Frederick II; and thence it reached afresh through Italy\nto Provence, [1326] carrying with it everywhere, by way of poetry, an\nelement of anti-clerical and even of anti-Christian rationalism. [1327]\nThough this spirit was not that of the Cathari and Waldenses, yet the\nfact that the latter strongly condemned the Crusades [1328] was a point\nin common between them and the sympathizers with Saracen culture. And\nas the tolerant Saracen schools of Spain or the Christian schools\nof the same region, which copied their curriculum, [1329] were in\nthat age resorted to by youth from each of the countries of western\nEurope for scientific teaching [1330]--all the latest medical and\nmost other scientific knowledge being in their hands--the influence\nof such culture must have been peculiarly strong in Provence. [1331]\n\nThe medieval mystery-plays and moralities, already common in Provence,\nmixed at times with the normal irreverence of illiterate faith [1332]\na vein of surprisingly pronounced skeptical criticism, [1333] which\nat the least was a stimulus to critical thought among the auditors,\neven if they were supposed to take it as merely dramatic. Inasmuch as\nthe drama was hereditarily pagan, and had been continually denounced\nand ostracized by Fathers and Councils, [1334] it would be natural\nthat its practitioners, even when in the service of the Church,\nshould be unbelievers.\n\nThe philosophy and science of both the Arabs and the Spanish Jews\nwere specially cultivated in the Provence territory. The college of\nMontpellier practised on Arab lines medicine, botany, and mathematics;\nand the Jews, who had been driven from Spain by the Almohades, had\nflourishing schools at Narbonne, Beziers, N\u00eemes, and Carcassonne,\nas well as Montpellier, and spread alike the philosophy of Averro\u00ebs\nand the semi-rational theology of the Jewish thinker Maimonides,\n[1335] whose school held broadly by Averro\u00efsm.\n\nFor the rest, every one of the new literary influences that were\nassailing the Church would tend to flourish in such a civilization as\nthat of Languedoc, which had been peaceful and prosperous for over two\nhundred years. Unable to lay hold of the popular poets and minstrels\nwho propagated anti-clericalism, the papacy could hope to put down\nby brute force the social system in which they flourished, crushing\nthe pious and more hated heretic with the scoffer. And Languedoc\nwas a peculiarly tempting field for such operations. Its relative\nlack of military strength, as well as its pre-eminence in heresy,\nled Innocent III, a peculiarly zealous assertor of the papal power,\n[1336] to attack it in preference to other and remoter centres of\nenmity. In the first year of his pontificate, 1198, he commenced a new\nand zealous Inquisition [1337] in the doomed region; and in the year\n1207, when as much persecution had been accomplished as the lax faith\nof the nobility and many of the bishops would consent to--an appeal\nto the King of France to interfere being disregarded--the scheme\nof a crusade against the dominions of Raymond Count of Toulouse was\nconceived and gradually matured. The alternate weakness and obstinacy\nof Raymond, and the fresh provocation given by the murder, in 1208,\nof the arrogant papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau, [1338] permitted\nthe success of the scheme in such hands. The crusade was planned\nexactly on the conditions of those against the Saracens--the heretics\nat home being declared far worse than they. [1339] The crusaders\nwere freed from payment of interest on their debts, exempted from\nthe jurisdiction of all law courts, and absolved from all their\nsins past or future. [1340] To earn this reward they were to give\nonly forty days' service [1341]--a trifle in comparison with the\nhardships of the crusades to Palestine. \"Never therefore had the\ncross been taken up with a more unanimous consent.\" [1342] Bishops\nand nobles in Burgundy and France, the English Simon de Montfort,\nthe Abbot of Citeaux, and the Bernardine monks throughout Europe,\ncombined in the cause; and recruits came from Austria and Saxony, from\nBremen, even from Slavonia, as well as from northern France. [1343]\nThe result was such a campaign of crime and massacre as European\nhistory cannot match. [1344] Despite the abject submission of the\nCount of Toulouse, who was publicly stripped and scourged, and\ndespite the efforts of his nephew the Count of Albi to make terms,\nvillage after village was fired, all heretics caught were burned, and\non the capture of the city and castle of Beziers (1209), every man,\nwoman, and child within the walls was slaughtered, many of them in the\nchurches, whither they had run for refuge. The legate, Arnold abbot\nof Citeaux, being asked at an early stage how the heretics were to be\ndistinguished from the faithful, gave the never-to-be-forgotten answer,\n\"Kill all; God will know his own.\" [1345] Seven thousand dead bodies\nwere counted in the great church of St. Mary Magdalene. The legate\nin writing estimated the total quarry at 15,000; others put the\nnumber at sixty thousand. [1346] When all in the place were slain,\nand all the plunder removed, the town was burned to the ground,\nnot one house being left standing. Warned by the fate of Beziers,\nthe people of Carcassonne, after defending themselves for many days,\nsecretly evacuated their town; but the legate contrived to capture\na number of the fugitives, of whom he burned alive four hundred, and\nhanged fifty. [1347] Systematic treachery, authorized and prescribed\nby the Pope, [1348] completed the success of the undertaking. The\nChurch had succeeded, in the name of religion, in bringing half of\nEurope to the attainment of the ideal height of wickedness, in that\nit had learned to make evil its good; and the papacy had on the whole\ncome nearer to destroying the moral sense of all Christendom [1349]\nthan any conceivable combination of other causes could ever have done\nin any age.\n\n\n According to a long current fiction, it was the Pope who first\n faltered when \"the whole of Christendom demanded the renewal of\n those scenes of massacre\" (Sismondi, Crusades, p. 95); but this is\n disproved by the discovery of two letters in which, shortly before\n his death, he excitedly takes on himself the responsibility for\n all the bloodshed (Michelet, Hist. de France, vii, introd. note\n to \u00a7 iv). Michelet had previously accepted the legend which\n he here rejects. The bishops assembled in council at Lavaur,\n in 1213, demanded the extermination of the entire population of\n Toulouse. Finally, the papal policy is expressly decreed in the\n third canon of the Fourth General Council of Lateran, 1215. On that\n canon see The Statutes of the Fourth General Council of Lateran,\n by the Rev. John Evans, 1843. On the crusade in general, cp. Lea,\n History of the Inquisition, bk. i, ch. iv; Gieseler, Per. III,\n Div. iii, \u00a7 89.\n\n\nThe first crusade was followed by others, in which Simon de Montfort\nreached the maximum of massacre, varying his procedure by tearing\nout eyes and cutting off noses when he was not hanging victims\nby dozens or burning them by scores or putting them to the sword\nby hundreds [1350] (all being done \"with the utmost joy\") [1351];\nthough the \"White Company\" organized by the Bishop of Toulouse [1352]\nmaintained a close rivalry. The Church's great difficulty was that\nas soon as an army had bought its plenary indulgence for all possible\nsin by forty days' service, it disbanded. Nevertheless, \"the greater\npart of the population of the countries where heresy had prevailed\nwas exterminated.\" [1353] Organized Christianity had contrived to\nmurder the civilization of Provence and Languedoc [1354] while the\nfanatics of Islam in their comparatively bloodless manner were doing\nas much for that of Moorish Spain. Heresy indeed was not rooted out:\nthroughout the whole of the thirteenth century the Inquisition met with\nresistance in Languedoc [1355]; but the preponderance of numbers which\nalone could sustain freethinking had been destroyed, and in course\nof time it was eliminated by the sleepless engines of the Church.\n\nIt was owing to no lack of the principle of evil in the Christian\nsystem, but simply to the much greater and more uncontrollable\ndiversity of the political elements of Christendom, that the whole\nculture and intelligence of Europe did not undergo the same fate. The\ndissensions and mutual injuries of the crusaders ultimately defeated\ntheir ideal [1356]; after Simon de Montfort had died in the odour of\nsanctity [1357] the crusade of Louis VIII of France in 1226 seems to\nhave been essentially one of conquest, there being practically no\nheretics left; and the disasters of the expedition, crowned by the\nking's death, took away the old prestige of the movement. Meanwhile,\nthe heresy of the Albigenses, and kindred ideas, had been effectually\ndriven into other parts of Europe [1358]; and about 1231 we find\nGregory IX burning a multitude of them at the gates of the church of\nSanta Maria Maggiore in Rome [1359] and compassing their slaughter\nin France and Germany. [1360] In Italy the murderous pertinacity of\nthe Dominicans gradually destroyed organized heresy despite frequent\nand desperate resistance. About 1230 we hear of one eloquent zealot,\nchosen podest\u00e0 by the people of Verona, using his power to burn in one\nday sixty heretics, male and female. [1361] The political heterogeneity\nof Europe, happily, made variation inevitable; though the papacy,\nby making the detection and persecution of heresy a means of gain to\na whole order of its servants, had set on foot a machinery for the\ndestruction of rational thought such as had never before existed.\n\n\n It is still common to speak of the personnel of the Inquisition as\n disinterested, and to class its crimes as \"conscientious.\" Buckle\n set up such a thesis, without due circumspection, as a support\n to one of his generalizations. (See the present writer's ed. of\n his Introduction to the History of Civilization in England,\n pp. 105-108, notes, and the passages in McCrie and Llorente\n there cited.) Dr. Lea, whose History of the Inquisition is\n the greatest storehouse of learning on the subject, takes up a\n similar position, arguing (i, 239): \"That the men who conducted\n the Inquisition, and who toiled sedulously in its arduous,\n repulsive, and often dangerous labour, were thoroughly convinced\n that they were furthering the kingdom of God, is shown by the\n habitual practice of encouraging them with the remission of sins,\n similar to that offered for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land\"--a\n somewhat surprising theorem. Parallel reasoning would prove that\n soldiers never plunder and are always Godly; that the crusaders\n were all conscientious men; and that policemen never take bribes\n or commit perjury. The interpretation of history calls for a\n less simple-minded psychology. That there were devoted fanatics\n in the Inquisition as in the Church is not to be disputed; that\n both organizations had economic bases is certain; and that the\n majority of office-bearers in both, in the ages of faith, had\n regard to gain, is demonstrated by all ecclesiastical history.\n\n Dr. Lea's own History shows clearly enough (i, 471-533) that the\n Inquisition, from the first generation of its existence, lived\n upon its fines and confiscations. \"Persecution, as a steady and\n continuous policy, rested, after all, upon confiscation.... When\n it was lacking, the business of defending the faith lagged\n lamentably\" (i, 529). \"But for the gains to be made out of fines\n and confiscations its [the Inquisition's] work would have been\n much less thorough, and it would have sunk into comparative\n insignificance as soon as the first frantic zeal of bigotry\n had exhausted itself\" (pp. 532-33). Why, in the face of these\n avowals, \"it would be unjust to say that greed and thirst for\n plunder were the impelling motives of the Inquisition\" (p. 532)\n is not very clear. See below, ch. x, \u00a7 3, as to the causation\n in Spain. Cp. Mocatta, The Jews and the Inquisition, pp. 37,\n 44, 52. On the Inquisition in Portugal, in turn, Professor\n W. E. Collins sums up that \"it was founded for reasons ostensibly\n religious but actually fiscal\" (in the \"Cambridge Modern History,\"\n vol. ii, The Reformation, ch. xii, p. 415). Every charge of\n economic motive that Catholicism can bring against Protestantism is\n thus balanced by the equivalent charge against its own Inquisition.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 5. FREETHOUGHT IN THE SCHOOLS\n\nThe indestructibility of freethought, meanwhile, was being proved\neven in the philosophic schools, under all their conformities to\nfaith. Already in the ninth century we have seen Scotus Erigena putting\nthe faith in jeopardy by his philosophic defence of it. Another\nthinker, Roscelin (or Roussellin: fl. 1090), is interesting as\nhaving made a critical approach to freethought in religion by way\nof abstract philosophy. With him definitely begins the long academic\ndebate between the Nominalists and Realists so called. In an undefined\nway, it had existed as early as the ninth century, [1362] the ground\nbeing the Christian adoption of Plato's doctrine of ideas--that\nindividual objects are instances or images of an ideal universal,\nwhich is a real existence, and prior to the individual thing:\n\"universalia ante rem.\" To that proposition Aristotle had opposed the\ndoctrine that the universal is immanent in the thing--\"universalia\nin re\"--the latter alone being matter of knowledge; [1363] and in the\nMiddle Ages those who called Aristotle master carried his negation of\nPlato to the extent of insisting that the \"universal\" or \"abstract,\"\nor the \"form\" or \"species,\" is a mere subjective creation, a name,\nhaving no real existence. This, the Nominalist position--mistakenly\nascribed to Aristotle [1364]--was ultimately expressed in the formula,\n\"universalia post rem.\"\n\nSuch reasonings obviously tend to implicate theology; and Roscelin\nwas either led or helped by his Nominalist training to deny either\nexplicitly or implicitly the unity of the Trinity, arguing in effect\nthat, as only individuals are real existences, the actuality of the\npersons of the Trinity involves their disunity. [1365] The thesis,\nof course, evoked a storm, the English Archbishop Anselm and others\nproducing indignant answers. Of Roscelin's writing only one letter\nis extant; and even Anselm, in criticizing his alleged doctrine,\nadmits having gathered it only from his opponents, whose language\nsuggests perversion. [1366] But if the testimony of his pupil Abailard\nbe truthful, [1367] he was at best a confused reasoner; and in his\ntheology he got no further than tritheism, then called ditheism. [1368]\nThus, though \"Nominalism, by denying any objective reality to general\nnotions, led the way directly to the testimony of the senses and\nthe conclusions of experience,\" [1369] it did so on lines fatally\nsubordinate to the theology it sought to correct. Roscelin's thesis\nlogically led to the denial not only of trinity-in-unity but of the\nIncarnation and transubstantiation; yet neither he nor his opponents\nseem to have thought even of the last consequence, he having in fact\nno consciously heretical intention. Commanded to recant by the Council\nof Soissons in 1092, he did so, and resumed his teaching as before;\nwhereafter he was ordered to leave France. Coming to England, he showed\nhimself so little of a rebel to the papacy as to contend strongly for\npriestly celibacy, arguing that all sons of priests and all born out of\nwedlock should alike be excluded from clerical office. Expelled from\nEngland in turn for these views, by a clergy still anti-celibate,\nhe returned to Paris, to revive the old philosophic issue, until\ngeneral hostility drove him to Aquitaine, where he spent his closing\nyears in peace. [1370]\n\nSuch handling of the cause of Nominalism gave an obvious advantage\nto Realism. That has been justly described by one clerical scholar\nas \"Philosophy held in subordination to Church-Authority\"; [1371]\nand another has avowed that \"the spirit of Realism was essentially\nthe spirit of dogmatism, the disposition to pronounce that truth\nwas already known,\" while \"Nominalism was essentially the spirit\nof progress, of inquiry, of criticism.\" [1372] But even a critical\nphilosophy may be made to capitulate to authority, as even \u00e0 priori\nmetaphysic may be to a certain extent turned against it. Realism had\nbeen markedly heretical in the hands of John Scotus; and in a later\nage the Realist John Huss was condemned to death--perhaps on political\ngrounds, but not without signs of sectarian hate--by a majority of\nNominalists at the Council of Constance. Everything depended on the\nforce of the individual thinker and the degree of restraint put\nupon him by the authoritarian environment. [1373] The world has\neven seen the spectacle of a professed indifferentist justifying\nthe massacre of St. Bartholomew; and the Platonist Marsilio Ficino\nvilified Savonarola, basely enough, after his execution, adjusting\na pantheistic Christianity to the needs of the political situation\nin Medicean Florence. Valid freethinking is a matter of thoroughness\nand rectitude, not of mere theoretic assents.\n\nTried by that test, the Nominalism of the medieval schools was no\nvery potent emancipator of the human spirit, no very clear herald of\nfreedom or new concrete truth. A doctrine which was so far adjusted\nto authority as to affirm the unquestionable existence of three\ndeities, Father, Son, and Spirit, and merely disputed the not more\nsupra-rational theorem of their unity, yielded to the rival philosophy\na superiority in the kind of credit it sought for itself. Nominalism\nwas thus \"driven to the shade of the schools,\" where it was \"regarded\nentirely in a logical point of view, and by no means in its actual\nphilosophic importance as a speculation concerning the grounds of\nhuman knowledge.\" [1374] For Roscelin himself the question was one of\ndialectics, not of faith, and he made no practical rationalists. The\npopular heresies bit rather deeper into life. [1375]\n\n\n It is doubtless true of the Paulicians that \"there was no principle\n of development in their creed: it reflected no genuine freedom\n of thought\" (Poole, Illustrations, p. 95); but the same thing,\n as we have seen, is clearly true of scholasticism itself. It may\n indeed be urged that \"the contest between Ratramn and Paschase on\n the doctrine of the Eucharist; of Lanfranc with Berengar on the\n same subject; of Anselm with Roscelin on the nature of Universals;\n the complaints of Bernard against the dialectical theology of\n Abelard; are all illustrations of the collision between Reason\n and Authority ... varied forms of rationalism--the pure exertions\n of the mind within itself ... against the constringent force\n of the Spiritual government\" (Hampden, Bampton Lectures on The\n Scholastic Philosophy, 3rd ed. p. 37; cp. Hardwick, Church History:\n Middle Age, p. 203); but none of the scholastics ever professed\n to set Authority aside. None dared. John Scotus indeed affirmed\n the identity of true religion with true philosophy, without\n professing to subordinate the latter; but the most eminent of the\n later scholastics affirmed such a subordination. \"The vassalage of\n philosophy consisted in the fact that an impassable limit was fixed\n for the freedom of philosophizing in the dogmas of the Church\"\n (Ueberweg, i, 357); and some of the chief dogmas were not allowed\n to be philosophically discussed; though, \"with its territory thus\n limited, philosophy was indeed allowed by theology a freedom which\n was rarely and only by exception infringed upon\" (ib. Cp. Milman,\n Latin Christianity, 4th ed. ix, 151). \"The suspicion of originality\n was fatal to the reputation of the scholastic divine\" (Hampden,\n pp. 46-47). The popular heresy, indeed, lacked the intellectual\n stimulus that came to the schools from the philosophy of Averro\u00ebs;\n but it was the hardier movement of the two.\n\n\nAlready in the eleventh century, however, the simple fact of the\nproduction of a new argument for the existence of God by Anselm,\nArchbishop of Canterbury, is a proof that, apart from the published\ndisputes, a measure of doubt on the fundamental issue had arisen in\nthe schools. It is urged [1376] that, though the argumentation of\nAnselm seems alien to the thought of his time, there is no proof that\nthe idea of proving the existence of God was in any way pressed on him\nfrom the outside. It is, however, inconceivable that such an argument\nshould be framed if no one had raised a doubt. And as a matter of fact\nthe question was discussed in the schools, Anselm's treatise being\na reproduction of his teaching. The monks of Bec, where he taught,\nurged him to write a treatise wherein nothing should be proved by mere\nauthority, but all by necessity of reason or evidence of truth, and\nwith an eye to objections of all sorts. [1377] In the preface to his\nCur Deus Homo, again, he says that his first book is an answer to the\nobjections of infidels who reject Christianity as irrational. [1378]\nFurther, the nature of part of Anselm's theistic argument and the\nvery able but friendly reply of Gaunilo (a Count of Montigni, who\nentered a convent near Tours, 1044-1083) show that the subject was\nwithin the range of private discussion. Anselm substantially follows\nSt. Augustine; [1379] and men cannot have read the ancient books\nwhich so often spoke of atheism without confronting the atheistic\nidea. It is not to be supposed that Gaunilo was an unbeliever; but\nhis argumentation is that of a man who had pondered the problem. [1380]\n\nDespite the ostensibly rationalistic nature of his argument, however,\nAnselm stipulated for absolute submission of the intellect to the\ncreed of the Church; [1381] so that the original subtitle of his\nProslogium, Fides quaerens intellectum, in no way admits rational\ntests. In the next century we meet with new evidence of sporadic\nunbelief, and new attempts to deal with it on the philosophic\nside. John of Salisbury (1120-1180) tells of having heard many\ndiscourse on physics \"otherwise than faith may hold\"; [1382] and the\nsame vivacious scholar put in his list of \"things about which a wise\nman may doubt, so ... that the doubt extend not to the multitude,\" some\n\"things which are reverently to be inquired about God himself.\" [1383]\nGiraldus Cambrensis (1147-1223), whose abundant and credulous gossip\nthrows so much light on the inner life of the Church and the laity in\nhis age, tells that the learned Simon of Tournay \"thought not soundly\non the articles of the faith,\" saying privately, to his intimates,\nthings that he dared not utter publicly, till one day, in a passion,\nhe cried out, \"Almighty God! how long shall this superstitious sect\nof Christians and this upstart invention endure?\"; whereupon during\nthe night he lost the power of speech, and remained helpless till\nhis death. [1384] Other ecclesiastical chroniclers represent Simon\nas deriding alike Jesus, Moses, and Mahomet--an ascription to him\nof the \"three impostors\" formula. [1385] Again, Giraldus tells how\nan unnamed priest, reproved by another for careless celebration\nof the mass, angrily asked whether his rebuker really believed in\ntransubstantiation, in the incarnation, in the Virgin Birth, and\nin resurrection; adding that it was all carried on by hypocrites,\nand assuredly invented by cunning ancients to hold men in terror and\nrestraint. And Giraldus comments that inter nos there are many who\nso think in secret. [1386] As his own picture of the Church exhibits\na gross and almost universal rapacity pervading it from the highest\nclergy to the lowest, the statement is entirely credible. [1387]\nYet again, in the Romance of the Holy Grail, mention is twice made\nof clerical doubters on the doctrine of the Trinity; [1388] and on\nthat side, in the crusading period, both the monotheistic doctrine\nof Islam and the Arab philosophy of Averro\u00ebs were likely to set up a\ncertain amount of skepticism. In the twelfth century, accordingly,\nwe have Nicolas of Amiens producing his tractate De articulis (or\narte) catholic\u00e6 fidei in the hope of convincing by his arguments men\n\"who disdain to believe the prophecies and the gospel.\" [1389]\n\nTo meet such skepticism too was one of the undertakings of the\nrenowned Abailard (1079-1142), himself persecuted as a heretic for\nthe arguments with which he sought to guard against unbelief. Of the\ndetails of his early life it concerns us here to note only that he\nstudied under Roscelin, and swerved somewhat in philosophy from his\nmaster's theoretic Nominalism, which he partly modified on Aristotelian\nlines, though knowing little of Aristotle. [1390] After his retirement\nfrom the world to the cloister, he was induced to resume philosophic\nteaching; and his pupils, like those of Anselm, begged their master to\ngive them rational arguments on the main points of the faith. [1391]\nHe accordingly rashly prepared a treatise, De Unitate et Trinitate\ndivina, in which he proceeded \"by analogies of human reason,\" avowing\nthat the difficulties were great. [1392] Thereupon envious rivals,\nof whom he had made many by his arrogance as well as by his fame, set\nup against him a heresy hunt; and for the rest of his life he figured\nas a dangerous person. While, however, he took up the relatively\nadvanced position that reason must prepare the way for faith, since\notherwise faith has no certitude, [1393] he was in the main dependent\non the authority either of second-hand Aristotle [1394] or of the\nScriptures, though he partly set aside that of the Fathers. [1395]\nWhen St. Bernard accused him of Arianism and of heathenism he was\nexpressing personal ill-will rather than criticizing. Abailard himself\ncomplained that many heresies were current in his time [1396]; and\nas a matter of fact \"more intrepid views than his were promulgated\nwithout risk by a multitude of less conspicuous masters.\" [1397]\nFor instance, Bernard Sylvester (of Chartres), in his cosmology,\ntreated theological considerations with open disrespect [1398];\nand William of Conches, who held a similar tone on physics, [1399]\ntaught, until threatened with punishment, that the Holy Ghost and\nthe Universal Soul were convertible terms. [1400] This remarkably\nrational theologian further rejected the literal interpretation of\nthe creation of Eve; in science he adopted the Demokritean doctrine of\natoms; and in New Testament matters he revived the old rationalistic\nheresy that the three Persons of the Trinity are simply three aspects\nof the divine personality--power, wisdom, and will--which doctrine he\nwas duly forced to retract. It is clear from his works that he lived\nin an atmosphere of controversy, and had to fight all along with the\npious irrationalists who, \"because they know not the forces of nature,\nin order that they may have all men comrades in their ignorance,\nsuffer not that others should search out anything, and would have us\nbelieve like rustics and ask no reason.\" \"If they perceive any man\nto be making search, they at once cry out that he is a heretic.\" The\nhistory of a thousand years of struggle between reason and religion\nis told in those sentences.\n\n\n As to William's doctrines and writings see Poole, pp. 124-30,\n 346-59. His authorship of one treatise is only latterly cleared\n up. In the work which under the title of Elementa Philosophiae\n is falsely ascribed to Bede, and under the title De Philosophia\n Mundi to Honorius of Autun (see Poole, pp. 340-42, 347 sq.), but\n which is really the production of William of Conches, there occurs\n the passage: \"What is more pitiable than to say that a thing is,\n because God is able to do it, and not to show any reason why it\n is so; just as if God did everything that he is able to do! You\n talk like one who says that God is able to make a calf out of\n a log. But did he ever do it? Either, then, show a reason why a\n thing is so, or a purpose wherefore it is so, or else cease to\n declare it so.\" Migne, Patrolog. Latin. xc, 1139. It is thus an\n exaggeration to say of Abailard, as does Cousin, that \"il mit\n de c\u00f4t\u00e9 la vieille \u00e9cole d'Anselme de Laon, qui exposait sans\n expliquer, et fonda ce qu'on appelle aujourd'hui le rationalisme\"\n (Ouvr. in\u00e9dits d'Ab\u00e9lard, 1836, intr. p. ii).\n\n\nAbailard was not more explicit on concrete issues than this\ncontemporary--who survived him, and studied his writings. If, indeed,\nas is said, he wrote that \"a doctrine is believed not because God has\nsaid it, but because we are convinced by reason that it is so,\" [1401]\nhe went as far on one line as any theologian of his time; but his\nmain service to freethought seems to have lain in the great stimulus\nhe gave to the practice of reasoning on all topics. [1402] His enemy,\nSt. Bernard, on the contrary, gave an \"immense impulse to the growth\nof a genuinely superstitious spirit among the Latin clergy.\" [1403]\n\n\n Dr. Rashdall pronounces Abailard \"incomparably the greatest\n intellect of the Middle Ages; one of the great minds which mark\n a period in the world's intellectual history\"; and adds that\n \"Abailard (a Christian thinker to the very heart's core, however\n irredeemable (sic) the selfishness and overweening vanity of his\n youth) was at the same time the representative of the principle of\n free though reverent inquiry in matters of religion and individual\n loyalty to truth.\" (The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages,\n 1895, i, 56-57.) If the praise given be intended to exalt Abailard\n above John Scotus, it seems excessive.\n\n\nOn a survey of Abailard's theological teachings, a modern reader is\napt to see the spirit of moral reason most clearly in one set forth\nin his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, to the effect that\nJesus was not incarnate to redeem men from damnation, but solely to\ninstruct them by precept and example, and that he suffered and died\nonly to show his charity towards men. The thesis was implicit if not\nexplicit in the teaching of Pelagius; and for both men it meant the\neffort to purify their creed from the barbaric taint of the principle\nof sacrifice. In our own day, revived by such theologians as the\nEnglish Maurice, it seems likely to gain ground, as an accommodation\nto the embarrassed moral sense of educated believers. But it is heresy\nif heresy ever was, besides being a blow at the heart of Catholic\nsacerdotalism; and Abailard on condemnation retracted it as he did\nhis other Pelagian errors. Retractation, however, is publication;\nand to have been sentenced to retract such teaching in the twelfth\ncentury is to leave on posterity an impression of moral originality\nperhaps as important as the fame of a metaphysician. In any case,\nit is a careful judge who thus finally estimates him: \"When he is\noften designated as the rationalist among the schoolmen, he deserves\nthe title not only on account of the doctrine of the Trinity, which\napproaches Sabellianism in spite of all his polemics against it, and\nnot only on account of his critical attempts, but also on account of\nhis ethics, in which he actually completely agrees in the principal\npoint with many modern rationalists.\" [1404] And it is latterly his\nsingular fate to be valued at once by many sympathetic Catholics,\nwho hold him finally vindicated alike in life and doctrine, and by\nmany freethinkers.\n\nHow far the stir set up in Europe by his personal magnetism and his\npersonal record may have made for rational culture, it is impossible\nto estimate; but some consequence there must have been. John of\nSalisbury was one of Abailard's disciples and admirers; and, as\nwe saw, he not only noted skepticism in others but indicated an\ninfusion of it in his own mind--enough to earn for him from a modern\nhistorian the praise of being a sincere skeptic, as against those\nfalse skeptics who put forward universal doubt as a stalking horse for\ntheir mysticism. [1405] But he was certainly not a universal skeptic\n[1406]; and his denunciation of doubt as to the goodness and power\nof God [1407] sounds orthodox enough. What he gained from Abailard\nwas a concern for earnest dialectic.\n\nThe worst side of scholasticism at all times was that it was more\noften than not a mere logical expatiation in vacuo; this partly\nfor sheer lack of real knowledge. John of Salisbury probably did\nnot do injustice to the habit of verbiage it developed [1408]; and\nthe pupils of Abailard seem to have expressed themselves strongly to\nhim concerning the wordy emptiness of most of what passed current as\nphilosophic discourse; speaking of the teachers as blind leaders of\nthe blind. [1409] One version of the legend against Simon of Tournay is\nto the effect that, after demonstrating by the most skilful arguments\nthe truth of the doctrine of the Trinity, he went on to say, when\nenraptured listeners besought him to dictate his address so that\nit might be preserved, that if he had been evilly minded he could\nrefute the doctrine by yet better arguments. [1410] Heresy apart,\nthis species of dialectical insincerity infected the whole life of\nthe schools, even the higher spirits going about their work with a\ncertain amount of mere logical ceremony.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 6. SARACEN AND JEWISH INFLUENCES\n\nEven in the schools, however, over and above the influence of the more\noriginal teachers, there rises at the close of the twelfth century and\nthe beginning of the thirteenth some measure of a new life, introduced\ninto philosophy through the communication of Aristotle to the western\nworld by the Saracens, largely by the mediation of the Jews. [1411]\nThe latter, in their free life under the earlier Moorish toleration,\nhad developed something in the nature of a school of philosophy,\nin which the Judaic Platonism set up by Philo of Alexandria in the\nfirst century was blended with the Aristotelianism of the Arabs. As\nearly as the eighth and ninth centuries, anti-Talmudic (the Kara\u00eftes)\nand pro-Talmudic parties professed alike to appeal to reason [1412];\nand in the twelfth century the mere production of the Guide of the\nPerplexed by the celebrated Moses Maimonides (1130-1205) [1413]\ntells of a good deal of practical rationalism (of the kind that\nreduced miracle stories to allegories), of which, however, there\nis little direct literary result save of a theosophic kind. [1414]\nLevi ben Gershom (1286-1344), commonly regarded as the greatest\nsuccessor of Maimonides, is like him guardedly rationalistic in his\ncommentaries on the Scriptures. [1415] But the doctrine which makes\nAristotle a practical support to rationalism, and which was adopted\nnot only by Averro\u00ebs but by the Motazilites of Islam--the eternity\nof matter--was rejected by Maimonides (as by nearly all other Jewish\nteachers, with the partial exception of Levi ben Gershom), [1416]\non Biblical grounds; though his attempts to rationalize Biblical\ndoctrine and minimize miracles made him odious to the orthodox Jews,\nsome of whom, in France, did not scruple to call in the aid of the\nChristian inquisition against his partisans. [1417] The long struggle\nbetween the Maimonists and the orthodox is described as ending in the\n\"triumph of peripatetism\" or Averro\u00efsm in the synagogue [1418]; but\nAverro\u00efsm as modified by Maimonides is only a partial accommodation\nof scripture to common sense. It would appear, in fact, that Jewish\nthought in the Saracen world retrograded as did that of the Saracens\nthemselves; for we find Maimonides exclaiming over the apparent\ndisbelief in creatio ex nihilo in the \"Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer the\nGreat,\" believed by him to be ancient, but now known to be a product\nof the eighth century. [1419] The pantheistic teaching of Solomon\nben Gebirol or Ibn Gebirol, better known as Avicebron, [1420] who\nin point of time preceded the Arab Avempace, and who later acquired\nmuch Christian authority, was orthodox on the side of the creation\ndogma even when many Jews were on that head rationalistic. [1421]\nThe high-water mark, among the Jews, of the critical rationalism of\nthe time, is the perception by Aben or Ibn Ezra (1119-1174) that the\nPentateuch was not written by Moses--a discovery which gave Spinoza\nhis cue five hundred years later; but Ibn Ezra, liberioris ingenii vir,\nas Spinoza pronounced him, had to express himself darkly. [1422]\n\nThus the Jewish influence on Christian thought in the Middle Ages was\nchiefly metaphysical, carrying on Greek and Arab impulses; and to call\nthe Jewish people, as does Renan, \"the principal representative of\nrationalism during the second half of the Middle Age\" is to make too\nmuch of the academic aspects of freethinking. On the side of popular\ntheology it is difficult to believe that they had much Unitarian\ninfluence; though Joinville in his Life of Saint Louis tells how,\nin a debate between Churchmen and Jews at the monastery of Cluny,\na certain knight saw fit to break the head of one of the Jews with\nhis staff for denying the divinity of Jesus, giving as his reason\nthat many good Christians, listening to the Jewish arguments, were\nin a fair way to go home unbelievers. It was in this case that the\nsainted king laid down the principle that when a layman heard anyone\nblaspheme the Christian creed his proper course was not to argue,\nbut to run the blasphemer through with his sword. [1423] Such admitted\ninability on the part of the laity to reason on their faith, however,\nwas more likely to accompany a double degree of orthodoxy than to\nmake for doubt; and the clerical debating at the Abbey of Cluny,\ndespite the honourable attitude of the Abbot, who condemned the\nknight's outrage, was probably a muster of foregone conclusions.\n\nFor a time, indeed, in the energetic intellectual life of northern\nFrance the spirit of freethought went far and deep. After the great\nstimulus given in Abailard's day to all discussion, we find another\nBreton teacher, Amaury or Amalrich of B\u00e8ne or Bena (end of twelfth\ncentury) and his pupil David of Dinant, partly under the earlier\nArab influence, [1424] partly under that of John the Scot, [1425]\nteaching a pronounced pantheism, akin to that noted as flourishing\nlater among the Brethren of the Free Spirit [1426] and some of the\nFranciscan Fraticelli. Such a movement, involving disregard for\nthe sacraments and ceremonies of the Church, was soon recognized as\na dangerous heresy, and dealt with accordingly. The Church caused\nAmaury to abjure his teachings; and after his death, finding his party\nstill growing, dug up and burned his bones. At the same time (1209)\na number of his followers were burned alive; David of Dinant had to\nfly for his life; [1427] and inasmuch as the new heresy had begun\nto make much of Aristotle, presumably as interpreted by Averro\u00ebs,\na Council held at Paris vetoed for the university the study alike of\nthe pagan master and his commentators, interdicting first the Physics\nand soon after the Metaphysics. [1428] This veto held until 1237,\nwhen the school which adapted the lore of Aristotle to Christian\npurposes began to carry the day.\n\nThe heretical Aristotelianism and the orthodox system which was\nto overpower it were alike radiated from the south, where the Arab\ninfluence spread early and widely. There, as we shall see, the long\nduel between the Emperor Frederick II and the papacy made a special\nopportunity for speculative freethought; and though this was far\nfrom meaning at all times practical enmity to Christian doctrine,\n[1429] that was not absent. It is clear that before Thomas Aquinas\n(1225-1274) a Naturalist and Averro\u00efst view of the universe had\nbeen much discussed, since he makes the remark that \"God is by some\ncalled Natura naturans\" [1430]--Nature at work--an idea fundamental\nalike to pantheism and to scientific naturalism. And throughout his\ngreat work--a marvel of mental gymnastic which better than almost\nany other writing redeems medieval orthodoxy from the charge of\nmere ineptitude--Thomas indicates his acquaintance with unorthodox\nthought. In particular he seems to owe the form of his work as well\nas the subject-matter of much of his argument to Averro\u00ebs. [1431]\nBorn within the sphere of the Saracen-Sicilian influence, and of\nhigh rank, he must have met with what rationalism there was, and he\nalways presupposes it. [1432] \"He is nearly as consummate a skeptic,\nalmost atheist, as he is a divine and theologian,\" says one modern\necclesiastical dignitary; [1433] and an orthodox apologist [1434]\nmore severely complains that \"Aquinas presented ... so many doubts\non the deepest points ... so many plausible reasons for unbelief\n... that his works have probably suggested most of the skeptical\nopinions which were adopted by others who were trained in the study\nof them.... He has done more than most men to put the faith of his\nfellow-Christians in peril.\" Of course he rejects Averro\u00efsm. Yet he,\nlike his antagonist Duns Scotus, inevitably gravitates to pantheism\nwhen he would rigorously philosophize. [1435]\n\nWhat he did for his church was to combine so ingeniously the semblance\nof Aristotelian method with constant recurrence to the sacred books\nas to impose their authority on the life of the schools no less\ncompletely than it dominated the minds of the unlearned. Meeting\nmethod with method, and showing himself well aware of the lore he\ncircumvented, he built up a system quite as well fitted to be a\nmere gymnastic of the mind; and he thereby effected the arrest for\nsome three centuries of the method of experimental science which\nAristotle had inculcated. He came just in time. Roger Bacon, trained\nat Paris, was eagerly preaching the scientific gospel; and while he\nwas suffering imprisonment at the hands of his Franciscan superiors\nfor his eminently secular devotion to science, the freer scholars of\nthe university were developing a heresy that outwent his.\n\nNow, however, began to be seen once for all the impossibility\nof rational freedom in or under a church which depended for its\nrevenue on the dogmatic exploitation of popular credulity. For a\ntime the Aristotelian influence, as had been seen by the churchmen\nwho had first sought to destroy it, [1436] tended to be Averro\u00efst\nand rationalist. [1437] In 1269, however, there begins a determined\ncampaign, led by the bishop of Paris, against the current Averro\u00efst\ndoctrines, notably the propositions \"that the world is eternal\";\n\"that there never was a first man\"; \"that the intellect of man\nis one\"; \"that the mind, which is the form of man, constituting\nhim such, perishes with the body\"; \"that the acts of men are not\ngoverned by divine providence\"; \"that God cannot give immortality or\nincorruptibility to a corruptible or mortal thing.\" [1438] On such\ndoctrines the bishop and his coadjutors naturally passed an anathema\n(1270); and at this period it was that Albertus Magnus and Thomas\nAquinas wrote their treatises against Averro\u00efsm. [1439]\n\nStill the freethinkers held out, and though in 1271 official commands\nwere given that the discussion of such matters in the university should\ncease, another process of condemnation was carried out in 1277. This\ntime the list of propositions denounced includes the following:\n\"that the natural philosopher as such must deny the creation of\nthe world, because he proceeds upon natural causes and reasons;\nwhile the believer (fidelis) may deny the eternity of the world,\nbecause he argues from supernatural causes\"; \"that creation is not\npossible, although the contrary is to be held according to faith\";\n\"that a future resurrection is not to be believed by the philosopher,\nbecause it cannot be investigated by reason\"; \"that the teachings of\nthe theologians are founded on fables\"; \"that there are fables and\nfalsities in the Christian religion as in others\"; \"that nothing more\ncan be known, on account of theology\"; \"that the Christian law prevents\nfrom learning\"; [1440] \"that God is not triune and one, for trinity\nis incompatible with perfect simplicity\"; \"that ecstatic states and\nvisions take place naturally, and only so.\" Such vital unbelief could\nhave only one fate; it was reduced to silence by a papal Bull, [1441]\nadministered by the orthodox majority; and the memory of the massacres\nof the year 1209, and of the awful crusade against the Albigenses,\nserved to cow the thinkers of the schools into an outward conformity.\n\nHenceforward orthodox Aristotelianism, placed on a canonical footing\nin the theological system of Thomas Aquinas, ruled the universities;\nand scholasticism counts for little in the liberation of European\nlife from either dogma or superstition. [1442] The practically\nprogressive forces are to be looked for outside. In the thirteenth\ncentury in England we find the Franciscan friars in the school of\nRobert Grosst\u00eate at Oxford discussing the question \"Whether there\nbe a God?\" [1443] but such a dispute was an academic exercise like\nanother; and in any case the authorities could be trusted to see\nthat it came to nothing. The work of Thomas himself serves to show\nhow a really great power of comprehensive and orderly thought can be\nturned to the subversion of judgment by accepting the prior dominion\nof a fixed body of dogma and an arbitrary rule over opinion. And yet,\nso strong is the principle of ratiocination in his large performance,\nand so much does it embody of the critical forces of antiquity and of\nits own day, that while it served the Church as a code of orthodoxy\nits influence can be seen in the skeptical philosophy of Europe\nas late as Spinoza and Kant. It appears to have been as a result\nof his argumentation that there became established in the later\nprocedure of the Church the doctrine that, while heretics who have\nonce received the faith and lapsed are to be coerced and punished,\nother unbelievers (as Moslems and Jews) are not. This principle also,\nit would appear, he derived from the Moslems, as he did their rule\nthat those of the true faith must avoid intimacy with the unbelievers,\nthough believers firm in the faith may dispute with them \"when there\nis greater expectation of the conversion of the infidels than of the\nsubversion of the fidels.\" And to the rule of non-inquisition into\nthe faith of Jews and Moslems the Church professed to adhere while the\nInquisition lasted, after having trampled it under foot in spirit by\ncausing the expulsion of the Jews and the Moriscoes from Spain. [1444]\n\nWe shall perhaps best understand the inner life of the schools in\nthe Middle Ages by likening it to that of the universities of our own\ntime, where there is unquestionably much unbelief among teachers and\ntaught, but where the economic and other pressures of the institution\nsuffice to preserve an outward acquiescence. In the Middle Ages it\nwas immeasurably less possible than in our day for the unbeliever to\nstrike out a free course of life and doctrine for himself. If, then,\nto-day the scholarly class is in large measure tied to institutions\nand conformities, much more so was it then. The cloister was almost\nthe sole haven of refuge for studious spirits, and to attain the haven\nthey had to accept the discipline and the profession of faith. We\nmay conclude, accordingly, that such works as Abailard's Sic et Non,\nsetting forth opposed views of so many doctrines and problems,\nstood for and made for a great deal of quiet skepticism; [1445]\nthat the remarkable request of the monks of Bec for a ratiocinative\nteaching which should meet even extravagant objections, covered a\ngood deal of resigned unfaith; and that in the Franciscan schools at\nOxford the disputants were not all at heart believers. Indeed, the\nvery existence of the doctrine of a \"twofold truth\"--one truth for\nreligion and another for philosophy--was from the outset a witness\nfor unbelief. But the unwritten word died, the litera scripta being\nsolely those of faith, and liberation had to come, ages later, from\nwithout. Even when a bold saying won general currency--as that latterly\nascribed, no doubt falsely, to King Alfonso the Wise of Castile, that\n\"if he had been of God's council when he made the world he could have\nadvised him better\"--it did but crystallize skepticism in a jest,\nand supply the enemy with a text against impiety.\n\nAll the while, the Church was forging new and more murderous weapons\nagainst reason. It is one of her infamies to have revived the use\nin Christendom of the ancient practice of judicial torture, and this\nexpressly for the suppression of heresy. The later European practice\ndates from the Bull of Innocent IV, Ad extirpanda, dated 1252. At\nfirst a veto was put on its administration by clerical hands; but in\n1256 Alexander IV authorized the inquisitors and their associates to\nabsolve one another for such acts. By the beginning of the fourteenth\ncentury torture was in use not only in the tribunals of the Inquisition\nbut in the ordinary ecclesiastical courts, whence it gradually entered\ninto the courts of lay justice. [1446] It is impossible to estimate\nthe injury thus wrought at once to culture and to civilization, at\nthe hands of the power which claimed specially to promote both. [1447]\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 7. FREETHOUGHT IN ITALY\n\nApart from the schools, there was a notable amount of hardy\nfreethinking among the imperialist nobles of northern Italy, in\nthe time of the emperors Henry IV and V, the attitude of enmity to\nthe Holy See having the effect of encouraging a rude rationalism. In\n1115, while Henry V was vigorously carrying on the war of investitures\nbegun by his father, and formerly condemned by himself, the Countess\nMatilda of Tuscany bequeathed her extensive fiefs to the papacy;\nand in the following year Henry took forcible possession of them. At\nthis period the strife between the papal and the imperial factions in\nthe Tuscan cities was at its fiercest; and the Florentine chronicler\nGiovanni Villani alleges that among many other heretics in 1115 and\n1117 were some \"of the sect of the Epicureans,\" who \"with armed\nhand defended the said heresy\" against the orthodox. [1448] But\nit is doubtful whether the heresy involved was anything more than\nimperialist anti-papalism. Another chronicler speaks of the heretics\nas Paterini; and even this is dubious. The title of Epicurean in the\ntime of Villani and Dante stood for an unbeliever in a future state;\n[1449] but there was an avowed tendency to call all Ghibellines\nPaterini; and other heretical aspersions were likely to be applied in\nthe same way. [1450] As the Averro\u00efst philosophy had not yet risen,\nand rationalistic opinions were not yet current among the western\nSaracens, any bold heresy among the anti-papalists of Florence must\nbe assigned either to a spontaneous growth of unbelief or to the\nobscure influence of the great poem of Lucretius, never wholly lost\nfrom Italian hands. But the Lucretian view of things among men of\nthe world naturally remained a matter of private discussion, not of\npropaganda; and it was on the less rationalistic but more organized\nanti-clericalism that there came the doom of martyrdom. So with the\nsimple deism of which we find traces in the polemic of Guibert de\nNogent (d. 1124), who avowedly wrote his tract De Incarnatione adversus\nJud\u00e6os rather as an apology against unbelievers among the Christians;\n[1451] and again among the pilgrim community founded later in France\nin commemoration of Thomas \u00e0 Becket. [1452] Such doubters said little,\nleaving it to more zealous reformers to challenge creed with creed.\n\nFreethought in south-western Europe, however, had a measure of\ncountenance in very high places. In the thirteenth century the Emperor\nFrederick II had the repute of being an infidel in the double sense of\nbeing semi-Moslem [1453] and semi-atheist. By Pope Gregory IX he was\nopenly charged, in a furious afterthought, [1454] with saying that\nthe world had been deceived by three impostors (baratores)--Moses,\nJesus, and Mohammed; also with putting Jesus much below the other two,\nand with delighting to call himself the forerunner of Antichrist.\n\n\n The Pope's letter, dated July 1, 1239, is given by Matthew Paris\n (extracts in Gieseler, vol. iii, \u00a7 55), and in Labbe's Concilia,\n t. xiii, col. 1157. Cp. the other references given by Renan,\n Averro\u00e8s, 3e \u00e9dit. pp. 296-97. As Voltaire remarks (Essai sur\n les Moeurs, ch. lii), the Pope's statement is the basis for the\n old belief that Frederick had written a treatise dealing with\n Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed as The Three Impostors. The story\n is certainly a myth; and probably no such book existed in his\n century. Cp. Maclaine's note to Mosheim, 13 Cent. pt. i, end;\n Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 280-81, 295. The authorship of such a book\n has nevertheless been ascribed by Catholic writers successively\n to Averro\u00ebs, Simon of Tournay, Frederick, his Minister, Pierre\n des Vignes, Arnaldo de Villanueva, Boccaccio, Poggio, Pietro\n Aretino, Machiavelli, Symphorien, Champier, Pomponazzi, Cardan,\n Erasmus, Rabelais, Ochinus, Servetus, Postel, Campanella, Muret,\n Geoffroi Vall\u00e9e, Giordano Bruno, Dolet, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Vanini\n (cp. Sentimens sur le trait\u00e9 des trois imposteurs in the French\n ed. of 1793; and Lea, Hist. of the Inquis. iii, 560); and the\n seventeenth-century apologist Mersenne professed to have seen it\n in Arabic (Lea, iii, 297). These references may be dismissed as\n worthless. In 1654 the French physician and mathematician Morin\n wrote an Epistola de tribus impostoribus under the name of Panurge,\n but this attacked the three contemporary writers Gassendi, Neure,\n and Bernier; and in 1680 Kortholt of Kiel published under the title\n De tribus impostoribus magnis an attack on Herbert, Hobbes, and\n Spinoza. The Three Impostors current later, dealing with Moses,\n Jesus, and Mohammed, may have been written about the same time,\n but, as we shall see later, is identical with L'Esprit de Spinoza,\n first published in 1719. A Latin treatise purporting to be written\n de tribus famosissimis deceptoribus, and addressed to an Otho\n illustrissimus (conceivably Otho Duke of Bavaria, 13th c.), came\n to light in MS. in 1706, and was described in 1716, but was not\n printed. The treatise current later in French cannot have been\n the same. On the whole subject see the note of R. C. Christie\n (reprinted from Notes and Queries) in his Selected Essays and\n Papers, 1902, pp. 309, 315; and the full discussion in Reuter's\n Geschichte der religi\u00f6sen Aufkl\u00e4rung, ii, 251-96. The book De\n tribus impostoribus, bearing the date 1598, of which several copies\n exist, seems to have been really published, with its false date,\n at Vienna in 1753.\n\n\nFrederick was in reality superstitious enough; he worshipped relics;\nand he was nearly as merciless as the popes to rebellious heretics and\nManicheans; [1455] his cruelty proceeding, seemingly, on the belief\nthat insubordination to the emperor was sure to follow intellectual\nas distinguished from political revolt against the Church. He was\nabsolutely tolerant to Jews and Moslems, [1456] and had trusted Moslem\ncounsellors, thereby specially evoking the wrath of the Church. Greatly\nconcerned to acquire the lore of the Arabs, [1457] he gave his favour\nand protection to Michael Scotus, the first translator of portions\nof Averro\u00ebs into Latin, [1458] and presumptively himself a heretic\nof the Averro\u00efst stamp; whence the legend of his wizardry, adopted\nby Dante. [1459] Thus the doubting and persecuting emperor assisted\nat the birth of the philosophic movement which for centuries was\nmost closely associated with unbelief in Christendom. For the rest,\nhe is recorded to have ridiculed the doctrine of the Virgin Birth,\nthe viaticum, and other dogmas, \"as being repugnant to reason and to\nnature\"; [1460] and his general hostility to the Pope would tend to\nmake him a bad Churchman. Indeed the testimonies, both Christian and\nMoslem, as to his freethinking are too clear to be set aside. [1461]\nCertainly no monarch of that or any age was more eagerly interested\nin every form of culture, or did more, on tyrannous lines, to promote\nit; [1462] and to him rather than to Simon de Montfort Europe owes\nthe admission of representatives of cities to Parliaments. [1463]\nOf his son Manfred it is recorded that he was a thorough Epicurean,\nbelieving neither in God nor in the saints. [1464] But positive\nunbelief in a future state, mockery of the Christian religion, and\neven denial of deity--usually in private, and never in writing--are\nfrequently complained of by the clerical writers of the time in France\nand Italy; [1465] while in Spain Alfonso the Wise, about 1260, speaks\nof a common unbelief in immortality, alike as to heaven and hell;\nand the Council of Tarragona in 1291 decrees punishments against such\nunbelievers. [1466] In Italy, not unnaturally, they were most commonly\nfound among the Ghibelline or imperial party, the opponents of the\npapacy, despite imperial orthodoxy. \"Incredulity, affected or real,\nwas for the oppressed Ghibellines a way among others of distinguishing\nthemselves from the Guelph oppressors.\" [1467]\n\nThe commonest form of rationalistic heresy seems to have been unbelief\nin immortality. Thus Dante in the Inferno estimates that among\nthe heretics there are more than a thousand followers of Epicurus,\n\"who make the soul die with the body,\" [1468] specifying among them\nthe Emperor Frederick II, a cardinal, [1469] the Ghibelline noble\nFarinata degli Uberti, and the Guelph Cavalcante Cavalcanti. [1470]\nHe was thinking, as usual, of the men of his own age; but, as we\nhave seen, this particular heresy had existed in previous centuries,\nhaving indeed probably never disappeared from Italy. Other passages in\nDante's works [1471] show, in any case, that it was much discussed in\nhis time; [1472] and it is noteworthy that, so far as open avowal went,\nItalian freethought had got no further two hundred years later. In the\nperiod before the papacy had thoroughly established the Inquisition,\nand diplomacy supervened on the tempestuous strifes of the great\nfactions, there was a certain hardihood of speech on all subjects,\nwhich tended to disappear alongside of even a more searching unbelief.\n\n\n \"Le 16e si\u00e8cle n'a eu aucune mauvaise pens\u00e9e que le 13e n'ait\n eue avant lui\" (Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 231). Renan, however,\n seems astray in stating that \"Le Po\u00e8me de la Descente de Saint\n Paul aux enfers parle avec terreur d'une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 secr\u00e8te qui\n avait jur\u00e9 la destruction de Christianisme\" (id. p. 284). The\n poem simply describes the various tortures of sinners in hell,\n and mentions in their turn those who \"en terre, \u00e0 sainte Iglise\n firent guerre,\" and in death \"Verbe Deu refusouent\"; also those\n \"Ki ne croient que Deu fust nez (n\u00e9), ne que Sainte Marie l'eust\n portez, ne que por le peuple vousist (voulait) mourir, ne que\n peine deignast soffrir.\" See the text as given by Ozanam, Dante,\n ed. 6i\u00e8me, Ptie. iv--the version cited by Renan.\n\n\nSo, with regard to the belief in magic, there was no general advance\nin the later Renaissance on the skepticism of Pietro of Abano, a\nfamous Paduan physician and Averro\u00efst, who died, at the age of 80,\nin 1305. He appears to have denied alike magic and miracles, though\nhe held fast by astrology, and ascribed the rise and progress of all\nreligions to the influence of the stars. Himself accused of magic, he\nescaped violent death by dying naturally before his trial was ended;\nand the Inquisition burned either his body or his image. [1473] After\nhim, superstition seems to have gone step for step with skepticism.\n\nDante's own poetic genius, indeed, did much to arrest intellectual\nevolution in Italy. Before his time, as we have seen, the trouv\u00e8res\nof northern France and the Goliards of the south had handled hell\nin a spirit of burlesque; and his own teacher, Brunetto Latini, had\nframed a poetic allegory, Il Tesoretto, in which Nature figures as\nthe universal power, behind which the God-idea disappeared. [1474] But\nDante's tremendous vision ultimately effaced all others of the kind;\nand his intellectual predominance in virtue of mere imaginative art is\nat once the great characteristic and the great anomaly of the early\nRenaissance. Happily the inseparable malignity of his pietism was in\nlarge part superseded by a sunnier spirit; [1475] but his personality\nand his poetry helped to hold the balance of authority on the side\nof faith. [1476] Within a few years of his death there was burned at\nFlorence (1327) one of the most daring heretics of the later Middle\nAges, Cecco Stabili d'Ascoli, a professor of philosophy and astrology\nat Bologna, who is recorded to have had some intimacy with Dante, and\nto have been one of his detractors. [1477] Cecco has been described as\n\"representing natural science, against the Christian science of Dante\";\n[1478] and though his science was primitive, the summing-up is not\nunwarranted. Combining strong anti-Christian feeling with the universal\nbelief in astrology, he had declared that Jesus lived as a sluggard\n(come un poltrone) with his disciples, and died on the cross, under\nthe compulsion of his star. [1479] In view of the blasphemer's fate,\nsuch audacity was not often repeated.\n\nAs against Dante, the great literary influence for tolerance and\nliberalism if not rationalism of thought was Boccaccio (1313-1375),\nwhose Decameron [1480] anticipates every lighter aspect of the\nRenaissance--its levity, its licence, its humour, its anti-clericalism,\nits incipient tolerance, its irreverence, its partial freethinking,\nas well as its exuberance in the joy of living. On the side of\nanti-clericalism, the key-note is struck so strongly and so defiantly\nin some of the opening tales that the toleration of the book by the\npapal authorities can be accounted for only by their appreciation of\nthe humour of the stories therein told against them, as that [1481] of\nthe Jew who, after seeing the utter corruption of the clergy at Rome,\nturned Christian on the score that only by divine support could such\na system survive. No Protestant ever passed a more scathing aspersion\non the whole body of the curia than is thus set in the forefront of\nthe Decameron. Still more deeply significant of innovating thought,\nhowever, is the famous story of The Three Rings, [1482] embodied later\nby Lessing in his Nathan the Wise as an apologue of tolerance. Such a\nstory, introduced with whatever parade of orthodox faith, could not but\nmake for rational skepticism, summarizing as it does the whole effect\nof the inevitable comparison of the rival creeds made by the men of\nItaly and those of the east in their intercourse. The story itself,\ncentring on Saladin, is of eastern origin, [1483] and so tells of even\nmore freethinking than meets the eye in the history of Islam. [1484]\nIt is noteworthy that the Rabbi Simeon Duran (1360-1444), who follows\non this period, appears to be the first Jewish teacher to plead for\nmutual toleration among the conflicting schools of his race. [1485]\n\nCurrent in Italy before Boccaccio, the tale had been improved from\none Italian hand to another; [1486] and the main credit for its full\ndevelopment is Boccaccio's. [1487] Though the Church never officially\nattempted to suppress the book--leaving it to Savonarola to destroy as\nfar as possible the first edition--the more serious clergy naturally\nresented its hostility, first denouncing it, then seeking to expurgate\nall the anti-clerical passages; [1488] and the personal pressure\nbrought to bear upon Boccaccio had the effect of dispiriting and\npuritanizing him; so that the Decameron finally wrought its effect\nin its author's despite. [1489] So far as we can divine the deeper\ninfluence of such a work on medieval thought, it may reasonably be\nsupposed to have tended, like that of Averro\u00efsm, towards Unitarianism\nor deism, inasmuch as a simple belief in deity is all that is normally\nimplied in its language on religious matters. On that view it bore\nits full intellectual fruit only in the two succeeding centuries,\nwhen deism and Unitarianism alike grew up in Italy, apparently from\nnon-scholastic roots.\n\nIt is an interesting problem how far the vast calamity of the Black\nDeath (1348-49) told either for skepticism or for superstition in this\nage. In Boccaccio's immortal book we see a few refined Florentines who\nflee the pest giving themselves up to literary amusement; but there\nis also mention of many who had taken to wild debauchery, and there\nare many evidences as to wild outbreaks of desperate licence all over\nEurope. [1490] On the other hand, many were driven by fear to religious\npractices; [1491] and in the immense destruction of life the Church\nacquired much new wealth. At the same time the multitudes of priests\nwho died [1492] had as a rule to be replaced by ill-trained persons,\nwhere the problem was not solved by creating pluralities, the result\nbeing a general falling-off in the culture and the authority of the\nclergy. [1493] But there seems to have been little or no growth of\nsuch questioning as came later from the previously optimistic Voltaire\nafter the earthquake of Lisbon; and the total effect of the immense\nreduction of population all over Europe seems to have been a lowering\nof the whole of the activities of life. Certainly the students of\nParis in 1376 were surprisingly freethinking on scriptural points;\n[1494] but there is nothing to show that the great pestilence had set\nup any new movement of ethical thought. In some ways it grievously\ndeepened bigotry, as in regard to the Jews, who were in many regions\nmadly impeached as having caused the plague by poisoning the wells,\nand were then massacred in large numbers.\n\nSide by side with Boccaccio, his friend Petrarch (1304-1374), who\nwith him completes the great literary trio of the late Middle Ages,\nbelongs to freethought in that he too, with less aggressiveness but\nalso without recoil, stood for independent culture and a rational habit\nof mind as against the dogmatics and tyrannies of the Church. [1495]\nHe was in the main a practical humanist, not in accord with the\nverbalizing scholastic philosophy of his time, and disposed to\nfind his intellectual guide in the skeptical yet conservative\nCicero. The scholastics had become as fanatical for Aristotle or\nAverro\u00ebs as the churchmen were for their dogmas; [1496] and Petrarch\nmade for mental freedom by resisting all dogmatisms alike. [1497]\nThe general liberality of his attitude has earned him the titles of\n\"the first modern man\" [1498] and \"the founder of modern criticism\"\n[1499]--both somewhat high-pitched. [1500] He represented in reality\nthe sobering and clarifying influence of the revived classic culture\non the fanaticisms developed in the Middle Ages; and when he argued\nfor the rule of reason in all things [1501] it was not that he\nwas a deeply searching rationalist, but that he was spontaneously\naverse to all the extremes of thought around him, and was concerned\nto discredit them. For himself, having little speculative power, he\nwas disposed to fall back on a simple and tolerant Christianity. Thus\nhe is quite unsympathetic in his references to those scholars of his\nday who privately indicated their unbelief. Knowing nothing of the\nteaching of Averro\u00ebs, he speaks of him, on the strength of Christian\nfictions, as \"that mad dog who, moved by an execrable rage, barks\nagainst his Lord Christ and the Catholic faith.\" [1502] Apart from\nsuch conventional odium theologicum, his judgment, like his literary\nart, was clear and restrained; opening no new vistas, but bringing\na steady and placid light to bear on its chosen sphere.\n\nBetween such humanistic influences and that of more systematic and\nscholastic thought, Italy in that age was the chief source of practical\ncriticism of Christian dogmas; and the extent to which a unitarian\ntheism was now connected with the acceptance of the philosophy of\nAverro\u00ebs brought it about, despite the respectful attitude of Dante,\nwho gave him a tranquil place in hell, [1503] that he came to figure\nas Antichrist for the faithful. [1504] Petrarch in his letters speaks\nof much downright hostility to the Christian system on the part of\nAverro\u00efsts; [1505] and the association of Averro\u00efsm with the great\nmedical school of Padua [1506] must have promoted practical skepticism\namong physicians. Being formally restricted to the schools, however,\nit tended there to undergo the usual scholastic petrifaction; and\nthe common-sense deism it encouraged outside had to subsist without\nliterary discipline. In this form it probably reached many lands,\nwithout openly affecting culture or life; since Averro\u00efsm itself\nwas professed generally in the Carmelite order, who claimed for it\northodoxy. [1507]\n\nAlongside, however, of intellectual solvents, there were at work others\nof a more widely effective kind, set up by the long and sinister\nhistoric episode of the Great Papal Schism. The Church, already\nprofoundly discredited in the eleventh century by the gross disorders\nof the papacy, continued frequently throughout the twelfth to exhibit\nthe old spectacle of rival popes; and late in the fourteenth (1378)\nthere broke out the greatest schism of all. Ostensibly beginning in\na riotous coercion of the electing cardinals by the Roman populace,\nit was maintained on the one side by the standing interest of the\nclergy in Italy, which called for an Italian head of the Church,\nand on the other hand by the French interest, which had already\nenforced the residence of the popes at Avignon from 1305 to 1376. It\nwas natural that, just after the papal chair had been replaced in\nItaly by Gregory IX, the Romans should threaten violence to the\ncardinals if they chose any but an Italian; and no less natural that\nthe French court should determine to restore a state of things in\nwhich it controlled the papacy in all save its corruption. During\nthe seventy years of \"the Captivity,\" Rome had sunk to the condition\nof a poor country town; and to the Italian clergy the struggle for a\nrestoration was a matter of economic life and death. For thirty-nine\nyears did the schism last, being ended only by the prolonged action\nof the great Council of Constance in deposing the rivals of the moment\nand appointing Martin V (1417); and this was achieved only after there\nhad slipped into the chair of Peter \"the most worthless and infamous\nman to be found.\" [1508] During the schism every species of scandal had\nflourished. Indulgences had been sold and distributed at random; [1509]\nsimony and venality abounded more than ever; [1510] the courts of Rome\nand Avignon were mere rivals in avarice, indecorum, and reciprocal\nexecration; and in addition to the moral occasion for skepticism there\nwas the intellectual, since no one could show conclusively that the\nadministration of sacraments was valid under either pope. [1511]\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 8. SECTS AND ORDERS\n\nDespite, therefore, the premium put by the Church on devotion\nto its cause and doctrine, and despite its success in strangling\nspecific forms of heresy, hostility to its own pretensions germinated\neverywhere, [1512] especially in the countries most alien to Italy\nin language and civilization. An accomplished Catholic scholar [1513]\nsums up that \"from about the middle of the twelfth century the whole\nsecular and religious literature of Europe grew more and more hostile\nto the papacy and the curia.\" The Church's own economic conditions,\nconstantly turning its priesthood, despite all precautions, into a\nmoney-making and shamelessly avaricious class, ensured it a perpetuity\nof ill-will and denunciation. The popular literature which now began\nto grow throughout Christendom with the spread of political order was\neverywhere turned to the account of anti-clerical satire; [1514] and\nonly the defect of real knowledge secured by the Church's own policy\nprevented such hostility from developing into rational unbelief. As\nit was, a tendency to criticize at once the socio-economic code and\npractice and the details of creed and worship is seen in a series\nof movements from the thirteenth century onwards; and some of the\nmost popular literature of that age is deeply tinged with the new\nspirit. After the overthrow of the well-organized anti-clericalism\nof the Cathari and other heretics in Languedoc, however, no movement\nequally systematic and equally heretical flourished on any large scale;\nand as even those heresies on their popular side were essentially\nsupernaturalist, and tended to set up one hierarchy in place of\nanother, it would be vain to look for anything like a consistent or\nsearching rationalism among the people in the period broadly termed\nmedieval, including the Renaissance.\n\nIt would be a bad misconception to infer from the abundant signs of\npopular disrespect for the clergy that the mass of the laity even\nin Italy, for instance, were unbelievers. [1515] They never were\nanything of the kind. At all times they were deeply superstitious,\neasily swayed by religious emotion, credulous as to relics, miracles,\nvisions, prophecies, responsive to pulpit eloquence, readily passing\nfrom derision of worldly priests to worship of austere ones. [1516]\nWhen Machiavelli said that religion was gone from Italy, he was\nthinking of the upper classes, among whom theism was normal, [1517] and\nthe upper clergy, who were often at once superstitious and corrupt. As\nfor the common people, it was impossible that they should be grounded\nrationalists as regarded the great problems of life. They were merely\nthe raw material on which knowledge might work if it could reach them,\nwhich it never did. And the common people everywhere else stood at\nor below the culture level of those of Italy.\n\nFor lack of other culture than Biblical, then, even the popular heresy\ntended to run into mysticisms which were only so far more rational than\nthe dogmas and rites of the Church that they stood for some actual\nreflection. A partial exception, indeed, may be made in the case of\nthe Brethren of the Free Spirit, a sect set up in Germany in the early\nyears of the thirteenth century, by one Ortlieb, on the basis of the\npantheistic teachings of Amaury of B\u00e8ne and David of Dinant. [1518]\nTheir doctrines were set forth in a special treatise or sacred book,\ncalled The Nine Rocks. The Fratres liberi spiritus seem to have been\nidentical with the sect of the \"Holy Spirit\"; [1519] but their tenets\nwere heretical in a high degree, including as they did a denial of\npersonal immortality, and consequently of the notions of heaven,\nhell, and purgatory. Even the sect's doctrine of the Holy Spirit was\nheretical in another way, inasmuch as it ran, if its opponents can be\nbelieved, to the old antinomian assertion that anyone filled with the\nSpirit was sinless, whatever deeds he might do. [1520] As always, such\nantinomianism strengthened the hands of the clergy against the heresy,\nthough the Brethren seem to have been originally very ascetic; and\ninasmuch as their pantheism involved the idea that Satan also had in\nhim the divine essence, they were duly accused of devil-worship. [1521]\nOn general principles they were furiously persecuted; but all through\nthe thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and even in the fifteenth,\nthey are found in various parts of central and western Europe, [1522]\noften in close alliance with the originally orthodox communities\nknown in France and Holland by the names of Turlupins and Beguins or\nBeguines, and in Germany and Belgium as Begutt\u00e6 or Beghards, [1523]\nakin to the Lollards.\n\nThese in turn are to be understood in connection with developments\nwhich took place in the thirteenth century within the Church--notably\nthe rise of the great orders of Mendicant Friars, of which the\ntwo chief were founded about 1216 by Francis of Assisi and the\nSpanish Dominic, the latter a fierce persecutor in the Albigensian\ncrusade. Nothing availed more to preserve or restore for a time the\nChurch's prestige. The old criticism of priestly and monastic avarice\nand worldliness was disarmed by the sudden appearance and rapid spread\nof a priesthood and brotherhood of poverty; and the obvious devotion of\nthousands of the earlier adherents went to the general credit of the\nChurch. Yet the descent of the new orders to the moral and economic\nlevels of the old was only a question of time; and no process could\nmore clearly illustrate the futility of all schemes of regenerating the\nworld on non-rational principles. Apart from the vast encouragement\ngiven to sheer mendicancy among the poor, the orders themselves\nsubstantially apostatized from their own rules within a generation.\n\nThe history of the Franciscans in particular is like that of the\nChurch in general--one of rapid lapse into furious schism, with a\ngeneral reversion to gross self-seeking on the part of the majority,\noriginally vowed to utter poverty. Elias, the first successor of\nFrancis, appointed by the Saint himself, proved an intolerable tyrant;\nand in his day began the ferocious strife between the \"Spirituals,\"\nwho insisted on the founder's ideal of poverty, and the majority, who\ninsisted on accepting the wealth which the world either bestowed or\ncould be cajoled into bestowing on the order. The majority, of course,\nultimately overbore the Spirituals, the papacy supporting them. [1524]\nThey followed the practically universal law of monastic life. The\nHumiliati, founded before the thirteenth century, had to be suppressed\nby the Pope in the sixteenth, for sheer corruption of morals; and the\nFranciscans and Dominicans, who speedily became bitterly hostile to\neach other, were in large measure little better. Even in the middle\nof the thirteenth century they were attacked by the Sorbonne doctor,\nWilliam of St. Amour, in a book on The Perils of the Latter Times;\n[1525] and in England in the fourteenth century we find Wiclif\nassailing the begging friars as the earlier satirists had assailed\nthe abbots and monks. That all this reciprocal invective was not\nmere partizan calumny, but broadly true as against both sides, is\nthe conclusion forced upon a reader of the Philobiblon ascribed to\nRichard de Bury, Bishop of Durham and Treasurer and Chancellor under\nEdward III. In that book, written either by the bishop or by one\nof his chaplains, Robert Holkot, [1526] the demerits of all orders\nof the clergy from the points of view of letters and morals are set\nforth with impartial emphasis; [1527] and the character of the bishop\nin turn is no less effectively disposed of after his death by Adam\nMurimuth, a distinguished lawyer and canon of St. Paul's. [1528]\n\nThe worst of the trouble for the Church was that the mendicants were\ndetested by bishops and the beneficed priests, whose credit they\nundermined, and whose revenues they intercepted. That the Franciscans\nand Dominicans remained socially powerful till the Reformation was\ndue to the energy developed by their corporate organization and the\nmeasure of education they soon secured on their own behalf; not\nto any general superiority on their part to the \"secular\" clergy\nso-called. [1529] Indeed it was to the latter, within the Church,\nthat most pre-Reformation reformers looked for sympathy. At the outset,\nhowever, the movement of the Mendicant Friars gave a great impulsion to\nthe lay communities of the type of the Beguines and Beghards who had\noriginated in the Netherlands, and who practised at once mendicancy\nand charity very much on the early Franciscan lines; [1530] and the\nspirit of innovation led in both cases to forms of heresy. That of the\nBeguines and Beghards arose mainly through their association with the\nBrethren of the Free Spirit; and they suffered persecution as did the\nlatter; while among the \"Spiritual\" Franciscans, who were despisers of\nlearning, there arose a species of new religion. At the beginning of\nthe century, Abbot Joachim, of Flora or Flores in Calabria (d. 1202),\nwho \"may be regarded as the founder of modern mysticism,\" [1531]\nhad earned a great reputation by devout austerities, and a greater by\nhis vaticinations, [1532] which he declared to be divine. One of his\nwritings was condemned as heretical, thirteen years after his death,\nby the Council of Lateran; but his apocalyptic writings, and others put\nout in his name, had a great vogue among the rebellious Franciscans.\n\nAt length, in 1254, there was produced in Paris a book called The\nEverlasting Gospel, consisting of three of his genuine works, with a\nlong and audacious Introduction by an anonymous hand, which expressed\na spirit of innovation and revolt, mystical rather than rational, that\nseemed to promise the utter disruption of the Church. It declared\nthat, as the dispensation of the Son had followed on that of the\nFather, so Christ's evangel in turn was to be superseded by that of\nthe \"Holy Spirit.\" [1533] Adopted by the \"Spiritual\" section of the\nFranciscans, it brought heresy within the organization itself, the\nIntroduction being by many ascribed--probably in error--to the head\nof the order, John of Parma, a devotee of Joachim. On other grounds,\nhe was ultimately deposed; [1534] but the ferment of heresy was\ngreat. And while the Franciscans are commonly reputed to have been led\nby small-minded generals, [1535] their order, as Renan notes, [1536]\nnot only never lost the stamp of its popular and irregular origin,\nbut was always less orthodox in general than the Dominican. But its\ndeviations were rather ultra-religious than rational; and some of its\nheresies have become orthodoxy. Thus it was the Franciscans, notably\nDuns Scotus, who carried the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception\nof the Virgin against the Dominicans, who held by the teaching of\nThomas Aquinas that she was conceived \"in sin.\" [1537] Mary was thus\ndeified on a popular impulse, dating from paganism, at the expense\nof Christism; and, considering that both Thomas and St. Bernard had\nflatly rejected the Immaculate Conception, its ultimate adoption as\ndogma is highly significant. [1538]\n\nIn the year 1260, when, according to the \"Eternal Gospel,\" the new\ndispensation of the Holy Spirit was to begin, there was an immense\nexcitement in northern Italy, marked by the outbreak of the order\nof Flagellants, self-scourgers, whose hysteria spread to other\nlands. Gherardo Segarelli, a youth of Parma, came forward as a new\nChrist, had himself circumcised, swaddled, cradled, and suckled;\n[1539] and proceeded to found a new order of \"Apostolicals,\" after\nthe manner of a sect of the previous century, known by the same name,\nwho professed to return to primitive simplicity and to chastity, and\nreproduced what they supposed to be the morals of the early Church,\nincluding the profession of ascetic cohabitation. [1540] Some of\ntheir missionaries got as far as Germany; but Segarelli was caught,\nimprisoned, reduced to the status of a bishop's jester, and at length,\nafter saving his life for a time by abjuration, burned at Parma,\nin the year 1300.\n\nDespite much persecution of the order, one of its adherents,\nFra Dolcino, immediately began to exploit Segarelli's martyrdom,\nand renewed the movement by an adaptation of the \"Eternal Gospel,\"\nannouncing that Segarelli had begun a new era, to last till the Day\nof Judgment. Predicting the formation of native states, as well as\nthe forcible purification of the papacy, he ultimately set up an\narmed movement, which held out in the southern Alps for two years,\ntill the Apostolicals were reduced to cannibalism. At length (1307)\nthey were overpowered and massacred, and Dolcino was captured, with\nhis beautiful and devoted companion, Margherita di Trank. She was\nslowly burned to death before his eyes, refusing to abjure; and he\nin turn was gradually tortured to death, uttering no cry. [1541]\n\nThe order subsisted for a time in secret, numbers cherishing Dolcino's\nmemory, and practising a priestless and riteless religion, prohibiting\noaths, and wholly repudiating every claim of the Church. [1542] Yet\nanother sect, called by the name of \"The Spirit of Liberty\"--probably\nthe origin of the name libertini, later applied to freethinkers in\nFrance--was linked on the one hand to the Apostolicals and on the\nother to the German Brethren of the Free Spirit, as well as to the\nFranciscan Fraticelli. This sect is heard of as late as 1344, when\none of its members was burned. [1543] And there were yet others;\ntill it seemed as if the Latin Church were to be resolved into an\nendless series of schisms. But organization, as of old, prevailed;\nthe cohesive and aggressive force of the central system, with the\nnatural strifes of the new movements, whether within or without\n[1544] the Church, sufficed to bring about their absorption or their\ndestruction. It needed a special concurrence of economic, political,\nand culture forces to disrupt the fabric of the papacy.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 9. THOUGHT IN SPAIN\n\nOf all the chapters in the history of the Inquisition, the most\ntragical is the record of its work in Spain, for there a whole\nnation's faculty of freethought was by its ministry strangled for a\nwhole era. There is a prevalent notion that in Spain fanaticism had\nmastered the national life from the period of the overthrow of Arianism\nunder the later Visigothic kings; and that there the extirpation of\nheresy was the spontaneous and congenial work of the bulk of the\nnation, giving vent to the spirit of intolerance ingrained in it\nin the long war with the Moors. \"Spain,\" says Michelet, \"has always\nfelt herself more Catholic than Rome.\" [1545] But this is a serious\nmisconception. Wars associated with a religious cause are usually\nfollowed rather by indifference than by increased faith; and the long\nwars of the Moors and the Christians in Spain had some such sequel,\n[1546] as had the Crusades, and the later wars of religion in France\nand Germany. It is true that for a century after the (political)\nconversion of the Visigothic king Recared (587) from Arianism to\nCatholicism--an age of complete decadence--the policy of the Spanish\nChurch was extremely intolerant, as might have been expected. The\nJews, in particular, were repeatedly and murderously persecuted;\n[1547] but after the fall of the Visigoths before the invading\nMoors, the treatment of all forms of heresy in the Christian parts\nof the Peninsula, down to the establishment of the second or New\nInquisition under Torquemada, was in general rather less severe than\nelsewhere. [1548]\n\nAn exception is to be noted in the case of the edicts of 1194 and 1197,\nby Alfonso II and Pedro II (\"the Catholic\") of Aragon, against the\nWaldenses. [1549] The policy in the first case was that of wholesale\nexpulsion of the heretics anathematized by the Church; and, as this\nlaid the victims open to plunder all round, there is a presumption\nthat cupidity was a main part of the motive. Peter the Catholic, in\nturn, who decreed the stake for the heretics that remained, made a\nsignally complete capitulation to the Holy See; but the nation did not\nsupport him; and the tribute he promised to pay to the Pope was never\npaid. [1550] In the thirteenth century, when the Moors had been driven\nout of Castile, rationalistic heresy seems to have been as common\nin Spain as in Italy. Already Arab culture had spread, Archbishop\nRaymond of Toledo (1130-50) having caused many books to be translated\nfrom Arabic into Latin; [1551] and inasmuch as racial warfare had\nalways involved some intercourse between Christians and Moors, [1552]\nthe Averro\u00efst influence which so speedily reached Sicily from Toledo\nthrough Michael Scot must have counted for something in Spain. About\n1260 Alfonso X, \"the Wise\" king of Castile, describes the heresies of\nhis kingdom under two main divisions, of which the worse is the denial\nof a future state of rewards and punishments. [1553] This heresy,\nfurther, is proceeded against by the Council of Tarragona in 1291. And\nthough Alfonso was orthodox, and in his legislation a persecutor,\n[1554] his own astronomic and mathematical science, so famous in the\nafter times, came to him from the Arabs and the Jews whom he actually\ncalled in to assist him in preparing his astronomic tables. [1555]\nSuch science was itself a species of heresy in that age; and to it\nthe orthodox king owes his Catholic reputation as a blasphemer,\nas Antichrist, [1556] and as one of the countless authors of the\nfabulous treatise on the \"Three Impostors.\" He would further rank\nas a bad Churchman, inasmuch as his very laws against heresy took no\naccount of the Roman Inquisition (though it was nominally established\nby a papal rescript in 1235), [1557] but provided independently for\nthe treatment of offenders. Needless to say, they had due regard to\nfinance, non-believers who listened to heresy being fined ten pounds\nweight of gold, with the alternative of fifty lashes in public; while\nthe property of lay heretics without kin went to the fisc. [1558]\nThe law condemning to the stake those Christians who apostatized to\nIslam or Judaism [1559] had also a financial motive.\n\nSuch laws, however, left to unsystematic application, were but slightly\noperative; and the people fiercely resisted what attempts were made\nto enforce them. [1560] At the end of the thirteenth century the\nheresies of the French Beguines and the Franciscan \"Spirituals\" spread\nin Aragon, both by way of books and of preaching, and even entered\nPortugal. Against these, in the years 1314-1335, the Inquisitors\nmaintained a persecution. [1561] But it has been put on record by\nthe famous Arnaldo of Villanueva--astronomer, scholar, alchemist,\nreformer, and occultist [1562] (d. 1314)--whose books were at that\nperiod condemned by a council of friars because of his championship of\nthe Spirituals, that King Frederick II of Aragon had confessed to him\nhis doubts as to the truth of the Christian religion--doubts set up by\nthe misconduct of priests, abbots, and bishops; the malignities of the\nheads of the friar orders; and the worldliness and political intrigues\nof the Holy See. [1563] Such a king was not likely to be a zealous\ninquisitor; and the famous Joachite Franciscan Juan de Pera-Tallada\n(Jean de la Rochetaillade), imprisoned at Avignon for his apocalyptic\nteachings about 1349, seems to have died in peace in Spain long\nafterwards. [1564] It cannot even be said that the ordinary motive of\nrapacity worked strongly against heresy in Spain in the Middle Ages,\nsince there the Templars, condemned and plundered everywhere else,\nwere acquitted; and their final spoliation was the work of the papacy,\nthe Spanish authorities resisting. [1565] We shall find, further, the\northodox Spanish king of Naples in the fifteenth century protecting\nanti-papal scholarship. And though Dominic, the primary type of the\nInquisitor, had been a Castilian, no Spaniard was Pope from the fourth\nto the fourteenth century, and very few were cardinals. [1566]\n\nAs late as the latter half of the fifteenth century, within a\ngeneration of the setting-up of the murderous New Inquisition,\nSpain seems to have been on the whole as much given to freethinking\nas France, and much more so than England. On the one hand, Averro\u00efsm\ntinged somewhat the intellectual life through the Moorish environment,\nso that in 1464 we find revolted nobles complaining that King Enrique\nIV is suspected of being unsound in the faith because he has about\nhim both enemies of Catholicism and nominal Christians who avow their\ndisbelief in a future state. [1567] On the other hand, it had been\nnoted that many were beginning to deny the need or efficacy of priestly\nconfession; and about 1478 a Professor at Salamanca, Pedro de Osma,\nactually printed an argument to that effect, further challenging the\npower of the Pope. So slight was then the machinery of inquisition\nthat he had to be publicly tried by a council, which merely ordered\nhim to recant in public; and he died peacefully in 1480. [1568]\n\nIt was immediately after this, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella,\nthat the Inquisition was newly and effectively established in Spain;\nand the determining motive was the avarice of the king and queen,\nnot the Catholic zeal of the people. The Inquisitor-General of\nMessina came to Madrid in 1477 in order to obtain confirmation of a\nforged privilege, pretended to have been granted to the Dominicans\nin Sicily by Frederick II in 1233--that of receiving one-third of\nthe property of every heretic they condemned. To such a ruler as\nFerdinand, such a system readily appealed; and as soon as possible a\nnew Inquisition was established in Spain, Isabella consenting. [1569]\nFrom the first it was a system of plunder. \"Men long dead, if they\nwere represented by rich descendants, were cited before the tribunal,\njudged, and condemned; and the lands and goods that had descended to\ntheir heirs passed into the coffers of the Catholic kings.\" [1570]\nThe solemn assertion by Queen Isabella, that she had never applied\nsuch money to the purposes of the crown, has been proved from State\npapers to be \"a most deliberate and daring falsehood.\" [1571] The\nrevenue thus iniquitously obtained was enormous; and it is inferrible\nthat the pecuniary motive underlay the later expulsion of the Jews\nand the Moriscoes as well as the average practice of the Inquisition.\n\n\n The error as to the original or anciently ingrained fanaticism of\n the Spanish people, first made current by Ticknor (Hist. Spanish\n Lit., 6th ed. i, 505), has been to some extent diffused by Buckle,\n who at this point of his inquiry reasoned \u00e0 priori instead of\n inductively as his own principles prescribed. See the notes to the\n present writer's edition of his Introduction (Routledge, 1904),\n pp. 107, 534-50. The special atrocity of the Inquisition in Spain\n was not even due directly to the papacy (cp. Burke, ii, 78): it was\n the result first of the rapacity of Ferdinand, utilizing a papal\n institution; and later of the political fanaticisms of Charles V\n and Philip II, both of Teutonic as well as Spanish descent. Philip\n alleged that the Inquisition in the Netherlands was more severe\n than in Spain (ed. of Buckle cited, p. 107, note). In the words\n of Bishop Stubbs: \"To a German race of sovereigns Spain finally\n owed the subversion of her national system and ancient freedom\"\n (id. p. 550, note).\n\n\nSuch a process, however, would not have been possible in any country,\nat any stage of the world's history, without the initiative and the\nsupport of some such sacrosanct organization as the Catholic Church,\nwielding a spell over the minds even of those who, in terror and\ndespair, fought against it. As in the thirteenth century, so at the end\nof the fifteenth, [1572] the Inquisition in Spain was spasmodically\nresisted in Aragon and Castile, in Catalonia, and in Valencia;\nthe first Inquisitor-General in Aragon being actually slain in the\ncathedral of Saragossa in 1487, despite his precaution of wearing a\nsteel cap and coat of mail. [1573] Vigorous protests from the Cort\u00e8s\neven forced some restraint upon the entire machine; but such occasional\nresistance could not long countervail the steady pressure of regal and\nofficial avarice and the systematic fanaticism of the Dominican order.\n\nIt was thus the fate of Spain to illustrate once for all the power of\na dogmatic religious system to extirpate the spirit of reason from an\nentire nation for a whole era. There and there only, save for a time\nin Italy, did the Inquisition become all-powerful; and it wrought for\nthe evisceration of the intellectual and material life of Spain with\na demented zeal to which there is no parallel in later history. In\nthe reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, after several random massacres\nand much persecution of the \"New Christians\" or doubtful converts from\nJudaism, [1574] the unconverted Jews of Spain were in 1489 penned into\nGhettos, and were in 1492 expelled bodily from the country, with every\ncircumstance of cruelty, so far as Church and State could compass their\nplans. By this measure at least 160,000 subjects [1575] of more than\naverage value were lost to the State. Portugal and other Christian\ncountries took the same cruel step a few years later; but Spain\ncarried the policy much further. From the year of its establishment,\nthe Inquisition was hotly at work destroying heresy of every kind;\nand the renowned Torquemada, the confessor of Isabella, is credited\nwith having burned over ten thousand persons in his eighteen years of\noffice as Grand Inquisitor, besides torturing many thousands. Close\nupon a hundred thousand more were terrified into submission; and\na further six thousand burned in effigy in their absence or after\ndeath. [1576] The destruction of books was proportionally thorough;\n[1577] and when Lutheran Protestantism arose it was persistently killed\nout; thousands leaving the country in view of the hopelessness of\nthe cause. [1578] At this rate, every vestige of independent thought\nmust soon have disappeared from any nation in the world. If she is\nto be judged by the number of her slain and exiled heretics, Spain\nmust once have been nearly as fecund in reformative and innovating\nthought as any State in northern Europe; but the fatal conjunction\nof the royal and the clerical authority sufficed for a whole era to\ndenude her of every variety of the freethinking species. [1579]\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 10. THOUGHT IN ENGLAND\n\nLying on the outskirts of the world of culture, England in the\nlater Middle Ages and the period of the Italian Renaissance lived\nintellectually, even where ministered to by the genius of Chaucer, for\nthe most part in dependence on Continental impulses; yet not without\nnotable outcrops of native energy. There is indeed no more remarkable\nfigure in the Middle Ages than Roger Bacon (? 1214-1294), the English\nFranciscan friar, schooled at Paris. His career remains still in parts\nobscure. Born at or near Ilchester, in Somersetshire, he studied at\nOxford under Edmund Rich, Richard Fitzacre, Robert Grosst\u00eate, and Adam\nde Marisco; and later, for a number of years, at Paris, where he is\nsupposed to have held a chair. On his return he was lionized; but a few\nyears afterwards, in 1257, we find him again in Paris, banished thither\nby his Order. [1580] He was not absolutely imprisoned, but ordered to\nlive under official surveillance in a dwelling where he was forbidden\nto write, to speak to novices, or observe the stars--rules which, it\nis pretty clear, he broke, one and all. [1581] After some eight years\nof this durance, Cardinal Guido Falcodi (otherwise Guy Foucaud or De\nFoulques), who while acting as papal legate in England at the time\nof the rising of Simon de Montfort may have known or heard of Bacon,\nbecame interested in him through his chaplain, Raymond of Laon, who\nspoke (in error) of the imprisoned friar as having written much on\nscience. The cardinal accordingly wrote asking to see the writings in\nquestion. Bacon sent by a friend an explanation to the effect that he\nhad written little, and that he could not devote himself to composition\nwithout a written mandate and a papal dispensation. About this time\nthe Cardinal was elevated to the papacy as Clement IV; and in that\ncapacity, a year later (1266), he wrote to Bacon authorizing him to\ndisobey his superior, but exhorting him to do it secretly. Bacon,\nby his own account, had already spent in forty years of study 2,000\nlibri [1582] in addition to purchases of books and instruments and\nteacher's fees; and it is not known whether the Pope furnished the\nsupplies he declared he needed. [1583] To work, however, he went with\nan astonishing industry, and in the course of less than eighteen months\n[1584] he had produced his chief treatise, the Opus Majus; the Opus\nMinus, designed as a summary or sample of the former; and the later\nOpus Tertium, planned to serve as a preamble to the two others. [1585]\n\nThrough all three documents there runs the same inspiration, the Opus\nTertium and the Majus constituting a complete treatise, which gives\nat once the most vivid idea of the state of culture at the time,\nand the most intimate presentment of a student's mind, that survive\nfrom the thirteenth century. It was nothing less than a demand, such\nas was made by Francis Bacon three hundred and fifty years later,\nand by Auguste Comte in the nineteenth century, for a reconstruction\nof all studies and all tuition. Neither pope nor emperor could have\nmet it; but Clement gave Roger his freedom, and he returned to Oxford,\npapally protected, at the end of 1267. Four years later Clement died,\nand was succeeded by Gregory X, a Franciscan.\n\nAt this stage of his life Bacon revealed that, whatever were his\nwrongs, he was inclined to go halfway to meet them. In a new writing of\nsimilar purport with the others, the Compendium Philosophi\u00e6, written\nin 1271, [1586] he not only attacked in detail the ecclesiastical\nsystem, [1587] but argued that the Christians were incomparably\ninferior to pagans in morals, and therefore in science; [1588] that\nthere was more truth in Aristotle's few chapters on laws than in the\nwhole corpus juris; [1589] that the Christian religion, as commonly\ntaught, was not free of errors; and that philosophy truly taught,\nand not as in the schools, was perhaps the surer way to attain both\ntruth and salvation. [1590]\n\nAgain he was prosecuted; and this time, after much delay, it was\ndecided that the entire Order should deal with the case. Not till\n1277 did the trial come off, under the presidency of the chief of the\nOrder, Jerome of Ascoli. Bacon was bracketed with another insubordinate\nbrother, Jean d'Olive; and both were condemned. In Bacon's case his\ndoctrine was specified as continentem aliquas novitates suspectas,\npropter quas fuit idem Rogerius carceri condempnatus. [1591] This\ntime Bacon seems to have undergone a real imprisonment, which lasted\nfourteen years. During that time four more popes held office, the\nlast of them being the said Jerome, elevated to the papal chair as\nNicholas IV. Not till his death in 1292 was Bacon released--to die\ntwo years later.\n\nHe was in fact, with all his dogmatic orthodoxy, too essentially\nin advance of his age to be otherwise than suspect to the typical\necclesiastics of any time. The marvel is that with his radical\nskepticism as to all forms of human knowledge; his intense perception\nof the fatality of alternate credulity and indifference which kept\nmost men in a state of positive or negative error on every theme;\nhis insatiable thirst for knowledge; his invincible repugnance to all\nacknowledgment of authority, [1592] and his insistence on an ethical\nend, he should have been able to rest as he did in the assumption of\na divine infallibility vested in what he knew to be a corruptible\ntext. It was doubtless defect of strictly philosophic thought, as\ndistinguished from practical critical faculty, that enabled him to\nremain orthodox in theology while anti-authoritarian in everything\nelse. As it was, his recalcitrance to authority in such an age sufficed\nto make his life a warfare upon earth. And it is not surprising that,\neven as his Franciscan predecessor Robert Grosst\u00eate, bishop of Lincoln,\ncame to be reputed a sorcerer on the strength of having written many\ntreatises on scientific questions--as well as on witchcraft--Roger\nBacon became a wizard in popular legend, and a scandal in the eyes\nof his immediate superiors, for a zest of secular curiosity no less\nuncommon and unpriestlike. [1593] \"It is sometimes impossible to\navoid smiling,\" says one philosophic historian of him, \"when one\nsees how artfully this personified thirst for knowledge seeks to\npersuade himself, or his readers, that knowledge interests him only for\necclesiastical ends. No one has believed it: neither posterity ... nor\nhis contemporaries, who distrusted him as worldly-minded.\" [1594]\n\nWorldly-minded he was in a noble sense, as seeking to know the\nworld of Nature; and perhaps the most remarkable proof of his\noriginality on this side is his acceptance of the theory of the\nearth's sphericity. Peter de Alliaco, whose Imago Mundi was compiled\nin 1410, transcribed from Roger Bacon's Opus Majus almost literally,\nbut without acknowledgment, a passage containing quotations from\nAristotle, Pliny, and Seneca, all arguing for the possibility of\nreaching India by sailing westward. Columbus, it is known, was familiar\nwith the Imago Mundi; and this passage seems greatly to have inspired\nhim in his task. [1595] This alone was sufficient practical heresy\nto put Bacon in danger; and yet his real orthodoxy can hardly be\ndoubted. [1596] He always protested against the scholastic doctrine\nof a \"twofold truth,\" insisting that revelation and philosophy were\nat one, but that the latter also was divine. [1597] It probably\nmattered little to his superiors, however, what view he took of the\nabstract question: it was his zeal for concrete knowledge that they\ndetested. His works remain to show the scientific reach of which his\nage was capable, when helped by the lore of the Arabs; for he seems\nto have drawn from Averro\u00ebs some of his inspiration to research;\n[1598] but in the England of that day his ideals of research were as\nunattainable as his wrath against clerical obstruction was powerless;\n[1599] and Averro\u00efsm in England made little for innovation. [1600]\nThe English Renaissance properly sets-in in the latter half of the\nsixteenth century, when the glory of that of Italy is passing away.\n\nIn the fourteenth century, indeed, a remarkable new life is seen\narising in England in the poetry and prose of Chaucer, from contact\nwith the literature of Italy and France; but while Chaucer reflects\nthe spontaneous medieval hostility to the self-seeking and fraudulent\nclergy, and writes of deity with quite medieval irreverence, [1601] he\ntells little of the Renaissance spirit of critical unbelief, save when\nhe notes the proverbial irreligion of the physicians, [1602] or smiles\nsignificantly over the problem of the potency of clerical cursing\nand absolution, [1603] or shrugs his shoulders over the question of\na future state. [1604] In such matters he is noticeably undevout;\nand though it is impossible to found on such passages a confident\nassertion that Chaucer had no belief in immortality, it is equally\nimpossible in view of them to claim that he was a warm believer.\n\n\n Prof. Lounsbury, who has gone closely and critically into the\n whole question of Chaucer's religious opinions, asks concerning\n the lines in the Knight's Tale on the passing of Arcite:\n \"Can modern agnosticism point to a denial more emphatic than\n that made in the fourteenth century of the belief that there\n exists for us any assurance of the life that is lived beyond\n the grave?\" (Studies in Chaucer, 1892, ii, 514-15). Prof. Skeat,\n again, affirms (Notes to the Tales, Clar. Press Compl. Chaucer,\n v, 92) that \"the real reason why Chaucer could not here describe\n the passage of Arcite's soul to heaven is because he had already\n copied Boccaccio's description, and had used it with respect\n to the death of Troilus\" (see Troil. v, 1807-27; stanzas 7,\n 8, 9 from the end). This evades the question as to the poet's\n faith. In point of fact, the passage in Troilus and Criseyde is\n purely pagan, and tells of no Christian belief, though that poem,\n written before the Tales, seems to parade a Christian contempt\n for pagan lore. (Cp. Lounsbury, as cited, p. 512.)\n\n The ascription of unbelief seems a straining of the evidence;\n but it would be difficult to gainsay the critic's summing-up:\n \"The general view of all his [Chaucer's] production leaves upon\n the mind the impression that his personal religious history was\n marked by the dwindling devoutness which makes up the experience\n of so many lives--the fallings from us, the vanishings, we know\n not how or when, of beliefs in which we have been bred. One\n characteristic which not unusually accompanies the decline of\n faith in the individual is in him very conspicuous. This is\n the prominence given to the falsity and fraud of those who have\n professedly devoted themselves to the advancement of the cause of\n Christianity.... Much of Chaucer's late work, so far as we know\n it to be late, is distinctly hostile to the Church.... It is,\n moreover, hostile in a way that implies an utter disbelief in\n certain of its tenets, and even a disposition to regard them\n as full of menace to the future of civilization\" (Lounsbury,\n vol. cited, pp. 519-20).\n\n Against this general view is to be set that which proceeds on\n an unquestioning acceptance of the \"Retractation\" or confession\n at the close of the Canterbury Tales, as to the vexed question\n of the genuineness of which see the same critic, work cited, i,\n 412-15; iii, 40. The fact that the document is appended to the\n concluding \"Parson's Tale\" (also challenged as to authenticity),\n which is not a tale at all, and to which the confession refers\n as \"this little treatise or rede,\" suggests strongly a clerical\n influence brought to bear upon the aging poet.\n\n\nTo infer real devotion on his part from his sympathetic account of the\ngood parson, or from the dubious Retractation appended to the Tales,\nis as unwarrantable as is the notion, dating from the Reformation\nperiod, that he was a Wicliffite. [1605] Even if the Retractation be\nof his writing, under pressure in old age, it points to a previous\nindifferentism; and from the great mass of his work there can be\ndrawn only the inference that he is essentially non-religious in\ntemper and habit of mind. But he is no disputant, no propagandist,\nwhether on ecclesiastical or on intellectual grounds; and after his\nday there is social retrogression and literary relapse in England\nfor two centuries. That there was some practical rationalism in his\nday, however, we gather from the Vision of Piers Ploughman, by the\ncontemporary poet Langland (fl. 1360-90), where there is a vivid\naccount of the habit among anti-clerical laymen of arguing against\nthe doctrine of original sin and the entailment of Adam's offence\non the whole human race. [1606] To this way of thinking Chaucer\nprobably gave a stimulus by his translation of the De Consolatione\nPhilosophiae of Boethius, where is cited the \"not unskilful\" dilemma:\n\"If God is, whence come wicked things? And if God is not, whence come\ngood things?\" [1607] The stress of the problem is hard upon theism;\nand to ponder it was to resent the doctrine of inherited guilt. The\nChurch had, in fact, visibly turned this dogma to its own ends,\ninsisting on the universal need of ghostly help even as it repelled\nthe doctrine of unalterable predestination. In both cases, of course,\nthe matter was settled by Scripture and authority; and Langland's\nreply to the heretics is mere angry dogmatism.\n\nThere flourished, further, a remarkable amount of heresy of the\nspecies seen in Provence and Northern Italy in the eleventh and twelfth\ncenturies, such sectaries being known in England under the generic name\nof \"Lollards,\" derived from the Flemish, in which it seems to have\nsignified singers of hymns. [1608] Lollards or \"Beghards,\" starting\nfrom the southern point of propagation, spread all over civilized\nNorthern Europe, meeting everywhere persecution alike from the parish\npriests and the mendicant monks; and in England as elsewhere their\nanti-clericalism and their heresy were correlative. In the formal\nLollard petition to Parliament in 1395, however, there is evident an\namount of innovating opinion which implies more than the mere stimulus\nof financial pressure. Not only the papal authority, monasteries,\nclerical celibacy, nuns' vows, transubstantiation, exorcisms, bought\nblessings, pilgrimages, prayers for the dead, offerings to images,\nconfessions and absolutions, but war and capital punishment and\n\"unnecessary trades,\" such as those of goldsmiths and armourers,\nare condemned by those early Utopists. [1609] In what proportion they\nreally thought out the issues they dealt with we can hardly ascertain;\nbut a chronicler of Wiclif's time, living at Leicester, testifies that\nyou could not meet two men in the street but one was a Lollard. [1610]\nThe movement substantially came to nothing, suffering murderous\npersecution in the person of Oldcastle (Lord Cobham) and others,\nand disappearing in the fifteenth century in the demoralization of\nconquest and the ruin of the civil wars; but apart from Chaucer's\npoetry it is more significant of foreign influences in England than\nalmost any other phenomenon down to the reign of Henry VIII.\n\nIt is still doubtful, indeed, whence the powerful Wiclif derived his\nmarked Protestantism as to some Catholic dogmas; but it would seem\nthat he too may have been reached by the older Paulician or other\nsouthern heresy. [1611] As early as 1286 a form of heresy approaching\nthe Albigensian and the Waldensian is found in the province of\nCanterbury, certain persons there maintaining that Christians\nwere not bound by the authority of the Pope and the Fathers, but\nsolely by that of the Bible and \"necessary reason.\" [1612] It is\ntrue that Wiclif never refers to the Waldenses or Albigenses, or\nany of the continental reformers of his day, though he often cites\nhis English predecessor, Bishop Grosst\u00eate; [1613] but this may have\nbeen on grounds of policy. To cite heretics could do no good; to\ncite a bishop was helpful. The main reason for doubting a foreign\ninfluence in his case is that to the last he held by purgatory and\nabsolute predestination. [1614] In any case, Wiclif's practical and\nmoral resentment of ecclesiastical abuses was the mainspring of his\ndoctrine; and his heresies as to transubstantiation and other articles\nof faith can be seen to connect with his anti-priestly attitude. He,\nhowever, was morally disinterested as compared with the would-be\nplunderers who formed the bulk of the anti-Church party of John of\nGaunt; and his failure to effect any reformation was due to the fact\nthat on one hand there was not intelligence enough in the nation to\nrespond to his doctrinal common sense, while on the other he could\nnot so separate ecclesiastical from feudal tyranny and extortion as\nto set up a political movement which should strike at clerical evils\nwithout inciting some to impeach the nobility who held the balance of\npolitical power. Charged with setting vassals against tyrant lords,\nhe was forced to plead that he taught the reverse, though he justified\nthe withholding of tithes from bad curates. [1615] The revolt led by\nJohn Ball in 1381, which was in no way promoted by Wiclif, [1616]\nshowed that the country people suffered as much from lay as from\nclerical oppression.\n\nThe time, in short, was one of common ferment, and not only were\nthere other reformers who went much farther than Wiclif in the matter\nof social reconstruction, [1617] but we know from his writings\nthat there were heretics who carried their criticism as far as to\nchallenge the authority and credibility of the Scriptures. Against\nthese accusatores and inimici Scripturae he repeatedly speaks in\nhis treatise De veritate Scripturae Sacrae, [1618] which is thus one\nof the very earliest works in defence of Christianity against modern\ncriticism. [1619] His position, however, is almost wholly medieval. One\nqualification should perhaps be made, in respect of his occasional\nresort to reason where it was least to be expected, as on the question\nof restrictions on marriage. [1620] But on such points he wavered;\nand otherwise he is merely scripturalist. The infinite superiority\nof Christ to all other men, and Christ's virtual authorship of the\nentire Scriptures, are his premisses--a way of begging the question so\nsimple-minded that it is clear the other side was not heard in reply,\nthough these arguments had formed part of his theological lectures,\n[1621] and so pre-supposed a real opposition. Wiclif was in short a\ntypical Protestant in his unquestioning acceptance of the Bible as a\nsupernatural authority; and when his demand for the publication of\nthe Bible in English was met by \"worldly clerks\" with the cry that\nit would \"set Christians in debate, and subjects to rebel against\ntheir sovereigns,\" he could only protest that they \"openly slander\nGod, the author of peace, and his holy law.\" Later English history\nproved that the worldly clerks were perfectly right, and Wiclif the\nerring optimist of faith. For the rest, his essentially dogmatic\nview of religion did nothing to counteract the spirit of persecution;\nand the passing of the Statute for the Burning of Heretics in 1401,\nwith the ready consent of both Houses of Parliament, constituted the\ndue dogmatic answer to dogmatic criticism. Yet within a few years the\nCommons were proposing to confiscate the revenues of the higher clergy:\n[1622] so far was anti-clericalism from implying heterodoxy.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 11. THOUGHT IN FRANCE\n\nAs regards France, the record of intellectual history between the\nthirteenth and the sixteenth centuries is hardly less scanty than\nas regards England. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the\nintellectual life of the French philosophic schools, as we saw,\nwas more vigorous and expansive than that of any other country;\nso that, looking further to the Proven\u00e7al literature and to the\nFrench beginnings of Gothic architecture, France might even be said\nto prepare the Renaissance. [1623] Outside of the schools, too, there\nwas in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a notable dissemination\nof partially philosophical thought among the middle-class laity. At\nthat period the anti-clerical tendency was strongest in France, where\nin the thirteenth century lay scholarship stood highest. In the reign\nof Philippe le Bel (end of thirteenth century) was composed the poem\nFauvel, by Fran\u00e7ois de Rues, which is a direct attack on pope and\nclergy; [1624] and in the famous Roman de la Rose, as developed by\nJean le Clopinel (= the Limper) of Meung-sur-Loire, there enters,\nwithout any criticism of the Christian creed, an element of all-round\nNaturalism which indirectly must have made for reason. Begun by\nGuillaume de Lorris in the time of St. Louis in a key of sentiment and\nlyricism, the poem is carried on by Jean de Meung under Philippe le Bel\nin a spirit of criticism, cynicism, science, and satire, which tells\nof many developments in forty years. The continuation can hardly have\nbeen written, as some literary historians assume, about its author's\ntwenty-fifth year; but it may be dated with some certainty between\n1270 and 1285. To the work of his predecessor, amounting to less than\n5,000 lines, he added 18,000, pouring forth a medley of scholarship,\npedantry, philosophic reflection, speculation on the process of nature\nand the structure and ills of society, on property, morals, marriage,\nwitchcraft, the characters of women, monks, friars, aristocrats--the\nwhole pageant of medieval knowledge and fancy.\n\nThe literary power of the whole is great, and may be recommended to the\ngeneral reader as comparing often with that shown in the satirical and\nsocial-didactic poems of Burns, though without much of the breath of\npoetry. Particularly noteworthy, in the historic retrospect, is the\nassimilization of the ancient Stoic philosophy of \"living according\nto Nature,\" set forth in the name of a \"Reason\" who is notably free\nfrom theological prepossessions. It is from this standpoint that\nJean de Meung assails the mendicant friars and the monks in general:\nhe would have men recognize the natural laws of life; and he carries\nthe principle to the length of insisting on the artificial nature of\naristocracy and monarchy, which are justifiable only as far as they\nsubserve the common good. Thus he rises above the medieval literary\nprejudice against the common people, whose merit he recognizes as\nMontaigne did later. On the side of science, he expressly denies\n[1625] that comets carry any such message as was commonly ascribed\nto them alike by popular superstition and by theology--a stretch of\nfreethinking perhaps traceable to Seneca, but nonetheless centuries in\nadvance of the Christendom of the time. [1626] On the side of religion,\nagain, he is one of the first to vindicate the lay conception of\nChristian excellence as against the ecclesiastical. His Naturalism,\nso far, worked consistently in making him at once anti-ascetic and\nanti-supernaturalist.\n\nIt is not to be inferred, however, that Jean de Meung had learned\nto doubt the validity of the Christian creed. His long poem, one of\nthe most popular books in Europe for two hundred years, could never\nhave had its vogue if its readers could have suspected it to be even\nindirectly anti-Christian. He can hardly have held, as some historians\nbelieve, [1627] the status of a preaching friar; but he claims that he\nneither blames nor defames religion, [1628] respecting it in all forms,\nprovided it be \"humble and loyal.\" He was in fact a man of some wealth,\nmuch culture, and orderly in life, thus standing out from the earlier\n\"Goliard\" type. When, then, he pronounces Nature \"the minister of\nthis earthly state,\" \"vicar and constable of the eternal emperor,\"\nhe has no thought of dethroning Deity, or even of setting aside the\nChristian faith. In his rhymed Testament he expresses himself quite\npiously, and lectures monks and women in an edifying fashion.\n\n\n To say therefore that Jean de Meung's part of the Roman de la Rose\n is a \"popular satire on the beliefs of Romanism\" (Owen, Skeptics\n of Ital. Renais. p. 44) is to misstate the case. His doctrine is\n rather an intellectual expression of the literary reaction against\n asceticism (cp. Bartoli, Storia della letteratura italiana, i, 319,\n quoting Lenient) which had been spontaneously begun by the Goliards\n and Troubadours. At the same time the poem does stand for the new\n secular spirit alike in \"its ingrained religion and its nascent\n freethought\" (Saintsbury, p. 87); and with the Reynard epic it\n may be taken as representing the beginning of \"a whole revolution,\n the resurgence and affirmation of the laity, the new force which is\n to transform the world, against the Church\" (Bartoli, Storia, i,\n 308; cp. Demogeot, Hist. de la litt. fr. 5e \u00e9d. pp. 130-31, 157;\n Lanson, pp. 132-36). The frequent flings at the clergy (cp. the\n partly Chaucerian English version, Skeat's ed. of Chaucer's Works,\n i, 234; Bell's ed. iv, 230) were sufficient to draw upon this\n as upon other medieval poems of much secular vogue the anger of\n \"the Church\" (Sismondi, Lit. of South. Europe, i, 216); but they\n were none the less relished by believing readers. \"The Church\"\n was in fact not an entity of one mind; and some of its sections\n enjoyed satire directed against the others.\n\n When, then, we speak of the anti-clerical character of much\n medieval poetry, we must guard against exaggerated implications. It\n is somewhat of a straining of the facts, for instance, to say of\n the humorous tale of Reynard the Fox, so widely popular in the\n thirteenth century, that it is essentially anti-clerical to the\n extent that \"Reynard is laic: Isengrim [the wolf] is clerical\"\n (Bartoli, Storia della letteratura italiana, i, 307; cp. Owen,\n Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, p. 44). The Reynard epic,\n in origin a simple humorous animal-story, had various later\n forms. Some of these, as the Latin poem, and especially the version\n attributed to Peter of St. Cloud, were markedly anti-clerical, the\n latter exhibiting a spirit of all-round profanity hardly compatible\n with belief (cp. Gervinus, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, 5te\n Ausg. i, 227-28; Gebhart, Les Origines de la Renais. en Italie,\n 1874, p. 39); but the version current in the Netherlands, which\n was later rendered into English prose by Caxton, is of a very\n different character (Gervinus, p. 229 sq.). In Caxton's version it\n is impossible to regard Reynard as laic and Isengrim as clerical;\n though in the Latin and other versions the wolf figures as monk or\n abbot. (See also the various shorter satires published by Grimm\n in his Reinhart Fuchs, 1834.) Often the authorship is itself\n clerical, one party or order satirizing another; sometimes the\n spirit is religious, sometimes markedly irreverent. (Gervinus,\n pp. 214-21). \"La plupart de ces satires sont l'oeuvre des moines\n et des abb\u00e9s\" (Lenient, La Satire en France au moyen \u00e2ge, 1859,\n pr\u00e9f. p. 4); and to say that these men were often irreligious is\n not to say that they were rationalists. It is to be remembered\n that nascent Protestantism in England under Henry VIII resorted\n to the weapons of obscene parody (Blunt, Ref. of Ch. of England,\n ed. 1892, i, 273, note).\n\n\n\"In fine,\" we may say with a judicious French historian, \"one\ncannot get out of his time, and the time was not come to be\nnon-Christian. Jean de Meung did not perceive that his thought put\nhim outside the Church, and upset her foundations. He is believing\nand pious, like Rutebeuf.... The Gospel is his rule: he holds it; he\ndefends it; he disputes with those who seem to him to depart from it;\nhe makes himself the champion of the old faith against the novelties\nof the Eternal Gospel.... His situation is that of the first reformers\nof the sixteenth century, who believed themselves to serve Jesus Christ\nin using their reason, and who very sincerely, very piously, hoped for\nthe reform of the Church through the progress of philosophy.\" [1629]\n\"Nevertheless,\" adds the same historian, \"one cannot exaggerate the\nreal weight of the work. By his philosophy, which consists essentially\nin the identity, the sovereignty, of Nature and Reason, he is the\nfirst link in the chain which connects Rabelais, Montaigne, Moli\u00e8re;\nto which Voltaire also links himself, and even in certain regards\nBoileau.\" [1630]\n\nMen could not then see whither the principle of \"Nature\" and Reason\nwas to lead, yet even in the age of Jean de Meung the philosophic\nheads went far, and he can hardly have missed knowing as much, if,\nas is supposed, he studied at Paris, as he certainly lived and died\nthere. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, as before noted,\nrationalism at the Paris university was frequently carried in private\nto a rejection of all the dogmas peculiar to Christianity. At that\ngreat school Roger Bacon seems to have acquired his encyclop\u00e6dic\nlearning and his critical habit; and there it was that in the\nfirst half of the fourteenth century William of Occam nourished his\nremarkable philosophic faculty. From about the middle of the fourteenth\ncentury, however, there is a relative arrest of French progress for\nsome two centuries. [1631] Three main conditions served to check\nintellectual advance: the civil wars which involved the loss of the\ncommunal liberties which had been established in France between the\neleventh and thirteenth centuries; [1632] the exhaustion of the nation\nby the English invasion under Edward III; the repressive power of the\nChurch; and the general devotion of the national energies to war. After\nthe partial recovery from the ruinous English invasion under Edward\nIII, civil strifes and feudal tyranny wrought new impoverishment,\nmaking possible the still more destructive invasion under Henry V;\nso that in the first half of the fifteenth century France was hardly\nmore civilized than England. [1633] It is from the French invasion\nof Italy under Charles VIII that the enduring renascence in France\nbroadly dates. Earlier impulses had likewise come from Italy: Lanfranc,\nAnselm, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and others of lesser note,\n[1634] had gone from Italy to teach in France or England; but it\nneeded the full contact of Italian civilization to raise monarchic\nFrance to the stage of general and independent intellectual life.\n\n\n During the period in question, there had been established\n the following universities: Paris, 1200; Toulouse, 1220;\n Montpellier, 1289; Avignon, 1303; Orl\u00e9ans, 1312; Cahors, 1332;\n Angers, 1337; Orange, 1367; D\u00f4le, 1422; Poitiers, 1431; Caen,\n 1436; Valence, 1454; Nantes, 1460; Bourges, 1463; Bordeaux, 1472\n (Desmaze, L'Universit\u00e9 de Paris, 1876, p. 2. Other dates for\n some of these are given on p. 31). But the militarist conditions\n prevented any sufficient development of such opportunities. In\n the fourteenth century, says Littr\u00e9 (\u00c9tudes sur les barbares,\n p. 419), \"the university of Paris ... was more powerful than\n at any other epoch.... Never did she exercise such a power over\n men's minds.\" But he also decides that in that epoch the first\n florescence of French literature withered away (p. 387). The\n long location of the anti-papacy at Avignon (1305-1376)\n doubtless counted for something in French culture (V. Le\n Clerc, Hist. Litt. de la France au XIVe si\u00e8cle, i, 37; Gebhart,\n pp. 221-26); but the devastation wrought by the English invasion\n was sufficient to countervail that and more. See the account of\n it by Petrarch (letter of the year 1360) cited by Littr\u00e9, \u00c9tudes,\n pp. 416-17; and by Hallam, Middle Ages, i, 59, note. Cp. Michelet,\n Hist. de France, vi, ch. iii; Dunton, England in the Fifteenth\n Century, 1888, pp. 79-84. As to the consequences of the English\n invasion of the fifteenth century see Martin, Hist. de France,\n 4e \u00e9dit. vi, 132-33; Sismondi, Hist. des Fran\u00e7ais, 1831, xii,\n 582; Hallam, Middle Ages, i, 83-87.\n\n\nIn northern France of the fourteenth century, as in Provence and Italy\nand England, there was a manifold stir of innovation and heresy: there\nas elsewhere the insubordinate Franciscans, with their Eternal Gospel,\nthe Paterini, the Beghards, fought their way against the Dominican\nInquisition. But the Inquisitors burned books as well as men; and much\nanti-ecclesiastical poetry, some dating even from the Carlovingian\nera, shared the fate of many copies of the Talmud, translations of\nthe Bible, and, \u00e0 fortiori, every species of heretical writing. In\neffect, the Inquisition for the time \"extinguished freethought\"\n[1635] in France. As in England, the ferment of heresy was mixed\nwith one of democracy; and in the French popular poetry of the time\nthere are direct parallels to the contemporary English couplet,\n\"When Adam delved and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman?\" [1636]\nSuch a spirit could no more prosper in feudal France than in feudal\nEngland; and when France emerged from her mortal struggle with the\nEnglish, to be effectively solidified by Louis XI, there was left in\nher life little of the spirit of free inquiry. It has been noted that\nwhereas the chronicler Joinville, in the thirteenth century, is full\nof religious feeling, Froissart, in the fourteenth, priest as he is,\nexhibits hardly any; and again Comines, in the fifteenth, reverts to\nthe orthodoxy of the twelfth and thirteenth. [1637] The middle period\nwas one of indifference, following on the killing out of heresy:\n[1638] the fifteenth century is a resumption of the Middle Ages, and\nComines has the medieval cast of mind, [1639] although of a superior\norder. There seems to be no community of thought between him and his\nyounger Italian contemporaries, Machiavelli and Guicciardini; though,\n\"even while Comines was writing, there were unequivocal symptoms of\na great and decisive change.\" [1640]\n\nThe special development in France of the spirit of \"chivalry\" had\njoined the normal uncivilizing influence of militarism with that\nof clericalism; the various knightly orders, as well as knighthood\npure and simple, being all under ecclesiastical sanctions, and\nmore or less strictly vowed to \"defend the church,\" [1641] while\nsupremely incompetent to form an intelligent opinion. It is the more\nremarkable that in the case of one of the crusading orders heresy\nof the most blasphemous kind was finally charged against the entire\norganization, and that it was on that ground annihilated (1311). It\nremains incredible, however, that the order of the Templars can have\nsystematically practised the extravagances or held the tenets laid to\ntheir charge. They had of course abused their power and departed from\ntheir principles like every other religious order enabled to amass\nwealth; and the hostility theirs aroused is perfectly intelligible\nfrom what is known of the arrogance of its members and the general\nruffianism of the Crusaders. Their wealth alone goes far to explain\nthe success of their enemies against them; for, though the numbers of\nthe order were much smaller than tradition gives out, its possessions\nwere considerable. These were the true ground of the French king's\nattack. [1642] But that its members were as a rule either Cathari\nor anti-Christians, either disguised Moslems or deists, or that they\npractised obscenity by rule, there is no reason to believe. What seems\nto have happened was a resort by some unbelieving members to more or\nless gross burlesque of the mysteries of initiation--a phenomenon\nparalleled in ancient Greece and in the modern Catholic world, and\nimplying rather hardy irreligion than any reasoned heresy whatever.\n\n\n The long-continued dispute as to the guilt of the Knights Templars\n is still chronically re-opened. Hallam, after long hesitation,\n came finally to believe them guilty, partly on the strength of\n the admissions made by Michelet in defending them (Europe in\n the Middle Ages, 11th ed. i, 138-42--note of 1848). He attaches,\n however, a surprising weight to the obviously weak \"architectural\n evidence\" cited by Hammer-Purgstall. Heeren (Essai sur l'influence\n des croisades, 1808, pp. 221-22) takes a more judicial view. The\n excellent summing-up of Lea (Hist. of the Inquis. bk. iii,\n ch. v, pp. 263-76) perhaps gives too little weight to the mass\n of curious confirmatory evidence cited by writers on the other\n side (e.g., F. Nicolai, Versuch \u00fcber die Beschuldigungen welche\n dem Tempelherrenorden gemacht worden, 1782); but his conclusion\n as to the falsity of the charges against the order as a whole\n seems irresistible.\n\n The solution that offensive practices occurred irregularly (Lea,\n pp. 276-77) is pointed to even by the earlier hostile writers\n (Nicolai, p. 17). It seems to be certain that the initiatory rites\n included the act of spitting on the crucifix--presumptively a\n symbolic display of absolute obedience to the orders of those in\n command (Jolly, Philippe le Bel, pp. 264-68). That there was no\n Catharism in the order seems certain (Lea, p. 249). The suggestion\n that the offensive and burlesque practices were due to the lower\n grade of \"serving brethren,\" who were contemned by the higher,\n seems, however, without firm foundation. The courage for such\n freaks, and the disposition to commit them, were rather more likely\n to arise among the crusaders of the upper class, who could come\n in contact with Moslem-Christian unbelief through those of Sicily.\n\n For the further theory that the \"Freemasons\" (at that period really\n cosmopolitan guilds of masons) were already given to freethinking,\n there is again no evidence. That they at times deliberately\n introduced obscene symbols into church architecture is no proof\n that they were collectively unbelievers in the Church's doctrines;\n though it is likely enough that some of them were. Obscenity\n is the expression not of an intellectual but of a physical and\n unreasoning bias, and can perfectly well concur with religious\n feeling. The fact that the medieval masons did not confine\n obscene symbols to the churches they built for the Templars\n (Hallam, as cited, pp. 140-41) should serve to discredit alike\n the theory that the Templars were systematically anti-Christian,\n and the theory that the Freemasons were so. That for centuries\n the builders of the Christian churches throughout Europe formed\n an anti-Christian organization is a grotesque hypothesis. At\n most they indulged in freaks of artistic satire on the lines of\n contemporary satirical literature, expressing an anti-clerical\n bias, with perhaps occasional elements of blasphemy. (See Menzel,\n Gesch. der Deutschen, Cap. 252, note.) It could well be that\n there survived among the Freemasons various Gnostic ideas;\n since the architectural art itself came in a direct line from\n antiquity. Such heresy, too, might conceivably be winked at by the\n Church, which depended so much on the heretics' services. But their\n obscenities were the mere expression of the animal imagination and\n normal salacity of all ages. Only in modern times, and that only in\n Catholic countries, has the derivative organization of Freemasonry\n been identified with freethought propaganda. In England in the\n seventeenth century the Freemasonic clubs--no longer connected\n with any trade--were thoroughly royalist and orthodox (Nicolai,\n pp. 196-98), as they have always remained.\n\n\nSome remarkable intellectual phenomena, however, do connect with\nthe French university life of the first half of the fourteenth\ncentury. William of Occam (d. 1347), the English Franciscan, who\ntaught at Paris, is on the whole the most rationalistic of medieval\nphilosophers. Though a pupil of the Realist Duns Scotus, he became\nthe renewer of Nominalism, which is the specifically rationalistic\nas opposed to the religious mode of metaphysic; and his anti-clerical\nbias was such that he had to fly from France to Bavaria for protection\nfrom the priesthood. His Disputatio super potestate ecclesiastica,\nand his Defensorium directed against Pope John XXII (or XXI), were\nso uncompromising that in 1323 the Pope gave directions for his\nprosecution. What came of the step is not known; but in 1328 we find\nhim actually imprisoned with two Italian comrades in the papal palace\nat Avignon. Thence they made their escape to Bavaria. [1643] To the\nsame refuge fled Marsiglio of Padua, author (with John of Jandun) of\nthe Defensor Pacis (1324), \"the greatest and most original political\ntreatise of the Middle Ages,\" [1644] in which it is taught that,\nthough monarchy may be expedient, the sovereignty of the State rests\nwith the people, and the hereditary principle is flatly rejected; while\nit is insisted that the Church properly consists of all Christians,\nand that the clergy's authority is restricted to spiritual affairs\nand moral suasion. [1645] Of all medieval writers on politics before\nMachiavelli he is the most modern.\n\nOnly less original is Occam, who at Paris came much under Marsiglio's\ninfluence. His philosophic doctrines apparently derive from Pierre\nAureol (Petrus Aureolus, d. 1321), who with remarkable clearness and\nemphasis rejected both Realism and the doctrine that what the mind\nperceives are not realities, but form\u00e6 speculares. Pierre it was who\nfirst enounced the Law of Parsimony in philosophy and science--that\ncauses are not to be multiplied beyond mental necessity--which is\nspecially associated with the name of Occam. [1646] Both anticipated\nmodern criticism [1647] alike of the Platonic and the Aristotelian\nphilosophy; and Occam in particular drew so decided a line between\nthe province of reason and that of faith that there can be little\ndoubt on which side his allegiance lay. [1648] His dialectic is for\nits time as remarkable as is that of Hume, four centuries later. The\nmost eminent orthodox thinker of the preceding century had been the\nFranciscan John Duns Scotus (1265 or 1274-1308), who, after teaching\ngreat crowds of students at Oxford, was transferred in 1304 to Paris,\nand in 1308 to Cologne, where he died. A Realist in his philosophy,\nDuns Scotus opposed the Aristotelian scholasticism, and in particular\ncriticized Thomas Aquinas as having unduly subordinated faith and\npractice to speculation and theory. The number of matters of faith\nwhich Thomas had held to be demonstrable by reason, accordingly, was by\nDuns Scotus much reduced; and, applying his anti-rationalism to current\nbelief, he fought zealously for the dogma that Mary, like Jesus, was\nimmaculately conceived. [1649] But Occam, turning his predecessor's\ntactic to a contrary purpose, denied that any matter of faith was\ndemonstrable by reason at all. He granted that on rational grounds\nthe existence of a God was probable, but denied that it was strictly\ndemonstrable, and rejected the ontological argument of Anselm. As to\nmatters of faith, he significantly observed that the will to believe\nthe indemonstrable is meritorious. [1650]\n\nIt is difficult now to recover a living sense of the issues at stake\nin the battle between Nominalism and Realism, and of the social\natmosphere in which the battle was carried on. Broadly speaking, the\nNominalists were the more enlightened school, the Realists standing\nfor tradition and authority; and it has been alleged that \"the books\nof the Nominalists, though the art of printing tended strongly to\npreserve them, were suppressed and destroyed to such a degree that\nit is now exceedingly difficult to collect them, and not easy to\nobtain copies even of the most remarkable.\" [1651] On the other hand,\nwhile we have seen Occam a fugitive before clerical enmity, we shall\nsee Nominalists agreeing to persecute a Realist to the death in the\nperson of Huss in the following century. So little was there to choose\nbetween the camps in the matter of sound civics; and so easily could\nthe hierarchy wear the colours of any philosophical system.\n\nContemporary with Occam was Durand de St. Pour\u00e7ain, who became a bishop\n(d. 1332), and, after ranking as of the school of Thomas Aquinas,\nrejected and opposed its doctrine. With all this heresy in the air,\nthe principle of \"double truth,\" originally put in currency by\nAverro\u00efsm, came to be held in France as in Italy, in a sense which\nimplied the consciousness that theological truth is not truth at\nall. [1652] Occam's pupil, Buridan, rector of the University of\nParis (fl. 1340), substantially avoided theology, and dealt with\nmoral and intellectual problems on their own merits. [1653] It is\nrecorded by Albert of Saxony, who studied at Paris in the first half\nof the century, that one of his teachers held by the theory of the\nmotion of the earth. [1654] Even a defender of Church doctrines,\nPierre d'Ailly, accepted Occam's view of theism, [1655] and it\nappears to be broadly true that Occam had at Paris an unbroken line\nof successors down to the Reformation. [1656] In a world in which the\ndoctrine of a two-fold truth provided a safety-valve for heresy, such\na philosophical doctrine as his could not greatly affect lay thought;\nbut at Paris University in the year 1376 there was a startling display\nof freethinking by the philosophical students, not a little suggestive\nof a parody of the Averro\u00efst propositions denounced by the Bishop\nof Paris exactly a century before. Under cover of the doctrine of\ntwo-fold truth they propounded a list of 219 theses, in which they (1)\ndenied the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, and the\nimmortality of the soul; (2) affirmed the eternity of matter and the\nuselessness of prayer, but also posited the principles of astrology;\n(3) argued that the higher powers of the soul are incapable of sin,\nand that voluntary sexual intercourse between the unmarried is not\nsinful; and (4) suggested that there are fables and falsehoods in the\ngospels as in other books. [1657] The element of youthful gasconnade\nin the performance is obvious, and the Archbishop sharply scolded the\nstudents; but there must have been much free discussion before such a\nmanifesto could have been produced. Nevertheless, untoward political\nconditions prevented any dissemination of the freethinking spirit\nin France; and not for some two centuries was there such another\ngrowth of it. The remarkable case of Nicolaus of Autricuria, who in\n1348 was forced to recant his teaching of the atomistic doctrine,\n[1658] illustrates at once the persistence of the spirit of reason\nin times of darkness, and the impossibility of its triumphing in the\nwrong conditions.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 12. THOUGHT IN THE TEUTONIC COUNTRIES\n\nThe life of the rest of Europe in the later medieval period has little\nspecial significance in the history of freethought. France and Italy,\nby German admission, were the lands of the medieval Aufkl\u00e4rung. [1659]\nThe poetry of the German Minnesingers, a growth from that of the\nTroubadours, presented the same anti-clerical features; [1660] and the\nstory of Reynard the Fox was turned to anti-ecclesiastical purpose\nin Germany as in France. The relative freethinking set up by the\ncrusaders' contact with the Saracens seems to be the source of doubt of\nthe Minnesinger Freidank concerning the doom of hell-fire on heretics\nand heathens, the opinion of Walter der Vogelweide that Christians,\nJews, and Moslems all serve the same God, [1661] and still more\nmordant heresy. But such bold freethinking did not spread. Material\nprosperity rather than culture was the main feature of German\nprogress in the Middle Ages; architecture being the only art greatly\ndeveloped. Heresy of the anti-ecclesiastical order indeed abounded,\nand was duly persecuted; but the higher freethinking developments were\nin the theosophic rather than the rationalistic direction. Albert the\nGreat (fl. 1260), \"the universal Doctor,\" the chief German teacher\nof the Middle Ages, was of unimpeached orthodoxy. [1662]\n\nThe principal German figure of the period is Master Eckhart (d. 1329),\nwho, finding religious beliefs excluded from the sphere of reason by\nthe freer philosophy of his day, undertook to show that they were all\nmatters of reason. He was, in fact, a mystically reasoning preacher,\nand he taught in the interests of popular religion. Naturally,\nas he philosophized on old bases, he did not really subject his\nbeliefs to any skeptical scrutiny, but took them for granted and\nproceeded speculatively upon them. This sufficed to bring him before\nthe Inquisition at Cologne, where he recanted conditionally on an\nappeal to the Pope. Dying soon after, he escaped the papal bull\ncondemning twenty-eight of his doctrines. His school later divided\ninto a heretical and a Church party, of which the former, called the\n\"false free spirits,\" seems to have either joined or resembled the\nantinomian Brethren of the Free Spirit, then numerous in Germany. The\nother section became known as the \"Friends of God,\" a species\nof mystics who were \"faithful to the whole medieval imaginative\ncreed, Transubstantiation, worship of the Virgin and Saints,\nPurgatory.\" [1663] Through Tauler and others, Eckhart's pietistic\ndoctrine gave a lead to later Protestant evangelicalism; but the\nsystem as a whole can never have been held by any popular body. [1664]\n\n\n Dr. Lasson pronounces (Ueberweg, i, 483) that the type of Eckhart's\n character and teaching \"was derived from the innermost essence\n of the German national character.\" At the same time he admits\n that all the offshoots of the school departed more or less widely\n from Eckhart's type--that is, from the innermost essence of their\n own national character. It would be as plausible to say that the\n later mysticism of F\u00e9nelon derived from the innermost essence\n of the French character. The Imitatio Christi has been similarly\n described as expressing the German character, on the assumption\n that it was written by Thomas \u00e0 Kempis. Many have held that the\n author was the Frenchman Gerson (Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ed. 1872,\n i, 139-40). It was in all probability, as was held by Suarez,\n the work of several hands, one a monk of the twelfth century,\n another a monk of the thirteenth, and the third a theologian of\n the fifteenth; neither Gerson nor Thomas \u00e0 Kempis being concerned\n (Le Clerc, Hist. Litt. du XIVe Si\u00e8cle, 2e \u00e9dit. pp. 384-85;\n cp. Neale's Hist. of the so-called Jansenist Church of Holland,\n 1858, pp. 97-98).\n\n\nThe Imitatio Christi (1471), the most popular Christian work\nof devotion ever published, [1665] tells all the while of the\nobscure persistence of the search for knowledge and for rational\nsatisfactions. Whatever be the truth as to its authorship, it belongs\nto all Christendom in respect of its querulous strain of protest\nagainst all manner of intellectual curiosity. After the first note of\nworld-renunciation, the call to absorption in the inner religious life,\nthere comes the sharp protest against the \"desire to know.\" \"Surely an\nhumble husbandman that serveth God is better than a proud philosopher\nwho, neglecting himself, laboureth to understand the course of the\nheavens.... Cease from an inordinate desire of knowing.\" [1666]\nNo sooner is the reader warned to consider himself the frailest of\nall men than he is encouraged to look down on all reasoners. \"What\navaileth it to cavil and dispute much about dark and hidden things,\nwhen for being ignorant of them we shall not be so much as reproved\nat the day of judgment? It is a great folly to neglect the things\nthat are profitable and necessary, and give our minds to that which\nis curious and hurtful.... And what have we to do with genus and\nspecies, the dry notions of logicians?\" [1667] The homily swings\nto and fro between occasional admissions that \"learning is not to\nbe blamed,\" perhaps interpolated by one who feared to have religion\nfigure as opposed to knowledge, and recurrent flings--perhaps also\ninterpolated--at all who seek book-lore or physical science; but the\nnote of distrust of reason prevails. \"Where are all those Doctors and\nMasters whom thou didst well know whilst they lived and flourished\nin learning? Now others have their livings, and perchance scarce ever\nthink of them. While they lived they seemed something, but now they are\nnot spoken of.\" [1668] It belongs to the whole conception of retreat\nand aloofness that the devout man should \"meddle not with curiosities,\nbut read such things as may rather yield compunction to his heart than\noccupation to his head\"; and the last chapter of the last book closes\non the note of the abnegation of reason. \"Human reason is feeble and\nmay be deceived, but true faith cannot be deceived. All reason and\nnatural search ought to follow faith, not to go before it, nor to\nbreak in upon it.... If the works of God were such that they might be\neasily comprehended by human reason, they could not be justly called\nmarvellous or unspeakable.\" Thus the very inculcation of humility,\nby its constant direction against all intellectual exercise, becomes\nan incitement to a spiritual arrogance; and all manner of science\nfinds in the current ideal of piety its pre-ordained antagonist.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nFREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE\n\n\n\u00a7 1. THE ITALIAN EVOLUTION\n\nWhat is called the Renaissance was, broadly speaking, an evolution\nof the culture forces seen at work in the later \"Middle Ages,\"\nnewly fertilized by the recovery of classic literature; and we shall\nhave to revert at several points of our survey to what we have been\nconsidering as \"medieval\" in order to perceive the \"new birth.\" The\nterm is inconveniently vague, and is made to cover different periods,\nsometimes extending from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century,\nsometimes signifying only the fifteenth. It seems reasonable to apply\nit, as regards Italy, to the period in which southern culture began to\noutgo that of France, and kept its lead--that is, from the end of the\nfourteenth century [1669] to the time of the Counter-Reformation. That\nis a comparatively distinct sociological era.\n\nRenascent Italy is, after ancient Greece, the great historical\nillustration of the sociological law that the higher civilizations\narise through the passing-on of seeds of culture from older to newer\nsocieties, under conditions that specially foster them and give them\nfreer growth. The straitened and archaic pictorial art of Byzantium,\nunprogressive in the hidebound life of the Eastern Empire, developed\nin the free and striving Italian communities till it paralleled the\nsculpture of ancient Greece; and it is to be said for the Church\nthat, however she might stifle rational thought, she economically\nelicited the arts of painting and architecture (statuary being\ntabooed as too much associated with pagan worships), even as Greek\nreligion had promoted architecture and sculpture. By force, however,\nof the tendency of the arts to keep religion anthropomorphic where\ndeeper culture is lacking, popular belief in Renaissance Italy was\nsubstantially on a par with that of polytheistic Greece.\n\nBefore the general recovery of ancient literature, the main motives to\nrationalism, apart from the tendency of the Aristotelian philosophy\nto set up doubts about creation and Providence and a future state,\nwere (1) the spectacle of the competing creed of Islam, [1670]\nmade known to the Italians first by intercourse with the Moors,\nlater by the Crusades; and further and more fully by the Saracenized\nculture of Sicily and commercial intercourse with the east; (2) the\nspectacle of the strife of creeds within Christendom; [1671] and (3)\nthe spectacle of the worldliness and moral insincerity of the bulk\nof the clergy. It is in that atmosphere that the Renaissance begins;\nand it may be said that freethought stood veiled beside its cradle.\n\nIn such an atmosphere, even on the ecclesiastical side, demand for\n\"reforms\" naturally made headway; and the Council of Constance\n(1414-1418) was convened to enact many besides the ending of the\nschism. [1672] But the Council itself was followed by seven hundred\nprostitutes; [1673] and its relation to the intellectual life was\ndefined by its bringing about, on a charge of heresy, the burning\nof John Huss, who had come under a letter of safe-conduct from the\nemperor. The baseness of the act was an enduring blot on the Church;\nand a hundred years later, in a Germany with small goodwill to Bohemia,\nLuther made it one of his foremost indictments of the hierarchy. But\nin the interim the spirit of reform had come to nothing. Cut off from\nmuch of the force that was needed to effect any great moral revolution\nin the Church, the reforming movement soon fell away, [1674] and the\nChurch was left to ripen for later and more drastic treatment.\n\nHow far, nevertheless, anti-clericalism could go among the scholarly\nclass even in Italy is seen in the career of one of the leading\nhumanists of the Renaissance, Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457). In the\nwork of his youth, De Voluptate et Vero Bono, a hardy vindication\nof aggressive Epicureanism--at a time when the title of Epicurean\nstood for freethinker [1675]--he plainly sets up a rationalist\nstandard, affirming that science is founded on reason and Nature,\nand that Nature is God. Not content with a theoretic defiance of\nthe faith, he violently attacked the Church. It was probably to the\nprotection of Alfonso of Aragon, king of Naples, who though pious\nwas not pro-clerical, [1676] that Valla was able to do what he did,\nabove all to write his famous treatise, De falso credita et ementita\nConstantini donatione, wherein he definitely proved once for all that\nthe \"donation\" in question was a fiction. [1677] Such an opinion had\nbeen earlier maintained at the Council of Basle by \u00c6neas Sylvius,\nafterwards Pope Pius II, and before him by the remarkable Nicolaus of\nCusa; [1678] but when the existence of Valla's work was known he had\nto fly from Rome afresh (1443) to Naples, where he had previously been\nprotected for seven years. Applying the same critical spirit to more\nsacrosanct literature, he impugned the authenticity of the Apostles'\nCreed, and of the letter of Abgarus to Jesus Christ, given by Eusebius;\nproceeding further to challenge many of the mistranslations in the\nVulgate. [1679] For his untiring propaganda he was summoned before\nthe Inquisition at Naples, but as usual was protected by the king,\nwhom he satisfied by professing faith in the dogmas of the Church,\nas distinguished from ecclesiastical history and philology.\n\nIt was characteristic of the life of Italy, hopelessly committed on\neconomic grounds to the Church, that Valla finally sought and found\nreconciliation with the papacy. He knew that his safety at Naples\ndepended on the continued anti-papalism of the throne; he yearned for\nthe society of Rome; and his heart was all the while with the cause of\nLatin scholarship rather than with that of a visionary reformation. In\nhis as in so many cases, accordingly, intellectual rectitude gave\nway to lower interests; and he made unblushing offers of retractation\nto cardinals and pope. In view of the extreme violence of his former\nattacks, [1680] it is not surprising that the reigning Pope, Eugenius\nIV, refused to be appeased; but on the election of Nicholas V (1447)\nhe was sent for; and he died secretary to the Curia and Canon of\nSt. John Lateran. [1681]\n\nWhere so much of anti-clericalism could find harbourage within the\nChurch, there was naturally no lack of it without; and from the period\nof Boccaccio till the Catholic reaction after the Reformation a large\nmeasure of anti-clerical feeling is a constant feature in Italian\nlife. It was so ingrained that the Church had on the whole to leave\nit alone. From pope to monk the mass of the clergy had forfeited\nrespect; and gibes at their expense were household words, [1682]\nand the basis of popular songs. Tommaso Guardati of Salerno, better\nknown as Masuccio, attacks all orders of clergy in his collection of\ntales with such fury that only the protection of the court of Naples\ncould well have saved him; and yet he was a good Catholic. [1683]\nThe popular poetic literature, with certain precautions, carried\nthe anti-clerical spirit as far as to parade a humorous non-literary\nskepticism, putting in the mouths of the questionable characters in\nits romances all manner of anti-religious opinions which it would\nbe unsafe to print as one's own, but which in this way reached\nappreciative readers who were more or less in sympathy with the\nauthor's sentiments and stratagems. The Morgante Maggiore of Pulci\n(1488) is the great type of such early Voltairean humour: [1684]\nit revives the spirit of the Goliards, and passes unscathed in the\nnew Renaissance world, where the earlier Proven\u00e7al impiety had gone\nthe way of the Inquisition bonfire, books and men alike. Beneath\nits mockery there is a constant play of rational thought, and every\nphase of contemporary culture is glanced at in the spirit of always\nunembittered humour which makes Pulci \"the most lovable among the\ngreat poets of the Renaissance.\" [1685] It is noteworthy that Pulci is\nfound affirming the doctrine of an Antipodes with absolute openness,\nand with impunity, over a hundred years before Galileo. This survival\nof ancient pagan science seems to have been obscurely preserved all\nthrough the Middle Ages. In the eighth century, as we have seen,\nthe priest Feargal or Vergilius, of Bavaria, was deposed from his\noffice by the Pope, on the urging of St. Boniface, for maintaining it;\nbut he was reinstated, died a bishop, and became a saint; and not\nonly that doctrine, but that of the two-fold motion of the earth,\nwas affirmed with impunity before Pulci by Nicolaus of Cusa [1686]\n(d. 1464); though in the fourteenth century Nicolaus of Autricuria\nhad to recant his teaching of the atomistic theory. [1687] As Pulci\nhad specially satirized the clergy and ecclesiastical miracles,\nhis body was refused burial in consecrated ground; but the general\ntemper was such as to save him from clerical enmity up to that point.\n\nThe Inquisition too was now greatly enfeebled throughout central\nand northern as well as southern Italy. In 1440 the materialist,\nmathematician, and astrologer Amadeo de' Landi, of Milan, was\naccused of heresy by the orthodox Franciscans. Not only was he\nacquitted, but his chief accuser was condemned in turn to make public\nretractation, which he however declined to do. [1688] Fifty years\nlater the Inquisition was still nearly powerless. In 1497 we find\na freethinking physician at Bologna, Gabriele de Sal\u00f2, protected\nby his patrons against its wrath, although he \"was in the habit of\nmaintaining that Christ was not God, but the son of Joseph and Mary\n...; that by his cunning he had deceived the world; that he may have\ndied on the cross on account of crimes which he had committed,\" [1689]\nand so forth. Nineteen years before, Galeotto Marcio had come near\nbeing burned for writing that any man who lived uprightly according\nto his own conscience would go to heaven, whatever his faith; and it\nneeded the Pope, Sixtus IV, his former pupil, to save him from the\nInquisition. [1690] Others, who went further, ran similar risks; and\nin 1500 Giorgio da Novara was burned at Bologna, presumptively for\ndenying the divinity of Jesus. [1691] A bishop of Aranda, however,\nis said to have done the same with impunity, in the same year, [1692]\nbesides rejecting hell and purgatory, and denouncing indulgences as\na device of the popes to fill their pockets.\n\nDuring this period too the philosophy of Averro\u00ebs, as set forth in his\n\"Great Commentary\" on Aristotle, was taught in North Italy with an\noutspokenness not before known. Gaetano of Siena began to lecture on\nthe Commentary at Padua in 1436; it was in part printed there in 1472;\nand from 1471 to 1499 Nicoletto Vernias seems to have taught, in the\nPaduan chair of philosophy, the Averro\u00efst doctrine of the world-soul,\nthus virtually denying the Christian doctrine of immortality. Violent\nopposition was raised when his pupil Niphus (Nifo) printed similar\ndoctrine in a treatise De Intellectu et D\u00e6monibus (1492); but the\nprofessors when necessary disclaimed the more dangerous tenets of\nAverro\u00efsm. [1693] Nifo it was who put into print the maxim of his\ntribe: Loquendum est ut plures, sententiendum ut pauci--\"think with\nthe few; speak with the majority.\" [1694]\n\nAs in ancient Greece, humorous blasphemy seems to have fared better\nthan serious unbelief. [1695] As is remarked by Hallam, the number of\nvindications of Christianity produced in Italy in the fifteenth century\nproves the existence of much unbelief; [1696] and it is clear that,\napart from academic doubt, there was abundant freethinking among men\nof the world. [1697] Erasmus was astonished at the unbelief he found\nin high quarters in Rome. One ecclesiastic undertook to prove to him\nfrom Pliny that there is no future state; others openly derided Christ\nand the apostles; and many avowed to him that they had heard eminent\npapal functionaries blaspheming the Mass. [1698] The biographer of Pope\nPaul II has recorded how that pontiff found in his own court, among\ncertain young men, the opinion that faith rested rather on trickeries\nof the saints (sanctorum astutiis) than on evidence; which opinion the\nPope eradicated. [1699] But in the career of Perugino (1446-1524),\nwho from being a sincerely religious painter became a skeptic in\nhis wrath against the Church which slew Savonarola, [1700] we have\nevidence of a movement of things which no papal fiat could arrest.\n\nAs to the beliefs of the great artists in general we have little\ninformation. Employed as they so often were in painting religious\nsubjects for the churches, they must as a rule have conformed\noutwardly; and the artistic temper is more commonly credent than\nskeptical. But in the case of one of the greatest, Leonardo da Vinci\n(1452-1519), we have evidence of a continual play of critical scrutiny\non the world, and a continual revolt against mere authority, which\nseem incompatible with any acceptance of Christian dogma. In his many\nnotes, unpublished till modern times, his universal genius plays\nso freely upon so many problems that he cannot be supposed to have\nignored those of religion. His stern appraisement of the mass of men\n[1701] carries with it no evangelical qualifications; his passion for\nknowledge is not Christian; [1702] and his reiterated rejection of\nthe principle of authority in science [1703] and in literature [1704]\ntells of a spirit which, howsoever it might practise reticence, cannot\nhave been inwardly docile to either priesthood or tradition. In all\nhis reflections upon philosophic and scientific themes he is, in\nthe scientific sense, materialistic--that is, inductive, studious\nof experiment, insistent upon tangible data. [1705] \"Wisdom is\ndaughter of experience\"; [1706] \"truth is the daughter of time\";\n[1707] \"there is no effect in Nature without a reason\"; [1708] \"all\nour knowledge originates in sensations\" [1709]--such are the dicta he\naccumulates in an age of superstition heightened by the mutability\nof life, of ecclesiastical tyranny tempered only by indifferentism,\nof faith in astrology and amulets, of benumbing tradition in science\nand philosophy. On the problem of the phenomena of fossil shells\nhe pronounces with a searching sagacity of inference [1710] that\nseems to reveal at once the extent to which the advance of science\nhas been blocked by pious obscurantism. [1711] In all directions we\nsee the great artist, a century before Bacon, anticipating Bacon's\nprotests and questionings, and this with no such primary bias to\nreligion as Bacon had acquired at his mother's knee. When he turns\nto the problems of body and spirit he is as dispassionate, as keenly\nspeculative, as over those of external nature. [1712] Of magic he is\nentirely contemptuous, not in the least on religious grounds, though\nhe glances at these, but simply for the folly of it. [1713] All that\ntells of religious feeling in him is summed up in a few utterances\nexpressive of a vague theism; [1714] while he has straight thrusts at\nreligious fraud and absurdity. [1715] It is indeed improbable that a\nmind so necessitated to discourse of its thought, however gifted for\nprudent silence, can have subsisted without private sympathy from\nkindred souls. Skepticism was admittedly abundant; and Leonardo of\nall men can least have failed to reckon with its motives.\n\nPerhaps the most fashionable form of quasi-freethinking in the Italy of\nthe fifteenth century was that which prevailed in the Platonic Academy\nof Florence in the period, though the chief founder of the Academy,\nMarsilio Ficino, wrote a defence of Christianity, and his most famous\nadherent, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, planned another. Renaissance\nPlatonism began with the Greek Georgios Gemistos, surnamed Plethon\nbecause of his devotion to Plato, which was such as to scandalize\ncommon Christians and exasperate Aristotelians. The former had the\nreal grievance that his system ostensibly embodied polytheism and\nlogically involved pantheism; [1716] and one of his antagonists,\nGennadios Georgios Scolarios, who became patriarch of Constantinople,\ncaused his book On Laws to be burned; [1717] but the allegation of\nhis Aristotelian enemy and countryman, Georgios Trapezuntios, that\nhe prayed to the sun as creator of the world, [1718] is only one of\nthe polemical amenities of the period. Ostensibly he was a believing\nChristian, stretching Christian love to accommodate the beliefs of\nPlato; but it was not zeal for orthodoxy that moved Cosimo dei Medici,\nat Florence, to embrace the new Platonism, and train up Marsilio\nFicino to be its prophet. The furor allegoricus which inspired the\nwhole school [1719] was much more akin to ancient Gnosticism than to\northodox Christianity, and constantly points to pantheism [1720] as\nthe one philosophic solution of its ostensible polytheism. When, too,\nFicino undertakes to vindicate Christianity against the unbelievers in\nhis Della Religione Cristiana, \"the most solid arguments that he can\nfind in its favour are the answers of the Sibyls, and the prophecies\nof the coming of Jesus Christ to be found in Virgil, Plato, Plotinus,\nand Porphyry.\" [1721]\n\nHow far such a spirit of expatiation and speculation, however visionary\nand confused, tended to foster heresy is seen in the brief career\nof the once famous young Pico della Mirandola, Ficino's wealthy\npupil. Parading a portentous knowledge of tongues [1722] and topics\nat the age of twenty-four, he undertook (1486) to maintain a list of\nnine hundred Conclusiones or propositions at Rome against all comers,\nand to pay their expenses. Though he had obtained the permission of\nthe Pope, Innocent VIII, the challenge speedily elicited angry charges\nof heresy against certain of the theses, and the Pope had to stop the\nproceedings and issue an ecclesiastical commission of inquiry. Some\nof the propositions were certainly ill adjusted to Catholic ideas,\nin particular the sayings that \"neither the cross of Christ nor\nany image is to be adored adoratione latri\u00e6\"--with worship; that no\none believes what he believes merely because he wishes to; and that\nJesus did not physically descend into hell. [1723] Pico, retiring\nto Florence, defended himself in an Apologia, which provoked fresh\noutcry; whereupon he was summoned to proceed to Rome; and though the\npowerful friendship of Lorenzo dei Medici procured a countermand of\nthe order, it was not till 1496 that he received, from Alexander VI,\na full papal remission.\n\nAmong the unachieved projects of his later life, which ended at the\nage of thirty-one, was that of a treatise Adversus Hostes Ecclesi\u00e6,\nto be divided into seven sections, the first dealing with \"The avowed\nand open enemies of Christianity,\" and the second with \"Atheists and\nthose who reject every religious system upon their own reasoning\"; and\nthe others with Jews, Moslems, idolaters, heretics, and unrighteous\nbelievers. [1724] The vogue of unbelief thus signified was probably\nincreased by the whole speculative habit of Pico's own school, [1725]\nwhich tended only less than Averro\u00efsm to a pantheism subversive of\nthe Christian creed. It is noteworthy that, while Ficino believed\ndevoutly in astrology, [1726] Pico rejected it, and left among his\nconfused papers a treatise against it which his nephew contrived to\ntranscribe and publish; [1727] but it does not appear that this served\neither the cause of religion or that of science. The educated Italian\nworld, while political independence lasted, remained in various degrees\nfreethinking, pantheistic, and given to astrology, no school or teacher\ncombining rationalism in philosophy with sound scientific methods.\n\nOne of the great literary figures of the later Renaissance, Niccol\u00f2\nMachiavelli (1469-1527), is the standing proof of the divorce of\nthe higher intelligence of Italy from the faith as well as the cause\nof the Church before the Reformation. With this divorce he expressly\ncharges the Church itself, giving as the first proof of its malfeasance\nthat the peoples nearest Rome were the least religious. [1728] To\nhim the Church was the supreme evil in Italian politics, [1729] the\n\"stone in the wound.\" In a famous passage he gives his opinion that\n\"our religion, having shown us the truth and the true way, makes us\nesteem less political honour (l'onore del mondo)\"; and that whereas\nthe pagan religion canonized only men crowned with public honour,\nas generals and statesmen, \"our religion has glorified rather the\nhumble and contemplative men than the active,\" placing the highest\ngood in humility and abjection, teaching rather to suffer than\nto do, and so making the world debile and ready to be a prey to\nscoundrels. [1730] The passage which follows, putting the blame on\nmen for thus misreading their religion, is a fair sample of the grave\nmockery with which the men of that age veiled their unfaith. [1731]\nMachiavelli was reputed in his own world an atheist; [1732] and\nhe certainly was no religionist. He indeed never avows atheism, but\nneither did any other writer of the epoch; [1733] and the whole tenour\nof his writings is that of a man who had at least put aside the belief\nin a prayer-answering deity; [1734] though, with the intellectual\narbitrariness which still affected all the thought of his age, he avows\na belief that all great political changes are heralded by prodigies,\ncelestial signs, prophecies, or revelations [1735]--here conforming\nto the ordinary superstition of his troublous time.\n\nIt belongs, further, to the manifold self-contradiction of the\nRenaissance that, holding none of the orthodox religious beliefs,\nhe argues insistently and at length for the value and importance of\nreligion, however untrue, as a means to political strength. Through\nfive successive chapters of his Discourses on Livy he presses and\nillustrates his thesis, praising Numa as a sagacious framer of useful\nfictions, and as setting up new and false beliefs which made for the\nunification and control of the Roman people. The argument evolved\nwith such strange candour is, of course, of the nature of so much\nRenaissance science, an \u00e0 priori error: there was no lack of religious\nfaith and fear in primitive Rome before the age of Numa; and the legend\nconcerning him is a product of the very primordial mythopoiesis which\nMachiavelli supposes him to have set on foot. It is in the spirit of\nthat fallacious theory of a special superinduced religiosity in Romans\n[1736] that the great Florentine proceeds to charge the Church with\nhaving made the Italians religionless and vicious (senza religione\ne cattivi). Had he lived a century or two later he might have seen\nin the case of zealously believing Spain a completer political and\nsocial prostration than had fallen in his day on Italy, and this\nalongside of regeneration in an unbelieving France. But indeed it\nwas the bitterness of spirit of a suffering patriot looking back\nyearningly to an idealized Rome, rather than the insight of the author\nof The Prince, [1737] that inspired his reasoning on the political\nuses of religion; for at the height of his exposition he notes,\nwith his keen eye for fact, how the most strenuous use of religious\nmotive had failed to support the Samnites against the cool courage\nof Romans led by a rationalizing general; [1738] and he notes, too,\nwith a sardonic touch of hopefulness, how Savonarola had contrived to\npersuade the people of contemporary Florence that he had intercourse\nwith deity. [1739] Italy then had faith enough and to spare.\n\nSuch argument, in any case, even if untouched by the irony which tinges\nMachiavelli's, could never avail to restore faith; men cannot become\nbelievers on the motive of mere belief in the value of belief; and the\ntotal effect of Machiavelli's manifold reasoning on human affairs,\nwith its startling lucidity, its constant insistence on causation,\nits tacit negation of every notion of Providence, must have been, in\nItaly as elsewhere, rather to prepare the way for inductive science\nthan to rehabilitate supernaturalism, even among those who assented to\nhis theory of Roman development. In his hands the method of science\nbegins to emerge, turned to the most difficult of its tasks, before\nCopernicus had applied it to the simpler problem of the motion of the\nsolar system. After centuries in which the name of Aristotle had been\nconstantly invoked to small scientific purpose, this man of the world,\nwho knew little or nothing of Aristotle's Politics, [1740] exhibits\nthe spirit of the true Aristotle for the first time in the history of\nChristendom; and it is in his land after two centuries of his influence\nthat modern sociology begins its next great stride in the work of Vico.\n\nHe is to be understood, of course, as the product of the moral\nand intellectual experience of the Renaissance, which prepared his\naudience for him. Guicciardini, his contemporary, who in comparison was\nunblamed for irreligion, though an even warmer hater of the papacy,\nhas left in writing the most explicit avowals of incredulity as to\nthe current conceptions of the supernatural, and declares concerning\nmiracles that as they occur in every religion they prove none. [1741]\nAt the same time he professes firm faith in Christianity; [1742] and\nothers who would not have joined him there were often as inconsistent\nin the ready belief they gave to magic and astrology. The time was,\nafter all, one of artistic splendour and scientific and critical\nignorance; [1743] and its freethought had the inevitable defects that\nignorance entails. Thus the belief in the reality of witchcraft,\nsometimes discarded by churchmen, [1744] is sometimes maintained\nby heretics. Rejected by John of Salisbury in the twelfth century,\nand by the freethinking Pietro of Abano in 1303, it was affirmed\nand established by Thomas Aquinas, asserted by Gregory IX, and\nmade a motive for uncounted slaughters by the Inquisition. In 1460\na theologian had been forced to retract, and still punished, for\nexpressing doubt on the subject; and in 1471 Pope Sixtus VI reserved\nto the papacy the privilege of making and selling the waxen models\nof limbs used as preservatives against enchantments. In the sixteenth\ncentury a whole series of books directed against the belief were put\non the Index, and a Jesuit handbook codified the creed. Yet a Minorite\nfriar, Alfonso Spina, pronounced it a heretical delusion, and taught\nthat those burned suffered not for witchcraft but for heresy, [1745]\nand on the other hand some men of a freethinking turn held it. Thus\nthe progress of rational thought was utterly precarious.\n\nOf the literary freethinking of the later Renaissance the most famous\nrepresentative is Pomponazzi, or Pomponatius (1462-1525), for whom\nit has been claimed that he \"really initiated the philosophy of\nthe Italian Renaissance.\" [1746] The Italian Renaissance, however,\nwas in reality near its turning-point when Pomponazzi's treatise on\nthe Immortality of the Soul appeared (1516); and that topic was the\ncommonest in the schools and controversies of that day. [1747] He has\nbeen at times spoken of as an Averro\u00efst, on the ground that he denied\nimmortality; but he did so in reality as a disciple of Alexander of\nAphrodisias, a rival commentator to Averro\u00ebs. What is remarkable in\nhis case is not the denial of immortality, which we have seen to be\nfrequent in Dante's time, and more or less implicit in Averro\u00efsm,\nbut his contention that ethics could do very well without the belief\n[1748]--a thing that it still took some courage to affirm, though\nthe spectacle of the life of the faithful might have been supposed\nsufficient to win it a ready hearing. Presumably his rationalism, which\nmade him challenge the then canonical authority of the scholasticized\nAristotle, went further than his avowed doubts as to a future state;\nsince his profession of obedience to the Church's teaching, and his\nreiteration of the old academic doctrine of two-fold truth--one truth\nfor science and philosophy, and another for theology [1749]--are as\ndubious as any in philosophic history. [1750] Of him, or of Lorenzo\nValla, more justly than of Petrarch, might it be said that he is the\nfather of modern criticism, since Valla sets on foot at once historical\nand textual analysis, while Pomponazzi anticipates the treatment given\nto Biblical miracles by the rationalizing German theologians of the\nend of the eighteenth century. [1751] He too was a fixed enemy of the\nclergy; and it was not for lack of will that they failed to destroy\nhim. He happened to be a personal favourite of Leo X, who saw to\nit that the storm of opposition to Pomponazzi--a storm as much of\nanger on behalf of Aristotle, who had been shown by him to doubt\nthe immortality of the soul, as on behalf of Christianity--should\nend in an official farce of reconciliation. [1752] He was however\nnot free to publish his treatises, De Incantationibus and De Fato,\nLibero Arbitrio, et Pr\u00e6destinatione. These, completed in 1520, were\nnot printed till after his death, in 1556 and 1557; [1753] and by\nreason of their greater simplicity, as well as of their less dangerous\nform of heresy, were much more widely read than the earlier treatise,\nthus contributing much to the spread of sane thought on the subjects\nof witchcraft, miracles, and special providences.\n\nWhether his metaphysic on the subject of the immortality of the\nsoul had much effect on popular thought may be doubted. What the\nRenaissance most needed in both its philosophic and its practical\nthought was a scientific foundation; and science, from first to last,\nwas more hindered than helped by the environment. In the thirteenth\nand fourteenth centuries, charges of necromancy against physicians and\nexperimenters were frequently joined with imputations of heresy, and\non such charges not a few were burned. [1754] The economic conditions\ntoo were all unfavourable to solid research.\n\n\n When Galileo in 1589 was made Professor of Mathematics at Pisa,\n his salary was only 60 scudi (= dollars), while the Professor\n of Medicine got 2,000. (Karl von Gebler, Galileo Galilei,\n Eng. tr. 1879, p. 9.) At Padua, later, Galileo had 520 florins,\n with a prospect of rising to as many scudi. (Letter given\n in The Private Life of Galileo, Boston, 1870, p. 61.) The\n Grand Duke finally gave him a pension of 1,000 scudi at\n Florence. (Id. p. 64.) This squares with Bacon's complaint\n (Advancement of Learning, bk. ii; De Augmentis, bk. ii,\n ch. i--Works, Routledge ed. pp. 76, 422-23) that, especially\n in England, the salaries of lecturers in arts and professions\n were injuriously small, and that, further, \"among so many noble\n foundations of colleges in Europe ... they are all dedicated\n to professions, and none left free to the study of arts and\n sciences at large.\" In Italy, however, philosophy was fairly well\n endowed. Pomponazzi received a salary of 900 Bolognese lire when\n he obtained the chair of Philosophy at Bologna in 1509. (Christie,\n essay cited, p. 138.)\n\n\nMedicine was nearly as dogmatic as theology. Even philosophy was in\nlarge part shouldered aside by the financial motives which led men\nto study law in preference; [1755] and when the revival of ancient\nliterature gained ground it absorbed energy to the detriment of\nscientific study, [1756] the wealthy amateurs being ready to pay\nhigh prices for manuscripts of classics, and for classical teaching;\nbut not for patient investigation of natural fact. The humanists,\nso-called, were often forces of enlightenment and reform; witness\nsuch a type as the high-minded Pomponio Leto (Pomponius Laetus),\npupil and successor of Lorenzo Valla, and one of the many \"pagan\"\nscholars of the later Renaissance; [1757] but the discipline of mere\nclassical culture was insufficient to make them, as a body, qualified\nleaders either of thought or action, [1758] in such a society as\nthat of decaying Italy. Only after the fall of Italian liberties,\nthe decay of the Church's wealth and power, the loss of commerce, and\nthe consequent decline of the arts, did men turn to truly scientific\npursuits. From Italy, indeed, long after the Reformation, came a new\nstimulus to freethought which affected all the higher civilization\nof northern Europe. But the failure to solve the political problem,\na failure which led to the Spanish tyranny, meant the establishment\nof bad conditions for the intellectual as for the social life; and\nan arrest of freethought in Italy was a necessary accompaniment of\nthe arrest of the higher literature. What remained was the afterglow\nof a great and energetic period rather than a spirit of inquiry; and\nwe find the old Averro\u00efst scholasticism, in its most pedantic form,\nlasting at the university of Padua till far into the seventeenth\ncentury. \"A philosophy,\" remarks in this connection an esteemed\nhistorian, \"a mode of thought, a habit of mind, may live on in the\nlecture-rooms of Professors for a century after it has been abandoned\nby the thinkers, the men of letters, and the men of the world.\" [1759]\nThe avowal has its bearings nearer home than Padua.\n\nWhile it lasted, the light of Italy had shone upon all the thought of\nEurope. Not only the other nations but the scholars of the Jewish race\nreflected it; for to the first half of the sixteenth century belongs\nthe Jew Menahem Asariah de Rossi, whose work, Meor Enayim, \"Light of\nthe Eyes,\" is \"the first attempt by a Jew to submit the statements\nof the Talmud to a critical examination, and to question the value\nof tradition in its historical records.\" And he did not stand alone\namong the Jews of Italy; for, while Elijah Delmedigo, at the end of\nthe fifteenth century, was in a didactic Maimonist fashion doubtful of\nliterary tradition, his grandson, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, flourishing\nearly in the seventeenth century, \"wrote various pamphlets of a deeply\nskeptical character.\" [1760] That this movement of Jewish rationalism\nshould be mainly limited to the south was inevitable, since there only\nwere Jewish scholars in an intellectual environment. There could be\nno better testimony to the higher influence of the Italian Renaissance.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2. THE FRENCH EVOLUTION\n\nIn the other countries influenced by Italian culture in the sixteenth\ncentury the rationalist spirit had various fortune. France, as we saw,\nhad substantially retrograded at the time of the Italian new-birth, her\nrevived militarism no less than her depression by the English conquests\nhaving deeply impaired her intellectual life in the fourteenth and\nfifteenth centuries. Thus the true renascence of letters in France\nbegan late, and went on during the Reformation period; and all along\nit showed a tincture of freethought. From the midst of the group who\nlaid the foundations of French Protestantism by translations of the\nBible there comes forth the most articulate freethinker of that age,\nBonaventure Desperiers, author of the Cymbalum Mundi (1537). Early\nassociated with Calvin and Olivetan in revising the translation of the\nBible by Lef\u00e8vre d'Etaples (rev. 1535), Desperiers turned away from\nthe Protestant movement, as did Rabelais and \u00c9tienne Dolet, caring as\nlittle for the new presbyter as for the old priest; and all three were\nduly accused by the Protestants of atheism and libertinage. [1761] In\nthe same year Desperiers aided Dolet, scholar and printer, to produce\nhis much-praised Commentarii lingu\u00e6 latin\u00e6; and within two years he\nhad printed his own satire, Cymbalum Mundi, [1762] wherein, by way of\npagan dialogues, are allegorically ridiculed the Christian scheme,\nits miracles, Bible contradictions, and the spirit of persecution,\nthen in full fire in France against the Protestants. In the first\ndialogue Mercury is sent to Athens by Zeus the Father to have the\n\"Book of the Destinies\" rebound--an adaptation of an ancient sarcasm\nagainst the Christians by Celsus. [1763] He, robbing others, is\nrobbed of the book, and another (= the New Testament) is put in\nits place. In the second dialogue figure Rhetulus (= Lutherus) and\nCubercus (= Bucerus?), who suppose they have found the main pieces\nof the philosopher's stone, which Mercury had broken and scattered\nin the sand of the theatre arena. Protestants and Catholics are thus\nalike ridiculed. The allegory is not always clear to modern eyes; but\nthere was no question then about its general bearing; and Desperiers,\nthough groom of the chamber (after Clement Marot) to Marguerite of\nFrance (later of Navarre), had to fly for his life, as Marot did\nbefore him. The first edition of his book, secretly printed at Paris,\nwas seized and destroyed; and the second (1538), printed for him at\nLyons, whither he had taken his flight, seems to have had a similar\nfate. From that time he disappears, probably dying, whether or not\nby suicide is doubtful, [1764] before 1544, when his miscellaneous\nworks were published. They include his OEuvres Diverses--many of them\ngraceful poems addressed to his royal mistress, Marguerite--which,\nwith his verse translation of the Andria of Terence and his Discours\nnon plus Melancoliques que Divers, make up his small body of work. In\nthe Discours may be seen applied to matters of history and scholarship\nthe same critical spirit that utters itself in the Cymbalum, and the\nsame literary gift; but for orthodoxy his name became a hissing and\na byword, and it is only in modern times that French scholarship has\nrecognized in Desperiers the true literary comrade and potential equal\nof Rabelais and Marot. [1765] The age of Francis was too inclement\nfor such literature as his Cymbalum; and it was much that it spared\nGringoire (d. 1544), who, without touching doctrine, satirized in\nhis verse both priests and Protestants.\n\nIt is something of a marvel, further, that it spared Rabelais\n(? 1493-1553), whose enormous raillery so nearly fills up the\nliterary vista of the age for modern retrospect. It has been said\nby a careful student that \"the free and universal inquiry, the\nphilosophic doubt, which were later to work the glory of Descartes,\nproceed from Rabelais\"; [1766] and it is indeed an impression of\nboundless intellectual curiosity and wholly unfettered thinking that\nis set up by his entire career. Sent first to the convent school of\nLa Baumette, near Angers, he had there as a schoolfellow Geoffroy\nd'Estissac, afterwards his patron as Bishop of Maillezais. Sent later\nto the convent school of Fontenay-le-Comte, he had the luck to have for\nschoolfellows there the four famous brothers Du Bellay, so well able\nto protect him in later life; and, forced to spend fifteen years of\nhis young life (1509-24) at Fontenay as a Franciscan monk, he turned\nthe time to account by acquiring an immense erudition, including a\nknowledge of Greek, then rare. [1767] Naturally the book-lover was\nnot popular among his fellow-monks; and his Greek books were actually\nconfiscated by the chapter, who found in his cell certain writings\nof Erasmus, [1768] to whom as a scholar he afterwards expressed the\ndeepest intellectual obligations. Thereafter, by the help of his\nfriend d'Estissac, now bishop of the diocese, Rabelais received papal\npermission to join the order of the Benedictines and to enter the Abbey\nof Maillezais as a canon regular (1524); but soon after, though he was\nthus a fully-ordained priest, we find him broken loose, and living\nfor some six years a life of wandering freedom as a secular priest,\nsometimes with his friend the bishop, winning friends in high places by\nhis learning and his gaiety, everywhere studying and observing. At the\nbishop's priory of Ligug\u00e9 he seems to have studied hard and widely. In\n1530 he is found at Montpellier, extending his studies in medicine,\nin which he speedily won distinction, becoming B.M. on December 1,\nand a lecturer in the following year. He was later esteemed one of\nthe chief anatomists of his day, being one of the first to dissect the\nhuman body and to insist on the need of such training for physicians;\n[1769] and in 1532 [1770] we find him characterized as the \"true great\nuniversal spirit of this time.\" [1771] In the same year he published\nat Lyons, where he was appointed physician to the chief hospital,\nan edition of the Latin letters of the Ferrarese physician Manardi;\nand his own commentaries on Galen and Hippocrates, which had a very\npoor sale. [1772] At Lyons he made the acquaintance of Dolet, Marot,\nand Desperiers; and his letter (of the same year) to Erasmus (printed\nas addressed to Bernard de Salignac [1773]) showed afresh how his\nintellectual sympathies went.\n\nAbout 1532 he produced his Gargantua and Pantagruel, the first\ntwo books of his great humoristic romance; and in 1533 began his\nseries of almanacks, continued till 1550, presumably as printer's\nhack-work. From the fragments which have been preserved, they appear\nto have been entirely serious in tone, one containing a grave theistic\nprotest against all astrological prediction. Along with the almanack of\n1533, however, he produced a Pantagruelian Prognostication; and this,\nwhich alone has been preserved entire, [1774] passes hardy ridicule on\nastrology, [1775] one of the most popular superstitions of the day,\namong high and low alike. Almost immediately the Sorbonne was on\nhis track, condemning his Pantagruel in 1533. [1776] A journey soon\nafterwards to Rome, in the company of his friend Bishop Jean du Bellay,\nthe French ambassador, may have saved him some personal experience\nof persecution. Two years later, when the Bishop went to Rome to\nbe made cardinal, Rabelais again accompanied him; and he appears to\nhave been a favourite alike with Pope Clement VII and Paul III. At\nthe end of 1535 we find him, in a letter to his patron, the bishop\nof Maillezais, scoffing at the astrological leanings of the new Pope,\nPaul III. [1777] Nonetheless, upon a formal Supplicatio pro apostasia,\nhe obtained from the Pope in 1536 an absolution for his breach of his\nmonastic vows, with permission to practise medicine in a Benedictine\nmonastery. Shortly before, his little son Th\u00e9odule had died; [1778]\nand it may have been grief that inspired such a desire: in any case,\nthe papal permission to turn monk again was never used, [1779] though\nthe pardon was doubtless serviceable. Taking his degree as doctor\nat Montpellier in May, 1537, he there lectured for about a year on\nanatomy; and in the middle of 1538 he recommenced a wandering life,\n[1780] practising in turn at Narbonne, Castres, and Lyons. Then,\nafter becoming a Benedictine canon of St. Maur in 1540, we find him\nin Piedmont from 1540 to 1543, under the protection of the viceroy,\nGuillaume de Bellay. [1781]\n\nDuring this period the frequent reprints of the first two books of\nhis main work, though never bearing his name, brought upon him the\ndenunciations alike of priests and Protestants. Ramus, perhaps in\nrevenge for being caricatured as Raminagrobis, pronounced him an\natheist. [1782] Calvin, who had once been his friend, had in his\nbook De Scandalis angrily accused him of libertinage, profanity, and\natheism; and henceforth, like Desperiers, he was about as little in\nsympathy with Protestantism as with the zealots of Rome.\n\nThus assailed, Rabelais had seen cause, in an edition of 1542, to\nmodify a number of the hardier utterances in the original issues of the\nfirst two books of his Pantagruel, notably his many epithets aimed at\nthe Sorbonne. [1783] In the reprints there are substituted for Biblical\nnames some drawn from heathen mythology; expressions too strongly\nsavouring of Calvinism are withdrawn; and disrespectful allusions\nto the kings of France are elided. In his concern to keep himself\nsafe with the Sorbonne he even made a rather unworthy attack [1784]\n(1542) on his former friend \u00c9tienne Dolet for the mere oversight of\nreprinting one of his books without deleting passages which Rabelais\nhad expunged; [1785] but no expurgation could make his \u00e9vangile,\nas he called it, [1786] a Christian treatise, or keep for him an\northodox reputation; and it was with much elation that he obtained in\n1545 from King Francis--whose private reader was his friend Duch\u00e2tel,\nBishop of Tulle--a privilege to print the third book of Pantagruel,\nwhich he issued in 1546, signed for the first time with his name, and\nprefaced by a cry of jovial defiance to the \"petticoated devils\" of the\nSorbonne. They at once sought to convict him of fresh blasphemies; but\neven the thrice-repeated substitution of an n for an m in \u00e2me, making\n\"ass\" out of \"soul,\" was carried off, by help of Bishop Duch\u00e2tel, as\na printer's error; and the king, having laughed like other readers,\nmaintained the imprimatur. But although it gave Rabelais formal leave\nto reprint the first and second books, he was careful for the time\nnot to do so, leaving the increasing risk to be run by whoso would.\n\nIt was on the death of Francis in 1547 that Rabelais ran his greatest\ndanger, having to fly to Metz, where for a time he acted as salaried\nphysician of the city. About this time he seems to have written\nthe fourth and fifth books of Pantagruel; and to the treatment he\nhad suffered at Catholic hands has been ascribed the reversion\nto Calvinistic ideas noted in the fifth book. [1787] In 1549,\nhowever, on the birth of a son to Henri II, his friend Cardinal\nBellay returned to power, and Rabelais to court favour with him. The\nderider of astrology did not scruple to cast a prosperous horoscope\nfor the infant prince--justifying by strictly false predictions his\nown estimate of the art, since the child died in the cradle. There\nwas now effected the dramatic scandal of the appointment of Rabelais\nin 1550 to two parish cures, one of which, Meudon, has given him his\nmost familiar sobriquet. He seems to have left both to be served by\nvicars; [1788] but the wrath of the Church was so great that early\nin 1552 he resigned them; [1789] proceeding immediately afterwards to\npublish the fourth book of Pantagruel, for which he had duly obtained\nofficial privilege. As usual, the Sorbonne rushed to the pursuit;\nand the Parlement of Paris forbade the sale of the book despite\nthe royal permission. That permission, however, was reaffirmed; and\nthis, the most audacious of all the writings of Rabelais, went forth\nfreely throughout France, carrying the war into the enemies' camp,\nand assailing alike Protestants and churchmen. In the following year,\nhis work done, he died.\n\nIt is difficult to estimate the intellectual effect of his performance,\nwhich was probably much greater at the end of the century than\nduring his life. Patericke, the English translator of Gentillet's\nfamous Discours against Machiavelli (1576), points to Rabelais among\nthe French and Agrippa (an odd parallel) among the Germans as the\nstandard-bearers of the whole train of atheists and scoffers. \"Little\nby little, that which was taken in the beginning for jests turned to\nearnest, and words into deeds.\" [1790] Rabelais's vast innuendoes by\nway of jests about the people of Ruach (the Spirit) who lived solely on\nwind; [1791] his quips about the \"reverend fathers in devil,\" of the\n\"diabological faculty\"; [1792] his narratives about the Papefigues\nand Papimanes; [1793] and his gibes at the Decretals, [1794] were\ndoubtless enjoyed by many good Catholics otherwise placated by his\nattacks on the \"demoniacal Calvins, impostors of Geneva\"; [1795] and\nso careful was he on matters of dogma that it remains impossible to\nsay with confidence whether or not he finally believed in a future\nstate. [1796] That he was a deist or Unitarian seems the reasonable\ninference as to his general creed; [1797] but there also he throws\nout no negations--even indicates a genial contempt for the philosophe\nephectique et pyrrhonien [1798] who opposes a halting doubt to two\ncontrary doctrines. In any case, he was anathema to the heresy-hunters\nof the Sorbonne, and only powerful protection could have saved him.\n\nDolet (1508-1546) was certainly much less of an unbeliever [1799]\nthan Rabelais; [1800] but where Rabelais could with ultimate impunity\nridicule the whole machinery of the Church, [1801] Dolet, after\nseveral iniquitous prosecutions, in which his jealous rivals in the\nprinting business took part, was finally done to death in priestly\nrevenge [1802] for his youthful attack on the religion of inquisitorial\nToulouse, where gross pagan superstition and gross orthodoxy went hand\nin hand. [1803] He certainly \"lived a life of sturt and strife.\" Born\nat Orl\u00e9ans, he studied in his boyhood at Paris; later at Padua, under\nSimon Villanovanus, whom he heard converse with Sir Thomas More; then,\nat 21, for a year at Venice, where he was secretary to Langeac, the\nFrench Bishop of Limoges. It was at Toulouse, where he went in 1532 to\nstudy law, that he began his quarrels and his troubles. In that year,\nand in that town, the young Jean de Caturce, a lecturer in the school\nof law, was burned alive on a trivial charge of heresy; and Dolet\nwitnessed the tragedy. [1804] Previously there had been a wholesale\narrest of suspected Lutherans--\"advocates, procureurs, ecclesiastics\nof all sorts, monks, friars, and cur\u00e9s.\" [1805] Thirty-two saved\nthemselves by flight; but among those arrested was Jean de Boysonne,\nthe most learned and the ablest professor in the university, much\nadmired by Rabelais, [1806] and afterwards the most intimate friend\nof Dolet. It was his sheer love of letters that brought upon him the\ncharge of heresy; [1807] but he was forced publicly to abjure ten\nLutheran heresies charged upon him. The students of the time were\ndivided in the old fashion into \"nations,\" and formed societies as\nsuch; and Dolet, chosen in 1534 as \"orator\" of the \"French\" group,\nas distinct from the Gascons and the Tolosans, in the course of\na quarrel of the societies delivered two Latin orations, in one\nof which he vilipended alike the cruelty and the superstitions of\nToulouse. A number of the leading bigots of the place were attacked;\nand Dolet was after an interval of some months thrown into prison,\ncharged with exciting a riot and with contempt of the Parlement of\nToulouse. His incarceration did not last long; but never thereafter\nwas he safe; and in the remaining thirteen years of his life he was\nfive more times in prison, for nearly five years in all. [1808]\n\nAfter he had settled at Lyons, and produced his Commentaries, he had\nthe bad fortune to kill an enemy who drew sword upon him; and the\npardon he obtained from the king through the influence of Marguerite\nof Navarre remained technically unratified for six years, during which\ntime he was only provisionally at liberty, being actually in prison\nfor a short time in 1537. Apart from this episode he showed himself\nboth quarrelsome and vainglorious, alienating friends who had done\nmuch for him; but his enemies were worse spirits than he. The power\nof the man drove him to perpetual production no less than to strife;\nand his mere activity as a printer went far to destroy him.\n\n\n \"No calling was more hateful to the friends of bigotry and\n superstition than that of a printer\" (Christie, as cited,\n p. 387). Nearly all the leading printers of France and Germany\n were either avowedly in sympathy with Protestant heresy or\n suspected of being so (id. p. 388); and the issue of an edict\n by King Francis in 1535 for the suppression of printing was at\n the instance of the Sorbonne. We shall see that in Germany the\n support of the printers, and their hostility to the priests and\n monks, contributed greatly to the success of Lutheranism.\n\n\nIn 1542 he was indicted as a heretic, but really for publishing\nProtestant books of devotion and French translations of the\nBible. Among the formal offences charged were: (1) his having in his\nCato Christianus cited as the second commandment the condemnation\nof all images; (2) his use of the term \"fate\" in the sense of\npredestination; (3) his substitution of habeo fidem for credo; (4) the\neating of flesh in Lent; and (5) the act of taking a walk during the\nperformance of mass. [1809] On this indictment the two inquisitors Orry\nand Faye delivered him over to the secular arm for execution. Again\nhe secured the King's pardon (1543), through the mediation of Pierre\nDuch\u00e2tel, the good Bishop of Tulle; but the ecclesiastical resistance\nwas such that, despite Dolet's formal recantation, it required a more\nplenary pardon, the express orders of the King, and three official\nletters to secure his release after a year's detention. [1810]\n\nThat was, however, swiftly followed by a final and successful\nprosecution. By a base device two parcels were made of prohibited\nbooks printed by Dolet and of Protestant books issued at Geneva;\nand these, bearing his name in large, were forwarded to Paris. The\nparcels were seized, and he was again arrested, early in January,\n1544. He contrived to escape to Piedmont; but, returning secretly\nafter six months to print documents of defence, he was discovered\nand sent to prison in Paris. The last pardon having covered all\nprevious writings, the prosecutors sought in his translation of the\npseudo-Platonic dialogues Axiochus and Hipparchus, printed with his\nlast vindication; and, finding a slight over-emphasis of Sokrates's\nphrase describing the death of the body (\"thou shalt no longer be,\"\nrendered by \"thou shalt no longer be anything at all\"), pronounced\nthis a wilful propounding of a heresy, though in fact there had\nbeen no denial of the doctrine of immortality. [1811] This time the\nprey was held. After Dolet had been in prison for twenty months the\nParlement of Paris ratified the sentence of death; and he was burned\nalive on August 3, 1546. The utter wickedness of the whole process\n[1812] at least serves to relieve by neighbourhood the darkness of\nthe stains cast on Protestantism by the crimes of Calvin.\n\nThe whole of the clerical opposition to the new learning at this\nperiod is not unjustly to be characterized as a malignant cabal of\nignorance against knowledge. In Germany as in France real learning was\nsubstantially on the side of the persecuted writers. When, in March\nof 1537, Dolet was entertained at a banquet to celebrate the pardon\ngranted to him by the king for his homicide at Lyons on the last\nday of the previous year, there came to it, by Dolet's own account,\nthe chief lights of learning in France--Bud\u00e9, the chief Greek scholar\nof his time; Berauld, his nearest compeer; Dan\u00e8s and Toussain, both\npupils of Bud\u00e9 and the first royal professors of Greek at Paris; Marot,\n\"the French Maro\"; Rabelais, then regarded as a great new light in\nmedicine; Voult\u00e9, [1813] and others. The men of enlightenment at first\ninstinctively drew together, recognizing that on all hands they were\nsurrounded by rabid enemies, who were the enemies of knowledge. But\nsoon the stresses of the time drove them asunder. Voult\u00e9, who in this\nyear was praising Rabelais in Latin epigrams, was attacking him in\nthe next as an impious disciple of Lucian; [1814] and, after having\nwarmly befriended Dolet, was impeaching him, not without cause, as\nan ingrate. It was an age of passion and violence; and Voult\u00e9 was\nhimself assassinated in 1542 \"by a man who had been unsuccessful in\na law-suit against him.\" [1815]\n\nInfamous as was the cruelty with which Dolet was persecuted to\nthe death, his execution was but a drop in the sea of blood then\nbeing shed in France by the Church. The king, sinking under his\nmaladies, had become the creature of the priests, who in defiance\nof the Chancellor obtained his signature (1545) to a decree for a\nrenewed persecution of the heretics of the Vaudois; and an army,\nfollowed by a Catholic mob and accompanied by the papal vice-legate\nof Avignon, burst upon the doomed territory and commenced to burn and\nslay. Women captured were violated and then thrown over precipices;\nand twice over, when a multitude of fugitives in a fortified place\nsurrendered on the assurance that their lives and property would be\nspared, the commander ordered that all should be put to death. When\nold soldiers refused to enact such an infamy, others joyfully obeyed,\nthe mob aiding; and among the women were committed, as usual, \"all\nthe crimes of which hell could dream.\" Three towns were destroyed,\n3,000 persons massacred, 256 executed, six or seven hundred more\nsent to the galleys, and many children sold as slaves. [1816] Thus\nwas the faith vindicated and safeguarded.\n\nOf the freethought of such an age there could be no adequate\nrecord. Its tempestuous energy, however, implies not a little of\nprivate unbelief; and at a time when in England, two generations behind\nFrance in point of literary evolution, there was, as we shall see,\na measure of rationalism among religionists, there must have been\nat least as much in the land of Rabelais and Desperiers. The work\nof Guillaume Postell, De causis seu principiis et originibus Natur\u00e6\ncontra Atheos, published in 1552, testifies to kinds of unbelief that\noutwent the doubt of Rabelais; though Postell's general extravagance\ndiscounts all of his utterances. It is said of Guillaume Pellicier\n(1527-1568), Bishop of Montpellier, who first turned Protestant and\nafterwards, according to Gui Patin, atheist, that he would have been\nburned but for the fact of his consecration. [1817] And the English\nchroniclers preserve a scandal concerning an anonymous atheist, worded\nas follows: \"1539. This yeare, in October, died in the Universitie\nof Parris, in France, a great doctor, which said their was no God,\nand had bene of that opinion synce he was twentie yeares old, and was\nabove fouerscore yeares olde when he died. And all that tyme had kept\nhis error secrett, and was esteamed for one of the greatest clarkes\nin all the Universitie of Parris, and his sentence was taken and\nholden among the said studentes as firme as scripture, which shewed,\nwhen he was asked why he had not shewed his opinion till his death,\nhe answered that for feare of death he durst not, but when he knew\nthat he should die he said their was no lief to come after this lief,\nand so died miserably to his great damnation.\" [1818]\n\nAmong the eminent ones then surmised to lean somewhat to unbelief\nwas the sister of King Francis, Marguerite of Navarre, whom we have\nnoted as a protectress of the pantheistic Libertini, denounced by\nCalvin. She is held to have been substantially skeptical until her\nforty-fifth year; [1819] though her final religiousness seems also\nbeyond doubt. [1820] In her youth she bravely protected the Protestants\nfrom the first persecution of 1523 onwards; and the strongly Protestant\ndrift of her Miroir de l'\u00e2me p\u00e9cheresse exasperated the Catholic\ntheologians; but after the Protestant violences of 1546 she seems to\nhave sided with her brother against the Reform. [1821] The strange\ntaste of the Heptam\u00e9ron, of which again her part-authorship seems\ncertain, [1822] constitutes a moral paradox not to be solved save by\nrecognizing in her a woman of genius, whose alternate mysticism and\nbohemianism expressed a very ancient duality in human nature.\n\nA similar mixture will explain the intellectual life of the poet\nRonsard. A persecutor of the Huguenots, [1823] he was denounced as an\natheist by two of their ministers; [1824] and the pagan fashion in\nwhich he handled Christian things scandalized his own side, albeit\nhe was hostile to Rabelais. But though the spirit of the French\nRenaissance, so eagerly expressed in the D\u00e9fense et Illustration de\nla langue fran\u00e7oise of Joachim du Bellay (1549), is at its outset\nas emancipated as that of the Italian, we find Ronsard in his latter\nyears edifying the pious. [1825] Any ripe and consistent rationalism,\nindeed, was then impossible. One of the most powerful minds of the age\nwas Bodin (1530-1596), whose R\u00e9publique is one of the most scientific\ntreatises on government between Aristotle and our own age, and whose\nColloquium Heptaplomeres [1826] is no less original an outline of a\nnaturalist [1827] philosophy. It consists of six dialogues, in which\nseven men take part, setting forth the different religious standpoints\nof Jew, Christian, pagan, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic, the whole\nleading up to a doctrine of tolerance and universalism. Bodin was\nrepeatedly and emphatically accused of unbelief by friends and foes;\n[1828] and his rationalism on some heads is beyond doubt; yet he not\nonly held by the belief in witchcraft, but wrote a furious treatise\nin support of it; [1829] and he dismissed the system of Copernicus\nas too absurd for discussion. [1830] He also formally vetoes all\ndiscussion on faith, declaring it to be dangerous to religion;\n[1831] and by these conformities he probably saved himself from\necclesiastical attack. [1832] Nonetheless, he essentially stood for\nreligious toleration: the new principle that was to change the face\nof intellectual life. A few liberal Catholics shared it with him to\nsome extent [1833] long before St. Bartholomew's Day; eminent among\nthem being L'Hopital, [1834] whose humanity, tolerance, and concern\nfor practical morality and the reform of the Church brought upon him\nthe charge of atheism. He was, however, a believing Catholic. [1835]\nDeprived of power, his edict of tolerance repealed, he saw the long\nand ferocious struggle of Catholics and Huguenots renewed, and crowned\nby the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day (1572). Broken-hearted,\nand haunted by that monstrous memory, he died within six months.\n\nTwo years later there was put to death at Paris, by hanging\nand burning, on the charge of atheism, Geoffroi Vall\u00e9e, a man of\ngood family in Orl\u00e9ans. Long before, at the age of sixteen, he had\nwritten a freethinking treatise entitled La B\u00e9atitude des Chr\u00e9tiens,\nou le fl\u00e9au de la foy--a discussion between a Huguenot, a Catholic,\na libertin, an Anabaptist and an atheist. He had been the associate\nof Ronsard, who renounced him, and helped, it is said, to bring him\nto execution. [1836] It is not unlikely that a similar fate would\nhave overtaken the famous Protestant scholar and lexicographer, Henri\nEstienne (1532-1598), had he not died unexpectedly. His false repute of\nbeing \"the prince of atheists\" [1837] and the \"Pantagruel of Geneva\"\nwas probably due in large part to his sufficiently audacious Apologie\npour H\u00e9rodote [1838] (1566) and to his having translated into Latin\n(1562) the Hypotyposes of Sextus Empiricus, a work which must have made\nfor freethinking. But he was rather a Protestant than a rationalist. In\nthe former book he had spoken, either sincerely or ironically, of the\n\"detestable book\" of Bonaventure Desperiers, calling him a mocker of\nGod; and impeached Rabelais as a modern Lucian, believing neither in\nGod nor immortality; [1839] yet his own performance was fully as well\nfitted as theirs to cause scandal. It is in fact one of the richest\nrepertories ever formed of scandalous stories against priests, monks,\nnuns, and popes. [1840]\n\nOne literary movement towards better things had begun before the\ncrowning infamy of the Massacre appalled men into questioning the\ncreed of intolerance. Castalio, whom we shall see driven from Geneva\nby Calvin in 1544 for repugning to the doctrine of predestination,\npublished pseudonymously, in 1554, in reply to Calvin's vindication\nof the slaying of Servetus, a tract, De Haereticis quomodo cum iis\nagendum sit variorum Sententi\u00e6, in which he contrived to collect\nsome passage from the Fathers and from modern writers in favour of\ntoleration. To these he prefaced, by way of a letter to the Duke\nof Wirtemberg, an argument of his own, the starting-point of much\nsubsequent propaganda. [1841] Aconzio, another Italian, followed\nin his steps; and later came Mino Celso of Siena, with his \"long\nand elaborate argument against persecution,\" De Haereticis capitali\nsupplicio non afficiendis (1584). [1842] Withal, Castalio died in\nbeggary, ostracized alike by Protestants and Catholics, and befriended\nonly by the Sozzini, whose sect was the first to earn collectively the\npraise of condemning persecution. [1843] But in the next generation\nthere came to reinforce the cause of humanity a more puissant pen\nthan any of these; while at the same time the recoil from religious\ncruelty was setting many men secretly at utter variance with faith.\n\nIn France in particular a generation of insane civil war for religion's\nsake must have gone far to build up unbelief. Even among many who did\nnot renounce the faith, there went on an open evolution of stoicism,\ngenerated through resort to the teaching of Epictetus. The atrocities\nof Christian civil war and Christian savagery were such that Christian\nfaith could give small sustenance to the more thoughtful and sensitive\nmen who had to face them and carry on the tasks of public life the\nwhile. The needed strength was given by the masculine discipline which\npagan thought had provided for an age of oppression and decadence,\nand which had carried so much of healing even for the Christians\nwho saw decadence carried yet further, that in the fifth century\nthe Enchiridion of Epictetus had been turned by St. Nilus into a\nmonastic manual, even as Ambrose manipulated the borrowed Stoicism\nof Cicero. [1844] With its devout theism, the book had appealed to\nthose northern scholars who had mastered Greek in the early years of\nthe sixteenth century, when the refugees of Constantinople had set\nup Platonic studies in Italy. After 1520, Italian Hellenism rapidly\ndecayed; [1845] but in the north it never passed away; and from the\nstronger men of the new learning in Germany the taste for Epictetus\npassed into France. In 1558 the semi-Protestant legist Coras--later\nslain in the massacre of St. Bartholomew--published at Toulouse a\ntranslation of the apocryphal dialogue of Epictetus and Hadrian;\nin 1566 the Protestant poet Rivaudeau translated the Enchiridion,\nwhich thenceforth became a culture force in France. [1846]\n\nThe influence appears in Montaigne, in whose essays it is pervasive;\nbut more directly and formally in the book of Justus Lipsius,\nDe Constantia (1584), and the same scholar's posthumous dialogues\nentitled Manducatio ad philosophiam sto\u00efcam and Physiologia sto\u00efcorum\n(1604), which influenced all scholarly Europe. Thus far the Stoic\nethic had been handled with Christian bias and application; and\nGuillaume Du Vair, who embodied it in his work La Sainte Philosophie\n(1588), was not known as a heretic; but in his hands it receives no\nChristian colouring, and might pass for the work of a deist. [1847]\nAnd its popularity is to be inferred from his further production of a\nfresh translation of the Enchiridion and a Trait\u00e9 de la philosophie\nmorale des sto\u00efques. Under Henri IV he rose to high power; and his\npublic credit recommended his doctrine.\n\nSuch were the more visible fruits of the late spread of the Renaissance\nferment in France while, torn by the frantic passions of her pious\nCatholics, she passed from the plane of the Renaissance to that of\nthe new Europe, in which the intellectual centre of gravity was to\nbe shifted from the south to the north, albeit Italy was still to\nlead the way, in Galileo, for the science of the modern world.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3. THE ENGLISH EVOLUTION\n\nIn England as in France the intellectual life undergoes visible\nretrogression in the fifteenth century, while in Italy, with\nthe political problem rapidly developing towards catastrophe,\nit flourished almost riotously. From the age of Chaucer, considered\non its intellectual side and as represented mainly by him, there is\na steep fall to almost the time of Sir Thomas More, around whom we\nsee as it were the sudden inrush of the Renaissance upon England. The\nconquest of France by Henry V and the Wars of the Roses, between them,\nbrought England to the nadir of mental and moral life. But in the long\nand ruinous storm the Middle Ages, of which Wiclif is the last powerful\nrepresentative, were left behind, and a new age begins to be prepared.\n\nOf a very different type from Wiclif is the remarkable personality of\nthe Welshman Reginald (or Reynold) Pecock (1395?-1460?), who seems\ndivided from Wiclif by a whole era of intellectual development,\nthough born within about ten years of his death. It is a singular\nfact that one of the most rationalistic minds among the serious\nwriters of the fifteenth century should be an English bishop,\n[1848] and an Ultramontane at that. Pecock was an opponent at once\nof popular Bibliolatry and of priestly persecution, declaring that\n\"the clergy would be condemned at the last day if they did not\ndraw men into consent to the true faith otherwise than by fire and\nsword and hanging.\" [1849] It was as the rational and temperate\ndefender of the Church against the attacks of the Lollards in\ngeneral that he formulated the principle of natural reason as\nagainst scripturalism. This attitude it is that makes his treatise,\nthe Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy, the most modern of\ntheoretic books before More and Hooker and Bacon. That he was led to\nthis measure of rationalism rather by the exigencies of his papalism\nthan by a spontaneous skepticism is suggested by the fact that he\nstands for the acceptance of miraculous images, shrines, and relics,\nwhen the Lollards are attacking them. [1850] On the other hand, it\nis hard to be certain that his belief in the shrines was genuine,\nso ill does it consist with his attitude to Bibliolatry. In a series\nof serenely argued points he urges his thesis that the Bible is not\nthe basis of the moral law, but merely an illustration thereof,\nand that the natural reason is obviously presupposed in the bulk\nof its teaching. He starts from the formulas of Thomas Aquinas, but\nreaches a higher ground. It is the position of Hooker, anticipated by\na hundred years; and this in an age of such intellectual backwardness\nand literary decadence that the earlier man must be pronounced by\nfar the more remarkable figure. In such a case the full influence of\nthe Renaissance seems to be at work; though in the obscurity of the\nrecords we can do no more than conjecture that the new contacts with\nFrench culture between the invasion of France by Henry V in 1415 and\nthe expulsion of the English in 1451 may have introduced forces of\nthought unknown or little known before. If indeed there were English\nopponents of scripture in Wiclif's day, the idea must have ripened\nsomewhat in Pecock's. Whether, however, the victories of Jeanne D'Arc\nmade some unbelievers as well as many dastards among the English is\na problem that does not seem to have been investigated.\n\nPecock's reply to the Lollards creates the curious situation of a\nchurchman rebutting heretics by being more profoundly heretical than\nthey. In his system, the Scriptures \"reveal\" only supernatural truths\nnot otherwise attainable, a way of safeguarding dogma not likely to\nreassure believers. There is reason, indeed, to suspect that Pecock\nheld no dogma with much zeal; and when in his well-named treatise\n(now lost), The Provoker, he denied the authenticity of the Apostles'\nCreed, \"he alienated every section of theological opinion in England.\"\n\n\n See Miss A. M. Cooke's art. Reginald Pecock in Dict. of\n Nat. Biog. This valuable notice is the best short account of\n Pecock; though the nature of his case is most fully made out by\n Hook, as cited below. It is characteristic of the restricted\n fashion in which history is still treated that neither in\n the Student's History of Professor Gardiner nor in the Short\n History of Green is Pecock mentioned. Earlier ideas concerning\n him were far astray. The notion of Foxe, the martyrologist,\n that Pecock was an early Protestant, is a gross error. He held\n not a single Protestant tenet, being a rationalizing papist. A\n German ecclesiastical historian of the eighteenth century (Werner,\n Kirchengeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts, 1756, cited by Lechler)\n calls Pecock the first English deist. See a general view of\n his opinions in Lewis's Life of Dr. Reynold Pecock (rep. 1820),\n ch. v. The heresies charged on him are given on p. 160; also in\n the R. T. S. Writings and Examinations, 1831, pp. 200-201. While\n rejecting Bibliolatry, he yet argued that Popes and Councils\n could make no change in the current creed; and he thus offended\n the High Churchmen. Cp. Massingberd, The English Reformation,\n 4th ed. pp. 206-209.\n\n\nThe main causes of the hostility he met from the English hierarchy\nand Government appear to have been, on the one hand, his change of\npolitical party, which put him in opposition to Archbishop Bourchier,\nand on the other his zealous championship of the authority of the\npapacy as against that of the Councils of the Church. It was expressly\non the score of his denunciation of the Councils that he was tried\nand condemned. [1851] Thus the reward of his effort to reason down the\nmenacing Lollards and rebut Wiclif [1852] was his formal disgrace and\nvirtual imprisonment. Had he not recanted, he would have been burned:\nas it was, his books were; and it is on record that they consisted\nof eleven quartos and three folios of manuscript. Either because of\nhis papalism or as a result of official intrigue, Church and lords\nand commons were of one mind against him; and the mob would fain have\nburned him with his books. [1853] In that age of brutal strife, when\n\"neither the Church nor the opponents of the Church had any longer a\nsway over men's hearts,\" [1854] he figures beside the mindless prelates\nand their lay peers somewhat as does More later beside Henry VIII,\nas Reason versus the Beast; and it was illustrative of his entire\nlack of fanaticism that he made the demanded retractations--avowing\nhis sin in \"trusting to natural reason\" rather than to Scripture and\nthe authority of the Church--and went his way in silence to solitude\nand death. The ruling powers disposed of Lollardism in their own way;\nand in the Wars of the Roses every species of heretical thought seems\nto disappear. The bribe held out to the nation by the invasion of\nFrance had been fatally effectual to corrupt the spirit of moral\ncriticism which inspired the Lollard movement at its best; and the\nsubsequent period of rapine and strife reduced thought and culture\nto the levels of the Middle Ages.\n\nA hint of what was possible in the direction of freethought in\nthe England of Henry V and Henry VI emerges in some of the records\nconcerning Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry\nIV. Gifted but ill-balanced, Humphrey was the chief patron of learning\nin England in his day; and he drank deeply of the spirit of Renaissance\nscholarship. [1855] Sir Thomas More preserves the story--reproduced\nalso in the old play, The First Part of the Contention of the two\nFamous Houses of York and Lancaster--of how he exposed the fraud of\na begging impostor who pretended to have recovered his sight through\nthe virtue of a saint's relics; and a modern pietistic historian\ndecides that the Duke \"had long ceased to believe in miracles and\nrelics.\" [1856] But if this be true, it is the whole truth as to\nHumphrey's freethinking. It was the highest flight of rationalism\npermissible in his day and sphere.\n\n\n On the view that Humphrey was a freethinker, the pious Pauli,\n who says (as cited, p. 337) of the Renaissance of letters, \"The\n weak and evil side of this revived form of literature is that\n its disciples should have elevated the morality, or rather the\n immorality, of classical antiquity above Christian discipline and\n virtue,\" sees fit further to pronounce that the bad account of\n Gloucester's condition of body drawn up eleven years before his\n death by the physician Kymer is a proof of the \"wild unbridled\n passions by which the duke was swayed,\" and throws a lurid light\n upon \"the tendencies and disposition of his mind.\" Humphrey lived\n till 55, and died suddenly, under circumstances highly suggestive\n of poisoning by his enemies. His brothers Henry and John died\n much younger than he; but in their case the religious historian\n sees no ground for imputation. But the historian's inference is\n overstrained. In reality Humphrey never indicated any lack of\n theological faith. The poet Lydgate, no unbeliever, described\n him as \"Chose of God to be his owne knyghte,\" and so rigorous\n \"that heretike dar not comen in his sihte\" (verses transcribed in\n Furnivall's Early English Meals and Manners, 1868, pp. lxxxv-vi).\n\n His most comprehensive biographer decides that he was \"essentially\n orthodox,\" despite his uncanonical marriage with his second wife\n and his general reputation for sexual laxity. \"He was punctilious\n in the performance of his religious duties\" and \"a stern opponent\n of the Lollards\"; he \"countenanced the extinction of heresy\n by being present at the burning at Smithfield of an old priest\n who denied the validity of the sacraments of the Church\"; and an\n Archbishop of Milan pronounced him to be \"known everywhere as the\n chiefest friend and preserver of Holy Church\" (K. H. Vickers,\n Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester: A Biography, 1907, pp. 223,\n 321-23). Of such a personage no exegesis can make a rationalist.\n\n\nOf other traces of critical thinking in England in that age there is\nlittle to be said, so little literature is there to convey them. But\nthere are signs of the influence of the \"pagan\" thought of the\nRenaissance in religious books. The old Revelation of the Monk of\nEvesham, ostensibly dating from 1196, was first printed about 1482,\n[1857] with a \"prologe\" explaining that it \"was not shewed to hym only\nfor hym butte also for the confort and profetyng of all cristyn pepulle\nthat none man shuld dowte or mystruste of anothir life and world\";\n\"and as for the trowthe of this reuelacyon no man nother woman ought\nto dowte in any wise,\" seeing it is thus miraculously provided that\n\"alle resons and mocyons of infydelite the which risith often tymes of\nman's sensualite shall utwardly be excluded and quenched.\" Evidently\nthe old problem of immortality had been agitated.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4. THE REMAINING EUROPEAN COUNTRIES\n\nNot till late in the fifteenth century is the intellectual side of\nthe Renaissance influence to be seen bearing fruit in Germany, of\nwhich the turbulent and semi-barbaric life in the medieval period\nwas little favourable to mental progress. Of political hostility\nto the Church there was indeed an abundance, long before Luther;\n[1858] but amid the many traces of \"irreligion\" there is practically\nnone of rational freethinking. What reasoned thought there was, as\nwe have seen, turned to Christian mysticism of a pantheistic cast,\nas in the teaching of Tauler and Eckhart. [1859]\n\nAnother and a deeper current of thought is seen in the remarkable\nphilosophic work of Bishop Nicolaus of Kues or Cusa (1401-1464), who,\nprofessedly by an independent movement of reflection, but really as\na result of study of Greek philosophy, reached a larger pantheism\nthan had been formulated by any Churchman since the time of John the\nScot. [1860] There is little or no trace, however, of any influence\nattained by his teaching, which indeed could appeal only to a very few\nminds of that day. Less remarkable than the metaphysic of Nicolaus,\nthough also noteworthy in its way, is his Dialogue \"On Peace, or\nConcordance of Faith,\" in which, somewhat in the spirit of Boccaccio's\ntale of the Three Kings, he aims at a reconciliation of all religions,\nalbeit by way of proving the Christian creed to be the true one.\n\nIn the Netherlands and other parts of western Europe the popular\nanti-ecclesiastical heresy of the thirteenth century spread in various\ndegrees; but there is only exceptional trace of literate or properly\nrationalistic freethinking. Among the most notable developments\nwas the movement in Holland early in the fourteenth century, which\ncompares closely with that of the higher Paulicians and mystics\nof the two previous centuries, its chief traits being a general\npantheism, a denial of the efficacy of the sacrament of the altar, an\ninsistence that all men are sons of God, and a general declaration for\n\"natural light.\" [1861] But this did not progressively develop. Lack\nof leisured culture in the Low Countries, and the terrorism of the\nInquisition, would sufficiently account for the absence of avowed\nunbelief, though everywhere, probably, some was set up by the contact\nof travellers with the culture of Italy. It is fairly to be inferred\nthat in a number of cases the murderous crusade against witchcraft\nwhich was carried on in the fifteenth century served as a means of\nsuppressing heresy, rationalistic or other. At Arras, for instance,\nin 1460, the execution of a number of leading citizens on a charge of\nsorcery seems to have been a blow at free discussion in the \"chambers\nof rhetoric.\" [1862] And that rationalism, despite such frightful\ncatastrophes, obscurely persisted, is to be gathered from the long\nvogue of the work of the Spanish physician Raymund of Sebonde, [1863]\nwho, having taught philosophy at Toulouse, undertook (about 1435)\nto establish Christianity on a rational foundation [1864] in his\nTheologia Naturalis, made famous later by Montaigne.\n\nTo what length the suppressed rationalism of the age could on occasion\ngo is dramatically revealed in the case of Hermann van Ryswyck, a\nDutch priest, burned for heresy at the Hague in 1512. He was not only\na priest in holy orders, but one of the order of Inquisitors; and he\nput forth the most impassioned denial and defiance of the Christian\ncreed of which there is any record down to modern times. Tried before\nthe inquisitors in 1502, he declared \"with his own mouth and with\nsane mind\" that the world is eternal, and was not created as was\nalleged by \"the fool Moses\" that there is no hell, and no future\nlife; that Christ, whose whole career was flatly contrary to human\nwelfare and reason, was not the son of Omnipotent God, but a fool,\na dreamer, and a seducer of ignorant men, of whom untold numbers had\nbeen slain on account of him and his absurd evangel; that Moses had\nnot physically received the law from God; and that \"our\" faith was\nshown to be fabulous by its fatuous Scripture, fictitious Bible,\nand crazy Gospel. And to this exasperated testimony he added:\n\"I was born a Christian, but am no longer one: they are the chief\nfools.\" Sentenced in 1502 to perpetual imprisonment, he was again\nbrought forward ten years later, and, being found unbroken by that\nlong durance, was as an unrepentant heretic sentenced to be burned on\nDecember 14, 1512, the doom being carried out on the same day. The\nsource of his conviction can be gathered from his declaration that\n\"the most learned Aristotle and his commentator Averro\u00ebs were nearest\nthe truth\"; but his wild sincerity and unyielding courage were all\nhis own. \"Nimis infelix quidam\" is the estimate of an inquisitor of\nthat day. [1865] Not so, unless they are most unhappy who die in\nbattle, fighting for the truth they prize. But it has always been\nthe Christian way to contemn all save Christian martyrs.\n\n\n There is a tolerably full account of Ryswyck's case in a nearly\n contemporary document, which evidently copies the official\n record. Ryswyck is described as \"sacre theologie professorem\n ordinis predicatorum et inquisitorum\"; and his declaration runs:\n \"Quod mundum fuit ab eterna et non incipit per creationem\n fabricatum a stulto Mose, ut dicit Biblia indistincta.... Nec\n est infernus, ut nostri estimant. Item post hanc vitam nulla\n erit vita particularis.... Item doctissimus Aristoteles et\n ejus commentator Auerrois fuerunt veritati propinquissimi. Item\n Christum fuit stultus et simplex fantasticus et seductor simplicium\n hominum.... Quot enim homines interfecti sunt propter ipsum et suum\n Euangelium fatuum! Item quod omnia que Christus gessit, humano\n generi et rationi recte sunt contraria. Item Christum filium Dei\n omnipotentem aperte nego. Et Mosen legem a Deo visibiliter et\n facialiter suscepisse recuso. Item fides nostra fabulosa est,\n ut probat nostra fatua Scriptura et ficta Biblia et Euangelium\n delirum.... Omnes istos articulos et consimilos confessus est\n proprio ore et sana mente coram inquisitore et notario et testibus,\n addens: Ego Christianus natus, sed iam non sum Christianus,\n quoniam illi stultissimi sunt.\" Paul Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ricq, Corpus documentorum\n Inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis Neerlandicae, Gent, 1889, i,\n 494, 501-502.\n\n\nThus the Renaissance passed on to the age of the Reformation the\nseeds of a rationalism which struck far deeper than the doctrine\nof Luther, but at the same time left a social soil in which such\nseeds could ill grow. Its own defeat, social and intellectual, may\nbe best realized in terms of its failure to reach either political or\nphysical science. Lack of the former meant political retrogression and\nbondage; and lack of the latter a renewed dominion of superstition\nand Bibliolatry--two sets of conditions of which each facilitated\nthe other.\n\nNothing is more significant of the intellectual climate of the\nRenaissance than the persistence at all its stages of the belief\nin astrology, of which we find some dregs even in Bacon. That\npseudo-science indeed stands, after all, for the spirit of science,\nand is not to be diagnosed as mere superstition; being really\nan \u00e0 priori fallacy fallen into in the deliberate search for some\nprinciple of co\u00f6rdination in human affairs. Though adhered to by many\nprominent Catholics, including Charles V, and by many Protestants,\nincluding Melanchthon, it is logically anti-Christian, inasmuch as it\npresupposes in the moral world a reign of natural law, independent of\nthe will or caprice of any personal power. Herein it differs deeply\nfrom magic; [1866] though in the Renaissance the return to the lore\nof antiquity often involved an indiscriminate acceptance and blending\nof both sorts of occult pagan lore. [1867] Magic subordinates Nature\nto Will: astrology, as apart from angelology, subordinates Will\nto Cosmic Law. For many perplexed and thoughtful men, accordingly,\nit was a substitute, more or less satisfying, for the theory, grown\nto them untenable, of a moral government of the universe. It was in\nfact a primary form of sociology proper, as it had been the primary\nform of astronomy; to which latter science, even in the Renaissance,\nit was still for many the introduction.\n\nIt flourished, above all things, on the insecurity inseparable\nfrom the turbulent Italian life of the Renaissance, even as it had\nflourished on the appalling vicissitude of the drama of imperial\nRome; and it is conceivable that the inclination to true science\nwhich is seen in such men as Galileo, after the period of Italian\nindependence, was nourished by the greater stability attained for a\ntime under absolutist rule. And though Protestantism, on the other\nhand, adhered in the main unreasoningly to the theory of a moral\ncontrol, that dogma at least served to countervail the dominion of\nastrology, which was only a dogmatism with a difference, and as such\ninevitably hindered true science. [1868] On the whole, Protestantism\ntended to make more effectual that veto on pagan occultism which had\nbeen ineffectually passed from time to time by the Catholic Church;\nalbeit the motive was stress of Christian superstition, and the\nveto was aimed almost as readily at inductive and true science as\nat the deductive and false. We shall find the craze of witchcraft,\nin turn, dominating Protestant countries at a time when freethinkers\nand liberal Catholics elsewhere were setting it at naught.\n\nThere can be little doubt that, broadly speaking, the new interest\nin Scripture study and ecclesiastical history told against the free\nplay of thought on scientific and scholarly problems; we shall find\nBacon realizing the fact a hundred years after Luther's start; and\nthe influence has operated down to our own day. In this resistance\nCatholics played their part. The famous Cornelius Agrippa [1869]\n(1486-1535) never ceased to profess himself a Catholic, and had small\nsympathy with the Reformers, though always at odds with the monks;\nand his long popular treatise De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum\net artium, atque excellentia verbi Dei declamatio (1531) is a mere\npolemic for scripturalism against alike false science and true,\nmonkish superstition and reason. Vilified as a magician by the monks,\nand as an atheist and a scoffer by angry humanists, [1870] he did\nbut set error against error, being himself a believer in witchcraft,\na hater of anatomy, and as confident in his contempt of astronomy as\nof astrology. And his was a common frame of mind for centuries.\n\nStill, the new order contained certain elements of help for a new life,\nas against its own inclement principles of authority and dogma; and\nthe political heterogeneity of Europe, seconded by economic pressures\nand by new geographic discovery, sufficed further to prevent any\nfar-reaching organization of tyranny. Under these conditions,\nnew knowledge could incubate new criticism. But it would be an\nerror-breeding oversight to forget that in the many-coloured world\nbefore the Reformation there was not only a certain artistic and\nimaginative sunlight which the Reformation long darkened, but even,\nathwart the mortal rigours of papal rule, a certain fitful play of\nintellectual insight to which the peoples of the Reformation became\nfor a time estranged.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHE REFORMATION, POLITICALLY CONSIDERED\n\n\n\u00a7 1. THE GERMAN CONDITIONS\n\nIn a vague and general sense the ecclesiastical revolution known as\nthe Reformation was a phenomenon of freethought. To be so understood,\nindeed, it must be regarded in contrast to the dominion of the Catholic\nChurch, not to the movement which we call the Renaissance. That\nmovement it was that made the Reformation possible; and if we have\nregard to the reign of Bibliolatry which Protestantism set up, we seem\nto be contemplating rather a superimposing of Semitic darkness upon\nHellenic light than an intellectual emancipation. Emancipation of\nanother kind the Reformation doubtless brought about. In particular\nit involved, to an extent not generally realized, a secularization\nof life, through the sheer curtailment, in most Protestant countries,\nof the personnel and apparatus of clericalism, and the new disrepute\ninto which, for a time, these fell. Alike in Germany and in England\nthere was a breaking-up of habits of reverence and of self-prostration\nbefore creed and dogma and ritual. But this liberation was rather\nsocial than intellectual, and the product was rather licence and\nirreverence than ordered freethought. On the other hand, when the\nfirst unsettlement was over, the new growth of Bibliolatry tended\nrather to deepen the religious way of feeling and make more definite\nthe religious attitude. Tolerance did not emerge until after a whole\nera of embittered strife. The Reformation, in fact, was much more\nakin to a revolt against a hereditary king than to the process of\nself-examination and logical scrutiny by which men pass from belief\nto disbelief in a theory of things, a dogma, or a document.\n\nThe beginning of such a process had indeed taken place in Germany\nbefore Luther, insofar as the New Learning represented by such\nhumanists as Erasmus, such scholars as Reuchlin, [1871] and such\nsatirists as Ulrich von Hutten, set up a current of educated hostility\nto the ignorance and the grosser superstitions of the churchmen. For\nGermany, as for England, this movement was a contagion from the new\nscholarship and Platonism of Italy; [1872] and the better minds in the\nfour universities founded in the pre-Lutheran generation (T\u00fcbingen,\n1477; Mayence, 1482; Frankfort-on-the-Oder, 1506; Wittemberg, 1502)\nnecessarily owed much to Italian impulses, which they carried on,\nthough the universities as a whole were bitterly hostile to the\nnew learning. [1873] The Dutch freethinker Ryswyck, as we saw, was\nfundamentally an Averro\u00efst; and Italy was the stronghold of Averro\u00efsm,\nof which the monistic bias probably fostered the Unitarianism of\nthe sixteenth century. But it was not this literary and scholarly\nmovement that effected the Reformation so-called, which was rather\nan economic and political than a mental revolution.\n\n\n The persistence of Protestant writers in discussing the early\n history of the Reformation without a glance at the economic\n causation is one of the great hindrances to historic science. From\n such popular works as those of D'Aubign\u00e9 and H\u00e4usser it is\n practically impossible to learn what socially took place in\n Germany; and the general Protestant reader can learn it only--and\n imperfectly--from the works on the Catholic side, as Audin's\n Histoire de la vie de Luther (Eng. tr. 1853) and D\u00f6llinger's Die\n Reformation, and the more scientific Protestant studies, such as\n those of Ranke and Bezold (even there not at any great length),\n to neither of which classes of history will he resort. In England\n the facts are partially realized, in the light of an ecclesiastical\n predilection, through High Church histories such as that of Blunt,\n which proceed upon a Catholic leaning. Cobbett's intemperate\n exposure of the economic causation has found an audience chiefly\n among Catholics.\n\n Bezold admits that \"with perfect justice have recent historians\n commented on the former underrating of an economic force which\n certainly played its part in the spread and establishment of the\n Reformation\" (Gesch. der deutschen Reformation, 1890, p. 563). The\n broad fact is that in not a single country could the Reformation\n have been accomplished without enlisting the powerful classes\n or corporations, or alternatively the de facto governments, by\n proffering the plunder of the Church. Only in a few Swiss cantons,\n and in Holland, does the confiscation seem to have been made to\n the common good (cp. the present writer's Evolution of States,\n pp. 311, 343). But even in Holland needy nobles had finally turned\n Protestant in the hope of getting Church lands. (See Motley, Rise\n of the Dutch Republic, ed. 1863, p. 131.) Elsewhere appropriation\n of Church lands by princes and nobles was the general rule.\n\n Even as to Germany, it is impossible to accept Michelet's\n indulgent statement that most of the confiscated Church property\n \"returned to its true destination, to the schools, the hospitals,\n the communes; to its true proprietors, the aged, the child, the\n toiling family\" (Hist. de France, x, 333; see the same assertion\n in Henderson, Short History of Germany, 1902, i, 344). Plans\n to that effect were drawn up; but, as the princes were left to\n carry out the arrangement, they took the lion's share. Ranke\n (Hist. of the Ref. bk. iv, ch. v; Eng. tr. 1-vol. ed. 1905,\n pp. 466-67) admits much grabbing of Church lands as early as 1526;\n merely contending, with Luther, that papist nobles had begun the\n spoliation. (Cp. Bezold, pp. 564-65; Menzel, Gesch. der Deutschen,\n cap. 393.) In Saxony, when monks broke away from their monasteries,\n the nobles at once appropriated the lands and buildings (Ranke,\n p. 467). Luther made a warm appeal to the Elector against the\n nobles in general (Ranke, p. 467; Luther's letter, Nov. 22, 1526,\n in Werke, ed. De Wette, iii, 137; letter to Spalatin, Jan. 1, 1527,\n id. p. 147; also p. 153). See too his indignant protests against\n the rapine of the princes and nobles and the starvation of the\n ministers in the Table Talk, chs. 22, 60. Even Philip of Hesse did\n not adhere to his early and disinterested plans of appropriation\n (Ranke, pp. 468-69, 711-12). All that Ranke can claim is that \"some\n great institutions were really founded\"--to wit, two homes for\n \"young ladies of noble birth,\" four hospitals, and the theological\n school of Marburg. And this was in the most hopeful region.\n\n There is positive evidence, further, that not only ecclesiastical\n but purely charitable foundations were plundered by the Protestants\n (Witzel, cited by D\u00f6llinger, Die Reformation, ihre innere\n Entwickelung und ihre Wirkungen, 1846, i, 46, 47, 51, 62); and,\n as school foundations were confiscated equally with ecclesiastical\n in England, there is no reason to doubt the statement. Practically\n the same process took place in Scotland, where the share of Church\n property proposed to be allotted to the Protestant ministers\n was never given, and their protests were treated with contempt\n (Burton, History of Scotland, iv, 37-41). Knox's comments were\n similar to Luther's (Works, Laing's ed. ii, 310-12).\n\n Dr. Gardiner, a fairly impartial historian, sums up that, after\n the German settlement of 1552, \"The princes claimed the right of\n continuing to secularize Church lands within their territories as\n inseparable from their general right of providing for the religion\n of their subjects.... About a hundred monasteries are said to have\n fallen victims in the Palatinate alone; and an almost equal number,\n the gleanings of a richer harvest which had been reaped before the\n Convention of Passau, were taken possession of in Northern Germany\"\n (The Thirty Years' War, 8th ed. p. 11).\n\n\nThe credit of bringing the various forces to a head, doubtless,\nremains with Luther, though ground was further prepared by literary\npredecessors such as John of Wesel and John Wessel, Erasmus, Reuchlin,\nand Ulrich von Hutten. But even the signal courage of Luther could\nnot have availed to fire an effectual train of action unless a\ncertain number of nobles had been ready to support him for economic\nreasons. Even the shameless sale of indulgences by Tetzel was resented\nmost keenly on the score that it was draining Germany of money; [1874]\nand nothing is more certain than that Luther began his battle not as\na heretic but as an orthodox Catholic Reformer, desiring to propitiate\nand not to defy the papacy. Economic forces were the determinants. This\nbecomes the more clear when we note that the Reformation was only the\nculmination or explosion of certain intellectual, social, and political\nforces seen at work throughout Christendom for centuries before. In\npoint of mere doctrine, the Protestants of the sixteenth century\nhad been preceded and even distanced by heretics of the eleventh,\nand by teachers of the ninth. The absurdity of relic-worship, the\nfolly of pilgrimages and fastings, the falsehood of the doctrine\nof transubstantiation, the heresy of prayers to the saints, the\nunscripturalness of the hierarchy--these and a dozen other points of\nprotest had been raised by Paulicians, by Paterini, by Beghards, by\nApostolicals, by Lollards, long before the time of Luther. As regards\nhis nearer predecessors, indeed, this is now a matter of accepted\nProtestant history. [1875] What is not properly realized is that the\nconditions which wrought political success where before there had\nbeen political failure were special political conditions; and that\nto these, and not to supposed differences in national character,\nis due the geographical course of the Reformation.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2. THE PROBLEM IN ITALY, SPAIN, AND THE NETHERLANDS\n\nWe have seen that the spirit of reform was strong in Italy\nthree hundred years before Luther; and that some of the strongest\nmovements within the Church were strictly reformatory, and originally\ndisinterested in a high degree. In less religious forms the same\nspirit abounded throughout the Renaissance; and at the end of\nthe fifteenth century Savonarola was preaching reform religiously\nenough at Florence. His death, however, was substantially due to\nthe perception that ecclesiastical reform, as conducted by him,\nwas a socio-political process, [1876] whence the reformer was a\nsocio-political disturber. Intellectually he was no innovator; on\nthe contrary, he was a hater of literary enlightenment, and he was\nas ready to burn astrologers as were his enemies to burn him. [1877]\nHis claim, in his Triumph of the Cross, to combat unbelievers by\nmeans of sheer natural reason, indicates only his inability to\nrealize any rationalist position--a failure to be expected in his\nage, when rationalism was denied argumentative utterance, and when\nthe problems of Christian evidences were only being broached. The\nvery form of the book is declamatory rather than ratiocinative,\nand every question raised is begged. [1878] That he failed in his\ncrusade of Church reform, and that Luther succeeded in his, was due\nto no difference between Italian and German character, but to the vast\ndifference in the political potentialities of the two cases. The fall\nof public liberty in Florence, which must have been preceded as it\nwas accompanied by a relative decline in popular culture, [1879] and\nwhich led to the failure of Savonarola, may be in a sense attributed\nto Italian character; but that character was itself the product of\npeculiar social and political conditions, and was not inferior to\nthat of any northern population. [1880]\n\n\n The Savonarolan movement had all the main features of the\n Puritanism of the northern \"Reform.\" Savonarola sent organized\n bodies of boys, latterly accompanied by bodies of adults, to\n force their way into private houses and confiscate things thought\n suitable for the reformatory bonfire. Burckhardt, p. 477; Perrens,\n J\u00e9rome Savonarole, 2e \u00e9dit. pp. 140-41. The things burned included\n pictures and busts of inestimable artistic value, and manuscripts\n of exquisite beauty. Perrens, p. 229. Compare Villari, as cited;\n George Eliot's Romola, bk. iii, ch. xlix; and Merejkowski's The\n Forerunner (Eng. tr.), bk. vii. Previous reformers had set up\n \"bonfires of false hair and books against the faith\" (Armstrong, as\n cited, p. 167); and Savonarola's bands of urchins were developments\n from previous organizations, bent chiefly on blackmail. (Id.) But\n he carried the tyranny furthest, and actually proposed to put\n obstinate gamblers to the torture. Perrens, p. 132. Villari in\n his sentimental commemoration lecture on Savonarola (Studies\n Historical and Critical, Eng. tr. 1907) ignores these facts.\n\n\nWhen, a generation later, the propaganda of the Lutheran movement\nreached Italy, it was more eagerly welcomed than in any of the\nTeutonic countries outside of the first Lutheran circle, though\na vigilant system was at once set on foot for the destruction of\nthe imported books. [1881] It had made much headway at Milan and\nFlorence in 1525; [1882] and we have the testimony of Pope Clement\nVII himself that before 1530 the Lutheran heresy was widely spread\nnot only among the laity but among priests and friars, both mendicant\nand non-mendicant, many of whom propagated it by their sermons. [1883]\nThe ruffianism and buffoonery of the German Lutheran soldiers in the\narmy of Charles V at the sack of Rome in 1529 was hardly likely to\nwin adherents to their sect; [1884] yet the number increased all over\nItaly. In 1541-45 they were numerous and audacious at Bologna, [1885]\nwhere in 1537 a commission of cardinals and prelates, appointed by\nPope Paul III, had reported strongly on the need for reformation in\nthe Church. In 1542 they were so strong at Venice as to contemplate\nholding public assemblies; in the neighbouring towns of Vicentino,\nVicenza, and Trevisano they seem to have been still more numerous;\n[1886] and Cardinal Caraffa reported to the Pope that all Italy was\ninfected with the heresy. [1887]\n\nNow began the check. Among the Protestants themselves there had\ngone on the inevitable strifes over the questions of the Trinity\nand the Eucharist; the more rational views of Zwingli and Servetus\nwere in notable favour; [1888] and the Catholic reaction, fanned\nby Caraffa, was the more facile. Measures were first taken against\nheretical priests and monks; Ochino and Peter Martyr had to fly;\nand many monks in the monastery of the latter were imprisoned. At\nRome was founded, in 1543, the Congregation of the Holy Office, a new\nInquisition, on the deadly model of that of Spain; and thenceforth\nthe history of Protestantism in Italy is but one of suppression. The\nhostile force was all-pervading, organized, and usually armed with\nthe whole secular power; and though in Naples the old detestation\nof the Inquisition broke out anew so strongly that even the Spanish\ntyranny could not establish it, [1889] the papacy elsewhere carried\nits point by explaining how much more lenient was the Italian than\nthe Spanish Inquisition. Such a pressure, kept up by the strongest\neconomic interest in Italy, no movement could resist; and it would\nhave suppressed the Reformation in any country or any race, as a\nsimilar pressure did in Spain.\n\n\n Prof. Gebhart (Orig. de la Renais. en Italie, p. 68) writes that\n \"Italy has known no great national heresies: one sees there no\n uprising of minds which resembles the profound popular movements\n provoked by Waldo, Wiclif, John Huss, or Luther.\" The decisive\n answer to this is soon given by the author himself (p. 74): \"If\n the Order of Franciscans has had in the peninsula an astonishing\n popularity; if it has, so to speak, formed a Church within the\n Church, it is that it responded to the profound aspirations of\n an entire people.\" (Cp. p. 77.) Yet again, after telling how\n the Franciscan heresy of the Eternal Gospel so long prevailed,\n M. Gebhart speaks (p. 78) of the Italians as a people whom\n \"formal heresy has never seduced.\" These inconsistencies derive\n from the old fallacy of attributing the course of the Reformation\n to national character. (See it discussed in the present writer's\n Evolution of States, pp. 237-38, 302-307, 341-44.) Burckhardt,\n while recognizing--as against the theory of \"something lacking in\n the Italian mind\"--that the Italian movements of Church reformation\n \"failed to achieve success only because circumstances were\n against them,\" goes on to object that the course of \"mighty\n events like the Reformation ... eludes the deductions of the\n philosophers,\" and falls back on \"mystery.\" (Renaissance in\n Italy, Eng. tr. p. 457.) There is really much less \"mystery\"\n about such movements than about small ones; and the causes of the\n Reformation are in large part obvious and simple. Baur, even in\n the act of claiming special credit for the personality of Luther\n as the great factor in the Reformation, admits that only in the\n peculiar political conditions in which he found himself could he\n have succeeded. (Kirchengeschichte der neueren Zeit, 1863, p. 23.)\n\n The broad explanation of the Italian failure is that in Italy\n reform could not for a moment be dreamt of save as within the\n Church, where there was no economic leverage such as effected the\n Reformation from the outside elsewhere. It was a relatively easy\n matter in Germany and England to renounce the Pope's control\n and make the Churches national or autonomous. To attempt\n that in Italy would have meant creating a state of universal\n and insoluble strife. (Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, vol. i,\n ed. 1897, p. 369. Symonds, however, omits to note the financial\n dependence of Italian society on the papal system; and his verdict\n that Luther and the nations of the north saw clearly \"what the\n Italians could not see\" is simply the racial fallacy over again.)\n\n Apart from that, the Italians, as we have seen, were as much\n bent on reformation as any other people in mass; and the earlier\n Franciscan movement was obviously more disinterested than either\n the later German or the English, in both of which plunder was\n the inducement to the leading adherents, as it was also in\n Switzerland. There the wholesale bestowal of Church livings on\n Italians was the strongest motive to ecclesiastical revolution;\n and in Z\u00fcrich, the first canton which adopted the Reformation,\n the process was made easy by the State guaranteeing posts\n and pensions for life to the whole twenty-four canons of the\n chapter. (Vieusseux, History of Switzerland, 1840, pp. 120,\n 128; cp. Zschokke, Schweizerland's Geschichte, 9te Ausg. ch. 32,\n and Jackson, Huldreich Zwingli, 1901, pp. 222-25, 295-96.) The\n Protestants had further the support of the unbelieving soldiery,\n made anti-religious in the Italian wars, who rejoiced in the\n process of priest-baiting and plunder (Vieusseux, p. 130).\n\n\nThe process of suppression in Italy was prolonged through sixty\nyears. In 1543 numbers of Protestants began to fly; hundreds more\nwere cast into prison; and, save in a few places, public profession of\nthe heresy was suppressed. In 1546 the papacy persuaded the Venetian\nsenate to put down the Protestant communities in their dominions, and\nin 1548 there began in Venice a persecution in which many were sent to\nthe galleys. To reach secret Protestantism, the papacy dispersed spies\nthroughout Italy, Ferrara being particularly attended to, as a known\nhotbed. [1890] After the death of the comparatively merciful Paul III\n(1550), Julius III authorized new severities. A Ferrarese preacher was\nput to death; and the Duchess Ren\u00e9e, the daughter of Louis XII, who\nhad notoriously favoured the heretics, was made virtually a prisoner\nin her own palace, secluded from her children. At Faenza, a nobleman\ndied under torture at the hands of the inquisitors, and a mob in turn\nkilled some of these; [1891] but the main process went on throughout\nthe country. An old Waldensian community in Calabria having reverted\nto its former opinions under the new stimulus, it was warred upon by\nthe inquisitors, who employed for the purpose outlaws; and multitudes\nof victims, including sixty women, were put to the torture. [1892] At\nMontalto, in 1560, another Waldensian community were taken captive;\neighty-eight men were slaughtered, their throats being cut one by\none; many more were tortured; the majority of the men were sent\nto the Spanish galleys; and the women and children were sold into\nslavery. [1893] In Venice many were put to death by drowning. [1894]\n\nOf individual executions there were many. In a documented list of\nseventy-eight persons burned alive or hanged and burned at Rome from\n1553 to 1600, [1895] only a minority are known to have been Lutherans,\nthe official records being kept on such varying principles that it is\nimpossible to tell how many of the victims were Catholic criminals;\n[1896] while some heretics are represented--it would seem falsely--as\nhaving died in the communion of the Church. But probably more than half\nwere Lutherans or Calvinists. The first in the list (1553) are Giovanni\nMollio, [1897] a Minorite friar of Montalcino, who had been a professor\nat Brescia and Bologna, and Giovanni Teodori [1898] of Perugia; and\nthe former is stated in the official record to have recommended his\nsoul to God, the Virgin Mary, St. Francis, and St. Anthony of Padua,\nthough he had been condemned as an obstinate Lutheran. The next victims\n(1556) are the Milanese friar Ambrogio de Cavoli, who dies \"firm in his\nfalse opinion,\" and Pomponio Angerio or Algieri of Nola, a student aged\ntwenty-four, who, \"as being obstinate, was burned alive.\" [1899] These\nwere the first victims of Caraffa after his elevation to the papal\nchair as Paul IV. Under Pius IV three were burned in 1560; under Pius\nV two in 1566, six in 1567, six in 1568, and so on. Francesco Cellario,\nan ex-Franciscan friar, living as a refugee and Protestant preacher in\nthe Grisons, was kidnapped, taken to Rome, and burned [1900] (1569). A\nNeapolitan nobleman, Pompeo de Monti, caught in Rome, was officially\ndeclared to have \"renounced head by head all the errors he had held,\"\nand accordingly was benignantly beheaded. [1901] Quite a number,\nincluding the learned protonotary Carnesecchi (1567), are alleged\nto have died \"in the bosom of the Church.\" [1902] On the other hand,\nsome of the inquisitors themselves came under the charge of heresy,\ntwo cardinals and a bishop being actually prosecuted [1903]--whether\nfor Lutheranism or for other forms of private judgment does not appear.\n\nSimple Lutheranism, however, seems to have been the usual limit of\nheresy among those burned. Aonio Paleario (originally Antonio della\nPaglia or de' Pagliaricci) of Veroli [1904]--poet and professor of\nrhetoric at Milan, hanged in 1570 (in his seventieth year) either for\ndenouncing the Inquisition or for Lutheranism--was an extreme heretic\nfrom the Catholic point of view. His Actio in Romanos Pontificos et\neorum asseclas is still denounced by the Church. [1905] If, however,\nhe was the author of the Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Giesu\nCrocifisso verso I Christiani, he was simply an evangelical of the\nschool of Luther, exalting faith and making light of works; and its\n\"remedies against the temptation of doubt\" deal solely with theological\ndifficulties, not with critical unbelief. [1906] This treatise,\nimmensely popular in the sixteenth century, was so zealously destroyed\nby the Church that when Ranke wrote no copy was known to exist. [1907]\nThe Trattato was placed on the first papal Index Expurgatorius in\n1549; and the nearly complete extinction of the book is an important\nillustration of the Church's faculty of suppressing literature.\n\nThe Index, anticipated by Charles V in the Netherlands several years\nearlier, was established especially to resist the Reformation; and its\nthird class contained a prohibition of all anonymous books published\nsince 1519. The destruction of books in Italy in the first twenty years\nof the work of the Congregation of the Index was enormous, nearly\nevery library being decimated, and many annihilated. All editions\nof the classics, and even of the Fathers, annotated by Protestants,\nor by Erasmus, were destroyed; the library of the Medicean College at\nFlorence, despite the appeals of Duke Cosmo, was denuded of many works\nof past generations, now pronounced heretical; and many dead writers\nwho had passed for good Catholics were put on the Index. Booksellers,\nplundered of their stocks, were fain to seek another calling; and\nprinters, seeing that any one of them who printed a condemned work\nhad every book printed by him put on the Index, were driven to refuse\nall save works officially accredited. It was considered a merciful\nrelaxation of the procedure when, after the death of Paul IV (1555),\ncertain books, such as Erasmus's editions of the Fathers, were allowed\nto be merely mutilated. [1908] The effect of the whole machinery\nin making Italy in the seventeenth century relatively unlearned and\nilliterate cannot easily be overstated.\n\nIn fine, the Reformation failed in Italy because of the economic and\npolitical conditions, as it failed in Spain; as it failed in a large\npart of Germany; as it would have failed in Holland had Philip II made\nhis capital there (in which case Spain might very well have become\nProtestant); and as it would have failed in England had Elizabeth been\na Catholic, like her sister. During the sixty years from 1520 to 1580,\nthousands of Italian Protestants left Italy, as thousands of Spanish\nProtestants fled from Spain, and thousands of English Protestants from\nEngland in the reign of Mary. [1909] To make the outcome in Italy and\nSpain a basis for a theory of racial tendency in religion, or racial\ndefect of \"public spirit,\" is to explain history in a fashion which, in\nphysical science, has long been discredited as an argument in a circle.\n\n\n McCrie, at the old standpoint, says of the Inquisition that \"this\n iniquitous and bloody tribunal could never obtain a footing either\n in France or in Germany\"; that \"the attempt to introduce it in\n the Netherlands was resisted by the adherents of the old as well\n as the disciples of the new religion; and it kindled a civil war\n which ... issued in establishing civil and religious liberty\";\n and that \"the ease with which it was introduced into Italy showed\n that, whatever illumination there was among the Italians ... they\n were destitute of that public spirit and energy of principle which\n were requisite to shake off the degrading yoke by which they were\n oppressed.\" The ethical attitude of the Christian historian is\n noteworthy; but we are here concerned with his historiography. A\n little reflection will make it clear that the non-establishment\n of the Inquisition in France and Germany was due precisely to the\n fact that the papacy was not in these countries as it was in Italy,\n and that the native Governments resented external influence.\n\n As to the Netherlands, the statement is misleading in the\n extreme. The Inquisition set up by Charles V was long and fully\n established in the Low Countries; and Motley recognizes that it\n was there more severe even than in Spain. It was Charles V who,\n in 1546, gave orders for the establishment of the Inquisition\n in Naples, when the people so effectually resisted. The view,\n finally, that the attempt to suppress heresy caused the Dutch\n revolt is merely part of the mythology of the Reformation. Charles\n V, at the outset of his reign, stood to Spain in the relation\n of a foreign king who, with his Flemish courtiers, exploited\n Spanish revenues. Only by making Madrid his capital and turning\n semi-Spanish did he at all reverse that relation between the two\n parts of his dominions. So late as 1550 he set up an exceptionally\n merciless form of the Inquisition in the Low Countries, and this\n without losing any of the loyalty of the middle and upper classes,\n Protestantism having made its converts only among the poor. In\n 1546 too he had set up an Index Expurgatorius with the assistance\n of the theological faculty at Louvain; and there was actually\n a Flemish Index in print before the papal one (McCrie, Ref. in\n Italy, p. 184; Ticknor, Hist. of Spanish Lit. 6th ed. i, 493).\n\n What set up the breach between the Netherlands and Spain was\n the failure of Philip II to adjust himself to Dutch interests\n as his father had adjusted himself to Spanish. The sunderance\n was on lines of economic interest and racial jealousy; and\n Dutch Protestantism was not the cause but the effect. In the\n war, indeed, multitudes of Dutch Catholics held persistently\n with their Protestant fellow-countrymen against Spain, as many\n English Catholics fought against the Armada. As late as 1600\n the majority of the people of Groningen were still Catholics,\n as the great majority are now in North Brabant and Limburg; and\n in 1900 the Catholics in the Netherlands were nearly a third of\n the whole. From first to last too the Dutch Protestant creed and\n polity were those set up by Calvin, a Frenchman.\n\n\nTo those accustomed to the conventional view, the case may become\nclearer on a survey of the course of anti-papalism in other countries\nthan those mentioned. The political determination of the process in\nthe sixteenth century, indeed, cannot be properly realized save in\nthe light of kindred movements of earlier date, when the \"Teutonic\nconscience\" made, not for reform, but for fixation.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3. THE HUSSITE FAILURE IN BOHEMIA\n\nThat the causal forces in the Reformation were neither racial religious\nbias nor special gift on the part of any religious teachers is made\ntolerably clear by the pre-Lutheran episode of the Hussites in Bohemia\na century before the German movement. In Bohemia as elsewhere clerical\navarice, worldliness, and misconduct had long kept up anti-clerical\nfeeling; and the adoption of Wiclif's teaching by Huss [1910] at\nthe end of the fourteenth century was the result, and not the cause,\nof Bohemian anti-papalism. [1911] The Waldensians, whose doctrines\nwere closely akin to those of Huss, were represented in Bohemia as\nearly as the twelfth century; and so late as 1330 their community\nwas a teaching centre, able to send money help to the Waldensians of\nItaly. So apparent was the heredity that \u00c6neas Sylvius, afterwards\nPope Pius II, maintained that the Hussites were a branch of the\nWaldenses. [1912]\n\nBefore Huss too a whole series of native reformers, beginning\nwith the Moravian Militz, Archdeacon of Prague, had set up a partly\nanti-clerical propaganda. Militz, who gave up his emoluments (1363) to\nbecome a wandering preacher, actually wrote a Libellus de Anti-christo,\naffirming that the Church was already in Anti-christ's power, or nearly\nso. [1913] It was written while he was imprisoned by the Inquisition\nat Rome at the instance of the mendicant orders, whom he censured. As,\nhowever, the later hostility he incurred, up to his death, was on the\nscore of his influence with the people, the treatise cannot well have\nbeen current in his lifetime. A contemporary, Conrad of Waldhausen,\nholding similar views, joined Militz in opposing the mendicant friars\nas Wiclif was doing at the same period; and the King of Bohemia (the\nemperor Charles IV) gave zealous countenance to both. A follower of\nMilitz, Matthias of Janow, a prebendary of Prague, holding the same\nviews as to Anti-christ, wrote a book on The Abomination of Desolation\nof Priests and Monks, and yet another to similar effect.\n\nThere was thus a considerable movement in the direction of Church\nreform before either Huss or Wiclif was heard in Bohemia; and a\nBohemian king had shown a reforming zeal, apparently not on financial\nmotives, before any other European potentate. And whereas racial\njealousy of the dominant Italians was a main factor in the movement of\nLuther, the much more strongly motived jealousy of the Czechs against\nthe Germans who exploited Bohemia was a main element in the salient\nmovement of the Hussites. [1914] Called in to work the silver mines,\nand led further by the increasing field for commerce and industry,\n[1915] the more civilized Germans secured control of the Czech church\nand monasteries, appropriating most of the best livings. As they\ngreatly predominated also at the University of Prague, Huss, whose\ninspiration was largely racial patriotism, wrought with his colleague\nJerome to have the university made strictly national. [1916] When,\naccordingly, the German heads of the university still (1403 and 1408)\ncondemned the doctrines of Wiclif as preached by Huss, the motives\nof the censors were as much racial and economic as theological; that\nis to say, the \"Teutonic conscience\" operated in its own interest to\nthe exaltation of papal rule against the Czech conscience.\n\nThe first crisis in the racial struggle ended in Huss's obtaining a\nroyal decree (1409) giving three votes in university affairs (wherein,\naccording to medieval custom, the voting was by nations) to the\nBohemians, and only one to the Germans, though the latter were the\nmajority. Thereupon a multitude of the German students marched back to\nGermany, where there was founded for them the university of Leipzig;\n[1917] and the racial quarrel was more envenomed than ever.\n\nAt the same time the ecclesiastical authorities, closely allied\nwith the German interest, took up the cause of the Church against\nheresy; and Archbishop Sbinko of Prague, having procured a papal bull,\ncaused a number of Wiclifian and other manuscripts to be burned [1918]\n(1410), soon after excommunicating Huss. The now nationalist university\nprotested, and the king sequestrated the estates of the archbishop\non his refusal to indemnify the owners of the manuscripts. In 1411,\nfurther, Huss denounced the proposed papal crusade against Naples,\nand in 1412 the sale of indulgences by permission of Pope John XXIII,\nexactly as Luther denounced those of Leo X a century later, calling the\nPope Antichrist in the Lutheran manner, while his partizans burned the\npapal bulls. [1919] For the rest, he preached against image-worship,\nauricular confession, ceremonialism, and clerical endowments. [1920]\nAt the Council of Constance (1415), accordingly, there was arrayed\nagainst him a solid mass of German churchmen, including the ex-rector\nof Prague University, now bishop of Misnia. Further, the Germans\nwere scholastically, as a rule, Nominalists, and Huss a Realist;\nand as Gerson, the most powerful of the French prelates, was zealous\nfor the former school, he threw his influence on the German side,\n[1921] as did the Bishop of London on the part of England. [1922] The\nforty-five Wiclifian heresies, therefore, were re-condemned; Huss was\nsentenced to imprisonment, though he had gone to the Council under a\nletter of safe-conduct from the emperor; [1923] and on his refusal to\nretract he was burned alive (July 6, 1415). Jerome, taking flight,\nwas caught, and, being imprisoned, recanted; but later revoked the\nrecantation and was burned likewise (May 30, 1416).\n\nThe subsequent fortunes of the Hussite party were determined as usual\nby the political and economic forces. The King of Bohemia had joyfully\naccepted Huss's doctrine that the tithes were not the property of the\nchurchmen; and had locally protected him as his \"fowl with the golden\neggs,\" proceeding to plunder the Church as did the German princes\nin the next age. [1924] When, later, the revolutionary Hussites\nbegan plundering churches and monasteries, the Bohemian nobles in\ntheir turn profited, [1925] and became good Hussites accordingly;\nwhile yet another aristocracy was formed in Prague by the citizens\nwho managed the confiscations there. [1926] As happened earlier in\nHungary and later in Germany, again, there followed a revolt of the\npeasants against their extortionate masters; [1927] and there resulted\na period of ferocious civil war and exacerbated fanaticism. Ziska,\nthe Hussite leader, had been a strong anti-German; [1928] and when\nthe emperor entered into the struggle the racial hatred grew more\nintense than ever. On the Hussite side the claim for \"the cup\" (that\nis, the administration of the eucharist with wine as well as bread,\nin the original manner, departed from by the Church in the eleventh\ncentury) indicated the nature of the religious feeling involved. More\nmemorable was the communistic zeal of the advanced section of the\nTaborites (so called from the town of Tabor, their headquarters),\nwho anticipated the German movement of the Anabaptists, [1929] a small\nminority of them seeking to set up community of women. For the rest,\nall the other main features of later Protestantism came up at the\nsame time--the zealous establishment of schools for the young; [1930]\nthe insistence on the Bible as the sole standard of knowledge and\npractice; inflexible courage in warfare and good military organization,\nwith determined denial of sacerdotal claims. [1931]\n\nThe ideal collapsed as similar ideals did before and afterwards. First\nthe main body of the Hussites, led by Ziska, though at war with the\nCatholics in general and the Germans in particular, warred murderously\nalso on the extremer communists, called the Adamites, and destroyed\nthem (1421). Then, as the country became more and more exhausted\nby the civil war, the common people gradually fell away from the\nTaborites, who were the prime fanatics of the period. The zeal of\nthe communist section, too, itself fell away; and at length, in 1434,\nthe Taborites, betrayed by one of their generals, were defeated with\ngreat slaughter by the nobles in the battle of Lipan. Meanwhile, the\nupper aristocracy had reaped the economic fruits of the revolution at\nthe expense of townsmen, small proprietors, and peasants; [1932] and,\njust as the lot of the German peasants in Luther's day was worse after\ntheir vain revolt than before, so the Bohemian peasantry at the close\nof the fifteenth century had sunk back to the condition of serfdom\nfrom which they had almost completely emerged at the beginning. It is\ndoubtful, indeed, whether the material lot of the poor was bettered\nin any degree at any stage of the Protestant revolution, in any\ncountry. So little efficacy for social betterment has a movement\nguided by a light set above reason.\n\nThat there was in the period some Christian freethinking of a finer\nsort than the general Taborite doctrine is proved by the recovery\nof the unprinted work of the Czech Peter Helchitsky (Chelcicky),\nThe Net of Faith, which impeached the current orthodoxy and the\necclesiastico-political system on the lines of the more exalted\nof the Paulicians and the Lollards, very much to the same effect\nas the modern gospel of Tolstoy. In the midst of a party of warlike\nfanatics Helchitsky denounced war as mere wholesale murder, taught the\nsinfulness of wealth, declaimed against cities as the great corrupters\nof life, and preached a peaceful and non-resistant anarchism, ignoring\nthe State. But his party in turn developed into that of the Bohemian\nBrethren, an intensely Puritan sect, opposed to learning, and ashamed\nof the memory of the communism in which their order began. [1933]\nOf permanent gain to culture there is hardly a trace in the entire\nevolution.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4. ANTI-PAPALISM IN HUNGARY\n\nAs in Bohemia, so in Hungary, there was a ready popular inclination\nto religious independence of Rome before the Lutheran period. The\nlimited sway of the Hungarian monarchy left the nobles abnormally\npowerful, and their normal jealousy of the wealth of the Church\nmade them in the thirteenth century favourable to the Waldenses and\nrecalcitrant to the Inquisition. [1934] In the period of the Hussite\nwars a similar protection was long given to the thousands of refugees\nled by Ziska from Bohemia into Hungary in 1424. [1935] The famous\nking Matthias Corvinus, who put severe checks on clerical revenue,\nhad as his favourite court poet the anti-papal bishop of Wardein,\nJohn, surnamed Pannonicus, who openly derided the Papal Jubilee as a\nfinancial contrivance. [1936] Under Matthias's successor, the ill-fated\nUladislaus II, began a persecution, pushed on by his priest-ruled queen\n(1440), which drove many Hussites into Wallachia; and at the date\nof Luther's movement the superior clergy of Hungary were a powerful\nbody of feudal nobles, living mainly as such, wielding secular power,\nand impoverishing the State. [1937] As the crusade got up by the\npapacy against the Turks (1514) drew away many serfs, and ended in a\npeasant war against the nobility, put down with immense slaughter, and\nfollowed by oppression both of peasants and small landholders, there\nwas a ready hearing for the Lutheran doctrines in Hungary. Nowhere,\nprobably, did so many join the Reformation movement in so short\na time. [1938] As elsewhere, a number of the clergy came forward;\nand the resistance of the rest was proportionally severe, though\nQueen Mary, the wife of King Louis II, was pro-Lutheran. [1939] Books\nwere burned by cartloads; and the diet was induced to pass a general\ndecree for the burning of all Lutherans. [1940] The great Turkish\ninvasion under Soliman (1526) could not draw the priests from their\nheresy-hunt; but the subsequent division of sovereignty between John\nZapoyla and Ferdinand I, and above all the disdainful tolerance of the\nTurkish Sultan in the parts under his authority, [1941] permitted of a\ncontinuous spread of the anti-papal doctrine. About 1546 four bishops\njoined the Lutheran side, one getting married; and in Transylvania\nin particular the whole Church property was ere long confiscated to\n\"the State\"; so that in 1556, when only two monasteries remained,\nthe Bishop withdrew. Of the tithes, it is said, the Protestant clergy\nheld three-fourths, and retained them till 1848. [1942] In 1559,\naccording to the same authority, only three families of magnates still\nadhered to the pope; the lesser nobility were nearly all Protestant;\nand the Lutherans among the common people were as thirty to one. [1943]\n\nAs a matter of course, Church property had been confiscated on\nall hands by the nobles, Ferdinand having been unable to hinder\nthem. Soon after the battle of Moh\u00e4cs (1526) the nobles in diet\ndecided not to fill up the places of deceased prelates, but to make\nover the emoluments of the bishoprics to \"such men as deserved well\nof their country.\" Within a short time seven great territories were\nso accorded to as many magnates and generals, \"nearly all of whom\nseparated from the Church of Rome, and became steady supporters\nof the Reformation.\" [1944] The Hungarian \"Reformation\" was thus\nremarkably complete.\n\nIts subsequent decadence is one of the proofs that, even as the\nReformation movement had succeeded by secular force, so it was only to\nbe maintained on the same footing by excluding Catholic propaganda. In\nHungary, as elsewhere, strife speedily arose among Reformers on\nthe two issues on which reason could play within the limits of\nScripturalism--the doctrine of the eucharist and the divinity of\nJesus. On the former question the majority took the semi-rationalist\nview of Zwingli, making the eucharist a simple commemoration;\nand a strong minority in Transylvania became Socinian. The Italian\nUnitarian Giorgio Biandrata (or Blandrata [1945]), driven to Poland\nfrom Switzerland for his anti-trinitarianism, and called from Poland to\nbe the physician of the Prince of Transylvania, organized a ten days'\ndebate between Trinitarians and Unitarians at Weissenberg in 1568;\nand at the close the latter obtained from the nobles present all the\nprivileges enjoyed by the Lutherans, even securing control of the\ncathedral and schools of Clausenburg. [1946] It is remarkable that\nthis, the most advanced movement of Protestantism, has practically\nheld its ground in Transylvania to modern times. [1947]\n\nThe advance, however, meant desperate schism, and disaster to the\nmain Protestant cause. The professors of Wittemberg appealed to the\northodox authorities to suppress the heresy, with no better result\nthan a public repudiation of the doctrine of the Trinity at the Synod\nof Wardein, [1948] and an organization of the Unitarian Churches. In\ndue course these in turn divided. In 1578 Biandrata's colleague,\nFerencz Davides, contended for a cessation of prayers to Christ,\nwhereupon Biandrata invited Fausto Sozzini from Basel to confute him;\nand the confutation finally took the shape of a sentence of perpetual\nimprisonment on Davides in 1579 by the Prince of Transylvania, to\nwhom Biandrata and Sozzini referred the dispute. The victim died\nin a few days--by one account, in a state of frenzy. [1949] Between\nthe Helvetic and Augsburg confessionalists, meanwhile, the strife was\nequally bitter; and it needed only free scope for the new organization\nof the Jesuits to secure the reconquest of the greater part of Hungary\nfor the Catholic Church.\n\nThe course of events had shown that the Protestant principle of private\njudgment led those who would loyally act on it further and further from\nthe historic faith; and there was no such general spirit of freethought\nin existence as could support such an advance. In contrast with the\never-dividing and mutually anathematizing parties of the dissenters,\nthe ostensible solidity of the Catholic Church had an attraction which\nobscured all former perception of her corruptions; and the fixity of\nher dogma reassured those who recoiled in horror from Zwinglianism and\nSocinianism, as the adherents of these systems recoiled in turn from\nthat of Davides. Only the absolute suppression of the Jesuits, as in\nElizabethan England, could have saved the situation; and the political\ncircumstances which had facilitated the spread of Protestantism were\nequally favourable to the advent of the reaction. As the Huguenot\nnobles in France gradually withdrew from their sect in the seventeenth\ncentury, so the Protestant nobles in Hungary began to withdraw from\ntheirs towards the end of the sixteenth. What the Jesuits could not\nachieve by propaganda was compassed by imperial dragonnades; and\nin 1601 only a few Protestant congregations remained in all Styria\nand Carinthia. [1950] Admittedly, however, the Jesuits wrought much\nby sheer polemic, the pungent writings of their Cardinal Pazm\u00e1ny\nhaving the effect of converting a number of nobles; [1951] while the\nProtestants, instead of answering the most effective of Pazm\u00e1ny's\nattacks, The Guide to Truth, spent their energies in fighting each\nother. [1952]\n\nIn the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there ensued enough of\npersecution by the Catholic rulers to have roused a new growth of\nProtestantism, if that could longer avail; but the balance of forces\nremained broadly unchanged. Orthodox Protestantism and orthodox\nUnitarianism, having no new principle of criticism as against those\nturned upon themselves by the Jesuits, and no new means of obtaining an\neconomic leverage, have made latterly no headway against Catholicism,\nwhich is to-day professed by more than half the people of Hungary,\nwhile among the remainder the Greek Catholics and Greek Orientals\nrespectively outnumber the Helvetic and Lutheran Churches. The future\nis to some more searching principle of thought.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 5. PROTESTANTISM IN POLAND\n\nThe chief triumph of the Jesuit reaction was won in Poland; and\nthere, perhaps, is to be found the best illustration of the failure\nof mere Protestantism, on the one hand, to develop a self-maintaining\nintellectual principle, and the worse failure, on the other hand,\nof an organized and unresisted Catholicism to secure either political\nor intellectual vitality.\n\nOpposition to the papacy on nationalist as well as on general grounds\nis nearly as well marked in Polish history as in Bohemian, from the\npagan period onwards, the first Christian priesthood being chiefly\nforeign, [1953] while, as in Bohemia, the people clung to vernacular\nworship. In 1078 we find King Boleslav the Dauntless (otherwise\nthe Cruel) executing the Bishop of Cracow, taxing the lands of the\nChurch, and vetoing the bestowal of posts on foreigners. [1954] He in\nturn was driven into exile by a combination of clergy and nobles. A\ncentury later a Polish diet vetoes the confiscation of the property\nof deceased bishops by the sovereign princes of the various provinces;\nand a generation later still the veto is seen to be disregarded. [1955]\nIn the middle of the thirteenth century there are further violent\nquarrels between dukes and clergy over tithes, the former successfully\nordering and the latter vainly resisting a money commutation; till in\n1279 Duke Boleslav of Cracow is induced to grant the bishops almost\nunlimited immunities and powers. [1956] Under Casimir the Great\n(1333-1370) further strifes occur on similar grounds between the\nequestrian order and the clergy, the king sometimes supporting the\nlatter against the former, as in the freeing of serfs, and sometimes\nenforcing taxation of Church lands with violence. [1957] In the next\nreign the immunities granted by Boleslav in 1279 are cancelled by the\nequestrian order, acting in concert. And while these strifes had all\nbeen on economic grounds, we meet in 1341 with a heretical movement,\nset up by John Pirnensis, who denounced the pope as Antichrist in\nthe fashion of the Bohemian reformers of the next generation. The\npeople of Breslau seem to have gone over bodily to the heresy; and\nwhen the Inquisition of Cracow attempted forcible repression the\nChief Inquisitor was murdered in a riot. [1958]\n\nIt was thus natural that in the fourteenth century the Hussite movement\nshould spread greatly in Poland, and the papacy be defied in matters\nof nomination by the king. [1959] The Poles had long frequented\nthe university of Prague; and Huss's colleague Jerome was called\nin to organize the university of Cracow in 1413. Against the Hussite\ndoctrines the Catholic clergy had to resort largely to written polemic,\n[1960] their power being small; though the king confirmed their\nsynodical decree making heresy high treason. In 1450 Poland obtained\nits law of Habeas Corpus, [1961] over two centuries before England;\nand under that safeguard numbers of the nobility declared themselves\nHussites. In 1435 some of the chief of these formed a confederation\nagainst Church and crown; and in 1439 they proclaimed an abolition of\ntithes, and demanded, on the lines of the earlier English Lollards,\nthat the enormous estates of the clergy should be appropriated to\npublic purposes. In the diet of 1459, again, a learned noble, John\nOstrorog, who had studied at Padua, delivered an address, afterwards\nexpanded into a Latin book, denouncing the revenue exactions of the\npapacy, and proposing to confiscate the annates, or first fruits of\necclesiastical offices so exacted; proceeding further to bring against\nthe Polish clergy in general all the usual charges of simony, avarice,\nand fraud, and indicting the mendicant orders as having demoralized\nthe common people. [1962]\n\nThe Poles having no such nationalist motive in their Hussitism as had\nthe Bohemians, who were fighting German domination, there took place\nin Poland no such convulsions as followed the Bohemian movement; but,\nwhen the Lutheran impulse came in the next century, the German element\nwhich had been added to Poland by the incorporation of the order\nand territory of the Teutonic knights in 1466 made an easy way for\nthe German heresy. In Dantzic the Lutheran inhabitants in 1524 took\nthe churches from the Catholics, and, terrorizing the town council,\nshut up and secularized the monasteries and convents. [1963] In 1526,\nwith due bloodshed, the king effected a counter-revolution in the\nCatholic interest; but still the heresy spread, the law of Habeas\nCorpus thwarting all clerical attempts at persecution, and the king\nbeing at heart something of an indifferentist in religion. [1964] In\nthe province of Great Poland was formed (1530-40) a Lutheran church,\nprotected by a powerful family; and in Cracow a group of scholars\nformed a non-sectarian organization to evangelize the country. Among\nthem, about 1546, occurred the first expression of Polish Unitarianism,\nthe innovator being Adam Pastoris, a Dutch or Belgian priest, who\nseems to have used at times the name of Spiritus. [1965]\n\nOn lines of simple Protestantism the movement was rapid, many\naristocrats and clergy declaring for it; [1966] and in the Diets of\n1550 and 1552 was shown an increasingly strong anti-Catholic feeling,\nwhich the Church was virtually powerless to punish. In 1549 a parish\npriest publicly married a wife, and the bishop of Cracow abandoned the\nattempt to displace him. The next bishop, Zebrzydowski, a favourite\npupil of Erasmus, was said by a Socinian writer of the period to have\nopenly expressed disbelief in immortality and other dogmas; [1967]\nbut when in 1552 a noble refused to pay tithes, he ecclesiastically\ncondemned him to death, and declared his property confiscated. The\nsentence, however, could not be put in force; and when the other\nheads of the Church, seeing their revenues menaced and their clergy in\nlarge part tending to heresy, [1968] attempted a general and severe\nprosecution of backsliding priests, the resistance of the magistracy\nbrought the effort to nothing. [1969] The Diet of 1552 practically\nabrogated the ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and despite much intrigue\nthe economic interest of the landowners continued to maintain the\nProtestant movement, which was rapidly organized on German and Swiss\nmodels. It was by the play of its own elements of strife that its\nascendancy was undermined.\n\nOn the one hand, an influential cleric, Orzechowski, who had married\nand turned Protestant, reconciled himself to Rome on the death of his\nwife, having already begun a fierce polemic against the Unitarian\ntendencies appearing on the Protestant side in the teaching of the\nItalian Stancari (1550); on the other hand, those tendencies gained\nhead till they ruptured the party, of which the Trinitarian majority\nfurther quarrelled violently among themselves till, as in Hungary,\nmany were driven back to the arms of Catholicism. In a Synod held in\n1556, one Peter Goniondzki [1970] (Gonesius)--who as a Catholic had\nviolently opposed Stancari in 1550, but in the interim had studied in\nSwitzerland and turned Protestant--took up a more anti-Trinitarian\nposition than Stancari's, affirming three Gods, of whom the Son\nand the Spirit were subordinate to the Father. A few years later\nhe declared against infant baptism--here giving forth opinions he\nhad met with in Moravia; and he rapidly drew to him a considerable\nfollowing alike of ministers and of wealthy laymen. [1971]\n\nIt was thus not the primary influence of Lelio Sozzini, who had visited\nPoland in 1551 and did not return till 1558, that set up the remarkable\ngrowth of Unitarianism in that country. It would seem rather that in\nthe country of Copernicus the relative weakness of the Church had\nadmitted of a more common approach to freedom of thought than was\nseen elsewhere; [1972] and the impunity of the new movements brought\nmany heterodox fugitives (as it did Jews) from other lands. One of the\nnewcomers, the learned Italian, George Biandrata, whose Unitarianism\nhad been cautiously veiled, was made one of the superintendents of\nthe \"Helvetic\" Church of Little Poland, and aimed at avoidance of\ndogmatic strifes; but after his withdrawal to Transylvania Gregorius\nPauli, a minister of Cracow, of Italian descent, went further than\nGonesius had done, and declared Jesus to be a mere man. [1973] He\nfurther preached community of goods, promised a speedy millennium,\nand condemned the bearing of arms. [1974] After various attempts\nat suppression and compromise by the orthodox majority, a group of\nUnitarian ministers and nobles formally renounced the doctrine of\nthe Trinity at the Conference of Petrikov in 1562; and, on a formal\ncondemnation being passed by an orthodox majority at Cracow in 1563,\nthere was formed a Unitarian Church, with forty-two subscribing\nministers, Zwinglian as to the eucharist, and opposed to infant\nbaptism. [1975] Ethically, its doctrine was humane and pacificatory,\nits members being forbidden to go to law or to take oaths; and for\na time the community made great progress, the national Diet being,\nby one account, \"filled with Arians\" for a time. [1976]\n\nMeantime the Calvinist, Zwinglian, and Lutheran Protestant Churches\nquarrelled as fiercely in Poland as elsewhere, every compromise\nbreaking down, till the abundant relapses of nobles and common people\nto Catholicism began to rebuild the power of the old Church, which\nfound in \"the Great Cardinal,\" Hosius, a statesman and controversialist\nunequalled on the Protestant side. Backed by the Jesuits, he gained\nby every Protestant dispute, the Jesuit order building itself up with\nits usual skill. And the course of politics told conclusively in the\nsame direction. King Stephen Battory favoured the Jesuits; and King\nSigismund III, who had been educated as a Catholic by his mother,\nsystematically gave effect to his personal leanings by the use of his\npeculiar feudal powers. Under the ancient constitution the king had\nthe bestowal of a number of life-tenures of great estates, called\nstarosties; and the granting of these Sigismund made conditional\non the acceptance of Catholicism. [1977] Thus the Protestantism of\nthe nobles, which had been in large part originally determined by\neconomic interests, was dissolved by a reversal of the same force,\nvery much in the fashion in which it was disintegrated in France by the\npolicy of Richelieu at the same period. At the close of Sigismund's\nreign Protestantism was definitively broken up; and the Jesuit\nascendancy permitted even of frequent persecutions of heresy. From\nthese Unitarians could not escape; and at length, in 1658, they were\nexpelled from the country, now completely subject to Jesuitism. In\nthe country in which Protestantism and Unitarianism in turn had spread\nmost rapidly under favouring political and social conditions, the rise\nof contrary conditions had most rapidly and decisively overthrown them.\n\nThe record of the heresy of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, in fine,\nis very much a reduplication of that of early Christianity. Men\npresented with an obscure and self-contradictory \"revelation\" set\nthemselves zealously to extract from it a body of certain truth,\nand in that hopeless undertaking did but multiply strife, till the\nmajority, wearied with the fruitless quest, resigned themselves like\ntheir ancient prototypes to a rule of dogma under which the reasoning\nfaculty became inert. Sane rationalism had to find another path,\nin a more enlightened day.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 6. THE STRUGGLE IN FRANCE\n\nThe political and economic conditioning of the Reformation may perhaps\nbest be understood by following the fortunes of Protestantism in\nFrance. When Luther began his schism, France might reasonably have been\nheld a much more likely field for its extension than England. While\nKing Henry was still to earn from the papacy the title of \"Defender\nof the Faith\" as against Luther, King Francis had exacted from the\nPope (1516) a Concordat by which the appointment of all abbots and\nbishops in France was vested in the crown, the papacy receiving only\nthe annates, or first year's revenue. For centuries too the French\nthrone and the papacy had been chronically at strife; for seventy\nyears a French pope, subservient to the king, had sat at Avignon;\nand before the Concordat the \"Pragmatic Sanction,\" first enacted in\n1268 by the devout St. Louis, had since the reign of Charles VII, who\nreinforced it (1438), kept the Gallican Church on a semi-independent\nfooting towards Rome. By the account of the chancellor Du Prat in\n1517, the \"Pragmatic,\" then superseded by the Concordat, had isolated\nFrance among the Catholic peoples, causing her to be regarded as\ninclined to heresy. [1978] In 1512 the Council of Pisa, convoked by\nLouis XII, had denounced Pope Julius II as a dangerous schismatic,\nand he had retaliated by placing France under interdict. In the\nprevious year the French king had given his protection to a famous\nfarce by Pierre Gringoire, in which, on Shrove Tuesday, the Pope was\nopenly ridiculed. [1979] Nowhere, in short, was the papacy as such\nless respected.\n\nThe whole strife, however, between the French kings and the popes had\nbeen for revenue, not on any question of doctrine. In the three years\n(1461-64) during which Louis XI had for his own purposes suspended\nthe Pragmatic Sanction, it was found that 2,500,000 crowns had\ngone from France to Rome for \"expetatives\" and \"dispensations,\"\nbesides 340,000 crowns for bulls for archbishoprics, bishoprics,\nabbeys, priories, and deaneries. [1980] This drain was naturally\nresisted by Church and Crown alike. Louis XI restored the Pragmatic\nSanction. Louis XII re-enacted it in 1499 with new severity; and the\neffect of the Concordat of Francis I was merely to win over the Pope\nby dividing between the king and him the power of plunder by the sale\nof ecclesiastical offices. [1981] It was accordingly much resented by\nthe Parlement, the University, the clergy, and the people of Paris;\nbut the king overbore all opposition. Though, therefore, he had at\ntimes some disposition to make a \"reform\" on the Lutheran lines, he\nhad no such motive thereto as had the kings and nobles of the other\nnorthern countries; and he had further no such personal motive as had\nHenry VIII of England. Under the existing arrangement he was as well\nprovided for as might be, since \"the patronage of some six hundred\nbishoprics and abbeys furnished him with a convenient and inexpensive\nmethod of providing for his diplomatic service, and of rewarding\nliterary merit.\" [1982] The troubles in Germany, besides, were a\nwarning against letting loose a movement of popular fanaticism. [1983]\n\nWhen, therefore, Protestantism and Lutheranism began to show head\nin France, they had no friends at once powerful and zealous. Before\nLuther, in 1512, Jacques Lef\u00e8vre d'\u00c9taples laid down in the commentary\non his Latin translation of the Pauline Epistles the Lutheran\ndoctrine of grace, and in effect denied the received doctrine of\ntransubstantiation. [1984] In 1520 his former pupil, Guillaume\nBri\u00e7onnet, Bishop of Meaux, invited him and some younger reformers,\namong them Guillaume Farel, to join him in teaching in his diocese;\nand in 1523 appeared Lef\u00e8vre's translation of and commentary on\nthe gospels, which effectually began the Protestant movement in\nFrance. [1985]\n\nPersecution soon began. The king's adoring sister, Margaret, Duchess\nof Alen\u00e7on (afterwards Queen of Navarre), was the friend of Bri\u00e7onnet,\nbut was powerless to help at home even her own intimates. [1986] At\nfirst the king and his mother encouraged the movement at Meaux while\nsending out a dozen preachers through France to combat the Lutheran\nteaching; [1987] but in 1524, setting out on his Italian campaign,\nthe king saw fit to conciliate his clergy, and his clerical chancellor\nDu Prat began measures of repression, the queen-mother assenting, and\nBri\u00e7onnet's own brother assisting. Already, in 1521, the Sorbonne had\ncondemned Luther's writings, and the Parlement of Paris had ordered\nthe surrender of all copies. In 1523 the works of Louis de Berquin,\nthe anti-clerical friend of Erasmus, were condemned, and himself\nimprisoned; and Bri\u00e7onnet consented to issue synodal decrees against\nLuther's books and against certain Lutheran doctrines preached in\nhis own diocese. Only by the king's intervention was Berquin at this\ntime released.\n\nThe first man slain was Jean Chastellain, a shoemaker of Tournay,\nburned at Vic in Lorraine on January 12, 1525. The next was a\nwool-carder of Meaux, [1988] who was first whipped and branded\nfor a fanatical outrage, then burned to death, with slow tortures,\nfor a further outrage against an image of the Virgin at Metz (July,\n1525). Later, an ecclesiastic of the Meaux group, Jacques Banvan\nof Picardy, was prosecuted at Paris for anti-Lutheran heresy, and\npublicly recanted; but repented, retracted his abjuration, and was\nburned on the Place de Gr\u00e8ve, in August, 1526; a nameless \"hermit\nof Livry\" suffering the same death about the same time beside the\ncathedral of Notre Dame. [1989] Meantime Lef\u00e8vre had taken refuge\nin Strasburg, and, despite a letter of veto from the king, now in\ncaptivity at Madrid, his works were condemned by the Sorbonne. When\nreleased, the king not only recalled him but made him tutor to his\nchildren. Ecclesiastical pressures, however, forced him finally to\ntake refuge under the Queen of Navarre at N\u00e9rac, in Gascony, where\nhe mourned his avoidance of martyrdom. [1990]\n\nSo determined had been the persecution that in 1526 Berquin was\na second time imprisoned, and with difficulty saved from death\nby the written command of the captive king, sent on his sister's\nappeal. [1991] And when the released king, to secure the deliverance\nof his hostage sons, felt bound to conciliate the Pope, and to secure\nfunds had to conciliate the clergy, Marguerite, compelled to marry the\nking of Navarre, could do nothing more for Protestantism, [1992] being\nherself openly and furiously denounced by the Catholic clergy. [1993]\nBought by a clerical subsidy, the king, on the occasion of a new\noutrage on a statue of the Virgin (1528), [1994] associated himself\nwith the popular indignation; and when the audacious Berquin, despite\nthe dissuasions of Erasmus, resumed his anti-Catholic polemic, and in\nparticular undertook to prove that B\u00e9da, the chief of the Sorbonne,\nwas not a Christian, [1995] he was re-arrested, tried, and condemned\nto be publicly branded and imprisoned for life. On his announcing an\nappeal to the absent king, and to the pope, a fresh sentence, this\ntime of death, was hurriedly passed; and he was strangled and burned\n(1529) within two hours of the sentence, [1996] to the intense joy\nof the ecclesiastical multitude.\n\nAfter various vacillations, the king in 1534 had the fresh pretext\nof Protestant outrage--the affixing of an anti-Catholic placard in\nall of the principal thoroughfares of Paris, and to the door of the\nking's own room [1997]--for permitting a fresh persecution after\nhe had refused the Pope's request that he should join in a general\nextermination of heresy, [1998] and there began at Paris a series of\nhuman sacrifices. It will have been observed that Protestant outrages\nhad provoked previous executions; and there is some ground for the view\nthat, but for the new and exasperating outrage of 1534, the efforts\nwhich were being officially made for a modus vivendi might have met\nwith success. [1999] This hope was now frustrated. In November, 1534,\nseven men were condemned to be burned alive, one of them for printing\nLutheran books. In December others followed; and in January, 1535,\non the occasion of a royal procession \"to appease the wrath of God,\"\nsix Lutherans (by one account, three by another) were burned alive\nby slow fires, one of the victims being a school-mistress. [2000]\nIt was on this occasion that the king, in a public speech, declared:\n\"Were one of my arms infected with this poison, I would cut it\noff. Were my own children tainted, I should immolate them.\" [2001]\n\nUnder such circumstances religious zeal naturally went far. In six\nmonths there were passed 102 sentences of death, of which twenty-seven\nwere executed, the majority of the condemned having escaped by\nflight. Thereafter the individual burnings are past counting. On an\nold demand of the Sorbonne, the king actually sent to the Parlement\nan edict abolishing the art of printing; [2002] which he duly recalled\nwhen the Parlement declined to register it. But the French Government\nwas now committed to persecution. The Sorbonne's declaration against\nLuther in 1521 had proclaimed as to the heretics that \"their impious\nand shameless arrogance must be restrained by chains, by censures--nay,\nby fire and flame, rather than confuted by argument\"; [2003] and in\nthat spirit the ruling clergy proceeded, the king abetting them. In\n1543 he ordained that heresy should be punished as sedition; [2004] and\nin 1545 occurred the massacres of the Vaudois, before described. The\nresult of this and further savageries was simply the wider diffusion of\nheresy, and a whole era of civil war, devastation, and demoralization.\n\nMeantime Calvin had been driven abroad, to found a Protestant polity at\nGeneva and give a lead to those of England and Scotland. The balance\nof political forces prevented a Protestant polity in France; but\nnowhere else in the sixteenth century did Protestantism fight so long\nand hard a battle. That the Reformation was a product of \"Teutonic\nconscience\" is an inveterate fallacy. [2005] The country in which\nProtestantism was intellectually most disinterested and morally most\nactive was France. \"The main battle of erudition and doctrine against\nthe Catholic Church,\" justly contends Guizot, \"was sustained by the\nFrench reformers; it was in France and Holland, and always in French,\nthat most of the philosophic, historical, and polemic works on that\nside were written; neither Germany nor England, certainly, employed\nin the cause at that epoch more intelligence and science.\" [2006] Nor\nwas there in France--apart from the provocative insults to Catholics\nabove mentioned--any such licence on the Protestant side as arose in\nGermany, though the French Protestants were as violently intolerant\nas any. Their ultimate decline, after long and desperate wars ending\nin a political compromise, was due to the play of socio-economic\ncauses under the wise and tolerant administration of Richelieu, who\nopened the royal services to the Protestant nobles. [2007] The French\ncharacter had proved as unsubduable in Protestantism as any other; and\nthe generation which in large part gradually reverted to Catholicism\ndid but show that it had learned the lesson of the strifes which had\nfollowed on the Reformation--that Protestantism was no solution of\neither the moral or the intellectual problems of religion and politics.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 7. THE POLITICAL PROCESS IN BRITAIN\n\nIt was thus by no predilection or faculty of \"race\" that the\nReformation so-called came to be associated historically with the\nnorthern or \"Teutonic\" nations. They simply succeeded in making\npermanent, by reason of more propitious political circumstances,\na species of ecclesiastical revolution in which other races led the\nway. As Hussitism failed in Bohemia, Lollardism came to nothing\nin England in the same age, after a period of great vogue and\nactivity. [2008] The designs of Parliament on the revenues of the\nChurch at the beginning of the fifteenth century [2009] had failed by\nreason of the alliance knit between Church and Crown in the times when\nthe latter needed backing; and at the accession of Henry VIII England\nwas more orthodox than any of the other leading States of Northern\nEurope. [2010] Henry was himself passionately orthodox, and was much\nless of a reformer in his mental attitude than was Wolsey, who had\nfar-reaching schemes for de-Romanizing the Church alike in England and\nFrance, and who actually gave the king a handle against him by his\nplans for turning Church endowments to educational purposes. [2011]\nThe personal need of the despotic king for a divorce which the pope\ndared not give him was the first adequate lead to the rejection of the\npapal authority. On this the plunder of the monasteries followed, as\na forced measure of royal finance, [2012] of precaution against papal\ninfluence, and for the creation of a body of new interests vitally\nhostile to a papal restoration. The king and the mass of the people\nwere alike Catholics in doctrine; the Protestant nobles who ruled\nunder Edward VI were for the most part mere cynical plunderers,\nappropriating alike Church goods, lands, and school endowments\nmore shamelessly than even did the potentates of Germany; and on\nthe accession of Queen Mary the nation gladly reverted to Romish\nusages, though the spoil-holders would not surrender a yard of Church\nlands. [2013] Had there been a succession of Catholic sovereigns,\nCatholicism would certainly have been restored. Protestantism was\nonly slowly built up by the new clerical and heretical propaganda,\nand by the state of hostility set up between England and the Catholic\nPowers. It was the episode of the Spanish Armada that, by identifying\nCatholicism with the cause of the great national enemy, made the\npeople grow definitely anti-Catholic. Even in Shakespeare's dramas\nthe old state of things is seen not yet vitally changed.\n\nIn Scotland, though there the priesthood had fewer friends than almost\nanywhere else, the act of Reformation was mainly one of pure and\nsimple plunder of Church property by the needy nobility, in conscious\nimitation of the policy of Henry VIII, at a time when the throne\nwas vacant; and there too Protestant doctrine was only gradually\nestablished by the new race of preachers, trained in the school of\nCalvin. In Ireland, on the other hand, Protestantism became identified\nwith the cause of the oppressor, just as for England Romanism was\nthe cause of the enemy-in-chief. \"Race\" and \"national character,\"\nwhatever they may be understood to mean, had nothing whatever to do\nwith the course of events, and doctrinal enlightenment had just as\nlittle. [2014] In the words of a distinguished clerical historian:\n\"No truth is more certain than this, that the real motives of\nreligious action do not work on men in masses; and that the enthusiasm\nwhich creates Crusaders, Inquisitors, Hussites, Puritans, is not\nthe result of conviction, but of passion provoked by oppression or\nresistance, maintained by self-will, or stimulated by the mere desire\nof victory.\" [2015] To this it need only be added that the desire of\ngain is also a factor, and that accordingly the anti-papal movement\nsucceeded where the balance of political forces could be turned against\nthe clerical interest, and failed where the latter predominated.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nTHE REFORMATION AND FREETHOUGHT\n\n\n\u00a7 1. GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND\n\nIn the circumstances set forth in the last chapter, the Reformation\ncould stand for only the minimum of freethought needed to secure\npolitical action. Some decided unbelief there was within its\noriginal sphere; [2016] the best known instance being the private\nlatitudinarianism of such humanist teachers as Mutianus (Mudt) and\nCrotus (J\u00e4ger), of the Erfurt University, in the closing years of the\nfifteenth century. Trained in Italy, Mutianus, after his withdrawal\nto private life at Gotha, in his private correspondence [2017]\navowed the opinion that the sacred books contained many designed\nfables; that the books of Job and Jonah were such; and that there\nwas a secret wisdom in the Moslem opinion that Christ himself was\nnot crucified, his place being taken by someone resembling him. To\nhis young friend Spalatin he propounded the question: \"If Christ\nalone be the way, the truth, and the life, how went it with the men\nwho lived so many centuries before his birth? Had they had no part\nin truth and salvation?\" And he hints the answer that \"the religion\nof Christ did not begin with his incarnation, but is as old as the\nworld, as his birth from the Father. For what is the real Christ,\nthe only Son of God, save, as Paul says, the Wisdom of God, with\nwhich he endowed not only the Jews in their narrow Syrian land, but\nalso the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans, however different might\nbe their religious usages.\" Though some such doctrine could be found\nin Eusebius, [2018] it was remarkable enough in the Germany of four\nhundred years ago. But Mutianus went still further. To his friend\nHeinrich Urban he wrote that \"there is but one God and one Goddess\"\nunder the many forms and names of Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses, Christ,\nLuna, Ceres, Proserpina, Tellus, Maria. \"But,\" he prudently added,\n\"heed that you do not spread it abroad. One must hide it in silence,\nlike Eleusinian mysteries. In religious matters we must avail ourselves\nof the cloak of fable and enigma. Thou, with the grace of Jupiter--that\nis, the best and greatest God--shouldst silently despise the little\nGods. When I say Jupiter, I mean Christ and the true God. But enough\nof these all too high things.\" Such language hints of much current\nrationalism that can now only be guessed at, since it was unsafe even\nto write to friends as Mutianus did. On concrete matters of religion he\nis even more pronounced, laughing at the worship of the coat and beard\nand foreskin of Jesus, calling Lenten food fool's food, contemning\nthe begging monks, rejecting confession and masses for the dead,\nand pronouncing the hours spent in altar-service lost time. In his\nhouse at Gotha, behind the Cathedral, his friend Crotus burlesqued\nthe Mass, called the relics of saints bones from the gallows, and\notherwise blasphemed with his host. [2019]\n\nBut such esoteric doctrine and indoors unbelief can have had no part\nin the main movement; and though at the same period we see among\nthe common people the satirist Heinrich Bebel, a Swabian peasant's\nson, jesting for them over the doctrines of trinity in unity, the\nresurrection, doomsday, and the sacraments, [2020] it is certain that\nthat influence counted for little in the way of serious thinking. It\nwas only as separate and serious heresies that such doctrines could\nlong propagate themselves; and Luther in his letter to the people\nof Antwerp [2021] speaks of one sect or group as rejecting baptism,\nanother the eucharist, another the divinity of Jesus, and yet another\naffirming a middle state between the present life and the day of\njudgment. One teacher in Antwerp he describes as saying that every\nman has the Holy Ghost, that being simply reason and understanding,\nthat there is no hell, and that doing as we would be done by is\nfaith; but this heretic does not seem to have founded a sect. The\nmost extensive wave of really innovating thought was that set up by\nthe social and anti-sacerdotal revolt of the Anabaptists, among whom\noccurred also the first popular avowals of Unitarianism.\n\nIn the way of literature, Unitarian doctrine came from John Campanus,\nof J\u00fclich; Ludwig Hetzer, a priest of Z\u00fcrich; and (in a minor degree)\nJohann Denk, school-rector in N\u00fcremberg in 1524, [2022] and afterwards\none of the earlier leaders of the Anabaptist movement. All three\nwere men of academic training; and Hetzer, who wrote explicitly\nagainst the divinity of Christ, had previously made with the aid of\nDenk a German translation, which was used by Luther, of the Hebrew\nprophets (1527). He was beheaded at Constance in 1529, nominally on\nthe charge of practising free-love. [2023] Campanus, who published a\nbook attacking the doctrine of the Trinity and the teaching of Luther,\nhad to leave Wittemberg in consequence, and finally died after a long\nimprisonment in Cleve. Denk--an amiable and estimable man [2024]--is\nsaid, on very scant grounds, to have recanted before he died.\n\nNot only from such thoroughgoing heresy, but from the whole Anabaptist\nsecession, and no less from the rising of the peasants, the main\nLutheran movement kept itself utterly aloof; and, though the Catholics\nnaturally identified the extremer parties with the Reformation, its\nofficial or \"Centre\" polity made little for intellectual or political\nas distinct from ecclesiastical innovation. Towards the Peasants'\nRevolt, which at first he favoured, inasmuch as the peasants, whom\nhe had courted, came to him for counsel, Luther's final attitude was\nso brutal that it has to-day almost no apologist; and in this as in\nsome of his other evil departures the \"mild\" Melanchthon went with\nhim. [2025] Their doctrine was the very negation of all democracy,\nand must be interpreted as an absolute capitulation to the nobles,\nwithout whose backing they knew themselves to be ecclesiastically\nhelpless. In the massacres to which Luther gave his eager approval a\nhundred thousand men were destroyed. [2026] \"From this time onwards,\"\npronounces Baur, \"Luther ceases to be the representative of the\nspirit of his time; he represents only one side of it.... Thenceforth\nhis writings have no more the universal bearing they once had,\nbut only a particular.... In the political connection we must date\nfrom Luther's attitude to the Peasants' War the Lutheran theory of\nunconditional obedience. Christianity, as Luther preached it, has\ngiven to princes unlimited power of despotism and tyranny; while the\npoor man, who, without right of protest, must submit to everything,\nwill be compensated for his earthly sufferings in heaven.\" [2027]\nNaturally the princes henceforth grew more and more Lutheran.\n\nAs naturally the crushed peasantry turned away from the Reformation in\ndespair. Luther had in the first instance approached them, not they\nhim. Before the revolt the reformers had made the peasant a kind of\nhero in their propaganda; [2028] and when in the first and moderate\nstage of the rising its motives were set forth in sixty-two articles,\nthese were purely agrarian. \"There is no trace of a religious element\nin them, no indication that their authors had ever heard of Luther\nor of the Gospel.\" [2029] Then it was that Luther commended them;\nand thereafter \"a religious element began to obtrude.\" [2030] When\nthe overthrow began, doubtless sincerely reprobating the violences of\nthe insurgents, he hounded on the princes in their work of massacre,\nMelanchthon chiming in. Thereafter, as Melanchthon admitted, the\npeople showed a detestation of the Lutheran clergy; [2031] and among\nmany there was even developed a kind of \"materialistic atheism.\" [2032]\n\nThe political outcome, as aforesaid, was a thoroughly undemocratic\norganization of Protestantism in Germany; and, though the\necclesiastical tyranny which resulted from the more democratic system\nof Calvin was not more favourable to progress or happiness, the final\nGerman system of cujus regio, ejus religio--every district taking\nthe religion of its ruler--must be summed up as a mere negation of\nthe right of private judgment. Save for the attempt of a Frenchman,\nFran\u00e7ois Lambert of Avignon, to organize a self-governing church,\nGerman Protestantism showed almost no democratic feeling. [2033] The\none poor excuse for Luther was that the peasants had never recognized\nthe need or duty of maintaining their clergy. [2034] And seeing how\nthe wealth of the Church went to the nobles and the well-to-do, and\nhow downtrodden were the peasants all along, it would be surprising\nindeed if they had. They were not the workers of the ecclesiastical\nReformation, and it wrought little or nothing for them.\n\nThe side on which the whole movement made for new light was its\npromotion of common schools, which enabled many of the people for\nthe first time to read. [2035] This tendency had been seen among\nthe Waldenses, the Lollards, and the Hussites, and for the same\nreasons. Such movements depended for their existence on the reading\nof the sacred books by the people for themselves; and to make readers\nwas their first concern. In this connection, of course, note must\nbe taken of the higher educational revival before the Reformation,\n[2036] without which the ecclesiastical revolution could not have\ntaken place even in Germany. As we saw, a literary expansion preceded\nthe Hussite movement in Bohemia; and the stir of concern for written\nknowledge, delightedly acclaimed by Ulrich von Hutten, is recognized by\nall thoughtful historians in Germany before the rise of Luther. Such\nenlightenment as that of Mutianus was far in advance of Luther's own;\nand enlightenment of a lower degree cannot have been lacking. The\nability to read, indeed, must have been fairly general in the middle\nclass in Germany, for it appears that the partisan favour shown\neverywhere to Luther's writings by the printers and booksellers gave\nhim an immense propagandist advantage over his Catholic opponents,\nwho could secure for their replies only careless or bad workmanship,\nand were thus made to seem actually illiterate in the eyes of the\nreading public. [2037]\n\nAs regards Switzerland, again, it is the admitted fact that \"the\neducational movement began before the religious revival, and was a\ncause of the Reformation rather than a result.\" [2038] So in Holland,\nthe Brethren of the Common Lot (Fratres Vit\u00e6 Communis), a partially\ncommunistic but orthodox order of learned and unlearned laymen which\nlasted from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, did much for\nthe schooling of the common people, and passed on their impulse to\nGermany. [2039] Similarly in Scotland the schools seem to have been\nfairly numerous even in the later Catholic period. [2040] There, and\nin some other countries, it was the main merit of the Reformation to\ncarry on zealously the work so begun, setting up common schools in\nevery parish. In Lutheran Germany this work was for a long period much\nmore poorly done, as regarded the peasantry. These had been trodden\ndown after their revolt into a state of virtual slavery. \"The broad\nmidlands and the entire eastern part of Germany were filled with\nslaves, who had neither status nor property nor education\"; [2041]\nand it was long before any large number of the people were taught to\nread and write, [2042] the schooling given at the best being a scanty\ntheological drill. [2043]\n\nBut indeed for two-thirds of its adherents everywhere the Reformation\nmeant no other reading than that of the Bible and catechisms and\ntheological treatises. Coming as it did within one or two generations\nof the invention of printing, it stood not for new ideas, but for\nthe spread of old. That invention had for a time positively checked\nthe production of new books, the multiplication of the old having\nin a measure turned attention to the past; [2044] and the diffusion\nof the Bible in particular determined the mental attitude of the\nmovement in mass. The thinking of its more disinterested promoters\nbegan and ended in Bibliolatry: Luther and Calvin alike did but\nset up an infallible book and a local tyranny against an infallible\npope and a tyranny centring at Rome. Neither dreamt of toleration;\nand Calvin, the more competent mind of the two, did but weld the\ndetached irrationalities of the current theology into a system which\ncrushed reason and stultified the morality in the name of which he\nruled Geneva with a rod of iron. [2045] It is remarkable that both\nmen reverted to the narrowest orthodoxies of the earlier Church, in\ndefiance of whatever spirit of reasonable inquiry had been on the\nside of their movement. \"It is a quality of faith,\" wrote Luther,\n\"that it wrings the neck of reason and strangles the beast\"; [2046]\nand he repeatedly avowed that it was only by submitting his mind\nabsolutely to the Scriptures that he could retain his faith. [2047]\n\"He despised reason as heartily as any papal dogmatist could despise\nit. He hated the very thought of toleration or comprehension.\" [2048]\nAnd when Calvin was combated by the Catholic Pighius on the question of\npredestination and freewill, his defence was that he followed Christ\nand the Apostles, while his opponents resorted to human thoughts and\nreasonings. [2049] On the same principle he dealt with the Copernican\ntheory. After once breaking away from Rome both leaders became typical\nanti-freethinkers, never even making Savonarola's pretence to resort\nto rationalist methods, though of course not more anti-rationalist\nthan he. The more reasonable Zwingli, who tried to put an intelligible\naspect on one or two of the mysteries of the faith, was scouted by\nboth, as they scouted each other.\n\nIt is noteworthy that Zwingli, the most open-minded of the Reformers,\nowed his relative enlightenment to his general humanist culture,\n[2050] and in particular to the influence of Pico della Mirandola\nand of Erasmus. It has even been argued that his whole theological\nsystem is derived from Pico, [2051] but it appears to have been from\nErasmus that he drew his semi-rationalistic view of the eucharist,\n[2052] a development of that of Berengar, representing it as\na simple commemoration. Such thinking was far from the \"spirit\nof the Reformation\"; and Luther, after the Colloquy of Marburg\n(1529), in which he and Melanchthon debated against Zwingli and\nOecolampadius, spoke of those \"Sacramentarians\" as \"not only liars,\nbut the very incarnation of lying, deceit, and hypocrisy.\" [2053]\nZwingli's language is less ferocious; but it is confessed of him\nthat he too practised coercion against minorities in the case alike\nof the Anabaptists and of the monasteries and nunneries, and even\nin the establishment of his reformed eucharist. [2054] The expulsion\nof the nuns of St. Katherinenthal in particular was an act of sheer\ntyranny; and the outcome of the methods enforced by him at Z\u00fcrich\nwas the bitter hostility of the five Forest Cantons, which remained\nCatholic. In war with them he lost his life; and after his death\n(1531) his sacramental doctrine rapidly disappeared from Swiss and\nContinental Protestantism, [2055] even as it failed to make headway\nin England. [2056] At his fall \"the words of triumph and cursing used\nby Lutherans and others were shameful and almost inhuman.\" [2057]\nIn the sequel, for sheer lack of a rational foundation, the other\nProtestant sects in turn fell to furious dissension and persecution,\nsome apparently finding their sole bond of union in hatred of the rest.\n\n\n See Menzel, Geschichte der Deutschen, 3te Aufl. Cap. 431, for a\n sample of Lutheran popery; and as to the strifes cp. C. Beard, The\n Reformation, as cited, pp. 182-83; Dunham, History of the Germanic\n Empire, 1835, iii, 115-20, 153, 169; Strype, Memorials of Cranmer,\n ed. 1848, iii, 155-62; A. F. Pollard, in \"The Cambridge Modern\n History,\" vol. ii, The Reformation, ch. viii, pp. 277-79. In the\n last-cited compilation, however, the strifes of the Protestant\n sects are barely indicated.\n\n As to Luther's attitude towards new science, see his derision of\n Copernicus, on scriptural grounds, in the Table Talk, ch. lxix,\n Of Astronomy and Astrology. (The passage is omitted from\n the English translation in the Bohn Library, p. 341; and the\n whole chapter is dropped from the German abridgment published\n by Reclam.) Melanchthon was equally unteachable, and actually\n proposed to suppress the new teachings by punitive methods. (Initia\n Doctrin\u00e6 Physic\u00e6, cited by White, Warfare of Science and Theology,\n 1896, i, 127.) It has been loosely claimed for Luther that he was\n \"an enemy to religious persecution\" (Lieber, Manual of Political\n Ethics, 1839, pt. i, p. 329), when the only evidence offered is\n (id. p. 205) that he declared against killing for heresy, because\n innocent men were likely to be slain--\"Quare nullo modo possum\n admittere, falsos doctores occidi.\" As early as 1524, renouncing\n his previous doctrine of non-coercion, he invoked the intervention\n of the State to punish blasphemy, declaring that the power of the\n sword was given by God for such ends (Bezold, p. 563). Melanchthon\n too declared that \"Our commands are mere Platonic laws when the\n civil power does not give its support\" (id. p. 565).\n\n A certain intellectual illusion is set up even by Bezold when he\n writes that in Luther's resort to physical force \"the hierarchical\n principle had triumphed over one of the noblest principles of the\n Reformation.\" \"The Reformation\" had no specific principles. Among\n its promoters were professed all manner of principles. The\n Reformation was the outcome of all their activities, and to make\n of it an entity or even a distinct set of theories is to obscure\n the phenomena.\n\n Such flaws of formulation, however, are trifling in comparison\n with the mis-statement of the historic fact which is still normal\n in academic as in popular accounts of the Reformation. It would\n be difficult, for instance, to give seriously a more misleading\n account of the Lutheran reformation than the proposition of\n Dr. Edward Caird that, \"in thrusting aside the claim of the\n Church to place itself between the individual and God, Luther\n had proclaimed the emancipation of men not only from the leading\n strings of the Church, but, in effect, from all external authority\n whatever, and even, in a sense, from all merely external teaching\n or revelation of the truth\" (Hegel, 1883, p. 18). Luther thrust\n his own Church precisely where the Catholic Church had been;\n bitterly denounced new heresies; and put the Bible determinedly\n \"between the individual and God.\" In Luther's own day Sebastian\n Franck unanswerably accused him of setting up a paper pope in place\n of the human pope he had rejected. Luther's declaration was that\n \"the ungodly papists prefer the authority of the Church far above\n God's Word, a blasphemy abominable and not to be endured, wherewith\n ... they spit in God's face. Truly God's patience is exceeding\n great, in that they be not destroyed\" (Table Talk, ch. i).\n\n Another misconception is set up by Pattison, who seems to have been\n much concerned to shield Calvin from the criticism of the civilized\n conscience (see below, p. 452). He pronounces that Calvin's \"great\n merit lies in his comparative neglect of dogma. He seized the idea\n of reformation as a real renovation of human character\" (Essays,\n ii, 23). If so, the reformer can have had little satisfaction,\n for he never admitted having regenerated Geneva. But the claim\n that he \"comparatively\" neglected dogma is true only in the sense\n that he was more inquisitorially zealous about certain forms of\n private conduct than was Luther. Gruet, indeed, he helped to\n slay upon political charges, taking a savage vengeance upon a\n personal opponent. But even in Gruet's case he sought later to\n add a religious justification to his crime. And it was in the\n name of dogma that he put Servetus to death, exiled Castalio,\n imprisoned Bolsec, broke with old friends, and imperilled the\n entire Genevan polity. Pattison's praise would be much more\n appropriate to Zwingli.\n\n\nLuther, though he would probably have been ready enough to punish\nCopernicus as a heretic, was saved the evil chance which befel\nCalvin of being put in a place of authority where he could in God's\nname commit judicial murder. It is by acts so describable that\nthe name of Calvin is most directly connected with the history of\nfreethought. In nowise entitled to rank with its furtherers, he is\nto be enrolled in the evil catalogue of its persecutors. In the case\nof Jacques Gruet on a mixture of political and religious charges,\nin that of Michael Servetus on grounds of dogma pure and simple, he\ncast upon the record of Genevan Protestantism and upon his own memory\nan ineffaceable stain of blood. Gruet, an adherent of the Perrinist\nfaction of Geneva, a party opposed to Calvin, on being arrested for\nissuing a placard against the clerical junto in power, was found,\nby the accounts of the Calvinist historians, to have among his papers\nsome revealing his disbelief in the Christian religion. [2058] This,\nhowever, proves to be a partisan account of the matter, and is hardly\neven in intention truthful. In the first place, it was admitted by\nCalvin that the placard, affixed by night to the chair of St. Peter\nin Geneva, was not in Gruet's handwriting; yet he was arrested,\nimprisoned, and put to the torture with the avowed object of making\nhim confess \"that he had acted at the instigation of Fran\u00e7ois Favre,\nof the wife of Perrin, and of other accomplices of the same party whom\nhe must have had.\" Perrin was the former Captain-General of Geneva,\na popular personage, opposed to Calvin and detested by him. No match\nfor the vigilant Reformer, Perrin had been through Calvin's intrigues\ndeprived of his post; and there was a standing feud between his\nfriends and the Calvinistic party in power.\n\nThe main part of the charges against Gruet was political; and the\nmost circumstantial was based upon a draft, found among his papers,\nof a speech which he had ostensibly proposed to make in the General\nCouncil calling for reform of abuses. The speech contained nothing\nseditious, but the intention to deliver it without official permission\nwas described as l\u00e8se-majest\u00e9--a term now newly introduced into\nGenevan procedure. The other documentary proofs were trivial. In\none fragment of a letter there was an ironical mention of \"notre\ngalant Calvin\"; and in a note on a margin of Calvin's book against\nthe Anabaptists he had written in Latin \"All trifles.\" For the rest,\nhe was accused of writing two pages in Latin \"in which are comprised\nseveral errors,\" and of being \"inclined (plut\u00f4t enclin) to say,\nrecite and write false opinions and errors as to the true words of\nOur Saviour.\" [2059] Concerning his errors the only documentary proof\npreserved is from an alleged scrap of his writing in corrupt Latin,\ncited by Calvin as a sample of his inability to write Latin correctly:\nOmnes tam humane quam divine que dicantur leges factae sunt ad placitum\nhominum, which may be rendered, \"All so-called laws, divine as well\nas human, are made at the will of men.\" In the act of sentence, he is\ndeclared further to have written obscene verses justifying free love;\nto have striven to ruin the authority of the consistory, menaced the\nministers, and abused Calvin; and to have \"conspired with the king\nof France against the safety of Calvin and the State.\"\n\nTo make out these charges, for the last of which there seems to be\nno evidence whatever, Gruet was put to the torture many times during\nmany days \"according to the manner of the time,\" says one of Calvin's\nbiographers. [2060] In reality such unmeasured use of torture was\nin Geneva a Calvinistic innovation. Gruet, refusing under the worst\nstress of torture to incriminate anyone else, at length, in order to\nend it, pleaded guilty to the charges against him, praying in his\nlast extremity for a speedy death. On July 26, 1547, his half-dead\nbody was beheaded on the scaffold, the torso being tied and the\nfeet nailed thereto. Such were the judicial methods and mercies of\na reformed Christianity, guided by a chief reformer.\n\n\n The biographer Henry \"cannot repress a sigh\" over the thirty\n days of double torture of Gruet (ii, 66), but goes on to make a\n most disingenuous defence of Calvin, first asserting that he was\n not responsible, and then arguing that it would be as unjust to\n try Calvin by modern standards as to blame him for not wearing a\n perruque \u00e0 la Louis XIV, or proceeding by the Code Napol\u00e9on! The\n same moralist declares (p. 68) that \"it is really inspiriting to\n hear how Calvin stormed in his sermons against the opposite party\":\n and is profoundly impressed by the \"deep religious earnestness\"\n with which Calvin in 1550 claimed that \"The council ought again\n to declare aloud that this blasphemer has been justly condemned,\n that the wrath of God may be averted from the city.\" Finally\n (p. 69), recording how Gruet's \"book\" was burned in 1550, the\n biographer pronounces that \"The Gospel thus gained a victory over\n its enemies; in the same manner as in Germany freedom triumphed\n when Luther burnt the pope's bull.\"\n\n\nAs to the alleged anti-religious writings of Gruet, they were not\nproduced or even specified till 1550, three years after his execution,\nwhen they were said to have been found partly in the roof of what\nhad been his house (now occupied by the secretary of the consistory),\npartly behind a chimney, and partly in a dustbin. Put together, they\namounted to thirteen leaves, in a handwriting which was declared by\nCalvin to be \"juridically, by good examination of trustworthy men,\nrecognized to be that of Gruet.\" The time and the singular manner of\ntheir discovery raises the question whether the papers had not been\nplaced by the finders. The execution of Gruet, the first bloodshed\nunder Calvin's r\u00e9gime, had roused new hatred against him; the slain\nman figured as a martyr in the eyes of the party to which he belonged;\nand it had become necessary to discredit him and them if the ascendancy\nof Calvin was to be secure. It is solely upon Calvin's account that\nwe have to depend for our knowledge of Gruet's alleged anti-Christian\ndoctrine; for the document, after being described and condemned, was\nduly burned by the common hangman. If genuine, it was a remarkable\nperformance. According to the act of condemnation, which is in the\nhandwriting of Calvin, it derided all religions alike, blasphemed\nGod, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, Moses, the Patriarchs,\nthe Prophets, the Apostles, the disciples, the gospels, the Old and\nNew Testaments, the gospel miracles, and the resurrection. [2061]\nNot a single phrase is quoted; we have mere general description,\nexecration, and sentence.\n\nWhether the document was a planned forgery, or part of a copy by\nGruet of an anti-Christian treatise theretofore secretly circulated,\nwill never be known. The story of Gruet soon swelled into a\nlegend. According to one narrative, he had copied with his own hand and\ncirculated in Geneva the mysterious treatise, De Tribus Impostoribus,\nthe existence of which, at that period, is very doubtful. [2062]\nOn the strength of this and other cases [2063] the Libertines have\nbeen sometimes supposed to be generally unbelievers; but there is\nno more evidence for this than for the general ascription to them\nof licentious conduct. It appears certain indeed that at that time\nthe name Libertine was not recognized as a label for all of Calvin's\npolitical opponents, but was properly reserved for the sect so-called;\n[2064] but even a vindicator of Calvin admits that \"it is undeniable\nthat the Libertines [i.e. the political opponents of Calvin, so-called\nby modern writers] of 1555 were the true political representatives of\nthe patriots of 1530.\" [2065] The presumption is that the political\nopposition included the more honest and courageous men of liberal and\ntolerant tendencies, as Calvin's own following included men of \"free\"\nlife. [2066] The really antinomian Libertini of the period were to\nbe found among the pantheistic-Christian sect or school so-called,\notherwise known as Spirituals, who seem to have been a branch of\nthe Brethren of the Free Spirit, or fraternity of the \"Spirit of\nLiberty.\" These Calvin denounced in his manner; but in 1544 he had also\nforced into exile his former friend, Sebastian Castalio (or Castalion;\nproperly Chatillon), master of the public school at Geneva, for simply\nrejecting his doctrine of absolute predestination, striving to have him\ndriven in turn from Basel; and in 1551 he had caused to be imprisoned\nand banished a physician and ex-Carmelite, Jerome Bolsec, for publicly\ndenying the same dogma. Bolsec, being prevented by Calvin's means\nfrom settling in any neighbouring Protestant community, returned to\nCatholicism, [2067] as did many others. After Calvin's death Bolsec\ntook his revenge in an attack on the reformer in his public and\nprivate character, [2068] which has been treated as untrustworthy\nby the more moderate Catholic scholars who deal with the period;\n[2069] and which, as regards its account of his private morals, is\nprobably on all fours with Calvin's own unscrupulous charges against\nthe \"Libertines\" and others who opposed him.\n\n\n The tenets of the Libertini are somewhat mystifying, as handled\n by Calvin and his biographer Henry, both alike animated by\n the odium theologicum in the highest degree. By Calvin's own\n account they were mystical Christians, speaking of Christ as \"the\n spirit which is in the world and in us all,\" and of the devil\n and his angels as having no proper existence, being identical\n with the world and sin. Further, they denied the eternity of\n the human soul and the freedom of the will; and Calvin charges\n them with subverting alike belief in God and morality (Henry,\n Life of Calvin, Eng. tr. ii, 45-46). The last charge could\n just as validly be brought against his own predestinarianism;\n and as regards ethics we find Calvin alternately denouncing the\n Libertines for treating all sin as unpardonable, and for stating\n that in Christ none could sin. Apparently he gives his inferences\n as their doctrines; and the antinomianism which, in the case of\n the trial of Madame Ameaux, Henry identifies with pantheism, was\n by his own showing of a Christian cast. Little credit, accordingly,\n can be given to his summing up that among the Libertines of Geneva\n there exhibited itself \"a perfectly-formed anti-Christianity,\"\n which he calls \"a true offspring of hell\" (ii, 49). The residuum\n of truth appears to be that in the pantheism of this sect,\n as Neander says concerning the Brethren of the Free Spirit\n among the Beghards, there were \"the foretokens of a thoroughly\n anti-Christian tendency, hostile to everything supernatural, every\n sentiment of a God above the world; a tendency which contained\n ... the germ of absolute rationalism\" (Hist. of the Chr. Church,\n Torrey's tr. ix, 536). Pantheism, logically extended, obviously\n reduces the supernatural and the natural to unity, and is thus\n atheistic. But that the pantheists of Geneva in Calvin's day\n reached logical consistency is incredible. The Libertine sect,\n in all likelihood, was only partially antinomian, and only in\n very small part consciously anti-Christian.\n\n\nAt this period (1552), on the same issue of predestination, Calvin\nbroke utterly with one of his closest friends, Jacques de Bourgogne,\nSieur de Falais. [2070] It seemed as if the Protestant polity\nwere disrupting in a continuous convulsion of dogmatic strife; and\nMelanchthon wrote to Bucer in despair over the madness and misery of\na time in which Geneva was returning to the fatalism of the Stoics,\nand imprisoning whosoever would not agree with Zeno. [2071] By this\ntime it must have been clear to some that behind the strifes of\nraging theologians there lay a philosophic problem which they could\nnot sound. It is therefore not surprising to learn that already Basel\nUniversity, as fifty years before at Erfurt, there was a latitudinarian\ngroup of professors who aimed at a universal religion, and came near\n\"naturalism\" in the attempt; [2072] while elsewhere in Switzerland,\nas we shall see later, there grew up the still freer way of thought\nwhich came to be known as Deism.\n\nA great impulse to that development, as well as to simple Unitarianism,\nmust have been given by the execution of Michael Servetus. [2073]\nThat ill-starred heretic, born of Spanish stock in France, brought\nto the propaganda of Unitarianism, of which he may be reckoned the\ninaugurator, a determination as strong as Calvin's own. Sent by his\nfather to study civil law at Toulouse, he began there to study the\nBible, doubtless under the stimulus of the early Protestant discussions\nof the time. The result was a prompt advance beyond the Protestant\nstandpoint. Leaving Toulouse after two or three years' residence, he\nvisited Bologna and Augsburg in the train of the confessor of Charles\nV. Thereafter he visited Lyons and Geneva, and had some intercourse\nwith Oecolampadius at Basel, where he put in the hands of a bookseller\nthe signed manuscript of his first book, De Trinitatis erroribus libri\nseptem. The bookseller sent it on to Hagenau, in Alsace, which as an\n\"imperial city\" seems to have had special freedom in the matter of\nbook-publishing; and thither, after visiting Bucer and Capito at\nStrasburg, Servetus went to have it printed in 1531. [2074] In this\ntreatise, produced in his twenty-first year, he definitely rejects\nTrinitarianism, while putting somewhat obscurely his own idea of\nthe nature of Jesus Christ--whom, it should be noted, he held in\nhigh reverence. In the following year he produced at the same place\nanother small treatise, Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duo, wherein\nhe recasts his first work, \"retracting\" it and apologizing for its\ncrudity, but standing substantially to its positions. It was not\ntill 1553 that he printed at Vienne in Dauphin\u00e9, without his name,\nhis Christianismi Restitutio. [2075] In the interval he had been\ndoing scientific work as an editor of Ptolemy (1535, Lyons), and as a\nstudent of and lecturer on anatomy and medicine at Paris, where (1536)\nhe met Calvin on his last visit to France. In 1538 he is found studying\nat Louvain; and, after practising medicine at Avignon and Charlieu,\nhe again studies medicine at Montpellier. The Archbishop of Vienne,\nwho had heard him lecture at Paris, established him at Vienne as his\nconfidential physician (1541-53), and there it was that he produced\nthe book for which he died. About 1545-46 he had rashly written to\nCalvin, sending him the MS. of the much-expanded recast of his books\nwhich later appeared as the Restitutio. Calvin sent a hostile reply,\nand on the same day wrote to Farel: \"If he come, and my influence can\navail, I shall not suffer him to depart alive.\" Servetus had denounced\nthe papacy as fiercely as any Protestant could wish, yet his heresy on\nthe question of the Trinity [2076] was enough to doom him to instant\ndeath at Calvin's hands. Servetus could not get back his MS., and\nwrote to a friend about 1547 that he felt sure the affair would bring\nhim to his death. [2077] When in 1552-53 he had the book privately\nprinted at Vienne, and the bulk of the edition was sent to Lyons and\nFrankfort, the toils closed around him, the ecclesiastical authorities\nat Lyons being apprised of the facts by de Trie, a Genevan Protestant,\nformerly of Lyons. The whole Protestant world, in fact, was of one\nopinion in desiring to suppress Servetus's anti-Trinitarian books,\nand the wonder is that he had so long escaped both Protestant and\nCatholic fury. Luther had called his first book horribly wicked; and\nMelanchthon, who in 1533 foresaw from the second much dangerous debate,\nwrote in 1539 to the Venetian Senate to warn them against letting\neither be sold. [2078] It is significant of the random character of\nProtestant as of Catholic thought that Servetus, like Melanchthon,\nwas a convinced believer in astrology, [2079] while Luther on Biblical\ngrounds rejected astrology and the Copernican astronomy alike, and\nheld devoutly by the belief in witchcraft. The superiority of Servetus\nconsists in his real scientific work--he having in part given out the\ntrue doctrine of the circulation of the blood [2080]--and his objection\nto all persecution of heresy. [2081] Philosophically, he was more than\na mere Scripturist. Though pantheism was not charged upon him, we have\nCalvin's testimony that he propounded it in the strongest form. [2082]\n\nCalvin's guilt in the matter begins with his devices to have\nServetus seized by the Catholic authorities of Lyons [2083]--to set\nmisbelievers, as he regarded them, to slay the misbeliever--and his\nuse of Servetus's confidential letters against him. [2084] He was\nnot repelling a heresy from his own city, but heretic-hunting far\naway in sheer malignity. The Catholics were the less cruel gaolers,\nand let their prisoner escape, condemning him to death at Vienne\nin absence. After some months of wandering he had the temerity to\nseek to pass into Italy by way of Geneva, and was there at length\nrecognized, and arrested. After a long trial he was sentenced to be\nburned alive (Oct. 27, 1553). The trial at Geneva is a classic document\nin the records of the cruelties committed in honour of chimeras; and\nCalvin's part is the sufficient proof that the Protestant could hold\nhis own with the Catholic Inquisitor in the spirit of hate. [2085]\nIt has been urged, in his excuse, that the doctrines of Servetus were\nblasphemously put; but in point of fact Calvin passed some of his\nbitterest denunciation on the statement, cited (from Lorenz Friese)\nin a note in Servetus's edition of Ptolemy's Geography, that Judea is\nactually a barren and meagre country, and not \"flowing with milk and\nhoney.\" Despite the citation of ample proof, and the plea that the\npassage was drawn from a previous edition, it was by Calvin adjudged\nblasphemous in that it \"necessarily inculpated Moses and grievously\noutraged the Holy Spirit.\" [2086] The language of Calvin against\nServetus at this point is utterly furious. Had Servetus chanced to\nmaintain the doctrine of the earth's motion, he would certainly have\nbeen adjudged a blasphemer on that score also; for in the Argument\nto his Commentary on Genesis (1563) Calvin doggedly maintains the\nPtolemaic theory. His language tells of much private freethinking\naround him on the Mosaic doctrine, and his tone leaves no doubt as\nto how he would treat published heresy on that theme. The audacity of\nServetus in suggesting that the 53rd chapter of Isaiah had historical\nreference to Cyrus is for him anathema. [2087]\n\nEven before this hideous episode, Calvin's passion of malevolence\nagainst his theological opponents in his own sect is such as to\nshock some of his adoring biographers. [2088] All the Protestant\nleaders, broadly speaking, grew more intolerant as they grew in\nyears--a fair test as between the spirit of dogma and the spirit of\nfreethought. Calvin had begun by pleading for tolerance and clemency;\nLuther, beginning as a humanitarian, soon came to be capable\nof hounding on the German nobility against the unhappy peasants;\nMelanchthon, tolerant in his earlier days, applauded the burning of\nServetus; [2089] Beza laboriously defended the act. Erasmus stood\nfor tolerance; and Luther accordingly called him godless, an enemy\nof true religion, a slanderer of Christ, a Lucian, an Epicurean, and\n(by implication) the greatest knave alive. [2090]\n\nThe burning of Servetus in 1553, however, marked a turning point in\nProtestant theological practice on the Continent. There were still\nto come the desperate religious wars in France, in which more than\n300,000 houses were destroyed, abominable savageries were committed,\nand all civilization was thrown back, both materially and morally;\nand there was yet to come the still more appalling calamity of the\nThirty Years' War in Germany--a result of the unstable political\nconditions set up at the Reformation; but theological human sacrifices\nwere rapidly discredited. Servetus was not the first victim, but he\nwas nearly the last.\n\nThe jurist Matthieu Gripaldi (or Gribaldo) lectured on law at\nToulouse, Cahors, Valence, and Padua successively, and, finding his\nanti-Trinitarian leanings everywhere a source of danger to him, had\nsought a retreat at Fargias near Geneva, then in the jurisdiction\nof Berne. Venturing to remonstrate with Calvin against the sentence\non Servetus, he brought upon himself the angry scrutiny of the\nheretic-hunter, and was banished from the neighbourhood. For a time\nhe found refuge in a new professorship at T\u00fcbingen; but there too the\nalarm was raised, and he was expelled. Coming back to Fargias, he gave\nrefuge to the heretic Valentinus Gentilis on his escape from Geneva;\nand again Calvin attacked him, delivering him to the authorities of\nBerne. An abjuration saved him for the time; but he would probably\nhave met the martyr's fate in time had not his death by the plague,\nin 1564, guaranteed him, as Bayle remarks, against any further trial\nfor heresy. [2091]\n\n\n The effect of theological bias on moral judgment is\n interestingly exemplified in the comment of Mosheim on the case\n of Servetus. Unable to refer to the beliefs of deists or atheists\n without vituperation, Mosheim finds it necessary to add to his\n account of Servetus as a highly-gifted and very learned man the\n qualification: \"Yet he laboured under no small moral defects,\n for he was beyond all measure arrogant, and at the same time\n ill-tempered, contentious, unyielding, and a semi-fanatic.\" Every\n one of these characterizations is applicable in the highest\n degree to Calvin, and in a large degree to Luther; yet for them\n the historian has not a word of blame.\n\n Even among rationalists it has not been uncommon to make light\n of Calvin's crimes on the score that his energy maintained a\n polity which alone sustained Protestantism against the Catholic\n Reaction. This is the verdict of Michelet: \"The Renaissance,\n betrayed by the accident of the mobilities of France, turning\n to the wind of light volitions, would assuredly have perished,\n and the world would have fallen into the great net of the fishers\n of men, but for that supreme concentration of the Reformation on\n the rock of Geneva by the bitter genius of Calvin.\" And again:\n \"Against the immense and darksome net into which Europe fell by the\n abandonment of France nothing less than this heroic seminary could\n avail\" (Hist. de France, vol. x, La R\u00e9forme: end of pref. and end\n of vol.). Though this verdict has been accepted by such critical\n thinkers as Pattison (Essays, ii, 30-32) and Lord Morley (Romanes\n Lecture on Machiavelli, 1877, p. 47), it is difficult to find\n for it any justification in history.\n\n The nature of the proposition is indeed far from clear. Michelet\n appears to mean that Geneva saved Europe as constituting a\n political rallying-point, a nucleus for Protestantism. Pattison,\n pronouncing that \"Calvinism saved Europe\" (Essays, ii, 32),\n explains that it was by \"a positive education of the individual\n soul\"; and that \"this, and this alone, enabled the Reformation to\n make head against the terrible repressive forces brought to bear\n by Spain--the Inquisition and the Jesuits\" (p. 32). The thesis\n thus vanishes in rhetoric, for it is quite impossible to give\n such a formula any significance in the light of the history of\n Protestantism in Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, and Holland. It\n implies that where Protestantism finally failed--as in Italy,\n France, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Belgium, parts of Germany,\n and parts of Switzerland--it was because the individual spirit\n had not been educated enough, which is a mere omission to note\n the real economic and political causation. Neither Michelet nor\n Pattison had any scientific notion of the nature of the process.\n\n If we revert to Michelet's claim, we get no more satisfaction. The\n very fact that Calvin's polity could subsist without any special\n military protection is the proof that it could have subsisted\n without the gross cruelty and systematic persecution which marked\n it out from the rest of the world, making Geneva \"a kind of frozen\n hell of austerity and retribution and secret sin.\" To say otherwise\n is to say that freedom and toleration are less attractive to men\n than ferocity, tyranny, and gloom. Calvin drove many men back to\n Catholicism, and had his full share in the mortal schism which\n set Calvinists and Lutherans at daggers drawn for a century,\n while Catholicism re-conquered Poland and Bohemia and Hungary,\n held France, and nearly re-conquered Lutheran Germany. There\n is no reason to suppose that the Reformation would have gone\n otherwise in Britain, Scandinavia, and Holland had Geneva gone as\n far in tolerance as it actually did in intolerance. To call it,\n as Michelet does, an \"asylum,\" in view of Calvin's expulsion or\n execution of every man who dared to differ from him, is courageous.\n\n At the close of his argument (p. 41) Pattison sums up that,\n \"Greatly as the Calvinistic Churches have served the cause of\n political liberty, they have contributed nothing to the cause of\n knowledge.\" The admission is in the main valid; but the claim will\n not stand, unless \"political liberty\" is to be newly defined. The\n Calvinistic rule at Geneva was from the first a class tyranny,\n which became more and more narrow in its social basis. The\n Calvinist clergy and populace of Holland turned their backs on\n republican institutions, and became violent monarchists. The\n Calvinists of England and Scotland were as determined persecutors\n as ever lived. And, indeed, how should liberty anywhere flourish\n when knowledge is trodden under foot?\n\n\nThe treatment of Bernardino Ochino, who had turned Protestant after\nbeing vicar-general of the Capuchin order, shows the slackening of\nferocity after the end of Servetus. Ochino in a late writing ventured\nguardedly to suggest certain relaxations of the law of monogamy--a\npoint on which some Lutherans went much further than he--and\nwas besides mildly heretical about the Trinity. [2092] He was in\nconsequence expelled with his family from the canton of Z\u00fcrich (1563),\nat the age of seventy-six. Finding Switzerland wholly inhospitable,\nand being driven by the Catholics from Poland, where he had sought\nto join the Socinians, he went to die in Moravia. [2093] This was no\nworse treatment than Lutherans and Calvinists normally meted out to\neach other; [2094] and several of the Italian Protestants settled at\nGeneva who leant to Unitarian views--among them Gribaldo, Biandrata,\nand Alciati--found it prudent to leave that fortress of orthodoxy,\nwhere they were open to official challenge. [2095] Finally, when\nthe Italian Valentinus Gentilis, or Gentile, the anti-Trinitarian,\nvariously described as Tritheist, Deist, and Arian, uttered his\nheresies at Geneva, he contrived, after an imprisonment, a forced\nrecantation, and a public degradation (1558), to escape thence with\nhis life, but was duly beheaded at Berne in 1566, refusing this time\nto recant. [2096]\n\nThis ends the main Swiss era of theological murder; but a century\nwas to pass before sectarian hatreds subsided, or the spirit of\npersecution was brought under control of civilization. In 1632, indeed,\na Protestant minister, Nicholas Anthoine, was burned at Geneva on\nthe charge of apostasy to Judaism. As he had been admittedly insane\nfor a time, and had repeatedly shown much mental excitement, [2097]\nhis execution tells of a spirit of cruelty worthy of the generation\nof Calvin. The Protestant Bibliolatry, in short, was as truly the\npractical negation of freethought and tolerance as was Catholicism\nitself; and it was only their general remoteness from each other\nthat kept the different reformed communities from absolute war where\nthey were not, as in Switzerland, held in check by the dangers around\nthem. [2098] As it was, they had their full share in the responsibility\nfor the furious civil wars which so long convulsed France, and for\nthose which ultimately reduced Germany to the verge of destruction,\narresting her civilization for over a hundred years.\n\nTo sum up. In Germany Protestantism failed alike as a moral and\nas an intellectual reform. The lack of any general moral motive in\nthe ecclesiastical revolution is sufficiently proved by the general\ndissolution of conduct which, on the express admission of Luther,\nfollowed upon it. [2099] This was quite apart from the special\ndisorders of the Anabaptist movement, which, on the other hand,\ncontained elements of moral and religious rationalism, as against\nBibliolatry, that have been little recognized. [2100] Of that movement\nthe summing-up is that, like the Lutheran, it turned to evil because\nof sheer lack of rationalism. Among its earlier leaders were men\nsuch as Denk, morally and temperamentally on a higher plane than any\nof the Lutherans. But Anabaptism too was fundamentally scriptural\nand revelationist, not rational; and it miscarried in its own way\neven more hopelessly than the theological \"reform.\" Lutheranism,\nrenouncing the rational and ethical hope of social betterment, ran\nto insane dissension over irrational dogma; Anabaptism, ignorantly\nattaching the hope of social betterment to religious delusion,\nran to irrational social schemes, ending in anarchy, massacre, and\nextinction. But the Lutheran failure was intellectually and morally\nno less complete. Luther was with good reason ill at ease about his\ncause when he died in 1546; and Melanchthon, dying in 1560, declared\nhimself glad to be set free from the rabies theologorum. [2101]\n\nThe test of the new regimen lay, if anywhere, in the University of\nWittemberg; and there matters were no better than anywhere else. [2102]\nGerman university life in general went from bad to worse till a\nnew culture began slowly to germinate after the Thirty Years' War;\n[2103] and the germs came mainly from the neighbouring nations. German\nSwitzerland exhibited similar symptoms, the Reformation being followed\nby no free intellectual life, but by a tyranny identical in spirit\nand method with that of Rome. [2104] It rests, finally, on the express\ntestimony of leading Reformers that the main effect of the Reformation\nin the intellectual life of Germany was to discredit all disinterested\nlearning and literature. Melanchthon in particular, writing at dates\nas far apart as 1522 and 1557, repeatedly and emphatically testifies\nto the utter disregard of erudition and science in the interests\nof pietism, corroborating everything said to the same effect by\nErasmus. [2105]\n\nOn the social and political side the rule of the Protestant princes\nwas not only as tyrannous but as indecorous as that of their\nCatholic days, each playing pope in his own dominions; [2106] and\ntheir clergy were not in a position to correct them. Menzel notes\nthat the normal drunkenness of the Protestant aristocracy at this\nperiod made current in Europe the expression \"a German swine.\" And\nwhereas Germany before the Reformation was at various points a culture\nforce for Europe--whence the readiness in other nations at first to\nfollow the Lutheran lead--it progressively became more and more of an\nobject-lesson of the evils of heresy, thus fatally weakening the cause\nof Protestantism in France, where its fortunes hung in the balance.\n\nEven in the matter of theology, Protestantism did not hold its own\nagainst Catholic criticism. Both began by discriminating in the\nscriptural canon, rejecting some books and depreciating others,\nall the while professing to make the Word of God their sole or\nfinal standard. When the Catholics pressed the demand as to how\nthey could settle what was the true Word of God, their followers\nand successors could make no answer, and had to fall back on an\nindiscriminate acceptance of the Canon. Again, Luther and Calvin\nalike maintained the doctrine of \"Assurance,\" and this was one\nof the points in Calvinism accepted by Arminius. The Catholics,\nnaturally making the most of the admitted increase of sexual and\nother licence in Germany and elsewhere under Lutheranism, dwelt upon\nLuther's predestinarianism in general, and the doctrine of Assurance\nin particular, as the source of the demoralization; and at the Council\nof Trent it was expressly condemned. Thereafter, though it was \"part\nand parcel of the Confessions of all the Churches of the Reformation\ndown to the Westminster Assembly,\" it was in the last-named conclave\n(1643) declared not to be of the essence of faith; and the Scottish\nGeneral Assembly subsequently deposed and condemned holders of this,\nthe original Protestant doctrine. Similar modifications took place\nelsewhere. Thus the Protestant world drifted back to a Catholic\nposition, affirmed at the Council of Trent against Protestantism;\n[2107] and in Holland we shall see, in the rise of Arminianism,\na similar surrender on the Protestant side to the general pressure\nof Catholicism upon the ethical weaknesses of Predestinarianism. On\nthat point, however, the original Catholic doctrine of predestination\nwas revived by the Spanish Jesuit Luis Molina (1535-1600; not to be\nconfused with the later Quietist, Miguel de Molinos), who in his\ntreatise Liberi Arbitrii concordia cum grati\u00e6 donis (1588) set it\nforth as consequent upon God's foreknowledge of man's free use of his\nwill. As a result of the dispute between the Thomists and Molina's\nfollowers, known as the Molinists, the Pope in 1607 pronounced that\nthe views of both sides were permissible--a course which had already\nbeen taken twenty years before with the controversy on predestination\naroused by the doctrines of Michael Baius at the University of\nLouvain. [2108] Thus the dissensions of Catholics in a manner kept\nin countenance the divided Protestants; but the old confidence of\naffirmation and formulation was inevitably sapped by the constant play\nof controversy; and from this Protestantism necessarily suffered most.\n\nIntellectually, there was visible retrogression in the Protestant\nworld. It is significant that throughout the sixteenth century most of\nthe great scientific thinkers and the freethinkers with the strongest\nbent to new science lived in the Catholic world. Rabelais and Bruno\nwere priests; Copernicus a lay canon; Galileo had never withdrawn\nfrom the Church which humiliated him; even Kepler returned to the\nCatholic environment after professing Protestantism. He was in fact\nexcommunicated by the T\u00fcbingen Protestant authorities in 1612 [2109]\nfor condemning the Lutheran doctrine that the body of Christ could be\nin several places at once. The immunity of such original spirits as\nGilbert and Harriott from active molestation is to be explained only\nby the fact that they lived in the as yet un-Puritanized atmosphere\nof Elizabethan England, before the age of Bibliolatry. It would\nseem as if the spirit of Scripturalism, invading the very centres\nof thought, were more fatal to original intellectual life than the\nmore external interferences of Catholic sacerdotalism. [2110] In\nthe phrase of Arnold, Protestantism turned the key on the spirit,\nwhere Catholicism was normally content with an outward submission to\nits ceremonies, and only in the most backward countries, as Spain,\ndestroyed entirely the atmosphere of free mental intercourse. It was\nafter a long reaction that Bruno and Galileo were arraigned at Rome.\n\nThe clerical resistance to new science, broadly speaking, was more\nbitter in the Protestant world than in the Catholic; and it was merely\nthe relative lack of restraining power in the former that made possible\nthe later scientific progress. The history of Lutheranism upon this\nside is an intellectual infamy. At Wittemberg, during Luther's life,\nReinhold did not dare to teach the Copernican astronomy; Rheticus\nhad to leave the place in order to be free to speak; and in 1571\nthe subject was put in the hands of Peucer, who taught that the\nCopernican theory was absurd. Finally, the rector of the university,\nHensel, wrote a text-book for schools, entitled The Restored Mosaic\nSystem of the World, showing with entire success that the new doctrine\nwas unscriptural. [2111] A little later the Lutheran superintendent,\nPfeiffer, of L\u00fcbeck, published his Pansophia Mosaica, insisting on the\nliteral truth of the entire Genesaic myth. [2112] In the next century\nCalovius (1612-1686), who taught successively at K\u00f6nigsberg, Dantzic,\nand Wittemberg, maintained the same position, contending that the\nstory of Joshua's staying the sun and moon refuted Copernicus. [2113]\nWhen Pope Gregory XIII, following an impulse abnormal in his world,\ntook the bold step of rectifying the Calendar (1584), the Protestants\nin Germany and Switzerland vehemently resisted the reform, and in some\ncities would not tolerate it, [2114] thus refusing, on theological\ngrounds, the one species of co-operation with Catholicism that lay\nopen to them. And the anti-scientific attitude persisted for over\na century in Switzerland as in Scotland. At Geneva, J.-A. Turretin\n(1671-1737), writing after Kepler and Newton had done their work,\nlaboriously repeated the demonstration of Calovius, and reaffirmed\nthe positions of Calvin. So far as its ministers could avail, the\nSacred Book was working the old effect.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2. ENGLAND\n\nFreethought gained permanently as little in England as elsewhere\nin the process of substituting local tyranny for that of Rome. The\nsecularizing effect of the Reformation, indeed, was even more\nmarked there than elsewhere. What Wolsey had aimed at doing with\nmoderation and without revolution was done after him with violence\non motives of sheer plunder, and a multitude not only of monasteries\nbut of churches were disendowed and destroyed. The monastic churches\nwere often magnificent, and \"when the monasteries were dissolved,\ndivine service altogether ceased in ninety out of every hundred of\nthese great churches, and the remaining ten were left ... without any\nprovision whatever\" for public worship. [2115] All this must have had\na secularizing effect, which was accentuated by the changes in ritual;\nand by the middle of the century it was common to treat both churches\nand clergy with utter irreverence, which indeed the latter often\nearned by their mode of life. [2116] Riots in churches, especially in\nLondon, were common; there was in fact a habit of driving mules and\nhorses through them; [2117] and buying and selling and even gaming\nwere often carried on. But with all this there was no intellectual\nenlightenment, and in high places there was no toleration. Under Henry\nVIII anti-Romanist heretics were put to death on the old Romanist\nprinciples. In 1532, again, was burned James Bainham, who not only\nrejected the specially Catholic dogmas, but affirmed the possible\nsalvation of unbelievers.\n\nUnder the Protectorate which followed there was indeed much religious\nsemi-rationalism, evidently of continental derivation, which is\ndiscussed in the theological literature of the time. Roger Hutchinson,\nwriting about 1550, repeatedly speaks of contemporary \"Sadducees and\nLibertines\" who say (1) \"that all spirits and angels are no substances,\nbut inspirations, affections, and qualities\"; (2) \"that the devil\nis nothing but nolitum, or a filthy affection coming of the flesh\";\n(3) \"that there is neither place of rest nor pain after this life;\nthat hell is nothing else but a tormenting and desperate conscience;\nand that a joyful, quiet, and merry conscience is heaven.\"\n\n\n See The Image of God, or Layman's Book, 1550, ch. xxiv: Parker\n Society's rep. 1842, pp. 134, 138, 140. Cp. p. 79 and Sermon\n II, on The Lord's Supper (id. p. 247), as to \"Julianites\" who\n \"do think mortal corpo, mortal anima.\" To the period 1550-60\n is also assigned the undated work of John Veron, A Frutefull\n Treatise of Predestination and of the Divine Providence of God,\n with an Apology of the same against the swynishe gruntinge of\n the Epicures and Atheystes of oure time. There was evidently a\n good deal of new rationalism, which has been generally ignored\n in English historiography. Its foreign source is suggested by\n the use of the term \"Libertines,\" which derives from France and\n Geneva. See below, p. 473. The above-cited tenets are, in fact,\n partly identical with those of the libertins denounced at Geneva\n by Calvin.\n\n\nSuch doctrine, which we shall find in vogue fifty years later, cannot\nhave been printed, and probably can have been uttered only by men\nof good status, as well as culture; and even by them only because of\nthe weakness of the State Church in its transition stage. Yet heresy\nwent still further among some of the sects set up by the Anabaptist\nmovement, which in England as in Germany involved some measure\nof Unitarianism. A letter of Hooper to Bullinger in 1549 tells of\n\"libertines and wretches who are daring enough in their conventicles\nnot only to deny that Christ is the Messiah and Saviour of the world,\nbut also to call that blessed Seed a mischievous fellow and deceiver\nof the world.\" [2118] This must have been said with locked doors, for\nmuch milder heresy was heavily punished, the worst penalties falling\nupon that which stood equally with orthodoxy on Biblical grounds.\n\n\n In 1541, under Henry VIII, were burned three persons \"because they\n denied transubstantiation, and had not received the sacrament at\n Easter.\" See the letter of Hilles to Bullinger, Original Letters,\n as cited, i, 200. The case of Jean Bouchier or Bocher, burned in\n 1550, is well known. It is worth noting that the common charge\n against Cranmer, of persuading the young king to sign her death\n warrant, is false, being one of the myths of Foxe. The warrant\n was passed by the whole Privy Council, Cranmer not being even\n present. See the Parker Society's reprint of Roger Hutchinson,\n 1812, introd. pp. ii-5. Hutchinson apparently approved; and it\n is significant of the clerical attitude of the time that he calls\n (Image of God, ch. xxx, p. 201) for the punishment of Anabaptists\n by death if necessary, but does not suggest it for \"Sadducees\n and Libertines.\"\n\n\nThe Elizabethan archbishops and the Puritans were equally intolerant;\nand the idea of free inquiry was undreamt of. That there had been much\nprivate discussion in clerical circles, however, is plain from the 13th\nand 18th of the Thirty-nine Articles (1562), which repudiate natural\nmorality and hold \"accursed\" those who say that men can be saved\nunder any creed. [2119] This fulmination would not have occurred had\nthe heresy not been pressing; but the \"curse\" would thenceforth set\nthe key of clerical and public utterance. The Reformation, in fact,\nspeedily over-clouded with fanaticism what new light of freethought\nhad been glimmering before; turning into Bibliolaters those who had\nrationally doubted some of the Catholic mysteries, and forcing back,\neither into silence or, by reaction, into Catholic bigotry, those more\nrefined spirits who, like Sir Thomas More, had before been really\nin advance of their age intellectually and morally, and desired a\ntransmutation of the old system rather than its overthrow. Nothing\nso nearly rational as the Utopia (1515-16) appeared again in English\nliterature for a century; it is indeed, in some respects, a lead\nto social science in our own day. More, with all his spontaneous\nturn for pietism, had evidently drunk in his youth or prime [2120]\nat some freethinking source, for his book recognizes the existence\nof unbelievers in deity and immortality; and though he pronounces\nthem unfit for political power, as did Milton, Locke, and Voltaire\nlong after him, he stipulates that they be tolerated. [2121] Broadly\nspeaking, the book is simply deistic. \"From a world,\" says a popular\nhistorian, clerically trained--\"from a world where fifteen hundred\nyears of Christian teaching had produced social injustice, religious\nintolerance, and political tyranny, the humorist philosopher turns to a\n'Nowhere' in which the efforts of mere natural human virtue realized\nthose ends of security, equality, brotherhood, and freedom, for which\nthe very institution of society seems to have been framed.\" [2122]\nIn his own case, however, we see the Nemesis of the sway of feeling\nover judgment, for, beginning by keeping his prejudice above the\nreason of whose teaching he is conscious, he ends by becoming a blind\nreligious polemist and a bitter persecutor.\n\n\n Cp. Isaac Disraeli's essay, \"The Psychological Character of Sir\n Thomas More,\" in the Amenities of Literature, and the present\n writer's essay, \"Culture and Reaction,\" in Essays in Sociology,\n vol. i. Lord Acton, vindicating More as against Wolsey, pleads\n (Histor. Essays and Studies, 1907, p. 64) that More before his\n death protested that no Protestant perished by his act. This seems\n to be true in the bare sense that he did not exceed his ostensible\n legal duties, and several times restrained the execution of the\n law (Archdeacon Hutton, Sir Thomas More, 1895, pp. 215-22). But\n the fact remains that More expressly justified and advocated the\n burning of heretics as \"lawful, necessary, and well done.\" Title of\n ch. xiii of Dialogue, The Supper of the Lord. Cp. title of ch. xv.\n\n\nIt is in the wake, then, of the overthrow of Catholicism in the\nsecond generation that a far-reaching freethought begins to be heard\nof in England; and this clearly comes by way of new continental and\nliterary contact, which would have occurred in at least as great a\ndegree under Catholicism, save insofar as unbelief was facilitated by\nthe irreverence developed by the ecclesiastical revolution, or by the\nstate of indifference which among the upper classes was the natural\nsequel of the shameless policy of plunder and the oscillation between\nProtestant and Catholic forms. And it was finally in such negative\nways only that Protestantism furthered freethought anywhere.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3. THE NETHERLANDS\n\nHardly more fortunate was the earlier course of things intellectual\nafter the Reformation in the Netherlands, where by the fifteenth\ncentury remarkable progress had been made alike in science and the\narts, and where Erasmus acquired his culture and did his service to\nculture's cause. The fact that Protestantism had to fight for its\nlife against Philip was of course not the fault of the Protestants;\nand to that ruinous struggle is to be attributed the arrest of the\ncivilization of Flanders. But it lay in the nature of the Protestant\nimpulse that, apart from the classical culture which in Holland was\nvirtually a successful industry, providing editions for all Europe,\nit should turn all intellectual life for generations into vain\ncontroversy. The struggle between reform and popery was followed by\nthe struggle between Calvinism and Arminianism; and the second was\nno less bitter if less bloody than the first, [2123] the religious\nstrife passing into civil feud.\n\nThe secret of the special bitterness of Calvinist resentment\ntowards the school of Arminius lay in the fact that the latter\nendorsed some of the most galling of the Catholic criticisms of\nCalvinism. Arminius [Latinized name of Jacob Harmensen or van Harmin,\n1560-1609, professor of theology at Leyden] was personally a man of\ngreat amiability, averse to controversy, but unable to reconcile the\nCalvinist view of predestination with his own quasi-rational ethic,\nand concerned to secure that the dogma should not be fastened upon\nall Dutch Protestants. In his opinion, no effective answer could be\nmade on Calvinist lines to the argument of Cardinal Bellarmin [2124]\nthat from much Calvinist doctrine there flowed the consequences: \"God\nis the author of sin; God really sins; God is the only sinner; sin\nis no sin at all.\" [2125] This was substantially true; and Arminius,\nlike Bellarmin, unable to see that the Calvinist position was simply\na logical reduction to moral absurdity of all theistic ethic, sought\nsafety in fresh dogmatic modifications. Of these the Calvinists, in\nturn, could easily demonstrate the logical incoherence; and in a ring\nof dilemmas from which there was no logical exit save into Naturalism\nthere arose an exacerbated strife, as of men jostling each other in a\nprison where some saw their nominal friends in partial sympathy with\ntheir deadly enemies, who jeered at their divisions.\n\nThe wonder is that the chaos of dispute and dogmatic tinkering which\nfollowed did not more rapidly disintegrate faith. Calvinists sought\nmodifications under stress of dialectic, like their predecessors;\nand the high \"Supralapsarian\" doctrine--the theory of the certain\nregeneration or \"perseverance\" of \"the saints\"--shaded into\n\"the Creabilitarian opinion\" [2126] and yet another; while the\n\"Sublapsarian\" view claimed also to safeguard predestination. So long\nas men remained in the primary Protestant temper, convinced that they\npossessed in their Bibles an infallible revelation, such strife could\nbut generate new passion, even as it had done on the other irrational\nproblem of the eucharist. For men of sane and peaceful disposition,\nthe only modes of peace were resignation and doubt; and in the case\nof the doubters the first intellectual movements would be either\nback towards Rome [2127] or further on towards deism. The former\ncourse would be taken by some who had winced under the jeers of the\nCatholics; the latter by the hardier spirits who judged Catholicism for\nthemselves. As most of the fighting had been primed by and transacted\nover texts, the surrender of the belief in an inspired scripture\ngreatly reduced the friction; and in Holland as elsewhere deism would\nbe thus spontaneously generated in the Protestant atmosphere. A few\nwent even further. \"I have no doubt that many persons have secretly\nrevolted from the Reformed Church to the Papists,\" wrote Uitenbogaert\nto Vorstius in 1613. \"I firmly believe,\" he added, \"that Atheism is\ncreeping by degrees into the minds of some.\" [2128]\n\nWhere mere Arminianism could bring Barneveldt to the block, even deism\ncould not be avowed; and generations had to pass before it could have\nthe semblance of a party; but the proof of the new vogue of unbelief\nlies in the labour spent by Grotius (Hugo or Huig van Groot, 1583-1645)\non his treatise De Veritate Religionis Christian\u00e6 (1627)--a learned and\nstrenuous defence of the faith which had so lacerated his fatherland,\nfirst through the long struggle with Spain, and again in the feud of\nArminians and Calvinists. When Barneveldt was put to death, Grotius had\nbeen sentenced to imprisonment for life; and it was only after three\nyears of the dungeon that, by the famous stratagem of his wife, he\nescaped in 1621. The fact that he devoted his freedom in France first\nto his great treatise On the Law of War and Peace (1625), seeking to\nhumanize the civil life of the world, and next to his defence of the\nChristian religion, is the proof of his magnanimity; but the spectacle\nof his life must have done as much to set thinkers against the whole\ncreed as his apologetic did to reconcile them to it. He, the most\ndistinguished Dutch scholar and the chief apologist of Christianity in\nhis day, had to seek refuge, on his escape from prison, in Catholic\nFrance, whose king granted him a pension. The circumstance which in\nHolland chiefly favoured freethought, the freedom of the press, was,\nlike the great florescence of the arts in the seventeenth century,\na result of the whole social and political conditions, not of any\nProtestant belief in free discussion. That there were freethinkers\nin Holland in and before Grotius's time is implied in the pains he\ntook to defend Christianity; but that they existed in despite and not\nby grace of the ruling Protestantism is proved by the fact that they\ndid not venture to publish their opinions. In France, doubtless, he\nfound as much unbelief as he had left behind. In the end, Grotius and\nCasaubon alike recoiled from the narrow Protestantism around them,\nwhich had so sadly failed to realize their hopes. [2129] \"In 1642\nGrotius had become wholly averse to the Reformation. He thought it\nhad done more harm than good\"; and had he lived a few years longer\nhe would probably have become a Catholic. [2130]\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4. CONCLUSION\n\nThus concerning the Reformation generally \"we are obliged to confess\nthat, especially in Germany, it soon parted company with free learning;\nthat it turned its back upon culture; that it lost itself in a maze\nof arid theological controversy; that it held out no hand of welcome\nto awakening science. Presently we shall see that the impulse to an\nenlightened study and criticism of the Scriptures came chiefly from\nheretical quarters; that the unbelieving Spinoza and the Arminian Le\nClerc pointed the way to investigations which the great Protestant\nsystematizers thought neither necessary nor useful. Even at a later\ntime it has been the divines who have most loudly declared their\nallegiance to the theology of the Reformation who have also looked\nmost askance at science, and claimed for their statements an entire\nindependence of modern knowledge.\" [2131] In fine, \"to look at\nthe Reformation by itself, to judge it only by its theological and\necclesiastical development, is to pronounce it a failure\"; and the\nclaim that \"to consider it as part of a general movement of European\nthought ... is at once to vindicate its past and to promise it the\nfuture\"--this amounts merely to avowing the same thing. Only as an\neddy in the movement of freethought is the Reformation intellectually\nsignificant. Politically it is a great illustration of the potency\nof economic forces.\n\nWhile, however, the Reformation in itself thus did little for the\nspirit of freethought, substituting as it did the arbitrary standard of\n\"revelation\" for the not more arbitrary standard of papal authority,\nit set up outside its own sphere some new movements of rational\ndoubt which must have counted for much in the succeeding period. It\nwas not merely that, as we shall see, the bloody strifes of the two\nChurches, and the quarrels of the Protestant sects among themselves,\nsickened many thoughtful men of the whole subject of theology; but that\nthe disputes between Romanists and anti-Romanists raised difficult\nquestions as to the bases of all kinds of belief. As always happens\nwhen established beliefs are long attacked, the subtler spirits in the\nconservative interest after a time begin putting in doubt beliefs of\nevery species; a method often successful with those who cannot carry\nan argument to its logical conclusions, and who are thus led to seek\nharbour in whatever credence is on the whole most convenient; but\none which puts stronger spirits on the reconsideration of all their\nopinions. Thus we shall find, not only in the skepticism of Montaigne,\nwhich is historically a product of the wars of religion in France,\nbut in the more systematic and more cautious argumentation of the\nabler Protestants of the seventeenth century, a measure of general\nrationalism much more favourable alike to natural science and to\nBiblical and ethical criticism than had been the older environment\nof authority and tradition, brutal sacerdotalism, and idolatrous\nfaith. Men continued to hate each other religiously for trifles,\nto quarrel over gestures and vestures, and to wrangle endlessly over\nworn-out dogmas; but withal new and vital heresies were set on foot;\nnew science generated new doubt; and under the shadow of the aging\ntree of theology there began to appear the growths of a new era. As\nProtestantism had come outside the \"universal\" Church, rearing its\nown tabernacles, so freethought came outside both, scanning with a\ndeepened intentness the universe of things. And thus began a more vital\ninnovation than that dividing the Reformation from the Renaissance,\nor even that dividing the Renaissance from the Middle Ages.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nTHE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT\n\n\n\u00a7 1. THE ITALIAN INFLUENCE\n\nThe negative bearing of the Reformation on freethought is made clear by\nthe historic fact that the new currents of thought which broadly mark\nthe beginning of the \"modern spirit\" arose in its despite, and derive\noriginally from outside its sphere. It is to Italy, where the political\nand social conditions thus far tended to frustrate the Inquisition,\nthat we trace the rise alike of modern deism, modern Unitarianism,\nmodern pantheism, modern physics, and the tendency to rational\natheism. The deistic way of thinking, of course, prevailed long\nbefore it got that name; and besides the vogue of Averro\u00efsm we have\nnoted the virtual deism of More's Utopia (1516). The first explicit\nmention of deism noted by Bayle, however, is in the epistle dedicatory\nto the second and expanded edition of the Instruction Chr\u00e9tienne of\nthe Swiss Protestant Viret (1563), where professed deists are spoken\nof as a new species bearing a new name. On the admission of Viret,\nwho was the friend and bitter disciple of Calvin, they rejected all\nrevealed religion, but called themselves deists by way of repudiating\natheism; some keeping a belief in immortality, some rejecting it. In\nthe theological manner he goes on to call them all execrable atheists,\nand to say that he has added to his treatise on their account an\nexposition of natural religion grounded on the \"Book of Nature\";\nstultifying himself by going on to say that he has also dealt with\nthe professed atheists. [2132] Of the deists he admits that among\nthem were men of the highest repute for science and learning. Thus\nwithin ten years of the burning of Servetus we find privately avowed\ndeism and atheism in the area of French-speaking Protestantism.\n\nDoubtless the spectacle of Protestant feuds and methods would go\nfar to foster such unbelief; but though, as we have seen, there were\naggressive Unitarians in Germany before 1530, who, being scholars,\nmay or may not have drawn on Italian thought, thereafter there is\nreason to look to Italy as the source of the propaganda. Thence came\nthe two Sozzini, the founders of Socinianism, of whom Lelio, the uncle\nof Fausto, travelled much in northern Europe (including England)\nbetween 1546 and 1552. [2133] As the earlier doctrine of Servetus\nshows clear affinities to that of the Sozzini, and his earlier books\nwere much read in Italy between 1532 and 1540, he may well have given\nthem their impulse. [2134] It is evidently to Servetus that Zanchi\nreferred when he wrote to Bullinger in 1565 that \"Spain bore the hens,\nItaly hatched the eggs, and we now hear the chickens piping.\" [2135]\nBefore Socinianism had taken form it was led up to, as we have seen, in\nthe later writings of the ex-monk Bernardino Ochino (1487-1564), who,\nin the closing years of a much chequered career, combined mystical\nand Unitarian tendencies with a leaning to polygamy and freedom\nof divorce. [2136] His influence was considerable among the Swiss\nProtestants, though they finally expelled him for his heresies. From\nGeneva or from France, in turn, apparently came some of the English\nfreethought of the middle period of the sixteenth century; [2137]\nfor in 1562 Speaker Williams in the House of Commons, in a list of\nmisbelievers, speaks of \"Pelagians, Libertines, Papists, and such\nothers, leaving God's commandments to follow their own traditions,\naffections, and minds\" [2138]--using theologically the foreign term,\nwhich never became naturalized in English in its foreign sense. It was\nabout the year 1563, again, that Roger Ascham wrote his Scholemaster,\nwherein are angrily described, as a species new in England, men who,\n\"where they dare,\" scorn both Protestant and Papist, \"rejecting\nscripture, and counting the Christian mysteries as fables.\" [2139]\nHe describes them as \"atheoi in doctrine\"; adding, \"this last word is\nno more unknowne now to plane Englishe men than the Person was unknown\nsomtyme in England, untill some Englishe man took peines to fetch that\ndevelish opinion out of Italie.\" [2140] The whole tendency he connects\nin a general way with the issue of many new translations from the\nItalian, mentioning in particular Petrarch and Boccaccio. Among good\nProtestants his view was general; and so Lord Burghley in his Advice to\nhis Son writes: \"Suffer not thy sons to pass the Alps, for they shall\nlearn nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and atheism.\" As it happened,\nhis grandson the second Earl of Exeter, and his great-grandson Lord\nRoos, went to Rome, and became not atheists but Roman Catholics.\n\nSuch episodes should remind us that in that age of ignorance and\nsuperstition the Church had always an immense advantage. Those\nwho, like Gentillet in his raging Discours, commonly known as the\nContre-Machiavel (1576), ascribed to \"atheism\" and the teaching of\nMachiavelli all the crimes and oppressions wrought by Catholics,\n[2141] were ludicrously perverting the facts. Massacres in churches,\nwhich are cited by Gentillet as impossible to believing Catholics,\nwere wrought, as we have seen, on the largest scale by the Church\nin the thirteenth century. So, when Scaliger calls the Italians\nof his day \"a set of atheists,\" we are to understand it rather of\n\"the hypocrisy than of the professed skepticism of the time.\" [2142]\nBut rationalism and semi-rationalism did prevail in Italy more than\nin any other country. [2143]\n\nLike the old Averro\u00efsm, the new pietistic Unitarianism persisted\nin Italy and radiated thence afresh when it had flagged in other\nlands. The exploded Unitarian tradition [2144] runs that the doctrine\narose in the year 1546 among a group of more than forty learned men who\nwere wont to assemble in secret at Vicenza, near Venice. Claudius of\nSavoy, however, emphatically gave out his anti-Trinitarian doctrine at\nBerne in 1534, after having been imprisoned at Strasburg and banished\nthence; [2145] and Ochino and Lelio Sozzini left Italy in 1543. But\nthere seems to have been a continuous evolution of Unitarian heresy\nin the south after the German movement had ceased. Giorgio Biandrata,\nwhom we have seen flying to Poland from Geneva, had been seized by the\nInquisition at Pavia for such opinion. Still it persisted. In 1562\nGiulio Guirlando of Treviso, and in 1566 Francesco Saga of Rovigo,\nwere burned at Venice for anti-Trinitarianism. Giacomo Aconzio too,\nwho dedicated his Stratagems of Satan (Basel, 1565) to Queen Elizabeth,\nand who pleaded notably for the toleration of heresy, [2146] was a\ndecided latitudinarian. [2147]\n\nIt is remarkable that the whole ferment occurs in the period of the\nCatholic Reaction, the Council of Trent, and the subjection of Italy,\nwhen the papacy was making its great effort to recover its ground. It\nwould seem that in the compulsory peace which had now fallen on\nItalian life men's thoughts turned more than ever to mental problems,\nas had happened in Greece after the rise of Alexander's empire. The\nauthority of the Church was outwardly supreme; the Jesuits had\nalready begun to do great things for education; [2148] the revived\nInquisition was everywhere in Italy; its prisons, as we have seen,\nwere crowded with victims of all grades during a whole generation;\nPius V and the hierarchy everywhere sought to enforce decorum in life;\nthe \"pagan\" academies formed on the Florentine model were dissolved;\nand classic culture rapidly decayed with the arts, while clerical\nlearning flourished, [2149] and a new religious music began with\nPalestrina. Yet on the death of Paul IV the Roman populace burned the\nOffice of the Inquisition to the ground and cast the pope's statue\ninto the Tiber; [2150] and in that age (1548) was born Giordano Bruno,\none of the types of modern freethought.\n\nThe great service of Italy to modern freethought, however, was to come\nlater, in respect of the impulse given to the scientific spirit by\nBruno, Vanini, and Galileo. On the philosophical or critical side, the\nItaly of the middle of the sixteenth century left no enduring mark on\nEuropean thought, though her serious writers were numerous. Aconzio had\npublished, before his De Stratagematibus Satan\u00e6, a treatise De Methodo,\nsive recta investigandarum tradendarumque scientiarum ratione (Basel,\n1558), wherein he pleads strenuously for a true logical method as the\none way to real knowledge of things. In this he anticipates Bacon, as\ndid, still earlier, Mario Nizolio in his Antibarbarus sive de veris\nprincipiis et vera ratione philosophandi contra pseudo-philosophos\n(Parma, 1553). Nizolio's main effort is towards the discrediting of\nAristotle, whom, like so many in the generation following, he regarded\nas the great bulwark of scholastic obscurantism. He insists that\nall knowledge must proceed from sensation, which alone has immediate\ncertainty; and thus stands for direct scientific observation as against\ntradition and verbalism. But Ludovicus Vives had before him (in his\nDe causis corruptarum artium, Antwerp, 1531) claimed that the true\nAristotelian went direct to nature, as Aristotle himself had done;\nand Nizolio did nothing in practical science to substantiate his\npolemic against the logic-choppers.\n\nHe and Aconzio in effect cancel each other. Each had glimpsed a\ntruth, one seeing the need for a right method in inference, the\nother protesting against the idea that abstract reasoning could lead\nto knowledge; but neither made good his argument by any treasure\ntrove of fact. Another writer of the same decade, Gomez Pereira,\njoined in the revolt against Aristotelianism, publishing in 1554 his\nMargarita Antoniana, wherein, in advance of Descartes, he maintained\nthe absence of sensation in brutes. [2151] For the rest, he championed\nfreedom in speculation, denying that authority should avail save in\nmatters of faith. But he too failed to bring forth fruits meet for\nfreedom. Neither by abstract exposition of right methods of reasoning,\nnor by abstract attacks on wrong methods, could any vital impulse\nyet be given to thought. What was lacking was the use of reason\nupon actual problems, whether of human or of natural science. All\nthe while Europe was anchored to ancient delusion, historical and\nscientific. Even as the horrors of age-long religious war could alone\ndrive men to something like toleration in the religious life, there\nwas needed the impact of actual discovery to win them to science as\nagainst scholasticism. And rational thinking on the religion which\nresisted all new science was to be still later of attainment, save\nfor the nameless men who throughout the ages of faith rejected the\ncreeds without publishing their unbelief. Of these Italy had always\na large sprinkling.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2. SPAIN\n\nThe fact that sixteenth-century Spain could be charged, on the\nscore of Servetus, with producing the \"hen\" of Socinianism, is an\nimportant reminder of the perpetuity of variation and of the fatality\nof environment. The Portuguese Sanchez, whom we shall find laying new\npotential foundations of skepticism in France alongside of Montaigne,\ncould neither have acquired nor propounded his philosophy in his\nnative land. But it is to be noted that an elder contemporary of\nSanchez, living and dying in Spain, was able, in the generation after\nServetus, to make a real contribution to the revival of freethought,\nalbeit under shelter of a firm profession of orthodoxy.\n\nNo book of the kind, perhaps, had a wider European popularity than\nthe Examen de Ingenios para las ciencias of Huarte de San Juan,\notherwise Juan Huarte y Navarro (c. 1530-1592). Like Servetus and\nSanchez and many another, Huarte had his bias to reason fostered by a\nmedical training; and it is as a \"natural philosopher\" that he stands\nfor a rational study of causation. As a pioneer of exact science,\nindeed, he counts for next to nothing. Taking as his special theme\nthe divergences of human faculty, he does but found himself on the \u00e0\npriori system of \"humours\" and \"temperatures\" passed on by Aristotle\nto Galen and Hippocrates, inconsistently affirming on the one hand\nthat the \"characters\" not only of whole nations but of the inhabitants\nof provinces are determined by their special climates and aliments,\nand on the other hand that individual faculty is determined by the\nproportions of hot and cold, moist and dry \"temperatures\" in the\nparents. Apart from his insistence on the functions of the brain,\nand from broadly rational deliverances as to the kinds of faculty\nwhich determine success in theology and law, arms and arts, his\n\"science\" is naught. Dealing with an obscure problem, he brought\nto it none of the exact inductiveness which alone had yielded true\nknowledge in the simpler field of astronomy. In virtue, however,\neither of his confidence in affirmation or of his stand for rational\ninquiry, or of both, Huarte's book, published in 1575, went the\nround of Europe. Translated into Italian in 1582 (or earlier; new\nrendering 1600), it was thence rendered into English by Richard Carew\nin 1594. [2152] A French version appeared in 1598, and two others\nin 1661 and 1671. A later English translation, from the original,\nwas produced in 1698; and Lessing thought the book worth putting into\nGerman in 1785.\n\nThe rationalistic importance of Huarte lies in his insistence on the\nstudy of \"second causes\" and his protest against the burking of all\ninquiry by a reference to deity. On this head he anticipates much of\nthe polemic of Bacon. The explanation of all processes and phenomena\nby the will of God, he observes, \"is so ancient a manner of talk, and\nthe natural philosophers have so often refuted it, that the seeking to\ntake the same away were superfluous, neither is it convenient.... But\nI have often gone about to consider the reason and the cause whence\nit may grow that the vulgar sort is so great friend to impute all\nthings to God, and to reave them from Nature, and do so abhor the\nnatural means.\" [2153] His solution is the impatience of men over the\ncomplexity of Nature, their spiritual arrogance, their indolence,\nand their piety. For himself, he pronounces, as Middleton did in\nEngland nearly two centuries later, that \"God doth no longer those\nunwonted things of the New Testament; and the reason is, for that on\nhis behalf he hath performed all necessary diligence that men might\nnot pretend ignorance. And to think that he will begin anew to do\nthe like miracles ... is an error very great.... God speaks once\n(saith Job) and turns not to a second replial.\" [2154]\n\nOnly thus could the principle of natural causation be affirmed in the\nSpain of Philip II. Huarte is careful to affirm miracles while denying\ntheir recurrence; and throughout he writes as a good Scripturist and\nCatholic. But he sticks to his naturalist thesis that \"Nature makes\nable,\" and avows that \"natural philosophers laugh at such as say,\nThis is God's doing, without assigning the order and discourse of\nthe particular causes whence they may spring.\" [2155] The fact that\nthe book was dedicated to Philip tells of royal protection, without\nwhich the author could hardly have escaped the Inquisition. Years\nafter, we shall find Lilly in England protesting on the stage against\nthe conception of Natura naturans; and Bacon powerfully reaffirming\nHuarte's doctrine, with the same reservations. The Spaniard must have\ncounted for something as a pleader for elementary reason, if Bacon did.\n\nBut this is practically the only important contribution from Spain to\nthe intellectual renascence then going on in Europe. As we have seen,\nit was not that Spaniards had any primordial bias to dogmatism and\npersecution: it was simply that their whole socio-political evolution,\nlargely determined by Spanish discovery and dominion in the New World,\nset up institutions and forces which became specially powerful to stamp\nout freethought. The work of progress was done in lands where lack\nof external dominion left on the one hand a greater fund of variant\nenergy, and on the other made for a lesser power of repression on\nthe part of Church and State.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3. FRANCE\n\nWhile Italy continues to be reputed throughout the sixteenth century\na hotbed of freethinking, styled \"atheism,\" it appears to have been\nin France, alongside of the wars of religion, that positive unbelief,\nas distinct from scripturalist Unitarianism, made most new headway\namong laymen. It was in France that the forces of change had greatest\nplay. The mere contact with Italy which began with the invasion of\nCharles VII in 1494 meant a manifold moral and mental influence,\naffecting French literature and life alike; and the age of strife and\ndestruction which set in with the first Huguenot wars could not but\nbe one of disillusionment for multitudes of serious men. We have seen\nas much in the work of Bonaventure des Periers and Rabelais; but the\nspread of radical unbelief is to be traced, as is usual in the ages\nof faith, by the books written against it. Already in 1552 we have\nseen Guillaume Postell publishing his book, Contra Atheos. [2156]\nUnbelief increasing, there is published in 1564 an Atheomachie by\none De Bourgeville; but the Massacre must have gone far to frustrate\nhim. In 1581 appears another Atheomachie, ou r\u00e9futation des erreurs\net impi\u00e9t\u00e9s des Ath\u00e9istes, Libertins, etc., issued at Geneva, but\nbearing much on French life; and in the same year is issued the\nlong-time popular work of the Huguenot Philippe de Mornay, De la\nv\u00e9rit\u00e9 de la religion Chrestienne, Contre les Ath\u00e9es, Epicuriens,\nPayens, Juifs, Mahumedistes, et autres Infid\u00e8les. [2157] In both the\nEpistle Dedicatory (to Henry of Navarre) and the Preface the author\nspeaks of the great multiplication of unbelief, the refutation of\nwhich he declares to be more needful among Christians than it ever\nhad been among the heathen. But, like most of the writers against\natheism in that age, he declares [2158] that there are no atheists\nsave a few young fools and utterly bad men, who turn to God as soon as\nthey fall sick. The reputed atheists of antiquity are vindicated as\nhaving denied not the principle of deity but the false Gods of their\nage--this after the universality of a belief in Gods in all ages had\nbeen cited as one of the primary proofs of God's existence. In this\nfashion is compiled a book of nine hundred pages, ostensibly for\nthe confutation of a few fools and knaves, described as unworthy of\nserious consideration. Evidently the unbelief of de Mornay's day was\na more vigorous growth than he affected to think; and his voluminous\nperformance was followed by others. In 1586, Christophe Cheffontaines\npublished his Epitome nov\u00e6 illustrationis Christianae Fidei adversus\nImpios, Libertinos et Atheos; and still skepticism gained ground,\nhaving found new abettors.\n\nFirst came the Portuguese Francisco Sanchez (1552-1623?), born in\nPortugal, but brought as a child to Bordeaux, which seems to have\nbeen a place of refuge for many fugitive heretics from both sides of\nthe Peninsula. Sanchez has recorded that in his early youth he had no\nbias to incredulity of any kind; but at some stage of his adolescence\nhe travelled in Italy and spent some time at Rome. The result was not\nthat special disbelief in Christianity which was proverbially apt\nto follow, but a development on his part of philosophic skepticism\nproperly so-called, which found expression in a Latin treatise entitled\nQuod Nihil Scitur--\"That Nothing is Known.\" Composed as early as 1576,\nin the author's twenty-fourth year, the book was not published till\n1581, a year after the first issue of the Essais of Montaigne. It is\nnatural to surmise that while Sanchez was at Bordeaux he may have known\nsomething of his famous contemporary; but though Montaigne is likely\nto have read the Quod Nihil Scitur in due course, he nowhere speaks of\nit; and in 1576 Sanchez was a Professor of Medicine at Montpellier,\nthen a town of Huguenot leanings. Soon he left it for Toulouse, the\nhotbed of Catholic fanaticism, where he contrived to live out his\nlong life in peace, despite his production of a Pyrrhonist treatise\nand of a remarkable Latin poem (1578) on the comet of 1577. The Quod\nNihil Scitur is a skeptical flank attack on current science, in no\nway animadverting on religion, as to which he professed orthodoxy:\nthe poem is a frontal attack on the whole creed of astrology, then\ncommonly held by Averro\u00efsts and Aristotelians, as well as by orthodox\nCatholics. Yet he seems never to have been molested. It would seem as\nif a skepticism which ostensibly disallowed all claims to \"natural\"\nknowledge, while avowedly recognizing \"spiritual,\" was then as later\nthought to make rather for faith than against it. That such virtual\nPyrrhonism as that of Sanchez can ever have ministered to religious\nzeal is not indeed to be supposed: it is rather as a weapon against\nthe confidence of the \"Naturalist\" that the skeptical method has\nalways recommended itself to the calculating priest. And inasmuch as\nastrology could be, and was, held by a non-religious theory, though\nmany Christians added it to their creed, a polemic against that was\nthe least dangerous form of rationalizing then possible. At all times\nthere had been priests who so reasoned, though, as we have seen in\ndealing with the men of the Protestant Reformation, the belief in\nastral influences is too closely akin to the main line of religious\ntradition to be capable of ejection on religious grounds.\n\nWith his hostility to credulous hopes and fears in the sphere of\nNature, Sanchez is naturally regarded as a forerunner and helper\nof freethought. But there is nothing to show that his work had\nany effect in undermining the most formidable of all the false\nbeliefs of Christendom. [2159] Like so many others of his age,\nhe flouted Aristotelean scholasticism, but was perforce silent as\nto the verbalisms and sophistries of simple theology. It may fairly\nbe inferred that his poem on the comet of 1577 helped to create that\ncurrent of reasoned disbelief [2160] which we find throwing up almost\nidentical expressions in Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Moli\u00e8re, [2161]\nconcerning the folly of connecting the stars with human affairs. But\na skepticism which left untouched the main matter of the creeds could\nnot affect conduct in general; and while Sanchez passed unchecked the\nwatchdogs of the Inquisition, the fiery Bruno and Vanini were in his\nday to meet their fiery death at its hands--the latter in Toulouse,\nperhaps under the eyes of Sanchez. Having resigned his professorship\nof medicine, he seems to have lived to a ripe age, dying in 1623.\n\nProbably those very deaths availed more for the rousing of critical\nthought than did the dialectic of the Pyrrhonist. To the life of\nthe reason may with perfect accuracy be applied the claim so often\nmade for that of religion--that it feeds on feeling and is rooted in\nexperience. Revolt from the cruelties and follies of faith plays a\ngreat part in the history of freethought. In the greatest French writer\nof that age, a professed Catholic, but in mature life averse alike\nto Catholic and to Protestant bigotry, the shock of the Massacre of\nSaint Bartholomew can be seen disintegrating once for all the spirit\nof faith. Montaigne typifies the kind of skepticism produced in an\nunscientific age by the practical demonstration that religion can\navail immeasurably more for evil than for good. [2162] A few years\nbefore the Massacre he had translated for his dying father [2163] the\nold Theologia Naturalis of Raymond of Sebonde; and we know from the\nlater Apology in the Essays that freethinking contemporaries declared\nthe argument of Raymond to be wholly insufficient. [2164] It is clear\nfrom the same essay that Montaigne felt as much; though the gist of\nhis polemic is a vehement attack upon all forms of confident opinion,\nreligious and anti-religious alike. \"In replying to arguments of so\nopposite a tenour, Montaigne leaves Christianity, as well as Raimond\nSebonde, without a leg to stand upon. He demolishes the arguments of\nSebonde with the rest of human presumption, and allows Christianity,\nneither held by faith nor provable by reason, to fall between\nthe two stools.\" [2165] The truth is that Montaigne's skepticism\nwas the product of a mental evolution spread over at least twenty\nyears. In his youth his vivid temperament kept him both credulous\nand fanatical, so much so that in 1562 he took the reckless oath\nprescribed by the Catholic Parlement of Paris. As he avows with\nhis incomparable candour, he had been in many things peculiarly\nsusceptible to outside influences, being always ready to respond to\nthe latest pressure; [2166] and the knowledge of his susceptibility\nmade him self-distrustful. But gradually he found himself. Beginning\nto recoil from the ferocities and iniquities of the League, he yet\nremained for a time hotly anti-Protestant; and it seems to have\nbeen his dislike of Protestant criticism that led him to run amuck\nagainst reason, at the cost of overthrowing the treatise he had set\nout to defend. The common end of such petulant skepticism is a plunge\ninto uneasy yet unreasoning faith; but, though Montaigne professed\nCatholicism to the end, the sheer wickedness of the Catholic policy\nmade it impossible for him to hold sincerely to the creed any more\nthan to the cause. [2167] Above all things he hated cruelty. [2168]\nIt was the Massacre that finally made Montaigne renounce public life;\n[2169] it must have affected likewise his working philosophy.\n\nThat philosophy was not, indeed, an original construction: he found\nit to his hand partly in the deism of his favourite Seneca; partly in\nthe stoical ethic of Epictetus, then so much appreciated in France;\nand partly in the Hypotyposes of Sextus Empiricus, of which the Latin\ntranslation is known to have been among his books; from which he took\nseveral of the mottoes inscribed on his library ceiling, [2170] and\nfrom which he frequently quotes towards the end of his Apology. The\nbody of ideas compacted on these bases cannot be called a system: it\nwas not in Montaigne's nature to frame a logical scheme of thought;\nand he was far from being the philosophic skeptic he set out to be\n[2171] by way of confounding at once the bigots and the atheists. He\nwas essentially ondoyant et divers, as he freely admitted. As he put\nit in a passage added to the later editions of the Essais, [2172]\nhe was a kind of m\u00e9tis, belonging neither to the camp of ignorant\nfaith nor to that of philosophic conviction, whether believing or\nunbelieving. He early avows that, had he written what he thought and\nknew of the affairs of his times, he would have published judgments \"\u00e0\nmon gr\u00e9 mesme et selon raison,\" in his opinion true and reasonable, but\n\"ill\u00e9gitimes et punissables.\" [2173] Again, \"whatsoever is beyond the\ncompass of custom, we deem likewise to be beyond the compass of reason,\nGod knows how unreasonably, for the most part.\" [2174] Yet in the next\nbreath he will exclaim at those who demand changes. Often he comments\nkeenly on the incredible readiness of men to go to war over trifles;\nbut in another mood he accuses the nobility of his day of unwillingness\nto take up arms \"except upon some urgent and extreme necessity.\" [2175]\nIn the same page he will tell us that he is \"easily carried away by\nthe throng,\" and that he is yet \"not very easy to change, forsomuch\nas I perceive a like weakness in contrary opinions.\" [2176] \"I am\nvery easily to be directed by the world's public order,\" [2177] is\nthe upshot of his easy meditations. And a conformist he remained in\npractice to the last, always bearing himself dutifully towards Mother\nChurch, and generally observing the proprieties, though he confesses\nthat he \"made it a conscience to eat flesh upon a fish day.\" [2178]\n\n\n His conformities, verbal and practical, have set certain\n Catholics upon proving his orthodoxy, though his Essays are\n actually prohibited by the Church. A Benedictine, Dom Devienne,\n published in 1773 a Dissertation sur la Religion de Montaigne,\n of which the main pleas are that the Essais often affirm the\n divinity of the Christian faith; that the essayist received\n the freedom of the city of Rome under the eyes of the pope; and\n that his epitaph declared his orthodoxy! A generation later, one\n Labouderie undertook to set forth Le Christianisme de Montaigne\n in a volume of 600 pages (1819). This apologist has the courage\n to face the protest of Pascal: \"Montaigne puts everything in a\n doubt so universal and so general that, doubting even whether\n he doubts, his uncertainty turns upon itself in a perpetual and\n unresting circle.... It is in this doubt which doubts of itself,\n and in this ignorance which is ignorant of itself, that the essence\n of his opinion consists.... In a word, he is a pure Pyrrhonist\"\n (Pens\u00e9es, supp. to Pt. i, art. 11). The reply of the apologist\n is that Montaigne never extends his skepticism to \"revelation,\"\n but on the contrary declares that revelation alone gives man\n certainties (work cited, p. 127).\n\n That is of course merely the device of a hundred skeptics of the\n Middle Ages; the old shibboleth of a \"twofold truth\" modified\n by a special disparagement of reason, with no attempt to meet\n the rejoinder that, if reason has no certainties, there can be\n no certainty that revelation is what it claims to be. When the\n apologist concludes that Montaigne's aim en froissant la raison\n humaine is to \"oblige men to recognize the need of a revelation\n to fix his incertitudes,\" it suffices to answer that Montaigne in\n so many words declares at the outset of the Apologie de Raimond\n Sebonde that he knows nothing of theology, which is equivalent\n to saying that he is not a student of the Bible. As a matter of\n fact he never quotes it!\n\n\nIn the last and most characteristic essay of all, discoursing at large\nOf Experience, he makes the most daring attack on laws in general,\nas being always arbitrary and often irrational, and not seldom more\ncriminal than the offences they punish. After a planless discourse\nof diseases and diets, follies of habit and follies of caprice, the\nwisdom of self-rule and the wisdom of irregularity, he contrives to\nconclude at once that we should make the best of everything and that\n\"only authority is of force with men of common reach and understanding,\nand is of more weight in a strange language\"--a plea for Catholic\nritual. Yet in the same page he pronounces that \"Supercelestial\nopinions and under-terrestrial manners are things that amongst us I\nhave ever seen to be of singular accord.\"\n\nThere is no final recognition here of religion as even a useful\nfactor in life. In point of fact Montaigne's whole habit of mind\nis perfectly fatal to orthodox religion; and it is clear that,\ndespite his professions of conformity, he did not hold the Christian\nbeliefs. [2179] He was simply a deist. Again and again he points to\nSokrates as the noblest and wisest of men; there is no reference to\nJesus or any of the saints. Whatever he might say in the Apology, in\nthe other essays he repeatedly reveals a radical unbelief. The essay\non Custom strikes at the root of all orthodoxy, with its thrusts\nat \"the gross imposture of religions, wherewith so many worthy and\nsufficient men have been besotted and drunken,\" and its terse avowal\nthat \"miracles are according to the ignorance wherein we are by\nnature, and not according to nature's essence.\" [2180] Above all, he\nrejected the great superstition of the age, the belief in witchcraft;\nand, following the lead of Wier, [2181] suggested a medical view of\nthe cases of those who professed wizardry. [2182] This is the more\nremarkable because his rubber-ball fashion of following impulsions\nand rebounding from certainty made him often disparage other men's\ncertainties of disbelief just because they were certainties. Declaring\nthat he prefers above all things qualified and doubtful propositions,\n[2183] he makes as many confident assertions of his own as any man\never did. But the effect of the whole is a perpetual stimulus to\nquestioning. His function in literature was thus to set up a certain\nmental atmosphere, [2184] and this the extraordinary vitality of\nhis utterance enabled him to do to an incalculable extent. He had\nthe gift to disarm or at least to baffle hostility, to charm kings,\n[2185] to stand free between warring factions. No book ever written\nconveys more fully the sensation of a living voice; and after three\nhundred years he has as friendly an audience as ever.\n\n\n Owen notes (French Skeptics, p. 446; cp. Champion, pp. 168-69)\n that, though the papal curia requested Montaigne to alter certain\n passages in the Essays, \"it cannot be shown that he erased or\n modified a single one of the points.\" Sainte-Beuve, indeed, has\n noted many safeguarding clauses added to the later versions of\n the essay on Prayers (i, 56): but they really carry further the\n process of doubt. M. Champion has well shown how the profession of\n personal indecision and mere self-portraiture served as a passport\n for utterances which would have brought instant punishment on an\n author who showed any clear purpose. As it was, nearly a century\n passed before the Essais were placed upon the Roman Index Librorum\n Prohibitorum (1676).\n\n To the orthodox of his own day Montaigne seems to have given entire\n satisfaction. Thus Florimond de Boemond, in his Antichrist (2e\n \u00e9d. 1599, p. 4), begins his apologetic with a skeptical argument,\n which he winds up by referring the reader with eulogy to the\n Apologie of Montaigne. The modern resort to the skeptical method\n in defence of traditional faith seems to date from this time. See\n Prof. Fortunat Strowski, Histoire du sentiment religieux en France\n au xviie si\u00e8cle; 1907, i, 55, note. (De Montaigne \u00e0 Pascal.)\n\n\nThe momentum of such an influence is seen in the work of Charron\n(1541-1603), Montaigne's friend and disciple. The Essais had\nfirst appeared in 1580; the expanded and revised issue in 1588;\nand in 1601 there appeared Charron's De la Sagesse, which gives\nmethodic form and as far as was permissible a direct application to\nMontaigne's naturalistic principles. Charron's is a curious case of\nmental evolution. First a lawyer, then a priest, he became a highly\nsuccessful popular preacher and champion of the Catholic League;\nand as such was favoured by the notorious Marguerite (the Second\n[2186]) of Navarre. On the assassination of the Duke of Guise by\norder of Henri III he delivered an indignant protest from the pulpit,\nof which, however, he rapidly repented. [2187] Becoming the friend\nof Montaigne in 1586, he shows already in 1593, in his Three Truths,\nthe influence of the essayist's skepticism, [2188] though Charron's\nbook was expressly framed to refute, first, the atheists; second,\nthe pagans, Jews, Mohammedans; and, third, the Christian heretics\nand schismatics. The Wisdom, published only eight years later, is a\nwork of a very different cast, proving a mental change. Even in the\nfirst work \"the growing teeth of the skeptic are discernible beneath\nthe well-worn stumps of the believer\"; [2189] but the second almost\ntestifies to a new birth. Professedly orthodox, it was yet recognized\nat once by the devout as a \"seminary of impiety,\" [2190] and brought\non its author a persecution that lasted till his sudden death from\napoplexy, which his critics pronounced to be a divine dispensation. In\nthe second and rearranged edition, published a year after his death,\nthere are some modifications; but they are so far from essential [2191]\nthat Buckle found the book as it stands a kind of pioneer manual of\nrationalism. [2192] Its way of putting all religions on one level,\nas being alike grounded on bad evidence and held on prejudice, is\nonly the formal statement of an old idea, found, like so many others\nof Charron's, in Montaigne; but the didactic purpose and method\nturn the skeptic's shrug into a resolute propaganda. So with the\nformal and earnest insistence that true morality cannot be built on\nreligious hopes and fears--a principle which Charron was the first to\nbring directly home to the modern intelligence, [2193] as he did the\nprinciple of development in religious systems. [2194] Attempting as it\ndoes to construct a systematic practical philosophy of life, the book\nputs aside so positively the claims of the theologians, [2195] and\nso emphatically subordinates religion to the rule of natural reason,\n[2196] that it constitutes a virtual revolution in public doctrine\nfor Christendom. As Montaigne is the effective beginner of modern\nliterature, so is Charron the beginner of modern secular teaching. He\nis a Naturalist, professing theism; and it is not surprising to find\nthat for a time his book was even more markedly than Montaigne's the\nFrench \"freethinker's breviary.\"\n\n\n Strowski, as cited, pp. 164-65, 183 sq., founding on Garasse and\n Mersenne. Strowski at first pronounces Charron \"in reality only a\n collector of commonplaces\" (p. 166); but afterwards obliviously\n confesses (p. 191) that \"his audacities are astonishing,\"\n and explains that \"he formulates, perhaps without knowing\n it, a whole doctrine of irreligion which outgoes the man and\n the time--a thought stronger than the thinker!\" And again he\n forgetfully speaks of \"cette critique hardie et m\u00e9thodique,\n j'allais \u00e9crire scientifique\" (p. 240). All this would be a new\n form of commonplace.\n\n\nIt was only powerful protection that could save such a book from\nproscription; but Charron and his book had the support at once of Henri\nIV and the President Jeannin--the former a proved indifferentist to\nreligious forms; the latter the author of the remark that a peace with\ntwo religions was better than a war which had none. Such a temper had\nbecome predominant even among professed Catholics, as may be gathered\nfrom the immense popularity of the Satyre Menipp\u00e9e (1594). Ridiculing\nas it did the insensate fanaticism of the Catholic League, that\ncomposition was naturally described as the work of atheists; but there\nseems to have been no such element in the case, the authors being\nall Catholics of good standing, and some of them even having a record\nfor zeal. [2197] The Satyre was in fact the triumphant revolt of the\nhumorous common sense of France against the tyranny of fanaticism,\nwhich it may be said to have overthrown at one stroke, [2198] inasmuch\nas it made possible the entry of Henri into Paris. By a sudden appeal\nto secular sanity and the sense of humour it made the bulk of the\nCatholic mass ashamed of its past course. [2199] On the other hand,\nit is expressly testified by the Catholic historian De Thou that all\nthe rich and the aristocracy held the League in abomination. [2200]\nIn such an atmosphere rationalism must needs germinate, especially\nwhen the king's acceptance of Catholicism dramatized the unreality\nof the grounds of strife.\n\nAfter the assassination of the king in 1610, the last of the bloody\ndeeds which had kept France on the rack of uncertainty in religion's\nname for three generations, the spirit of rationalism naturally did\nnot wane. In the Paris of the early seventeenth century, doubtless, the\nnew emancipation came to be associated, as \"libertinism,\" with licence\nas well as with freethinking. In the nature of the case there could be\nno serious and free literary discussion of the new problems either of\nlife or belief, save insofar as they had been handled by Montaigne and\nCharron; and, inasmuch as the accounts preserved of the freethought\nof the age are almost invariably those of its worst enemies, it is\nchiefly their side of the case that has been presented. Thus in 1623\nthe Jesuit Father Fran\u00e7ois Garasse published a thick quarto of over\na thousand pages, entitled La Doctrine Curieuse des Beaux Esprits\nde ce temps, ou pr\u00e9tendus tels, in which he assails the \"libertins\"\nof the day with an infuriated industry. The eight books into which\nhe divides his treatise proceed upon eight alleged maxims of the\nfreethinkers, which run as follows:--\n\n\n I. There are very few good wits [bons Esprits] in the world;\n and the fools, that is to say, the common run of men, are not\n capable of our doctrine; therefore it will not do to speak freely,\n but in secret, and among trusting and cabalistic souls.\n\n II. Good wits [beaux Esprits] believe in God only by way of form,\n and as a matter of public policy (par Maxime d'Etat).\n\n III. A bel Esprit is free in his belief, and is not readily to\n be taken in by the quantity of nonsense that is propounded to\n the simple populace.\n\n IV. All things are conducted and governed by Destiny, which\n is irrevocable, infallible, immovable, necessary, eternal, and\n inevitable to all men whomsoever.\n\n V. It is true that the book called the Bible, or the Holy\n Scripture, is a good book (un gentil livre), and contains a lot of\n good things; but that a bon esprit should be obliged to believe\n under pain of damnation all that is therein, down to the tail of\n Tobit's dog, does not follow.\n\n VI. There is no other divinity or sovereign power in the world but\n Nature, which must be satisfied in all things, without refusing\n anything to our body or senses that they desire of us in the\n exercise of their natural powers and faculties.\n\n VII. Supposing there be a God, as it is decorous to admit, so\n as not to be always at odds with the superstitious, it does not\n follow that there are creatures which are purely intellectual\n and separated from matter. All that is in Nature is composite,\n and therefore there are neither angels nor devils in the world,\n and it is not certain that the soul of man is immortal.\n\n VIII. It is true that to live happily it is necessary to extinguish\n and drown all scruples; but all the same it does not do to appear\n impious and abandoned, for fear of offending the simple or losing\n the support of the superstitious.\n\n\nThis is obviously neither candid [2201] nor competent writing; and as\nit happens there remains proof, in the case of the life of La Mothe le\nVayer, that \"earnest freethought in the beginning of the seventeenth\ncentury afforded a point d'appui for serious-minded men, which neither\nthe corrupt Romanism nor the narrow Protestantism of the period could\nfurnish.\" [2202] Garasse's own doctrine was that \"the true liberty\nof the mind consists in a simple and docile (sage) belief in all that\nthe Church propounds, indifferently and without distinction.\" [2203]\nThe later social history of Catholic France is the sufficient comment\non the efficacy of such teaching to regulate life. In any case the\nnew ideas steadily gained ground; and on the heels of the treatise of\nGarasse appeared that of Marin Mersenne, L'impiet\u00e9 des D\u00e9istes, Ath\u00e9es\net Libertins de ce temps combattue, avec la refutation des opinions\nde Charron, de Cardan, de Jordan Brun, et des quatraines du D\u00e9iste\n(1624). In a previous treatise, Qu\u00e6stiones celeberrim\u00e6 in Genesim\n... in quo volumine Athei et Deisti impugnantur et expugnantur (1623),\nMersenne set agoing the often-quoted assertion that, while atheists\nabounded throughout Europe, they were so specially abundant in France\nthat in Paris alone there were some fifty thousand. Even taking the\nterm \"atheist\" in the loosest sense in which such writers used it,\nthe statement was never credited by any contemporary, or by its author;\nbut neither did anyone doubt that there was an unprecedented amount of\nunbelief. The Quatraines du D\u00e9iste, otherwise L'Antibigot, was a poem\nof one hundred and six stanzas, never printed, but widely circulated\nin manuscript in its day. It is poor poetry enough, but its doctrine\nof a Lucretian God who left the world to itself sufficed to create\na sensation, and inspired Mersenne to write a poem in reply. [2204]\nSuch were the signs of the times when Pascal was in his cradle.\n\n\n Mersenne's statistical assertion was made in two sheets of the\n Qu\u00e6stiones Celeberrim\u00e6, \"qui ont \u00e9t\u00e9 supprim\u00e9 dans la plupart\n des exemplaires, \u00e0 cause, sans doute, de leur exag\u00e9ration\"\n (Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cart\u00e9sienne, 1854, i, 28, where\n the passage is cited). The suppressed sheets included a list of\n the \"atheists\" of the time, occupying five folio columns. (Julian\n Hibbert, Plutarchus and Theophrastus on Superstition, etc., 1828;\n App. Catal. of Works written against Atheism, p. 3; Prosper\n Marchand, Lettre sur le Cymbalum Mundi, in \u00e9d. Bibliophile\n Jacob, 1841, p. 17, note; Prof. Strowski, De Montaigne \u00e0 Pascal,\n 1907, p. 138 sq.) Mersenne himself, in the preface to his book,\n stultifies his suppressed assertion by declaring that the impious\n in Paris boast falsely of their number, which is really small,\n unless heretics be reckoned as atheists. Garasse, writing against\n them, all the while professed to know only five atheists, three\n of them Italians (Strowski, as cited).\n\n\n\n END OF VOL. I.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNOTES\n\n\n[1] Cp. Lechler, Geschichte des englischen Deismus, 1841, p. 458;\nA. S. Farrar, Critical History of Freethought, 1862, p. 588; Larousse's\nDictionnaire, art. Libre Pens\u00e9e; Sayous, Les d\u00e9istes anglais et le\nChristianisme, 1882, p. 203.\n\n[2] Jesus is made to apply it either to his disciples or to willing\nfollowers in Matt. xvii, 17, where the implication seems to be that\nlack of faith alone prevents miraculous cures. So with apistia in\nMatt. xiii, 58. In the Epistles, a pagan as such is apistos--e.g.,\n1 Cor. vi, 6. Here the Vulgate has infideles: in Matt. xiii, 58,\nthe word is incredulitatem.\n\n[3] Cp. Luke xii, 46; Tit. i, 15; Rev. xxi, 8.\n\n[4] In the prologue to the first print of the old (1196) Revelation\nof the Monk of Evesham, 1482.\n\n[5] Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Viret, Note D.\n\n[6] Essais, liv. iii. ch. 12. \u00c9dit. Firmin-Didot, 1882, ii, 518.\n\n[7] See F. T. Perrens, Les Libertins en France au xviie Si\u00e8cle, 1896,\nIntrod. \u00a7 11, for a good general view of the bearings of the word. It\nstood at times for simple independence of spirit, apart from religious\nfreethinking. Thus Madame de Sevign\u00e9 (Lettre \u00e0 Mme. de Grignan,\n28 juin, 1671) writes: \"Je suis libertine, plus que vous.\"\n\n[8] St\u00e4helin, Johannes Calvin, 1863, i, 383 sq.; Perrens as cited,\npp. 5-6; Mosheim, Eccles. Hist., 13 Cent., part ii, ch. v, \u00a7\u00a7 9-12,\nand notes; 14 Cent., part ii, ch. v, \u00a7\u00a7 3-5; 16 Cent., \u00a7 3, part ii,\nch. ii. \u00a7\u00a7 38-42.\n\n[9] A. Bossert, Calvin, 1906. p. 151.\n\n[10] Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, Eng. tr. ed. 1892, p. 542, note.\n\n[11] Answer to Sir T. More, Parker Soc. rep. 1850, pp. 53-54.\n\n[12] Controversy with Harding, Parker Soc. rep. of Works, 1845, i, 305.\n\n[13] Paradise Lost, i, 582; Samson Agonistes, 221.\n\n[14] The New Inn, 1628-9, Act iii. Sc. 2.\n\n[15] The New English Dictionary gives instances in 1526 and 1552.\n\n[16] If Mr. Froude's transcript of a manuscript can here be relied\non. History, ed. 1870, x, 545. (Ed. 1872, xi, 199.)\n\n[17] Four Questions Propounded (pref. to Acts and Monuments).\n\n[18] Answer to the Bishop of Winchester, Parker Soc. rep., p. 129.\n\n[19] Works, ed. 1850, ii, 752.\n\n[20] B. V, ch. i, \u00a7 3. Works, i, 429.\n\n[21] De civitate Dei, xx, 30, end; xxi, 5, beginn., etc.\n\n[22] Religio Medici, 1642, pt. i. \u00a7\u00a7 19, 20.\n\n[23] Essay II, Of Scepticism and Certainty (rep. of reply to Thomas\nWhite, app. to Scepsis Scientifica in 1665) in Glanvill's collected\nEssays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion,\n1676, pp. 38, 44.\n\n[24] Plus Ultra: or, The Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since\nthe Days of Aristotle, 1668, p. 146.\n\n[25] History of the Royal Society, 1667, p. 73. Describing the\nbeginnings of the Society, Sprat remarks that Oxford had at that time\nmany members \"who had begun a free way of reasoning\" (p. 53).\n\n[26] Buckle, Introd. to Hist. of Civ. in Eng., 1-vol. ed. p. 211.\n\n[27] Sprat, p. 375 (printed as 367).\n\n[28] Id., p. 83. The French Academy had the same rule.\n\n[29] Some of Sprat's uses of the term have a very general sense, as\nwhen he writes (p. 87) that \"Amsterdam is a place of Trade without the\nmixture of men of freer thoughts.\" The latter is an old application,\nas in \"the free sciences\" or \"the liberal arts.\"\n\n[30] Cited by Archbishop Trench, The Study of Words, 19th ed., p. 230,\nfrom the Clarendon State Papers, App. Vol. III, p. 40.\n\n[31] Art. Rationalismus and Supernaturalismus in Herzog and Plitt's\nReal-Encyk. f\u00fcr prot. Theol. und Kirche, 1883. xii, 509.\n\n[32] Philosophical Works of Bacon, ed. Ellis and Spedding, iii,\n583. See the same saying quoted among the Apophthegms given in\nTenison's Baconiana (Routledge's ed. of Works, p. 895).\n\n[33] Every Man in his Humour (1598), Act iii, sc. 3.\n\n[34] Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and Several of his\nFriends, 1708, p. 190.\n\n[35] Id. p. 133.\n\n[36] Ed. Rotterdam, 1686. p. 195.\n\n[37] B. II, pt. ii, \u00a7 1.\n\n[38] Ch. on Logic, cited by Professor Fowler in his ed. of the Novum\nOrganum, 1878, introd. p. 118.\n\n[39] \u00a7\u00a7 3 and 4.\n\n[40] Letters, 1746, p. 5.\n\n[41] Orig. ed. iii, 305, 306, 311; ed. J. M. R., 1900, ii, 349, 353.\n\n[42] Nos. 12, 111, 135.\n\n[43] Cp. Johnson on A. Philips in Lives of the Poets. Swift, too,\nissued his Free Thoughts upon the Present State of Affairs in 1714.\n\n[44] Thus Bentley, writing as Phileleutherus Lipsiensis against\nCollins, claims to have been \"train'd up and exercis'd in Free Thought\nfrom my youth.\" Dr. Samuel Clarke somewhere makes a similar statement;\nand the point is raised by Berkeley in his Minute Philosopher,\nDial. i, \u00a7 10. One of the first replies to Collins, A Letter to the\nFree-thinkers, By a Layman, dated February 24, 1712-13, likewise\ninsists on the right of believers to the title, declaring that\n\"a free-thinker may be the best or worst of men.\" Shaftesbury on\nthe other side protests that the passion of orthodoxy \"holds up the\nintended chains and fetters and declares its resolution to enslave\"\n(Characteristics, iii. 305; ed. 1900, ii, 345). Later, the claim of\nBentley and Clarke became common; and one tract on Christian evidences,\nA Layman's Faith, 1732, whose author shows not a grain of the critical\nspirit, professes to be written \"by a Freethinker and a Christian.\"\n\n[45] Written in 1898.\n\n[46] Cp. Haur\u00e9au, Histoire de la philosophie scolastique,\ned. 1870-1872, i, 543-46.\n\n[47] Second ed. with enlarged Appendix (of authorities and references),\n1808, 2 vols.\n\n[48] Farrar, pref., p. x; Riddle, p. 99; Van Mildert, i, 105, etc.\n\n[49] Van Mildert even recast his first manuscript. See the Memoir of\nJoshua Watson, 1863, p. 35.\n\n[50] Cp. W. A. Schmidt, Geschichte der Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit im\nersten Jahrhundert der Kaiserherrschaft und des Christenthums, 1847,\npp. 12-13.\n\n[51] Its legitimacy on that side is expressly contended for by\nProfessor William James in his volume The Will to Believe (1897),\nthe positions of which were criticized by the present writer in the\nUniversity Magazine, April and June, 1897.\n\n[52] Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, 8th ed., p. 135.\n\n[53] A religious basis for sexual licence is of course a common feature\nin non-Christian religions also. Classic instances are well known. As\nto sexual promiscuity in an \"intensely religious\" savage community,\nsee Turner, Samoa a Hundred Years Ago, 1884, p. 290.\n\n[54] E. B. Tylor, Anthropology, 1881, p. 439. Cp. Lang, Custom and\nMyth, ed. 1893, p. 72; J. G. Frazer, Lectures on the Early History\nof the Kingship, 1905, pp. 85-87.\n\n[55] Theal, The Beginning of South African History, 1902, p. 57. See\nalso the Rev. J. Macdonald, Light in Africa, 1890, p. 192.\n\n[56] Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians,\n5th ed. 1871, i, 280, note.\n\n[57] Life of Mr. Yukichi Fukuzawa, Tokyo, 1902, pp. 48-53, 56-69.\n\n[58] See Tylor, Primitive Culture, 3rd ed. i, 71, as to savage\nconservatism in handicraft; but compare his Researches into the Early\nHistory of Mankind, 1865, p. 160, as to countervailing forces.\n\n[59] E.g., in the first chapter of Saint-Simon's M\u00e9moires, the account\nof the French soldiers who at the siege of Namur burned and broke\nthe images of Saint M\u00e9dard for sending so much rain. Cp. Irvine,\nLetters on Sicily, 1813, p. 72; and Ramage, Wanderings through Italy,\ned. 1868, p. 113. Constant, De la religion, 1824, vol. i, ptie. ii,\np. 34, gives a number of Christian instances.\n\n[60] Rev. J. B. Stair, Old Samoa, 1897, pp. 181-82.\n\n[61] Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Mathematicos, ix, 14, 29; Pseudo-Plutarch,\nDe placitis philosophorum, i, 7; Lactantius, De ira Dei, x, 47;\nCicero, De natura Deorum, i, 42; Augustine, De civitate Dei, iv,\n32. It is noteworthy that the skeptic Sextus rejects the opinion as\nabsurd, even as does the high-priest Cotta in Cicero.\n\n[62] Vico was one of the first, after Sextus Empiricus and his modern\ncommentator Fabricius, to insist (following the saying of Petronius,\nPrimus in orbe deos fecit timor) that \"False religions were founded\nnot by the imposture of some, but by the credulity of all\" (Scienza\nNuova [1725], lib. i, prop. 40). Yet when denying (id., De' Principii,\ned. 1852, p. 114) the assertions of travellers as to tribes without\nreligion, he insisted that they were mere fictions planned to sell\nthe authors' books--here imputing fraud as lightly as others had done\nin the case of the supposed founders of religions.\n\n[63] E.g., the Elizabethan play Selimus (Huth Lib. ed. of Greene,\nvol. xiv, ed. Grosart), dated 1594, vv. 258-262. (In \"Temple\nDramatists\" ed., vv. 330-334.) See also below, vol. ii, ch. xiii.\n\n[64] On the principle of self-expression in religion, cp. Feuerbach,\nDas Wesen der Religion, in Werke, ed. 1846-1849, i, 413, 445, 498, etc.\n\n[65] Bishop Thirlwall, History of Greece, ed. 1839, i, 186,\n204. Cp. Curtius, Griechische Geschichte, 1858, i, 389.\n\n[66] Tiele, Outlines of the Hist. of Religions, Eng. tr.,\np. 96. Cp. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church,\n2nd ed., p. 141, note.\n\n[67] Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia,\n1904, pp. 258, 347, 366, 373, 492.\n\n[68] See the article by E. J. Glave, of Stanley's force, on\n\"Fetishism in Congoland,\" in the Century Magazine, April, 1891,\np. 836. Compare F. Schultze, Der Fetischismus, 1871, pp. 137, 141,\n142, 144, etc.; Theal, The Beginning of South African History, 1902,\npp. 49, 52; Kranz, Natur- und Kulturleben der Zulus, 1880, pp. 110,\n113-14; Moffat, Missionary Labours, 35th thous., pp. 69, 81-84;\nA. B. Ellis, The Tshi-Speaking Peoples, 1887, pp. 125-29, 137-39, 142;\nSir G. S. Robertson, The K\u00e1firs of the Hindu-Kush, ed. 1899, pp. 405,\n417; E. Rae, The White Sea Peninsula, 1881, p. 149; Turner, Samoa,\n1884, p. 272. It is certain that the wizards of contemporary savage\nraces are frequently killed as impostors by their own people. See\nbelow, p. 35.\n\n[69] Tylor, Anthropology, p. 406; Primitive Culture, 3rd ed., i, 38.\n\n[70] The fact that this phenomenon occurs everywhere among primitives,\nfrom the South Seas to Lapland, should be noted in connection with\nthe latterly revived claims of so-called \"Mysticism.\"\n\n[71] Cp. E. Rae, The White Sea Peninsula, 1881, pp. 149, 263.\n\n[72] Glave, article cited, pp. 835-36.\n\n[73] Cp. Max M\u00fcller, Natural Religion, 1889, p. 133; Anthropological\nReligion, 1892, p. 150; Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2nd ed. ii,\n358 sq.\n\n[74] Compare Bishop Butler's Charge to the Clergy of Durham, and Bishop\nWordsworth On Religious Restoration in England, 1854, p. 75, etc.\n\n[75] P. von Bradke, Dy\u00e2us Asura, Ahura Mazda, und die Asuras,\nHalle. 1885, p. 115.\n\n[76] Rig-Veda, x, 121 (as translated by Muir, M\u00fcller, Dutt, and von\nBradke); and x, 82 (Dutt's rendering). It is to be noted that the\nrefrain \"Who is the God whom we should worship?\" is entirely different\nin Ludwig's rendering of x, 121. [Bertholet's Religionsgeschichtliches\nLesebuch (1908) compiled on the principle that \"the best translations\nare good enough for us,\" follows the rendering of Muir, M\u00fcller, Dutt,\nand von Bradke (p. 165).] Cp. Max M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 302,\nand Natural Religion, pp. 227-229, citing R. V., viii, 100, 3, etc.,\nfor an apparently undisputed case of skepticism. See again Langlois's\nversion of vi, 7, iii, 3 (p. 459). He cannot diverge much more from\nthe German and English translators than they do from each other.\n\n[77] Junod, as above cited, pp. 341, 343, 350, 388. Cp. Dalton,\nas cited, p. 115.\n\n[78] E. Rae, The White Sea Peninsula, 1881, pp. 146-7.\n\n[79] On the other hand, there might be genuine defect of knowledge of\nthe religion of others of the tribe. This is said to occur in thousands\nof cases in Christian countries: why not also among savages? See the\nexpress testimony of Sir G. S. Robertson, The K\u00e1firs of the Hindu-Kush,\ned. 1899, pp. 377, 409.\n\n[80] E.g., Moffat, Missionary Labours, end of ch. xvi and beginning\nof ch. xix.\n\n[81] See Dr. Gasquet, The Great Pestilence, 1893.\n\n[82] Missionary Labours, ch. xix: stereo. ed. pp. 81, 82. It is\nnoteworthy that the women were the first to avow unbelief in an\nunsuccessful rainmaker (Id. p. 84).\n\n[83] Missionary Labours, as cited, p. 85.\n\n[84] Cp. Schultze, Der Fetischismus, 1871, pp. 155-56; A. H. Keane,\nMan, Past and Present, 1900, p. 49; Thurston, Castes and Tribes of\nSouthern India, 1909, i, 86.\n\n[85] Travels in Southern Africa in the Years 1803-1806, 1815, ii,\n61. Cp. Rev. J. Macdonald, Light in Africa, 1890, p. 192, as to\nthe compulsion on men of superior intelligence to play the wizard,\nby reason of the common connection of wizardry with any display of\nmental power. There is no more tragical aspect in the life-conditions\nof primitive peoples.\n\n[86] The Lake Regions of Central Africa, 1860, ii, 351.\n\n[87] Turner, Samoa a Hundred Years Ago, 1884,\npp. 304-305. Cp. Herodotos, iv, 68, as to the slaying of \"false\nprophets\" among the Scythians; and i, 128, as to the impaling of the\nMagi by Astyages.\n\n[88] Paul Kollmann, The Victoria Nyanza, 1899, p. 168.\n\n[89] Sir A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-Speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast,\n1887, p. 127.\n\n[90] E.g., an aged female relative of the writer, quite orthodox\nin all her habits, and devout to the extent of calling the Book of\nEsther \"Godless\" because the word \"God\" does not occur in it, yet\nat a pinch declared that she had \"never heard of Providence putting\na boll of meal inside anybody's door.\" Her daughter-in-law, also of\nquite religious habits, quoted the saying with a certain sense of its\naudacity, but endorsed it, as she had cause to do. Yet both regularly\npractised prayer and asserted divine beneficence.\n\n[91] See B. Seeman, \"Fiji and the Fijians,\" in Galton's Vacation\nTourists, 1862, pp. 275-76, as to the terrorism resorted to by Fijian\npriests against unbelievers. \"Punishment was sure to overtake the\nskeptic, let his station in life be what it might\"--i.e., supernatural\npunishment was threatened, and the priests were not likely to let it\nfail. Cp. Basil Thomson, The Fijians: A Study of the Decay of Custom,\n1909, introd., p. xi: \"The reformers of primitive races never lived\nlong: if they were low-born they were clubbed, and that was the end of\nthem and their reforms; if they were chiefs, and something happened\nto them, either by disease or accident, men saw therein the figure\nof an offended deity; and obedience to the existing order of things\nbecame stronger than before.\" Cp. Pagan Christs, 2nd ed., pp. 60-62,\nas to kings who wished to put down human sacrifices.\n\n[92] See Pagan Christs, 2nd ed., pp. 1-2.\n\n[93] E. J. Glave, art. cited, p. 825. Cp. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times,\npp. 582, 594.\n\n[94] Cp. the Rev. J. Macdonald, Light in Africa, 1890, pp. 222-23,\nas to the \"universal suspicion\" which falls upon tribesmen of\nrationalistic and anti-superstitious tendencies, making them \"almost\ndoubt their own sanity.\"\n\n[95] Sir H. H. Johnston, The River Congo, ed. 1805, p. 289. Cp. Moffat,\nas cited above.\n\n[96] Colenso, The Pentateuch, vol. i, pref. p. vii; introd. p. 9.\n\n[97] Spencer, Principles of Sociology, iii, \u00a7 583.\n\n[98] W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, 1831, iv, 30-31, 126-28.\n\n[99] Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, compiled from the\ncommunications of W. Mariner, by John Martin, M.D., 3rd ed. 1827,\ni, 289-300, 306-307, 338-39; ii, 27-28, 83-86, 134. Mariner, who saw\nmuch of the priests, found no reason to suspect them of any systematic\ndeception. See ii, 129. But his narrative leaves small room for doubt\nas to the procedure of the priest of Toobo Totai.\n\n[100] Dr. A. Kropf, Das Volk der Xosa-Kaffern in \u00f6stlichen S\u00fcdafrika,\nBerlin, 1899, pp. 203-204. Dr. Kropf, a missionary of forty years'\nexperience, states that many of the Kaffirs latterly disbelieve\nin their sorcerers; but this may be partly a result of missionary\nteaching--not so much the religious as the scientific. See the\ntestimony of the Rev. J. Macdonald, Life in Africa, 1890, pp. 47-48.\n\n[101] Rev. J. Macdonald, Life in Africa, pp. 225-26.\n\n[102] It is clear that in the Christianization of Europe much use\nwas made of the argument that the best lands had fallen to the\nChristian peoples. See the epistle of Bishop Daniel of Winchester\nto St. Boniface (Ep. lxvii) cited in Schlegel's note to Mosheim,\nReid's ed. of Murdock's translation, p. 262.\n\n[103] Bede, Eccles. Hist., ii, 13.\n\n[104] Cp. A. H. Mann in Social England, illustr. ed., i, 217.\n\n[105] Teutonic Mythology, Eng. trans. 1882, i, 7.\n\n[106] Crichton and Wheaton, Scandinavia, 1837, i, 198, note. Compare\nDr. Ph. Schweitzer, Geschichte der Skandinavischen Litteratur, i, 25:\n\"In the higher circles [in the pagan period] from an early date (schon\nlange) unbelief and even contempt of religion flourished ... probably\nnever reaching the lower grades of the people.\" See also C. F. Allen,\nHistoire de Danemark, French trans., Copenhagen, 1878, i, 55.\n\n[107] \u00c6neid, vii, 648; x, 773, 880. Mezentius does not deny that Gods\nexist: see x, 743.\n\n[108] Sir G. S. Robertson, The K\u00e1firs of the Hindu-Kush, ed. 1899,\np. 379.\n\n[109] Professor T. Clifford Allbutt, Harveian Oration on Science and\nMedieval Thought, 1901, p. 82.\n\n[110] Mr. Basil Thomson, in the able introduction to his excellent work\non The Fijians, speaks of primitive reformers (p. xi) as \"rare souls\nborn before their time.\" But there is no special \"time\" for reformers,\nwho, as such, must be in advance of their average contemporaries.\n\n[111] Garcilasso, 1. viii, c. 8; 1. ix, c. 10; Herrera, Dec. v, 1. iv,\nc. 4. See the passages in R\u00e9ville's Hibbert Lectures, pp. 162-65.\n\n[112] Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, Kirk's ed., pp. 81 sq., 91-93,\n97; H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, v, 427-29;\nClavigero, History of Mexico, Eng. tr. ed. 1807, B. iv, \u00a7\u00a7 4, 15;\nvii. \u00a7 42.\n\n[113] See the author's Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. pp. 60-62,\n361. Cp. Lafcadio Hearn, Japan, 1904, pp. 313-14.\n\n[114] Cp. T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, ed. 1870, i, 231; Turner,\nSamoa a Hundred Years Ago, 1884, p. 202.\n\n[115] \"A long time elapses between each step that their [missionaries']\nstations advance: and when they do it invariably is under the influence\nof some chief that they are even then led on.\" Dalton, Narrative of\nan Explorer in Tropical South Africa, ed. 1891, p. 102.\n\n[116] See Professor Sully's Studies of Childhood, 1895.\n\n[117] Rev. S. Smith, Church Work among the Deaf and Dumb, 1875, cited\nby Spencer, Principles of Sociology, iii, \u00a7 583. Cp. the testimony\ncited there from Dr. Kitto, Lost Senses, p. 200.\n\n[118] Die griechischen Culte und Mythen, 1887, pp. 263, 276, 277,\netc. What is true as regards the thesis is that some of the central\ninsanities of religion, such as the cult of human sacrifice, seem to\nhave been propagated in all directions from an Asiatic centre. See\nthe author's Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. pp. 273, 292, 343, 354, 362,\netc. Cp. the Rev. D. Macdonald's Asiatic Origin of the Oceanic\nLanguages, Luzac & Co., 1894; the Nubische Grammatik of Lepsius,\n1880; and Terrien de Lacouperie, Western Origin of the Early Chinese\nCivilization, 1894, pp. 134, 362-63.\n\n[119] Dr. Andrew White, A History of the Warfare of Science with\nTheology in Christendom, 1896, i, 23.\n\n[120] Dr. B. Seeman, Viti, 1862, pp. 179-82.\n\n[121] Cp. Lang (Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i, 91) as to the\ncontemptuous disbelief of savages in Christian myths. Mr. Lang\nobserves that this shows savages and civilized men to have \"different\nstandards of credulity.\" That, however, does not seem to be the true\ninference. Each order of believer accepts the myths of his own creed,\nand derides others.\n\n[122] Cp. Decharme, La Critique des trad. relig. chez les Grecs,\n1904, p. 121.\n\n[123] The same process will be recorded later in the case of the\nintercourse of Crusaders and Saracens; and in the seventeenth century\nit is noted by La Bruy\u00e8re (Caract\u00e8res, ch. xvi, Des esprits forts,\npar. 3) as occurring in his day. The anonymous English author of an\nessay on The Agreement of the Customs of the East Indians with those of\nthe Jews (1705, pp. 152-53) na\u00efvely endorses La Bruy\u00e8re. Macaulay's\nremark to the Edinburgh electors, on the view taken of sectarian\nstrifes by a man who in India had seen the worship of the cow, is\nwell known.\n\n[124] Cp. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 96, 121-22; Robertson Smith,\nReligion of the Semites, p. 74; Tiele, Egyptian Religion, p. 36;\nand Outlines, p. 52.\n\n[125] Cp. Tiele, Outlines, pp. 109-110, and Fischer, Heidenthum und\nOffenbarung, p. 59. Professor Max M\u00fcller's insistence that the lines of\nVedic religion could not have been \"crossed by trains of thought which\nstarted from China, from Babylon, or from Egypt\" (Physical Religion,\np. 251), does not affect the hypothesis put above. The Professor\nadmits (p. 250) the exact likeness of the Babylonian fire-cult to\nthat of Agni.\n\n[126] But cp. M\u00fcller, Anthropolog. Relig., p. 164, as to possible\nlater developments; and see above, pp. 45-47, as to the many cases in\nwhich conquering races have actually adopted the Gods of the conquered.\n\n[127] Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, ii (2nd ed.), 372, 379, 384.\n\n[128] Id. p. 395.\n\n[129] Max M\u00fcller, Selected Essays, 1881, ii, 207-208.\n\n[130] Cp. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, 1894, pp. 94, 98-99;\nGhosha, Hist. of Hindu Civ. as illust. in the Vedas, Calcutta, 1889,\npp. 190-91; Max M\u00fcller, Phys. Relig., 1891, pp. 197-98.\n\n[131] Max M\u00fcller, Selected Essays, ii, 237.\n\n[132] Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, v, 268.\n\n[133] Max M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 302, citing R. V., viii, 100,\n3; and ii, 12, 5. The first passage runs: \"If you wish for strength,\noffer to Indra a hymn of praise: a true hymn, if Indra truly exist;\nfor some one says, Indra does not exist! Who has seen him? Whom shall\nwe praise?\" The hymn of course asseverates his existence.\n\n[134] Cp. Rig-Veda, i, 164, 46; x, 90 (cited by Ghosa, pp. 191,\n198); viii, 10 (cited by M\u00fcller, Natural Religion, pp. 227-29);\nand x, 82, 121, 129 (cited by Romesh Chunder Dutt, Hist. of Civ. in\nAnc. India, ed. 1893, i, 95-97); Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v, 353 sq.;\nTiele, Outlines, p. 125; Weber, Hist. of Ind. Lit., Eng. trans.,\np. 5; Max M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures, ed. 1880, pp. 298-304, 310, 315;\nPhys. Relig., p. 187; Barth, Religions of India, Eng. trans., p. 8;\nTylor, Primitive Culture, ii, 354.\n\n[135] Barth, Religions of India, pp. 26, 31, citing Rig-Veda, v, 3,\n1; i, 164, 46; viii, 68, 2. The phrase as to Agni is common in the\nBr\u00e2hmanas, but is not yet so in the Vedas. The second text cited is\nrendered by M\u00fcller: \"That which is one the sages speak of in many\nways--they call it Agni, Yama, M\u00e2tarisvan\" (Selected Essays, 1881,\nii, 240).\n\n[136] Colebrooke's Miscellaneous Essays, ed. 1873, i, 375-76. Weber\n(Ind. Lit., pp. 27, 137, 236, 284-85) has advanced the view that\nthe adherents of this doctrine, who gradually became stigmatized as\nheretics, were the founders or beginners of Buddhism. But the view\nthat the universe is a self-existent totality appears to enter into the\nBrahmans' Sankhya teaching, which is midway between the popular Nyaya\nsystem and the esoteric Ved\u00e2nta (Ballantyne, Christianity Contrasted\nwith Hindu Philosophy, 1859, pp. xviii, 59, 61). As to the connection\nbetween the Sankhya system and Buddhism, see Oldenberg, Der Buddha,\nsein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde, 3te Aufl., Excurs, pp. 443.\n\n[137] H. H. Wilson, Works, 1862-71, ii, 346.\n\n[138] Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., p. 236.\n\n[139] Ballantyne, pp. 58, 61; Major Jacob, Manual of Hindu Pantheism,\n1881, p. 13.\n\n[140] Cp. Max M\u00fcller, Chips from a German Workshop, ed. 1880, i,\n228-232, and Banerjea's Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy, p. 73,\ncited by Major Jacob, Hindu Pantheism, p. 13.\n\n[141] Jacob, as cited, p. 3.\n\n[142] Max M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 340-41. Cp. Barth, Religions\nof India, p. 81.\n\n[143] M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 139.\n\n[144] Cp. Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., p. 28.\n\n[145] Id. pp. 28, 220-22.\n\n[146] Max M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 139, note, citing Panini, iv,\n4, 60.\n\n[147] Apparently belonging to the later or middle Buddhist\nperiod. M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 141.\n\n[148] On these cp. M\u00fcller, p. 139, note; Garbe, Philos. of Anc. India,\nEng. tr. 2nd ed. Chicago, 1899, p. 25; and Weber, Ind. Lit. p. 246,\nnote, with the very full research of Professor Rhys Davids, Dialogues\nof the Buddha, 1899, pp. 166-72.\n\n[149] M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 140-41. Cp. Garbe. p. 28.\n\n[150] Garbe, as cited.\n\n[151] Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, p. 171.\n\n[152] Id. pp. 169-71.\n\n[153] Id. p. 172.\n\n[154] Id. ib.\n\n[155] Trans. in English by Cowell and Gough, 1882.\n\n[156] Garbe, as cited, p. 25.\n\n[157] See M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 141-42, citing Burnouf.\n\n[158] M\u00fcller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 310.\n\n[159] Bk. I, Stories ii, 7, 8, 16; vii. 180.\n\n[160] Bk. I, 11, 40; St. ii, 32.\n\n[161] St. vi. 162.\n\n[162] Major Jacob, as cited, preface.\n\n[163] M\u00fcller, Psychol. Relig., pp. 95, 97, 126; Lect. on the Ved\u00e2nta\nPhilos., 1894, p. 32.\n\n[164] Chunder Dutt, Hist. of Civ. in Anc. India, as cited, i, 112-13.\n\n[165] Rhys Davids, trans. of Dialogues of the Buddha, p. 166. Cp. his\nBuddhism, p. 143, as to Buddhist censures of an extravagant skepticism\nwhich denied every religious theory. In one of the Dialogues (ii,\n25, p. 74) a contemporary sophist is cited as flatly denying a future\nstate. Mr. Lillie, however (Buddhism in Christendom, 1887, p. 187),\ncontends as against Professor Rhys Davids that the Upanishads were only\n\"whispered to pupils who had gone through a severe probation.\"\n\n[166] Prof. Weber (Hist. Ind. Lit., p. 4) says the peoples of the\nPunjaub never at all submitted to the Brahmanical rule and caste\nsystem. But the subject natives there must at the outset have been\ntreated as an inferior order. Cp. Tiele, Outlines, p. 120 and refs.;\nand Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 23.\n\n[167] Cp. Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., pp. 236, 284-85; Max M\u00fcller,\nChips, i, 228-32; Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 258-64; and the\ngeneral discussion of the problem in the author's Pagan Christs,\n2nd ed. pp. 239-63.\n\n[168] Brahmanism had itself been by this time influenced by aboriginal\nelements, even to the extent of affecting its language. Weber, as\ncited, p. 177. Cp. M\u00fcller, Anthrop. Relig., p. 164.\n\n[169] Major Jacob, as cited, p. 12.\n\n[170] I.e., \"the enlightened,\" a title given to sages in\ngeneral. Weber, p. 284.\n\n[171] Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., pp. 179, 299; M\u00fcller, Natural Religion,\np. 299.\n\n[172] See Senart, Essai sur la l\u00e9gende de Buddha, 2e \u00e9dit., p. 297 ff.\n\n[173] Cp. Weber, pp. 286-87, 303.\n\n[174] See Weber, pp. 301, 307; also Rhys Davids, Buddhism, pp. 43,\n83, etc.\n\n[175] Tiele, Outlines, p. 117.\n\n[176] Cp. Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., pp. 27, 284-87; Max M\u00fcller, Natural\nReligion, p. 555; Jacobi, as there cited; Tiele, Outlines, pp. 135-36;\nRhys Davids, American Lectures on Buddhism, pp. 115-16; Buddhism,\np. 84; and the author's Pagan Christs, pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 8-13.\n\n[177] Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., pp. 4, 39.\n\n[178] Barth, Religions of India, p. 146.\n\n[179] Rhys Davids, Buddhism, pp. 35, 79, 99.\n\n[180] Cp. Pagan Christs, pp. 248-50.\n\n[181] Rhys Davids, trans. of Dialogues, pp. 188-89; Amer. Lec. on\nBuddhism, 1896, pp. 127-34; Hibbert Lectures, 1881, p. 109; Buddhism,\npp. 95, 98-99.\n\n[182] Max M\u00fcller, Selected Essays, 1881, ii, 295.\n\n[183] As the context in Professor M\u00fcller's work shows, these phrases\nare inaccurate.\n\n[184] Cp. Weber, Ind. Lit., p. 289, note; and Banerjea, Dialogues on\nthe Hindu Philosophy, p. 520, cited by Major Jacob, pp. 29-30.\n\n[185] See Muir, Sanskrit Texts, iv, 50 (cited by Jacob, pp. 30-31),\nas to the Brahman view of the licence ascribed to Krishna. And see\niii, 32 (cited by Jacob, p. 14), as to a remarkable disparagement of\nVedism in the Bhagavat Gita.\n\n[186] M\u00fcller, Selected Essays, ii, 363: H. H. Wilson, as last cited,\nii, 368 sq.\n\n[187] See this brought out in a strikingly dramatic way in Mr. Dennis\nHird's novel, The Believing Bishop.\n\n[188] Cp. Dr. A. Jeremias, Monotheistische Str\u00f6mungen innerhalb der\nBabylonischen Religion, 1904, p. 44--a very candid research.\n\n[189] The Hammurabi Code, by Chilperic Edwards, 1904, pp. 67, 68, 70\n(\u00a7\u00a7 240, 249, 266). The invocations of named Gods by Hammurabi at the\nclose of the code, however, suggest that the force of the word was\n\"a God.\" Cp. p. 76 with what follows; and see note on p. 93. On this\nquestion compare Jeremias, as cited, pp. 39, 43.\n\n[190] Maspero, Hist. anc. des peup. de l'orient, 4e \u00e9d. p. 139; Sayce,\nHib. Lect., pp. 121, 213, 215; E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt., i (1884),\n161 (\u00a7 133); iii (1901), 167 sq. (\u00a7 103).\n\n[191] Sayce, pp. 219, 344; Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, Eng. ed. p. 127.\n\n[192] Jastrow, Religions of Babylonia and Assyria, 1898, p. 318.\n\n[193] Jastrow, p. 187; Sayce, pp. 128, 267-68. Cp. Kuenen, Religion of\nIsrael, Eng. tr., i, 91; Menzies, History of Religion, 1895, p. 171;\nGunkel, Israel und Babylonien, 1903, p. 30; Jeremias, as cited,\npp. 5-6.\n\n[194] Meyer, iii, 168; Jastrow, p. 79; Sayce, p. 331 sq., 367 sq.;\nLenormant, Chaldean Magic, p. 112; Jeremias, pp. 7-23.\n\n[195] Sayce, p. 305. Cp. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites,\np. 452.\n\n[196] Jastrow, p. 190, note, p. 319; Sayce, pp. 191-92, 367; Lenormant,\npp. 112, 113, 119, 133; Jeremias, p. 26.\n\n[197] Tiele, Outlines, p. 78; Sayce, Ancient Empires of the East,\npp. 152-53; Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, 2nd ed. iii, 13; Maspero,\np. 139.\n\n[198] Strabo, xvi, c. 1, \u00a7 6.\n\n[199] Cp. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, i, 110; iii, 12-13.\n\n[200] Hibbert Lectures, p. 385.\n\n[201] Meyer, iii, \u00a7 103; Sayce, pp. 192, 345.\n\n[202] Cp. Jastrow, p. 662; Sayce, p. 78; and Tiele, Hist. Compar\u00e9e,\np. 209. It seems probable that human sacrifice was latterly restricted\nto the case of criminals.\n\n[203] Cp. Meyer, iii, 173.\n\n[204] Meyer, i, 187, and note.\n\n[205] Cp. T. G. Pinches, The Old Testament in the Light of the\nHist. Records of Assyria and Babylonia, 1902, pp. 161-63.\n\n[206] Jastrow, pp. 187, 256; Sayce, pp. 316, 320, 322, 327; Meyer,\ni, 183; Lenormant, p. 110; Jeremias, p. 5.\n\n[207] Sayce, pp. 326, 341; cp. Jastrow, p. 317.\n\n[208] Meyer, i, 599; Sayce, Hib. Lect., pp. 85-91; Anc. Emp. of the\nEast, p. 245.\n\n[209] Meyer, iii, \u00a7 57.\n\n[210] Herod. i, 131.\n\n[211] Jer. xi, 13, etc.\n\n[212] Ezek. chs. vi, viii.\n\n[213] Cp. the recent literature on the recovered Code of Hammurabi.\n\n[214] Herod. i, 101.\n\n[215] Id. iii, 79.\n\n[216] Cp. Grote, History of Greece, pt. ii, ch. 33 (ed. 1888, iii,\n442), note.\n\n[217] Meyer, Gesch. des Alt., i, 505 (\u00a7 417), 542 (\u00a7 451), 617 (\u00a7\n515); Tiele, Outlines, p. 164.\n\n[218] Herod. i, 130.\n\n[219] Cp. Herod. iii, 94, 98; Grote, vol. iii, p. 448.\n\n[220] Meyer, as cited, i, 505, 530 (\u00a7 439); Tiele, Outlines, pp. 163,\n165.\n\n[221] Meyer, i, 528 (\u00a7 438).\n\n[222] Darmesteter, The Zendavesta (S. B. E. ser.), vol. i, introd.,\np. lx (1st ed.).\n\n[223] Rawlinson, Religions of the Anc. World, p. 105; Meyer, \u00a7\u00a7\n417, 450-51.\n\n[224] Meyer, i, 507 (\u00a7 418).\n\n[225] Cp. Meyer, i, 506-508; Renan, as cited by him, p. 508;\nDarmesteter, as cited, cc. iv-ix, 2nd ed.; Tiele, Outlines, p. 165.\n\n[226] Meyer, i, 520 (\u00a7 428).\n\n[227] Meyer, i, 524 (\u00a7 433); Tiele, Outlines, p. 178; Darmesteter,\nOrmazd et Ahriman, 1877, pp. 7-18.\n\n[228] Meyer, i, \u00a7 450 (p. 541).\n\n[229] Tiele, Outlines, p. 167. Cp. Lenormant (Chaldean Magic, p. 229),\nwho attributes the heresy to immoral Median Magi; and Spiegel (Avesta,\n1852, i, 271), who considers it a derivation from Babylon.\n\n[230] Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures on Relig. of Anc. Egypt,\n2nd ed. p. 92; Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians,\nEng. tr. 1897, p. 109. Cp. p. 260. Renouf (pp. 93-103) supplies an\ninteresting analysis.\n\n[231] Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 83; Wiedemann, as cited, p. 103 sq.\n\n[232] Cp. Major Glyn Leonard, The Lower Niger and its Tribes, 1906,\npp. 354, 417, 433.\n\n[233] Wiedemann, as cited, p. 136.\n\n[234] Meyer, p. 81 (\u00a7 66); Tiele, Hist. of the Egypt. Relig. Eng. tr.,\npp. 119, 154.\n\n[235] Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 2nd ed. p. 240.\n\n[236] Meyer, Geschichte des Alten Egyptens, in Oncken's series,\n1877, B. iii, Kap. 3, p. 249; Gesch. des Alt. i. 109; Tiele,\nEgypt. Relig. pp. 149, 151, 157; Maspero, Hist. anc. des peuples de\nl'orient, 4\u00e9 ed., pp. 278-80; Le Page Renouf, as cited, pp. 215-30;\nWiedemann, pp. 12, 13, 301; Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion,\nEng. tr. 1907, p. 57.\n\n[237] Erman, pp. 59, 60.\n\n[238] Tiele, Egypt. Rel. pp. 153, 155, 156.\n\n[239] Tiele, p. 157.\n\n[240] Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, 1884;\n1 H\u00e4lfte, pp. 90-91; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, Eng. trans. i,\n395-97; Tiele, pp. 226-30; Erman, pp. 71, 103-105.\n\n[241] Cp. Wiedemann, p. 302.\n\n[242] Tiele, pp. 114, 118, 154. Cp. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums,\ni, 101-102 (\u00a7 85). Wiedemann, p. 260.\n\n[243] Dr. Wallis Budge, Egyptian Magic, 1899, end.\n\n[244] Tiele, p. 157. Cp. p. 217.\n\n[245] Cp. Maspero, as cited, pp. 274-76.\n\n[246] Meyer, i, 72.\n\n[247] Maspero's spelling.\n\n[248] Von Bissing's spelling.\n\n[249] De Garis Davies, The Tombs of Amarna.\n\n[250] Maspero (Hist. anc. des peuples de l'orient, ed. 1905, p. 251)\nsays he respected also Osiris and Horus.\n\n[251] Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, ed. 1891, p. 216. Maspero\n(as cited, p. 250) recognizes no such revolt.\n\n[252] Maspero, Hist. anc. de l'orient, 7e \u00e9d. pp. 248-54; Brugsch,\nHist. of Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. trans. ed. 1891, ch. x;\nMeyer, Geschichte des alten Aegyptens, B. iii, Kap. 4, 5; Gesch. des\nAlterthums, i, 271-74; Tiele, pp. 161-65; Flinders Petrie, History\nof Egypt, iii (1905), 10; Wiedemann, pp. 35-39; Erman, pp. 61-70;\nL. W. King and H. H. Hall, Egypt and Western Asia in the Light of\nRecent Discoveries, 1907, pp. 383-87; F. W. von Bissing, Geschichte\nAegyptens in Umriss, 1904, pp. 52-53.\n\n[253] Tiele, p. 144; Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 135.\n\n[254] \"We do not find magic predominant [in the tales] until the\nPtolemaic age. At that time the physical magic of the early times\nreappears in full force\" (Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient\nEgypt, 1898, p. 29. Cp. Maspero, p. 286; Budge, Egyptian Magic,\npp. 64, 233).\n\n[255] Petrie, Hist. iii, 174-75, 180.\n\n[256] Tiele, pp. 180-82; Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 140-43.\n\n[257] Tiele, pp. 184-85, 196, 217.\n\n[258] Herodotos, ii, 48, 60-64, etc. Cp. Maspero, p. 286.\n\n[259] \"The Osiride and Cosmic Gods rose in importance as time went\non, while the Abstract Gods continually sank on the whole. This\nagrees with the general idea that the imported Gods have to yield\ntheir position gradually to the older and more deeply-rooted faiths\"\n(Petrie, as last cited, p. 95).\n\n[260] The familiar narrative of Herodotos is put in doubt by the\nmonuments. Sayce, Ancient Empires, p. 246. But cp. Meyer, i, 611\n(\u00a7 508).\n\n[261] Tiele, p. 158.\n\n[262] See figures 209, 212, 221, 235, 242, 249, 250, in Sharpe's\nHist. of Egypt, 7th ed.\n\n[263] Cp. Sharpe, ii, 287-95; Budge, Egyptian Magic, p. 64.\n\n[264] Compare the orthodox view of Bishop Westcott, Essays in the\nHistory of Religious Thought in the West, 1891, pp. 197-200.\n\n[265] These fights had not ceased even in the time of Julian (Sharpe,\nii, 280). Cp. Juvenal, Sat. xv, 33 sq.\n\n[266] Metamorphoses, B., xi.\n\n[267] Cp. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, passim.\n\n[268] Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 232-33.\n\n[269] Meyer, i, 237.\n\n[270] Put by Canon Rawlinson, History of Phoenicia, 1889, p. 321.\n\n[271] As to the universality of this tendency, see Meyer, ii, 97.\n\n[272] Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i, 251, \u00a7 209; Tiele, Outlines,\np. 84; Histoire compar\u00e9e des anciennes religions, Fr. tr. pp. 320-21.\n\n[273] Rawlinson, Phoenicia, p. 340; Sayce, Anc. Emp. p. 204; Menzies,\nHist. of Relig. p. 168.\n\n[274] Pr\u00e6paratio Evangelica, B. i, c. 9-10.\n\n[275] Meyer, i, 249.\n\n[276] Cp. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 159, as to Persian methods of\nthe same kind.\n\n[277] Div. Inst. i, 23.\n\n[278] E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 104, 105.\n\n[279] As to Greek instances, cp. Bury, Hist. of Greece, ed. 1906,\npp. 53, 55, 65, 92, 104; and as to Roman, see Ettore Pais, Ancient\nLegends of Roman History, Eng. trans. 1906, ch. x, where it is shown\nthat Virginia and Lucretia are primarily ancient Latin divinities; and\n(ch. vii) that both Numa and Servius Tullius are probably in the same\ncase, Servius Rex being in all likelihood the servus rex Nemorensis of\nthe Arician grove, round whom turns the research of Dr. J. G. Frazer's\nGolden Bough; while tullius is an old Latin word for a spring. See also\nch. iv as to Acca Larentia, another Goddess reduced by the historians\nto the status of a hetaira, as was Flora. Horatius Cocles (id. p. 157)\nis also a God reduced to a hero.\n\n[280] So Sayce, Ancient Empires, p. 204.\n\n[281] Sayce, Ancient Empires, p. 202.\n\n[282] Legge, Religions of China, 1880, pp. 11, 16; Douglas,\nConfucianism and Taouism, 1879, pp. 12, 82.\n\n[283] Menzies, History of Religion, p. 158.\n\n[284] Legge, pp. 12, 19, 23, 25, 26; Tiele, Outlines, p. 27; Douglas,\np. 79.\n\n[285] Legge, Religions of China, p. 142.\n\n[286] See the citations made by Legge, p. 5.\n\n[287] Id. p. 139; cp. Menzies, p. 109.\n\n[288] Legge, p. 140; cp. p. 117; Douglas, p. 81.\n\n[289] Legge, Religions, p. 117; Life and Teachings of Confucius,\n4th ed. p. 101; Douglas, p. 68; Tiele, Outlines, p. 29.\n\n[290] Tiele, p. 31; Legge, Religions, p. 143.\n\n[291] Tiele, pp. 31-32; Douglas, pp. 68, 84. But cp. Legge, Religions,\npp. 123, 127.\n\n[292] Legge, Life and Teachings, pp. 100-101.\n\n[293] Douglas, pp. 179, 184.\n\n[294] See the author's Pagan Christs, pp. 214-22.\n\n[295] Pauthier, Chine Moderne, p. 351. There is a tradition that\nLao-Tsze took his doctrine from an ancient sage who flourished\nbefore 1120 B.C.; and he himself (Tau Teh King, trans. by Chalmers,\nThe Speculations of Lao-Tsze, 1868, ch. 41) cites doctrine as to Tau\nfrom \"those who have spoken (before me).\" Cp. cc. 22, 41, 62, 65, 70.\n\n[296] Cp. E. J. Simcox, Primitive Civilizations, 1894, ii, 18.\n\n[297] Pauthier, p. 358; Chalmers, pp. 14, 37.\n\n[298] Legge, Religions, p. 137.\n\n[299] Tau Teh King, as cited, pp. 38. 49, ch. 49, 63; Pauthier,\np. 358; Legge, p. 223.\n\n[300] Analects, xxv, 36; Legge, Religions, p. 143; Life and Teachings,\np. 113; Douglas, p. 144.\n\n[301] Legge, Religions, p. 164. We do find, however, an occasional\nallusion to deity, as in the phrase \"the Great Architect\" (Chalmers'\ntrans. 1868. ch. lxxiv, p. 57), and \"Heaven\" is spoken of in a somewhat\npersonalized sense. Still, Mr. Chalmers complains (p. xv) that Lao-Tsze\ndid not recognize a personal God, but put \"an indefinite, impersonal,\nand unconscious Tau\" above all things (ch. iv).\n\n[302] F. H. Balfour, Art. \"A Philosopher who Never Lived,\" in Leaves\nfrom my Chinese Scrap-book, 1887, p. 83 sq.\n\n[303] Id. pp. 86-90.\n\n[304] Id. p. 134.\n\n[305] Legge, Religions of China, p. 147; Tiele, Outlines, p. 33.\n\n[306] Legge, Life and Works of Mencius, 1875, pp. 29, 50, 77, etc.\n\n[307] Tiele, p. 33.\n\n[308] Legge, Life and Works of Mencius, pp. 44, 47, 56, 57, etc.\n\n[309] Miss Simcox, Primitive Civilizations, ii, 36-37, following\nChavannes.\n\n[310] Legge's Mencius, p. 49; cp. p. 48.\n\n[311] Cp. Legge's Mencius, pp. 47, 131; Chalmers' Lao-Tsze, pp. 23,\n28, 53, 58 (chs. xxx, xxxi, xxxvi, lxvii, lxxiv); Douglas, Taouism,\nchs. ii, iii.\n\n[312] Legge, Religions of China, p. 147. The ruler in question seems\nto have been of non-Chinese descent. E. H. Parker, China, 1901, p. 18.\n\n[313] Legge, Religions of China, p. 159.\n\n[314] Id. p. 60.\n\n[315] Tiele, p. 37.\n\n[316] Douglas, p. 222.\n\n[317] Id. p. 239.\n\n[318] Tiele, p. 35; Douglas, p. 287. Taouism, however, has a rather\nnoteworthy ethical code. See Douglas, ch. vi. It has to be noted that\nthe translations of the T\u00e2o T\u00eah King have varied to a disquieting\ndegree. Cp. Drews, Gesch. des Monismus, p. 121.\n\n[319] Details are given in the author's Pagan Christs, pt. iv.\n\n[320] Nadaillac (L'Am\u00e9rique pr\u00e9historique, 1883, pp. 273-84) gives\nthem little of this credit, pronouncing them at once cruel and\ndegenerate. He credits them, however, with being the first makers of\nroads and aqueducts in Central America, and cites the record of their\nfree public hospitals, maintained by the sacerdotal kings. Prescott,\non the other hand, overstated the bloodlessness of their religion\n(Conquest of Mexico, Kirk's ed. 1890, p. 41 and ed. note).\n\n[321] R\u00e9ville, Hibbert Lectures, On the Native Religions of Mexico\nand Peru, 1884, pp. 62-67.\n\n[322] J. G. M\u00fcller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen,\ned. 1867, pp. 577-90; H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific\nStates, iii, 279. (Passage cited in author's Pagan Christs,\npp. 402-403; where is also noted Dr. Tylor's early view, discarded\nlater, that Quetzalcoatl was a real personage.)\n\n[323] Cp. Prescott, as cited.\n\n[324] R\u00e9ville, p. 66.\n\n[325] J. G. M\u00fcller, as cited, pp. 473-74; R\u00e9ville, p. 46. Dr. R\u00e9ville\nspeaks of the worship of the unifying deity as pretty much \"effaced\"\nby that of the lower Gods. It seems rather to have been a priestly\neffort to syncretize these. Still, such an effacement did take place,\nas we have seen, in Central Asia in ancient times, after a syncretic\nidea had been reached (above, p. 45). As to the alleged monotheism of\nKing Netzahuatl (or Netzahualcoyotl), of Tezcuco, mentioned above,\np. 39, see Lang, Making of Religion, p. 270, note, and p. 282;\nPrescott, Conquest of Mexico, as cited, p. 92; and J. G. M\u00fcller,\nas cited, pp. 473-74, 480.\n\n[326] As to the capabilities of the Aztec language, see Bancroft,\nNative Races, ii, 727-28 (quoted in Pagan Christs, p. 416, note).\n\n[327] Refs. above, p. 41. Cp. Lang, Making of Religion, p. 270,\nnote, and p. 282; J. G. M\u00fcller, as cited, pp. 473-74; and Nadaillac,\nas cited, p. 289.\n\n[328] The Christianized descendant of the Tezcucan kings, Ixtilxochitl,\nwho wrote their history, adds the words, \"Cause of Causes\"--a very\nunlikely formula in the place and circumstances.\n\n[329] Above, p. 41. Cp. Lang, as last cited, pp. 263, 282.\n\n[330] Cp. Kirk's ed. of Prescott's Conquest of Peru, 1889, p. 44;\nR\u00e9ville, p. 189-90; Lang, as cited below.\n\n[331] R\u00e9ville, p. 152, citing Garcilasso. See same page for a story\nof resistance to the invention of an alphabet.\n\n[332] R\u00e9ville, p. 50. citing Torquemada, 1. viii, c. 20. end.\n\n[333] History of the Affairs of New Spain, French trans. 1880,\n1. vi, ch. 7, pp. 342-43. Cp. Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, Kirk's\ned. pp. 31, 33.\n\n[334] Prescott, p. 34.\n\n[335] \"The priest says, 'the spirit is hungry.' the fact being that he\nhimself is hungry. He advises the killing of an animal\" (Max M\u00fcller,\nAnthropological Religion, p. 307).\n\n[336] On the general tendency cp. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Manual\nof the Science of Religion, pp. 77-84.\n\n[337] In the windows of the shop of the S. P. C. K., in London,\nmay be often seen large displays of reproduced Madonna-pictures,\nby Catholic artists, at popular prices.\n\n[338] Compare the author's Pagan Christs, pp. 66-95.\n\n[339] Jud. xvii, xviii.\n\n[340] Gen. xxxi, 19, 34, 35.\n\n[341] Compare Hugo Winckler, Geschichte Israels, i, 56-58.\n\n[342] Compare Tiele, Outlines, p. 87; Hist. comp. des\nanc. relig. p. 342 sq.; Kuenen, Relig. of Israel, iii, 35, 44,\n398. Winckler (Gesch. Israels, i, 34-38) pronounces the original\nSemitic Yahu, and the Yahweh evolved from him, to have been each a\n\"Wetter-Gott.\"\n\n[343] The word is applied to the apparition of Samuel in the story\nof the Witch of Endor (1 Sam. xxviii, 13).\n\n[344] The unlearned reader may here be reminded that in Gen. i the\nHebrew word translated \"God\" is \"Elohim\" and that the phrase in\nGen. ii rendered \"the Lord God\" in our versions is in the original\n\"Yah-weh-Elohim.\" The first chapter, with its plural deity, is,\nhowever, probably the later as well as the more dignified narrative,\nand represents the influence of Babylonian quasi-science. See,\nfor a good general account of the case, The Witness of Assyria, by\nC. Edwards, 1893, ch. ii. Cp. Wellhausen, Proleg. to Hist. of Israel,\nEng. tr. pp. 196-308; E. J. Fripp, Composition of the Book of Genesis,\n1892, passim; Driver, Introd. to the Lit. of the Old Test. 1891,\npp. 18-19.\n\n[345] Winckler, Gesch. Isr. i, 29-30.\n\n[346] Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. i, 398.\n\n[347] See the myth of the offerings put in it by the Philistines\n(1 Sam. vi).\n\n[348] 1 Sam. iii, 3. Cp. ch. ii, 12-22. Contrast Lev. xvi, 2, ff.\n\n[349] 1 Sam. iv, 3-11. Cp. v. vii, 2.\n\n[350] 2 Sam. vi.\n\n[351] 1 Kings xii, 28; Hosea viii, 4-6. Cp. Jud. viii. 27; Hosea\nviii, 5.\n\n[352] Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 196. But see above, p. 79.\n\n[353] 11th cent. B.C.\n\n[354] 2 Kings xviii, 4, 22; xxiii, 48.\n\n[355] 2 Kings xxiii.\n\n[356] Jer. i, 18; iii, 16; vi, 13; vii, 4-22; viii, 8; xviii, 18;\nxx, 1, 2; xxiii, 11.\n\n[357] Jer. ii, 28; xi, 13.\n\n[358] So Kuenen, vol. i. App. i to Ch. 1.\n\n[359] Amos v, 21, 22.\n\n[360] Hosea ii, 11; vi, 6.\n\n[361] Isa. i, 11-14.\n\n[362] Mic. vi, 6-8.\n\n[363] Cp. M. M\u00fcller, Nat. Rel. pp. 560-61; Psychol. Rel. pp. 30-32;\nWellhausen, Israel, p. 465. If the Moabite Stone be genuine--and it\nis accepted by Stade (Gesch. des Volkes Israel, in Oncken's Series,\n1881, i, 86) and by most contemporary scholars--the Hebrew alphabetic\nwriting is carried back to the ninth century B.C. An account of the\nStone is given in The Witness of Assyria, by C. Edwards, ch. xi. See\nagain Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, bk. i, ch. 14, Eng. tr. 1894, i, 280,\nfor a theory of the extreme antiquity of the alphabet.\n\n[364] Dr. Cheyne (Art. Amos in Encyc. Biblica) gives some good reasons\nfor attaching little weight to such objections, but finally joins in\ncalling Amos \"a surprising phenomenon.\"\n\n[365] Driver, Introd. to Lit. of Old Test. ch. vi, \u00a7 2 (p. 290,\ned. 1891). Cp. Kuenen, Relig. of Israel, i, 86; and Robertson Smith,\nart. Joel, in Encyc. Brit.\n\n[366] Cp. Wellhausen, Israel, p. 501; Driver, ch. vii (1st ed. pp. 352\nsq., esp. pp. 355, 361, 362, 365); Stade, Gesch. des Volkes Israel,\ni, 85.\n\n[367] E.g. Ps. l, 8-15; li, 16-17, where v. 19 is obviously a priestly\naddition, meant to countervail vv. 16, 17.\n\n[368] Cp. Kuenen, i, 156; Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 139; Israel,\np. 478.\n\n[369] As to a possible prehistoric connection of Hebrews and\nPerso-Aryans, see Kuenen, i, 254, discussing Tiele and Spiegel, and\niii, 35, 44, treating of Tiele's view, set forth in his Godsdienst\nvan Zarathustra, that fire-worship was the original basis of\nYahwism. Cp. Land's views, discussed by Kuenen, p. 398; and Renan,\nHist. des langues s\u00e9mit. p. 473.\n\n[370] Cheyne, Introd. to Isaiah, Prol. pp. xxx, xxxviii, following\nKosters.\n\n[371] There is a cognate dispute as to the condition of the Samaritans\nat the time of the Return. Stade (Gesch. den Volkes Israel,\ni, 602) holds that they were numerous and well-placed. Winckler\n(Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen, 1892, p. 107) argues that, on the\ncontrary, they were poor and unorganized, and looked to the Jews for\nhelp. So also E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. iii (1901), 214.\n\n[372] Cp. Rowland Williams, The Hebrew Prophets, ii (1871), 38. This\ntranslator's rendering of the phrase cited by Zephaniah runs:\n\"Neither good does the eternal nor evil.\"\n\n[373] Cp. E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, iii, 216.\n\n[374] Mal. ii, 17; iii, 13. Cp. ii, 8, 11.\n\n[375] Cp. Jer. xxxiii, 24; xxxviii, 19.\n\n[376] Eccles. iii, 19-21.\n\n[377] Ch. v. Renan's translation lends lucidity.\n\n[378] Driver, Introduction, p. 378. Prof. Dillon (Skeptics of the\nOld Testament, p. 155) goes so far as to pronounce Agur a \"Hebrew\nVoltaire,\" which is somewhat of a straining of the few words he has\nleft. Cp. Dr. Moncure Conway, Solomon and Solomonic Literature, 1899,\np. 55. In any case, Agur belongs to an age of \"advanced religious\nreflection\" (Cheyne, Job and Solomon, p. 152).\n\n[379] Driver, Introduction, p. 378.\n\n[380] Biscoe, Hist. of the Acts of the Apostles, ed. 1829, p. 80,\nfollowing Selden and Lightfoot.\n\n[381] S. Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896, p. 189, citing Sanhedrin,\n386, and Pseudo-Jonathan to Gen. iv, 8. Cp. pp. 191-92, citing a\nmention of Epicurus in the Mishna.\n\n[382] The familiar phrase in the Psalms (xiv, i; liii, 1), \"The fool\nhath said in his heart, there is no God,\" supposing it to be evidence\nfor anything, clearly does not refer to any reasoned unbelief. Atheism\ncould not well be quite so general as the phrase, taken literally,\nwould imply.\n\n[383] Cp. W. R. Sorley, Jewish Christians and Judaism, 1881,\np. 9; Robertson Smith, Old Test. in the Jewish Ch. ed. 1892,\npp. 48-49. These writers somewhat exaggerate the novelty of the view\nthey accept. Cp. Biscoe, History of the Acts, ed. 1829, p. 101.\n\n[384] Wisdom, c. 2.\n\n[385] Cp. the implications in Ecclesiasticus, vi, 4-6; xvi, 11-12,\nas to the ethics of many believers.\n\n[386] Kuenen, ii, 242-43.\n\n[387] Kalisch, Comm. on Leviticus, xxv, 8, pt. ii, p. 548.\n\n[388] In the Wisdom of Solomon, iii, 13; iv, 1, the old desire for\noffspring is seen to be in part superseded by the newer belief in\npersonal immortality.\n\n[389] Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896, p. 216. Compare pp. 193-94.\n\n[390] See Supernatural Religion, 6th ed. i, 97-100, 103-21; Mosheim,\nComm. on Christ. Affairs before Constantine, Vidal's tr. i, 70;\nSch\u00fcrer, Jewish People in the Time of Jesus, Eng. tr. Div. II,\nvol. iii, p. 152.\n\n[391] Sat. xiv, 96-106.\n\n[392] Cp. Horace, 1 Sat. v, 100.\n\n[393] Rev. A. Edersheim, History of the Jewish Nation after the\nDestruction of Jerusalem, 1856, p. 462, citing the Avoda Sara, a\ntreatise directed against idolatry! Other Rabbinical views cited by\nDr. Edersheim as being in comparison \"sublime\" are no great improvement\non the above--e.g., the conception of deity as \"the prototype of\nthe high priest, and the king of kings,\"--\"who created everything\nfor his own glory.\" With all this in view, Dr. Edersheim thought\nit showed \"spiritual decadence\" in Philo Jud\u00e6us to speak of Persian\nmagi and Indian gymnosophists in the same laudatory tone as he used\nof the Essenes, and to attend \"heathenish theatrical representations\"\n(p. 372).\n\n[394] See Ps. xc, 2; Prov. viii, 22, 26.\n\n[395] This is seen persisting in the lore of the Neo-Platonist writer\nSallustius Philosophus (4th c.), De Diis et Mundo, c. 7, though quite\nunscientifically held.\n\n[396] Cp. Tiele, Outlines, pp. 205, 207, 212.\n\n[397] Cp. E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 533.\n\n[398] Cp. K. O. M\u00fcller, Literature of Ancient Greece, ed. 1847, p. 77.\n\n[399] Duncker, Gesch. des Alterth. 2 Aufl. iii, 209-10, 252-54,\n319 sq.; E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii, 181, 365, 369, 377, 380,\n535 (see also ii, 100, 102, 105, 106, 115 note, etc.); W. Christ,\nGesch. der griech. Lit. 3te Aufl. p. 12; Gruppe, Die griech. Culte\nund Mythen, 1887, p. 165 sq.\n\n[400] E. Curtius, Griech. Gesch. i, 28, 29, 35, 40, 41, 101, 203,\netc.; Meyer, ii, 369.\n\n[401] See the able and learned essay of S. Reinach, Le Mirage\nOrientate, reprinted from L'Anthropologie, 1893. I do not find that\nits arguments affect any of the positions here taken up. See pp. 40-41.\n\n[402] Meyer, ii. 369; Benn, The Philosophy of Greece, 1898, p. 42.\n\n[403] Cp. Bury, History of Greece, ed. 1906, pp. vi, 10, 27, 32-34,\n40, etc.; Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, 1907, ch. ix; Maisch,\nManual of Greek Antiquities, Eng. tr. \u00a7\u00a7 8, 9, 10, 60; H. R. Hall,\nThe Oldest Civilization of Greece, 1901, pp. 31, 32.\n\n[404] Cp. K. O. M\u00fcller, Hist. of the Doric Race, Eng. tr. 1830, i,\n8-10; Busolt, Griech. Gesch. 1885, i, 33; Grote, Hist. of Greece,\n10-vol. ed. 1888, iii, 3-5, 35-44; Duncker, iii, 136, n.; E. Meyer,\nGesch. des Alterthums, i, 299-310 (\u00a7\u00a7 250-58); E. Curtius, i, 29;\nSch\u00f6mann, Griech. Alterth\u00fcmer, as cited, i, 2-3, 89; Burrows, ch. ix.\n\n[405] Cp. Meyer, ii, 97; and his art. \"Baal\" in Roscher's\nAusf\u00fchrl. Lex. Mythol. i, 2867.\n\n[406] The fallacy of this tradition, as commonly put, was well shown\nby Renouvier long ago--Manuel de philosophie ancienne, 1844, i,\n3-13. Cp. Ritter, as cited below.\n\n[407] Cp. on one side, Ritter, Hist. of Anc. Philos. Eng. tr. i,\n151; Renan, \u00c9tudes d'hist. religieuse, pp. 47-48; Zeller, Hist. of\nGreek Philos. Eng. tr. 1881, i, 43-49; and on the other, Ueberweg,\nHist. of Philos. Eng. tr. i, 31, and the weighty criticism of Lange,\nGesch. des Materialismus, i, 126-27 (Eng. tr. i, 9, note 5).\n\n[408] Cp. Curtius, i, 125; Bury, introd. and ch. i.\n\n[409] Cp. Bury, as cited.\n\n[410] As to the primary mixture of \"Pelasgians\" and Hellenes,\ncp. Busolt, i, 27-32; Curtius, i, 27; Sch\u00f6mann, i, 3-4; Thirlwall,\nHist. of Greece, ed. 1839, i, 51-52, 116. K. O. M\u00fcller (Doric Race,\nEng. tr. i, 10) and Thirlwall, who follows him (i, 45-47), decide\nthat the Thracians cannot have been very different from the Hellenes\nin dialect, else they could not have influenced the latter as they\ndid. This position is clearly untenable, whatever may have been\nthe ethnological facts. It would entirely negate the possibility of\nreaction between Greeks, Kelts, Egyptians, Semites, Romans, Persians,\nand Hindus.\n\n[411] Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 1912, p. 59.\n\n[412] Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. ii, 583.\n\n[413] The question is discussed at some length in the author's\nEvolution of States, 1912.\n\n[414] Lit. of Anc. Greece, pp. 41-47. The discussion of the Homeric\nproblem is, of course, alien to the present inquiry.\n\n[415] Introd. to Scientif. Mythol. Eng. tr. pp. 180, 181,\n291. Cp. Curtius, i, 126.\n\n[416] Cp. Curtius, i, 107, as to the absence in Homer of any\ndistinction between Greeks and barbarians; and Grote, 10-vol. ed. 1888,\niii, 37-38, as to the same feature in Archilochos.\n\n[417] Duncker, Gesch. des Alt., as cited, iii. 209-10; pp. 257,\n319 sq. Cp. K. O. M\u00fcller, as last cited, pp. 181, 193; Curtius, i,\n43-49, 53, 54, 107, 365, 373, 377, etc.; Grote, iii, 39-41; and Meyer,\nii, 104.\n\n[418] Duncker, iii, 214; Curtius, i, 155, 121; Grote, iii, 279-80.\n\n[419] Busolt, Griech. Gesch. 1885, i, 171-72. Cp. pp. 32-34; and\nCurtius, i, 42.\n\n[420] On the general question cp. Gruppe, Die griechischen Culte und\nMythen, pp. 151 ff., 157, 158 ff., 656 ff., 672 ff.\n\n[421] Preller, Griech. Mythol. 2 Aufl. i, 260; Tiele, Outlines, p. 211;\nR. Brown, Jr., Semit. Influ. in Hellenic Mythol. 1898, p. 130; Murray,\nHist. of Anc. Greek Lit. p. 35; H. R. Hall, Oldest Civilization of\nGreece, 1901, p. 290.\n\n[422] See Tiele, Outlines, pp. 210, 212. Cp., again, Curtius,\nGriech. Gesch. i, 95, as to the probability that the \"twelve Gods\"\nwere adjusted to the confederations of twelve cities; and again p. 126.\n\n[423] \"Even the title 'king' (Anax) seems to have been borrowed by the\nGreek from Phrygian.... It is expressly recorded that tyrannos is a\nLydian word. Basileus ('king') resists all attempts to explain it as a\npurely Greek formation, and the termination assimilates it to certain\nPhrygian words.\" (Prof. Ramsay, in Encyc. Brit. art. Phrygia). In\nthis connection note the number of names containing Anax (Anaximenes,\nAnaximandros, Anaxagoras, etc.) among the Ionian Greeks.\n\n[424] iv, 561 sq.\n\n[425] It is now agreed that this is merely a guess. The document,\nfurther, has been redacted and interpolated.\n\n[426] Prehist. Antiq. of the Aryan Peoples, Eng. tr. p. 423. Wilamowitz\nholds that the verses Od. xi, 566-631, are interpolations made later\nthan 600 B.C.\n\n[427] Tiele, Outlines, p. 209; Preller, p. 263.\n\n[428] Meyer says on the contrary (Gesch. des Alt. ii, 103, Anm.) that\n\"Kronos is certainly a Greek figure\"; but he cannot be supposed to\ndispute that the Greek Kronos cult is grafted on a Semitic one.\n\n[429] Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 54, 181. Cp. Cox, Mythol. of the\nAryan Nations, p. 260, note. It has not, however, been noted in the\ndiscussions on Semel\u00ea that Semlje is the Slavic name for the Earth\nas Goddess. Ranke, History of Servia, Eng. tr. p. 43.\n\n[430] Iliad, xiv, 201, 302.\n\n[431] Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 367 sq.; Ancient Empires,\np. 158. Note p. 387 in the Lectures as to the Assyrian influence,\nand p. 391 as to the Homeric notion in particular. Cp. W. Christ,\nGesch. der griech. Literatur, \u00a7 68.\n\n[432] It is unnecessary to examine here the view of Herodotos that\nmany of the Greek cults were borrowed from Egypt. Herodotos reasoned\nfrom analogies, with no exact historical knowledge. But cp. Renouvier,\nManuel, i, 67, as to probable Egyptian influence.\n\n[433] Cp. Meyer, ii, \u00a7\u00a7 453-60, as to the eastern initiative of\nOrphic theology.\n\n[434] It is noteworthy that the traditional doctrine associated with\nthe name of Orpheus included a similar materialistic theory of the\nbeginning of things. Athenagoras, Apol. c. 19. Cp. Renouvier, Manuel\nde philos. anc. i, 69-72; and Meyer, ii, 743.\n\n[435] Cp. Meyer, ii, 726. As to the oriental elements in Hesiod see\nfurther Gruppe, Die griechischen Culte und Mythen, 1887, pp. 577,\n587, 589, 593.\n\n[436] Cp. however, Bury (Hist. of Greece, pp. 6, 65), who assumes that\nthe Greeks brought the hexameter with them to Hellas. Contrast Murray,\nFour Stages, p. 61.\n\n[437] Mahaffy, History of Classical Greek Literature, 1880, i, 15.\n\n[438] Id. p. 16. Cp. W. Christ, as cited, p. 79.\n\n[439] Mahaffy, pp. 16-17.\n\n[440] Od. xviii, 352.\n\n[441] Od. vi, 240; Il. v, 185.\n\n[442] Od. xxii, 39.\n\n[443] In Od. xiv, 18, antitheoi means not \"opposed to the Gods,\"\nbut \"God-like,\" in the ordinary Homeric sense of noble-looking\nor richly attired, as men in the presence of the Gods. Cp. vi,\n241. Yet a Scholiast on a former passage took it in the sense\nof God-opposing. Clarke's ed. in loc. Liddell and Scott give no\nuse of atheos, in the sense of denying the Gods, before Plato\n(Apol. 26 C. etc.), or in the sense of ungodly before Pindar\n(P. iv, 288) and \u00c6schylus (Eumen. 151). For Sophocles it has the\nforce of \"God-forsaken\"--Oedip. Tyr. 254 (245), 661 (640), 1360\n(1326). Cp. Electra, 1181 (1162). But already before Plato we find the\nterms apistos and atheos, \"faithless\" or \"infidel\" and \"atheist,\"\nused as terms of moral aspersion, quite in the Christian manner\n(Euripides, Helena, 1147), where there is no question of incredulity.\n\n[444] Cp. Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2nd ed. i, 14-15. and\ncit. there from Professor Jebb.\n\n[445] Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterthums, ii, 724-27; Grote, as cited,\ni, 279-81.\n\n[446] Meyer, ii, 724, 727.\n\n[447] The tradition is confused. Stesichoros is said first to have\naspersed Helen, whereupon she, as Goddess, struck him with blindness:\nthereafter he published a retractation, in which he declared that she\nhad never been at Troy, an eidolon or phantasm taking her name; and\non this his sight was restored. We can but divine through the legend\nthe probable reality, the documents being lost. See Grote, as cited,\nfor the details. For the eulogies of Stesichoros by ancient writers,\nsee Girard, Sentiment religieux en Gr\u00e8ce, 1869, pp. 175-79.\n\n[448] Cp. Meyer (1901), iii. \u00a7 244.\n\n[449] Ol. i, 42-57, 80-85.\n\n[450] Ol. ix, 54-61.\n\n[451] He dedicated statues to Zeus, Apollo, and Hermes. Pausanias,\nix, 16, 17.\n\n[452] Herodot. ii. 53.\n\n[453] A ruler of Libyan stock, and so led by old Libyan connections to\nmake friends with Greeks. He reigned over fifty years, and the Greek\nconnection grew very close. Curtius, i, 344-45. Cp. Grote, i, 144-55.\n\n[454] Grote, 10-vol. ed. 1888, i, 307, 326, 329, 413. Cp. i, 27-30;\nii, 52; iii, 39-41, etc.\n\n[455] K. O. M\u00fcller, Introd. to Mythology, p. 192.\n\n[456] \"Then one [of the Persians] who before had in nowise believed\nin [or, recognized the existence of] the Gods, offered prayer and\nsupplication, doing obeisance to Earth and Heaven\" (Persae, 497-99).\n\n[457] Agamemnon, 370-372. This is commonly supposed to be a reference\nto Diagoras the Melian (below, p. 159).\n\n[458] Agam. 170-72 (160-62).\n\n[459] So Whittaker, Priests, Philosophers, and Prophets, 1911,\npp. 42-43.\n\n[460] So Buckley, in Bohn trans. of \u00c6schylus, p. 100. He characterizes\nas a \"skeptical formula\" the phrase \"Zeus, whoever he may be\"; but\ngoes on to show that such formulas were grounded on the Semitic notion\nthat the true name of God was concealed from man.\n\n[461] Grote, ed. 1888, vii, 8-21. See the whole exposition of the\nexceptionally interesting 67th chapter.\n\n[462] Cp. Meyer, ii, 431; K. O. M\u00fcller, Introd. to Mythol. pp. 189-92;\nDuncker, p. 340; Curtius, i, 384; Thirlwall, i, 200-203; Burckhardt,\nGriech. Culturgesch. 1898, ii. 19. As to the ancient beginnings of a\npriestly organization, see Curtius, i, 92-94, 97. As to the effects of\nits absence, see Heeren, Polit. Hist. of Anc. Greece, Eng. tr. 1829,\npp. 59-63; Burckhardt, as cited, ii, 31-32; Meyer, as last cited;\nZeller, Philos. der Griechen, 3te Aufl. i, 44 sq. Lange's criticism\nof Zeller's statement (Gesch. des Materialismus, 3te Aufl. i, 124-26,\nnote 2) practically concedes the proposition. The influence of a\nfew powerful priestly families is not denied. The point is that they\nremained isolated.\n\n[463] Cp. K. O. M\u00dcller, Introd. to Mythol. p. 195; Curtius, i, 387,\n389, 392; Duncker, iii, 519-21, 563; Thirlwall, i, 204; Barth\u00e9lemy\nSt. Hilaire, pr\u00e9f. to tr. of Metaphys. of Aristotle, p. 14. Professor\nGilbert Murray, noting that Homer and Hesiod treated the Gods as\nelements of romance, or as facts to be catalogued, asks: \"Where is\nthe literature of religion: the literature which treated the Gods as\nGods? It must,\" he adds, \"have existed\"; and he holds that we \"can\nsee that the religious writings were both early and multitudinous\"\n(Hist. of Anc. Greek Lit. p. 62; cp. Meyer and Mahaffy as cited\nabove, pp. 125-26. \"Writings\" is not here to be taken literally;\nthe early hymns were unwritten). The priestly hymns and oracles\nand mystery-rituals in question were never collected; but perhaps\nwe may form some idea of their nature from the \"Homeridian\" and\nOrphic hymns to the Gods, and those of the Alexandrian antiquary\nCallimachus. It is further to be inferred that they enter into the\nHesiodic Theogony. (Decharme, p. 3, citing Bergk.)\n\n[464] Meyer, ii, 426; Curtius, i, 390-91, 417; Thirlwall, i, 204;\nGrote, i, 48-49.\n\n[465] Meyer, ii, 410-14.\n\n[466] Cp. Curtius, i, 392-400, 416; Duncker, iii, 529.\n\n[467] Curtius, i, 112; Meyer, ii, 366.\n\n[468] Curtius, i, 201, 204, 205, 381; Grote, iii, 5; Lange, Gesch. des\nMaterialismus, 3te Aufl. i, 23 (Eng. tr. i, 23).\n\n[469] Herodotos, i, 170; Diogenes La\u00ebrtius, Thales, ch. i.\n\n[470] On the essentially anti-religious rationalism of the whole\nIonian movement, cp. Meyer, ii, 753-57.\n\n[471] The First Philosophers of Greece, by A. Fairbanks, 1898, pp. 2,\n3, 6. This compilation usefully supplies a revised text of the ancient\nphilosophic fragments, with a translation of these and of the passages\non the early thinkers by the later, and by the epitomists. A good\nconspectus of the remains of the early Greek thinkers is supplied\nalso in Grote's Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates, ch. i;\nand a valuable critical analysis of the sources in Prof. J. Burnet's\nEarly Greek Philosophy.\n\n[472] Cp. Lange, Gesch. des Mat. i, 126 (Eng. tr. i, 8, n.). Mr. Benn\n(The Greek Philosophers, i, 8) and Prof. Decharme (p. 39) seem to read\nthis as a profession of belief in deities in the ordinary sense. But\ncp. R. W. Mackay, The Progress of the Intellect, 1850, i, 338. Burnet\n(ch. i, \u00a7 11) doubts the authenticity of this saying, but thinks it\n\"extremely probable that Thales did say that the magnet and amber\nhad souls.\"\n\n[473] Mackay, as cited, p. 331.\n\n[474] Fairbanks, p. 4.\n\n[475] Diogenes La\u00ebrtius, Thales, ch. 9.\n\n[476] Fairbanks, pp. 3, 7.\n\n[477] Herodotos, i, 74.\n\n[478] Cp. Burnet, Early Greek Philos. 2nd. ed. introd. \u00a7 3. To Thales\nis ascribed by the Greeks the \"discovery\" of the constellation Ursus\nMajor. Diog. ch. 2. As it was called \"Phoenike\" by the Greeks, his\nknowledge would be of Phoenician derivation. Cp. Humboldt, Kosmos,\nBohn tr. iii, 160.\n\n[479] Diog. La\u00ebrt. ch. 3. On this cp. Burnet, introd. \u00a7 6.\n\n[480] Herod. i, 170. Cp. Diog. La\u00ebrt. ch. 3.\n\n[481] Diog. La\u00ebrt. ch. 9.\n\n[482] Cp. Burnet, p. 57.\n\n[483] Fairbanks, pp. 9-10. Mr. Benn (Greek Philosophers, i, 9)\ndecides that the early philosophers, while realizing that ex nihilo\nnihil fit, had not grasped the complementary truth that nothing can be\nannihilated. But even if the teaching ascribed to Anaximandros be set\naside as contradictory (since he spoke of generation and destruction\nwithin the infinite), we have the statement of Diogenes La\u00ebrtius\n(bk. ix, ch. 9, \u00a7 57) that Diogenes of Apollonia, pupil of Anaximenes,\ngave the full Lucretian formula.\n\n[484] Diogenes La\u00ebrtius, however (ii, 2), makes him agree with Thales.\n\n[485] Fairbanks, pp. 9-16. Diogenes makes him the inventor of\nthe gnomon and of the first map and globe, as well as a maker of\nclocks. Cp. Grote, i, 330, note.\n\n[486] See below, p. 158, as to Demokritos' statement concerning the\nEastern currency of scientific views which, when put by Anaxagoras,\nscandalized the Greeks.\n\n[487] Fairbanks, pp. 17-22.\n\n[488] See Windelband, Hist. of Anc. Philos. Eng. tr. 1900, p. 25,\nciting Diels and Wilamowitz-M\u00f6llendorf. Cp. Burnet, introd. \u00a7 14.\n\n[489] It will be observed that Mr. Cornford's book, though somewhat\nloosely speculative is very freshly suggestive. It is well worth\nstudy, alongside of the work of Prof. Burnet, by those interested in\nthe scientific presentation of the evolution of thought.\n\n[490] Diog. La\u00ebrt. ix, 19; Fairbanks, p. 76.\n\n[491] Herodotos, i, 163-67; Grote, iii, 421; Meyer, ii, \u00a7 438.\n\n[492] Cp. Guillaume Br\u00e9ton, Essai sur la po\u00e9sie philosophique\nen Gr\u00e8ce, 1882, pp. 23-25. The life period of Xenophanes is\nstill uncertain. Meyer (ii, \u00a7 466) and Windelband (Hist. of\nAnc. Philos. Eng. tr. p. 47) still adhere to the chronology which puts\nhim in the century 570-470, making him a young man at the foundation\nof Elea.\n\n[493] Cousin, developed by G. Br\u00e9ton, work cited, p. 31 sq., traces\nXenophanes's doctrine of the unity of things to the school of\nPythagoras. It clearly had antecedents. But Xenophanes is recorded\nto have argued against Pythagoras as well as Thales and Epimenides\n(Diog. La\u00ebrt. ix, 2, \u00a7\u00a7 18, 20).\n\n[494] Metaphysics, i, 5; cp. Fairbanks, pp. 79-80.\n\n[495] One of several so entitled in that age. Cp. Burnet, introd. \u00a7 7.\n\n[496] Metaph., as cited; Plato, Soph. 242 D.\n\n[497] Long fragment in Athen\u00e6us, xi, 7; Burnet, p. 130.\n\n[498] Burnet, p. 141.\n\n[499] Cp. Burnet, p. 131.\n\n[500] Fairbanks, p. 67, Fr. 5, 6; Clem. Alex. Stromata, bk. v,\nWilson's tr. ii, 285-86. Cp. bk. vii, c. 4.\n\n[501] Fairbanks, Fr. 7.\n\n[502] Cicero, De divinatione, i, 3, 5; Aetius, De placitis reliqui\u00e6,\nin Fairbanks, p. 85.\n\n[503] Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii, 23, \u00a7 27. A similar saying is attributed\nto Herakleitos, on slight authority (Fairbanks, p. 54).\n\n[504] Cicero, Academica, ii, 39; Lactantius, Div. Inst. iii,\n23. Anaxagoras and Demokritos held the same view. Diog. La\u00ebrt, bk. ii,\nch. iii, iv (\u00a7 8); Pseudo-Plutarch, De placitis philosoph. ii, 25.\n\n[505] Cp. Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, i, 340.\n\n[506] Diog. La\u00ebrt. in life of Pyrrho, bk. ix, ch. xi, 8 (\u00a7 72). The\npassage, however, is uncertain. See Fairbanks, p. 70.\n\n[507] Fairbanks. Fr. 1. Fairbanks translates with Zeller: \"The whole\n[of God].\" Grote: \"The whole Kosmos, or the whole God.\" It should\nbe noted that the original in Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math. ix, 144)\nis given without the name of Xenophanes, and the ascription is modern.\n\n[508] Grote, as last cited, p. 18.\n\n[509] Fairbanks, Fr. 19. In Athen\u00e6us, x, 413.\n\n[510] Polybius, iv, 40; Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos,\nviii, 126; Fairbanks, pp. 25, 27; Frag. 4, 14. Cp. 92, 111, 113.\n\n[511] Diog. La\u00ebrt. ix, i, 2.\n\n[512] Fairbanks, Fr. 134.\n\n[513] Id. Frag. 36, 67.\n\n[514] Id. Frag. 43, 44, 46, 62.\n\n[515] Diog. La\u00ebrt. last cited. This saying is by some ascribed to the\nlater Herakleides (see Fairbanks, Fr. 119 and note); but it does not\nseem to be in his vein, which is wholly pro-Homeric.\n\n[516] Clem. Alex. Protrept. ch. 2, Wilson's tr. p. 41. The passage is\nobscure, but Mr. Fairbanks's translation (Fr. 127) is excessively so.\n\n[517] Clemens, as cited, p.32; Fairbanks, Fr. 124, 125,\n130. Cp. Burnet, p. 139.\n\n[518] Fairbanks, Fr. 21.\n\n[519] Cp. Burnet, pp. 175-90.\n\n[520] Theaetetus, 180 D. See good estimates of Parmenides in Benn's\nGreek Philosophers, i, 17-19, and Philosophy of Greece in Relation to\nthe Character of its People, pp. 83-95; in J. A. Symonds's Studies of\nthe Greek Poets, 3rd ed. 1893, vol. i, ch. 6; and in Zeller, i, 580 sq.\n\n[521] Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 26.\n\n[522] Mr. Benn finally gives very high praise to Melissos\n(Philos. of Greece, pp. 91-92); as does Prof. Burnet (Early\nGr. Philos. p. 378). He held strongly by the Ionian conception of\nthe eternity of matter. Fairbanks, p. 125.\n\n[523] Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ix, ch. iv, 3 (\u00a7 24).\n\n[524] Diog. La\u00ebrt. ix, 3 (\u00a7 21).\n\n[525] As to this see Windelband, Hist. Anc. Philos. pp. 91-92.\n\n[526] Cp. Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, i. 340.\n\n[527] \"The difference between the Ionians and Eleat\u00e6 was this:\nthe former endeavoured to trace an idea among phenomena by aid\nof observation; the latter evaded the difficulty by dogmatically\nasserting the objective existence of an idea\" (Mackay, as last cited).\n\n[528] Cp. Mackay, i, 352-53, as to the survival of veneration of the\nheavenly bodies in the various schools.\n\n[529] Grote, i, 350.\n\n[530] Meyer, ii, 9, 759 (\u00a7\u00a7 5, 465).\n\n[531] Id. \u00a7\u00a7 6, 466.\n\n[532] Jevons, Hist. of Greek Lit. 1886, p. 210.\n\n[533] Compare Meyer, ii, \u00a7 502, as to the close resemblances between\nPythagoreanism and Orphicism.\n\n[534] Meyer, i, 186; ii, 635.\n\n[535] Fairbanks, pp. 145, 151, 155, etc.\n\n[536] Id. p. 143.\n\n[537] Id. p. 154.\n\n[538] Prof. Burnet insists (introd. p. 30) that \"the\" Greeks must\nbe reckoned good observers because their later sculptors were so. As\nwell say that artists make the best men of science.\n\n[539] Metaph. i, 5; Fairbanks, p. 136. \"It is quite safe to attribute\nthe substance of the First Book of Euclid to Pythagoras.\" Burnet,\nEarly Greek Philos. 2nd ed. p. 117.\n\n[540] Diog. La\u00ebrt. Philolaos (bk. viii, ch. 7).\n\n[541] L. U. K. Hist. of Astron. p. 20; A. Berry's Short Hist. of\nAstron. 1898, p. 25; Narrien's Histor. Acc. of the Orig. and Prog. of\nAstron. 1850, p. 163.\n\n[542] See Benn, Greek Philosophers, i, 11.\n\n[543] Diog. La\u00ebrt. in life of Philolaos; Cicero, Academica, ii,\n39. Cicero, following Theophrastus, is explicit as to the teaching\nof Hiketas.\n\n[544] Hippolytos, Ref. of all Heresies, i, 13. Cp. Renouvier, Manuel\nde la philos. anc. i, 201, 205, 238-39.\n\n[545] Pseudo-Plutarch, De Placitis Philosoph. iii, 13, 14.\n\n[546] Ueberweg, i, 49. Cp. Tertullian (Apol. ch. 11), who says\nPythagoras taught that the world was uncreated; and the contrary\nstatement of Aetius (in Fairbanks, pp. 146-47).\n\n[547] Berry, Short Hist. of Astron. pp. 22, 25. The question is ably\nhandled by Renouvier, Manuel, i, 199-205.\n\n[548] Diog. La\u00ebrt., viii, i, 8.\n\n[549] The whole question is carefully sifted by Grote, iv,\n76-94. Prof. Burnet (Early Greek Philos. 2nd ed. pp. 96-98) sums up\nthat the Pythagorean Order was an attempt to overrule or supersede\nthe State.\n\n[550] Cp. Burnet, p. 97, note 3. Prof. Burnet speaks of the Pythagorean\nOrder as a \"new religion\" appealing to the people rather than the\naristocrats, who were apt to be \"freethinking.\" But on the next page he\npictures the \"plain man\" as resenting precisely the religious neology\nof the movement. The evidence for the adhesion of aristocrats seems\npretty strong.\n\n[551] Fairbanks, p. 143.\n\n[552] Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates, ed. 1885,\niv, 163.\n\n[553] Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. viii, ch. i, 19 (\u00a7 21).\n\n[554] Ennius, Fragmenta, ed. Hesselius, 1707, pp. 1, 4-7; Horace,\nEpist. ii, 1, 52; Persius, Sat. vi.\n\n[555] Grote, History, iv, 97.\n\n[556] Scholiast on Iliad, xx, 67; Tatian, Adv. Gr\u00e6cos, c. 48 (31);\nW. Christ, Gesch. der griech. Literatur, 3te Aufl. p. 63; Grote,\nch. xvi (i, 374).\n\n[557] See above, p. 145.\n\n[558] K. O. M\u00fcller, Dorians, Eng. tr. ii, 365-68; Mommsen, Hist. of\nRome, Eng. tr. ed. 1894, iii, 113.\n\n[559] Grote. i, 338, note.\n\n[560] Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 22.\n\n[561] Philolaos, as we saw, is said to have been prosecuted, but is\nnot said to have been condemned.\n\n[562] Fairbanks, pp. 245, 255, 261; Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ii, ch. iii, 4\n(\u00a7 8).\n\n[563] Fairbanks, pp. 230-45. Cp. Grote, Plato, i, 54, and Ueberweg,\ni, 66, as to nature of the Nous of Anaxagoras.\n\n[564] Grote, i, 374; Hesychius, s.v. Agamemnona;\ncp. Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ii, ch. iii, 7 (\u00a7 11); Tatian, Adv. Gr\u00e6cos,\nc. 37 (21).\n\n[565] Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 6.\n\n[566] Id. chs. 5, 8.\n\n[567] Id. c. 16. The old man is said to have uttered the reproach:\n\"Perikles, those who want to use a lamp supply it with oil.\"\n\n[568] Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 4.\n\n[569] Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. iv, 277.\n\n[570] Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 32.\n\n[571] Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ix, ch. ix (\u00a7 57), citing the Defence of\nSokrates by Demetrius Phalereus.\n\n[572] Id. bk. ii, ch. iii, 9 (\u00a7 12), citing Sotion. Another writer of\nphilosophers' lives, Hermippus (same cit.), said he had been thrown\ninto prison; and yet a third, Hieronymus, said he was released out\nof pity because of his emaciated appearance when produced in court\nby Perikles.\n\n[573] Diog. La\u00ebrt. last cit. 10 (\u00a7 14).\n\n[574] Id. 8 (\u00a7 11).\n\n[575] Drews, Gesch. des Monismus im Altertum, p. 205.\n\n[576] Even in the early progressive period \"the same time which\nset up rationalism developed a deep religious influence in the\nmasses.\" (Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. ii, 728. Cp. iii, 425; also Grote,\nvii, 30; and Benn, Philosophy of Greece, 1898, pp. 69-70.)\n\n[577] Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 32.\n\n[578] Cp. Grote, v, 24; Curtius, ii, 208-209.\n\n[579] Plutarch, as cited. Plutarch also states, however, that the\nonly occasion on which Perikles gave way to emotion in public was\nthat of the death of his favourite son.\n\n[580] Holm (Griechische Geschichte, ii, 335) decides that Perikles\nsought to Ionise his fellow Athenians; and Dr. Burnet, coinciding\n(Early Greek Philosophy, 1892, p. 277), suggests that he and Aspasia\nbrought Anaxagoras to Athens with that aim.\n\n[581] Perikles, ch. 8.\n\n[582] \"Der Kleinasiatische Rationalist Herodot\" is the exaggerated\nestimate of A. Bauer, in Ilberg's Neue Jahrb\u00fccher f\u00fcr das klassische\nAltertum, ix (1902), 235, following Eduard Meyer (iv, \u00a7 448), who,\nhowever (\u00a7 447), points to the lack of scientific thought or training\nin Herodotos as in Thukydides. Ignorance of Nature remained a Greek\ncharacteristic.\n\n[583] Bk. viii, ch. 77. Cp. viii, 20, 96; ix, 43.\n\n[584] Cp. Meyer, iv, \u00a7 446, as to the inadequacy of Athenian culture,\nand the unchanging ignorance of the populace on matters of physical\nscience.\n\n[585] Plutarch, Against the Stoics, ch. 31; Simplicius, Physica, i, 6.\n\n[586] Clem. Alex. Protrept. c. 4.\n\n[587] Refutation of all Heresies, i, 14.\n\n[588] Cp. Aristotle, Metaphysics, i, 3; De anima, i, 2.\n\n[589] Decharme, Critique des trad. relig. p. 137, citing scholiast\non Aristoph., Clouds, 96.\n\n[590] See the point discussed by Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus,\n3te Aufl. i, 128-29, 131-32, notes 10 and 31 (Eng. tr. i, 15,\n39). Ritter and Preller say \"Protagoras floret circa a. 450-430\";\n\"Democritus natus circa a. 460 floret a. 430-410, obit. circa a. 357.\"\n\n[591] Cp. Ueberweg, i, 68-69; Renouvier, Manuel de la philos. anc. i,\n238.\n\n[592] Burnet, p. 381.\n\n[593] Diog. La\u00ebrt. x, 13.\n\n[594] Lange, i, 10-11 (tr. p. 17); Clem. Alex. Stromata, i, 15;\nDiog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ix, \u00a7 35.\n\n[595] On this also see Lange, i, 128 (tr. p. 15, note).\n\n[596] Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ix, ch. vii, 2 (\u00a7 34). Cp. Renouvier, i, 239-41.\n\n[597] See in particular the De principiis atque originibus (Works,\nRoutledge's 1-vol. ed. 1905, pp. 649-50).\n\n[598] Meyer, who dwells on his scientific shortcomings (Gesch. des\nAlt. v. \u00a7 910), makes no account of this, his vital doctrine.\n\n[599] Fairbanks, pp. 189-91. The idea is not put by Empedokles with any\nsuch definiteness as is suggested by Lange, i, 23-25 (tr. pp. 33-35),\nand Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos. Eng. tr. i, 62, n. But Ueberweg's\nexposition is illuminating.\n\n[600] Fairbanks, pp. 136, 169.\n\n[601] Id. p. 201.\n\n[602] Benn, i, 28.\n\n[603] Fairbanks, p. 205.\n\n[604] See a good study of Empedokles in J. A. Symonds' Studies of the\nGreek Poets, 3rd ed. 1893, vol. i, ch. 7; and another in Renouvier,\nManuel, i, 163-82.\n\n[605] Cp. Grote, Plato, i, 73, and note.\n\n[606] Cp. Renouvier, i, 239-62; Lange, p. 11 (tr. p. 17).\n\n[607] Cp. Meyer, \u00a7 911.\n\n[608] Diogenes La\u00ebrtius, bk. ix, ch. viii, \u00a7 3 (51); cp. Grote, vii,\n49, note.\n\n[609] For a defence of Protagoras against Plato, see Grote, vii, 43-54.\n\n[610] Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos, ix, 56.\n\n[611] Beckmann, History of Inventions, Eng. tr. 1846, ii, 513.\n\n[612] Diod. Sic. xiii, 6; Hesychius, cit. in Cudworth, ed. Harrison,\ni, 131.\n\n[613] Ueberweg, i, 80; Thukydides, v, 116. The bias of Sextus\nEmpiricus is further shown in his account of Diagoras as moved in\nhis denunciation by an injury to himself.\n\n[614] It is told by Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math. ix, 53) that Diagoras\nis said to have invented the dithyramb (in praise of Iacchos), and\nto have begun a poem with the words, \"All things come by the daimon\nand fortune.\" But Sextus writes with a fixed skeptical bias.\n\n[615] Grote, vi, 13, 32, 33, 42-45.\n\n[616] Athenagoras, Apol., ch. 4; Clem. Alex., Protrept. ch. 2. See\nthe documentary details in Meyer, iv, 105.\n\n[617] Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 1, 23, 42; iii, 37 (the last\nreference gives proof of his general rationalism); Lactantius, De ir\u00e2\nDei, c. 9. In calling Sokrates \"the Melian,\" Aristophanes (Clouds,\n830) was held to have virtually called him \"the atheist.\"\n\n[618] Diod. xiii, 6; Suidas, s.v. Diagoras; Aristophanes, Birds,\n1073. It is noteworthy that in their fury against Diagoras the\nAthenians put him on a level of common odium with the \"tyrants\"\nof past history. Cp. Burckhardt, Griechische Culturgeschichte, i, 355.\n\n[619] Grote, vi, 476-77. As to the freethinking of Kritias, see Sextus\nEmpiricus, Adv. Math. ix, 54. According to Xenophon (Memorabilia, i,\n2), Kritias made his decree in revenge for Sokrates's condemnation\nof one of his illicit passions. Prof. Decharme (pp. 122-24) gives a\ngood account of him.\n\n[620] Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ii, ch. iv; Hippolytos, Refutation of all\nHeresies, i, 8; Renouvier, Manuel, i, 233-37.\n\n[621] Cp. Cudworth, Intellectual System, ed. Harrison, i, 32;\nRenouvier, Manuel, i, 233, 289; ii, 268, 292; Tatian, Adv. Gr\u00e6cos,\nc. 48 (31); Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ii, ch. iii, 7 (\u00a7 11); Grote, i, 374,\n395, note; Hatch, Infl. of Greek Ideas, p. 60.\n\n[622] Haigh, Tragic Drama of the Greeks, p. 206. Cp. Burnett, p. 278.\n\n[623] Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ii (\u00a7 22).\n\n[624] \"He never so utterly abandoned the religion of his country as to\nfind it impossible to acquiesce in at least some part of traditional\nreligion.\" Jevons, Hist. of Greek Lit. 1886. p. 222.\n\n[625] Haigh, The Attic Theatre, 1889, p. 316.\n\n[626] Above, p. 133.\n\n[627] \"He had also acquired in no small degree that love of dexterous\nargumentation and verbal sophistry which was becoming fashionable in\nthe Athens of the fifth century. Not unfrequently he exhibits this\ndexterity when it is clearly out of place.\" Haigh, Tragic Drama of\nthe Greeks, p. 235. Cp. Jevons, Hist. of Greek Lit. p. 223. Schlegel\nis much more censorious.\n\n[628] Ion., 436-51, 885-922; Andromache, 1161-65; Electra, 1245-46;\nHercules Furens, 339-47; Iphigenia in Tauris, 35, 711-15.\n\n[629] Hercules Furens, 344, 1341-46; Iphigenia in Tauris, 380-91.\n\n[630] Electra, 737-45.\n\n[631] Troades, 969-90.\n\n[632] Ion, 374-78, 685; Helena, 744-57; Iphigenia in Tauris, 570-75;\nElectra, 400; Phoeniss\u00e6, 772; Fragm. 793; Bacch\u00e6, 255-57; Hippolytus,\n1059. It is noteworthy that even Sophocles (OEd. Tyr., 387) makes a\ncharacter taunt Tiresias the soothsayer with venality.\n\n[633] Philoctetes, fr. 793; Helena, 1137-43; Bellerophon, fr. 288.\n\n[634] Bacch\u00e6, 200-203.\n\n[635] Helena, 1013; Fragm. 890, 905, 935; Troades, 848-88.\n\n[636] A. Schlegel, Lectures on Dramatic Literature, Bohn tr. p. 117.\n\n[637] This charge is on a par with that of Hygiainon, who accused\nEuripides of impiety on the score that one of his characters makes\nlight of oaths. Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii, 15.\n\n[638] K. O. M\u00fcller, Hist. of the Lit. of Anc. Greece, 1847, p. 359. The\ncomplaint is somewhat surprising from such a source. The only play\nwith an entirely invented plot mentioned by Aristotle is Agathon's\nFlower (Aristotle, Poetic, ix); and such plays would not have been\neligible for representation at the great festivals.\n\n[639] Cp. Jevons, Hist. of Greek Lit. pp. 223-24.\n\n[640] Haigh. The Attic Theatre, p. 191. Cp. M\u00fcller, pp. 362-64.\n\n[641] See, however, the \u00e6sthetic theorem of Prof. Murray, Euripides\nand his Age, pp. 221-27.\n\n[642] It seems arguable that the aversion of Aristophanes to Euripides\nwas primarily artistic, arising in dislike of some of the features of\nhis style. On this head his must be reckoned an expert judgment. The\nold criticism found in Euripides literary vices; the new seems to\nignore the issue. But a clerical scholar pronounces that \"Aristophanes\nwas the most unreasoning laudator temporis acti. Genius and poet as he\nwas, he was the sworn foe to intellectual progress.\" Hence his hatred\nof Euripides and his championship of \u00c6schylus. (Rev. Dr. W. W. Merry,\nintrod. to Clar. Press ed. of The Frogs, 1892.)\n\n[643] Girard, Essai sur Thucydide, 1884, pp. 258-59.\n\n[644] Cp. Haigh, The Attic Theatre, p. 315. In the same way\nKtesilochos, the pupil of Apelles, could with impunity make Zeus\nridiculous by exhibiting him pictorially in child-bed, bringing forth\nDionysos (Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxv, 40. \u00a7 15).\n\n[645] Bk. x, ad init.\n\n[646] Cp. Benn, Philos. of Greece, p. 171.\n\n[647] Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools, Eng. tr. 3rd\ned. p. 227: Hegel, as there cited Grote, Plato, ed. 1885, i, 423.\n\n[648] Cp. Owen, Evenings with the Skeptics, i, 181 sq., 291, 293,\n299, etc.\n\n[649] Grote, History, i, 334; Xenophon, Memorabilia, i, 1, \u00a7\u00a7 6-9.\n\n[650] Cp. Benn. The Philosophy of the Greeks, 1898, p. 160.\n\n[651] Grote, i, 334-35; Hippocrates, De Aeribus, Aquis, Locis, c. 22\n(49).\n\n[652] Plato, Ph\u00e6drus, Jowett's tr. 3rd ed. i. 434; Grote, History,\ni, 393.\n\n[653] Compare, however, the claim made for him, as promoting\n\"objectivity,\" by Prof. Drews, Gesch. des Monismus im Altertum,\n1913. P. 213.\n\n[654] Memorabilia, i, 4.\n\n[655] \"The predominatingly theistic character of philosophy ever since\nhas been stamped on it by Socrates, as it was stamped on Socrates by\nAthens\" (Benn, Philos. of Greece, p. 168).\n\n[656] Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools, as cited, p. 231. The\ncase against Sokrates is bitterly urged by Forchhammer, Die Athenen und\nSokrates, 1837; see in particular pp. 8-11. Cp. Grote, Hist. vii, 81.\n\n[657] \"Had not all the cultivated men of the time passed through\na school of rationalism which had entirely pulled to pieces the\nbeliefs and the morals of their ancestors?\" Zeller, as last cited,\npp. 231-33. Cp. Haigh, Tragic Drama, p. 261.\n\n[658] See Aristophanes's Frogs, 888-94.\n\n[659] \u00c6schines, Timarchos, cited by Thirlwall, iv, 277. Cp. Xenophon,\nMem. i, 2.\n\n[660] \"Nothing could well be more unpopular and obnoxious than\nthe task which he undertook of cross-examining and convicting of\nignorance every distinguished man whom he could approach.\" Grote,\nvii. 95. Cp. pp. 141-44. Cp. also Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay,\ned. 1881, p. 316: and Renouvier, Manuel de la philos. anc. 1, iv,\n\u00a7 iii. See also, however, Benn, Phil. of Greece, pp. 162-63. For a\nview of Sokrates's relations to his chief accuser, which partially\nvindicates or whitewashes the latter, see Prof. G. Murray's Anc. Greek\nLit. pp. 176-77. There is a good monograph by H. Bleeckly, Socrates\nand the Athenians: An Apology, 1884, which holds the balances fairly.\n\n[661] On the desire of Sokrates to die see Grote, vii, 152-64.\n\n[662] The assertion of Plutarch that after his death the prosecutors of\nSokrates were socially excommunicated, and so driven to hang themselves\n(Moralia: Of Envy and Hatred), is an interesting instance of moral\nmyth-making. It has no historic basis; though Diogenes (ii, 23 \u00a7\n43) and Diodorus Siculus (xiv, 37), late authorities both, allege\nan Athenian reaction in Sokrates' favour. Probably the story of the\nsuicide of Judas was framed in imitation of Plutarch's.\n\n[663] Grote, History, i, 94.\n\n[664] Id. i, 194. Not till Strabo do we find this myth disbelieved;\nand Strabo was surprised to find most men holding by the old story\nwhile admitting that the race of Amazons had died out. Id. p. 197.\n\n[665] Life of Thukydides, by Marcellinus, ch. 22, citing\nAntyllas. Cp. Girard, Essai sur Thucydide, p. 239; and the prefaces\nof Hobbes and Smith to their translations.\n\n[666] Girard, p. 3.\n\n[667] \"His writings,\" remarks Dr. Hatch, \"contain the seeds of nearly\nall that afterwards grew up on Christian soil\" (Influence of Greek\nIdeas and Usages upon the Christian Church, 1890, p. 182).\n\n[668] Clem. Alex. Stromata, v, 14; Fairbanks, pp. 146-47; Grote,\nPlato, ch. 38.\n\n[669] Cp. Grote, Plato, iv, 162, 381. Professor Bain, however\n(Practical Essays, 1884, p. 273), raises an interesting question by\nhis remark, as to the death of Sokrates: \"The first person to feel\nthe shock was Plato. That he was affected by it to the extent of\nsuppressing his views on the higher questions we can infer with the\ngreatest probability. Aristotle was equally cowed.\"\n\n[670] Diog. La\u00ebr. bk. ix, ch. vii, \u00a7 8 (40).\n\n[671] Republic, bk. ii, 377, to iii, 393; Jowett's tr. 3rd ed. iii,\n60 sq., 68 sq. In bk. x, it is true, he does speak of the poets as\nunqualified by knowledge and training to teach truth (Jowett's tr. iii,\n311 sq.); but Plato's \"truth\" is not objective, but idealistic,\nor rather fictitious-didactic.\n\n[672] Id. Jowett. pp. 59, 69, etc.\n\n[673] Id. bk. iii; Jowett, pp. 103-105.\n\n[674] Laws, x; Jowett, v, 295-98.\n\n[675] Received myths are forbidden; and the preferred fictions are\nto be city law. Cp. the Laws, ii, iii; Jowett, v, 42, 79.\n\n[676] Laws, Jowett's tr. 3rd ed. v, 271-72. Cp. the comment of Benn,\ni, 271-72.\n\n[677] Republic, bk. ii, 379; Jowett, iii, 62.\n\n[678] Laws, x, 906-907, 910; Jowett, v, 293-94, 297-98.\n\n[679] On the inconsistency of the whole doctrine see see Grote's Plato,\niv, 379-97.\n\n[680] Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos. Eng. tr. i, 25. Cp. Lange, Geschichte\ndes Materialismus, i, 38-39 (tr. i, 52-54), and the remarkable verdict\nof Bacon (De Augmentis, bk. iii, ch. 4; Works, 1-vol. ed. 1905, p. 471;\ncp. Advancement of Learning, bk. ii, p. 96) as to the superiority\nof the natural philosophy of Demokritos over those of Plato and\nAristotle. Bacon immediately qualifies his verdict; but he repeats\nit, as regards both Aristotle and Plato, in the Novum Organum, bk. i,\naph. 96. See, however, Mr. Benn's final eulogy of Plato as a thinker,\ni, 273, and Murray's Anc. Greek Lit. pp. 311-13.\n\n[681] Laws, x, 908; Jowett, v, 295.\n\n[682] Grote, History, vii, 168.\n\n[683] Cp. Grote, Aristotle, 2nd ed. p. 10.\n\n[684] Origen, Against Celsus, ii, 13; cp. i, 65; iii, 75; vii, 3.\n\n[685] Grote, Aristotle, p. 13.\n\n[686] Benn, Greek Philosophers, i, 352. Mr. Benn refutes Sir A. Grant's\nview that Aristotle's creed was a \"vague pantheism\"; but that phrase\nloosely conveys the idea of its non-religiousness. It might be called a\nLucretian monotheism. Cp. Benn, i, 294; and Drews, Gesch. des Monismus,\np. 257.\n\n[687] Metaphysics, xi (xii), 8, 13 (p. 1074, b). The passage is so\nstringent as to raise the question how he came to run the risk in this\none case. It was probably a late writing, and he may have taken it\nfor granted that the Metaphysics would never be read by the orthodox.\n\n[688] Cp. the severe criticisms of Benn, vol. i, ch. vi; Berry,\nShort Hist. of Astron. p. 33; and Lange, Ges. des Mater. i, 61-68,\nand notes, citing Eucken and Cuvier. Aristotle's science is very\nmuch on a par with that of Bacon, who saw his imperfections, but fell\ninto the same kinds of error. Both insisted on an inductive method;\nand both transgressed from it. See, however, Lange's summary, p. 69,\nalso p. 7, as to the unfairness of Whewell; and ch. v of Soury's\nBr\u00e9viaire de l'histoire du Mat\u00e9rialisme, 1881, especially end.\n\n[689] Politics, i, 2.\n\n[690] Strabo, bk. ix, ch. iii, \u00a7 11. Strabo reproaches Ephoros with\nrepeating the current legends all the same; but it seems clear that\nhe anticipated the critical tactic of Gibbon.\n\n[691] As to the Stoics, cp. Zeller, \u00a7 34, 4; Benn, The Philosophy of\nGreece, pp. 255-56. As to Epicurus, cp. Benn, p. 261.\n\n[692] Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ix, ch. xi, 5, \u00a7 64. The lengthy notice given\nby Diogenes shows the impression Pyrrho's teaching made. See a full\naccount of it, so far as known, in the Rev. J. Owen's Evenings with\nthe Skeptics, 1881, i, 287 sq., and the monograph of Zimmerman,\nthere cited.\n\n[693] These propositions occur in the first of the ten Pyrrhonian\ntropoi or modes (Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ix, ch. xi, 9), of which the\nauthorship is commonly assigned to \u00c6nesidemos (fl. 80-50). Cp. Owen,\nEvenings with the Skeptics, i, 290, 322-23. But as given by Diogenes\nthey seem to derive from the early Pyrrhonian school.\n\n[694] Thus, where Democritos pronounced the sun to be of vast size,\nEpicurus held it to be no larger than it seemed (Cicero, De Finibus, i,\n6)--a view also loosely ascribed to Herakleitos (Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ix,\nch. i, 6, \u00a7 7). See, however, Wallace's Epicureanism (\"Ancient\nPhilosophies\" series), 1889, pp. 176 sq., 186 sq., 266, as to the\nscientific merits of the system.\n\n[695] The Epicurean doctrine on this and other heads is chiefly to be\ngathered from the great poem of Lucretius. Prof. Wallace's excellent\ntreatise gives all the clues. See p. 202 as to the Epicurean God-idea.\n\n[696] Grote, History, i, 395, note; Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi\nsec. Epicur.\n\n[697] Compare Wallace, Epicureanism, pp. 64-71, and ch. xi; and\nMackintosh, On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, 4th ed. p. 29.\n\n[698] De rerum natura, i, 62-79.\n\n[699] Alexander seu Pseudomantis, cc. 25, 38, 47, 61, cited by Wallace,\npp. 249-50.\n\n[700] The repute of the Epicureans for irreligion appears in the\nfact that when Romanized Athens had consented to admit foreigners\nto the once strictly Athenian mysteries of Eleusis, the Epicureans\nwere excluded.\n\n[701] Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 13; Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata,\nv, 14; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Mathematicos, ix, 51, 55.\n\n[702] Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk ii, ch. viii, \u00a7\u00a7 7, 11-14 (86, 97-100). He was\nalso nicknamed \"the God.\" Id. and ch. xii, 5 (\u00a7 116).\n\n[703] Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 1, 23, 42.\n\n[704] Diogenes, as last cited, \u00a7 12 (97).\n\n[705] Id. \u00a7\u00a7 15, 16 (101-102).\n\n[706] Professor Wallace's account of the court of Lysimachos of Thrace\nas a \"favourite resort of emancipated freethinkers\" (Epicureanism,\np. 42) is hardly borne out by his authority, Diogenes La\u00ebrtius, who\nrepresents Lysimachos as unfriendly towards Theodoros. Hipparchia\nthe Cynic, too, opposed rather than agreed with the atheist.\n\n[707] Diog., last cit. Cp. Cicero, Tusculans, ii, 43. Philo Jud\u00e6us\n(Quod Omnis Probus Liber, c. 18; cp. Plutarch, De Exilio, c. 16) has\na story of his repelling taunts about his banishment by comparing\nhimself to Hercules, who was put ashore by the alarmed Argonauts\nbecause of his weight. But he is further made to boast extravagantly,\nand in doing so to speak as a believer in myths and deities. The\ntestimony has thus little value.\n\n[708] Diog. bk. ii, ch. xii, \u00a7 5 (116).\n\n[709] Id. ch. x, \u00a7 2 (106).\n\n[710] Id. ch. xii, \u00a7 5 (117) and bk. iv, ch. vii, \u00a7\u00a7 4, 9, 10 (52,\n54, 55).\n\n[711] Plutarch, De defectu orac. ch. 19. Bion seems to have made an\nimpression on Plutarch, who often quotes him, though it be but to\ncontradict him.\n\n[712] Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 13.\n\n[713] Id. ib.; Academics, iv, 38.\n\n[714] Cicero, Tusculans, i, 10, 31; Academics, ii, 39; and refs. in\ned. Davis.\n\n[715] Sir A. Grant's tr. of the hymn is given in Capes's Stoicism\n(\"Chief Ancient Philosophies\" series), 1880, p. 41; and the Greek\ntext by Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought, p. 262. Cp. Cicero, De\nnat. Deor. i, 14.\n\n[716] Pseudo-Plutarch, De placitis philosoph. i, 7.\n\n[717] Eusebius, Pr\u00e6p. Evang. bk. ii, ch. 2; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris,\nch. 23.\n\n[718] P. 80.\n\n[719] It may be noted that Diogenes of Babylon, a follower of\nChrysippos, applied the principle to Greek mythology. Cicero, De\nnat. Deor. i, 15.\n\n[720] Above, p. 80, note 4.\n\n[721] See Grote, i, 371-74 and notes.\n\n[722] Palaiphatos, De Incredibilibus: De Act\u00e6one, De Geryone, De\nCerbero, De Amazonibus, etc.\n\n[723] E. R. Bevan (art. \"The Deification of Kings in the Greek Cities\"\nin Eng. Histor. Rev. Oct. 1901, p. 631) argues that the practice was\nnot primarily eastern, but Greek. See, however, Herodotos, vii, 136;\nArrian, Anabas. Alexand. iv, 11; Q. Curtius, viii, 5-8; and Plutarch,\nArtaxerxes, ch. 22, as to the normal attitude of the Greeks, even as\nlate as Alexander.\n\n[724] See Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, chs. 22, 23, for the later\nHellenistic tone on the subject of apotheosis apart from the official\npractice of the empire.\n\n[725] Gibbon, ch. xl. Bohn ed. iv, 353, and note.\n\n[726] Mahaffy, Greek Life, pp. 133-35; Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. ii, ch. v,\n5 (\u00a7 38).\n\n[727] Wallace, Epicureanism (pp. 245-46), citing Suidas, s.v. Epicurus.\n\n[728] Diogenes La\u00ebrtius, bk. vii, ch. i, 28 (\u00a7 33); cp. Origen,\nAgainst Celsus, bk. i, ch. 5; Clemens Alex, Stromata, bk. v, ch. ii.\n\n[729] Mahaffy, as cited, p. 135, n.; Athen\u00e6us, ix, 63 (p. 400).\n\n[730] (297 B.C.) Burckhardt, Griechische Culturgeschichte, i, 213;\nPausanias, i, 29.\n\n[731] Cp. G. Guizot, M\u00e9nandre, 1855, pp. 324-27, and App.\n\n[732] Cp. Guizot, pp. 327-31, and the fragments cited by Justin Martyr,\nDe Monarchia, ch. 5.\n\n[733] Whittaker, as cited, p. 85.\n\n[734] Martha, as cited, p. 78.\n\n[735] Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. iv, ch. ix, 8 (\u00a7 65).\n\n[736] Diog. La\u00ebrt. bk. iv, ch. ix, 4, 5 (\u00a7 63); Noumenios in\nEuseb. Pr\u00e6p. Evang. xiv, 8; Cicero, De Oratore, ii, 38; Lucilius,\ncited by Lactantius, Div. Inst.\n\n[737] Cicero, Academics, ii, 34.\n\n[738] Berry, Short Hist. of Astron. pp. 34-62; Narrien,\nHistor. Account, as cited, ch. xi; L. U. K. Hist. of Astron. ch. vi. It\nis noteworthy that Hipparchos, like so many of his predecessors,\nhad some of his ideas from Babylonia. Strabo, prooem., \u00a7 9.\n\n[739] Ptolemy normally lumps unbelief in religion with all the vices\nof character. Cp. the Tetrabiblos, iii, 18 (paraphrase of Proclus).\n\n[740] Hist. Nat. ii, 26.\n\n[741] Lucian's dialogue Philopseudes gives a view of the superstitions\nof average Greeks in the second century of our era. Cp. Mr. Williams's\nnote to the first Dialogue of the Dead, in his tr. p. 87.\n\n[742] See M. Foucart's treatise, Des assoc. relig. chez les Grecs,\n1873, 2e ptie.\n\n[743] On the early tendency to orthodox conformity among the\nunbelieving Alexandrian scholars, see Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought,\npp. 260-61.\n\n[744] Frag. cited by Wallace, p. 258.\n\n[745] Rev. Baden Powell, Hist. of Nat. Philos. 1834, p. 79.\n\n[746] De Oratore, iii, 17; De Finibus, ii, 12, 13.\n\n[747] See Saisset, Le Scepticisme, 1865, pp. 22-27, for a careful\ndiscussion of dates.\n\n[748] His own claim was to be of the \"methodical\" school. Hypotyp. i,\n34.\n\n[749] See his doctrine expounded by Owen, Evenings with the Skeptics,\ni, 332 sq.\n\n[750] Cp. Owen, p. 349.\n\n[751] These seem to be derived from Carneades. Cp. Ueberweg, i, 217.\n\n[752] \"The general character of the Greek Skeptics from Sokrates to\nSextos is quite unexceptionable\" (Owen, Evenings, i, 352).\n\n[753] Polybius, bk. vi, ch. lvi. Cp. bk. xvi, Frag. 5 (12), where\nhe speaks impatiently of the miracle-stories told of certain cults,\nand, repeating his opinion that some such stories are useful for\npreserving piety among the people, protests that they should be kept\nwithin bounds.\n\n[754] Bk. i, ch. ii, \u00a7 8. Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, ch. 8) puts the\nmore decent principle that all the apparent absurdities have good\noccult reasons.\n\n[755] Bk. ix, ch. iii, \u00a7 12. Cp. bk. x, ch. iii, \u00a7 23. The hand of\nan interpolator frequently appears in Strabo (e.g., bk. ix, ch. ii,\n\u00a7 40; ch. iii, \u00a7 5); and the passage cited in bk. i is more in the\nstyle of the former than of the latter.\n\n[756] See Dr. Hatch, Influence of Greek Ideas upon the Christian\nChurch, 1890, pp. 60-64, notes; also above, pp. 143 and 161, note.\n\n[757] De defect. orac. c. 19; Isis and Osiris, ch. 67.\n\n[758] De Amore, c. 13; Isis and Osiris, chs. 66, 67; and De\ndefect. orac. c. 13.\n\n[759] Schmidt, Gesch. der Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit im erst. Jahr.,\n1847, p. 22.\n\n[760] Burnet, Early Greek Philos. 1892, p. 276. Cp. 2nd ed. p. 294.\n\n[761] It is to be presumed that Dr. Burnet, when penning his estimate,\nhad not in memory such a record as Dr. A. D. White's History of the\nWarfare between Science and Theology.\n\n[762] Mommsen, History of Rome, bk. i, ch. 14 (Eng. tr. 1894,\nvol. i, pp. 282-83). Mommsen's view of the antiquity of writing\namong the Latins (p. 280) is highly speculative. He places its\nintroduction about or before 1000 B.C.; yet he admits that they got\ntheir alphabet from the Greeks, and he can show no Greek contacts\nfor that period. Cp. pp. 167-68 (ch. x). Schwegler (R\u00f6mische\nGeschichte, 1853, i, 36) more reasonably places the period after\nthat of the Etruscan domination, while recognizing the Greek origin\nof the script. Cp. Ettore Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman History,\nEng. tr. 1906, pp. 26-28; Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, 1893,\np. 32.\n\n[763] Schwegler, i, ch. i, \u00a7 12; Teuffel, Hist. of Roman\nLit. ed. Schwabe, Eng. tr. 1900, i, 100-101, 104-10.\n\n[764] Teuffel, i, 110-11.\n\n[765] Mommsen, bk. ii, ch. 8. Eng. tr. ii, 70. Such creation of deities\nby mere abstraction of things and functions had been the rule in the\npopular as distinguished from the civic religion. Cp. Augustine, De\ncivitate Dei, iv, 16, 23; vi, 9, etc. It was the concomitant of the\ntendency noted by Livy: adeo minimis etiam rebus prava religio inserit\ndeos (xxvii, 23). But the practice was not peculiar to the Romans,\nfor among the Greeks were Gods or Goddesses of Wealth, Peace, Mercy,\nShame, Fortune, Rumour, Energy, Action, Persuasion, Consolation,\nDesire, Yearning, Necessity, Force, etc. See Pausanias passim. The\ninference is that the more specific deities in all religions, with\npersonal names, are the product of sacerdotal institutions or of\npoetic or other art. M. Boissier (i, 5), like Ihne, takes it for\ngranted that the multitude of deified abstractions had no legends;\nbut this is unwarranted. They may have had many; but there were no\npoets to sing, or priests to preserve and ritualize them.\n\n[766] De natura Deorum, i, 42.\n\n[767] Mr. Schuckburgh (History of Rome, 1894, p. 401, note) cites\na translated passage in his fragments (Cicero, De Div. ii, 50; De\nnat. Deorum, iii, 32), putting the Epicurean view that the Gods clearly\ndid not govern human affairs, \"which he probably would have softened\nif he had not agreed with it.\" Cp. Mommsen, iii, 113 (bk. ii, ch. 13).\n\n[768] Fragmenta, ed. Hesselius, p. 226; Cicero, De Divinatione, i, 58.\n\n[769] Mommsen, i, 301; ii, 71; iii, 117 (bk. i, ch. 15; bk. ii, ch. 8;\nbk. iii, ch. 13). Cicero, De Div. i, 41.\n\n[770] Livy, xxix, 18. Dr. Warde Fowler (Religious Experience of the\nRoman People, p. 346) censures Mr. Heitland for calling Livy's story\n\"an interesting romance\" (Hist. of Rom. Rep. ii, 229 note); remarking\nthat \"it is the fashion now to reject as false whatever is surprising,\"\nand adding (p. 347): \"It is certain, from the steps taken by the\ngovernment ... that it is in the main a true account.\" It may suffice\nto ask whether Dr. Fowler believes in all or any of the prodigia\nmentioned by Livy because the government \"took steps\" about them.\n\n[771] Cp. Boissier, La religion romaine, i, 39, 346.\n\n[772] Teuffel, i, 122.\n\n[773] Aulus Gellius (xv, 11) says the edict was de philosophis et de\nrhetoribus Latinis, but the senatus-consultum, as given by him, does\nnot contain the adjective; and he goes on to tell that aliquot deinde\nannis post--really sixty-nine years later--the censors fulminated\nagainst homines qui NOVUM genus disciplin\u00e6 instituerunt ... eos sibi\nnomen imposuisse Latinas rhetoras. The former victims, then, were\npresumably Greek. Cp. Shuckburgh, p. 520; and Long, Decline of the\nRoman Republic, 1866, ii, 146. Professor Pelham (Outlines of Roman\nHistory, 1893, p. 179, note) mistakenly cites the senatus-consultum\nas containing the word \"Latini.\" The reading Latinis in Gellius's\nown phrase has long been suspected. See ed. Frederic and Gronov, 1706.\n\n[774] Plutarch, Cato, c. 22.\n\n[775] Cicero, De. Repub., passim, ed. Halm.\n\n[776] Polybius, xxxii, 10.\n\n[777] Suetonius, De claris rhetoribus.\n\n[778] See in Cicero, De Oratore, iii, 24, the account by the censor\nCrassus of his reasons for preferring the Greek rhetors.\n\n[779] Valerius Maximus, i, 3, 1.\n\n[780] The culture history of the republican period, as partially\nrecovered by recent arch\u00e6ology, shows a process of dissolution and\nreplacement from a remote period. Cp. Ettore Pais, Ancient Legends\nof Roman History, Eng. tr. 1906, ch. ii, notably p. 18.\n\n[781] De rerum natura, i, 50-135; cp. v, 1166.\n\n[782] ii, 646-50 (the passage cited by Mr. Gladstone in the House\nof Commons in one of the Bradlaugh debates, with a confession of its\nnoble beauty); and again ii, 1090-1105, and iii, 18-22.\n\n[783] See Christianity and Mythology, pp. 52-57.\n\n[784] See the account of the doctrine of the high-priest Scaevola,\npreserved by Augustine, De civ. Dei, iv, 27. He and Varro (id. iv,\n31; vi, 5-7) agreed in rejecting the current myths, but insisted on\nthe continued civic acceptance of them. On the whole question compare\nBoissier, La religion romaine, i, 47-63.\n\n[785] Thus the satirist Lucilius, who ridiculed the popular beliefs,\nwas capable, in his capacity of patriot, of crying out against the lack\nof respect shown to religion and the Gods (Boissier, pp. 51-52). The\npurposive insincerity set up in their thinking by such men must,\nof course, have been injurious to character.\n\n[786] Cp. the De Divinatione, i, 2.\n\n[787] E.g., Mr. A. J. Balfour's Foundations of Belief.\n\n[788] Tusc. Disp. i, 26.\n\n[789] De Divinatione, ii, 33, 34, cp. ii, 12; and De nat. Deorum,\ni, 22. It is not surprising that in a later age, when the remaining\npagans had no dialectic faculty left, the Christian Fathers, by using\nCicero as a weapon against the cults, could provoke them into calling\nhim impious (Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, iii, 6, 7).\n\n[790] De Divinatione, ii, 22.\n\n[791] Boissier, i, 58.\n\n[792] De nat. Deorum, ii, 1.\n\n[793] Boissier, p. 59.\n\n[794] \"It seems to me that, on the whole, among the educated and\nthe rich, the indifferent must have been in the majority\" (Boissier,\np. 61).\n\n[795] Id. p. 59.\n\n[796] Cp. Long, Decline of Roman Republic, i, 438; ii, 38-40. Long\nremarks that Domitius, the accuser of Scaurus (who had prevented his\nelection to the college of augurs), \"used the name of religion for the\npurpose of damaging a political enemy; and the trick has been repeated,\nand is repeated, up to the present day. The Romans must have kept\nrecords of many of these trials. They were the great events of the\ntimes ...; and so we learn that three tribes voted against Scaurus,\nand thirty-two voted for him; but in each of these thirty-two tribes\nthere was only a small majority of votes (pauca puncta) in favour\nof Scaurus.\"\n\n[797] See Long, i, 56, for a cynical estimate of the mode of\nmanipulation of the Sibylline and other sacred books.\n\n[798] Sallust, Bellum Catilin. c. 51.\n\n[799] Suetonius, Julius, cc. 59, 77; Cicero, De Divinatione, ii,\n24. Cp. Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, ed. 1865,\nii, 424.\n\n[800] Plutarch, Sulla, c. 29; Marius, c. 16. Long (Decline of Roman\nRepublic, ii, 369) says of Sulla that, \"though he could rob a temple\nwhen he wanted money, he believed in the religion of his time. We\nshould call him superstitious; and a man who is superstitious is\ncapable of any crime, for he believes that the Gods can be conciliated\nby prayers and presents.\"\n\n[801] Compare the fears which grew upon Cromwell in his last days.\n\n[802] Pompeius, on the other hand, had many seers in his camp; but\nafter his overthrow expressed natural doubts about Providence. Cicero,\nDe Div. ii, 24, 47; Plutarch, Pompeius, c. 75.\n\n[803] Boissier, i, 73.\n\n[804] See Augustine's citation from Varro, De civ. Dei, vi,\n2. Cp. Sueton. Aug. 29.\n\n[805] The only record to the contrary is the worthless scandal as\nto his \"suppers of the Twelve Gods\" (Sueton. Aug. 70). The statement\nof W. A. Schmidt that \"none of the Julians was orthodox\" (Geschichte\nder Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit im ersten Jahrhundert, 1847, p. 175)\nis somewhat overstrained.\n\n[806] Dio Cassius, lii, 36.\n\n[807] E.g., his encouragement of a new college of priests founded in\nhis honour. Dio, xliv, 6.\n\n[808] Sueton. Julius, 44, 56. The first public library actually\nopened in Rome was founded by Asinius Pollio under Augustus, and was\nplaced in the forecourt of the temple of Liberty: Augustus founded\ntwo others; Tiberius a fourth, in his palace; Vespasian a fifth, in\nthe temple of Peace; Domitian a sixth, on the Capitol. W. A. Schmidt,\nGesch. der Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit, pp. 151-52, and refs.\n\n[809] Boissier, pp. 67-108; Suetonius, Aug. xxix-xxxi.\n\n[810] L'Abb\u00e9 Beurlier, Le Culte Imp\u00e9rial, 1891, introd. and ch. 1;\nBoissier, ch. 2. Cp. p. 185, note, above.\n\n[811] It would seem that the occasion on which he enraged the Senate\nby not rising to receive them (Sueton. Jul. 78) was that on which\nthey came to announce that they had made him a God, Jupiter Julius,\nwith a special temple and a special priest. See Long, Decline of the\nRoman Republic, v, 418. He might very well have intended to rebuke\ntheir baseness. But cp. Boissier, i, 122, citing Dio, xlvi, 6.\n\n[812] iii, 46; x, 40; xliii, 13.\n\n[813] 1 Sat. v, 98-103.\n\n[814] As to the conflict between Horace's bias and his policy,\ncp. Boissier, i. 193-201.\n\n[815] E.g., Carm. iii, 6.\n\n[816] Fasti, v, 673-92.\n\n[817] Fasti, ii, 61-66.\n\n[818] Fasti, iv, 204. The preceding phrase, pro magno teste vetustas\ncreditur, certainly has an ironic ring.\n\n[819] \u00c6neid, vi, 724-27.\n\n[820] Cp. Boissier, i, 228-29.\n\n[821] Georgics, ii, 490, 493. Diderot originated the idea that\nthe first of these lines and the two which follow it in Virgil had\nreference to Lucretius. Grimm, Correspondance Litt\u00e9raire, ed. 1829-30,\nvi, 21-25. It is acquiesced in by W. Warde Fowler, Social Life at\nRome in the Age of Cicero, 1909, p. 327. Sellar (Roman Poets of the\nAugustan Age: Virgil, 1877. p. 201) is doubtful on the point.\n\n[822] Cp. Boissier, i, 193.\n\n[823] Boissier, ii, 84-92.\n\n[824] Ep. xcv.\n\n[825] Suetonius, Jul. 88.\n\n[826] The same note occurs in Virgil, \u00c6neid, vi, 719-21.\n\n[827] Hist. Nat. ii, 1, 5 (7). Pliny identifies nature and deity:\n\"Per qu\u00e6 declaratur haud dubie natur\u00e6 potentia, idque esse quod Deum\nvocamus\" (last cit., end).\n\n[828] Hist. nat. vii, 55 (56). Cp. Boissier, i, 300.\n\n[829] Id. pp. 301-303.\n\n[830] See the praiseworthy treatise of Mr. J. A. Farrer, Paganism\nand Christianity, 1891, chs. 5, 6, and 7.\n\n[831] \"... vires religionis, ad quas maxime etiamnum caligat humanum\ngenus.\" Hist. nat. xxx, 1.\n\n[832] Above, p. 188.\n\n[833] Primus in orbe deos fecit timor. Frag. 22, ed. Burmanni. The\nwhole passage is noteworthy. See also his Satyricon, c. 137, as to\nhis estimate of sacerdotal sincerity.\n\n[834] Thebaid, iii, 661.\n\n[835] Porphyry, Epistle to Anebo (with Jamblichus). Chaeremon, however,\nis said to have regarded comets as divine portents. Origen, Ag. Celsus,\nbk. i, ch. 59.\n\n[836] Prof. C. Martha, Les moralistes sous l'empire romain, ed. 1881,\np. 341.\n\n[837] W. A. Schmidt, who cites this act (Geschichte der Denk- und\nGlaubensfreiheit, pp. 31-33) as the beginning of the end of free\nspeech in Rome, does not mention the detail given by Dio (xliv,\n10), that C\u00e6sar suspected the tribunes of having set on some of\nthe people to hail him as king. But the unproved suspicion does not\njustify his course, which was a bad lapse of judgment, even if the\nsuspicion were just. From this point a conspiracy against his life\nwas natural. Cp. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, v, 432-33. as\nto the facts.\n\n[838] See W. A. Schmidt, pp. 34-108, for a careful analysis of the\nevolution. As to the book-censure, see pp. 101-104.\n\n[839] Suetonius, Tiberius, c. 28.\n\n[840] Id. c. 61.\n\n[841] Annals, i, 73. That such a phrase should have been written by an\nemperor in an official letter, and yet pass unnoticed through antiquity\nsave in one historical work, recovered only in the Renaissance, is\none of the minor improbabilities that give colour to the denial of\nthe genuineness of the Annals.\n\n[842] Tiberius, c. 69.\n\n[843] Petronius, Satyricon, ad init.\n\n[844] In the Annals (xiv, 50) it is stated that the book attacked\nsenators and pontiffs; that it was condemned to be burned, and\nVejento to be exiled; and that the book was much sought and read\nwhile forbidden; but that it fell into oblivion when all were free\nto read it. Here, again, there is no other ancient testimony. Vejento\nis heard of, however, in Juvenal, iv, 113, 123-29.\n\n[845] Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, iv. 47.\n\n[846] Cp. Schmidt, pp. 346-47.\n\n[847] Suetonius, Domitian, c. 10.\n\n[848] Cp. Schmidt, p. 157.\n\n[849] Suetonius, Tiberius, c. 36; Josephus, Antiquities, xviii, 3,\n\u00a7\u00a7 4, 5. Josephus specifies isolated pretexts, which Suetonius does\nnot mention. They are not very probable.\n\n[850] Who destroyed 2,000 copies of prophetical books. Suetonius,\nAug. c. 31.\n\n[851] See, in the next chapter, as to the rationalistic mythology\nof Macrobius.\n\n[852] Cp. Propertius, ii, 14, 27 sqq.; iii, 23, 19-20; iv, 3, 38;\nTibullus, iv, 1, 18-23; Juvenal, as before cited, and xv, 133, 142-46.\n\n[853] Plato, 2 Alcib.; Cicero, Pro Cluentio, c. 68; Horace, Carm. iii,\n23, 17; Ovid, Heroides, Acont. Cydipp. 191-92; Persius, Sat. ii,\n69; Seneca, De Beneficiis, i, 6. Cp. Diod. Sic. xii, 20; Varro,\nin Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, vii, 1.\n\n[854] 1 Sat. iii, 96-98. Cp. Cicero, De Finibus, iv, 19, 27, 28;\nMatt. v. 19-28; James, ii, 10. Lactantius, again (Div. Inst. iii,\n23). denounces the doctrine of the equality of offences as laid down\nby Zeno, giving no sign of knowing that it is also set forth in his\nown sacred books.\n\n[855] On Seneca's moral teaching, cp. Martha, Les Moralistes sous\nl'empire romain, pp. 57-66; Boissier, La religion romaine, ii,\n80-82. M. Boissier further examines fully the exploded theory that\nSeneca received Christian teaching. On this compare Bishop Lightfoot,\nDissertations on the Apostolic Age, pp. 237-92.\n\n[856] Seneca was so advanced in his theoretic ethic as to consider\nall war on a level with homicide. Epist. xcv, 30.\n\n[857] It is to be noted that preaching had begun among the moralists\nof Rome in the first century, and was carried on by the priests\nof Isis in the second; and that in Egypt monasticism had long been\nestablished. Martha, as cited, p. 67; Boissier, i, 356-59. Cp. Mosheim,\n2 Cent. pt. ii, c. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 13, 14, as to monasticism.\n\n[858] Mt. xxii, 39; Mk. xii, 31.\n\n[859] Talmud, tract. Sabbath, 306.\n\n[860] Mk. xii, 32.\n\n[861] Lk. xviii, 20.\n\n[862] See the impressive argument of Dr. Moncure Conway in his Solomon\nand Solomonic Literature, 1899, ch. xviii.\n\n[863] See Dr. Nicholson's The Gospel According to the Hebrews, 1879,\np. 77. Cp. Conway, p. 222. Dr. Nicholson insists that at least the word\n\"sacrificing\" must be spurious, because \"it is surely impossible that\nJesus ever uttered this threat\"!\n\n[864] Cp. the author's Christianity and Mythology, pt. iii. div. ii,\n\u00a7 6.\n\n[865] The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, known as the \"Slavonic Enoch,\"\nch. xliv, 1 (Eng. tr. 1896, pp. 60, 67).\n\n[866] See the author's Pagan Christs, pt. ii.\n\n[867] Above, p. 215.\n\n[868] Hosea, vi, 6; Psalms, xl, 6, 7; Ecclesiastes, v, 1.\n\n[869] Talmud, Yoma-Derech Eretz; Midrash, Vayikra-Rabba, xxvii,\n11 and 12.\n\n[870] Ch. lii (p. 69).\n\n[871] Luke xiii, 4.\n\n[872] Cp. Conway, Solomon and Solomonic Literature, 1899, pp. 57,\n201, 219.\n\n[873] John iv, 21.\n\n[874] E.g., Plato, Crito, Jowett's tr. 3rd ed. ii, 150; Seneca, De\nIra, ii, 32. Valerius Maximus (iv, 2, 4) even urges the returning of\nbenefits for injuries.\n\n[875] It is impossible to find in the whole patristic literature a\nsingle display of the \"love\" in question. In all early Christian\nhistory there is nothing to represent it save the attitude of\nmartyrs towards their executioners--an attitude seen often in pagan\nliterature. (E.g., \u00c6lian, Var. Hist. xii, 49.)\n\n[876] 1 Thess. v, 21.\n\n[877] 2 Cor. xi, 4; Gal. i, 6.\n\n[878] Cp. Rom. ix, 14-21.\n\n[879] 2 Cor. x, 5. Needless to say, such an expression savours strongly\nof late invention; but in any case it tells of the attitude of the\nChristian teachers of the second century.\n\n[880] 1 Cor. vii, 20-24 (where the phrase translated in English\n\"use it rather\" unquestionably means \"rather continue\" = remain a\nslave. Cp. Eph. vi, 5, and Variorum Teacher's Bible in loc.).\n\n[881] Rom. xiii, 1. Cp. 1 Peter ii, 13-14; Tit. iii, 1. The anti-Roman\nspirit in the Apocalypse is Judaic, not Gentile-Christian; the book\nbeing of Jewish origin.\n\n[882] James ii, 21.\n\n[883] 1 Cor. xv, 12.\n\n[884] The Apology of Athenagoras (2nd c.) is rather a defence of\nmonotheism than a Christian document; hence, no doubt, its speedy\nneglect by the Church.\n\n[885] Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. c. 5; Min. Felix, Octavius, c. 10.\n\n[886] \"The inhabitants of Coelesyria, Idumea, and Judea are principally\ninfluenced by Aries and Ares, and are generally audacious, atheistical,\nand treacherous\" (Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, ii, 3--Paraphrase of Proclus).\n\n[887] Cp. Tertullian, De Idolatria, passim, and Ad Scapulam, c. 5.\n\n[888] For the refusal to worship men as Gods they had, of course,\nabundant pagan precedent. See above, p. 186, note.\n\n[889] E.g., Tertullian, De Testimonio Anim\u00e6, c. 1; Arnobius,\nAdversus Gentes, i, 41, etc.; Lactantius, Divine Institutes, c. xv;\nEpit. c. vii.\n\n[890] Cp. J. A. Farrer, Paganism and Christianity, ch. vii.\n\n[891] Iren\u00e6us, Against Heresies, i, 26. Cp. Hagenbach, Lehrbuch der\nDogmengeschichte, 3te Aufl. \u00a7 23, 4 (p. 37), as to Cerinthus.\n\n[892] 1 Tim. vi, 20. The word persistently translated \"oppositions\"\nis a specific term in Gnostic lore. Cp. R. W. Mackay, Rise and Progress\nof Christianity, 1854, p. 115, note.\n\n[893] Cp. Harnack, Outlines of the History of Dogma, Mitchell's\ntrans. p. 77 (ch. vi), p. 149 (bk. ii, ch. vi); Gieseler, Comp. of\nEccles. Hist. i, \u00a7 63, Eng. tr. i, 234, as to the attitude of Origen.\n\n[894] The term \"Gnostic,\" often treated as if applicable only to\nheretical sects, was adopted by Clemens of Alexandria as an honourable\ntitle. Cp. Gieseler, p. 241, as cited.\n\n[895] Mosheim, Eccles. Hist. 2 Cent. pt. ii, ch. i, \u00a7\u00a7 4-12. Cp.,\nhowever, Abb\u00e9 Cognat, Cl\u00e9ment d'Alexandrie, 1859, pp. 421-23, and\nUeberweg, i, 239, as to the obscurity resting on the original teaching\nof Ammonios.\n\n[896] Cp. Gieseler, Compendium, i, \u00a7 52 (tr. vol. i, p. 162).\n\n[897] Id. \u00a7\u00a7 54, 55, pp. 186-90.\n\n[898] E. H. 3 Cent. pt. ii, ch. i, \u00a7\u00a7 2-4.\n\n[899] As to the earlier latitudinarianism, cp. Gieseler, as cited,\np. 166.\n\n[900] Gieseler, \u00a7 55.\n\n[901] Mosheim, E. H. 3 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 1-7; Gieseler,\nas cited, \u00a7 53, pp. 162-65; Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. vi, 19;\nB. Saint-Hilaire, De l'\u00e9cole d'Alexandrie, 1845, p. 7; Baur,\nCh. Hist. Eng. tr. ii, 3-8. But cp. Cognat, Cl\u00e9ment d'Alexandrie,\nl. v, ch. v.\n\n[902] Cp. Mosheim on Origen, Comm. de rebus Christ. ante Const. \u00a7\u00a7 27,\n28, summarized in Schlegel's note to Ec. Hist. Reid's ed. pp. 100-101;\nGieseler, \u00a7 63; Renan, Marc-Aur\u00e8le, pp. 114, 140. Dr. Hatch (Influence\nof Greek Ideas on the Christian Church, pp. 82-83) notes that the\nallegorical method, which began in a tendency towards rationalism,\ncame later to be typically orthodox.\n\n[903] \"Gnosis was an attempt to convert Christianity into philosophy;\nto place it in its widest relation to the universe, and to incorporate\nwith it the ideas and feelings approved by the best intelligence of\nthe times.\" Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, p. 109. But\ncp. the per contra on p. 110: \"it was but a philosophy in fetters,\nan effort of the mind to form for itself a more systematic belief in\nits own prejudices.\" Again (p. 115): \"a reaction towards freethought\nwas the essence of Gnosis.\" So also Robins, A Defence of the Faith,\n1862, pt. i, pp. 4-5, 153.\n\n[904] This view could be supported by the Platonists from Plato, Laws,\nbk. x. Cp. Chaignet, La vie et les \u00e9crits de Platon, 1871, p. 422;\nand Milman, Hist. of Christianity, bk. ii, ch. v, ed. Paris, 1840,\ni, 288. It is explicitly set forth by Plutarch, I. and O., cc. 45-49.\n\n[905] On the subject in general cp. Mosheim, E. H. 2 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. v; also his Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians before\nConstantine, Eng. tr. vol. ii; Harnack, Outlines of the Hist. of Dogma,\nch. iv; King, The Gnostics and their Remains; Mackay, Rise and Progress\nof Christianity, pt. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 10, 11, 12; Renan, L'\u00c9glise Chr\u00e9tienne,\nchs. ix, x; Milman, Hist. of Christianity, bk. ii, ch. v; Lardner,\nHist. of Heretics, in Works, ed. 1835, vol. viii; Baur, Church History,\npt. iii; Jeremie, Hist. of the Chr. Church in 2nd and 3rd Cent.,\nch. v (in Encyc. Metropolitana).\n\n[906] \"Mysticism itself is but an insane rationalism\" (Hampden,\nBampton Lect. on Scholastic Philosophy, 3rd ed. intr. p. liii). It may\nbe described as freethought without regard to evidence--that \"lawless\nthought\" which Christian polemists are wont to ascribe to rationalists.\n\n[907] Gieseler, \u00a7\u00a7 61, 86 (pp. 228, 368, 370).\n\n[908] In the fourth century and later, however, the gospel of\nasceticism won great orthodox vogue through the writings of the\nso-called Dionysius the Areopagite. Cp. Mosheim, 4 Cent. pt. ii,\nc. iii, \u00a7 12; Westcott, Religious Thought in the West, 1891,\npp. 190-91.\n\n[909] Compare the process by which the Talmudic system unified\nJudaism. Wellhausen, Israel, as cited, pp. 541-42; Milman, History\nof Christianity, bk. ii, ch. 4, ed. Paris, 1840, i, 276.\n\n[910] \"There is good reason to suppose that the Christian bishops\nmultiplied sacred rites for the sake of rendering the Jews and the\npagans more friendly to them\" (Mosheim, E. H. 2 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. iv. Cp. ch. iii, \u00a7 17; ch. iv, \u00a7\u00a7 3-7; 4 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 1-3; ch. iv, \u00a7\u00a7 1-2; 5 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7\n2). This generalization is borne out by nearly every other Church\nhistorian. Cp. Harnack, Outlines, pt. ii, bk. i, ch. i; Milman, bk. iv,\nch. 5, pp. 367-74; Gieseler. \u00a7\u00a7 98, 99, 101, 104; Renan, Marc-Aur\u00e8le,\n3e edit. p. 630. Baur, Church History, Eng. tr. ii, 285-89.\n\n[911] Gieseler, \u00a7 87, p. 373; Hagenbach, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte,\n3te Aufl. \u00a7 108.\n\n[912] Eusebius, v, 28; Gieseler, \u00a7 60, p. 218.\n\n[913] Cp. Gieseler, \u00a7\u00a7 80-83, pp. 328-53; Harnack, Outlines, pt. ii,\nbk. i, esp. pp. 201-202.\n\n[914] One being another Theodotos, a money-changer.\n\n[915] Eusebius, as last cited. The sect was accused of altering the\ngospels to suit its purposes. The charge could probably be made with\ntruth against every sect in turn, as against the Church in general.\n\n[916] In the end the doctrine declared orthodox was the opposite\nof what had been declared orthodox in the Sabellian and other\ncontroversies (Mosheim, 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7 9); and all the while\n\"the Arians and the orthodox embraced the same theology in substance\"\n(Murdock, note on Mosheim, Reid's ed. p. 161). An eminent modern\nCatholic, however, has described Arianism as \"a deistic doctrine which\nhad not the courage to bury itself in the fecund obscurities of dogma\"\n(Ozanam, La Civilisation chr\u00e9tienne chez les Francs, 1849, p. 35).\n\n[917] Gieseler, \u00a7 83. p. 345.\n\n[918] Cp. the author's Short History of Christianity, 2nd\ned. pp. 176-81.\n\n[919] \"Pelagianism is Christian rationalism\" (Harnack, Outlines,\npt. ii, bk. ii, ch. iv, \u00a7 3, p.364).\n\n[920] He was first a Manichean; later an anti-Manichean, denying\npredestination; later, as an opponent of the Pelagians, an assertor\nof predestination. Cp. Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity,\npt. v, \u00a7 15. As to his final Manicheanism, see Milman, Hist. of Latin\nChristianity, 3rd ed. i, 152.\n\n[921] Cp. Harnack, Outlines, pt. ii, bk. ii, ch. v, \u00a7 1 (p. 386).\n\n[922] Cp. Hampden, Bampton Lectures on The Scholastic Philosophy,\n1848, pp. xxxv-xxxvi, and refs.\n\n[923] Sokrates, Eccles. Hist. bk. vii, ch. 15.\n\n[924] Epist. 93. Cp. Schlegel's notes on Mosheim, in Reid's\ned. pp. 159, 198; Rev. W. R. Clarke, Saint Augustine, pp. 86-87\n(a defence); Milman, History of Latin Christianity, bk. ii,\nch. ii, 3rd. ed. i, 163; Boissier, La fin du paganisme, 2e \u00e9dit. i,\n69-79. Harnack's confused and contradictory estimate of Augustine\n(Outlines, pt. ii, bk ii, chs. iii, iv) ignores this issue. He\nnotes, however (pp. 362-63), some of Augustine's countless\nself-contradictions.\n\n[925] Milman, Hist. of Christianity, bk. iii, ch. viii; ed. cited,\nii, 182, 188, and note. For the views of Ambrose see p. 184. In Gaul,\nSt. Martin put down the old shrines by brute force. Id. p. 179.\n\n[926] Cp. Beugnot, Histoire de la destruction du paganisme en Occident,\n1835, i, 430.\n\n[927] De errore profanarum religionum, end.\n\n[928] See it translated in full by Lardner in his Testimonies of\nAncient Heathens, ch. xlix. Works, ed. 1835, vol. viii.\n\n[929] Lardner, as cited, pp. 25-27.\n\n[930] As to the high character of Libanius, who used his influence\nto succour his Christian friends in the reign of Julian, see Lardner,\npp. 15-17.\n\n[931] Milman, Hist. of Christianity, bk. iii, ch. vi; vol. ii,\np. 131. See the passage there cited from the Funeral Oration of\nLibanius On Julian, as to Christians building houses with temple\nstones; also the further passages, pp. 129, 161, 212, of Mr. King's\ntr. of the Oration in his Julian the Emperor (Bohn Lib.).\n\n[932] Ammianus, xxii, 4.\n\n[933] Gibbon, ch. xlvii. Bohn ed. v, 211-52, 264, 268, 272. Mosheim,\npassim.\n\n[934] Milman, as cited, p. 178.\n\n[935] De Testimonio Anim\u00e6, c. 2; De Ira Dei.\n\n[936] Tertullian, as cited, c. 3.\n\n[937] B. vi, ch. 28.\n\n[938] On the Mysteries, bk. x, ch. 2.\n\n[939] Cp. Minucius Felix (2nd c.), Octavius, c. 5.\n\n[940] De consensu evangelistarum, i, 10.\n\n[941] De civ. Dei, xxi, 2, 5-7.\n\n[942] Id. i, 14.\n\n[943] Id. xxi, 11.\n\n[944] See the citations in Abailard's Sic et non, \u00a7 1. Quod fides\nhumanis rationibus sit adstruenda, et contra.\n\n[945] De Gubernatione Dei, l. 4.\n\n[946] See Renan, L'\u00c9glise Chr\u00e9tienne, p. 493. As to Crescens, the\nenemy of Justin Martyr (2 Apol. c. 3), see id. p. 492. Cp. Arnobius,\nAdversus Gentes, passim, as to pagan objections. What remains of\nPorphyry will be found in Lardner's Testimonies of the Heathen,\nch. xxxvii. Cp. Baur, Church History, Eng. tr. ii, 179-87.\n\n[947] The Controversy between Jason and Papiscus regarding Christ,\nmentioned by Origen (Ag. Celsus, bk. iv, ch. 4), seems to have been\nof the same nature.\n\n[948] Origen repeatedly calls him an Epicurean; but this is obviously\nfalse. The Platonizing Christian would not admit that a Platonist\nwas anti-Christian.\n\n[949] Origen places him in the reign of Hadrian; but the internal\nevidence is all against that opinion. Kain dates the treatise 177-78.\n\n[950] Cp. Renan, Marc-Aur\u00e8le, 3e \u00e9dit. pp. 346-71.\n\n[951] B. i, cc. 24, 25.\n\n[952] B. i, cc. 28, 32.\n\n[953] c. 32.\n\n[954] cc. 37, 39.\n\n[955] B. ii, c. 26.\n\n[956] B. ii, c. 78.\n\n[957] B. ii, c. 49.\n\n[958] B. ii, c. 30.\n\n[959] B. iii, c. 1.\n\n[960] B. iv, cc. 23-30, 54-60, 74.\n\n[961] Cp. A. Kind, Teleologie und Naturalismus in der altchristlichen\nZeit, 1875; Soury, Br\u00e9viaire de l'histoire du Mat\u00e9rialisme, pp. 331-40.\n\n[962] B. i, chs. 9-11; iii, 44.\n\n[963] Cp. Renan, Marc-Aur\u00e8le, pp. 373-77.\n\n[964] Christian excisions have been suspected in the Peregrinus,\n\u00a7 11 (Bernays, Lucian und die Kyniker, 1879, p. 107). But see\nMr. J. M. Cotterill's Peregrinus Proteus, Edinburgh, 1879, for a\ntheory of the spuriousness of the treatise, which is surmised to be\na fabrication of Henri Etienne.\n\n[965] Logoi Philaletheis, known only from the reply of Eusebius, Contra\nHiroclem. Hierocles made much of Apollonius of Tyana, as having greatly\noutdone Jesus in miracles, while ranking simply as a God-beloved man.\n\n[966] Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, and Philostorgius.\n\n[967] Cod. Justin. De Summa Trinitate. l. I, tit. i, c. 3.\n\n[968] Citations are given by Baur, Ch. Hist. ii, 180 sq.\n\n[969] Cp. Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, p. 160. Chrysostom\n(De Mundi Creatione, vi, 3) testifies that Porphyry \"led many away\nfrom the faith.\" He ably anticipated the \"higher criticism\" of the\nBook of Daniel. See Baur, as cited. Porphyry, like Celsus, powerfully\nretorted on the Old Testament the attacks made by Christians on the\nimmorality of pagan myths, and contemned the allegorical explanations\nof the Christian writers as mere evasions. The pagan explanations of\npagan myths, however, were of the same order.\n\n[970] Gieseler, \u00a7 106, ii, 75. Cp. Mosheim, 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii,\n\u00a7 22.\n\n[971] Gieseler, \u00a7 106, vol. ii, p. 74; Mosheim, 4 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. iii, \u00a7 2; and Schlegel's note in Reid's ed. p. 152.\n\n[972] Milman, Hist. of Chr. bk. iii, ch. xi (ii, 268-70); Mosheim,\n5 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7 14; Gilly, Vigilantius and his Times,\n1844, pp. 8, 389 sq., 470 sq. As to Jerome's persecuting ferocity\nsee also Gieseler, ii, 65 note. For a Catholic polemic on Jerome's\nside see Amed\u00e9e Thierry, Saint J\u00e9rome, 2e \u00e9dit. pp. 141, 363-66.\n\n[973] See a good account of the works of Macrobius in Prof. Dill's\nRoman Society in the last Century of the Western Empire, bk. i, ch. iv.\n\n[974] Philostorgius, Eccles. Hist. Epit. bk. viii, ch. x.\n\n[975] By Justinian in 529. The banished thinkers were protected by\nChosroes in Persia, who secured them permission to return (Gibbon,\nBohn ed. iv. 355-56; Finlay, Hist. of Greece, ed. Tozer, i, 277,\n287). Theodosius II had already forbidden all public lectures by\nindependent teachers (id. pp. 282-83).\n\n[976] Theodosius I, Arcadius, and Theodosius II (379-450) successively\npassed laws forbidding and persecuting paganism (Finlay. i,\n286; Beugnot. Hist. de la destr. du paganisme en occident, i, 350\nsq.). Mithraism was suppressed in the same period (Jerome, Epist. cvii,\nad Laetam, Sokrates, Eccles. Hist. bk. v, ch. xvi). It is to be\nremembered that Constans and Constantius, the sons of Constantine,\nhad commenced, at least on paper, to persecute paganism as soon as\ntheir father's new creed was sufficiently established (Cod. Theod. xvi,\n10, 2, 4), and this with the entire approval of the whole Church. It\nwas not their fault that it subsisted till the time of Theodosius II\n(cp. Gieseler, \u00a7 75, pp. 306-308; and Beugnot, i, 138-48). On the\nedict of Theodosius I see Milman, bk. iii, ch. viii; ed. cited, p. 186.\n\n[977] In S. Babylam, contra Julianum, c. ii. Cp. his Hom. iv on 1st\nCor. Eng. tr. 1839, p. 42.\n\n[978] There is also a suggestion in one passage of Chrysostom (Hom. in\n1 Cor. vi, 2, 3) that some Christians tended to doubt the actuality\nof apostolic miracles, seeing that no miracles took place in their\nown day.\n\n[979] Pr\u00e6paratio Evangelica, xv, 61.\n\n[980] Div. Inst. iii, 3.\n\n[981] Id. iii, 24.\n\n[982] Topographia, lib. v, cited by Murdock in note on Mosheim. 5\nCent. pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7 5, Reid's ed. p. 192. Cp. same ed. p. 219,\nnote; and Gibbon, Bohn ed. iv, 259; v, 319.\n\n[983] , ii, 65, 71.\n\n[984] See Schlegel's note on Mosheim. 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7 19.\n\n[985] The first name came from Anomoios, \"unlike-natured (to\nthe Father),\" that being their primary doctrinal heresy concerning\nJesus. The second seems to have been a euphemism of their own making,\nwith the sense of \"holding the good law.\"\n\n[986] Jerome, Adv. Vigilantium, cc. 9, 11.\n\n[987] Epiphanius, Adv. H\u00e6res. lxx, \u00a7 6.\n\n[988] Cp. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, viii, 15-19; xxi, 6; De\nTrinitate, iii, 12, 13 (7, 8); Epist. cxxxviii, 18-20; Sermo cc,\nin Epiph. Dom. ii; Jerome, Vita S. Hilarion, cc. 6, 37.\n\n[989] Mosheim, E. H. 2 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 8, 15; 3 Cent. pt. i,\nch. i, \u00a7 5; pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 10, 11; 4 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii,\n\u00a7\u00a7 3, 16; Gieseler, \u00a7 63, p. 235; Waddington, Hist. of the Church,\n1833, pp. 38-39; Milman, Hist. of Chr. bk. iv, ch. iii, ed. cited,\nii, 337. Cp. Mackay, Rise and Progress of Christianity, pp. 11-12.\n\n[990] Cp. the explicit admissions of Mosheim, E. H. 2 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. iii, \u00a7 16; 3 Cont. pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 4, 6; 4 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. ii, \u00a7 8; ch. iii, \u00a7 17; Gieseler, \u00a7 103, vol. ii, p. 56. It is to\nbe noted, however, that even the martyrs were at times bad characters\nwho sought in martyrdom remission for their sins (Gieseler, \u00a7 74,\np. 206; De Wette, as there cited).\n\n[991] Cp. Gieseler, ii, 67-68.\n\n[992] Epist. vii, 5; xcv, 33. Cp. Cicero, Tusculans, ii, 17.\n\n[993] Cp. the Bohn ed. of Gibbon, note by clerical editor, iii, 359.\n\n[994] The express declaration of Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei,\nl. 6. On the general question compare Mr. Farrer's Paganism and\nChristianity, ch. x; Milman, as last cited, p. 331; and Gieseler,\nii, 71, note 6. The traditional view that the games were suppressed\nby Honorius, though accepted by Gibbon and by Professor Dill (Roman\nSociety in the Last Century of the Western Empire, 2nd ed. p. 56),\nappears to be an error. Cp. Beugnot, Destr. du Paganisme, ii, 25;\nFinlay, Hist. of Greece, i, 236.\n\n[995] As to the specially cruel use of judicial torture by the later\nInquisition, see H. C. Lea, Superstition and Force, 3rd ed. p. 452.\n\n[996] Lavoll\u00e9e, as cited, p. 92. Cp. St. Chrysostom's Picture of his\nAge, p. 112, and the admissions of Milman, bk. iv, ch. i.\n\n[997] As to the spirit of hatred roused by controversy among believers,\nsee Gieseler, \u00a7 104, vol. ii, pp. 64-67; and Ullmann's Gregory of\nNazianzum, Eng. tr. 1851, pp. 177-80.\n\n[998] H. Fraser Stewart, Boethius: An Essay, 1891, pp. 100-101.\n\n[999] Cp. Beugnot, Destruction du Paganisme, ii, 282-83.\n\n[1000] Id. p. 159. Mr. Stewart in another passage (p. 106) argues that\n\"The Consolation is intensely artificial\"--this by way of explaining\nthat it was a deliberate exercise, not representing the real or normal\nstate of its author's mind. Yet he has finally to avow (p. 107) that\n\"it remains a very noble book\"--a character surely incompatible with\nintense artificiality.\n\n[1001] This is the view of Maurice (Medieval Philosophy, 2nd ed. 1859,\npp. 14-16), who decides that Boethius was neither a Christian nor a\n\"pagan\"--i.e., a believer in the pagan Gods. This is simply to say that\nhe was a rationalist--a \"pagan philosopher,\" like Aristotle. But, as\nis noted by Prof. Bury (ed. of Gibbon, iv. 199), Boethius's authorship\nof a book, De sancta trinitate, et capita qu\u00e6dam dogmatica, et librum\ncontra Nestorium, is positively asserted in the Anecdoton Holderi\n(ed. by Usener, Leipzig, 1877, p. 4), a fragment found in a 10th\ncentury MS.\n\n[1002] The strict meaning of this term, given by Mohammed (\"the true\nreligion with God is Islam\"; Sura, iii, 17), is \"submission\"--such\nbeing the attitude demanded by the Prophet. \"Moslem\" or \"Muslim\"\nmeans one who accepts Islam. Koran means strictly, not \"book,\" but\n\"reading\" or recitation.\n\n[1003] Rodwell's tr. of the Koran, ed. 1861, pref. p. xv.\n\n[1004] Sale, Preliminary Discourse to tr. of the Koran, ed. 1833, i,\n42; Muir's Life of Mohammad, ed. Weir, 1912, p. 78. Cp. Freeman,\nHistory and Conquests of the Saracens, 1856, p. 35. The late\nProf. Palmer, in introd. to his tr. of the Koran (Sacred Books of\nthe East series), i, p. xv, says that \"By far the greater number had\nceased to believe in anything at all\"; but this is an extravagance,\nconfuted by himself in other passages--e.g. p. xi.\n\n[1005] These generalizations are always matched, and cancelled, by\nothers from the same sources. Thus Prof. D. B. Macdonald writes of\n\"the always flighty and skeptical Arabs,\" and, a few pages later, of\nthe God-fearing fatalism \"of all Muslim thought, the faith to which\nthe Semite ever returns in the end.\" Development of Muslim Theology,\netc. (in \"Semitic Series\"), New York, 1903, pp. 122, 126.\n\n[1006] The word means either convert or pervert; in Heb. and\nSyr. \"heretic\"; in Arabic, \"orthodox.\" It must not be confounded with\nHanyfite, the name of an orthodox sect, founded by one Hanyfa.\n\n[1007] See Rodwell's tr. of the Koran, ed. 1861, pref. pp. xvi,\nxvii; and Sura, xvi (lxxiii in Rodwell's chron. arrangement), v. 121,\np. 252, note 2.\n\n[1008] Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad, 1861-65, i,\n83 sq. Cp. p. 60 sq.\n\n[1009] Rodwell, p. 497, note to Sura iii (xcvii) 19; and pref. p. xvi;\nCaussin de Perceval, Essai sur l'histoire des Arabes avant l'Islamisme,\n1847, i, 321-26; Nicholson, Lit. Hist. of the Arabs, pp. 69, 149. \"To\nthe great mass of the citizens of Mecca the new doctrine was simply\nthe Hanyfism to which they had become accustomed; and they did not at\nfirst trouble themselves at all about the matter.\" Palmer, introd. to\ntr. of Koran, i, p. xxiv. Cp. Sprenger, as cited, i, 46-60, 65.\n\n[1010] The word Hanyf or Hanif recurs in Sura ii, 129; iii,\n60, 89; iv, 124; vi, 79, 162; x, 105, xvi, 121; xxii, 32; xxx,\n29. Cp. H. Derenbourg, La science des religions et l'Islamisme, 1886,\npp. 42-43. Palmer's translation, marred as it unfortunately is by\nslanginess, is on such points specially trustworthy. Rodwell's does\nnot always indicate the use of the word Hanyf; but the German version\nof Ullmann, the French of Kanimirski, and Sale's, do not indicate\nit at all. Sprenger (p. 43) derives the Hanyfs from Essenes who had\nalmost lost all knowledge of the Bible. Cp. p. 67. Prof. Macdonald\nwrites that the word \"is of very doubtful derivation. But we have\nevidence from heathen Arab poetry that these Hanifs were regarded as\nmuch the same as Christian monks, and that the term hanif was used\nas a synonym for rahib, monk.\" Work cited, p. 125.\n\n[1011] Sprenger, as cited, p. 13.\n\n[1012] Cp. Sale's Prelim. Discourse, as cited, i, 38; and Palmer,\nintrod. p. xv; and Nicholson, pp. 139-40.\n\n[1013] Al Mostaraf, cited by Pococke, Specimen Histor. Arab. p. 136;\nSale, Prelim. Disc. as cited, p. 45.\n\n[1014] Cp. Nicholson, pp. 155-56 and refs.\n\n[1015] Sale, as cited, pp. 39-41.\n\n[1016] Palmer, introd. to his Haroun Alraschid, 1882,\np. 14. Cp. Derenbourg, La science des religions et l'Islamisme, p. 44,\ncontroverting Kuenen.\n\n[1017] Hibbert Lectures, On National and Universal Religions, ed. 1901,\np. 21 and Note II.\n\n[1018] Id. p. 31.\n\n[1019] Nicholson, Lit. Hist. of the Arabs, p. 145.\n\n[1020] Rodwell, note to Sura xcvi (R. i), 10.\n\n[1021] Sprenger estimates that at his death the number really converted\nto his doctrine did not exceed a thousand. Cp. Nicholson, pp. 153-58.\n\n[1022] Renan ascribes the idea wholly to Omar. \u00c9tudes d'histoire\net de critique, ed. 1862, p. 250. The faithful have preserved a sly\nsaying that \"Omar was many a time of a certain opinion, and the Koran\nwas then revealed accordingly.\" N\u00f6ldeko, Enc. Brit. art. on Koran,\nin Sketches from Eastern History, 1892, p. 28. On the other hand,\nSedillot decides (Histoire des Arabes, 1854. p. 60) that \"in Mohammed\nit is the political idea that dominates.\" So Nicholson (p. 169): \"At\nMedina the days of pure religious enthusiasm have passed away for ever,\nand the prophet is overshadowed by the statesman.\" Cp. pp. 173, 175.\n\n[1023] On the measure of racial unity set up by Abyssinian attacks\nas well as by the pretensions of the Byzantine and Persian empires,\nsee Sedillot, pp. 30, 38. Cp. Van Vloten, Recherches sur la domination\narabe, Amsterdam, 1894. pp. 1-4. 7.\n\n[1024] Professor Stanilas Guyard, La Civilisation Musulmane, 1884,\np. 22.\n\n[1025] Cp. Renan, \u00c9tudes, pp. 257-66; Hauri, Der Islam in seinem\nEinfluss auf das Leben seiner Bekenner, 1882, pp. 64-65; Nicholson,\np. 235. It was at Medina that a strict Mohammedanism first arose.\n\n[1026] Nicholson, pp. 178-79, and ref.\n\n[1027] Hauri, Der Islam, p. 64.\n\n[1028] Cp. Montesquieu, Grandeur et d\u00e9cadence des Romains, ch. 22.\n\n[1029] Nicholson, p 190.\n\n[1030] Id. p. 199.\n\n[1031] Van Vloten, p. 70 and passim.\n\n[1032] Prof. Guyard, as cited, pp. 16, 51; C. E. Oelsner, Des effets\nde la religion de Mohammed, etc., 1810, p. 130.\n\n[1033] Guyard, p. 21; Palmer, Haroun Alraschid, introd. p. 19.\n\n[1034] The alleged destruction of the library of Alexandria by Omar\nis probably a myth, arising out of a story of Omar's causing some\nPersian books to be thrown into the water. See Prof. Bury's notes in\nhis ed. of Gibbon, v, 452-54. Cp. Oelsner, as cited, pp. 142-43.\n\n[1035] Sura, vi, 25, 29; xix, 67; xxvii, 68-70; liv, 2; lxxxiii,\n10-13. According to lviii, 28, however, some polytheists denied the\nfuture state.\n\n[1036] Cp. Renan, \u00c9tudes d'histoire et de critique, pp. 232-34.\n\n[1037] Renan, as cited, p. 232.\n\n[1038] Id. p. 235. Renan and Sprenger conflict on this point, the\nformer having regard, apparently, to the bulk of the poetry, the\nlatter to parts of it.\n\n[1039] Sedillot, p. 39. One of these was Zaid. Nicholson, p. 149.\n\n[1040] See the passage (Sura ii) cited with praise by the sympathetic\nMr. Bosworth Smith in his Mohammed and Mohammedanism, 2nd ed. p. 181;\nwhere also delighted praise is given to the \"description of\nInfidelity\" in Sura xxiv, 39-40. The \"infidels\" in question were\nsimply non-Moslems.\n\n[1041] The Flight (of the Prophet to Medina from Mecca, in 622),\nfrom which begins the Mohammedan era.\n\n[1042] Sale, as cited, p. 160.\n\n[1043] Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen, ii, 261-64; Dugat, Histoire des\nphilosophes et des th\u00e9ologiens Mussulmans, 1878, pp. 48-55; H. Steiner,\nDie Mu`taziliten, oder die Freidenker im Islam, 1865, pp. 49-50;\nGuyard, p. 36; Sale, p. 161 (sec. viii); Nicholson, p. 222 sq. The\nterm Motazila broadly means \"dissenter,\" or \"belonging to a sect.\"\n\n[1044] Steiner, p. 1.\n\n[1045] Palmer, Introd. to Haroun Alraschid, p. 14.\n\n[1046] As to the Persian influence on Arab thought, cp. A. M\u00fcller,\nDer Islam, i, 469; Palmer, as last cited; Weil, Geschichte der\nChalifen, ii, 114 ff.; Nicholson, p. 220; Van Vloten, Recherches sur\nla domination arabe, p. 43. Van Vloten's treatise is a lucid sketch of\nthe socio-political conditions set up in Persia by the Arab conquest.\n\n[1047] Weil, ii, 261.\n\n[1048] G. Dugat, Histoire des philosophes et des th\u00e9ologiens\nMussulmans, p. 44; Sale, pp. 161, 174-78.\n\n[1049] Dugat, p. 55; Steiner, p. 4; Sale, p. 162.\n\n[1050] \"Motazilism represents in Islam a Protestantism of the\nshade of Schleiermacher\" (Renan, Averro\u00e8s et l'Averro\u00efsme, 3e\ned. p. 104). Cp. Syed Ameer Ali, Crit. Exam. of Life of Mohammed,\npp. 300-308; Sale, p. 161.\n\n[1051] Dugat, pp. 28, 44; Guyard, p. 36; Steiner, pp. 24-25; Renan,\nAverro\u00e8s, p. 101. The Kadarites, as Sale notes (pp. 164-65), are really\nan older group than the Motazilites, so-called, their founder having\nrejected predestination before Wasil did. Kuenen (Hibbert Lect. p. 47)\nwrites as if all the Motazilites were maintained of freewill, but\nthey varied. See Prof. Macdonald, as cited, p. 135 sq.\n\n[1052] Sale, pp. 165, 172-73.\n\n[1053] For a view of the various schools of Sifatites see Sale,\npp. 166-74.\n\n[1054] Guyard, pp. 37-38; G. D. Osborn, The Khalifs of Baghdad, 1878,\np. 134.\n\n[1055] Steiner, p. 16. Major Osborn (work cited, p. 136) attributes\ntheir rise to the influence of Eastern Christianity, but gives\nno proof.\n\n[1056] Guyard, p. 40. Cp. Sale, p. 176; Van Vloten, p. 43.\n\n[1057] Dugat, p. 34. Thus the orthodox sect of Hanyfites were called\nby one writer followers of reason, since they relied rather on their\njudgment than on tradition.\n\n[1058] Steiner, p. 5; Nicholson, p. 370.\n\n[1059] Steiner, pp. 5, 9, 88-89; Sale, p. 161; Macdonald, p. 140.\n\n[1060] Sedillot, Hist. des Arabes, p. 335; Prof. A. M\u00fcller, Der Islam\n(in Oncken's series), i, 470; Ueberweg, i, 402.\n\n[1061] Ueberweg, p. 403; Weil, Gesch. der Chalifen, ii, 281.\n\n[1062] For an orthodox account of the beginnings of freethinking\n(called zendekism) see Weil, ii, 214. Cp. p. 261; also Tabari's\nChronicle, pt. v, ch. xcvii; and Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 103. Already,\namong the Ommayade Khalifs, Yezid III held the Motazilite tenet of\nfreewill. Weil, p. 260.\n\n[1063] Nicholson, pp. 372, 375. The name zendek (otherwise spelt\nzindiq) seems to have originally meant a Manich\u00e6an. Browne,\nLiterary History of Persia, ii (1906), 295; Nicholson, p. 375 and\nref. Macdonald, p. 134, thinks it literally meant \"initiate.\"\n\n[1064] Steiner, p. 8. An association called \"Brethren of Purity\"\nor \"Sincere Brethren\" seem to have carried Motazilism far, though\nthey aimed at reconciling philosophy with orthodoxy. They were\nin effect the encyclopedists of Arab science. Ueberweg, i, 411;\nNicholson, p. 370 sq. See Dr. F. Dieterici, Die Naturanschauung und\nNaturphilosophie der Araber im 10ten Jahrhundert, aus den schriften\nder lautern Br\u00fcder, 1861, Vorrede, p. viii, and Fl\u00fcgel, as there\ncited. Fl\u00fcgel dates the writings of the Brethren about 970; but the\nassociation presumably existed earlier. Cp. Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 104;\nand S. Lane-Poole's Studies in a Mosque, 1893, ch. vi, as to their\nperformance. Prof. Macdonald is disposed to regard them as \"part of\nthe great Fatimid propaganda which honeycombed the ground everywhere\nunder the Sunnite Abassids,\" but admits that the Fatimid movement is\n\"the great mystery of Muslim history\" (pp. 165-70).\n\n[1065] Sale, pp. 82-83, note.\n\n[1066] He made five pilgrimages to Mecca, and died on the last,\nthus attaining to sainthood.\n\n[1067] Weil, Gesch. der Chalifen, ii, 81; Dugat, pp. 59-61; A. M\u00fcller,\nDer Islam, i. 470; Macdonald, p. 134. In Mansour's reign was born Al\nAllaf, \"Sheikh of the Motazilites.\"\n\n[1068] Dugat, p. 62. The H\u00e2yetians, who had Unitarian Christian\nleanings, also held by metempsychosis. Sale, p. 163.\n\n[1069] Nicholson, p. 371 and refs.\n\n[1070] Dugat, p. 71. He persecuted Zendeks in general. Nicholson,\npp. 373-74.\n\n[1071] Id. p. 72; Sale, pp. 184-85; Tabari's Chronicle, pt. v,\nch. xcvii, Zotenberg's tr. 1874, iv, 447-53. Tabari notes (p. 448)\nthat all the Moslem theologians agree in thinking zendekism much worse\nthan any of the false religions, since it rejects all and denies God\nas well as the Prophet.\n\n[1072] Cp. Steiner, pp. 55 sq., 66 sq.; Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos.,\ni, 405.\n\n[1073] Dugat, p. 76. See Sale, pp. 82-83, 162-63, as to the champions\nof this principle.\n\n[1074] Sale, p. 83; Macdonald, p. 150.\n\n[1075] Dugat, p. 79; Osborn, The Khalifs of Baghdad, p. 195.\n\n[1076] Palmer, Haroun Alraschid, p. 82. They were really theists.\n\n[1077] Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen, ii, 215, 261, 280; A. M\u00fcller,\nDer Islam, pp. 514-15. \"It was believed that he was at heart a\nzindiq.\" Nicholson, p. 368.\n\n[1078] Dugat, pp. 85-96.\n\n[1079] Prof. Macdonald, as cited, p. 154.\n\n[1080] Dugat, p. 83.\n\n[1081] See extract by Major Osborn, Khalifs, p. 250.\n\n[1082] Osborn, Khalifs, p. 249.\n\n[1083] Macdonald, pp. 154-58, 167.\n\n[1084] Nicholson, pp. 358-59. He it was who first caused to be measured\na degree of the earth's surface. The attempt was duly denounced as\natheistic by a leading theologian, Takyuddin. Montucla, Hist. des\nMath\u00e9matiques, \u00e9d. Lalande, i, 355 sq.; Draper, Conflict of Religion\nand Science, p. 109.\n\n[1085] A. M\u00fcller, Der Islam, i, 509 sq.; Weil, Gesch. der Chalifen,\nii, 280 ff.\n\n[1086] Dugat, pp. 105-11; Sale, p. 82. Apart from this one issue,\ngeneral tolerance seems to have prevailed. Osborn, Khalifs, p. 265.\n\n[1087] Dugat, p. 112; Steiner, p. 79. According to Abulfaragius,\nMotawakkel had the merit of leaving men free to believe what they\nwould as to the creation of the Koran. Sale, p. 82.\n\n[1088] A good analysis is given by Dugat, pp. 337-48.\n\n[1089] The whole of Aristotle, except, apparently, the Politics,\nhad been translated in the time of the philosopher Avicenna (fl. 1000).\n\n[1090] Macdonald, pp. 200, 205-206.\n\n[1091] Steiner, Die Mu'taziliten, pp. 10-11, following Gazzali (Al\nGazel); Weil, Gesch. der Chalifen, iii, 72.\n\n[1092] Guyard, pp. 41-42; Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 104-5; Macdonald,\np. 186 sq. The cultivators of Kal\u00e2m were called Motecallem\u00een.\n\n[1093] Ueberweg, i, 405, 414; Steiner, p. 11; Whewell, Hist. of the\nInductive Sciences, 3rd ed. i, 193-94. Compare the laudatory account\nof Al Gazzali by Prof. Macdonald (pt. iii, ch. iv), who pronounces\nhim \"certainly the most sympathetic figure in the history of Islam\"\n(p. 215).\n\n[1094] Hence, among other things, a check on the practice of\nanatomy, religious feeling being opposed to it under Islam as under\nChristianity. Dugat, pp. 62-63.\n\n[1095] Dugat, pp. 123-28.\n\n[1096] Browne, Literary History of Persia, ii (1906), 290, 293;\nR. A. Nicholson, Literary History of the Arabs, 1907, p. 318.\n\n[1097] Browne, as cited, p. 292. Cp. Von Kremer, Culturgeschichte\ndes Orients, 1875-77, ii, 386-95; Macdonald, p. 199.\n\n[1098] Dugat, p. 167; Weil, iii, 72.\n\n[1099] Dugat, pp. 164-68.\n\n[1100] Nicholson, pp. 314-15.\n\n[1101] The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala, by Henry Baerlein, 1908, st. 36. Cp. 1,\n37, 41, 42, 53, 81, 86, 94, and the extracts given by Nicholson,\npp. 316-23.\n\n[1102] Weil, ii, 215.\n\n[1103] Decline and Fall, ch. lvii. Bohn ed. vi, 382, and\nnote. Cp. E. H. Whinfield, The Quatrains of Omar Khayy\u00e1m, 1882, p. 4.\n\n[1104] See the preface to Fitzgerald's translation of the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t.\n\n[1105] In one quatrain, of doubtful authenticity, is the line \"Khayy\u00e1m,\nwho longtime stitched the tents of learning\" (Whinfield, xxxviii),\nwhich excludes the idea of literal handicraft.\n\n[1106] J. K. M. Shirazi, Life of Omar Al-Khayy\u00e1mi, ed. 1895, pp. 30-41.\n\n[1107] Id. pp. 51, 58.\n\n[1108] Id. p. 54.\n\n[1109] Id. p. 56.\n\n[1110] Id. p. 59.\n\n[1111] Id. pp. 62-63.\n\n[1112] Id. p. 93.\n\n[1113] Id. pp. 59-61.\n\n[1114] Id. pp. 69-76, 86-88.\n\n[1115] Cited in introd. to Dole's variorum ed. of the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t, 1896,\ni, p. xix. Cp. Macdonald, p. 199.\n\n[1116] \"Dost thou desire to taste eternal bliss?\n Vex thine own heart, but never vex another.\" (Whinfield, vi.)\n\n \"Seek not the Kaaba, rather seek a heart.\" (Id. vii.)\n\nThis note is often repeated. E.g. xxxii, li.\n\n[1117] See in the very competent translation of Mrs. H. M. Cadell\n(who remarked that \"Fitzgerald has rather written a poem upon Omar\nthan translated him\"), quatrains 12, 14, 15, 20, 28, 29, 42, 45, 48,\n51d, 85, 88b, 133, 141, 143. etc.; in the artistically turned version\nof Mr. A. H. Talbot, which follows very faithfully the literal prose\ntranslation of Mr. Heron-Allen, Nos. 1, 3, 15, 18, 19, 24, 33, 41,\n45, 59, 72, 91, 115, 123, 148; and in Whinfield's version, Nos. 10,\n25, 32, 41, 45, 46, 62, 68, 77, 84, 87, 104, 105, 111, 113, 118, 142,\n144, 148, 151, 157, 161, 179, 195, 200, 201, 203, 216.\n\n[1118] Shirazi, pp. 102-108. Early in the thirteenth century he\nwas denounced by a Sufi mystic as an \"unhappy philosopher, atheist,\nand materialist.\" Browne, Lit. Hist. of Persia, ii, 250. Abu'l-Ala,\nof course, was similarly denounced.\n\n[1119] Whinfield, cited by Browne, pp. 109-110.\n\n[1120] Cp. Mrs. Cadell, The Rub'yat of Omar Khayam, 1899. Garnett's\nintrod. pp. xvii, xviii-xxi, xxiv, and Shirazi, as cited, pp. 79-80.\n\n[1121] Fitzgerald's pref. 4th ed. p. xiii; Whinfield,\nNo. 147. Cp. quatrains cited in art. Sufiism, in Relig. Systems of\nthe World, 2nd ed. pp. 325-26.\n\n[1122] Cp. Whinfield, p. 86, note on No. 147.\n\n[1123] Guyard, as cited, p. 42. But cp. Ueberweg, i, 411; Nicholson,\npp. 233-34.\n\n[1124] It is not impossible, Max M\u00fcller notwithstanding, that the\nname may have come originally from the Greek sophoi, \"the wise,\"\nthough it is usually connected with sufi = the woollen robe worn\nby the Sufite. There are other etymologies. Cp. Fraser, Histor. and\nDescrip. Account of Persia, 1834, p. 323, note; Dugat, p. 326; and\nart. Sufiism in Relig. Systems of the World, 2nd ed. p. 315. On the\nSufi system in general see also Max M\u00fcller, Psychol. Relig. Lect. vi.\n\n[1125] Cp. Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 293, as to Sufi latitudinarianism.\n\n[1126] Guyard, p. 44; Relig. Systems, p. 319.\n\n[1127] Hafiz in his own day was reckoned impious by many. Cp. Malcolm,\nSketches of Persia, 1827, ii, 100.\n\n[1128] Fitzgerald's pref. p. x.\n\n[1129] Yet he was disposed to put to death those who claimed mystic\nintercourse with Deity. Sale, pp. 177-78.\n\n[1130] Whose Salaman and Absal, tr. by Fitzgerald, is so little\nnoticed in comparison with the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t of Omar.\n\n[1131] E. C. Browne, in Religious Systems, as cited, p. 321; Dugat,\np. 331.\n\n[1132] Shirazi, pp. 22-28; Fitzgerald's pref. following Mirkhond;\nFraser, Persia, p. 329.\n\n[1133] Cp. Dugat, p. 336; Syed Ameer Ali, pp. 311-15; Gobineau,\nLes religions et les philosophies dans l'Asie centrale, 2e \u00e9dit. p. 68.\n\n[1134] Sale, p. 176. The same doctrine is fairly ancient in\nIndia. (Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, v, 313, note.) A belief that\nhell-fire will not be eternal was held among the Motazilite sect of\nJ\u00e2hedhians. Sale, p. 164. The Thamamians, again, held that at the\nresurrection all infidels, idolaters, atheists, Jews, Christians,\nMagians, and heretics, shall be reduced to dust. Id. ib.\n\n[1135] Cp. Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 101. Cp. p. 172.\n\n[1136] Renan's tr. in Averro\u00e8s, p. 166. The wording of the last phrase\nsuggests a misconstruction.\n\n[1137] Cp. p. 172.\n\n[1138] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 104-107.\n\n[1139] Steiner, Die Mu'taziliten, p. 6.\n\n[1140] Ueberweg, i, 412; Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 44, 96.\n\n[1141] E. G. Browne, Lit. Hist. of Persia, ii, 107.\n\n[1142] Whom he pronounced a pagan and an infidel. Haur\u00e9au, II, i, 29.\n\n[1143] Cp. Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 57, 96-98; Whewell, Hist. of the\nInductive Sciences, 3rd. ed. I, 193. Renan, following Degenerando\n(cp. Whewell, as cited), credits Gazzali with anticipating Hume's\ncriticism of the idea of causation; but Gazzali's position is that\nof dogmatic theism, not of naturalism. See Lewes, Hist. of Philos.,\n4th ed. ii, 57.\n\n[1144] Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la philos. scolastique, Ptie II, i, 35.\n\n[1145] Cp. Seignobos, Hist. de la Civ. ii, 58; Stanley Lane-Poole, The\nMoors in Spain, pref.; Milman, Latin Christianity, 4th ed. ix. 108-18;\nU. R. Burke, History of Spain, i, ch. 16; Baden Powell, as cited,\npp. 94-104; Gebhart, Origines de la Renaissance en Italie, 1879,\npp. 185-89; and post, ch. x.\n\n[1146] Baden Powell, Hist. of Nat. Philos. 1834, p. 97; Whewell,\nHist. of the Induct. Sciences, 3rd ed. ii. 273-74.\n\n[1147] Dr. L. Leclerc, Hist. de la M\u00e9decine Arabe, 1876, i, 462;\nDr. E. von Meyer, Hist. of Chemistry, Eng. tr. 2nd ed. p. 28.\n\n[1148] Cp. Buckle, Introd. to Hist. of Civ. in England,\n1-vol. ed. p. 70.\n\n[1149] Lane-Poole, The Moors in Spain, p. 73.\n\n[1150] Properly Morabethin--men of God or of religion; otherwise\nknown as \"Marabouts.\"\n\n[1151] Sedillot, p. 298.\n\n[1152] Cp. Dozy, Hist. des Musulmans d'Espagne, iii, 248-86; Ueberweg,\ni, 415.\n\n[1153] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 98-99.\n\n[1154] Ueberweg. i. 415; Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 32, 99.\n\n[1155] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 99.\n\n[1156] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 145.\n\n[1157] Id. pp. 156-58.\n\n[1158] Id. pp. 159-60.\n\n[1159] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 160-62.\n\n[1160] Ueberweg, i, 416; Steiner, p. 6; Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 162 sq.\n\n[1161] Ueberweg, i, 460; Renan, pp. 258, 275.\n\n[1162] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 169, and references.\n\n[1163] Id. pp. 165-66.\n\n[1164] Id. p. 5. Cp. the Avertissement, p. iii.\n\n[1165] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 31-36. Renan surmises that the popular\nhostility to the philosophers, which was very marked, was largely\ndue to the element of the conquered Christians, who were noted for\ntheir neglect of astronomy and natural science.\n\n[1166] Cp. Ueberweg. i. 415-17.\n\n[1167] Cp. Flint, History of the Philosophy of History, ed. 1893,\nvol. i, p. 169.\n\n[1168] Cp. Flint, p. 129, as to their hostility to him.\n\n[1169] Huth, Life and Writings of Buckle, ii, 171.\n\n[1170] Ricaut, Present State of the Ottoman Empire, 1686, p. 245.\n\n[1171] Dugat, p. 59. The Ameer Ali Syed, Moulvi, M.A., LL.B., whose\nCritical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mohammed appeared\nin 1873, writes as a Motazilite of a moderate type.\n\n[1172] Macdonald, pp. 120, 196, 286.\n\n[1173] A. Franck, \u00c9tudes Orientales, 1861, pp. 241-48, citing the\nDabistan.\n\n[1174] Gobineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans l'Asie\ncentrale, 2e \u00e9dit. ch. v; J. K. M. Shirazi, Life of Omar Khayy\u00e1mi,\ned. 1905, p. 102. The latter writer notes, however, that \"the cultured\nclasses, who ought to know better, are at no pains to dissipate the\nexisting religious prejudice against one [Omar] of whose reputation\nevery Persian may well feel proud.\" \"At the present time ... the\nname of Omar is no less execrated by the Shi-ite mob in Persia than\nit was in his own day.\" Id. p. 108.\n\n[1175] Fraser, Persia, p. 330. This writer (p. 239) describes Sufiism\nas \"the superstition of the freethinker,\" and as \"often assumed as\na cloak to cover entire infidelity.\"\n\n[1176] E.g., Dr. Wills, The Land of the Lion and the Sun, ed. 1891,\np. 339.\n\n[1177] Smith and Dwight, Missionary Researches in Armenia, 1834,\np. 340. Cp. Rev. H. Southgate, Tour through Armenia, etc. 1840, ii,\n153; and Morier's Hadji Baba of Ispahan (1824), ch. xlvii, near end.\n\n[1178] Fraser, Persia, p. 331; Malcolm, Sketches of Persia, ii, 108;\nGobineau, as cited, ch. v.\n\n[1179] H. Vamb\u00e9ry, Der Islam im neunzehnten Jahrhundert,\n1875, pp. 32-33. Vamb\u00e9ry further remarks: \"The half-fanatical,\nhalf-freethinking tone of Persians has often surprised me in my\ncontroversies with the most zealous Schiites.\"\n\n[1180] As to the rise of this sect see Gobineau, as cited, pp. 141-358;\nE. G. Browne's The Episode of the B\u00e2b; and his lecture on B\u00e2bism in\nReligious Systems of the World. Cp. Renan, Les Ap\u00f4tres, pp. 378-81.\n\n[1181] H. Arak\u00e9lian, M\u00e9moire sur Le B\u00e2bisme en Perse, in the Actes\ndu Premier Congr\u00e8s International d'Histoire des Religions, Paris,\n1902, 2 Ptie. Fasc. i.\n\n[1182] Gobineau, pp. 167 sq.; 180 sq.; Arak\u00e9lian, p. 94.\n\n[1183] Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 5th ed. 1871,\ni, 349, 356. \"There are, I believe,\" says Lane (writing originally\nin 1836), \"very few professed Muslims who are really unbelievers;\nand these dare not openly avow their unbelief through fear of losing\ntheir heads for their apostacy. I have heard of two or three such who\nhave been rendered so by long and intimate intercourse with Europeans;\nand have met with one materialist, who has often had long discussions\nwith me.\"\n\n[1184] Id. ii, 309. (Suppl. III, \"Of Late Innovations in Egypt.\")\n\n[1185] See the documents reproduced by Max M\u00fcller, Introd. to the\nScience of Religion, ed. 1882, App. 1.\n\n[1186] Id. pp. 214, 216.\n\n[1187] Id. pp. 210, 217, 224, 225.\n\n[1188] Id. pp. 224, 226.\n\n[1189] Id. pp. 226, 229.\n\n[1190] Guyard, p. 45; Steiner, p. 5, note; Lane, The Modern Egyptians,\ned. 1871, i. 137-38. Cp. Spencer, Study of Sociology, ch. xii, p. 292;\nBosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, 2nd ed. pp. 315-19.\n\n[1191] Derenbourg, p. 72; Steiner, p. 1; Lane, i, 79.\n\n[1192] Cp. Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, Lectures I and\nIV; Canon Isaac Taylor, address to Church Congress at Wolverhampton,\n1887, and letters to Times, Oct. and Nov. 1887. On the other or\nanti-Mohammedan side see Canon Robinson, Hausaland, 3rd ed. 1900,\np. 186 sq.--a somewhat obviously prejudiced argument. See pp. 190-91.\n\n[1193] Sir Harry H. Johnston, History of the Colonization of Africa\nby Alien Races, 1899, p. 283.\n\n[1194] This label has been applied by scholars to the seventh,\neighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. One writer, who supposes it to\ncover the period from 500 to 1400, and protests, is attacking only\na misconception. (M. A. Lane, The Level of Social Motion, New York,\n1902., p. 232.) The Renaissance is commonly reckoned to begin about\nthe end of the fourteenth century (cp. Symonds, Age of the Despots,\nch. i). But the whole period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the\nfall of Constantinople, or to the Reformation, is broadly included\nin the \"Middle Ages.\"\n\n[1195] Essai sur les Moeurs, ch. xlv.\n\n[1196] According to which God predestinated good, but merely foreknew\nevil.\n\n[1197] For Leo's contacts with the Saracens see Finlay, Hist. of\nGreece, ed. Tozer, ii, 14-20, 24, 31-32, 34-35, 37, etc., and compare\np. 218. See also Hardwick, Church History: Middle Age, 1833, p. 78,\nnote 2; and Waddington, History of the Church, 1833, p. 187, note.\n\n[1198] Kurtz, Hist. of the Chr. Church, Eng. tr. i, 252.\n\n[1199] Kurtz, p. 253.\n\n[1200] As to his hostility to letters see Gibbon, ch. liii--Bohn\ned. vi, 228. Of course the other side were not any more\nliberal. Cp. Finlay, ii, 222.\n\n[1201] Gieseler, ii, 202. Per. III, Div. I, pt. i, \u00a7 1. In the next\ncentury this was said to have gone in some churches to the point of\nrejection of Christ. Id. p. 207, note 28.\n\n[1202] Id. pp. 205, 207; Finlay, ii, 195.\n\n[1203] Neander, Hist. of Chr. Church, Bohn tr. v, 289; vi, 266.\n\n[1204] On their connection at this time with the culture-movement of\nthe Khalifate of Mamoun, see Finlay, ii, 224-25; Gibbon, ch. liii--Bohn\ned. vi, 228-29.\n\n[1205] Finlay, ii, 181, note. The enemies of Photius accused him\nof lending himself to the emperor's buffooneries. Neander, vi,\n303-304. Cp. Mosheim, 9 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7 7; and Gibbon,\nch. xxxiii--ed. cited, vi, 229. Finlay declares (p. 222) that no\nGreek of the intellectual calibre of Photius, John the Grammarian,\nand Leo the Mathematician, has since appeared.\n\n[1206] Neander, vi, 280.\n\n[1207] Finlay, ii, 174-75, 180.\n\n[1208] Hardwick, Church History: Middle Age, 1853, p. 85. It is\nnoteworthy that the \"heathen\" Magyars held the Mazdean dualistic\nprinciple, and that their evil power was named Armanyos (=\nAhrimanes). Mail\u00e1th, Geschichte der Magyaren, 1828, i, 25-26.\n\n[1209] Gibbon, ch. liv; Mosheim, 9 Cent. pt. ii, ch. 5; Gieseler,\nPer. III, Div. I, pt. i, \u00a7 3; G. S. Faber, The Ancient Vallenses\nand Waldenses, 1838, pp. 32-60. Some fresh light is thrown on the\nPaulician doctrines by the discovery of the old Armenian book,\nThe Key of Truth, edited and translated by F. C. Conybeare, Oxford,\n1898. It belonged to the Armenian sect of Thonraki, or Thonrakians,\nor Thondrakians--people of the village of Thondrac (Neander, vi,\n347)--founded by one Sembat, originally a Paulician, in the ninth\ncentury (Hardwick, Church History: Middle Age, p. 201; Neander, last\ncit.). For a criticism of Mr. Conybeare's theories see the Church\nQuarterly Review, Jan. 1899, Art. V.\n\n[1210] Gieseler, Per. III, \u00a7\u00a7 45, 46, vol. ii, pp. 489, 492; Hardwick,\np. 86. The sect of Euchites, also anti-priestly, seem to have joined\nthem. Faber denies any Manichean element.\n\n[1211] Gibbon, as cited, vi, 241.\n\n[1212] Gibbon, vi, 242; Hardwick, pp. 88-90.\n\n[1213] Gibbon, vi, 245, and note; Finlay, ii, 60.\n\n[1214] Despite the express decision, the use of statues proper\n(agalmata) gradually disappeared from the Greek Church, the disuse\nfinally creating a strong antipathy, while pictures and ikons remained\nin reverence (Tozer's note to Finlay, ii, 165; cp. Waddington, History\nof the Church, 1833, p. 190, note). It is probable that the sheer loss\nof artistic skill counted for much in the change. Cp. Milman, Latin\nChristianity, bk. xiv, ch. ix; 4th ed. ix, 308-12. It is noteworthy\nthat, whereas in the struggle over images their use was for two long\nperiods legally abolished, it was in both cases restored by empresses\nIrene and Theodora.\n\n[1215] Hardwick, p. 80, note; Neander, vi, 340.\n\n[1216] Cp. Kurtz, His. of the Chr. Church, Eng. tr. i, 271.\n\n[1217] Gibbon, vi, 246; Finlay, iii, 64; Mosheim, 10 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. v.\n\n[1218] Finlay, iii, 66.\n\n[1219] Gibbon, as cited; R. Lane Poole, Illustrations of the History\nof Medieval Thought, 1884, pp. 91-96; Mosheim, 11 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v.\n\n[1220] Finlay, iii, 67-68; Mosheim, 12 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7\n2. Hardwick, pp. 302-305; Kurtz, i, 270-73.\n\n[1221] Gieseler, Per. III, Div. II, pt. iii, \u00a7 46.\n\n[1222] Gibbon, vi, 249, note; Poole, p. 91, note; De Potter, L'Esprit\nde L'\u00c9glise, 1821, vi, 16, note.\n\n[1223] Boniface, Ep. lxvi, cited by Poole, p. 23; Reid's Mosheim,\np. 263, note 3; Neander, Hist. of the Christian Church, Bohn tr. v,\n86-67; Hardwick, p. 23.\n\n[1224] For excellent accounts of both see Mr. Poole's Illustrations,\npp. 28-50. As to Claudius cp. Monastier, Hist. of the Vaudois Church,\nEng. tr. 1848, pp. 13-42, and Faber, The Ancient Vallenses, bk. iii,\nch. iv.\n\n[1225] See Mr. Poole's Illustrations, pp. 46-48, for an account of\nthe privileges then accorded to Jews.\n\n[1226] This is not incompatible with their having opposed both Saracens\n(Claudius in actual war) and Jews, as Christian bishops.\n\n[1227] Poole, Illustrations, p. 37.\n\n[1228] This when the Church found its account in adopting all such\nusages. Lea, Superstition and Force, pp. 242, 280, etc. It is to be\nnoted, however, that one Council, that of Valence, 855, perhaps under\nthe influence of Agobard's teaching, published a canon prohibiting all\nduels, and praying the emperor to abolish them. Cited by Waddington,\nHistory of the Church, 1833, p. 242, note, from Fleury.\n\n[1229] De Grandine et tonitruis, c. 3; and De imaginibus, c. 13,\ncited by Reuter.\n\n[1230] \"He had the clearest head in the whole ninth century; and as an\ninfluence (Mann der Tendenz) is above comparison\" (Reuter, Gesch. der\nreligi\u00f6sen Aufkl\u00e4rung im Mittelalter, i, 24). As to his acute handling\nof the thorny question of reason and authority see Reuter, i, 40-41.\n\n[1231] Poole, pp. 50-52.\n\n[1232] Noack, Philosophie-Geschichtliches Lexikon, s. v. Rabanus. As\nto the doubtful works in which Rabanus coincides with Scotus Erigena,\ncp. Poole, p. 336; Noack, as cited; Ueberweg, i, 367-68.\n\n[1233] Ueberweg, pp. 366, 371; Poole, pp. 99, 101, 336.\n\n[1234] Ueberweg, pp. 356-65. That there was, however, an Irish\nscholasticism as early as the eighth century is shown by Mosheim,\n8 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7 6, note 3. Cp. Huber, Johannes Scotus\nErigena, 1861, p. 428 sq.; Taillandier, Scot Erig\u00e8ne et la philosophie\nscolastique, 1843, p. 198.\n\n[1235] Lea, as cited, p. 280.\n\n[1236] \"The learned and freethinking guest of Charles le Chauve,\"\nHardwick calls him, p. 176. It needed the protection of Charles to\nsave him from the orthodox, Hincmar included. See Amp\u00e8re, Histoire\nlitt\u00e9raire de la France, 1840, iii, 94-95, as to the anger against him.\n\n[1237] See the whole argument summarized by Huber, p. 59 sq.\n\n[1238] Cp. Poole, Illustrations, pp. 61, 63, 65; Neander, Bohn\ntr. vi, 198 sq.; and the present writer's introd. to Shaftesbury's\nCharacteristics, ed. 1900, p. xxxiv. And see above, p. 184.\n\n[1239] De divisione Natur\u00e6, l. v; De Pr\u00e6destinatione, c. 17; Poole,\npp. 71-72; Neander, vi, 198-99; Huber, as cited, p. 405.\n\n[1240] In the treatise On the Division of Nature. See the extracts\ngiven in the Cabinet Cyclop\u00e6dia survey of Europe in the Middle Ages,\nii, 266-68. They prove, says the author of the survey, \"that John\nErigena had none of the spirit of Christianity.\"\n\n[1241] Poole, pp. 64, 76.\n\n[1242] S. Robins, A Defence of the Faith, 1862, pp. 25-26.\n\n[1243] Huber, pp. 435-40.\n\n[1244] Cp. Neander, Hist. of the Chr. Church, Bohn tr. vi, 192.\n\n[1245] De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, rep. Oxford, 1838, cc. 8-16,\n29, 56, 72-76, etc.\n\n[1246] C. 19: \"Non sicut quidam volunt, anima sola hoc mysterio\npascitur.\" Neander, vi, 210.\n\n[1247] Hardwick, pp. 178, 181; Neander, vi, 217.\n\n[1248] Cp. Neander, vi, 219.\n\n[1249] Poole, p. 69.\n\n[1250] C. 6: \"Ineptas qu\u00e6stiunculas et aniles p\u00e6ne fabulas Scotorumque\npultes.\" Neander, vi, 207.\n\n[1251] Neander, vi, 219, citing Mabillon, Analecta, i, 207.\n\n[1252] Compare the Gemma Ecclesiastica of Giraldus Cambrensis for an\ninside view of the avarice of the clergy in his day.\n\n[1253] Neander, Hist. of the Chr. Church, v, 187. See the whole section\nfor a good account of the general economic and moral evolution. Neander\nrepeatedly (pp. 186-87) insists on the \"magical\" element in the\ndoctrine of the mass, as established by Gregory the Great.\n\n[1254] See Neander, as cited, v, 183. The point was well put some\ncenturies later by the Italian story-teller Masuccio, an orthodox\nCatholic but a vehement anti-clericalist, in a generalization\nconcerning the monks: \"The best punishment for them would be for\nGod to abolish Purgatory; they would then receive no more alms, and\nwould be forced to go back to their spades.\" Cited by Burckhardt,\nThe Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Eng. tr. 1892, p. 461.\n\n[1255] Neander, vi, 182. Rabanus Maurus distinctly belied him on this\nscore. (Id. p. 183.)\n\n[1256] Formerly, only the saved had been spoken of as pr\u00e6destinati,\nthe reprobate being called pr\u00e6sciti. Neander, vi, 181.\n\n[1257] Neander, vi, 187. Cp. Hampden, Bampton Lectures on The\nScholastic Philosophy, 3rd ed. p. 418; and Amp\u00e8re, Histoire litt\u00e9raire\nde France, 1840, iii, 92.\n\n[1258] Poole, p. 103. Cp. Neander, vi, 225.\n\n[1259] Neander, vi, 237-38.\n\n[1260] Id. pp. 255-56.\n\n[1261] Id. p. 257.\n\n[1262] Id. p. 258. As to the wide extent of the discussion see Reuter,\nGeschichte der religi\u00f6sen Aufkl\u00e4rung im Mittelalter, i, 112.\n\n[1263] In 945, however, Atto, Bishop of Verceil, is found complaining\nthat some people from the Italian border had introduced heresies.\n\n[1264] Mosheim, 10 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7 3; Poole, Illustrations,\np. 91.\n\n[1265] Hardwick, p. 203.\n\n[1266] Kurtz, History of the Christian Church, Eng. tr. 1868, i, 435.\n\n[1267] H\u00e9nault, Abr\u00e9g\u00e9 chronologique, ann. 1022; Neander, Hist. of\nthe Chr. Relig. and Church, Eng. tr. Bohn ed. vi, 349 sq.; Mosheim, 10\nCent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7 3; De Potter, L'Esprit de l'\u00c9glise, vi, 18-19;\nPoole, pp. 96-98; Lea, History of the Inquisition, i, 104, 108-109,\n218; Gieseler, Per. III, Div. ii, \u00a7 46. The contemporary accounts\nsay nothing as to the heretics being Manicheans. Neander, p. 350, note.\n\n[1268] Cp. Murdock's note on Mosheim, Reid's ed. p. 386; Monastier,\nHist. of the Vaudois Church, p. 33; Waddington, p. 356; Hardwick,\np. 203, note, and p. 207.\n\n[1269] De Potter, pp. 20-21; Gieseler, as cited, p. 497; Lea, i,\n104, 109.\n\n[1270] Mosheim, as last cited, \u00a7 4; Gieseler, ii, 496 (\u00a7 46); Hardwick,\npp. 203, 204.\n\n[1271] Mosheim. 11 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7 2, and Murdock's notes;\n12 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7\u00a7 4, 5.\n\n[1272] Hardwick, p. 306; Kurtz, i, 433. The derivation through\nthe Italian is however disputed. Cp. Murdock's note to Mosheim,\nReid's ed. p. 385, and Gieseler, ii, 486. The Chazari, a Turkish\n(Crimean) people, partly Christian and partly Moslem in the ninth\ncentury (Gieseler, as cited), may have given the name of Gazzari, as\nBulgar gave Bougre; and the German Ketzer may have come directly from\nChazar. The Christianity of the Chazars, influenced by neighbourhood\nwith Islam, seems to have been a very free syncretism.\n\n[1273] Cp. Gieseler, Per. III, \u00a7\u00a7 24, 34; Abb\u00e9 Queant, Gerbert, ou\nSylvestre II, 1868, pp. 3-5, citing Chev\u00e9, Histoire des papes, t. ii,\nand Baronius, Annales, ad ann. 900, n. 1; Mosheim, 9 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 1-4; with his and Murdock's refs.; 10 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 1, 2; 11 Cent. pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7 1; ch. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 1-3;\n12 Cent. pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7 1; 13 Cent. pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 1-7. The\nauthorities are often eminent Churchmen, as Agobard, Ratherius,\nBernard, and Gregory VIII.\n\n[1274] See Mosheim, 8 Cent. pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7 5, note z. Cp. Duruy,\nHist. de France, ii, 170.\n\n[1275] Cp. Prof. Abdy, Lectures on Feudalism, 1890, p. 72.\n\n[1276] Mosheim, 12 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7 6.\n\n[1277] Cp. Morin, Origines de la d\u00e9mocratie, 3e \u00e9d. pp. 164-65;\nMosheim, 10 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7 3.\n\n[1278] Morin, p. 168. Compare, on the whole communal movement, Duruy,\nHist. de France, ch. xxi, and Michelet.\n\n[1279] Gieseler, Per. III, \u00a7 46, end; Lea, i, 109, 218.\n\n[1280] Monastier, Hist. of the Vaudois Ch., p. 32; Lea, i, 110.\n\n[1281] Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, 8th ed. p. 134. See p. 135 for a\nlist of John's offences; and cp. p. 85 as to other papal records. For\na contemporary account of Pope Honorius II (d. 1130) see Milman,\nLatin Christianity, iii, 448-49.\n\n[1282] Hallam, Middle Ages, 11th ed. ii, 174.\n\n[1283] Cp. M\u00fcller, Allgemeine Geschichte, B. xiv, Cap. 17.\n\n[1284] Bryce, p. 152.\n\n[1285] \"Janus,\" The Pope and the Councils, Eng. tr. pp. 178-79.\n\n[1286] Cp. Heeren, Essai sur l'influence des Croisades, 1808, p. 172.\n\n[1287] Sir G. Cox, The Crusades, p. 111.\n\n[1288] Cp. Lea, i, 111.\n\n[1289] Id. p. 115.\n\n[1290] Hardwick, p. 310; Lea, i, 68; Reuter, Gesch. der religi\u00f6sen\nAufkl\u00e4rung im Mittelalter, i, 148-49; Mosheim, as last cited, \u00a7 7.\n\n[1291] Cp. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, ed. 1863, p. 36.\n\n[1292] Mosheim, 12 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7\u00a7 7-9, and varior. notes;\nMonastier, pp. 38-41, 43-47; Milman, Latin Christianity, v, 384-90.\n\n[1293] Hardwick, p. 267; Mosheim, as last cited, \u00a7 10; Monastier,\np. 49.\n\n[1294] Hardwick, p. 204, note; Kurtz, i, 433. Cp. the Transactions\nof the New Shakespeare Society, 1875-76, pt. ii, p. 313; Mosheim, 11\nCent. pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7 13, and note; Milman, Latin Christianity, v,\n401. On the sects in general see De Potter, vi, 217-310; and Cant\u00f9,\nGli Eretici d'Italia, 1865, i, 149-53.\n\n[1295] Lea, i, 115.\n\n[1296] Id. pp. 117-18.\n\n[1297] Id. p. 119.\n\n[1298] Kurtz, i, 435; Lea, i, 119.\n\n[1299] Hardwick, p. 308, note; Murdock's note to Mosheim, p. 426;\nMonastier, pp. 106-107.\n\n[1300] Lea, i, 124.\n\n[1301] Id. p. 126.\n\n[1302] Id. pp. 127-28.\n\n[1303] Kitchin, History of France, 4th ed. 1889, i, 286; citing\nChron. de St. Denis, p. 350. The Annales Victoriani at Philip's death\n(1223) pronounce him ecclesiarum et religionarum personarum amator\net fautor (H\u00e9nault's Abr\u00e9g\u00e9 Chronologique). Among the many Cathari\nput to death in his reign was Nicholas, the most famous painter in\nFrance--burned at Braine in 1204. Lea, i, 131.\n\n[1304] Lea, i, 113-14. Cp. Ranke, Hist. of the Popes,\nEng. tr. 1-vol. ed. p. 13.\n\n[1305] Cp. Hardwick, p. 312; Mosheim, 12 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7\n11, and notes in Reid's ed.; Monastier, Hist. of the Vaudois Church,\nEng. tr. 1848, pp. 12-29; Faber, The Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses,\npp. 28, 284, etc. As Vigilantius took refuge in the Cottian Alps,\nhis doctrine may have survived there, as argued by Monastier (p. 10)\nand Faber (p. 290). The influence of Claudius of Turin, as they further\ncontend, might also come into play. On the whole subject see Gieseler,\nPer. III, Div. iii, \u00a7 88.\n\n[1306] Cp. Mosheim with Faber, bk. iii, chs. iii, viii; Hardwick,\nas cited; and Monastier, pp. 53-82. Waddington, p. 353, holds Mosheim\nto be in error; and there are some grounds for dating the Waldensian\nheresy before Waldus, who flourished 1170-1180 (id. p. 354). Waldus had\nto flee from France, and finally died in Bohemia, 1197 (Kurtz, i, 439).\n\n[1307] Cp. Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, i, 73-88. Waldensian theology\nvaried from time to time.\n\n[1308] Between 1153 and 1191 there were ten popes, three of them\nanti-popes. Celestine III held the chair from 1191 to 1198; and\nInnocent III from the latter year to 1216.\n\n[1309] De Potter, vi, 26; Lea, i, 115.\n\n[1310] Lea, i, 290.\n\n[1311] De Potter, vi, 28.\n\n[1312] See Bartoli, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, 1878, i,\n262, note, also his I Precursori del Renascimento, 1877, p. 37. In\nthis section and in the next chapter I am indebted for various clues\nto the Rev. John Owen's Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance. As to\nthe Goliards generally, see that work, pp. 38-45; Bartoli, Storia,\ncap. viii; Milman, Latin Christianity, bk. xiv, ch. iv; and Gebhart,\nLes Origines de la Renaissance en Italie, 1879, pp. 125-26. The name\nGoliard came from the type-name Golias, used by many satirists.\n\n[1313] Bartoli, Storia, i, 271-79. Cp. Schlegel's note to Mosheim,\nReid's ed. p. 332, following Ratherius; and Gebhart, as cited. Milman\n(4th ed. ix, 189) credits the Goliards with \"a profound respect for\nsacred things, and freedom of invective against sacred persons.\" This\nshows an imperfect knowledge of much of their work.\n\n[1314] C. Lenient, La Satire en France au moyen \u00e2ge, 1859, pp. 38-39.\n\n[1315] Owen, as cited, pp. 43, 45; Bartoli, Storia, i, 293.\n\n[1316] Disparagement of the serf is a commonplace of medieval\nliterature. Langlois, La Vie en France au moyen \u00e2ge, 1908, p. 169,\nand note; Lanson, Hist. de la litt. fran\u00e7aise, p. 96. At this point\nthe semi-aristocratic jongleurs and the writers of bourgeois bias, such\nas some of the contributors to Reynard the Fox, coincided. The Renart\nstories are at once anti-aristocratic, anti-clerical, and anti-demotic.\n\n[1317] C. Lenient, La Satire en France, p. 115. Lenient cites from\nErasmus's letters (Sept. 1, 1528) a story of a German burned alive\nin his time for venting the same idea.\n\n[1318] Langlois, as cited, pp. 30-68.\n\n[1319] Cp. Langlois, pp. 107, 129, 263, etc. C. Lenient, as cited,\np. 115.\n\n[1320] Rev. Joseph Berington, Literary History of the Middle Ages,\ned. 1846, p. 229. Cp. Owen, p. 43.\n\n[1321] Owen, p. 43; Bartoli, Storia, i, 295, as to the French fabliaux.\n\n[1322] Labitte, La divine com\u00e9die avant Dante, in Charpentier ed. of\nDante, pp. 133-34.\n\n[1323] Aucassin and Nicolette, tr. by Eugene Mason, p. 6.\n\n[1324] Sismondi, Literature of Southern Europe, Eng. tr. i, 74-95.\n\n[1325] Id. p. 76.\n\n[1326] Zeller, Histoire d'Italie, 1853, p. 152; Renan, Averro\u00e8s,\np. 184.\n\n[1327] \"The Troubadours in truth were freethinkers\" (Owen, Italian\nSkeptics, p. 48). Cp. Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, ii, 2; and\nHardwick, p. 274, note 4, as to the common animus against the papacy.\n\n[1328] Heeren, Essai sur l'influence des Croisades, French tr. 1808,\np. 174, note; Owen, Italian Skeptics, p. 44, note.\n\n[1329] Abb\u00e9 Queant, Gerbert, ou Sylvestre II, 1868, pp. 30-31.\n\n[1330] Sismondi, as cited, p. 82; Owen, pp. 66, 68; Mosheim, 11\nCent. pt. ii, ch. i, \u00a7 4; 12 Cent. pt. ii, ch. i, \u00a7 9, and Reid's\nnote to \u00a7 8; Hampden, Bampton Lectures, p. 446. The familiar record\nthat Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II, studied in Spain among\nthe Arabs (Ueberweg, i, 369) has of late years been discredited\n(Olleris, Vie de Gerbert, 1867, chs. ii and xxv; Ueberweg, p. 430;\nPoole, Illustrations, p. 88); but its very currency depended on\nthe commonness of some such proceeding in his age. In any case,\nthe teaching he would receive at the Spanish monastery of Borel\nwould owe all its value to Saracen culture. Cp. Abb\u00e9 Queant, Gerbert,\npp. 26-32. The greatness of the service he rendered to northern Europe\nin introducing the Arabic numerals is expressed in the legend of his\nmagical powers. Compare the legends as to Roger Bacon.\n\n[1331] Sismondi, p. 83.\n\n[1332] Cp. G. H. Lewes, The Spanish Drama, 1846, pp. 11-14; Littr\u00e9,\n\u00c9tudes sur les barbares et le moyen \u00e2ge, 3e \u00e9dit. p. 356.\n\n[1333] See the passages cited by Owen, p. 58.\n\n[1334] Cp. Bartoli, Storia, pp. 200-202.\n\n[1335] Gebhart, Les Origines de la Renaissance, pp. 4, 17; Renan,\nAverro\u00e8s et l'Averro\u00efsme, pp. 145, 183, 185; Libri, Hist. des\nsciences math\u00e9matiques en Italie, i, 153; Michelet, Hist. de France,\nt. vii, Renaissance, introd. note du \u00a7 vii; Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la\nphilos. scolastique, i, 382. Cp. Franck, \u00c9tudes Orientales, 1861,\np. 357.\n\n[1336] As to the Pope's character compare Sismondi, Hist. of the\nCrusades against the Albigenses (Eng. tr. from vols. vi and vii of his\nHistoire des Fran\u00e7ais), p. 10; Hallam, Europe during the Middle Ages,\n11th ed. ii, 198; Mosheim, 13 Cent. pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 6-8.\n\n[1337] As to previous acts of inquisition and persecution by\nPope Alexander III (noted above) see Llorente, Hist. Crit. de\nl'Inquisition en Espagne, French tr. 2e \u00e9dit. i, 27-30, and Lea,\nHistory of the Inquisition, i, 118. Cp. Gieseler, Per. III, Div. iii,\n\u00a7 89 (Amer. ed. ii, 564).\n\n[1338] Hardwick, p. 309; Lea, i, 145.\n\n[1339] Sismondi, Crusades against the Albigenses, p. 21.\n\n[1340] On the previous history of indulgences see Lea, History of the\nInquisition, i, 41-47; De Potter, Esprit de l'\u00c9glise, vii, 22-39. For\nthe later developments cp. Lea's Studies in Church History, 1869,\np. 450; Vieusseux, History of Switzerland, 1840, pp. 121, 125.\n\n[1341] Sismondi, Crusades, pp. 28-29.\n\n[1342] Id. p. 23.\n\n[1343] Lea, i, 149.\n\n[1344] For a modern Catholic defence of the whole proceedings see\nthe Comte de Montalembert's Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie,\n13e \u00e9dit. intr. pp. 35-40.\n\n[1345] Sismondi, Crusades, p. 35, and refs.; Lea, i, 154.\n\n[1346] Sismondi, pp. 36-37, and refs.\n\n[1347] Id. pp. 37-43.\n\n[1348] Id. pp. 21, 41. Cp. p. 85 as to later treachery towards\nSaracens; and p. 123 as to the deeds of the Bishop of Toulouse. See\nagain pp. 140-42 as to the massacre of Marmande.\n\n[1349] As to the international character of the crusade see Sismondi,\nCrusades, p. 53.\n\n[1350] Sismondi, p. 62 sq.\n\n[1351] Pp. 77, 78.\n\n[1352] Pp. 74, 75.\n\n[1353] P. 87. \"The worship of the reformed Albigenses had everywhere\nceased\" (p. 115). Cp. p. 116 as to the completeness of the final\nmassacres. It is estimated (Monastier, p. 115, following De la\nMothe-Langon) that a million Albigenses were slain in the first half\nof the thirteenth century. The figures are of course speculative.\n\n[1354] Cp. Lea, ii, 159; Lenient, La Satire en France an moyen \u00e2ge,\n1859, p. 43.\n\n[1355] Lea, vol. ii, ch. i.\n\n[1356] Sismondi, pp. 115, 117.\n\n[1357] Id. p. 133.\n\n[1358] Id. pp. 235-39; Lea, ii, 247, 259, 319, 347, 429, etc.\n\n[1359] Sismondi, p. 236; Llorente, as cited, i, 60-64; Lea, ii, 200.\n\n[1360] Matthew Paris records that in 1249 four hundred and forty-three\nheretics were burned in Saxony and Pomerania. Previously multitudes\nhad been burned by the Inquisitor Conrad, who was himself finally\nmurdered in revenge. He was the confessor of Saint Elizabeth of\nHungary, and he taught her among other things, \"Be merciful to your\nneighbour,\" and \"Do to others whatsoever you would that they should do\nto you.\" See his praises recorded by Montalembert, as cited, vol. i,\nch. x. Cp. Gieseler, Per. III, Div. iii, \u00a7 89 (ii, 567).\n\n[1361] Lea, ii, 204. This was the \"peace-maker\" described by Dr. Lea\nas--in that capacity--\"so worthy a disciple of the Great Teacher of\ndivine love\" (i, 240).\n\n[1362] Ueberweg, i, 366; Poole, pp. 99, 100.\n\n[1363] As to the verbal confusion of Aristotle's theory see Ueberweg.\n\n[1364] Id. i, 160.\n\n[1365] Id. i, 375.\n\n[1366] Cp. Mosheim's note, Reid's ed. p. 388.\n\n[1367] Ueberweg, i, 374.\n\n[1368] Poole, p. 104, note; Milman, Latin Christianity, 4th ed. i, 54.\n\n[1369] Hampden, Bampton Lectures, On the Scholastic Philosophy, 1848,\np. 71.\n\n[1370] Mosheim, as cited, and refs.\n\n[1371] Hampden, p. 70.\n\n[1372] A. S. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, 1862, p. 111. Farrar\nadds: \"'Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, set credo ut\nintelligam' are the words of the Realist Anselm (Prolog. i, 43,\ned. Gerberon): 'Dubitando ad inquisitionem venimus; inquirendo\nveritatem percipimus' are those of the Nominalist Abailard (Sic et Non,\np. 16, ed. Cousin).\"\n\n[1373] Cp. Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la philos. scolastique, i, ch. 19,\nas to orthodoxy among both Nominalists and Realists.\n\n[1374] Hampden, pp. 70, 449.\n\n[1375] Cp. Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, iii, 550.\n\n[1376] Poole, Illustr. of the Hist. of Medieval Thought, pp. 104-105.\n\n[1377] Pr\u00e6fatio in Monologium.\n\n[1378] As to the various classes of doubters known to Anselm see\nReuter, Gesch. der religi\u00f6sen Aufkl\u00e4rung im Mittelalter, i, 129-31,\nand refs. Anselm writes: Fides enim nostra contra impios ratione\ndefenda est. Epist. ii, 41.\n\n[1379] Ueberweg, i, 381.\n\n[1380] See it in Ueberweg, i, 384-85; cp. Ch. de R\u00e9musat, Saint\nAnselme, 1853, pp. 61-62; Dean Church, Saint Anselm, ed. 1888,\npp. 86-87. As to previous instances of Anselm's argument cp. Poole,\nIllustrations, p. 338 sq.\n\n[1381] Cp. Ueberweg, i, 379-80.\n\n[1382] Cited by Hampden, Bampton Lect. p. 443.\n\n[1383] Metalogicus, vii, 2; Poole, p. 223.\n\n[1384] Gemma Ecclesiastica, Distinctio i, c. 51; Works, ed. Brewer,\nRolls Series, ii, 148-49; pref. p. xxxv.\n\n[1385] Cp. Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la philos. scolastique, Ptie. II (1880),\ni, 61. Haur\u00e9au points out that Simon's writings are strictly orthodox,\nwhatever his utterances may have been.\n\n[1386] Distinctio, ii, c. 24; pp. liv, 285.\n\n[1387] Cp. Pearson, Hist. of England during the Early and Middle Ages,\nii, 504.\n\n[1388] The Saynt Graal, ed. Furnivall, 1861, pp. 7, 84; History of\nthe Holy Grail, ed. Furnivall, 1874, pp. 5-7; Pearson, as cited,\ni, 606-607.\n\n[1389] Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la philos. scolastique, i, 1870, p. 502.\n\n[1390] Poole, pp. 141-42.\n\n[1391] \"Humanas ac philosophicas rationes requirebant; et plus qu\u00e6\nintelligi quam qu\u00e6 dici possent efflagitabant\" (Historia calamitatum\nmearum, ed. Gr\u00e9ard, p. 36).\n\n[1392] Id. ib.\n\n[1393] Ueberweg, i, 387.\n\n[1394] Ueberweg, i, 391. Cp. Milman, Latin Christianity, ix, 111.\n\n[1395] Ueberweg, i, 394-95.\n\n[1396] Hampden, Bampton Lect. pp. 420-21.\n\n[1397] Poole, p. 175. It is not impossible that, as Sismondi suggests\n(Histoire des Fran\u00e7ais, ed. 1823, v, 294-96), Abailard was persecuted\nmainly because of the dangerous anti-papal movement maintained in Italy\nfor fifteen years (1139-1155) by his doctrinally orthodox pupil, Arnold\nof Brescia. But Hampden (p. 40), agreeing with Guizot (Hist. de Civ. en\nEurope; Hist. mod. Le\u00e7on 6), pronounces that \"there was no sympathy\nbetween the efforts of the Italian Republics to obtain social liberty,\nand those within the Church to recover personal freedom of thought.\"\n\n[1398] Poole, pp. 117-23, 169.\n\n[1399] Ueberweg, i, 398.\n\n[1400] Poole, p. 173.\n\n[1401] Cp. Poole, p. 153. It is difficult to doubt that the series\nof patristic deliverances against reason in the first section of Sic\net Non was compiled by Abailard in a spirit of dissent.\n\n[1402] Cp. Hardwick, p. 279; and see p. 275, note, for Bernard's\ndislike of his demand for clearness: \"Nihil videt per speculum et in\naenigmate, sed facie ad faciem omnia intuetur.\"\n\n[1403] Poole, p. 161. Cp. Dr. Hastings Rashdall on the \"pious\nscurrility\" of Bernard. The Universities of Europe in the Middle\nAges, 1895, i, 57, note. Contrast the singularly laudatory account\nof St. Bernard given by two contemporary Positivists, Mr. Cotter\nMorison in his Life and Times of St. Bernard, and Mr. F. Harrison\nin his essay on that work in his Choice of Books. The subject is\ndiscussed in the present writer's paper on \"The Ethics of Propaganda\"\nin Essays in Ethics.\n\n[1404] Erdmann, History of Philosophy, Eng. tr. 3rd ed. i, 325.\n\n[1405] Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la philos. scolastique, i (1872), 534-46.\n\n[1406] Id. citing the Polycraticus, l. vii, c. 2.\n\n[1407] Polycraticus, l. vii, c. 7.\n\n[1408] Cp. Poole, pp. 220-22; the extracts of Hampden, pp. 438-43;\nand the summing-up of Haur\u00e9au. Hist. de la philos. scolastique, i\n(1870), 357.\n\n[1409] Historia calamitatum, as cited. Cp. p. 10 for Abailard's own\nopinion of Anselm of Laon, whom he compares to a leafy but fruitless\ntree.\n\n[1410] Matthew Paris, sub. ann. 1201. There is a somewhat\ncircumstantial air about this story, Simon's reply being made to begin\nhumorously with a Jesule. Jesule! Matthew, however, tells on this\nitem the story of Simon's miraculous punishment which Giraldus tells\non a quite different text. Matthew is indignant with the scholastic\narrogance which has led many to \"suppress\" the miracle.\n\n[1411] Ueberweg, i, 419, 430; Hampden, p. 443 sq. Cp. Renan, Averro\u00e8s,\np. 173 sq.\n\n[1412] Ueberweg, i, 418. The Kara\u00eftes may be described as Jewish\nProtestants or Puritans. Cp. Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896,\npp. 252-54.\n\n[1413] Schechter (as cited, pp. 197, 417) gives two sets of dates,\nthe second being 1135-1204.\n\n[1414] For a good survey of the medieval Hebrew thought in general\nsee Joel, Beitr\u00e4ge zur Gesch. der Philos. 1876; and as to Maimonides\nsee A. Franck's \u00c9tudes Orientales, 1861; Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la\nphilos. scolastique, Ptie II, i, 41-46; and Renan, Averro\u00e8s,\npp. 177-82.\n\n[1415] Schechter, Studies in Judaism, pp. 422-23.\n\n[1416] Id. p. 208.\n\n[1417] Ueberweg, i, 428; Schechter, p. 424.\n\n[1418] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 183.\n\n[1419] Schechter, pp. 83-85.\n\n[1420] Haur\u00e9au pronounces (II, i, 29-34) that Avicebron should be\nranked among the most sincere and resolute of pantheists. His chief\nwork was the Fons vit\u00e6.\n\n[1421] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 100, 175.\n\n[1422] Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, c. 8, ad init.\n\n[1423] M\u00e9moires de Joinville, ed. 1871, ii, 16.\n\n[1424] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 222-24.\n\n[1425] Huber, Johannes Scotus Erigena, p. 435; Christlieb, Leben und\nLehre des Johannes Scotus Erigena, 1860, p. 438. Copies of John's\nwritings were found in the hands of the sectaries of Amalrich and\nDavid; and in 1226 the writings in question were condemned and burnt\naccordingly. Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la philos. scolastique, i, 175.\n\n[1426] Ueberweg, i, 388, 431; Milman, Latin Christianity, ix, 112-14;\nRenan, p. 223; Hahn, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, 1845-50,\niii, 176-92.\n\n[1427] Mosheim, 13 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7 12.\n\n[1428] Poole, p. 225; Ueberweg, i, 431.\n\n[1429] Lecky's description (Rationalism in Europe, ed. 1887, i, 48)\nof Averro\u00efsm as a \"stern and uncompromising infidelity\" is hopelessly\nastray.\n\n[1430] Summa Theologica, Prima Secundae, Qu\u00e6st. LXXXV, Art. 6. Compare\nHaur\u00e9au, Hist. de la philos. scolastique, i, 189, for a trace of\nthe idea of natura naturans in John Scotus and Heiric, in the ninth\ncentury.\n\n[1431] Renan, p. 236 sq.\n\n[1432] Cp. Reuter, Gesch. der religi\u00f6sen Aufkl\u00e4rung im Mittelalter,\nii, 130.\n\n[1433] Milman, Latin Christianity, 4th ed. ix, 133.\n\n[1434] Robins. A Defence of the Faith, 1862, pt. i, pp. 38-39. Compare\nRashdall, Universities in the Middle Ages, i, 264; and Maurice,\nMedieval Philosophy, 2nd ed. pp. 188-90. It is noteworthy that the\nSumma of Thomas was a favourite study of Descartes, who read hardly\nany other theologian.\n\n[1435] Cp. Milman, ix, 143.\n\n[1436] See the comments of Giraldus Cambrensis in the proem to\nhis Speculum Ecclesi\u00e6 Brewer's ed. in Rolls Series, i. 9; and\npref. pp. xii-xiii.\n\n[1437] Cp. Renan. Averro\u00e8s, p. 267, as to the polemic of William\nof Auvergne.\n\n[1438] Renan, pp. 567-68.\n\n[1439] Id. pp. 269-71, and refs.\n\n[1440] Renan, pp. 273-75, and refs.; Ueberweg, i, 460, and refs.;\nMaywald, Die Lehre von der zweifachen Wahrheit, 1871, p. 11; Lange,\ni, 182 (tr. i, 218).\n\n[1441] Of John XXI, who had in 1276 condemned the doctrine of a\ntwofold truth.\n\n[1442] Cp. Gebhart, Origines de la Renaissance, pp. 29-44. And see\nabove, p. 308.\n\n[1443] Berington, Lit. Hist. of the Middle Ages, p. 245. See above,\np. 310.\n\n[1444] See the Summa of the Inquisitor Bartholom\u00e6us Fumus, Venet. 1554,\ns.v. Infidelitas, fol. 261, \u00a7 5; and the Summa of Thomas, Secunda\nSecund\u00e6, Qu\u00e6st. X, Art. 2.\n\n[1445] It is sometimes described as a formidable product of doubt;\nand again by M. de R\u00e9musat as \"consecrated to controversy rather than\nto skepticism.\" Cp. Pearson, Hist. of England in the Early and Middle\nAges, 1867, i. 609. The view in the text seems the just mean. Cp. Lea,\nHist. of the Inquisition, i. 57. In itself the book is for a modern\nreader a mere collection of the edifying contradictions of theologians;\nbut such a collection must in any age have been a perplexity to faith;\nand it is not surprising that it remained unpublished until edited\nby Cousin (see the Ouvrages in\u00e9dits, intr. pp. clxxxv-ix). That\nwriter justly sums up that such antinomies \"condamnent l'esprit \u00e0 un\ndoute salutaire.\" The Rev. A. S. Farrar pronounces that \"the critical\nindependence of Nominalism, in a mind like that of Abailard, represents\nthe destructive action of freethought, partly as early Protestantism,\npartly as skepticism\" (Crit. Hist. of Freethought, p. 12).\n\n[1446] Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, i, 421-22, 556-58, 575; U. Burke,\nHist. of Spain, Hume's ed. 1900, ii, 351-52. For a detailed description\nof the methods of ecclesiastical torture, Burke refers to the treatise,\nDe Catholicis Institutionibus, by Simancas, Bishop of Beja, Rome,\n1575, tit. lxv, De Tormentis, p. 491 sq.\n\n[1447] Torture was inflicted on witnesses in England in 1311, by\nspecial inquisitors, under the mandate of Clement V, in defiance of\nEnglish law; and under Edward II it was used in England as elsewhere\nagainst the Templars.\n\n[1448] Istorie fiorentine, iv, 29.\n\n[1449] See below, p. 325.\n\n[1450] Villari, Two First Centuries of Florentine History,\nEng. tr. 1901, pp. 110-12.\n\n[1451] Reuter, Gesch. der religi\u00f6sen Aufkl\u00e4rung im Mittelalter, i, 167.\n\n[1452] Id. i, 164-66.\n\n[1453] The Moslems were inclined to regard him as of their creed\n\"because educated in Sicily.\" Cant\u00f9, Gli Eretici d'Italia, 1865, i, 66.\n\n[1454] See Gieseler, as cited below; and Reid's Mosheim, p. 437, note.\n\n[1455] Milman, Latin Christianity, vi, 150; Lea, Hist. of the\nInquisition, i, 221.\n\n[1456] Milman, vi, 150, 158.\n\n[1457] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 289.\n\n[1458] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 205-10. Michael Scotus may have been, like\nJohn Scotus, an Irishman, but his refusal to accept the archbishopric\nof Cashel, on the ground that he did not know the native language,\nmakes this doubtful. The identification of him with a Scottish knight,\nSir Michael Scott, still persisted in by some scholars on the strength\nof Sir Walter Scott's hasty note to The Lay of the Last Minstrel,\nis destitute of probability. See the Rev. J. Wood Brown's Inquiry\ninto the Life and Legend of Michael Scot, 1897, pp. 160-61, 175-76.\n\n[1459] Inferno, xx, 515-17.\n\n[1460] Cant\u00f9, Gli Eretici d'Italia, i, 65-66; the Pope's letter,\nas cited; Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 287-91, 296.\n\n[1461] See the verdict of Gieseler, Eng. tr. iii (1853), p. 103, note.\n\n[1462] Milman, vi, 158-59.\n\n[1463] Id. p. 154. Cp. the author's Evolution of States, 1912, p. 382.\n\n[1464] G. Villani, Istorie fiorentine, vi, 46.\n\n[1465] Mosheim, 13 Cent. pt. i, ch. ii, \u00a7 2, citing in particular\nMoneta's Summa contra Catharos et Valdenses, lib. V, cc. 4, 11, 15;\nTempier (bishop of Paris), Indiculum Errorum (1272) in the Bibliotheca\nPatrum Maxima, t. xxv; Bul\u00e6us, Hist. Acad. Paris, iii, 433--as to the\nAverro\u00efsts at Paris, described above, p. 319. Cp. Renan, Averro\u00e8s,\npp. 230-31, citing William of Auvergne, and pp. 283, 285; Ozanam,\nDante, 6e \u00e9dit. pp. 86, 101, 111-12; Gebhart, Origines de la Renais,\npp. 79-81; Lange, i, 182 (tr. i, 218); Sharon Turner, Hist. of England\nduring the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. v, 136-38.\n\n[1466] Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, iii, 560-61.\n\n[1467] Perrens, La civilisation florentine du 13e au 16e si\u00e8cle,\n1892, p. 101. Above, p. 322.\n\n[1468] Inferno, Canto x, 14-15, 118.\n\n[1469] Ottavio Ubaldini, d. 1273, of whom the commentators tell that\nhe said that if there were such a thing as a soul he had lost his\nfor the cause of the Ghibellines.\n\n[1470] As to whom see Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 285, note; Gebhart,\nRenaissance, p. 81. His son Guido, \"the first friend and the companion\nof all the youth of Dante,\" was reputed an atheist (Decameron, vi,\n9). Cp. Cesare Balbo, Vita di Dante, ed. 1853, pp. 48-49. But see Owen,\nSkeptics of the Ital. Renais., p. 138, note.\n\n[1471] In the Convito, ii, 9, he writes that, \"among all the\nbestialities, that is the most foolish, the most vile, the most\ndamnable, which believes no other life to be after this life.\" Another\npassage (iv, 5) heaps curses on the \"most foolish and vile beasts\n... who presume to speak against our Faith.\"\n\n[1472] Cp. Ozanam, Dante, 6e \u00e9dit. pp. 111-12, as to anti-Christian\nmovements.\n\n[1473] Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i, 83, note; Renan, Averro\u00e8s,\npp. 326-27; Cant\u00f9, Gli Eretici d'Italia, i, 177. and note 13 on p. 196.\n\n[1474] Cp. Labitte, La Divine Com\u00e9die avant Dante, as cited, p. 139.\n\n[1475] Michelet argues that Italy was \"anti-Dantesque\" in the\nRenaissance (Hist. de France, vii, Intr. \u00a7 9 and App.), but he\nexaggerates the common disregard of the Commedia.\n\n[1476] As to an element of doubt, even in Dante, concerning Divine\ngovernment, see Burckhardt, p. 497. But the attempt made by some\ncritics to show that the \"sins\" to which Dante confessed had been\nintellectual--i.e., heresies--falls to the ground. See D\u00f6llinger,\nStudies in European History, Eng. tr. 1890, pp. 87-90; and cp. Cant\u00f9,\nGli Eretici d'Italia, i, 144 sq. on the whole question.\n\n[1477] Cesare Balbo, Vita di Dante, ed. 1853, pp. 416-17, 433.\n\n[1478] Cant\u00f9. Eretici d' Italia, i, 153. Cant\u00f9 gives an account of\nthe trial process.\n\n[1479] G. Villani, x, 39. It is to be noted that the horoscope of Jesus\nwas cast by several professed believers, as Albertus Magnus and Pierre\nd'Ailli, Cardinal and Bishop of Cambrai, as well as by Cardan. See\nBayle, art. Cardan, note Q; and cp. Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 326.\n\n[1480] Cp. Owen, pp. 128, 135-42; Hallam, Lit. Hist., i, 141-42;\nMilman, bk. xiv, ch. v, end.\n\n[1481] Decam., Gior. i, nov. 2.\n\n[1482] Gior. i, nov. 3.\n\n[1483] Dr. Marcus Landau, Die Quellen des Dekameron, 2te Aufl. 1884,\np. 182.\n\n[1484] The story is recorded to have been current among the\nMotecallem\u00een--a party kindred to the Motazilites--in Bagdad. Renan,\nAverro\u00e8s, p. 293, citing Dozy. Renan thinks it may have been of Jewish\norigin. Id. p. 294, note.\n\n[1485] Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896, pp. 207-208.\n\n[1486] It is found some time before Boccaccio in the Cento Novelle\nantiche (No. 72 or 73) in a simpler form; but Landau (p. 183) thinks\nBoccaccio's immediate source was the version of Busone da Gubbio\n(b. 1280), who had improved on the version in the Cento Novelle,\nwhile Boccaccio in turn improved on him by treating the Jew more\ntolerantly. Bartoli (I Precursori del Boccaccio, 1876, pp. 26-28)\ndisputes any immediate debt to Busone; as does Owen, Skeptics of the\nItal. Renais., p. 29, note.\n\n[1487] Burckhardt (Renaissance in Italy, p. 493, note) points out that\nBoccaccio is the first to name the Christian religion, his Italian\npredecessors avoiding the idea; and that in one eastern version the\nstory is used polemically against the Christians.\n\n[1488] Owen, p. 142, and refs.\n\n[1489] Id. pp. 143-45. He was even so far terrorized by the menaces\nof a monk (who appeared to him to have occult knowledge of some of\nhis secrets) as to propose to give up his classical studies; and\nwould have done so but for Petrarch's dissuasion. Petrarch's letter\n(Epist. Senil., i, 5) is translated (Lett. xii) by M. Develay,\nLettres de P\u00e9ttrarque \u00e0 Boccace.\n\n[1490] Gasquet, The Great Pestilence, 1893, pp. 28, 32, 37, and refs.\n\n[1491] Id. pp. 11, 41.\n\n[1492] Probably 25,000 in England alone, including monks. Id. p. 204.\n\n[1493] Id. pp. 205-208, 213, 216.\n\n[1494] Below, \u00a7 11.\n\n[1495] As to his anti-clericalism, cp. Gebhart, Orig. de la Renais.,\np. 71, and ref.; Owen, p. 113.\n\n[1496] Cp. Rashdall, Universities in the Middle Ages, i, 264.\n\n[1497] See the exposition of Owen, pp. 109-28. and refs. on p. 113.\n\n[1498] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 328.\n\n[1499] M\u00e9zi\u00e9res, P\u00e9trarque, 1868, p. 362.\n\n[1500] It is to be noted that in his opposition to the scholastics\nhe had predecessors. Cp. Gebhart, Orig. de la Renais., p. 65.\n\n[1501] Owen, p. 113. It is to be remembered that Dante also (Convito,\nii, 8, 9; iii, 14; iv, 7) exalts Reason; but he uses the word in the\nold sense of mere mentality--the thinking as distinguished from the\nsensuous element in man; and he was fierce against all resort to reason\nas against faith. Petrarch was of course more of a rationalist. As to\nhis philosophic skepticism, see Owen, p. 120. He drew the line only\nat doubting those things \"in which doubt is sacrilege.\" Nevertheless\nhe grounded his belief in immortality not on the Christian creed,\nbut on the arguments of the pagans (Burckhardt, p. 546).\n\n[1502] Epist. sine titulo, cited by Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 299. For the\nphrases put in Averro\u00ebs' mouth by Christians, see pp. 294-98.\n\n[1503] Inferno, iv, 144.\n\n[1504] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 301-15.\n\n[1505] Id. pp. 333-37; Cant\u00f9, Gli Eretici d'ltalia, i, 176 and refs.\n\n[1506] Renan, pp. 326-27.\n\n[1507] Id. pp. 318-20.\n\n[1508] Justinger, cited in The Pope and the Council, Eng. tr. p. 298.\n\n[1509] Hardwick, p. 357, note.\n\n[1510] Cp. Bonnechose, Reformers before the the Reformation,\nEng. tr. 1844, i, 40-43.\n\n[1511] \"Janus\" (i.e. D\u00f6llinger), The Pope and the Council, Eng. tr. 2nd\ned. 1869, pp. 292-95. This weighty work, sometimes mistakenly ascribed\nto Huber, who collaborated in it, was recast by commission and\nposthumously published as Das Papstthum, by J. Friedrich, M\u00fcnchen,\n1892.\n\n[1512] Hallam, Middle Ages, 11th ed. ii, 218; Lea, Hist. of the\nInquis., i, 5-34; Gieseler, \u00a7 90 (ii, 572); Freytag, Bilder aus der\ndeutschen Vergangenheit, 4te aufl. ii, 318-19.\n\n[1513] The Pope and the Council, p. 220. For proofs see same work,\npp. 220-34.\n\n[1514] \"La satire est la plus compl\u00e8te manifestation de la pens\u00e9e\nlibre au moyen \u00e2ge. Dans ce monde ou le dogmatisme impitoyable au\nsein de l'\u00c9glise et de l'\u00e9cole frappe comme h\u00e9r\u00e9tique tout dissident,\nl'esprit critique n'a pas trouv\u00e9 de voie plus s\u00fbre, plus rapide et plus\npopulaire, que la parodie\" (Lenient, La Satire en France au moyen \u00e2ge,\n1859, p. 14).\n\n[1515] Cp. Lenient, as cited, p. 21.\n\n[1516] See in Symonds's Renaissance in Italy, vol. i (Age of the\nDespots), ed. 1897, pp. 361-69, and Appendix IV, on \"Religious\nRevivals in Medieval Italy.\" Those revivals occurred from time to\ntime after Savonarola.\n\n[1517] Cp. Villari, Machiavelli, i, 138.\n\n[1518] Gieseler, Per. III. Div. iii, \u00a7 90; Lea, Hist. of Inquis.,\nii, 319-20.\n\n[1519] Kurtz, i, 435-36.\n\n[1520] Lea, i, 320-21. Cp. Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation,\nEng. tr. ii, 15-22; and Mosheim, 13 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7 11, and\nnotes. The doctrine of the treatise De Novem Rupibus is that of an\neducated thinker, and is in parts strongly antinomian, but always on\npantheistic grounds.\n\n[1521] Lea, i, 323-24.\n\n[1522] Cp. Reuter, Gesch. der religi\u00f6sen Aufkl\u00e4rung, ii, 240-49.\n\n[1523] Mosheim, 13 Cent. pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 40-43, and notes; ch. v,\n\u00a7 9. The names Beguin and Beghard seem to have been derived from the\nold German verb beggan, to beg. In the Netherlands, Beguine was a\nname for women; and Beghard for men.\n\n[1524] See the record in Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, bk. iii,\nchs. i-iii.\n\n[1525] Praised in the Roman de la Rose, Eng. vers. in Skeat's Chaucer,\ni, 244; Bell's ed. iv, 228. William was answered by the Dominican\nThomas Aquinas.\n\n[1526] See Biog. Introd. to ed. of the Philobiblon by E. C. Thomas,\n1888, pp. xliii-xlvii.\n\n[1527] C. 4, Querimonia librorum contra clericos jam promotos; C. 5,\n... contra religiosos possessionatos; C. 6, ... contra religiosos\nmendicantes.\n\n[1528] Ed. Thomas, as cited, pp. xlvi-vii.\n\n[1529] Cp. Mosheim, 13 C. pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 18-40; Hallam, Middle\nAges, ch. vii, pt. 2; Gebhart, Origines de la Renais., p. 42;\nBerington, Lit. Hist. of the Middle Ages, p. 244; Lea, Hist. of\nInq., bk. iii, ch. i. The special work of the Dominicans was the\nestablishment everywhere of the Inquisition. Mosheim, as last cited,\nch. v, \u00a7\u00a7 3-6, and notes; Lea, ii, 200-201; Milman, Latin Christianity,\nix, 155-56; Llorente, Hist. Crit. de l'Inquis. en Espagne, as cited,\ni, 49-55, 68, etc.\n\n[1530] As to the development of the Beguines from an original basis of\ncharitable co-operation see Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation,\nii, 13; Lea, ii, 351.\n\n[1531] Lea, iii, 10.\n\n[1532] See the thirteenth-century memoirs of Fra Salimbene, Eng. tr. in\nT. K. L. Oliphant's The Duke and the Scholar, 1875, pp. 98, 103-104,\n108-10, 116, 130.\n\n[1533] The Introduction to the book, probably written by the Franciscan\nGerhard, made St. Francis the angel of Rev. xiv, 6; and the ministers\nof the new order were to be his friars. Mosheim, 13 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 33-36, and notes. Cp. Lea, as cited; and Hahn, Gesch. der\nKetzer im Mittelalter, 1845-50, iii, 72-175--a very full account of\nJoachim's teaching.\n\n[1534] Lea, iii, 20-25.\n\n[1535] Le Clerc, Hist. Litt. de la France, xx, 230; Milman, Latin\nChristianity, ix, 155.\n\n[1536] Averro\u00e8s, pp. 259-60.\n\n[1537] Cp. Mosheim, 14 Cent. pt. ii, ch. iii, \u00a7 5; and Burnet's\nLetters, ed. Rotterdam, 1686, p. 31.\n\n[1538] Cp. Milman, Latin Christianity, ix, 75-76.\n\n[1539] Lea, iii, 104.\n\n[1540] Hardwick, p. 316; Lea, iii, 109; Mosheim, 12 Cent. pt. ii,\nch. v, \u00a7\u00a7 14-16. A sect of Apostolici had existed in Asia Minor in\nthe fourth century. Kurtz, i, 242. Cp. Lea, i, 109, note. Those of\nthe twelfth century were vehemently opposed by St. Bernard.\n\n[1541] Lea, iii, 109-19.\n\n[1542] Lea, p. 121; Kurtz, i, 437; Hardwick, p. 315, note; Mosheim,\n13 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7 14, and note. See Dante, Inferno, xxviii,\n55-60, as to Dolcino.\n\n[1543] Lea, p. 125.\n\n[1544] As to the external movements connected with Joachim's Gospel\nsee Mosheim, 13 Cent. pt. ii, ch. v, \u00a7\u00a7 13-15. They were put down by\nsheer bloodshed. Cp. Ueberweg, i, 431; Lea, pp. 25-26, 86.\n\n[1545] Hist. de France, vol. x; La R\u00e9forme, ed. 1884, p. 333.\n\n[1546] See the author's notes to his ed. of Buckle (Routledge), 1904,\npp. 539, 547.\n\n[1547] U. R. Burke, History of Spain, Hume's ed. i, 109-10.\n\n[1548] McCrie, Reformation in Spain, ed. 1856, p. 41; Burke, as cited,\nii, 55-56.\n\n[1549] Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, i, 81.\n\n[1550] Burke, i, 218.\n\n[1551] Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la philos. scolastique, ii, 54-55.\n\n[1552] Id. ii, 58.\n\n[1553] Lea, iii, 560.\n\n[1554] Personally he discouraged heresy-hunting. Burke, ii, 66.\n\n[1555] Burke, i, 268-73; Dunham, Hist. of Spain and Portugal, 1832,\niv, 260.\n\n[1556] Lea, iii, 24.\n\n[1557] Burke, ii, 65.\n\n[1558] Lea, ii, 183.\n\n[1559] Id. i, 221.\n\n[1560] Burke, ii, 66-67.\n\n[1561] Lea, iii, 85-86.\n\n[1562] Id. pp. 52-53; McCrie, Reformation in Spain, p. 20.\n\n[1563] Bonet-Maury, Les Pr\u00e9curseurs de la R\u00e9forme, 1904, pp. 114-19.\n\n[1564] Lea, iii, 86.\n\n[1565] Burke, ii, 57.\n\n[1566] Id. ii, 62-63.\n\n[1567] Lea, iii, 564.\n\n[1568] Id. ii, 187-88.\n\n[1569] Lea, ii, 287; Burke, ii, 67-69.\n\n[1570] Burke, ii, 77, citing Lafuente, ix, 233.\n\n[1571] Id. citing Bergenroth, Calendar, etc. i, 37.\n\n[1572] Even as late as 1591, in Aragon, when in a riot against the\nInquisition the Inquisitors barely escaped with their lives. Burke,\nii, 80, note.\n\n[1573] Id. pp. 81-82.\n\n[1574] There had previously been sharp social persecution by the\nCort\u00e8s, in 1480, on \"anti-Semitic\" grounds, the Jews being then\ndebarred from all the professions, and even from commerce. They were\nthus driven to usury by Christians, who latterly denounce the race for\nusuriousness. Cp. Michelet, Hist. de France, x, ed. 1884, p. 15, note.\n\n[1575] The number has been put as high as 800,000. Cp. F. D. Mocatta,\nThe Jews and the Inquisition, 1877, p. 54; E. La Rigaudi\u00e8re,\nHist. des Pers\u00e9c. Relig. en Espagne, 1860, pp. 112-14; Prescott,\nHist. of Ferdinand and Isabella, Kirk's ed. 1889, p. 323; and refs. in\ned. of Buckle cited, p. 541.\n\n[1576] Llorente, Hist. Crit. de l'Inquis. en Espagne, ed. 1818, i,\n280. As to Llorente's other estimates, which are of doubtful value,\ncp. Prescott's note, ed. cited, p. 746. But as to Llorente's general\ncredit, see the vindication of U. R. Burke, ii, 85-87.\n\n[1577] Llorente, i, 281.\n\n[1578] McCrie, Reformation in Spain, ch. viii.\n\n[1579] Cp. La Rigaudi\u00e8re, pp. 309-14; Buckle, as cited, pp. 514, 570;\nU. R. Burke, i, 59, 85.\n\n[1580] Cp. \u00c9mile Charles, Roger Bacon, Paris, 1861, p. 23.\n\n[1581] Cp. Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la philos. scolastique, Ptie. ii, 1880,\nvol. ii, p. 79.\n\n[1582] This sum of libri has been taken by English writers to stand\nfor English \"pounds.\" It may however have represented Parisian livres.\n\n[1583] Prof. Brewer, Introd. to Opera Inedita of Roger Bacon, 1859,\npp. xiv-xxiii.\n\n[1584] Id. p. xlvi.\n\n[1585] Id. p. xxx, sq.\n\n[1586] Id. pp. liv-lv.\n\n[1587] Compendium Philosophi\u00e6, cap. i, in Op. Ined., pp. 398-401.\n\n[1588] Id. p. 401. Cp. p. 412 as to the multitude of theologians at\nParis banished for sodomy.\n\n[1589] Id. p. 422.\n\n[1590] Id. cc. ii-v, pp. 404-32.\n\n[1591] Brewer, p. xciii, note, cites this in an extract from\nthe Chronicle of Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, a late\nwriter of the fifteenth century, who \"gives no authority for his\nstatement.\" Dr. Bridges, however, was enabled by M. Sabatier to\ntrace the passage back to the MS. Chronica xxiv Generalium Ordinis\nMinorum, which belongs to the first half of the fourteenth century;\nand the passage, as M. Sabatier remarks, has all the appearance of\nbeing an extract from the official journal of this Order. (Bridges,\nThe \"Opus Majus\" of Roger Bacon, Suppl. vol. 1900, p. 158.)\n\n[1592] \"Il etait n\u00e9 rebelle.\" \"Le m\u00e9pris syst\u00e9matique de l'autorit\u00e9,\nvoil\u00e0 vraiment ce qu'il professe.\" (Haur\u00e9au, Ptie. II, ii, 76, 85.)\n\n[1593] See the sympathetic accounts of Baden Powell, Hist. of\nNat. Philos. 1834, pp. 100-12; White, Warfare of Science with Theology,\ni, 379-91.\n\n[1594] Erdmann, History of Philosophy, Eng. tr. 3rd ed. i, 476.\n\n[1595] Humboldt, Examen Crit. de l'hist. de la G\u00e9ographie, 1836-39,\ni, 64-70, gives the passages in the Opus Majus and the Imago Mundi,\nand paraphrase of the latter in Columbus's letter to Ferdinand\nand Isabella from Jamaica (given also in P. L. Ford's Writings of\nChristopher Columbus, 1892, p. 199 sq.). Cp. Ellis's note to Francis\nBacon's Temporis Partus Masculus, in Ellis and Spedding's ed. of\nBacon's Works, iii, 534. It should be remembered in this connection\nthat Columbus found believers, in the early stage of his undertaking,\nonly in two friars, one a Franciscan and one a Dominican. See Ford's\ned. of the Writings, p. 107.\n\n[1596] Cp. Haur\u00e9au, Ptie. II, ii, 95.\n\n[1597] Opus Majus, Pars ii, cap. 5.\n\n[1598] Renan, Averro\u00e8s, p. 263. Bacon mentions Averro\u00ebs in the Opus\nMajus, P. i, cc. 6, 15; P. ii, c. 13; ed. Bridges, iii (1900), 14, 33,\n67. In the passage last cited he calls him \"homo solidae sapientiae,\ncorrigens multa priorum et addens multa, quamvis corrigendus sit in\naliquibus, et in multis complendus.\"\n\n[1599] See the careful notice by Prof. Adamson in Dict. of\nNat. Biog. Cp. Milman, Latin Christianity, ix, 152-60; Lewes, Hist. of\nPhilos. ii, 77-87.\n\n[1600] Two Englishmen, the Carmelite John of Baconthorpe (d. 1346)\nand Walter Burleigh, were among the orthodox Averro\u00efsts; the latter\nfiguring as a Realist against William of Occam.\n\n[1601] Legend of Good Women, ll. 1039-43; Parliament of Fowls,\nll. 199-200.\n\n[1602] Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 438 (440).\n\n[1603] Id. 653-61 (655-63). Cp. Tale of the Wife of Bath; 1-25.\n\n[1604] Legend of Good Women, prol. ll. 1-9; Knight's Tale, ll. 1951-56\n(2809-14 of MS. group A).\n\n[1605] The notion connects with the spurious Ploughman's Tale and\nPilgrim's Tale, as to which see Lounsbury, as cited, i, 460-73;\nii, 460-69.\n\n[1606] Vision of Piers Ploughman, ll. 5809 sq. Wright's ed. i, 179-80.\n\n[1607] Chaucer's Boece, B. I. Prose iv. ll. 223-26, in Skeat's\nStudent's Chaucer.\n\n[1608] Mosheim, 14 Cent. Pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7 36, and note. Cp. Green,\nShort History of the English People, ch. v, \u00a7 3, ed. 1881, p. 235.\n\n[1609] Cp. Green, Short Hist. ch. v, \u00a7 5; Massingberd, The English\nReformation, p. 171.\n\n[1610] Cited by Lechler, Wycliffe and his English Precursors,\nEng. tr. 1-vol. ed. p. 440.\n\n[1611] Cp. Prof. Montagu Burrows, Wiclif's Place in History, 1884,\np. 49. Maitland (Eight Essays, 1852) suggested derivation from the\nmovement of Abbot Joachim and others of that period.\n\n[1612] Wilkins' Concilia, ii, 124.\n\n[1613] Cp. Vaughan, as cited by Hardwick, Church History: Middle Age,\np. 402.\n\n[1614] Hardwick, pp. 417, 418. The doctrine of purgatory was, however,\nsoon renounced by the Lollards (id. p. 420).\n\n[1615] See the passages cited in Lewis's Life of Wiclif, ed. 1820,\npp. 224-25. Cp. Burrows, as cited, p. 19; Le Bas, Life of Wiclif,\n1832, pp. 357-59.\n\n[1616] Lechler, Wycliffe and his Eng. Precursors, pp. 371-76; Hardwick,\np. 412.\n\n[1617] Cp. Green, Short History, ch. v, \u00a7 4.\n\n[1618] Lechler, p. 236. It forms bk. vi of Wiclif's theological Summa.\n\n[1619] Baxter, in his address \"To the doubting and unbelieving\nreaders\" prefixed to his Reasons of the Christian Religion, 1667,\nnames Savonarola, Campanella, Ficinus, Vives, Mornay, Grotius,\nCameron, and Micraelius as defenders of the faith, but no writer of\nthe fourteenth century.\n\n[1620] Cp. Le Bas, pp. 342-43; and Hardwick, Church Hist.: Middle Age,\np. 415.\n\n[1621] Lechler, p. 236.\n\n[1622] Blunt, Reformation of the Church of England, 1892, i, 284,\nand refs.\n\n[1623] It is noteworthy that French culture affected the very\nvocabulary of Dante, as it did that of his teacher, Brunetto\nLatini. Cp. Littr\u00e9, Etudes sur les barbares et le moyen \u00e2ge, 3e\n\u00e9dit. pp. 399-400. The influence of French literature is further seen\nin Boccaccio, and in Italian literature in general from the thirteenth\nto the fifteenth century. Gebhart, pp. 209-21.\n\n[1624] Saintsbury, Short Hist. of French Lit. 1882, p. 57.\n\n[1625] Passage not translated in the old Eng. version.\n\n[1626] Cp. Lenient, pp. 159-60.\n\n[1627] Lenient, p. 169.\n\n[1628] This declaration, as it happens, is put in the mouth of\n\"False-Seeming,\" but apparently with no ironical intention.\n\n[1629] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. fran\u00e7aise, p. 132.\n\n[1630] Id. p. 135.\n\n[1631] Duruy, Hist. de France, ed. 1880, i, 440-41; Gebhart, Orig. de\nla Renais. pp. 2, 19, 24-29, 32-35, 41-50; Le Clerc and Renan,\nHist. Litt. de la France au XIVe Si\u00e8cle, i, 4; ii, 123; Littr\u00e9,\n\u00c9tudes, as cited, pp. 424-29.\n\n[1632] Duruy, i, 409 sq., 449; Gebhart, pp. 35-41; Morin, Origines\nde la D\u00e9mocratie: La France au moyen \u00e2ge, 3e \u00e9dit. 1865, p. 304 sq.\n\n[1633] Cp. Michelet, Hist. de France, vii, Renaissance, Introd. \u00a7\nii. Between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries, he insists,\n\"le jour baisse horriblement.\"\n\n[1634] Ozanam, Dante, 6e \u00e9dit. pp. 47, 78, 108-10.\n\n[1635] Littr\u00e9, \u00c9tudes, as cited, pp. 411-13.\n\n[1636] Le Clerc, as cited, p. 259; Gebhart, pp. 48-49.\n\n[1637] Sir James F. Stephen, Hor\u00e6 Sabbatic\u00e6, 1892, i, 42.\n\n[1638] The Italians said of the French Pope Clement VI (1342-52)\nthat he had small religion. M. Villani, Cronica, iii, 43 (ed. 1554).\n\n[1639] Cp. Dr. T. Arnold, Lect. on Mod. Hist. 4th ed. pp. 111-18;\nBuckle, 3 vol. ed. i, 326-27 (1-vol. ed. p. 185); Stephen, as cited,\ni, 121. \"It is hardly too much to say that Comines's whole mind was\nhaunted at all times and at every point by a belief in an invisible\nand immensely powerful and artful man whom he called God\" (last cited).\n\n[1640] Buckle, i, 329 (1-vol. ed. p. 186).\n\n[1641] Buckle, ii, 133 (1-vol. ed. p. 361); Hallam, Middle Ages, iii,\n395-96. Religious ceremonies were attached to the initiation of knights\nin the 13th century. Seignobos, Hist. de la Civilisation, ii, 15.\n\n[1642] Duruy, i, 368, 373-74. Cp. J. Jolly, Philippe le Bel, 1869,\nl. iii, ch. iv, p. 249. It is to be remembered that Philippe had\nfor years been sorely pressed for money to retrieve his military\ndisasters. See H. Hervieu, Recherches sur les premiers \u00e9tats g\u00e9n\u00e9raux,\n1879, pp. 89 sq., 99 sq. He used his ill-gotten gains to restore the\ncurrency, which he had debased. Id. pp. 101-102.\n\n[1643] Haur\u00e9au, Hist. de la philos. scolastique, Ptie II, vol. ii,\n359-60.\n\n[1644] Poole, Illustrations, p. 265. Cp. Villari, Life and Times\nof Machiavelli, ii, 64-67; Tullo Massarani, Studii di politica e di\nstoria, 2a ed. 1899, pp. 112-13; Neander, Ch. Hist. Eng. tr. 1855,\nix, 33.\n\n[1645] Poole, pp. 266-76. Cp. Hardwick, Church History, Middle Age,\n1853, pp. 346-47.\n\n[1646] Ueberweg, i, 461-62.\n\n[1647] \"His (Occam's) philosophy is that of centuries later.\" (Milman,\nLatin Christianity, ix, 148. Cp. pp. 150-51.)\n\n[1648] Cp. Hardwick, p. 377, and Rettberg, as there cited.\n\n[1649] Milman, Latin Christianity, ix, 75-76; Mosheim, 14 C. pt. ii,\nch. iii, \u00a7 5. As to his religious bigotry, see Milman, p. 142, notes.\n\n[1650] Ueberweg, i, 460-64; cp. Poole, Illustrations, pp. 275-81.\n\n[1651] James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind,\ned. 1869, i, 250-51.\n\n[1652] Cp. Ueberweg, p. 464. Mr. Poole's judgment (p. 280) that\nOccam \"starts from the point of view of a theologian\" hardly does\njustice to his attitude towards theology. Occam had indeed to profess\nacceptance of theology; but he could not well have made less account\nof its claims.\n\n[1653] Ueberweg, pp. 465-66.\n\n[1654] Id. p. 466.\n\n[1655] Id. ib.\n\n[1656] Poole, p. 281.\n\n[1657] Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, i, 37, citing John\nof Goch, De libertate Christiana, lib. i, cc. 17, 18. Compare the\nAverro\u00efst propositions of 1269-1277, given above, pp. 319-20.\n\n[1658] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 187-88 (Eng. tr. i, 225-26).\n\n[1659] Reuter, Gesch. der religi\u00f6sen Aufkl\u00e4rung im Mittelalter, i, 164.\n\n[1660] Gervinus, Gesch. der deutschen Dichtung, 5te Ausg. i,\n489-99. Even in the period before the Minnesingers the clerical\npoetry had its anti-clerical side. Id. p. 194. Towards the end of the\n12th century Nigellus Wireker satirized the monks in his Brunellus,\nseu speculum stultorum. Menzel, Gesch. der Deutschen, Cap. 252. See\nMenzel's note, before cited, for a remarkable outbreak of anti-clerical\nif not anti-Christian satire, in the form of sculpture in an ancient\ncarving in the Strasburg Cathedral.\n\n[1661] Reuter, Gesch. der relig. Aufkl\u00e4rung, ii, 62-63; Gervinus, i,\n523; ii, 69; Kurtz, Gesch. der deutschen Litteratur, 1853, i, 428,\ncol. 2.\n\n[1662] Milman, Latin Chr., ix, 125. Albert was an Aristotelian--a\ncircumstance which makes sad havoc of Menzel's proposition (Geschichte,\nCap. 251) that the \"German spirit\" did not take naturally to\nAristotle. Menzel puts the fact and the theory on opposite pages.\n\n[1663] Milman, Latin Christianity, ix, 258. Cp. p. 261.\n\n[1664] For a full account of Eckhart's teaching see Dr. A. Lasson's\nmonograph (\u00a7 106) in Ueberweg's Hist. of Philos., i, 467-84; also\nUllmann, Reformers before the Ref., ii, 23-31. Cp. Lea, Hist. of\nInquis., ii, 354-59, 362-69, as to the sects. As to Tauler, see\nMilman, ix, 255-56. He opposed the more advanced pantheism of the\nBeghards. Id. p. 262.\n\n[1665] In the 400 years following its publication there were published\nover 6,000 separate editions.\n\n[1666] Bk. i, ch. ii, 1, 2.\n\n[1667] Bk. i, ch. iii. 1, 2.\n\n[1668] Id. \u00a7 5.\n\n[1669] J. A. Symonds writes that in the age of Dante, Petrarch,\nand Boccaccio \"what we call the Renaissance had not yet arrived\"\n(Renaissance in Italy: Age of the Despots, ed. 1897, p. 9).\n\n[1670] Cp. Renan, Averro\u00e8s, 3e \u00e9dit. pp. 280-82, 295; Lewes, Hist. of\nPhilos., 4th ed. ii, 67; Reuter, Gesch. der relig. Aufkl\u00e4rung im\nMittelalter, i, 139-41. It is noteworthy that the troubadour, Austore\nd'Orlac, in cursing the crusades and the clergy who promoted them,\nsuggests that the Christians should turn Moslems, seeing that God is\non the side of the unbelievers (Gieseler, Per. III. Div. III, \u00a7 58,\nnote 1).\n\n[1671] Cp. Burckhardt, Civ. of the Renais. in Italy, Eng. tr. ed. 1892,\npp. 490, 492.\n\n[1672] Id. p. 333.\n\n[1673] Hardwick, p. 354, note.\n\n[1674] Cp. Hardwick, p. 361; \"Janus,\" The Pope and the Council, p. 308.\n\n[1675] Burckhardt, p. 497, note.\n\n[1676] Villari, Life and Times of Machiavelli, Eng. tr. 3rd ed. vol. i,\nintrod. p. 115. Cp. Burckhardt, pp. 35, 226.\n\n[1677] As to its history see \"Janus,\" The Pope and the Council,\np. 131 sq.\n\n[1678] Villari, as last cited, pp. 98, 108.\n\n[1679] It is noteworthy, however, that he did not detect, or at least\ndid not declare, the spuriousness of the text of the three witnesses\n(Hallam, Lit. of Europe, iii, 58, note). Here the piety of Alfonso,\nwho knew his Bible by heart, may have restrained him.\n\n[1680] See the passages transcribed by Hallam, Lit. of Europe, i, 148.\n\n[1681] Villari, as last cited, pp. 98-101.\n\n[1682] Cp. Gebhart, Renaissance en Italie, pp. 72-73; Burckhardt,\npp. 458-65; Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, i, 5-4. \"The authors of\nthe most scandalous satires were themselves mostly monks or benficed\npriests.\" (Burckhardt, p. 465.)\n\n[1683] Burckhardt, pp. 451-61; J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy:\nThe Age of the Despots, ed. 1897, p. 359; Villari, Life of Machiavelli,\ni, 153.\n\n[1684] See it well analysed by Owen, pp. 147-60. Cp. Hallam,\nLit. of Europe, i, 199. M. Perrens describes Pulci as \"emancipated\nfrom all belief\"; but holds that he \"bantered the faith without the\nleast design of attacking religion\" (La Civilisation florentine,\np. 151). But cp. Villari, Life of Machiavelli, i, 159-60.\n\n[1685] Owen, p. 160. So also Hunt, and the editor of the Parnaso\nItaliano, there cited.\n\n[1686] Below, \u00a7 4.\n\n[1687] Above, p. 361.\n\n[1688] Lea, ii, 271-72. Cp. pp. 282-84.\n\n[1689] Burckhardt, p. 502.\n\n[1690] Id. p. 500.\n\n[1691] Id. p. 502.\n\n[1692] Id. p. 503, note.\n\n[1693] Cp. R. C. Christie's essay, \"Pomponatius--a Skeptic,\" in\nhis Selected Essays and Papers, 1902, pp. 131-32; Renan, Averro\u00e8s,\npp. 345-352.\n\n[1694] Comm. in Aristot. de Gen. et Corr., lib. i, fol. 29 G. cited\nby Ellis in note on Bacon, who quotes a version of the phrase in the\nDe Augmentis, B. v, end. As to Nifo see Nourrisson, Machiavel, 1875,\nch. xii.\n\n[1695] As to ribald blasphemies by the Roman clergy see Erasmus,\nEpist. xxvi, 34 (ed. le Clerc), cited by Hardwick, Church History:\nMiddle Age, p. 378, note.\n\n[1696] Lit. Hist. of Europe, i, 142. Following Eichhorn, Hallam notes\nvindications by Marsilio Ficino, Alfonso de Spina (a converted Jew),\n\u00c6neas Sylvius, and Pico di Mirandola; observing that the work of the\nfirst-named \"differs little from modern apologies of the same class.\"\n\n[1697] Cp. Ranke, History of the Popes, Bohn tr. ed. 1908, i, 58.\n\n[1698] Epist. above cited; Burigni, Vie d'Erasme, 1757, i, 148-49.\n\n[1699] Paul Canensius, cited by Ranke.\n\n[1700] This view seems to solve the mystery as to Perugino's\ncreed. Vasari (ed. Milanesi, iii, 589) calls him \"persona di assai poca\nreligione.\" Mezzanotte (Della vita di P. Vanucci, etc. 1836, p. 172\nsq.) indignantly rejects the statement, but notes that in Ciatti's\nMS. annals of Perugia, ad ann. 1524, the mind of the painter is said to\nhave been come una tavola rasa in religious matters. Mezzanotte holds\nthat Pietro has been there confounded with a later Perugian painter.\n\n[1701] Leonardo da Vinci, Frammenti letterari e filosofici, trascelti\npar Dr. Edmondo Solmi. Firenze, 1900. Pensieri sulla scienza, 19, 20.\n\n[1702] Ib. 14, 22, 23, 24, 92.\n\n[1703] Ib. 36-38, 41.\n\n[1704] Some of the humanists called him unlettered (omo senza lettere),\nand he calls them gente stolta, a foolish tribe.\n\n[1705] Ib. 44, 46, 47, 48, 58, 60, 63, etc.\n\n[1706] Ib. 45.\n\n[1707] Ib. 30.\n\n[1708] Ib. 57.\n\n[1709] Ib. 66. Cp. 67-69.\n\n[1710] Id. Pensieri sulla natura. 80-86.\n\n[1711] Shortly after Leonardo we find Girolamo Fracastorio (1483-1553)\ndeveloping the criticism further, and in particular disposing of the\nfutile formula, resorted to by the scientific apriorists of the time,\nthat the \"plastic force of nature\" created fossils like other things.\n\n[1712] Id. Pensieri sulla morale, passim.\n\n[1713] Ib. 7.\n\n[1714] Ib. 44, 45.\n\n[1715] Ib. 46, 47.\n\n[1716] Cp. Burckhardt, pp. 524, 541, notes; Villari, Life of\nMachiavelli, i, 124. \"It was easy to see by his words that he hoped\nfor the restoration of the pagan religion\" (Id. Life of Savonarola,\nEng. tr. p. 51).\n\n[1717] Only a few fragments of it survive. Villari, Life of Savonarola,\np. 51.\n\n[1718] Carriere, Philos. Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit, 1847,\np. 13.\n\n[1719] Cp. Villari, Life of Machiavelli, i, 128-34.\n\n[1720] Cp. Perrens, Hist. de Florence (1434-1531), i, 258.\n\n[1721] Id. p. 257. Cp. Villari, Machiavelli, i, 132; Savonarola, p. 60.\n\n[1722] \"Of the majority of the twenty-two languages he was supposed to\nhave studied, he knew little more than the alphabet and the elements\nof grammar\" (Villari, Machiavelli, i, 135). As to Pico's character,\nwhich was not saintly, see Perrens, Histoire, as cited, i, 561-62.\n\n[1723] Cp. Greswell, Memoirs of Politianus, Picus, etc. 2nd ed. 1805,\n235; McCrie, The Reformation in Italy, ed. 1856, p. 33, note.\n\n[1724] Greswell, pp. 330-31.\n\n[1725] Cp. K. M. Sauer, Gesch. der italien. Litteratur, 1883, p. 109;\nVillari, Machiavelli, i, 138.\n\n[1726] Villari, Machiavelli, i, 133.\n\n[1727] Greswell, pp. 331-32.\n\n[1728] Discorsi sopra Tito Livio, i, 12.\n\n[1729] Istorie fiorentine, liv. i; Discorsi, i, 12.\n\n[1730] Discorsi, ii, 2.\n\n[1731] For another point of view see Owen, as cited, p. 167.\n\n[1732] In the Italian translation of Bacon's essays, made for Bacon\nin 1618 by an English hand, Machiavelli is branded in one passage as\nan impio, and in another his name is dropped. See Routledge ed. of\nBacon's Works, pp. 749, 751. The admiring Paolo Giovio called him\nirrisor et atheos; and Cardinal Pole said the Prince was so full of\nevery kind of irreligion that it might have been written by the hand\nof Satan (Nourrisson, Machiavel, 1875, p. 4).\n\n[1733] Burckhardt, pp. 499-500. Cp. Owen, pp. 165-68. It is thus\nimpossible to be sure of the truth of the statement of Gregorovius\n(Lucrezia Borgia, Eng. tr. 1904, p. 25) that \"There were no women\nskeptics or freethinkers; they would have been impossible in the\nsociety of that day.\" Where dissimulation of unbelief was necessarily\nhabitual, there may have been some women unbelievers as well as\nmany men.\n\n[1734] Owen's characterization of Machiavelli's Asino d'oro as a\n\"satire on the freethought of his age\" (p. 177) will not stand\ninvestigation. See his own note, p. 178.\n\n[1735] Discorsi, i, 56.\n\n[1736] As we saw, Polybius in his day took a similar view, coming\nas he did from Greece, where military failure had followed on a\ncertain growth of unbelief. Machiavelli was much influenced by\nPolybius. Villari, ii, 9.\n\n[1737] Cp. Tullo Massarani, Studii di letteratura e d'arte, 1809,\np. 96.\n\n[1738] Discorsi, i, 15.\n\n[1739] Id. i, 11, end.\n\n[1740] Villari, ii, 93-94.\n\n[1741] Burckhardt, p. 464; Owen, p. 180, and refs.\n\n[1742] Owen, p. 181. See the whole account of Guicciardini's rather\nconfused opinions.\n\n[1743] Though Italy had most of what scientific knowledge\nexisted. Burckhardt, p. 292.\n\n[1744] \"A man might at the same time be condemned as a heretic in Spain\nfor affirming, and in Italy for denying, the reality of the witches'\nnightly rides\" (The Pope and the Council, p. 258).\n\n[1745] The Pope and the Council, pp. 249-61. It was another Spina\nwho wrote on the other side.\n\n[1746] F. Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi, 1868, p. 30.\n\n[1747] Owen, pp. 197-98; Renan, Averro\u00e8s, pp. 353-62; Christie,\nas cited, p. 133.\n\n[1748] Cp. Owen, pp. 201, 218; Lange, i, 183-87 (tr. i, 220-25). He,\nhowever, granted that the mass of mankind, \"brutish and materialized,\"\nneeded the belief in heaven and hell to moralize them (Christie,\npp. 140-41).\n\n[1749] This principle, though deriving from Averro\u00efsm, and condemned,\nas we have seen, by Pope John XXI, had been affirmed by so high\nan orthodox authority as Albertus Magnus. Cp. Owen, pp. 211-12,\nnote. While thus officially recognized, it was of course denounced\nby the devout when they saw how it availed to save heretics from\nharm. Mr. Owen has well pointed out (p. 238) the inconsistency of\nthe believers who maintain that faith is independent of reason, and\nyet denounce as blasphemous the profession to believe by faith what\nis not intelligible by philosophy.\n\n[1750] Owen, pp. 209, note. \"Son \u00e9cole est une \u00e9cole de la\u00efques. de\nm\u00e9decins, d'esprits forts, de libres penseurs\" (Bouillier, Hist. de\nla philos. cart\u00e8sienne, 1854, i, 3).\n\n[1751] Owen. p. 210; Christie, p. 151.\n\n[1752] Christie, pp. 141-47.\n\n[1753] Id. p. 149.\n\n[1754] Burckhardt, p. 291.\n\n[1755] Gebhart, pp. 59-63; Burckhardt, p. 211.\n\n[1756] Cp. Burckhardt, p. 291.\n\n[1757] Burckhardt, pp. 279-80; Villari, Life of Machiavelli,\npp. 106-107.\n\n[1758] Burckhardt, pt. iii, ch. xi.\n\n[1759] Dr. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages,\n1895, i, 265. Cp. Renan, Averro\u00e8s, Avert.\n\n[1760] Schechter, Studies in Judaism, pp. 213, 420-21.\n\n[1761] Notice of Bonaventure Desperiers, by Bibliophile Jacob\n[i.e. Lacroix], in 1841 ed. of Cymbalum Mundi, etc.\n\n[1762] For a solution of the enigma of the title see the Clef of Eloi\nJohanneau in ed. cited, p. 83. Cymbalum mundi was a nickname given\nin antiquity to (among others) an Alexandrian grammarian called\nDidymus--the name of doubting Thomas in the gospel. The book is\ndedicated by Thomas Du Clevier \u00e0 son ami Pierre Tyrocan, which is\nfound to be, with one letter altered (perhaps by a printer's error),\nan anagram for Thomas Incr\u00e9dule \u00e0 son ami Pierre Croyant, \"Unbelieving\nThomas to his friend Believing Peter.\" Clef cited, pp. 80-85.\n\n[1763] Origen, Against Celsus, vi, 78.\n\n[1764] The readiness of piety in all ages to invent frightful deaths\nfor unbelievers must be remembered in connection with this and other\nrecords. Cp. Notice cited, p. xx, and note. The authority for this is\nHenri Estienne, Apologie pour H\u00e9rodote, liv. i, chs. 18, end, and 26.\n\n[1765] So Charles Nodier, cited in the Notice by Bibliophile Jacob,\npp. xxiii-xxiv. The English translator of 1723 professed to see no\nunbelief in the book.\n\n[1766] Perrens, Les Libertins en France au XVIIe si\u00e8cle, 1896, p. 41.\n\n[1767] Notice historique in Bibliophile Jacob's ed. of Rabelais,\n1841; Stapfer, Rabelais, pp. 6, 10; W. F. Smith, biog. not. to his\ntrans. of Rabelais, 1893, i, p. xxii.\n\n[1768] Rathery, notice biog. to ed. of Burgaud des Marets, i,\n12. Jacob's account of his relations with his friends Bud\u00e9 and Amy\nat this stage is erroneous. See Rathery, p. 14.\n\n[1769] Le Double, Rabelais anatomiste et physiologiste, 1889, pp. 12,\n425; and pref. by Professor Duval, p. xiii; Stapfer, p. 42; A. Tilley,\nFran\u00e7ois Rabelais, 1907, pp. 74-76.\n\n[1770] In the same year he was induced to publish what turned out to\nbe two spurious documents purporting to be ancient Roman remains. See\nHeulhard, Rabelais l\u00e9giste, and Jacob, Notice, p. xviii.\n\n[1771] Rathery, p. 23.\n\n[1772] Jacob, p. xix.\n\n[1773] As to this see Tilley, p. 53.\n\n[1774] See it at the end of the ed. of Bibliophile Jacob.\n\n[1775] Cp. Stapfer, pp. 24-25; Rathery, p. 26.\n\n[1776] Rathery, p. 30.\n\n[1777] Cp. Jacob, Notice, p. xxxviii; Smith, ii, 524.\n\n[1778] Rathery, p. 71; Stapfer, pp. 42-43.\n\n[1779] Stapfer, p. 53.\n\n[1780] Jacob, p. xxxix.\n\n[1781] Rathery, pp. 44-49. The notion of Lacroix, that Rabelais\nvisited England, has no evidence to support it. Cp. Rathery, p. 49,\nand Smith, p. xxiii.\n\n[1782] Cp. Jacob, p. lx. Ramus himself, for his attacks on the\nauthority of Aristotle, was called an atheist. Cp. Waddington, Ramus,\nsa vie, etc., 1855, p. 126.\n\n[1783] See the list in the avertissement of M. Burgaud des Marets\nto \u00e9d. Firmin Didot. Cp. Stapfer, pp. 63, 64. For example, the\n\"theologian\" who makes the ludicrous speech in Liv. i, ch. xix, becomes\n(chs. 18 and 20) a \"sophist\"; and the sorbonistes, sorbonicoles,\nand sorbonagres of chs. 20 and 21 become mere maistres, magistres,\nand sophistes likewise.\n\n[1784] It is doubtful whether Rabelais wrote the whole of the notice\nprefixed to the next edition, in which this attack was made; but it\nseems clear that he \"had a hand in it\" (Tilley, Fran\u00e7ois Rabelais,\np. 87).\n\n[1785] R. Christie, \u00c9tienne Dolet, pp. 369-72. Christie, in his\nvacillating way, severely blames Dolet, and then admits that the\nbook may have been printed while Dolet was in prison, and that in\nany case there was no malice in the matter. This point, and the\npersistent Catholic calumnies against Dolet, are examined by the\nauthor in art. \"The Truth about \u00c9tienne Dolet,\" in National Reformer,\nJune 2 and 9, 1889.\n\n[1786] Epistre, pref. to Liv. iv. Ed. Jacob, p. 318.\n\n[1787] Cp. W. F. Smith's trans. of Rabelais, 1893, ii, p. x. In this\nbook, however, other hands have certainly been at work. Rabelais left\nit unfinished.\n\n[1788] Jacob, Notice, p. lxiii; Stapfer, p. 76.\n\n[1789] So Rathery, p. 60; and Stapfer, p. 78. Jacob, p. lxii, says\nhe resigned only one. Rathery makes the point clear by giving a copy\nof the act of resignation as to Meudon.\n\n[1790] A Discourse ... against Nicholas Machiavel, Eng. tr. (1577),\ned. 1608, Epist. ded. p. 2.\n\n[1791] Liv. iv, ch. xliii.\n\n[1792] Liv. iii, ch. xxiii.\n\n[1793] Liv. iv, ch. xlv-xlviii.\n\n[1794] Liv. iv, ch. xlix sq.\n\n[1795] Liv. iv, ch. xxxii.\n\n[1796] Prof. Stapfer, Rabelais, sa personne, son g\u00e9nie, son oeuvre,\n1889, pp. 365-68. Cp. the Notice of Bibliophile Jacob, ed. 1841 of\nRabelais, pp. lvii-lviii; and Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 39. In his\nyouth he affirmed the doctrine. Stapfer, p. 23.\n\n[1797] Cp. Ren\u00e9 Millet, Rabelais, 1892, pp. 172-80.\n\n[1798] Liv. iii, ch. xxxvi.\n\n[1799] The description of him by one French biographer, M. Boulmier\n(Estienne Dolet, 1857), as \"le Christ de la pens\u00e9e libre\" is a\ngross extravagance. Dolet was substantially orthodox, and even\nanti-Protestant, though he denounced the cruel usage of Protestants.\n\n[1800] Wallace (Antitrinitarian Biography, 1850, ii. 2) asserts\nthat Dolet \"not only became a convert to the opinions of Servetus,\nbut a zealous propagator of them.\" For this there is not a shadow\nof evidence.\n\n[1801] Cp. Voltaire, Lettres sur Rabelais, etc. i.\n\n[1802] Cp. author's art. above cited; R. C. Christie, \u00c9tienne Dolet,\n2nd ed. 1890, p. 100; Octave Galtier, \u00c9tienne Dolet (N.D.), pp. 66,\n94, etc.\n\n[1803] Christie, as cited, pp. 50-58, 105-106; Galtier, p. 26 sq.\n\n[1804] It is to this that Rabelais alludes (ii, 5) when he tells\nhow at Toulouse they \"stuck not to burn their regents alive like\nred herrings.\"\n\n[1805] Christie, p. 80.\n\n[1806] Liv. iii, ch. xxix.\n\n[1807] Christie, p. 86.\n\n[1808] One of his enemies wrote of him that prison was his\ncountry--patria Doleti.\n\n[1809] Proc\u00e8s d'Estienne Dolet, Paris, 1836, p. 11; Galtier, pp. 65-70;\nChristie, pp. 389-90.\n\n[1810] Proc\u00e8s, p. viii.; Galtier, p. 78.\n\n[1811] Galtier, p. 101 sq.; Christie, p. 461.\n\n[1812] A modern French judge, the President Baudrier, was found to\naffirm that the laws, though \"unduly severe,\" were \"neither unduly\nnor unfairly pressed\" against Dolet! Christie, p. 471.\n\n[1813] Concerning whom see Christie, as cited, pp. 29 01.\n\n[1814] Tilley, as last cited, p. 69.\n\n[1815] Christie, p. 317.\n\n[1816] Christie, as cited, pp. 465-67; Lutteroth, La Reformation en\nFrance pendant sa premi\u00e8re p\u00e9riode, 1850, pp. 39-40; Prof. H. M. Baird,\nRise of the Huguenots, 1880, i, 240 sq.\n\n[1817] Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 43; Patin, Lettres,\ned. Reveill\u00e9-Parise, 1846, i, 210.\n\n[1818] Wriothesley's Chronicle (Camden Society, 1875), pp. 107-108.\n\n[1819] Nodier, quoted by Bibliophile Jacob in ed. of Cymbalum Mundi,\nas cited, p. xviii.\n\n[1820] Cp. Brantome, Des dames illustres, OEuvres, ed. 1838, ii, 186.\n\n[1821] Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Marguerite de Navarre (the First),\nnotes F and G.\n\n[1822] Bayle, note N. Cp. Nodier, as cited, p. xix, as to the\ncollaboration of Desperiers and others.\n\n[1823] Bayle, art. Ronsard, note D.\n\n[1824] Garasse, La Doctrine Curieuse des Beaux Esprits de ce Temps,\n1623, pp. 126-27. Ronsard replied to the charge in his poem, Des\nmis\u00e8res du temps.\n\n[1825] Bayle, art. Ronsard, note O. Cp. Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 43.\n\n[1826] MS. 1588. First printed in 1841 by Guhrauer, again in 1857 by\nL. Noack.\n\n[1827] As before noted, he was one of the first to use the\nword. Cp. Lechler, Geschichte des englischen Deismus, pp. 31, 455,\nnotes.\n\n[1828] Bayle, art. Bodin, note O. Cp. Renan, Averro\u00e8s, 3e \u00e9dit. p. 424;\nand the Lettres de Gui Patin, iii, 679 (letter of 27 juillet, 1668),\ncited by Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 43. Leibnitz, in an early\nletter to Jac. Thomasius, speaks of the MS. of the Colloquium,\nthen in circulation, as proving its writer to be \"the professed\nenemy of the Christian religion,\" adding: \"Vanini's dialogues are a\ntrifle in comparison.\" (Philosophische Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, i,\n26; Martineau, Study of Spinoza, p. 77.) Carriere, however, notes\n(Weltanschauung, p. 317) that in later years Leibnitz learned to\nprize Bodin's treatise highly.\n\n[1829] Cp. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i, 66, 87-91. In the\nR\u00e9publique too he has a chapter on astrology, to which he leans\nsomewhat.\n\n[1830] R\u00e9publique, Liv. iv, ch. ii.\n\n[1831] Id. Liv. iv, ch. vii. \"Bodin in this sophistry was undoubtedly\ninsincere\" (Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 159).\n\n[1832] Cp. Perrens, Les Libertins. p. 43.\n\n[1833] Cp. Villemain, Vie de L'Hopital, in \u00c9tudes de l'hist. moderne,\n1846. pp. 363-68, 428.\n\n[1834] Buckle (3-vol. ed. ii, 10; 1-vol. ed. p. 291) errs in\nrepresenting L'Hopital as the only statesman of the time who dreamt of\ntoleration. It is to be noted, on the other hand, that the Huguenots\nthemselves protested against any toleration of atheists or Anabaptists;\nand even the reputed freethinker Gabriel Naud\u00e9, writing his Science\ndes Princes, ou Consid\u00e9rations politiques sur les Coups d'\u00e9tat, in\n1639, defended the massacre on political grounds (Owen, Skeptics of\nthe French Renaissance, p. 470, note). Bodin implicitly execrated\nit. Cp. Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 162.\n\n[1835] Villemain, p. 429.\n\n[1836] Garasse, Doctrine Curieuse, pp. 125~26; M\u00e9moires de Garasse,\ned. Ch. Nisard, 1860, pp. 77-78; Perrens, p. 43.\n\n[1837] Bibliophile Jacob, Introd. to Beroalde de Verville.\n\n[1838] Estienne's full title is: L'Introduction au trait\u00e9 de la\nconformit\u00e9 des merveilles, anciennes avec les modernes: ou, Trait\u00e9\npr\u00e9paratif \u00e0 l'Apologie pour H\u00e9rodote.\n\n[1839] Apologie pour H\u00e9rodote, ed. 1607, pp. 97, 249 (liv. i, chs. xiv,\nxviii.) Cymbalum Mundi, ed. Bibliophile Jacob, pp. xx, 13.\n\n[1840] The index was specially framed to call attention to these\nitems. The entry, \"Fables des dieux des payens cousines germaines\ndes legendes des saints,\" is typical.\n\n[1841] Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Castalion; Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii,\n81; Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, ii, 46-49. Hallam finds Castalio's\nletter to the Duke of Wirtemberg \"cautious\"; but Lecky quotes some\nstrong expressions from what he describes as the preface of Martin\nBellius (Castalio's pseudonym) to Cluten's De Haereticis persequendis,\ned. 1610. Castalio died in 1563. As to his translations from the Bible,\nsee Bayle's note.\n\n[1842] Hallam, ii, 83; McCrie, Reformation in Italy, ed. 1856, p. 231.\n\n[1843] Even St\u00e4helin (Johannes Calvin, ii, 303) condemns Calvin's\naction and tone towards Castalio, though he makes the significant\nremark that the latter \"treated the Bible pretty much as any other\nbook.\"\n\n[1844] Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, p. 169.\n\n[1845] Burckhardt, p. 195.\n\n[1846] Prof. Fortunat Strowski, Histoire du sentiment religieux en\nFrance au 17e si\u00e8cle, Ptie i, De Montaigne \u00e0 Pascal, 1907, pp. 19-23.\n\n[1847] \"Du Vair ne songe pas au M\u00e9diateur; s'il y a dans son trait\u00e9\ndes allusions \u00e0 Notre Seigneur, le nom de J\u00e9sus-Christ ne s'y trouve,\nje crois bien, pas une fois. Il songe encore moins aux pieux adjuvants\nqui excitent l'imagination; pas un mot de l'invocation des saints,\npas un mot des sacrements\" (Strowski, as cited, p. 78).\n\n[1848] Cp. Prof. Thorold Rogers, Economic Interpretation of History,\np. 83.\n\n[1849] In 1387 the Lollards were denounced under that name by the\nBishop of Worcester as \"eternally damned sons of Antichrist.\"\n\n[1850] See the Repressor, Babington's ed. in the Rolls Series, 1860,\nPart ii.\n\n[1851] Hook, Lives of the Archbishops (Life of Bourchier), 1867,\nv, 294-306.\n\n[1852] He repels, e.g., Wiclif's argument that a priest's misconduct\nsufficed to destroy his right to his endowments. Repressor, Babington's\ned. as cited, ii, 413.\n\n[1853] Hook, as cited, v, 309.\n\n[1854] Gardiner, Student's History, p. 330. Cp. Green, ch. vi, \u00a7 i,\n2, pp. 267, 275; Stubbs Const. Hist., iii, 631-33.\n\n[1855] Cp. Pauli, Pictures of Old England, Eng. tr. Routledge's\nrep. pp. 332-36.\n\n[1856] Pauli, p. 332.\n\n[1857] See Arber's reprint.\n\n[1858] Cp. Souchay, Gesch. der deutschen Monarchie, 1861-62, iii,\n230-31.\n\n[1859] On this cp. Souchay, pp. 234-39.\n\n[1860] See a good synopsis in P\u00fcnjer's History of the Christian\nPhilosophy of Religion, Eng. tr. pp. 68-89; and another in Moritz\nCarriere's Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit,\n1847, pp. 16-25, which, however, is open to P\u00fcnjer's criticism that\nit is coloured by modern Hegelianism.\n\n[1861] Dr. Paul Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ricq, Geschiedenis der Inquisitie in de\nNederlanden, 1025-1520, Gent, 1892-1897, ii, 4-9.\n\n[1862] Michelet, Hist. de France, vii--\u00e9d. 1857, pp. 125, 172.\n\n[1863] This name has many forms; and it is contended that Sabieude is\nthe correct one. See Owen, Evenings with the Skeptics, 1881, ii, 423.\n\n[1864] Cp. Hallam, Introd. to Lit. of Europe, ed. 1872, i, 142-44,\nand the analysis in Prof. Dowden's Montaigne, 1905, p. 127 sq.\n\n[1865] Van Hoogstraten, in Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ricq, as cited below.\n\n[1866] Dr. Frazer's assumption (Golden Bough, 3rd ed. pt. i, i, 224)\nthat magic assumes an invariable order of nature, is unsubstantiated\neven by his vast anthropological erudition. Magic varies arbitrarily,\nand the idea of a fixed \"order\" does not belong to the magician's\nplane of thought.\n\n[1867] Maury, La Magie et l'Astrologie, 4e \u00e9d. pp. 214-16.\n\n[1868] \"Judicial astrology ... which supplanted and degraded the art\nof medicine\" (Prof. Clifford Allbutt, Harveian Oration on Science and\nMedieval Thought, 1901, App. p. 113). There is a startling survival\nof it in the physiology of Harvey. Id. p. 45.\n\n[1869] Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.\n\n[1870] Above, p. 385.\n\n[1871] Who, however, was no rationalist, but an orientalizing\nmystic. Cp. Carriere, Die philos. Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit,\n1846, pp. 36-38.\n\n[1872] Cp. Ranke, Hist. of the Ref. in Germany, bk. ii, ch. i\n(Eng. tr. Routledge's 1-vol. ed. 1905, p. 129). The point is fairly put\nby Audin in the introduction to his Histoire de Luther. Compare Green:\n\"The awakening of a rational Christianity, whether in England or in\nthe Teutonic world at large, begins with the Florentine studies of Sir\nJohn Colet\" (Short Hist. ch. vi, \u00a7 iv). Colet, however, was strictly\northodox. Ulrich von Hutten spent five of the formative years of his\nlife in Italy.\n\n[1873] Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, 1852,\np. 205.\n\n[1874] As to the general resentment of the money drain cp. Strauss,\nGespr\u00e4che von Ulrich von Hutten, 1860, Vorrede, p. xiv, and the\ndialogues, pp. 159. 363. Cp. Ranke, bk. ii, ch. i (Eng. tr. as cited,\npp. 123-26).\n\n[1875] See Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, passim. Even\nthe Peasants' Rising was adumbrated in the movement of Hans B\u00f6heim\nof Nikleshausen (fl. 1476), whose doctrine was both democratic\nand anti-clerical. (Work cited, ii, 380-81; cp. Bezold, Gesch. der\ndeutschen Reform. 1890, ch. vii.)\n\n[1876] See Guicciardini's analysis of the parties, cited by\nE. Armstrong in the \"Cambridge Modern History,\" vol. i, The\nRenaissance, p. 170.\n\n[1877] Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy,\nEng. tr. pp. 476-77.\n\n[1878] See the sympathetic analysis of the book by Villari, Life of\nSavonarola, Eng. tr. pp. 582-94, where it is much overrated.\n\n[1879] As to the education of the Florentine common people in the\nfourteenth century cp. Burckhardt, pp. 203-204; Symonds, Age of the\nDespots, p. 202.\n\n[1880] Cp. Armstrong, as cited, pp. 150-51.\n\n[1881] McCrie, Reformation in Italy, ed. 1856, pp. 28-30, 41.\n\n[1882] Id. pp. 54, 68.\n\n[1883] Id. p. 45, citing Reynald's Annales, ad. ann. 1530; Trechsel,\nLelio Sozzini und die Anti-trinitarier seiner Zeit, 1844, pp. 19-35.\n\n[1884] McCrie reasons otherwise, from the fact that the sack of Rome\nwas by many Catholics regarded as a divine judgment on the papacy;\nbut he omits to mention the pestilence which followed and destroyed the\nbulk of the conquering army (Menzel, Gesch. der Deutschen, Cap. 390).\n\n[1885] McCrie, pp. 59-60.\n\n[1886] Id. p. 66.\n\n[1887] Id. pp. 112, 115.\n\n[1888] Id. pp. 89, 98, 215. McCrie thinks it useful to suggest\n(p. 95) that anti-trinitarianism seems to have begun at Siena, \"whose\ninhabitants were proverbial among their countrymen for levity and\ninconstancy of mind\"--citing Dante, Inferno, canto xxix, 121-23. Thus\ndoes theology illumine sociology. In a note on the same page the\nhistorian cites the testimony of Melanchthon (Epist. coll. 852, 941)\nas to the commonness of \"Platonic and skeptical theories\" among his\nItalian correspondents in general; and quotes further the words of\nCalvin, who for once rises above invective to explain as to heresy\n(Opera, viii, 510) that \"In Italis, propter rarum acumen, magis\neminet.\" The historian omits, further, to trace German Unitarianism\nto the levity of a particular community in Germany.\n\n[1889] A. von Reumont, The Carafas of Maddaloni, Eng. tr. 1854,\npp. 33-37; McCrie, p. 122. It was not Protestantism that made the\nrevolt. The contemporary historian Porzios states that the Lutherans\nwere so few that they could easily be counted. Von Reumont, as cited,\np. 33. It was not heresy that moved the Neapolitans, but the knowledge\nthat perjurers could be found in Naples to swear to anything, and\nthat the machine would thus be made one of pecuniary extortion.\n\n[1890] McCrie, Reformation in Italy, p. 131.\n\n[1891] McCrie, pp. 143-44.\n\n[1892] Id. pp. 158-61.\n\n[1893] Id. pp. 161-63. This seems to have been one of the latest\ninstances of enslavement in Italy. As to the selling of many Capuan\nwomen in Rome after the capture of Capua in 1501, see Burckhardt,\np. 279, note.\n\n[1894] McCrie, pp. 140-43.\n\n[1895] Domenico Orano, Liberi Pensatori bruciati in Roma dal XVI\nal XVIII Secolo, Roma, 1904. Giordano Bruno is 77th in the list;\nand there are only eight more. The 85th case was in 1642; and the\nlast--the burning of a dead body--in 1761.\n\n[1896] Orano, p. 13.\n\n[1897] Signor Orano gives the name as Buzio, citing the 1835 Italian\ntranslation of McCrie, and pronouncing Cant\u00f9 (ii, 338) wrong in making\nit Mollio. But in the 1856 ed. of McCrie's work the name is given\n(pp. 57-58, 168-69) as John Mollio. Cant\u00f9 then appears to have been\nright; but the date he gives, 1533, seems to be a blunder.\n\n[1898] McCrie gives this name as Tisserano.\n\n[1899] Orano, p. 6; McCrie, pp. 169-70.\n\n[1900] McCrie, p. 212; Orano, p. 33.\n\n[1901] Orano, pp. 15-16. McCrie, p. 165, says he was strangled;\nbut the official record is \"fu mozza la testa.\"\n\n[1902] Orano, p. 22. As to Carnesecchi's career see McCrie, pp. 173-79;\nand Babington's ed. of Paleario, 1855, Introd. pp. lxv-lxvi.\n\n[1903] McCrie, p. 164. See Trechsel, Lelio Sozzini, p. 35, as to\nBaldo Lupetino.\n\n[1904] As to whom see McCrie, pp. 81-84, 179-82, and the copious Life\nand Times of Aonio Paleario, by M. Young. 2 vols. 1860.\n\n[1905] Marini, Galileo e l'Inquisizione, Roma, 1850, p. 37, note.\n\n[1906] Babington's ed. p. 46 sq.\n\n[1907] It was afterwards unearthed, however; and Babington's ed. (1855)\nis an almost facsimile reprint, with old French and English versions.\n\n[1908] Cp. McCrie, pp. 114-17.\n\n[1909] Cp. McCrie, Ref. in Italy, ch. v; Ref. in Spain, ch. viii;\nGreen, Short Hist. pp. 358, 362.\n\n[1910] Huss, in his youth, at first turned from Wiclif's writings\nwith horror. Bonnechose, The Reformers before the Reformation,\nEng. tr. 1844, i, 72.\n\n[1911] Cp. Krasinski, Histor. Sketch of the Reformation in Poland,\n1838, i, 58.\n\n[1912] Krasinski, Sketch of Relig. Hist. of Slav. Nations, ed. 1851,\npp. 26-27.\n\n[1913] Neander, ix, 242 sq.; Hardwick, pp. 426-27. Militz effected\na remarkable reformation of life in Prague. Neander, p. 241.\n\n[1914] See the very intelligent survey of the situation in Kautsky's\nCommunism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation,\nEng. tr. 1897, p. 35 sq.\n\n[1915] Kautsky, p. 42.\n\n[1916] K. Raumer, Contrib. to the Hist. of the German Universities,\nNew York, 1859, p. 19; Dr. Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the\nMiddle Ages, vol. ii, pt. i, 223-26; Bonnechose, i, 78; Mosheim,\n15 Cent. pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7 6; Gieseler, Per. iii, Div. v, \u00a7 150;\nKrasinski, as cited, pp. 31-33.\n\n[1917] Krasinski, Sketch, p. 33; Kautsky, p. 43; Maclaine's note to\nMosheim, as last cited; Rashdall, pp. 225-26, 254. The exodus has\nbeen much exaggerated. Only 602 were enrolled at Leipzig.\n\n[1918] Many of these were of great beauty and value, and must have\nbeen owned by rich men. Krasinski, Sketch, p. 34.\n\n[1919] Hardwick. p. 433. Jerome caused the bull to be \"fastened to\nan immodest woman,\" and so paraded through the town before being\nburnt. Gieseler, iv, 114, note 15.\n\n[1920] Bonnechose, ii, 122; Gieseler, as cited.\n\n[1921] See Mosheim's very interesting note; and Gieseler, iv, 104-105.\n\n[1922] Krasinski, p. 51.\n\n[1923] For an account of the devices of Catholic historians to explain\naway the Council's treachery see Bonnechose, note E. to vol. i,\np. 270. The Council itself simply declared that faith was not to be\nkept with a heretic. Id. p. 271; Gieseler, p. 121.\n\n[1924] Bonnechose, ii, 118-20. Cp. Krasinski, p. 37.\n\n[1925] Kautsky, pp. 48-49.\n\n[1926] Id. p. 51.\n\n[1927] Id. p. 52.\n\n[1928] Krasinski, p. 65.\n\n[1929] See their principles stated in Kautsky, p. 59.\n\n[1930] \u00c6neas Sylvius, who detested the Taborites, declared them to\nhave only one good quality, the love of letters. Letter to Carvajal,\ncited by Krasinski, p. 93, note.\n\n[1931] Kautsky, pp. 59-67.\n\n[1932] Id. p. 76.\n\n[1933] Kautsky, pp. 78-82. See further the account of Helchitsky's\nbook in Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You, ch. i.\n\n[1934] Hist. of the Prot. Church in Hungary (anon.), Eng. tr. 1854,\np. 17.\n\n[1935] Id. p. 19.\n\n[1936] Id. pp. 23, 28.\n\n[1937] Id. pp. 24, 32, citing the chronicler Thurnschwamm.\n\n[1938] Id. pp. 29-31.\n\n[1939] Hist. of the Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 34.\n\n[1940] Id. p. 37.\n\n[1941] Id. p. 58.\n\n[1942] Id. pp. 69-70.\n\n[1943] Id. pp. 45, 73.\n\n[1944] Id. p. 45.\n\n[1945] Called Blandvater in the History above cited, which is copied\nin this error by Hardwick.\n\n[1946] Schlegel's note to Mosheim, Reid's ed. p. 708.\n\n[1947] Cp. Mosheim, last cit.\n\n[1948] Hist. of the Prot. Church in Hungary, p. 86.\n\n[1949] Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biog. ii, 257-60. Schlegel, as\ncited. Biandrata later gave up his Unitarianism, turning either Jesuit\nor Protestant. He was murdered by his nephew for his money. Wallace,\nii, 144.\n\n[1950] History cited, p. 109. As to the persecutions see pp. 108-15.\n\n[1951] Id. pp. 128-29, 132.\n\n[1952] Id. p. 134.\n\n[1953] Krasinski, Hist. of the Reformation in Poland, 1838, i, 29-30.\n\n[1954] Id. pp. 30-34.\n\n[1955] Hist. of the Reformation in Poland, p. 38.\n\n[1956] Id. i. 40-42.\n\n[1957] Id. p. 45.\n\n[1958] Id. pp. 55-56.\n\n[1959] Id. pp. 47-50.\n\n[1960] Id. pp. 65-66.\n\n[1961] Id. p. 67.\n\n[1962] Hist. of the Reformation in Poland, i, 91-98.\n\n[1963] Id. pp. 111-16.\n\n[1964] Id. p. 134.\n\n[1965] Id. pp. 139, 345, following Wengierski; Wallace,\nAntitrin. Biog. ii, Art. 41.\n\n[1966] Krasinski, pp. 143, 344, note.\n\n[1967] Id. i, 163.\n\n[1968] Id. p. 173, note.\n\n[1969] Id. pp. 176-77.\n\n[1970] I.e., Peter of Goniond, a small town in Podlachia.\n\n[1971] Krasinski, i, 346-48; Mosheim. 16 Cent. sect. III, pt. ii,\nch. iv, \u00a7 7; and Schlegel's and Reid's notes.\n\n[1972] Cp. Mosheim, chapter last cited, \u00a7 15 sq.\n\n[1973] Krasinski, i, 357.\n\n[1974] Wallace, Antitrin. Biog. ii, 181-82.\n\n[1975] Krasinski, pp. 357-60.\n\n[1976] Id. p. 363.\n\n[1977] Krasinski, Ref. in Poland, ii, 93-94; Rel. Hist. of\nSlav. Nations, p. 188.\n\n[1978] Lutteroth, La Reformation en France pendant sa premi\u00e8re p\u00e9riode,\np. 2.\n\n[1979] A. A. Tilley, in vol. ii of Camb. Mod. Hist. The Reformation,\nch. ix. p. 281.\n\n[1980] Prof. H. M. Baird, Hist. of the Rise of the Huguenots, 1880,\ni, 33.\n\n[1981] Id. i, 35.\n\n[1982] Tilley, as cited, p. 281.\n\n[1983] Lutteroth, pp. 14-16.\n\n[1984] Tilley, p. 282. The translation was notable as a revision of\nthe Vulgate version, which was printed side by side with it.\n\n[1985] Lutteroth, pp. 3-4; Baird, i, 79.\n\n[1986] Michelet, Hist. de France, tom. x, La R\u00e9forme, ch. viii.\n\n[1987] Lutteroth, p. 9.\n\n[1988] Michelet. \u00e9d. 1884, x, 308; Baird, i, 80, note.\n\n[1989] See Baird, i, 91, note, as to the dates, which are usually\nput a year too early.\n\n[1990] Baird, i, 95-96, and note.\n\n[1991] Id. p. 132.\n\n[1992] Michelet, x, 314; Baird, i, 133-37.\n\n[1993] Lutteroth, p. 15; Michelet. x, 337.\n\n[1994] Other such outrages followed, and did much to intensify\npersecution.\n\n[1995] Erasmus had said that one pamphlet of B\u00e9da's contained \"eighty\nlies, three hundred calumnies, and forty-seven blasphemies\" (Michelet,\nx, 320).\n\n[1996] Baird, i, 143-44; Michelet, x, 321-26.\n\n[1997] Michelet, x, 338-39.\n\n[1998] Baird, i, 149.\n\n[1999] Cp. Tilley, p. 285.\n\n[2000] Lutteroth, p. 17; Michelet, x, 340 (giving the text of a\ncontemporary record); Baird, i, 173-78--a very full account.\n\n[2001] See Baird, i, 176, note, as to the authenticity of the\nutterance, which was doubted by Voltaire.\n\n[2002] Michelet, x, 342; Baird, i, 169.\n\n[2003] Cit. by Baird, i, 24, note.\n\n[2004] Baird, i, 221-22.\n\n[2005] It is endorsed by Professor Clifford, Lectures and Essays,\n2nd ed. p. 335.\n\n[2006] Hist. de la Civ. en France, 13e \u00e9dit. i, 18.\n\n[2007] See the case well made out by Buckle,\nch. viii--1-vol. ed. pp. 311-13.\n\n[2008] See above, p. 348.\n\n[2009] Stubbs, Const. Hist., 3rd ed. ii, 469, 471, 510.\n\n[2010] Cp. Froude, Hist. of England, ed. 1872, i, 173; Burnet,\nHist. of the Reformation, Nares' ed. i, 17-18. Henry, says Burnet,\n\"cherished Churchmen more than any king in England had ever\ndone.\" Compare further Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in\nthe Characteristics, Misc. iii, ch. i, ed. 1733, vol. iii, p. 151;\nLea, Hist. of the Inquisition, as cited above, p. 316.\n\n[2011] Rev. Dr. J. H. Blunt, The Reformation of the Church of England,\ned. 1892, i, 72-100. Wolsey was more patient with Protestant heresy\nthan Henry ever was, though on his death-bed he counselled the king\nto put down the Lutherans.\n\n[2012] Cp. Burnet, as cited, pref. p. xl, and p. 3; Heylyn, Hist. of\nthe Ref. pref.; Blunt, i, 293-94. In 1530 the king had actually\nrepudiated his debts, cancelling borrowings made under the Privy\nSeal, and thus setting an example to the Catholic King Philip II in\na later generation.\n\n[2013] Heylyn, as cited, and i, 123-27, ed. 1849; A. F. Leach, English\nSchools at the Reformation, 1896, pp. 5-6; J. E. G. De Montmorency,\nState Intervention in English Education, 1902, pp. 62-65.\n\n[2014] The subject is treated at some length in The Dynamics of\nReligion, by \"M. W. Wiseman\" (J. M. R.), 1897, pp. 3-46; and in The\nSaxon and the Celt, pp. 92-97.\n\n[2015] Bishop Stubbs, Const. Hist. of England, 3rd ed. iii,\n638. Cp. Bishop Creighton, The Age of Elizabeth, p. 6; Hallam,\nLit. of Europe, i, 366.\n\n[2016] Ranke, History of the Popes, Bohn tr. 1908, p. 60; Hardwick,\nChurch History: Reformation, ed. 1886, p. 250.\n\n[2017] Much of this has never been published. Most of it is in a\nMS. Codex of the City Library at Frankfurt. Extracts in Tentzel's\nSupplementum Histori\u00e6 Gothan\u00e6, 1701, in the Narratio de Eobano Hesso\nof J. Camerarius, 1553, etc. See Strauss's Ulrich von Hutten, 2te\nAufl. 1871, p. 32, n. (ed. 1858, i, 44) et seq.\n\n[2018] Eccles. Hist., bk. i, ch. iv.\n\n[2019] Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten, as cited, pp. 33-35; Bezold,\nGesch. der deutschen Reformation, 1890, p. 226. Bezold describes\nMutianus as \"der freigeistige Kanonikus zu Gotha,\" and points out,\nconcerning his universalism, that \"the historic Christ thus slips\nthrough his fingers.\"\n\n[2020] Bezold, as last cited. \"Here is the skepticism kept in the\nbackground by Mutianus and Celtis, popularized in the rudest way.\"\n\n[2021] Briefe, ed. De Wette, iii, 60.\n\n[2022] Karl Hagen, Deutschlands lit. u. relig. Verh\u00e4ltnisse im\nReformations-zeitalter, 1868, ii, 110; letter of Capito to Zwingli,\nEp. Zwinglii i, 47; F. C. Baur, Kirchengeschichte, iv, 450; Trechsel,\nDie protestantischen Antitrinitarier vor Faustus Socinus, 1839-44, i,\n13-16, 33; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, 1850, i, art. 3, 4, 5.\n\n[2023] Schlegel's note to Mosheim, Reid's ed. p. 689; Baur, iv, 450;\nTrechsel, i, 13-16.\n\n[2024] See a good account of him by Beard, Hibbert Lectures on The\nReformation, p. 204 sq.\n\n[2025] For an impartial criticism of their language see Henderson's\nShort Hist. of Germany, i, 321-23. Cp. Baur, Kirchengeschichte, iv,\n73-76; A. F. Pollard in Camb. Mod. Hist. ii, 192-95; Beard, Hibbert\nLect. on The Reformation, p. 200; and Kautsky, Communism in Central\nEurope in the Time of the Reformation, Eng. tr. 1897, pp. 117-28.\n\n[2026] Kohlrausch, Hist. of Germany, Eng. tr. p. 397.\n\n[2027] To the same effect Menzel, Gesch. der Deutschen, Capp. 391, 492.\n\n[2028] Pollard, as cited, p. 175.\n\n[2029] Id. p. 178.\n\n[2030] Id. pp. 179, 193.\n\n[2031] Id. p. 193.\n\n[2032] Id. p. 192.\n\n[2033] Ranke, as cited, pp. 459-64.\n\n[2034] Id. p. 461.\n\n[2035] Cp. Michelet, Hist. de France, x, La R\u00e9forme, ed. 1882,\npp. 104, 332.\n\n[2036] Cp. Burckhard, De Ulrichi Hutteni Vita Commentarius, 1717, i,\n65. For a general view see Ranke, pp. 126-39.\n\n[2037] Jakob Marx, Die Ursachen der schnellen Verbreitung der\nReformation, 1847, \u00a7 12.\n\n[2038] Prof. J. M. Vincent, in Prof. S. M. Jackson's Huldreich Zwingli,\n1901, p. 37.\n\n[2039] Cp. Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, i, 19; ii,\npassim; Mosheim, 15 Cent. Pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7 22; and Bonet-Maury's\nthesis, De Opera Scholastica Fratrum Vit\u00e6 Communis, 1889.\n\n[2040] Burton, History of Scotland, iii, 399-401. But the end in\nview was probably, as Burton half admits, the recruiting of the\nChurch. Cp. Cosmo Innes, Sketches of Early Scotch History, p. 134 sq.,\nand Scottish Legal Antiquities, pp. 129-30.\n\n[2041] Menzel, Cap. 492.\n\n[2042] Menzel, Cap. 492 (ed. 1837, p. 762).\n\n[2043] Ranke (p. 466) becomes positively lyrical over the happy lot\nof the peasant who received Luther's Catechism (1529). \"It contains\nenduring comfort in every affliction, and, under a slight husk,\nthe kernel of truths able to satisfy the wisest of the wise.\" Such\ndeclamation holds the place that ought to have been filled by an\naccount of economic conditions.\n\n[2044] Bishop Stubbs, Const. Hist. of England, iii. 627. The bishop,\nhowever, holds that in the time of Lollard prosperity the ability to\nread was widely diffused in England (p. 628); and it seems certain\nthat in the first half of the sixteenth century printing multiplied\nenormously. Cp. Michelet. Hist. de France, x, ed. 1884. p. 103 sq.\n\n[2045] Cp. Willis, Servetus and Calvin, 1877, bk. ii. ch. i;\nAudin, Histoire de Calvin, \u00e9d. abr\u00e9g. ch. xxiv-xxvii; and essay on\n\"Machiavelli and Calvin\" in the present writer's Essays in Sociology,\n1903. vol. i.\n\n[2046] Werke., ed. Walch. viii. 2043 (On Ep. to Galat.), cited\nby Beard.\n\n[2047] Id. viii, 1181 (On 1 Cor. xv). Cp. other citations in Beard,\npp. 161-65.\n\n[2048] Green, Short History, ch. vi, \u00a7 v, p. 315.\n\n[2049] Cp. St\u00e4belin, Johannes Calvin, 1863. ii, 282-83.\n\n[2050] He was educated at Basel and Berne and at Vienna University,\nand of all the leading reformers he seems to have had most knowledge\nof classical literature. Hess, Life of Zwingle, Eng. tr. 1812, pp. 2-7,\nfollowing Myconius and Hottinger.\n\n[2051] Chr. Sigwart, Ulrich Zwingli, der Charakter seiner\nTheologie, mit besonderer R\u00fccksicht auf Pico von Mirandula, 1855,\npp. 14-26. Prof. Jackson, Huldreich Zwingli, p. 85, note, states that\nSigwart later modified his views.\n\n[2052] So states Melanchthon, cited by Jackson, p. 85,\nnote. Cp. pp. 201, 390-92.\n\n[2053] Cited by Jackson, p. 316.\n\n[2054] Id. p. 295.\n\n[2055] Id. p. 361.\n\n[2056] Id. p. 361, note.\n\n[2057] Id. According to Heylyn, the Earl of Warwick countenanced\nthe Zwinglians in his intrigues against the Protector Somerset; and\ntheir views were further welcomed by other nobles as making for the\nplundering of rich altars. Hist. of the Reform. of the Ch. of Eng.,\ned. 1849. pref. p. vii. But Heylyn appears to identify the Zwinglians\nat this stage with the Calvinists. Cp. p. x.\n\n[2058] Henry, Das Leben Calvins, ii, Kap. 13, and Beilage 16 (Appendix\nnot given in the English translation); St\u00e4helin, Johannes Calvin,\n1863, i, 399-400.\n\n[2059] Cp. Calvin's letter to Viret, July 2, 1547 (Letters of Calvin,\ned. Bonnet, Eng. tr. 1857, ii, 109), where it is alleged that in the\ntwo pages \"the whole of Scripture is laughed at, Christ aspersed,\nthe immortality of the soul called a dream and a fable, and finally\nthe whole of religion torn in pieces. I do not think he is the author\nof it,\" adds Calvin; \"but as it is in his handwriting he will be\ncompelled to appear in his defence.\"\n\n[2060] St\u00e4helin, i, 400. Henry avows that Gruet was \"subjected\nto the torture morning and evening during a whole month\"\n(Eng. tr. ii. 66). Other biographers dishonestly exclude the fact\nfrom their narratives.\n\n[2061] Cp. Calvin's letter to the Seigneury of Geneva, in Letters,\nii. 254-56.\n\n[2062] Henry, Life of Calvin, Eng. tr. ii, 47-48. Gruet's fragment can\nhardly have been the De Tribus Impostoribus, inasmuch as Calvin makes\nno mention of any reference to Mohammed in his fragment, whereas the\ntitle of the other book proceeded on the specification of Mohammed\nas well as Jesus and Moses. The existing treatise of that name,\nin any case, is of later date. Of the famous treatise in question,\nwhich was not published till long afterwards, Henry admits that it\n\"professes to show tranquilly, and with regret, but without abuse,\"\nthe fraudulent character of the three revealed religions. Concerning\nGruet's essay he asks: \"What are all the anti-Christian writings of the\nFrench Revolution compared with the hellish laughter which seemed to\npeal from its pages?\" For this description he has not a line to cite.\n\n[2063] For instance, one man was accused of having blasphemed against\na storm which terrified the pious.\n\n[2064] D\u00e4ndliker, Geschichte der Schweiz, 1884-87, ii, 559; above,\np. 2.\n\n[2065] Mark Pattison, Essays, 1889, ii, 37.\n\n[2066] D\u00e4ndliker, as cited, endorsing Roget. Cp. Hallam, Lit. of\nEurope, i, 306, and Hamilton, Discus. on Philos. and Lit., 2nd\ned. p. 497, as to the \"dissolution of morals\" in the Lutheran world.\n\n[2067] Mosheim, 14 Cent. sec. iii, Pt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 38-41; Audin,\nHistoire de Calvin, chs. xxix, xxx.\n\n[2068] Histoire de la vie, moeurs, actes, doctrine, constance et mort\nde Iean Calvin, jadis ministre de Geneue, receuilly par M. Hierosme\nHermes Bolsec, docteur m\u00e9decin \u00e0 Lyon. Lyon, 1577.\n\n[2069] The reprint of Bolsec's book prepared by M. L. F. Chastel\n(Lyon, 1875) appears to be faithful; but the Catholic animus shown\ndeprives the annotations of critical value.\n\n[2070] St\u00e4helin, ii, 293-301.\n\n[2071] St\u00e4helin, ii, 293. Arminius pointed to this letter as a proof\nthat Melanchthon had abandoned his early predestinarianism (Declaratio\nof 1608, xx. 2; Works of Arminius, ed. Nichols, i. 578). But of course\nMelanchthon had previously guarded himself in his Loci Communes (1545)\nand elsewhere. (Id. pp. 597-98.)\n\n[2072] St\u00e4helin, ii. 304.\n\n[2073] Latinized name of Miguel Servedo, alias Reves, born at Tudela in\nNavarre in 1511, son of Hernando Villanueva, a notary of an Aragonese\nfamily, of which Villanueva had been the seat. The statement of\nDe la Roche that Servetus was born in Aragon, though long current,\nis now exploded.\n\n[2074] De la Roche, M\u00e9moires de Litt\u00e9rature, cited in An Impartial\nHistory of Servetus, 1724, p. 27.\n\n[2075] Christianismi Restitutio, h.e. Totius ecclesi\u00e6 apostolic\u00e6\nad sua limina vocatio in integrum, restituta cognitione Dei, fidei\nchristian\u00e6, justificationis nostr\u00e6, regenerationis, baptismi, Coen\u00e6\nDomini manducationis. Restituto denique nobis regno coelesti, Babylonis\nimpia captivitate solut\u00e2, et antichristo cum suis penitus destructo,\n1553. Of this book De la Roche (1711) knew of no printed copy, having\nread it solely in MS. Perfect copies, however, are preserved in Vienna\nand Paris; and an imperfect one in Edinburgh University Library has\nbeen completed from the original draft, which has matter not in the\nprinted copy. It has been pointed out that the book is not absolutely\nanonymous, inasmuch as it has at the end the initials M. S. V.--the\nV. standing for the name Villanova or Villanovanus, which he bore\nas a student at Louvain and put on the title-pages of his scientific\nworks; and Servetus is actually introduced as an interlocutor in one\nof the dialogues.\n\n[2076] It is to be remembered, however, that he pronounced all\nTrinitarians to be \"veros Atheos.\" History of Servetus, p. 131.\n\n[2077] \"Mihi ob eam rem moriendum esse certo scio.\"\n\n[2078] Melanchthon, Epist., lib. i, ep. 3; McCrie, Reformation in\nItaly, p. 96; Trechsel, Lelio Sozini, 1844, pp. 38-41.\n\n[2079] Willis, Servetus and Calvin, 1877, p. 117.\n\n[2080] See the careful account of Dr. Austin Flint, of Now York, in\nhis pamphlet, Rabelais as a Physiologist, rep. from New York Medical\nJournal of June 29, 1901.\n\n[2081] Willis, p. 53.\n\n[2082] Letter to Farel, Aug. 20. 1553 (Letters, Eng. tr. ii,\n399). Cp. Henry, ii, 195-96.\n\n[2083] Id. ch. xix. See the letter of Trie, given in Henry's Life\nof Calvin (Eng. tr. ii, 181-85), with the admission that Trie was in\nCalvin's counsels. Henry vainly endeavours to make light (pp. 181-82)\nof Calvin's written words to Farel concerning Servetus: \"Si venerit,\nmodo valeat mea autoritas, vivum exire nunquam patiar.\" Still,\nit must in fairness be remembered that Trie, by his own account,\npersuaded Calvin, who was reluctant, to his act of complicity with\nthe inquisitors of Lyons. Cp. Bossert, Calvin, pp. 160-64.\n\n[2084] Willis, ch. xx. Cp. pp. 457, 503. The defence of Calvin in\nMackenzie's Life (1809, p. 79) on the score that he was not likely\nto communicate with Catholic officials does not meet the case as to\nTrie. And cp. p. 83.\n\n[2085] Ten years after the death of Servetus, Calvin calls him a\n\"dog and wicked scoundrel\" (Willis, p. 530; cp. Hist. of Servetus,\np. 214, citing Calvin's Comm. on Acts xx); and in his Commentary on\nGenesis (i, 3, ed. 1838, p. 9) he says of him: \"Latrat hic obscoenus\ncanis.\" And Servetus had asked his pardon at the end.\n\n[2086] White, Warfare of Science with Theology, 1896, i, 113; History\nof Servetus, 1724, p. 93 sq.: Willis, Servetus and Calvin, p. 325.\n\n[2087] Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, i, 430.\n\n[2088] See St\u00e4helin, Johannes Calvin, ii, 300-308.\n\n[2089] F. A. Cox. Life of Melanchthon, 1815, pp. 523-24; Willis,\npp. 47, 511.\n\n[2090] Table Talk, ch. 43. Cp. Michelet's Life of Luther,\nEng. tr. 1846, pp. 195-96; and Hallam, Lit. of Europe, i,\n360-65. Michelet's later enthusiasm for Luther (Hist. de France, x,\nch. v, ed. 1884, pp. 96-97) is oblivious of many of the facts noted\nin his earlier studies.\n\n[2091] Bayle, Art. Gribaud; Christie, \u00c9tienne Dolet, 2nd\ned. pp. 303-305. Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, ii, Art. 18.\n\n[2092] Benrath, Bernardino Ochino of Siena, Eng. tr. 1876. pp. 268-72,\n287-92.\n\n[2093] McCrie, p. 230; Audin, ch. xxxv; Benrath, Bernardino Ochino,\np. 297.\n\n[2094] Cp. Pusey, Histor. Enquiry into Ger. Rationalism, 1828, p. 14\nsq.; Beard, p. 183.\n\n[2095] St\u00e4helin, ii. 337. Biandrata went to Hungary, where, as we saw\n(p. 421), he turned persecutor, and then Protestant.\n\n[2096] Mosheim, 16 Cent. sec. iii, pt. ii, ch. iv, \u00a7 6; Audin,\npp. 394-99; Aretius, Short Hist. of Valentinus Gentilis, Eng. tr. 1696;\nSt\u00e4helin, ii, 338-45; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, ii, Art. 20.\n\n[2097] See the Historical Account of his life and trial in the Harleian\nMiscellany, iv, 168 sq.\n\n[2098] See St\u00e4helin, ii, 293, 304, etc.\n\n[2099] Cp. Menzel, Geschichte der Deutschen, 3te Aufl. Cap. 417;\nA. F. Pollard, in Cam. Mod. Hist., vol. ii, ch. vii, p. 223; The\nDynamics of Religion, pp. 6-8.\n\n[2100] See Beard, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 189-90, 196. The same avowal\nwas made in the eighteenth century by Mosheim (16 Cent. sec. iii,\npt. ii, \u00a7 5).\n\n[2101] F. A. Cox, Life of Melanchthon, 1815, p. 544, citing Adam,\nVit\u00e6 philosophorum (p. 934). Cp. pp. 528-29.\n\n[2102] K. von Raumer, as cited, pp. 32-37.\n\n[2103] Id. pp. 42-52; Pusey, as cited, p. 112.\n\n[2104] D\u00e4ndliker, Geschichte der Schweiz, ii, 556-59, 622 sq., 728-29.\n\n[2105] See the extracts in Beard's Hibbert Lectures, pp. 340-41.\n\n[2106] Menzel, Geschichte der Deutschen, Cap. 417.\n\n[2107] Cp. Hamilton, Discussions in Philosophy and Literature, 1852,\npp. 493-94, note.\n\n[2108] Mosheim, Reid's ed. pp. 625-26. Such solutions were common in\npapal polity. Id. p. 767.\n\n[2109] Bishop Schuster, Johann Kepler und die grossen kirchlichen\nStreitfragen seiner Zeit, 1888, p. 178 sq. It is noteworthy that\nKepler's mother was sentenced for witchcraft, and saved by the\ninfluence of her son. Johann Keppler's Leben und Werken nach neuerlich\naufgefundenen MSS., von G. L. C. Freiherrn von Breitschwert, 1831,\np. 97 sq.\n\n[2110] \"There is much reason to believe that the fetters upon\nscientific thought were closer under the strict interpretation of\nScripture by the early Protestants than they had been under the older\nchurch\" (White, Warfare of Science with Theology, i, 212). Concerning\nthe Protestant hostility to the Copernican system and to Kepler,\nsee Schuster, as cited, pp. 87 sq., 191 sq.\n\n[2111] White, as cited, i, 129.\n\n[2112] Id. i, 213.\n\n[2113] Id. p. 147.\n\n[2114] Menzel, Cap. 431; D\u00e4ndliker, Geschichte der Schweiz, 1884,\nii, 743. The cantons of Glarus, Outer Appenzell, St. Gall, and the\nGrisons formally rejected the Gregorian Calendar. Id. ib. Zschokke\n(Des Schweizerlands Geschichte, 9te Ausg. 1853, p. 179) implies that\nthe Protestants in general ignored it. Ranke (Hist. of the Popes,\nBohn tr. 1908, i, 337) mentions that \"all Catholic nations took part\nin this reform.\"\n\n[2115] Blunt, Ref. of the Church of England, ed. 1892, ii, 76. Of the\ntwenty-six cathedrals in the reign of Henry VIII, thirteen had been\nmonastic churches, and these were \"razed to the smallest possible\ndimensions as to number and endowments.\" Id. p. 77.\n\n[2116] Strype's Memorials of Cranmer, ed. 1848, ii, 89.\n\n[2117] Blunt, i, 160-61.\n\n[2118] Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, Parker\nSociety, 1816, i, 66.\n\n[2119] Bishop Burnet (Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, Art. 18)\nhas given currency to the pretence that the words \"saved by the\nlaw\" are meant to exclude the sense \"saved in the law,\" the latter\nsalvation being allowed as possible. That there was no such thought on\nthe part of the framers of the Article is shown by the Latin version,\nwhere the expression is precisely \"in lege.\" Burnet prints the Latin,\nyet utterly ignores its significance.\n\n[2120] Book II of the Utopia was written at Antwerp, during his six\nmonths' stay there on an embassy.\n\n[2121] Bk. ii, sec. \"Of the Religions\" (Arber's ed. pp. 143-47;\nMorley's ed. pp. 151-53).\n\n[2122] Green, Short History, ch. vi, \u00a7 4; 1881 ed. p. 311. Compare\nGreen's whole estimate. Michelet's hostile criticism (x, 356) is\nsurprisingly inept. For the elements of naturalism in the Utopia see\nbk. ii, sections \"Of their Journeying\" and \"Of the Religions.\"\n\n[2123] Cp. T. C. Grattan, The Netherlands, 1830, pp. 231-43.\n\n[2124] Who, as it happened, avowed that \"religion was almost extinct\"\nin Europe at the time of the rise of the Lutheran and Calvinistic\nheresies. Concio xxviii. Opera, vi, 296, ed. 1617, cited by Blunt,\nRef. of Church of England, ed. 1892, i, 4, note.\n\n[2125] Cp. The Works of Arminius, ed. by James Nichols, 1825, i,\n580, note.\n\n[2126] Id. p. 581 note.\n\n[2127] Cp. Schuster, as cited, pp. 191 sq., 202 sq.\n\n[2128] Nichols's Arminius, i, p. 233.\n\n[2129] Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 406-416; Pattison, Isaac Casaubon,\n2nd ed. pp. 447-48. As to Casaubon's own intolerance, however, see\np. 446.\n\n[2130] Hallam, ii, 411, 416.\n\n[2131] Beard, Hibbert Lectures, p. 298.\n\n[2132] Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Viret, note D.\n\n[2133] Calvin, scenting his heresy, warned him in 1552 (Bayle,\nart. Marianus Socin, the first, note B); but they remained on\nsurprisingly good terms till Lelio's death in 1562. Cp. St\u00e4helin,\nJohannes Calvin, ii. 321-28.\n\n[2134] Cp. the English History of Servetus, 1724, p. 39, and Trechsel,\nLelio Sozzini und die Antitrinitarier seiner Zeit (Bd. ii. of Die\nprotestantischen Antitrinitarier), 1844, pp. 38-41.\n\n[2135] Cited by Trechsel, p. 42, note.\n\n[2136] Cp. Bayle, art. Ochin; Miss Lowndes, Michel de Montaigne,\np. 266; Owen, French Skeptics, p. 588; Benrath, Bernardino Ochino\nof Siena, Eng. tr. 1876, pp. 268-72. McCrie mentions (Ref. in Italy,\np. 228, note) that Ochino's dialogue on polygamy has been translated\nand published in England \"by the friends of that practice.\" (In\n1657. Rep. 1732.)\n\n[2137] Above, pp. 458-59, Sermons (orthodox) by Ochino were published\nin English in 1548, and often reprinted.\n\n[2138] D'Ewes, Journals of Parliament in the Reign of Elizabeth,\n1682, p. 65.\n\n[2139] See above, p. 459.\n\n[2140] The Scholemaster, Arber's rep. p. 82.\n\n[2141] E.g., work cited, pt. ii, Max. 1, and Max. 6,\nend. Eng. tr. 1608, pp. 93, 128.\n\n[2142] Mark Pattison, Essay on Joseph Scaliger, in Essays, Routledge's\ned. i, 114.\n\n[2143] When Pattison declares that Italian curiosity had bred \"not\nsecret unbelief but callous acquiescence\" he sets up a spurious\nantithesis; and when he generalizes that in Italy \"men did not\ndisbelieve the truths of the Christian religion,\" he understates\nthe case. He errs equally in the opposite direction when he alleges\n(ib. p. 141) that in the France of Montaigne \"a philosophical\nskepticism had become the creed of all thinking men.\" Such a difference\nbetween France and Italy was impossible.\n\n[2144] See McCrie, Reformation in Italy, ed. 1856, pp. 96-99.\n\n[2145] Trechsel, Die protestantischen Antitrinitarier vor Faustus\nSocinus, i (1839), 56; Mosheim, 16 Cent. 3rd sec. pt. ii, ch. iv, \u00a7 3.\n\n[2146] Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 82.\n\n[2147] Art. Acontius, in Dict. of National\nBiog. Cp. J. J. Tayler. Retrospect of the Religious Life of England,\n2nd ed. pp. 205-206. As to the attack on latitudinarianism in the\nThirty-nine Articles, see above, p. 460.\n\n[2148] Bacon, Adv. of Learning, bk. i; Filum Labyrinthi, \u00a7 7 (Routledge\ned. pp. 50, 63, 200).\n\n[2149] Cp. Zeller, Hist. de l'Italie, pp. 400-12; Green, Short\nHist. ch. viii, \u00a7 2.\n\n[2150] McCrie, p. 164. It was said by Scaliger that \"in the time\nof Pius IV [between Paul IV and Pius V] people talked very freely\nin Rome.\" Id. ib. note. \"It was even considered characteristic\nof good society in Rome to call the principles of Christianity in\nquestion. 'One passes,' says P. Ant. Bandino, 'no longer for a man\nof cultivation unless one put forth heterodox opinions concerning the\nChristian faith.'\" Ranke, Hist. of the Popes, Bohn, tr. ed. 1908, i,\n58, citing Caracciolo's MS. Life of Paul IV.\n\n[2151] Hallam, ii, 116.\n\n[2152] Under the alternative titles of The Examination of Men's Wits\nand A Trial of Wits. Rep. 1596, 1604, 1616.\n\n[2153] Carew's tr. ed. 1596, p. 15.\n\n[2154] Id. p. 17.\n\n[2155] Id. p. 19.\n\n[2156] According to Henri Estienne, Postell himself vended strange\nheresies, one being to the effect that to make a good religion there\nwere needed three--the Christian, the Jewish, and the Turkish. Apologie\npour H\u00e9rodote, liv. i, ed. 1607, pp. 98-100.\n\n[2157] Published at Antwerp. It was reprinted in 1582, 1583, and 1590;\ntranslated into Latin in 1583, and frequently reprinted in that form;\ntranslated into English (begun by Sir Philip Sidney and completed by\nArthur Golding) in 1587, and in that form at least thrice reprinted\nin blackletter.\n\n[2158] Ed. 1582, p. 18. Eng. tr. 1601, p. 10.\n\n[2159] Or even in modifying philosophic doctrine, save perhaps\nas regards Descartes, later. Cp. Bartholmess, Hist. crit. des\ndoctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, 1855, i, 21-22.\n\n[2160] See Owen, Skeptics of the French Renaissance, pp. 631-36--a\nfairer and more careful estimate, than that of Hallam, Lit. of Europe,\nii, 111-13.\n\n[2161] Essais, bk. ii, ch. xiii, ed. Firmin-Didot, vol. ii, 2-3;\nKing Lear, i, 2, near end; Les Amants Magnifiques, i, 2; iii,\n1. Montaigne echoes Pliny (Hist. Nat. ii, 8), as Moli\u00e8re does Cicero,\nDe Divinatione, ii, 43.\n\n[2162] \"Our religion,\" he writes, \"is made to extirpate vices; it\nprotects, nourishes, and incites them\" (Essais, liv. ii, ch. xii;\n\u00e9d. Firmin-Didot, ii, 464). \"There is no enmity so extreme as the\nChristian.\" (I quote in general Florio's translation for the flavour's\nsake; but it should be noted that he makes many small slips.)\n\n[2163] Owen was mistaken (Skeptics of the French Renaissance,\np. 414) in supposing that Montaigne spent several years over this\ntranslation. By Montaigne's own account at the beginning of the\nApologie, it was done in a few days. Cp. Miss Lowndes's excellent\nmonograph, Michel de Montaigne, pp. 103, 106.\n\n[2164] \u00c9d. Firmin-Didot, ii, 469.\n\n[2165] Miss Lowndes, p. 145. Cp. Champion, Introd. aux Essais de\nMontaigne, 1900.\n\n[2166] Essais, liv. ii, ch. xii; liv. iii, ch. v. Ed. cited, i, 65;\nii, 309.\n\n[2167] For a view of Montaigne's development see M. Champion's\nexcellent Introduction--a work indispensable to a full understanding\nof the Essais.\n\n[2168] Liv. ii, ch. xi.\n\n[2169] Cp. the Essais, liv. iii, ch. i (ed. cited, ii, 208). Owen gives\na somewhat misleading idea of the passage (French Skeptics, p. 486).\n\n[2170] Miss Lowndes, Michel de Montaigne, p. 131. Cp. Owen, p. 414.\n\n[2171] He was consistent enough to doubt the new cosmology of\nCopernicus (Essais, as cited, i, 615); and he even made a rather\nchildish attack on the reform of the Calendar (liv. iii, chs. x, xi);\nbut he was a keen and convinced critic of the prevailing abuses in\nlaw and education. Owen's discussion of his opinions is illuminating;\nbut that of Champion makes a still more searching analysis as regards\nthe conflicting tendencies in Montaigne.\n\n[2172] Liv. i, ch. liv.\n\n[2173] Liv. i, ch. xx, end.\n\n[2174] Liv. i, ch. xxii.\n\n[2175] Liv. ii, ch. ix.\n\n[2176] Liv. ii, ch. xvii. Ed. cited, ii, 58.\n\n[2177] Id. p. 59.\n\n[2178] Liv. iii, ch. xiii. Ed. cited, ii, 572.\n\n[2179] Cp. the clerical protests of Sterling (Lond. and\nWestm. Rev. July, 1838, p. 346) and Dean Church (Oxford Essays, p. 279)\nwith the judgment of Champion, pp. 159-73. Sterling piously declares\nthat \"All that we find in him [Montaigne] of Christianity would be\nsuitable to apes and dogs....\"\n\n[2180] Liv. i, ch. xxii. Cp. liv. iii, ch. xi.\n\n[2181] Below, \u00a7 5.\n\n[2182] Liv. iii, ch. xi.\n\n[2183] Liv. iii, ch. xi.\n\n[2184] Cp. citations in Buckle, 3-vol. ed. ii, 18, note 42\n(1-vol. ed. p. 296); Locky. Rationalism, i, 92-95; and Perrens,\nLes Libertins, p. 44.\n\n[2185] As to Henri IV see Perrens, p. 53.\n\n[2186] Not, as Owen states (French Skeptics, p. 569), the sister of\nFrancis I, who died when Charron was eight years old, but the daughter\nof Henri II, and first wife of Henri of Navarre, afterwards Henri IV.\n\n[2187] Cp. Prof. Strowski, De Montaigne \u00e0 Pascal, as cited, p. 170\nsq., and the Discours Chr\u00e9tien of Charron--an extract from a letter\nof 1589--published with the 1609 ed. of the Sagesse.\n\n[2188] Cp. Sainte-Beuve, as cited by Owen, p. 571, note, and Owen's\nown words, p. 572.\n\n[2189] Owen, p. 571. Cp. pp. 573, 574.\n\n[2190] Bayle, art. Charron. \"A brutal atheism\" is the account of\nCharron's doctrine given by the Jesuit Garasse. Cp. Perrens, p. 57.\n\n[2191] Owen (p. 570) comes to this conclusion after carefully collating\nthe editions. Cp. p. 587, note. The whole of the alterations, including\nthose proposed by President Jeannin, will be found set forth in the\nedition of 1607, and the reprints of that. One of the modified passages\n(first ed. p. 257; ed. 1609, p. 785) is the Montaignesque comment\n(noted by Prof. Strowski, p. 195) on the fashion in which men's\nreligion is determined by their place of birth. \"C'est du Montaigne\naggrav\u00e9,\" complains M. Strowski. And it is left unchanged in substance.\n\n[2192] \"The first ... attempt made in a modern language to construct\na system of morals without the aid of theology\" (3-vol. ed. ii, 19;\n1-vol. ed. p. 296).\n\n[2193] Cp. Owen, pp. 580-85.\n\n[2194] Buckle, 3-vol. ed. ii, 21; 1-vol. ed. p. 297.\n\n[2195] E.g., the preface to the first edition, ad init.\n\n[2196] E.g., liv. ii, ch. xxviii of revised ed. (ed. 1609, p. 399).\n\n[2197] See the biog. pref. of Labitte to the Charpentier edition,\np. xxv. The Satyre in its own turn freely charges atheism and\nincest on Leaguers; e.g., the Harangue de M. de Lyon, ed. cited,\npp. 79, 86. This was by Rapin, whom Garasse particularly accuses of\nlibertinage. See the Doctrine Curieuse, as cited, p. 124.\n\n[2198] It had to be four times reprinted in a few weeks; and the\nsubsequent editions are innumerable. Ever since its issue it has been\nan anti-fanatical force in France.\n\n[2199] Cp. Ch. Read's introd. to ed. 1886 of the Satyre, p. iii. (An\nexact reprint.) The Satyre anticipates (ed. Read, p. 281; ed. Labitte,\np. 227) the modern saying that the worst peace is better than the\nbest war.\n\n[2200] De Thou, T. v, liv. 98, p. 63, cited in ed. 1699 of the\nSatyre, p. 489. De Thou was one of the Catholics who loathed the\nsavagery of the Church; and was accordingly branded by the pope as\na heretic. Buckle, 1-vol. ed. pp. 291, 300, notes.\n\n[2201] M. Labitte, himself a Catholic, speaks of Garasse's \"forfanterie\nhabituelle\" and \"ton d'insolence sinc\u00e8re qui d\u00e9guise tant de mensonges\"\n(Pref. cited, p. xxxi.). Prof. Strowski (p. 130) admits too that \"Il\nne faut pas trop s'attacher aux r\u00e9v\u00e9lations sensationelles du p\u00e8re\nGarasse: les maximes qu'il pr\u00eate aux beaux esprits, il les leur pr\u00eate\nen effet, elles ne leur appartient pas toutes. La soci\u00e9t\u00e9 secr\u00e8te,\nla Confr\u00e9rie des Bouteilles, ou il les dit engag\u00e9s, est un invention\nde sa verve bouffonne.\" But the Professor, with a \"N'importe!\",\nforgives him, and trades on his matter.\n\n[2202] Owen, French Skeptics, p. 659. Cp. Lecky, Rationalism, i, 97,\nciting Maury, as to the resistance of libertins to the superstition\nabout witchcraft.\n\n[2203] Doctrine Curieuse des Beaux Esprits, as cited, p. 208. This is\none of the passages which fully explain the opinion of the orthodox of\nthat age that Garasse \"helped rather than hindered atheism\" (Reimmann,\nHist. Atheismi, 1725, p. 408).\n\n[2204] Mersenne ascribed the quatrains to a skilled\ncontroversialist. Qu\u00e6stiones, pref.","title":"A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":236938}