{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_68018/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_68018","id":"gutenberg_68018","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68018","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christianity","Death -- Religious aspects -- Christianity","Medicine -- Religious aspects -- Christianity","Women in Christianity"],"text":"[Illustration: FRANCES POWER COBBE.\n\n_From \u201cLife of Frances Power Cobbe.\u201d By Herself._]\n\n\n\n\n  THE PEAK IN DARIEN,\n\n  WITH SOME OTHER INQUIRIES TOUCHING CONCERNS OF THE\n  SOUL AND THE BODY.\n\n  AN OCTAVE OF ESSAYS\n\n  BY\n\n  FRANCES POWER COBBE.\n\n  \u201cDas Leben ist der G\u00fcter h\u00f6chstes nicht;\n  Der Uebel gr\u00f6sstes aber ist die Schuld.\u201d\n\n  _Die Braut von Messina._\n\n  BOSTON:\n  GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET.\n\n  LONDON: WILLIAMS & NORGATE.\n\n  1882.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nMy last little book, _Lectures on the Duties of Women_, was addressed\nprincipally to the young of my own sex. The present volume is intended\nfor my contemporaries who are daily brought face to face with some of\nthe darker problems of the time, or are led by their advancing years to\nponder ever more earnestly on the mystery of the great transition. In\nthese various papers,--some new, some already published in different\nperiodicals,--I have striven to meet fairly the questions whether the\ndenial of God and immortality be indeed (as Agnostics and Comtists\nare wont to boast) a \u201cmagnanimous\u201d creed, whether life be truly (as\nLeopardi and Schopenhauer and hundreds of their English disciples din\ndaily in our ears) a burden and a curse, and whether (as much recent\nlegislation and newspaper literature would seem to teach) bodily health\nbe after all the _summum bonum_ for which personal freedom, courage,\nhumanity, and purity ought all to be sacrificed?\n\nTo these discussions, I have added one on the \u201cFitness of Women for\nthe Ministry of Religion,\u201d--a subject, I believe, destined soon to\nacquire importance,--with two or three less serious papers on other\nmatters touching moral questions; and, in conclusion, I have returned\nto a speculation concerning the immediate entry into the life after\ndeath which I find has possessed interest for many readers. That \u201cPeak\nin Darien,\u201d which we must all ascend in our turn,--the apex of two\nworlds, whence the soul may possibly descry the horizonless Pacific of\neternity,--is the turning-point of human hope. And it appears to me\ninfinitely strange that so little attention has been paid to the cases\nwherein indications seem to have been given of the perception by the\ndying of blessed presences revealed to them even as the veil of flesh\nhas dropped away. Were I permitted to record with names and references\nhalf the instances of this occurrence which have been narrated to me,\nthis short essay might have been swelled to a volume. It is my wish,\nhowever, that it should serve to suggest observation and provoke the\ninterchange of experiences, rather than be considered as pretending to\ndecide affirmatively the question wherewith it deals.\n\nPerhaps it may be as well to forestall any misapprehension by stating\nplainly that I utterly disbelieve, and even regard with intense\ndislike, all so-called \u201cSpiritualist\u201d manifestations and attempts to\nrecall the dead; and that I have never found any sufficient testimony\nfor stories of ghosts or apparitions of the departed beheld by men and\nwomen still in the midst of life. Only at the very moment when we are\npassing into their arms does it seem to me that the law of our being\nmay permit us to recognize once more the beloved ones who are \u201cnot\nlost, but gone before.\u201d The lines of W. J. Fox precisely express my\nthought on this subject:--\n\n  Call them from the dead!\n  Vain the call must be;\n  But the hand of death shall lay,\n  Like that of Christ, its healing clay\n  On eyes which then shall see\n  That glorious company.\n\n  FRANCES POWER COBBE.\n\n JULY, 1882.\n\n\n\n\n  CONTENTS.\n\n                                                         PAGE\n\n  I. MAGNANIMOUS ATHEISM,                                  11\n\n  II. HYGEIOLATRY,                                         77\n\n  III. PESSIMISM, AND ONE OF ITS PROFESSORS,               89\n\n  IV. ZOOPHILY,                                           125\n\n  V. SACRIFICIAL MEDICINE,                                151\n\n  VI. THE FITNESS OF WOMEN FOR THE MINISTRY OF RELIGION,  179\n\n  VII. THE HOUSE ON THE SHORE OF ETERNITY,                235\n\n  VIII. THE PEAK IN DARIEN: THE RIDDLE OF DEATH,          245\n\n\n\n\nMAGNANIMOUS ATHEISM.\n\n\n\u201cBe of good cheer, brother!\u201d said John Bradford to his fellow-martyr\nwhile the fagots were kindling: \u201cwe shall have a brave supper in heaven\nwith the Lord to-night!\u201d \u201cBe of good cheer, everybody!\u201d cry an army of\nmodern confessors, seated in library chairs: \u201cthere is no heaven and\nno Lord, and when we die there will be an end of us all, _in saecula\nsaeculorum_; but the generations who come after us will be greatly\nedified by our beautiful books and our instructive example.\u201d\n\nPerhaps the moral vitality of our age is in no way better exemplified\nthan by the fact that certain doubts, which seem to strike mortal\nblows at the head and heart of human virtue, yet leave it breathing,\nand even pulsating with aspirations after some yet loftier excellence\nthan saints and heroes have hitherto attained. To look back to the\n\u201cinfidels\u201d with whom Massillon and Jeremy Taylor had to do, and compare\nthem with the Agnostics of our time, is indeed more encouraging than\nto compare the \u201cfaithful\u201d of past centuries with those of the present\nage. While the old Atheist sheltered his vice behind a rampart of\nunbelief where no appeals could reach him, the new Agnostic honestly\nmaintains that his opinions are the very best foundations of virtue. No\none can for a moment say of him that he chooses darkness rather than\nlight _because_ his deeds are evil. If it be (as we think) darkness\nwhich he has chosen, there can be no question that his deeds are good,\nand that his conceptions of duty are truly elevated and far-reaching,\nand enforced by every argument which he has left himself at liberty\nto use. Renouncing faith in God and in the life hereafter,--that\nis to say, in _Goodness Infinite_ and _Goodness Immortalized_,--he\nretains the most fervent faith in goodness as developed in human\nlife,--that is to say, in _goodness finite_ in degree and in duration.\nIf we are to accept his own statement of the case, the Agnostic has\ncompletely turned the front of the theological battle. It is now the\npagans who have seized and hold aloft the sacred labarum of duty and\nself-sacrifice, and _in hoc signo_ are destined to victory.\n\nThe claim is one of the gravest which can be put forth between man\nand man. It was not easy--it was, alas! often beyond our strength--to\ncombat our doubts or those of others, while yet we fought against them\nas a sailor fights against enemies cutting his anchor cable on a stormy\nnight. We stand amazed and disarmed by the strange intelligence that,\nwhen these doubts have done their work, and cast us adrift altogether\nfrom allegiance to God and hope of another life, _then_, when all seems\nlost, we shall suddenly discover that we have touched the Fortunate\nIsles of virtue and peace. Only the thorough sceptic, we are assured,\ncan be the perfect saint. Nobody can disinterestedly serve his brother\non earth till he is entirely persuaded he has no Father in heaven. The\nfruit of the Tree of Knowledge (of course it is always assumed that\nit _is_ a tree of genuine knowledge on which Atheism grows) is to be\ndesired, not only because it will make us \u201cwise,\u201d but because it will\nmake us _good_. Who will hesitate any more to pluck and eat?\n\nTo the consideration of this now common pretension of Agnosticism to be\nthe true FRIEND OF VIRTUE, in the room of the old delusion of religion,\nthe following pages will be devoted. For the purposes of our particular\nargument and to avoid entangling ourselves with too many collateral\nquestions, I shall treat it here as the _Assumption of the Moral\nSuperiority of Atheism over Theism_. Is that assumption justifiable?\nI, for one, am entirely ready to admit that, _if_ there be anything\nin the faith in God and immortality which detracts from the highest\nconceivable perfection of human virtue,--if, in short, Atheism have a\nbetter morality to teach than Theism,--then the case of Theism must be\nabandoned. The religion which is _not_ the holiest conceivable by the\nman who holds it is condemned _ipso facto_.\n\nFor the present, I may assume that no important difference of opinion\nexists as to the practical rules of morality. It is the proper\n_motives_ to a virtuous and self-sacrificing life which Agnostics claim\nto place on higher ground than that which has been hitherto given to\nthem. They propose to tell us to \u201cdo justice and love mercy\u201d both\nin a better and more disinterested way than while we added to those\nunquestionable duties the mistaken attempt to walk humbly with our God.\nThe question lies in a nutshell,--Can they do it? Is there anything\nin the true Theistic faith detracting from the disinterestedness\nof virtue, or calculated to rob it of a single ray of purity and\nglory? This must be our first contention, since religion now stands\non its defence as a basis of morality. When it is settled, it may\nperhaps appear that religion may justly again assume the offensive,\nand challenge Atheism to prove its capacity for serving equally\nefficiently as a support for the virtue of humanity; and, if it appear\nthat to such a challenge no satisfactory reply can be given, then it\nwill be manifest that, in their expressions of satisfaction and joy at\nthe anticipated downfall of religion, Atheists display disregard of the\nmoral interests of their race.\n\nLet the lists be cleared in the first place. I shall not be\nexpected to defend all the base and demoralizing things which, in\nthe misused name of Christianity, have been inculcated concerning\n\u201cOther-worldliness,\u201d--the doing good for the sake of getting to\nheaven, and avoiding evil from fear of hell. Since the day, recorded\nby Joinville, when the mysterious old woman carried her waterpot and\ntorch before St. Louis, and told him she intended to put out the fires\nof hell and burn up heaven, so that men might learn to love God for his\nown sake, and not from fear or hope,--since that distant time, there\nhave not been wanting righteous souls who have girned and spurned at\nthe vile lessons current in the Churches, and asked with Kingsley,--\n\n  \u201cIs selfishness,--for time, a sin,--stretched out into eternity,\n  Celestial prudence?\u201d\n\nBeyond a doubt, one of the heaviest charges against the popular\ncreed is that, while its ministers have raged against the smallest\ntheological error, and convulsed the world by their ridiculous\ndisputes concerning mysteries altogether beyond the reach of human\ncomprehension, they have complacently endured and even fostered moral\nheresies which withered up the very roots of virtue. The whole tone of\nordinary Romish exhortation, _faire son salut_, is often base beyond\nexpression; and the teaching of the Church of England in the last\ncentury was no better. Here are some specimens of it. Rutherford says\n(_Nature and Obligations of Virtue_, 1744), \u201cEvery man\u2019s happiness is\nthe ultimate end which reason teaches him to pursue, and the constant\nand uniform practice of virtue becomes our duty _when_ revelation\nhas informed us that God will make us finally happy in a life after\nthis.\u201d Paley is no better. He says:[1] \u201cVirtue is the doing good\nto mankind in obedience to the will of God and _for the sake of\neverlasting happiness_. According to which definition, the good of\nmankind is the subject, the will of God the rule, and _everlasting\nhappiness the motive of virtue_.\u201d Waterland, the great champion of\nTrinitarianism, went even further. He says that \u201cbeing just and\ngrateful without future prospects has as much of moral virtue in it\n_as folly or indiscretion has_.\u201d These are the kind of doctrines which\nhave been placidly admitted among the recognized teachings of the great\nChristian Churches. Nor have some of the philosophers proved a whit\nmore conscious of the simple notion of duty. Bentham, for example,[2]\nplainly lays it down that for a man to give up a larger pleasure of his\nown for a smaller one of his neighbor\u2019s is an act not of virtue, but of\n_folly_.\n\nCertainly, if the new Agnostics had no types of religion or morality\nsave these thoroughly debased ones wherewith to compare their system,\nthey might well claim to be the evangelists of a purer gospel. Better,\nassuredly better, would it be to believe in no God than to pay homage\nto the all-adorable Author of Good for the sake of the payment we\nexpect him to give us. Better, assuredly better, to expect no life\nbeyond the grave than to poison every act of courage, justice, or\nbeneficence by the vile notion of being rewarded for it in heaven; or\nto refrain from treachery and cruelty and lies, merely, like a beaten\nhound, from dread of the bloody scourge of hell.\n\nBut it would be an insult to the well-informed and widely-read\nadvocates of Agnosticism, if we were to assume for a moment that\nthey were ignorant that this base alloy of religion has been almost\nuniversally repudiated by the higher class of English divines of\nthe present day, of every shade of Orthodoxy; while, outside of the\nChurches, there is not a religious man who does not regard them with\nunmitigated disgust. The question really is, not whether religion _may_\nbe made to corrupt morality with bribes and threats, but whether it\nproperly does so; whether a religious man _ought_, in accordance with\nhis theology, to be less disinterested than an Atheist. To reply to\nthis question, it seems only necessary to recall what a Theist believes\nabout God and immortality as concerned with his own virtue.\n\nA Theist believes, then, that the goodness and justice, which the\nAgnostic recognizes and loves so well in their human manifestations,\nhave existence beyond humanity, and are carried to ideal perfection in\na Being who is, in some sense, the Soul and Ruler of the universe.\n\n_This_ belief, at all events (whether legitimately held or only\na dream), cannot, I presume, so far as it goes, be charged with\ndetracting from the purity of virtue. Goodness cannot be esteemed less\ngood, or justice less just, because there exists One who is supremely\ngood and just.\n\nFurther, as regards himself, the Theist believes that this supremely\ngood and just Being so constituted his nature and the world around him\nas that the law of goodness and justice should be _known_ to him as the\nsacred rule, whereby he is inwardly bound to determine his actions and\nsentiments. In other words, he believes that he has acquired his moral\nsense of God, and not from any undesigned, fortuitous order of things\nwhich may have impressed it as an hereditary idea on his brain.\n\nI am at a loss to guess how _this_ step further can be supposed to\nbe hostile to the disinterestedness of virtue. It is easy to see how\nthe opposite theory of the origin of conscience, as exhibited in\nMr. Darwin\u2019s _Descent of Man_,--whereby the authority of the human\nintuition, \u201cThou shalt do no murder,\u201d is traced to the same origin as\nthe bees\u2019 intuition of the duty of killing their brothers, the drones\n(namely, the hereditary transmission of ideas found conducive to the\nwelfare of the tribe),--should dethrone Conscience from her assumed\nsupremacy, and place her among the crowd of other hereditary notions,\nneither more nor less deserving of honor. And, on the other hand, the\nattribution of our moral ideas, directly or indirectly, to the teaching\nof a Being immeasurably above us,--a theory which represents conscience\nas a ray shot downward from a sun, instead of a marsh-fire illumined\nunder special conditions of social existence, and liable to blaze up,\ndie down, or flit hither and thither as they may determine,--must\ninevitably elevate and sanctify the laws of morals to our apprehension.\nIn truth, it is obvious that, had the first hypothesis (of the\nhereditary transmission of useful ideas) been heard of in the days of\nour ancestors, the \u201cmystic extension\u201d (as Mr. Mill calls it) of utility\ninto morality could never have been accomplished, and repentance and\nremorse would have been unknown experiences. But all this refers to the\npractical _authority_ of moral laws. It is with the _disinterestedness_\nof the man who obeys them that we are at present concerned; and this\ndisinterestedness is not, that I perceive, influenced one way or the\nother by the theory he may hold of how he comes by his knowledge of\nthem.\n\nBut now we reach the point where, it is to be presumed, the Atheist\nfinds ground for his claim to superior disinterestedness. The Theist\nbelieves not only that goodness and justice are attributes of God,\nand that God has taught him to be good and just, but that God further\nholds what the old Schoolmen called the _Justitia Rectoria_ of the\nuniverse,--that he so ordains things as that, sooner or later, good\nwill surely befall the good, and evil the evil. So much as this is\nincluded in the simplest elements of Theism. In its fuller development,\nTheism teaches more: namely, that God takes the interest of a Father\nin the moral welfare of his children; that he has created every human\nsoul (and doubtless thousands of races of other intelligent beings)\nfor the express purpose that each should attain, through the teaching\nand trials of existence, to virtue, and so enter into the supreme\nbliss of sympathy and communion with himself. Theism thus understood\nteaches that God is perpetually training each soul for that sublime\nend, inspiring it with light, answering its prayers for spiritual aid,\npunishing it for its errors, hedging up its way with thorns to prevent\nits wanderings, and finally certainly conducting it, through this life\nand perhaps many lives to come, to the holiness and blessedness for\nwhich it was made.\n\nThe position of a Theist differs therefore essentially from that of\nan Atheist as regards the practice of virtue, inasmuch as the Atheist\nthinks he has no superhuman spectator or sympathizer; that the thoughts\nand feelings which awaken his conscience and move his heart do not\noriginate in any mind out of his own; that the woes of his life bear\nwith them no moral meaning of retribution or expiation; and finally\nthat, whether he be a hero or a coward, a saint or a sinner, it will\nbe all one, so far as himself is concerned, when the hour of his death\nhas sounded. His actions may and will have important consequences to\nother men, but as regards his own destiny they can have no consequences\nat all; for the grave will receive everything that remains of him.\nThe virtues he may have acquired with unutterable struggles will die\naway into nothingness, like the sound of a broken harp-string. He will\nneither rejoin his dead friends nor come into any fresh consciousness\nof God. Neither dead friends nor God have any existence; and a little\nsooner or later, as he may chance to be a more or less important\nperson, he will be altogether forgotten, and no being in the universe\nwill ever more remember that he once _was_.\n\nNow, I think it would be idle to deny that it must be _far harder_\nto be virtuous under the shadow of this Atheism than in the sunshine\nof Theism. The tax and strain upon the moral nature of a man who\nholds the views just indicated of the emptiness of the universe of\nany One absolutely good and just, of the low and haphazard origin of\nconscience, and of the utter loneliness and unaided state wherewith\nman pursues his weary course from the cradle to the inevitable,\neternal grave, must be simply enormous. All honor, sincere and hearty\nhonor, and full recognition of their noble disinterestedness, be to\nthose Atheists who, under such strain, yet struggle successfully\nand incessantly to do good and not evil all their days, and to die\nbravely and calmly, letting go their grasp of life and joy and love,\nand sinking without a groan under the waters which are to cover them\nfor evermore. There is something in the self-sustained, Promethean\ncourage of such a man which commands our admiration; and we can well\nimagine him looking round on his suffering fellows pitifully, as on\nhis orphaned and disinherited brothers and sisters, with infinite\ncompassion, deeming them destined like himself to perish with all their\naspirations and capacities disappointed and unfulfilled. For such a man\nto devote himself to the labors of practical benevolence and the relief\nof the woe which surrounds him, whence he usually draws his strongest\narguments for his desolate creed, would seem to be the fittest, if not\nthe only fit pursuit; and, when we behold him engaged in it (as in\ninstances I could readily name), our whole hearts recognize his virtue\nas absolutely beautiful and disinterested. But because the Atheist\u2019s\nvirtue, when he is virtuous, is without alloy, is there any just reason\nto hold that it is _more_ pure than that of the Theist? His task is,\nas I have readily admitted, the _harder_ of the two; _so_ hard indeed\nis it that there seem the gravest reasons for fearing that, if a few\nnoble spirits perform it, the mass of tried and tempted men who can\nscarcely lift themselves from their selfishness even with the two wings\nof Faith and Hope will lie prone in the very mire of vice when those\nwings are broken. But, because the Atheist\u2019s duty is harder to do, is\nit consequently better done? Is the music which he draws from that one\nstring of philanthropy sweeter than the full chord of all the religious\nand social affections together?\n\nLet us revert to the points of difference between the two creeds as\nabove enumerated. Is a man necessarily _self-interested_ in doing\nthe will of a Being whom he _loves_ and hopes by serving to approach\nand resemble? Of course, if he is looking for payment,--for health,\nwealth, happiness on earth or celestial glory,--for any adventitious\nreward outside of the fact of becoming better and nearer to God,--then,\nindeed, his service is self-interested. He is a mercenary in the army\nof martyrs. In strict ethics, his conduct, however exactly legal, is\nnot virtuous; for virtue can only be absolutely without side-looks to\ncontingent profit, present or future. I presume that, when Agnostics\nboast of the superior disinterestedness of the virtue they inculcate\nover that of religious men, they think (and cannot divest themselves\nof the early acquired habit of thinking) of religion as of this kind\nof labor-and-wages system,--hard duty below, high glory above,--with\nperhaps the additional complication of certain scholastic doctrines of\nimputed righteousness. But it is time this confusion should cease.\nLove of goodness _impersonated in God_ is not a less disinterested,\nthough naturally a more fervent, sentiment than love of goodness in\nthe abstract. The Theist, in his attempt to obey by good deeds the\nwill of the Being he loves, acts as simply as the Atheist, who loves\nthe good deed, thinking that no being higher in the scale of existence\nthan himself has any appreciation of the difference between good and\nevil. The Theist, indeed, adds to his love of goodness _per se_ a\nlove of goodness impersonated in God, who desires good actions to be\ndone,[3] and possibly also a hope that, by doing good now, he may be\ngiven the power to do it again and again for ever; but it is all the\nsame charmed circle of _doing good for goodness\u2019 sake_, out of which he\nnever emerges into any such motive as doing good for the sake of honor,\nprosperity, or heavenly bliss in a golden city. The sole thing which\nthe Theist asks of God as the reward of obedience is the power to obey\nbetter in future, the privilege of obeying forever. The payment of his\nvirtue is to be virtuous now and throughout eternity. Whether it be in\nthis life or another, there is no difference; no new principle comes\ninto play; no bribe unsought for here is hoped for there. He says to\nGod: \u201cIt is a joy to serve Thee, but infinitely greater is the joy to\nserve Thee with the assurance that the term of my service will never\nexpire. Precious is the privilege of calling Thee Father. How glad\nthen am I that I shall be a child at Thy feet forever! Lord, I seek no\nheaven hereafter. I covet no abode of bliss, no outward reward above.\nTo be with Thee is my heaven and my salvation and the only reward I\nseek. As I abide in Thee now, may I continue to live in Thee, O Father;\nand to grow in wisdom and love and purity and joy in Thee, time without\nend.\u201d[4]\n\nSurely, it is altogether absurd to speak of this religion as involving\nany, even the very slightest shade of interestedness or detraction\nfrom the highest conceivable type of human virtue. If it deserve such\na condemnation, then must likewise stand condemned the most pure and\nexalted human love which friend has ever felt for friend,--for this\nalso, by its very nature, seeks to serve for love\u2019s sake, to arrive at\nperfect harmony, to dwell with the beloved in unbroken and everlasting\nunion.\n\nTurn we now to the other side of the subject. Theism has been, I hope,\nvindicated from the charge of interestedness. What shall we say to the\ngeneral ethical aspect of Agnosticism, which assumes to be the nobler\nsystem? Admitting the blameless conduct and the high aspirations of\nsome of its professors, what value shall we attach to their claim to be\nthe heralds of a higher morality?\n\nIf I may, without offence, condense their lessons in a very obvious\nparallel, they amount to this \u201csymbol\u201d: \u201cWhosoever will be saved,\nbefore all things it is necessary that he cease to believe either\nin one God or in three; and that he be fully assured that those who\nhave done good and those who have done evil shall alike go into\neverlasting nothingness.\u201d This creed piously accepted, he will advance\nto perfection and outrun in two ways any excellence which has been\nhitherto attained.\n\n1st. While recognizing that, so far as he himself is concerned, death\nmeans the annihilation of consciousness, he will act throughout his\nlife with a deep and conscientious concern for the consequences of\nhis actions to those who come after him or, as Mr. Frederick Harrison\nexpresses it, to his own posthumous activity.\n\n2d. By welcoming the conclusions of Atheism, and especially the\ndoctrine of the annihilation of consciousness at death, not as a\nsorrowful truth, but as the latest and brightest gospel of good\ntidings; and proclaiming, on all suitable occasions, that they afford\na better stand-point and outlook for humanity than any faith or hope\nwhich has been hitherto entertained.\n\nThe first of these doctrines was set forth, a few years ago, in two\neloquent and affecting papers, by Mr. Frederick Harrison, in the\n_Nineteenth Century_. How much sympathy I feel with a great deal which\nis said in these papers,[5] how sincerely I respect Mr. Harrison\u2019s\nnoble conception of the aim of life, even where I most completely\nmisdoubt the validity of the method he proposes for attaining it, there\nis scarcely need to say. It is precisely because such Positivists as he\nand Mr. Morley and the late George Eliot, and such Agnostics as many\nI could name, assume such really high ground in their teaching, and\nappeal (though, as I think, in a fallacious way) to our very noblest\nsympathies and aspirations, that I feel urged to raise my feeble voice\nand call in question their guidance. There, in truth, stand, as they\npoint to them, the snowy summits of purity and goodness. But by what\npath would they guide us to ascend them? Even if their own strong souls\nmay climb those arid crags, can they be in any possible sense a better\nway than that by which millions of believers in God and immortality\nhave gone up on high?\n\nLet us take Mr. Harrison\u2019s doctrine of the \u201cPosthumous Activities\u201d\nof the soul, and endeavor to estimate how far it is calculated to\nact as an efficient motive of virtue on ordinarily constituted,\nwell-intentioned men and women. We must bear in mind that it is\nformally proposed as a substitute for the old belief in the immortality\nof the individual,--that is (according to the Theist creed), in the\nimmortality of the _virtue_ of the individual. While a Theist believes\nthat, having lighted that sacred torch, he shall be permitted to bear\nit onward, burning more purely and brightly forever, the Comtist\nthinks he must lay down his at the side of his grave, though other men\nmay ignite their own from it, and so carry on its light from age to age.\n\nIn the first place, I must remark that, like the promise on which such\nstress is laid in Dr. Bridge\u2019s _General View of Positivism_, that\nattached husbands and wives may be solemnly interred side by side,\nthere is nothing _new_ in these anticipations. We have always known\nthat we might be buried in the same vault with our next friend, as\nwe have always known that our actions would continue to bear fruit\nafter our departure. We entertained the first hope (so far as such a\npitiful matter as the future position of our deaf and blind decaying\ndust deserves to be considered a hope), and we were aware of the\nresponsibility,--_plus_ the belief that we ourselves should enjoy free\nconverse with the spirit of our friend, and afford to smile together\non our poor mouldering garments laid up side by side in the tomb,--and\n_plus_ the belief that we might ourselves be cognizant of our\nposthumous activities. There is nothing in the fact that both the hope\nand the sense of responsibility must now stand by themselves for what\nthey are worth, to give them (so far as I can see) any fresh leverage\nas motives of conduct. People who did not love each other better\nwhile they expected to be at liberty to spend eternity in conscious\ncommunion, as well as to be buried in the same grave, certainly will\nnot love each other better when their future prospects are limited to\nthe family vault. And people who have not regulated their conduct with\na view to their _post-mortem_ influence while they anticipated to be\nliving somewhere to know, or, at all events, to be obliged to think\nabout it, are very little likely to regulate it the better when they\nare convinced that, if they leave the deluge behind them, they will\nneither know nor care one iota. As to the good man, he will, under the\nold creed and under the new alike (and neither more nor less, so far\nas I can perceive), entertain a solemn sense of a responsibility to\ndo all the good and refrain from every evil in his power during his\nthreescore years and ten,--_not_ first, or chiefly, for the sake of\nconsequences near or remote to himself or other people in this world or\nanother, but because goodness, truth, courage, justice, and generosity\nare good in themselves, lovable in his eyes and in the eyes of God, and\nfalsehood, impurity, cruelty, and treachery are bad and despicable,\nhateful to him and to his Maker. Afterward, and as a reinforcement\nof his choice of Scipio, he will reflect that every good act entails\ngood consequences in widening circles of loving-kindness, honor, and\nhonesty, and every bad one the reverse; and he will hope in dying to\nreflect that the sum of the influence he leaves to work after him will\nbe wholly on the side of truth, justice, and love. It is monstrous for\nMr. Harrison to say that \u201cthe difference between our (Positivist) faith\nand that of the orthodox is this. _We_ look to the permanence of the\nactivities which give others happiness. _They_ look to the permanence\nof the consciousness which can enjoy happiness.\u201d Why should looking to\nthe permanence of consciousness and happiness make a man care less for\nthe activities \u201cwhich give others happiness\u201d? Does A care less for B\u2019s\nwelfare because he would like to be alive to see it, or even alive at\nthe antipodes at the same time?\n\nMoralists and divines of all ages have not overlooked the remoter\nconsequences of our actions in rehearsing the motives in favor of\nvirtue. But it is idle to attach to it, as applied to the bulk of\nmankind, more practical force than it possesses. In the first place,\nwhen such an observer of things as Shakspere could say that\n\n  \u201cThe evil which men do lives after them,\n  The good is oft interred with their bones,\u201d\n\nit is open to us all to doubt whether some of the very noblest\nachievements of human virtue have left any other mark than on the\nvirtuous souls themselves, which (as we Theists think) enjoy even now\nin a higher existence their blessed inward consequences. The martyrs\nwho perished unseen and unknown in the loathsome dungeons and amid the\nprotracted tortures of the Inquisition in Spain, where the Reformation\nthey would have established was absolutely extinguished and left no\nray of light behind,--could these men cheer themselves under the awful\nstrain of their agonies by a motive of such tenuity as the prospect of\ntheir \u201cposthumous activities\u201d?\n\nBut admitting, for argument\u2019s sake, that the motive would serve always\nto support the heroic order of virtues, would it likewise aid the still\nmore important ones of every-day conduct? His own illustrations ought\nsurely to have made Mr. Harrison pause before he assumed it. He speaks\nof Newton as \u201cno longer destroying his great name by feeble theology\nor querulous pettiness,\u201d of Shakspere as \u201cthe boon companion and\nretired playwright of Stratford,\u201d of Dante as the \u201cquerulous refugee\nfrom Florence,\u201d and of Milton as \u201cthe blind and stern old malignant of\nBunhill Fields.\u201d Now these are his chosen exemplars of the enormous\n\u201cposthumous activity\u201d which a man may exert, and certainly nobody now\nliving can hope that he shall ever exercise one-tenth as much. But\n_their_ \u201cpettiness\u201d and \u201cquerulousness\u201d and \u201cboon companionship\u201d and\n\u201csternness\u201d in their lifetimes did not hinder, or even essentially\ndetract from, their stupendous \u201cposthumous activity.\u201d Why, then, should\nlesser people have any scruple in being petty, querulous, or stern, or\nindulging in pot-companionship, or any other faults of temper or habit,\non account of their little posthumous activities, whatever they may\nhope that these may prove?\n\nObviously, Mr. Harrison has a misgiving as to the force which his\nargument can be expected to exert on ordinary mortals or for the daily\npurposes of life. Though he says that the truth he teaches \u201cis not\nconfined to the great,\u201d and adds the beautiful remark that \u201cin some\ninfinitesimal degree the humblest life that ever turned a sod sends a\nwave--no, more than a wave, a life--through the evergrowing harmony\nof human society,\u201d yet even while he alleges that a concern for such\nposthumous activity is \u201cno doubt now in England the great motive of\nvirtue and energy,\u201d and asks, \u201cCan we conceive a more potent stimulus\nto daily and hourly striving after a true life?\u201d[6] he says in the next\npage that \u201cit would be an endless inquiry to trace the means whereby\nthis sense of posthumous participation in the life of our fellows\n_can be extended to_ _the mass_, as it certainly affects already the\nthoughtful and refined.\u201d Honestly, he admits that it is \u201cimpossible\nit should become universal and capable of overcoming selfishness\u201d\n\u201cwithout an education, a new social opinion without a religion; I\nmean an organized religion, not a vague metaphysic.\u201d \u201cMake it,\u201d he\ncries, with almost the enthusiasm of a discoverer, \u201cat once the basis\nof philosophy, the standard of right and wrong, and the centre of a\nreligion,\u201d and then it may perhaps be achieved.\n\nBut, in sober truth, what \u201ceducation\u201d or \u201corganized religion\u201d (_i.e._,\nof course, Comtism) can possibly transform this remote anticipation of\nthe results of our actions after we are dead into a practical lever\nfor daily duty for the great bulk of mankind? It is the specialty of\nall vice to be selfishly indifferent to the injurious consequences\nof our actions, even to their immediate and visible consequences, to\nthose nearest to us. Is it not almost ludicrous to think of exhorting\nthe drunkard who sees his wife and children starving round him to-day,\nor the ill-conducted girl who is breaking her mother\u2019s heart, or the\nhard task-master or landlord who is grinding the faces of the poor to\nfill his pocket, to refrain from their misdoings on account of the evil\nwhich they will cause fifty years hence to people unborn? Or let us try\nto apply the principle to that sound mass of every-day English virtue\nwhich is, after all, the very air we breathe,--the daily dutifulness,\nthe purity, the truthfulness, the loving-kindness of our homes, the\nbeautiful patience to be witnessed beside a thousand sick-beds.\nWere we to ask the simple-hearted men and meek women who exemplify\nthese virtues whether they ever think of the excellent \u201cposthumous\nactivities\u201d which they will exert on their surviving acquaintances,\nwould they not be utterly bewildered? The clergyman (or let us have\nthe Comtist philosopher) who will go through a workhouse ward, or\nround the cottages of a village, and offer such a suggestion as a\ntopic of encouragement, would, I think, effect a very small measure\nof reformation. Nor do I think it is necessarily a low type of mind\nwhich does not project itself much into the future, whether in this\nworld or the next; but which is vividly affected by the idea of a\n_present_ righteous law claiming immediate obedience, and a _present_\nadorable God watching whether that obedience be paid, but which takes\nin even the idea of immortality more as adding an infinite dignity to\nmoral things and human souls than as a direct motive to moral action.\nTo such a person, the promise of \u201cposthumous activities\u201d is as remote\nand inoperative a principle as it is possible to propose; and he\ncan scarcely help smiling at it, as he does at the observation of\nPliny, that the \u201chappiest of all possible anticipations is the certain\nexpectation of an honorable and undying renown.\u201d Posthumous activity\naffords a far nobler motive than posthumous fame; but they both appeal\nto sentiments which have little weight with the majority of minds, and\nno weight at all with a great number not undeserving of respect.\n\nThe truth seems to be that the leading Comtists and Agnostics of the\nday not only belong to an exceptional type of human nature, little\ntouched by grosser impulses and highly sensitive to the most rarefied\norder of influences, but are unable to descend from such altitude, and\nrealize what ordinary flesh-and-blood men and women are made of. As\nMr. Darwin unconsciously betrayed that he had never once had occasion\nto repent an act of unkindness, when he theorized about repentance as\n_beginning_ by a spontaneous reversion to sympathy and good-will to\nthe people we have injured (in bold contradiction to Tacitus\u2019 too true\nmaxim, \u201c_Humani generis proprium est odisse quem laeseris_\u201d), so the\ndisciples of Comte unwittingly allow us to perceive that they really\nconsider an exalted and far-reaching interest in the welfare of our\nkind as the sort of motive which is already \u201cnow in England the great\nmotive of virtue and energy.\u201d\n\nLet me explain myself. I do not think there is any precept too high\nto be accepted by the mass of mankind: nay, I think that the higher,\nnobler, more self-sacrificing the lesson, the warmer response it\nwill draw forth from the heart of humanity. But this is the _moral_\nexcellence of the precept, the loftiness of the purity, the nobleness\nof the generosity, the courageousness of the self-devotion, which are\ndemanded. It is quite another thing to choose to present, as the proper\nmotive of daily virtue, an idea requiring a trained _intellect_ to\ntake it in and a vivid _imagination_ to realize it. Every argument for\nvirtue, for sobriety, veracity, and so on, drawn from considerations of\nfuture consequences, labors under this irremediable defect: _that it\nappeals least to those whom it is most necessary to influence_. When we\ngo further, and place our fulcrum of moral leverage in the period after\nthe death of the man to whom we appeal, and candidly tell him that he\nwill neither enjoy the sight of any good he may have effected, nor\nsuffer from the spectacle of the results of his wrong-doing, we have\nreached (as it seems to me) the _ne plus ultra_ of impracticability.\nWoe to human virtue when its advocates are driven to attach primary\nimportance to such an argument, and dream it can be made \u201cthe centre of\na religion\u201d!\n\nTo sum up this subject. To a man of high calibre and gifts, the\nconsideration of \u201cposthumous activities\u201d may act as a spur to doing\ngreat actions, but scarcely as a motive to regulate his daily life\nand temper. He will, perhaps, under its influence reform the prisons\nof Europe, and at the same time break his wife\u2019s heart; write a\ngreat epic poem, and treat his daughters like slaves; paint splendid\npictures, and remain a selfish and sordid miser; fight heroically his\ncountry\u2019s battles, and lead a life of persistent adultery; be at once a\ndisinterested statesman in a corrupt age, and an habitual drunkard.\n\nAs to the mass of mankind, who are endowed neither with any superior\ngifts to employ, nor vivid imagination to realize the results of their\nactions hereafter, an appeal to them to act virtuously in consideration\nof their posthumous activities would draw forth some such reply as\nthis: \u201cOur conduct can, at most, leave after our deaths only very small\nresults on a very few people whom we shall never know. We find it hard\nenough to make sacrifices for those whom we do know and love, and whose\nhappiness or misery we actually witness. It is asking too much of us\nthat, for remote, contingent, and evanescent benefits to our survivors,\nwe should undergo any pain or labor, or renounce any of the pleasures\nwhich in our poor short lives (so soon to end forever in darkness) may\nfall within our grasp.\u201d\n\nThus, in its capacity of the _Friend of Virtue_, it seems that Atheism\nbegins by depriving virtue of some of the strongest, if not the very\nstrongest, motives by which it has hitherto been supported, and offers\nin their room, as the best substitute for them and the future \u201ccentre\nof religion,\u201d a consideration of Posthumous Activities, whose force\nis of necessity both partial as to the virtues it inculcates, and\nextremely limited as to the persons over whom it can exercise any\ninfluence. And _that_ force, such as it is, appears to be in no way\nspecially connected with the Atheistic view of human destiny, but\nbelongs to every moral system in the world.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFinally, as if to complete the nullity of the motive of Posthumous\nActivities, there comes a reflection which must take erelong a\nprominent place in disquisitions of this kind. Comtists talk of the\n\u201cimmortality,\u201d the \u201ceternity,\u201d of a dead man\u2019s influence. But, if each\nindividual human soul is destined to be extinguished at death, then\nthere is _nothing_ wherewith man is concerned which is immortal or\neternal. Our race is destined irretrievably to perish _as a race_, if\nit perish piecemeal with every soul which drops into the grave. Miss\nMartineau\u2019s wild talk about \u201cthe special destination of my race\u201d being\n\u201cinfinitely nobler than the highest proposed under a scheme of divine\nmoral government\u201d[7] (an assertion in itself simply absurd, since\nthe believers in a scheme of divine government hold that whatever is\nnoblest is _by the hypothesis_ assuredly our destination), is rendered\ndoubly preposterous when we bear in mind what science teaches regarding\nthe inevitable lapse of this planet within a limited epoch into a\ncondition of uninhabitability. The following observations are made\non this subject in a little _jeu d\u2019esprit_ which I may be pardoned\nfor quoting. It assumes to be an extract from a newspaper of the next\ncentury, and the men of that period are supposed to look back upon the\ndoctrine of \u201cPosthumous Activities\u201d with very little respect:--\n\n It is needless to repeat that the delusive exhortations of some\n amiable but short--sighted philosophers of the last century to \u201clabor\n for the good of Humanity in future generations\u201d (a motive which they\n supposed would prove a substitute for the old historic religions) have\n been once and for all answered by the grand discovery of astronomers\n that our planet cannot long remain the habitation of man (even if it\n escape any sidereal explosion), since the solar heat is undergoing\n such rapid exhaustion. When the day comes, as come it must, when the\n fruits of the earth perish one by one, when the dead and silent woods\n petrify, and all the races of animals become extinct, when the icy\n seas flow no longer, and the pallid sun shines dimly over the frozen\n world, locked, like the moon, in eternal frost and lifelessness,--what\n in that day, predicted so surely by science, will avail all the works\n and hopes and martyrdoms of man? All the stores of knowledge which we\n shall have accumulated will be forever lost. Our discoveries, whereby\n we have become the lords of creation and wielded the great forces of\n Nature, will be useless and forgotten. The virtues which have been\n perfected, the genius which has glorified, the love which has blessed\n the human race, will all perish along with it. Our libraries of books,\n our galleries of pictures, our fleets, our railroads, our vast and\n busy cities, will be desolate and useless forevermore. No intelligent\n eye will ever behold them, and no eye in the universe will know or\n remember that there ever existed such a being as man. _This_ is what\n SCIENCE teaches us unerringly to expect, and in view of it who shall\n talk to us of \u201claboring for the sake of Humanity\u201d? The enthusiasm\n which could work disinterestedly for a Progress destined inevitably\n to end in an eternal Glacial Period must be recognized as a dream,\n wherein no man in a scientific age can long indulge.[8]\n\nThe second counsel of perfection of the Agnostic teachers is, as\nabove said, \u201cto welcome the conclusions of Atheism, and especially\nthe doctrine of annihilation of consciousness at death, not merely as\ntruth, but as the latest gospel of good tidings.\u201d\n\nThis lesson, though repeated more or less by nearly all Agnostic and\nComtist writers, has been perhaps most prominently brought to the front\nin the Life of Harriet Martineau. I shall take her observations and\nexample as the text for the remarks I wish to offer upon it, as I have\ndone the papers of Mr. Frederick Harrison for those just made on the\ndoctrine of Posthumous Activities. These are some of her utterances\nwhich touch on the matter:--\n\n I soon found myself quite outside of my old world of thought and\n speculation, under a new heaven and a new earth, disembarrassed of\n a load of selfish cares and troubles.... Hence it followed that\n the conceptions of a God with any human attributes whatever, of\n a principle or practice of design, of an administration of the\n affairs of the world by the principles of human morals, must be mere\n visions, necessary and useful in their day, but not philosophically\n or permanently true.... The reality that philosophy founded upon\n science is the one thing needful, the source and the vital principle\n of all morality and all peace to individuals and good-will among men,\n had become the crown of my experience and the joy of my life.... My\n comrade (Mr. Atkinson) and I were both pioneers of truth. We both care\n for our kind, and we could not see them suffering as we had suffered\n without imparting to them our consolation and our joy. Having found,\n as my friend said, a spring in the desert, should we see the multitude\n wandering in desolation, and not show them our refreshment?... _Then_\n (in younger days) I believed in a Protector, who ordered my work and\n would sustain me under it; and, however I may now despise that sort\n of support, I had it then, and have none of that sort now. I have all\n that I want, ... and I would not exchange my present views, imperfect\n and doubtful as they are,--I had better say I would not exchange my\n freedom from old superstition,--if I were to be burned at the stake\n next month, for all the peace and quiet of Orthodoxy. Nor would I\n for my exemption give up the blessing of the power of appeal to\n thoughtful minds.... When I experienced the still new joy of feeling\n myself to be a portion of the universe, resting on the security of\n its everlasting laws, certain that its Cause was wholly out of the\n sphere of human attributes, and that the special destiny of my race is\n infinitely nobler than the highest proposed under a scheme of \u201cdivine\n moral government,\u201d how could it matter to me that the adherents of a\n decaying mythology were still clinging to their Man-God?... Under this\n close experience (of illness), I find death in prospect the simplest\n thing in the world,--a thing not to be feared or regretted or to get\n excited about in any way. I attribute this very much to the nature of\n my views of death.... Now, the release is an inexpressible comfort. I\n see that the dying naturally and regularly, unless disturbed, desire\n and sink into death as into sleep.... I feel no solicitude about a\n parting which will bring no pain.... Under the eternal laws of the\n universe I came into being, and under them I have lived a life so full\n that its fulness is equivalent to length: thus there is much in my\n life that I am glad to have enjoyed, and much that generates a mood\n of contentment at its close. Besides that, I never dream of wishing\n that anything were otherwise than as it is; and I am frankly satisfied\n to have done with life. I have had a noble share of it, and I desire\n no more. I neither wish to live longer here nor to find life again\n elsewhere. It seems to me simply absurd to expect it.[9]\n\nIt is no part of the purpose of this article to discuss the _truth_\nof the doctrine that there is no God, and that death terminates human\nconsciousness. Nor yet do I question whether a high sense of loyalty\nto what is understood to be truth may not make it appear to any one\nholding such doctrines that he is under the obligation to publish them\nfrankly to the world. Many a man who is an Atheist as regards God holds\n(what many believers in Him lack) a noble faith in Truth _as_ Truth,\na firm conviction that nothing can be better than Truth, and that, as\nCarlyle said, \u201cTo nothing but error can any truth be dangerous.\u201d It is\nnot, then, the holding of such views as those above quoted, nor yet\ntheir frank publication and defence, wherewith we are now concerned;\nbut with the _tone of exultation_ with which they are announced, the\ndisregard and contempt which are manifested for the dearest hopes, the\npurest aspirations, of the great mass of mankind.\n\nMagnanimity has two phases. We may be magnanimous on our own\naccount,--brave, calm, and self-reliant in the face of things which\nappall feebler souls. Of this sort of personal magnanimity, this\nremarkable woman has given a very fine example. Here are the words she\nwrote twenty years after the foregoing pages, in her last letter to her\nfriend:\n\n I cannot think of any future as at all probable except the\n annihilation from which some people recoil with so much horror....\n For my part, I have no objection to such an extinction. I well\n remember the passion wherewith W. E. Forster said to me, \u201cI had\n rather be damned than annihilated.\u201d... I have no wish for any further\n experience, nor have I any fear of it.[10]...\n\nThese words have in them a calmness, simplicity, and courage which\ndemand our honor, written as they were by an aged woman (as she herself\ndescribes them a few lines further) \u201cunder the clear knowledge of\ndeath being so near at hand.\u201d The old vulgar theory, so frequently\nharped upon in the last generation, that the right place to judge\na man\u2019s religious views is his death-bed, and that, while orthodox\nbelievers alone can die bravely, sceptics must needs expire in anguish\nand alarm, with \u201ca certain fearful looking-for of judgment,\u201d has\nbeen thoroughly exploded by the now numberless instances of perfect\ncourage exhibited by dying men and women who had long before abandoned\nthe hopes of a happy futurity which revealed or natural religion has\nto offer. Harriet Martineau\u2019s serene self-resignation into eternal\nnothingness ought, if any further evidence were wanting, to suffice\nto set the matter finally at rest; and it may be cited very properly\nby disbelievers in immortality, as exhibiting what they deem to be\nthe fitting and dignified tone of a philosophical mind drawing near\nto the horizon beneath which it will presently disappear forever. No\none can help respecting courage, under whatever form or circumstances\nit is manifested; and, if a man think that he is on the verge of\nannihilation, it is truly dignified and praiseworthy to approach it\nwith unflinching eye and unblenched cheek. This is _so far as the\nindividual is concerned_. But is there not another and larger side of\nthe question, which the very noblest man _ought_ to feel as awful and\nheart-rending,--nay, must feel to be so, in proportion to his nobleness\nand his power to extend his view beyond his own petty personality?\n\nTrue magnanimity, it seems to me, must look far outside of a man\u2019s\nown lot, of his past share of life\u2019s feast, and his readiness now\nto rise from it satisfied, and must take a wide survey of the lives\n(so far as they can be known or guessed) of all other men,--of the\npoverty-stricken, the savage, the ignorant, the diseased, the enslaved,\nthe sin-degraded,--and attain the conclusion that for _these_ also, as\nwell as for himself, life on earth has been sufficient good, and none\nother need be asked or desired before he can complacently speak of the\n_joy_ of abandoning faith in God and immortality. \u201cI have had a noble\nshare of life, and I desire no more,\u201d is an expression of personal\nsentiment which may or may not be right and fitting on the assumed\nhypothesis. But to join to such expression of individual contentment no\nword of regret for the closing in of all hope to the suffering millions\nof our race who have _not_ had \u201cnoble\u201d shares of life, and who do, with\nyearning hunger, desire more than has ever fallen to their lot,--this\nis, as it seems to me, the reverse of magnanimity. This is littleness\nand selfishness almost as bad as that of the bigots whom these Atheists\nabhor, who rejoice to expect heaven for themselves, while leaving\nthousands of their brethren to perdition. It might be pardonable in\none brought up to believe in hell, and who hurriedly leaped to the\ndoctrine of annihilation from that intolerable yoke, and cried, \u201cLet\nus all perish together rather than that hideous doom overtake a single\ncreature!\u201d Such a choice would be generous and worthy. But when a woman\nwho probably never, at any period of her life, believed in the eternal\nperdition of a soul, proclaims herself enraptured at the joy of finding\nout that there is neither a God to protect the weak, nor, finally, any\nholiness or happiness beyond the grave,--then, I repeat, this is _not_\nmagnanimity, but gigantic selfishness.\n\nLet us think a little what it would signify to mankind to give up God\nand heaven,--that is, the _belief_ in God and heaven; for--God be\npraised!--it rests with no philosophic school to put out the sun or\nprevent the morning from breaking, but only to _blind our eyes to them_.\n\nDr. James Martineau once made in a sermon the startling remark that,\n\u201cif it could be known that God was dead, the news would cause but\nlittle excitement in the streets of Berlin or Paris.\u201d The observation\nwas doubtless true; for, of _direct_ thought of God, the streets\nof great cities are probably the emptiest of any places wherein\nmortals may be found. But there is an enormous share of human ideas\nand feelings not directly or consciously turned toward God, yet\nnevertheless colored by the belief that such a Being exists. Perhaps it\nwould be more proper to say that in Christendom every idea and every\nfeeling have imperceptibly been built up on the theory that there is a\nGod. We see everything _with Him for a background_. Inanimate nature\nand the lower animals, human history and society, poetry, literature,\nscience, and art,--every one of them has its religious aspect, which\ncan only be excluded by a mental _tour de force_. Take inanimate\nnature, for example,--the region where it seems easiest to sever\nthe links of habitual thought, and which the doctrine of Evolution\n(according to some of its teachers) has already withdrawn from the\ndomain of a Creative Power. We all love this nature; and our hearts\nare moved to their depths by sympathy with it when we gaze round of\na summer morning upon the woods and hills and waters, or, later in\nthe year, upon the \u201chappy autumn fields\u201d of ripened corn, or, on a\nwinter\u2019s night, up into the solemn host of stars. But is it merely the\nglittering \u201cpatines of bright gold,\u201d or fields of yellow wheat, or the\nblock of wood and rock which form the forest or the mountain, which\nawaken in us such mysterious emotion? Are we not dimly worshipping the\nsoul of nature through earth and sky,--the spirit wherewith our spirits\nare in ineffable harmony, and of which all the loveliness we behold is\nbut the shadow?\n\nLet some Agnostic disenchanter come to us at such an hour and tell us\nthat, though it takes a man of genius to depict worthily on canvas\na corner of this wide field of loveliness, yet that the whole great\noriginal had no Painter, no Designer; that the mountains had no\nArchitect, the well-balanced stars no supreme Geometer, but that it\nall came about as we behold it through the action of forces, unguided\nby any mind, undirected by any Will,--and what revulsion shall we not\nexperience? Shall we not feel like a man enamoured of a beautiful woman\nwhom he has believed to be good and wise and tender, but, when he comes\nat last to look close into her face, he finds her to be a soulless\nidiot, from whose stony and meaningless gaze he turns shuddering away?\n\nScience, again, is but a mere heap of facts, not a golden chain of\ntruths, if we refuse to link it to the throne of God.[11] In every\ndepartment of human thought, in short, something--and that something\nthe most beautiful in it--must be lost, some sacred spell must be\nbroken, if we are to think of it as divested from the deeper sense\nwhich religion has (all unconsciously to ourselves) given to it,--the\nthread of purpose running through; the understood promise of justice;\nthe sympathy of an unseen, all-beholding Spectator.\n\nIn the same way, all human relationships will be stripped of the\nmajestic mantle under which they have been sheltered. The idea of the\ncommon Fatherhood of God, which Paganism in its best days had begun\nto teach, and which Christ\u2019s lessons have made the familiar thought\nof every European child, has put a meaning into the phrase of human\nbrotherhood, which it is much to be doubted if the warmest \u201cEnthusiasts\nof Humanity\u201d would, without such preliminary training, have been able\nto give to it. The idea (poorly as it has been hitherto recognized)\nthat the most degraded of mankind, those from whom we naturally turn in\ndisgust, have yet the same Creator and the same Judge as ourselves,\nhas, beyond question, an indirect influence of no small force over\nall our sentiments concerning them. The same reflection has even at\nlast begun to exercise a perceptible influence over our conduct to the\nbrutes. Christians and Theists of every shade may be found impressed\nwith the sense that religion demands the humane treatment of all\nsentient creatures; and this, whether they take the view of Cardinal\nManning, that, \u201cif I owe no moral duties to the lower animals, I owe\nall the moral duties that are conceivable to the Creator of those\nanimals,--humanity, mercy, and care for them,\u201d or take the simple\nTheist stand-point, that, as we love Him, so we naturally look with\nsympathy and tenderness on everything He has made. Of course, this\nmotive of humanity to brutes disappears with the belief in God; and,\naccordingly, we find, with quite logical fitness, that, while the\nopposition to brute torture is maintained by men of every varied shade\nof religion, the majority of the chief vivisectors of Europe are\nprofessed Materialists. Vivisection is the logical outcome of Atheism\nas regards the brutes; and M. Paul Bert and Carl Vogt are only the most\ncandid examples of men who have carried it out.\n\nBut it is in the region of the personal virtues--purity, truth,\ntemperance, contentment--that the loss of the belief in God will be\nmost disastrous. I am far from maintaining that, putting religion\nwholly out of sight, there are not motives of a purely ethical kind\nleft which _ought_ to make men practise the highest inward virtue. But\nI think it needs only a slight knowledge of human nature to perceive\nthat the shutting up of the window of the soul, through which an awful\nand most holy Spectator has hitherto been believed to gaze into all its\nsecrets, must leave a great deal in darkness which has been till now\nillumined with a sin-exposing light. It takes much for a man to say,\nlike the author of _In Memoriam_,--\n\n  \u201cThe _dead_ shall look me through and through.\u201d\n\nThe idea of any eye perceiving all that is going on in the recesses of\nthe mind,--the double motives, the unfaithfulnesses, the vanities, the\nmemories of old shameful errors,--this is hard enough. But the belief\nthat such introspection is always taking place, and by the Holiest\nof all beings, is undoubtedly a sort of purification such as no mere\nsolitary process of self-examination can resemble. Even a warm human\nfriendship in youth brings with it always a burst of self-knowledge. We\nsee ourselves quite freshly in our friend\u2019s view of us. But a thousand\ntimes greater inevitably is the self-revelation which comes with the\nrealized presence of God in the soul, the flood of sunshine which\ndiscloses all the motes which fill the atmosphere of our thoughts. Now,\nthough it is only spiritually-minded men who know this experience in\nits full intensity, yet every man who believes in God has gleams of it\nat intervals through life which are never afterward quite forgotten.\nBut, more (and this is a point which concerns the whole Theistic moral\nargument most importantly), the supreme experience of spiritual men is\n_filtered down_ through all grades of minds by books and intercourse.\nThe lofty standard of purity which has been revealed to them is\npartially exhibited by their words and example, and forms a kind of\nhigh-water mark for lesser souls. It is an immense gain, even to very\npoor sinners, that there should be a few rich saints; and every man who\nhas attained a lofty conception of holiness helps to make all the world\naround him conscious of its unholiness. He is a mirror in a dark place:\nthe ray of light which has fallen on him dispels somewhat of the gloom\naround.\n\nThus, if the belief in God be lost to humanity, we shall lose not only\nthe direct, the incalculable effects on individual souls of the belief\nin a divine Searcher of Hearts, but also the indirect and universal\nuplifting influence on society of the presence of men who have\nexperienced such effects, and formed their moral standard accordingly.\nIs it too much to augur that the result will be a depreciation of the\ncommon ideal standard, and a consequently still further depression of\nthe practical level of personal virtue?\n\nWhat is left, when religion is gone, to give to the personal virtues\nof purity (of _thought_ as well as of act), of truth, temperance, and\ncontentment, the high status they ought to hold? These virtues, in the\nhistory of the moral development of mankind, are always the last to\nbe recognized. In the earlier ages of morality, nobody asks for more\nthan negative merits,--_not_ to murder or rob or deal treacherously.\nThen comes the great step, when the rabbinical precept, \u201cThou shalt\n_not_ do to another what thou wouldest not he should do to thee,\u201d is\nexchanged for the positive Christian law, _Do_ to another what thou\nwouldest he should do to thee. But only very slowly, above and beyond\nall social duties, the principle, \u201cBe perfect, as thy Father in heaven\nis perfect,\u201d has dawned on mankind as the aim of life; and how little\nit is yet the practical rule of conduct there is no need to tell. Let\nus but let slip our faith in the perfect Father in heaven, and will it\nnot sink again by degrees into oblivion? We shall hear a great deal,\ndoubtless (for a time, at all events), of the duty of \u201claboring for\nthe cause of humanity,\u201d and be encouraged by promises of \u201cposthumous\nactivity.\u201d But where are the motives for personal and secret virtue\nto come from,--that inward virtue without which even warm social\nbenevolence soon becomes tainted? It _must_, it would seem, fall more\nand more into the background. There is, theoretically, no more reason\nfor placing it forward: there is no more any \u201cend of creation\u201d in\ncontemplation, to which the virtue of each soul, to be wrought out by\nits own struggles, must contribute its quotum. _The intrinsic moral\ncharacter of each soul_ will no longer be deemed the concern of any\nbeing except the man himself, but only what _each is able to achieve\nin the way of contributing to the welfare of other people_. While the\nlesson of the higher ethics has been, \u201cIt is more important to _be_\ngood than to _do_ good,\u201d that of the new ethics must inevitably be,\n\u201cIt is very important what you _do_: it is of the smallest possible\nconsequence what you _are_ except in so far as your neighbors may know\nit and be affected thereby.\u201d\n\nIn another way, also, I think morality would be affected enormously,\nthough still indirectly, by the downfall of religion. Many of my\nreaders will recall a very able article on Atheism in the _National\nReview_ for January, 1856, by Mr. R. H. Hutton, in which it was\nmaintained that \u201cAtheism has no language by which it can express\nthe infinite nature of moral distinctions.... It is not, as has\nbeen falsely said, that right and wrong take their distinction from\nmeasures of duration, but that faith in infinite personal life, and in\ncommunion with or separate from infinite good, is the only articulate\nutterance which our conscience can find for its sense of the absolutely\nboundless significance it sees in every moral choice.\u201d Take away this\n_expression_ of the infinite nature of moral distinctions, and the\n_sense_ of it will very rapidly dwindle away.\n\nAnd, after all, can it be said in the same sense, under an Atheistic\nas under a Theistic creed, that moral distinctions _are_ \u201cinfinitely\u201d\nsignificant? Is there any \u201cinfinite\u201d left for us to talk about, when we\nhave abolished God and immortality? Some few thousands of years ago,\non the Atheistic hypothesis, when man was just emerging from apehood,\nthere was no Being anywhere who distinguished right from wrong;[12] and\nsome few thousand years to come, when the final glacial period sets\nin, there will be nobody left to know anything about it. There is no\nBeing now in whom righteousness is impersonated, nor any world to come\nwherein the injustices of this will be rectified. From the eternal and\nimmutable law of the universe, the \u1f04\u03b3\u03c1\u03b1\u03c0\u03c4\u03b1 \u03ba\u1f80\u03c3\u03c6\u03b1\u03bb\u1fc6 \u03b8\u03b5\u1ff6\u03bd \u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u03b9\u03bc\u03b1, which\nSophocles held it to be, the moral law has sunk to a mere \u201cRule of\nThumb,\u201d whereby certain ephemeral creatures on our small planet find\nit most beneficial, on the whole, to regulate their behavior. Is it\nin the nature of things to pay to such a rule the sort of obedience\nand reverence we have paid to the divine law? And if, with the very\nhighest sanctions which can be conceived, that law has but too often\nfailed to secure our obedience against the temptations of selfishness\nand passion, does anybody expect that, when it is divested of all those\nsanctions, it will prevail even so far as it has done hitherto?\n\nThese are some of the indirect ways in which mankind must lose beauty\nand truth and goodness, as it loses faith in God and immortality. But\nthe direct losses inevitably to follow are, if possible, graver still.\n\nThe course of the moral life, after it has been commenced in earnest,\nprobably passes through the same two great phases in almost every\nman who lives long enough. At first, duty is a hard effort and _all_\neffort. A strong hand seems to be laid on the man, urging him up a\ntoilsome road. Every evil tendency of his nature has to be separately\nfought with and trampled down, every act of self-sacrifice for others\nto be performed with exertion of his will. The man labors heroically\nunder his stern sense of duty, taking consolation in it _as_ duty, but\nstill looking rather to fulfil _his_ obligation than desirous that the\nend of each task should be accomplished. If he die at this stage, it\nis in some sense a release. He has discharged his duty as a soldier,\nand is glad to lay down his arms. If he be a religious man, he hopes to\nhear it said to him, \u201cWell done, good and faithful servant! enter thou\ninto the joy of thy Lord.\u201d\n\nBut if a man live many years, striving in earnest, however failingly,\nto do his duty, there comes by degrees a change in his condition. Old\ntemptations lie down; and, if no new ones arise to give him trouble,\nthe friction of the inner life diminishes so sensibly that he is apt to\nbe alarmed lest he be growing indifferent. As to his positive duties,\nthose which he has been fulfilling merely because he felt it laid upon\nhim to undertake them, by degrees they acquire interest for him for\ntheir own sake. He is intensely anxious for the success of his labors,\nand no longer measures his efforts by what may be considered his moral\nobligations. He _wants_ such and such aged or suffering persons to\nbe relieved, such sinners to be reclaimed, such children trained to\nvirtue, such truths published, such wrongs redressed, such useful laws\nor reforms or discoveries introduced. There is no need now for him to\nspur himself by reflections that it is his duty to work for these ends:\nthe difficulty with him now lies to moderate his work with a view to\nthe preservation of health and strength. It would be cruelty to tell\nhim his task has been honorably fulfilled, though the object of it has\nfailed. He would cry, \u201cLet me be accounted a faithless servant, but let\nthe work be accomplished by another, and I shall be content.\u201d If he die\n_now_, he takes very little comfort from thinking he has discharged his\nduty. The work is not finished, and will miss his hand. He says, as\nTheodore Parker said to me on his death-bed: \u201cI am not afraid to die,\nbut I wish I might carry on my work. I have only half used the powers\nGod gave me.\u201d\n\nNow, in all this history of the moral life, it appears that no\nostensible difference need exist between the sentiments of an Atheist\nand a Theist, _provided we can carry the Atheist safely to the second\nstage of progress_. Once there, it is evident that no change in his\nopinions about God or loss of hope of heaven will practically affect\nhis conduct. The habits of self-control whereby he has ruled his\npassions will not be lost, the interest he has taken in unselfish\nobjects will not dwindle. He will go on to the end, laboring for the\ngood of his kind, and regret his own death mainly because it will\nstop those labors. But how are ordinary men, of no specially elevated\nmoral fibre, to be carried up to that turning-point where Law is\nsuperseded by love? I am far from thinking that men may not and do\nnot often begin their self-reformation when they are (so far as their\nown consciousness goes) quite alienated from God or disbelieving his\nexistence. I know, on the contrary, that it is no uncommon experience\nthat this should be so. But, in the ordinary history of the soul, the\nresolute effort to obey conscience after a very little time brings\nwith it a sense, first dim, then shining more to the perfect day,\nthat there _is_ (as Mr. Matthew Arnold says) \u201ca Power not ourselves\nwhich makes for righteousness\u201d; or, in plainer revelation, that God\nwatches and helps the soul which strives to do right. Henceforth, the\nmechanical moral effort is aided by the electric force of religion,\nburning away the dross of sin in the fire of a divine Presence, and\nmaking self-sacrifice sweet as an offering of love. But if this normal\nprocess, whereby morality leads up to religion and becomes thereby\naided through all future effort, is to be rigidly prohibited by\nreason, if we are to starve out the religious sentiment as a passion\nnot to be indulged by a rational being, then, I ask, how many are the\nmen and women who, after their first good resolutions, will persist in\nthe course of arduous moral effort long enough to reach that stage when\nduty becomes comparatively easy? Where are the aids to come from to\nkeep them from self-indulgence? We have seen that the moral law itself\nis to be represented to them as merely an hereditary set of the brain;\nthat they are not to dream there is any Holy Eye looking at them, any\nstrong Hand ready to aid their feeble steps, any Infinite Love drawing\nthem to itself, any Life beyond the grave where the imperfect virtue of\nearth shall grow and blossom in eternal beauty. All these ideas are to\nbe resolutely dismissed. The habit of prayer (irreparable, immeasurable\nloss) is to be discarded. Nothing is to be left save only the one\nmotive of the Enthusiasm of Humanity, which is to replace God and\nconscience and heaven. Let me speak out concerning this much-boasted\nmodern sentiment.\n\nI have heard a good man, one of the best men I know, preaching on\nthis subject, and saying: \u201cDo you ask why should you love your\nneighbor? _Because you cannot help it!_\u201d Now, as I listened to that\ngenuine philanthropist\u2019s utterance, my heart smote me, and I said to\nmyself: \u201cBut I _could_ help it, and only too easily! It comes to him\nspontaneously, I have no doubt, to love his neighbors; but I have been\ntrying to do it for many years, and have very imperfectly succeeded.\nInstead of _beginning_ with love, and going on to duty toward them\nas the result of love, I have had to begin with duty, and, only with\nmany a self-reproach for hardness of spirit, learned at last to feel\nlove--for some of them!\u201d\n\nI do not think my experience is exceptional. I think the people who\ncan and do love spontaneously that terribly large section of our\nrace who are commonplace, narrow-minded, and small of heart, are the\nexceptions, and that, if we are to have no benevolence except from\nborn philanthropists like the good man I have named, we shall see very\nlittle in future of the Enthusiasm of Humanity.\n\nNo! It takes, for most of us, all the help to loving our brother\nwhich comes from believing that we have a common Father and a common\nhome,--all the help which comes to the heart in answer to the prayer\nthat God would melt its stoniness, and make it blossom into tenderness\nand sympathy,--to enable us to attain the love which is not the\n_spring_ of social duty, but its _climax_,--the \u201cfulfilling of the law.\u201d\n\nI honestly think that the process of making Atheists, _trained as\nsuch_, into philanthropists, will be but rarely achieved. And I venture\nto propound the question to those who point to admirable living\nexamples of Atheistic or Comtist philanthropy,--How many of these have\npassed through the earlier stage of morality _as believers in God_,\nand with all the aid which prayer and faith and hope could give them?\nThat they _remain_ actively benevolent, having advanced so far, is (as\nI have shown above) readily to be anticipated. But will their children\nstand where they stand now? We are yet obeying the great impetus of\nreligion, and running along the rails laid down by our forefathers.\nShall we continue in the same course when that impetus has stopped, and\nwe have left the rails altogether? I fear me not.\n\nIn brief, I think the outlook of Atheism, as a _moral educator_, as\nblack as need be. Viewed with the utmost candor, and admitting all the\nexcellence of many of its disciples, I think Atheism must deduct from\nmorality the priceless training to reverence afforded by religion;\nthe illuminating consciousness of an unseen Searcher of hearts; the\ninvigorating confidence in an Almighty Helper; the vivifying influence\nof divine love; and, finally, the immeasurable, inestimable benefits\nderivable from that practice of prayer which is God\u2019s own education of\nthe soul.\n\nBut, whatever may be its results as a system of moral training,\nAtheism, in its ultimate aspect, must be, to every religious man and\nwoman who is driven to adopt it in later life, the setting of the\nsun which has warmed and brightened existence. We may _live_ in the\ntwilight; but that which gave to prosperity its joy, to grief its\ncomfort, to duty its delight, to love its sweetness, to solitude its\ncharm, to all life its meaning and purpose, and to death its perfect\nconsolation and support, is lost forever. There are no words to tell\nwhat that loss must be,--worst of all to those who are least conscious\nof it, and who have therefore lost with their faith in God those\nspiritual faculties in the exercise of which man has his higher being,\nand of which the pains are better worth than all the pleasures of earth.\n\nAtheism involves a far _worse_ loss to humanity than the exclusion of\nthe belief in a Life after Death; but we can form no fair estimate of\nthe deduction which our complacent Agnostics are prepared to make from\nthe sum of human virtue and happiness, if we do not thoroughly realize\nwhat it is they are talking of when they tell us so cheerfully to\nabandon the hope of Immortality, as well as the belief in God, and that\nthey are quite satisfied to do both.\n\nAs far as each individual is personally concerned, such Hope is of\ncourse a very variable sentiment. There are those who say (as Miss\nMartineau mentions Mr. W. E. Forster saying to her), \u201cI would rather\nbe damned than annihilated.\u201d And there are others who say, as she does\nherself, \u201cI have had a very noble share of life, and I do not ask\nany more.\u201d With the latter feeling _per se_, no one has a right to\nquarrel. To many, no doubt, especially persons of feeble bodily health\nor overstrained conscientiousness, the notion of final repose is more\ngrateful than that of an immortality of activity. They feel in our day,\nas it would seem almost everybody did in more trying times, that it was\nthe \u201crest which remaineth for the people of God,\u201d beyond the storms\nof the world,--the \u201ceverlasting beds of rest\u201d on which the weary may\nlie,--rather than our more modern notion of a Heaven of Progress, to\nwhich they aspire. There are Buddhists of the West as of the East, to\nwhom, by some natural or acquired habit of mind, existence itself seems\na burden; and they extend the _taedium vitae_ which they feel here by\nanticipation to any future state to which they could be transferred.\nWith such persons as these, as I have just said, we have no claim\nto contend, even though we may think, with Tennyson, that, if they\nknew themselves better, they would recognize that, even in uttermost\nlassitude,\n\n  \u201c\u2019Tis _life_ of which our veins are scant;\n  O Life, not Death, for which we pant;\n  More life, and fuller, _that_ we want.\u201d\n\nThe dreams of men as to what they desire beyond the grave are\ninfinitely varied, from Nirvana to Valhalla; and nothing is to be said,\nso far as he himself is concerned, respecting a man who wishes it to be\nwritten on his tombstone that he\n\n  \u201cFrom Nature\u2019s temperate feast rose satisfied,\n  Thanked Heaven that he had lived and that he died,\u201d\n\nexcept this,--that his choice of eternal sleep betrays the fact _that\nthere is no one in this world or the next whom he loves well enough\nto wish to be awakened to meet him again_. Of course, a man may have\nabundance of kindly and dutiful sentiments for his relatives and\nfriends, and yet (thinking they will do well enough without him) be\nsatisfied to quit them for ever. But I cannot believe that any one\nwho has ever lost the object of the higher and more absorbing human\naffection, or who leaves behind him in dying one united to him by such\ntranscendent love, can fail passionately to desire immortality. He may\n_resign_ himself through philosophy or religion (if his religion take\nthe strange and rare form of belief in God and disbelief in a life to\ncome) to see his beloved one no more. But not to _desire_ to meet,\nat any cost of unwelcome ages of life, the being we profess to love\nsupremely, seems to be a contradiction in terms. Were there to loom\nbefore us worlds to climb, and centuries of labor, we would surely\nthankfully go through them all to reach the hour when we shall say,\n\n  \u201cSoul of my soul, I shall meet thee again!\n  And with God be the rest.\u201d\n\nBut because a loveless man may, without blame, be content to let death\ndrop a final curtain on his consciousness, it is quite another matter\nfor him to be equally placidly resigned to the extinction of the hopes\nof others, who have had no such feast of life as he, or who yearn for\nthe renewal of affection hereafter. As I have elsewhere attempted to\nshow, in a little parable, such resignation _on behalf of other people_\nis very much like that of Dives,[13] who, having fared sumptuously,\nshould be contented to let Lazarus starve.\n\nNor is it only the _comfort_ of expecting to see our beloved ones again\nwhich we shall lose with the hope of a future life. I am persuaded\nthat a great deal of the higher part of love itself will fade out of\nhuman existence altogether, if that hope be generally abandoned. Every\none knows how friendship and marriage are hallowed by the thought of\ntheir perpetuity even in this world, and how a union is debased if\nit be, consciously to those who make it, temporary and transitory.\nHitherto, we have loved one another _as immortal beings_, as creatures\nwhose affections belonged to the exalted order of eternal things. When\nthat ennobling and sanctifying element evaporates, when Love, like\neverything else, is reduced to a question of days and months and years,\nwill it not undergo somewhat of the degradation which now belongs to\nthe brief contracts of passion? Even those who might still be able to\nfeel all the holiness of love would, when they learned it was destined\nto end in the agony of eternal separation, check themselves from\nindulging a sentiment leading up inevitably to such a termination, just\nas a man would turn from a path ending in a precipice.\n\nThus, I believe, the affections must irretrievably suffer from the\nloss of the hope of immortality. So must, in a measure, the intellect\nand the imagination, driven from the wider expanse back on that poor\nfleshly life which is to be the end-all of man, and which must be\ndestined to assume an importance it has never possessed since our\nrace emerged from its brute and barbarian origin. Nor would our moral\nlife fail to suffer also very grievously, though in another way from\nthat which has been alleged. I think we can scarcely now estimate the\n_minifying_ consequences of closing all outlook beyond this world,\nand shutting up morality within the narrow sphere of mortal life. As I\nhave said in my _Hopes of the Human Race_, it is not possible we should\ncontinue to attach to virtue and vice the same profound significance,\nwhen we believe their scope to reach no further than our brief span,\nand justice to be a dream of our puny race never to be realized\nthroughout the eternal ages. In theory, right and wrong must come to\nbe regarded as of comparatively trivial importance; and, practically,\nthe virtue destined shortly to be extinguished forever must seem to\nthe tempted soul scarcely deserving of an effort. Life, after we have\npassed its meridian, must become in our eyes more and more like an\nautumn garden, wherein it would be vain to plant seeds of good which\ncan never bloom before the frosts of death, and useless to eradicate\nweeds which must be killed erelong without our labor. Needless to add\nthat of that dismal spot it may soon be said,--\n\n  \u201cBetween the time of the wind and the snow,\n  All loathsome things began to grow\u201d;\n\nand, when the winter comes at last, none will regret the white shroud\nit throws over corruption and decay.\n\nBut it is when we come to think of humanity _as a whole_ that the\nprospect of final extinction appears so unutterably deplorable, so\nlame and impotent a conclusion for all the struggles, the martyrdoms,\nand the prayers of a hundred generations who have gone to the grave in\nhope and faith, _and perished there_. We English men and women have\nbeen wont to think proudly of the vast geographical extension of our\ncountry\u2019s dominion, the grandeur of the Empire on which the sun never\nsets; and the remark has often been made that there is not a petty\ncorporation or board in the kingdom whose proceedings are not, in a\ndegree, dignified by the sense of England\u2019s greatness. The politicians\nwho have expressed a readiness to give up our Colonies have been\ntaunted, and justly, with lack of the nobler patriotism which regards\nnot only financial and administrative details, but the larger interests\nand glory of what we have delighted to call our Imperial Race. But\nwhat would be the loss to the _prestige_ of England of the severance\nof Australia and Canada and India, compared to the loss to mankind of\nthat glorious empery of Immortality in which it has prided itself since\nthe beginning of history? Everything we have achieved and thought--our\nliterature, art, laws, kingdoms, churches--has all been wrought and\nbuilt up in this faith, which has given value to the soul of the\nhumblest child, and added grandeur to the most splendid deeds of the\nhero and the martyr. With that hope disappears not only the consolation\nof all bereaved hearts, but the very crown upon the head of humanity.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is no argument for the truth of any opinion that the disclosure\nof its falsehood may have disastrous consequences. Nothing that has\nbeen advanced in this paper proves, or has been offered as proof, that\nthere is a God or a life to come. The foundations for those beliefs\nbelong to a different order of considerations. But I think thus much\nmay be presumed to have resulted from our inquiry; namely, that their\nvalue to the virtue and the happiness of mankind is so incalculably\nvast that the work of demolishing them ought to be carried on, by men\nprofessing to love their kind, in a very different spirit from that\nwhich is generally exhibited by Agnostics. Even if their position be\ntrue, and if they be morally bound to make known to the world that such\nis the case, and to put an end to the baseless dream which has deluded\nour race for so many thousand years,--even granting this, I think it\nremains clear that their task is one to be undertaken only under the\nsternest sense of duty, and with immeasurable mournfulness and regret.\nI think that, instead of rejoicing over the discovery of \u201ca spring in\nthe desert,\u201d it behooves them to weep tears, bitter as ever fell from\nhuman eyes, over the grave wherein they bury the Divine Love and the\nImmortal Hope of our miserable race.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] _Moral Philosophy_, B. I., chap. vii.\n\n[2] _Deontology_, p. 191.\n\n[3] Miss Martineau says: \u201cI saw with the pain of disgust how much\nlower a thing it is to lead even the loftiest life from a regard to\nthe will or mind of any other being than from a natural working out of\nour own powers\u201d (_Autobiography_, Vol. II.). I must humbly confess I\nhave not come yet to see anything of the kind. Provided that the Being\nto whose will we have regard is Supreme Goodness itself, it seems to\nme infinitely _higher_ to strive to assimilate our will to His than to\n\u201cwork out our own powers.\u201d\n\n[4] _Alone to the Alone_, p. 110, third edition.\n\n[5] _E.g._, the following passage, which deserves to be reprinted a\nhundred times, _Nineteenth Century_, July, 1877, p. 832: \u201cWe entirely\nagree with the theologians that our age is beset with a grievous\ndanger of materialism. There is a school of teachers abroad, and they\nhave found an echo here, who dream that victorious vivisection will\nultimately win them anatomical solutions of man\u2019s moral and spiritual\nmysteries. Such unholy nightmares, it is true, are not likely to\nbeguile many minds in a country like this, where social and moral\nproblems are still in their natural ascendant. But there is a subtler\nkind of materialism, of which the dangers are real. It does not,\nindeed, put forth the bestial sophism that the apex of philosophy is\nto be won by improved microscopes and new batteries. But then it has\nnothing to say about the spiritual life of men. It fills the air with\np\u00e6ans to science, but it always means physical, not moral science. It\nshirks the question of questions,--To what human end is this knowledge?\nHow shall man thereby order his life as a whole? Where is he to find\nthe object of the yearnings of his spirit?\u201d\n\nI am not concerned to defend the orthodox ideal of heaven against Mr.\nHarrison\u2019s strictures; but I cannot help entering a protest against his\nsneer at the \u201ceternity of the tabor\u201d as \u201cso gross, so sensual a creed.\u201d\nIt seems to me it errs by an excessive and unreal spirituality. It was,\ncertainly, not a \u201cgross\u201d or \u201csensual\u201d order of mind which deemed the\nact of _adoration_ to be one wherein man could spend an eternity of\necstasy.\n\n[6] Pages 838, 839.\n\n[7] _Autobiography_, Vol. II., p. 356.\n\n[8] _Age of Science_, p. 49.\n\n[9] _Autobiography_, pp. 333, 438.\n\n[10] Harriet Martineau\u2019s last letter to Mr. Atkinson, Ambleside, May\n19, 1876, _Autobiography_, Vol. III., p. 453.\n\n[11] I have heard of two very great living philosophers who thought\nthey had pretty nearly got rid of Final Causes, but who, in talking\ntogether, found it hard to avoid assuming their existence. One of them,\nin fact, in detailing his own observations and discoveries concerning\nanimals and plants, used so often terms implying that there was a\n_purpose_ visible in natural arrangements that his friend stopped him,\nand said, \u201cMr. ----, you are getting strangely _teleological_!\u201d\n\n[12] Or at least _our_ right from wrong; for, on Mr. Darwin\u2019s showing,\nthere may, it seems, be a different right and wrong for creatures\ndifferently constituted in other worlds, whose interests, being\ndifferent, will cause different \u201csets\u201d of their brains toward the lines\nof action useful to their tribes accordingly.\n\n[13] The following letter appeared in the _Spectator_:--\n\nSIR,--Indulging in the pernicious habit of reading in bed, I last\nnight perused with profound interest Mr. Greg\u2019s letter in your current\nnumber, your own remarks thereupon, and also Mr. Greg\u2019s generous\ndefence of his old friend, Harriet Martineau, in the _Nineteenth\nCentury_. As my eyes closed on the last paragraph of this article, I\nseemed to behold a vision, which I shall take leave to describe to you.\n\nDives had just eaten a particularly plentiful dinner, and was standing\nat the door of a pretty cottage in Ambleside. Lazarus, looking up at\nhim, said pitifully, \u201cI perish with hunger.\u201d Thereupon, Dives observed,\nwith great serenity: \u201cLazarus, I have had an excellent dinner. There is\nnot a crumb left. But I am quite content, and you ought to be the same.\u201d\n\nPoor Lazarus, however, instead of seeming satisfied, wailed yet more\nsadly: \u201cBut I hunger, Dives! I hunger for the bread of life! I hunger\nfor human love, of which I had only begun to taste, when it was\nsnatched away. I hunger for justice, of which such scant measure has\nbeen dealt me, and to millions like me. I hunger for truth, I hunger\nfor beauty, I hunger for righteousness, I hunger for a love holy,\ndivine, and perfect, which alone can satisfy my soul. I hunger, Dives!\nI hunger, and you tell me there is not a crumb left of the rich feast\nof existence, and bid me be content. It is a cruel mockery.\u201d\n\nThen Dives answered yet more placidly: \u201cI never dream of wishing\nanything were otherwise than it is. I am frankly satisfied to have done\nwith life. I have had a noble share of it, and I desire no more. I\nutterly disbelieve in a future life.\u201d\n\nAt that moment, my respected friend Mr. Greg passed by, and heard what\nDives was saying; on which, to my great surprise, he made the following\nobservation: \u201cThis is, unquestionably, the harder--_may it not also be\nthe higher_?--form of pious resignation, the last achievement of the\nripened mind.\u201d\n\nAs for Lazarus, on catching Mr. Greg\u2019s remark, he turned himself\npainfully on the ground, and groaned: \u201cI never heard before of anybody\nbeing \u2018_piously resigned_\u2019 to the woes and wants _of other people_. La\nRochefoucauld was right, I suppose, to say, \u2018_Nous avons tous assez de\nforce pour supporter les maux d\u2019autrui_\u2019; but, for my part, I should\nnot precisely call Dives\u2019 satisfaction in his \u2018noble share\u2019 of the\nfeast, while I am doomed to perish starving, by quite so fine a name\nas \u2018pious resignation.\u2019 Pray, Mr. Greg, with your large humanity, take\n_my_ case into consideration, before you credit Dives with anything\nbetter than stupendous egotism.\u201d\n\nStartled by the vehemence of poor Lazarus, I awoke.\n\n  I am, Sir, etc.\n\n\n\n\nHYGEIOLATRY.\n\n\nThe advance of physical science and the simultaneous retreat of\nreligious faith threaten, among their numerous consequences, to\nintroduce a new principle into morals. We may call it Doctor\u2019s\nDoctrine,--not because it is by any means the exclusive property of\nthe medical profession, or that all doctors can be supposed to hold\nit, but because it is more rife among them and tells more directly on\ntheir work than in the case of other men. It is indeed excusable for a\nphysician to attribute to bodily health, wherewith this new principle\nis concerned, more importance than a poet, a preacher, or a soldier, is\nlikely to concede to it; and to this natural tendency is added, pretty\nfrequently perhaps, a tolerably defined materialism, which not merely\nconnects but identifies genius, happiness, and virtue with physical\nsoundness, and stupidity, misery, and crime with diseased organization.\nWith such views, and deprived of that vista of an eternal future\nwhich alone gives to human things their true perspective, it is not\nwonderful that many should come to regard bodily health as the _summum\nbonum_, and thence to deduce the principle to which I desire to call\nattention as an innovation in ethics. Reduced as nearly as possible to\na formula, that principle is as follows:\n\n_That any practice which, in the opinion of experts, conduces to bodily\nhealth or tends to the cure of disease, becomes_, ipso facto, _morally\nlawful and right._\n\nI do not mean to imply that this principle has yet been clearly stated\nby any of its adherents, or that they are even generally conscious that\nthey have adopted it. Possibly, many who have practically embodied\nit in their conduct for years may repudiate it on seeing it defined\nin words. Nevertheless, it may be traced as the substructure of\ninnumerable arguments on all manner of subjects of public and private\ninterest,--arguments which, if the principle were knocked from under\nthem, would instantly be seen to fall baseless to the ground. It is, in\nshort, the implied major term of a thousand syllogisms which we hear in\nevery debate and read in every magazine and newspaper.\n\nNow, to measure the extent of the change which the adoption of this\nDoctor\u2019s Doctrine must introduce into ethics, it is only necessary to\ncast a glance backward at the older view of the relation of duty to\nhealth which has hitherto prevailed in the world, and been taught\npretty equally by moralists of every school, with the exception of\nascetics on one side, and pure hedonists on the other. That older\nlesson--which we may for convenience call Divine\u2019s Doctrine, since it\nis the general teaching of every Protestant theologian and moralist,\nmay be summed up in the canon--\n\n_Bodily health may not be lawfully sacrificed to our desire of pleasure\nor fear of pain. It may and ought to be sacrificed to the health of our\nsouls, to the service of our fellowmen, or to fidelity to God._\n\nIn other words, it has been taught that the man who injures his health\nby debauchery is guilty of a serious moral offence, and he who commits\nsuicide is guilty of a crime; but that, on the other hand, the man who\nsacrifices his health in the performance of his duty as physician,\nclergyman, or soldier, or in endeavoring to save a fellow-creature from\nflood or fire, or who gives up life itself rather than forswear himself\nor renounce his religious faith, or commit a base or unclean action,\nis not only exonerated from any guilt, but is, in the highest degree,\nvirtuous.\n\nOn these lines, Christian civilization may be said to have been built\nup. The natural selfishness of human nature has been counteracted by\nthe sense of duty; and if, now and then, needless and exaggerated\nself-sacrifices without adequate reason have been made, and there was\nroom for brave Charles Kingsley to preach the claims of the natural\nlaws of life, a thousand times more often has the sense of duty enabled\nmen and women to perform alike the painful daily tasks whereby our\nhomes are made beautiful and sacred, and the occasional acts of heroism\nwherewith human existence on earth is crowned and glorified.\n\nIt needs no words to prove to any one who reflects that two-thirds\nof what we have been wont to reverence as homely virtue and all the\nmartyrdoms of history consist precisely in the voluntary sacrifice\nof health, or of health and life together. To withhold from such\nsacrifices the meed of moral admiration would be to reverse the\njudgment of all the ages,--to prefer Sardanapalus and Heliogabalus to\nCurtius and Regulus, and to treat as a deluded fanatic the apostle\nwho converted the Gentile world, but spent his years in perils by sea\nand land amid prisons and scourgings. From the crucifixion of Christ\nto the silent self-immolation of the poor consumptive girl who works\nhalf-blinded through the winter\u2019s night to support her aged mother, the\nholiest and the sweetest things this earth has witnessed have been the\nactions of those who counted not their lives dear to them, so long as\nthey could obey the law of truth, of righteousness, and of love.\n\nBut how is this recognition of the duty and glory of the sacrifice of\nhealth and life at the call of every higher law to be reconciled with\nthe \u201cDoctor\u2019s Doctrine\u201d that the interests of health are so supreme\nthat they themselves constitute the highest law, and render any\npractice conducive to them _ipso facto_ lawful? Either we must admit,\naccording to the Divine\u2019s Doctrine, that moral interests transcend\nbodily interests, or we must hold, according to Doctor\u2019s Doctrine,\nthat bodily interests transcend moral interests. There is no third\nalternative. One principle or the other must prevail, and sooner or\nlater leaven society with its ennobling or else its debasing influence.\nThere are signs apparent that the Doctor\u2019s Doctrine is already bearing\nits proper fruit, and that, soothed by a becalmed conscience, absolved\nby the authority of the priesthood of Science, men and women are\nbeginning to be systematically selfish and self-indulgent where their\nhealth is concerned, or where there may appear a chance of curing their\nmaladies in modes not hitherto witnessed. I can only indicate a few of\nthe ways in which this deliberate self-preservation is exhibited.\n\nNotably, it seems that the old courage of Englishmen is dwindling away.\nAlmost every month, cases come to light wherein men, even soldiers,\nfail to stand by their comrades in danger; or wherein a crowd of fifty\npeople witness a child drowning in a shallow pond without an effort to\nsave it; or men who witness a cruel murder rush from the spot, leaving\nthe yet breathing victim dying unaided on the ground. There is even,\namong young men, a cynical avowal of prudent concern for their own\nlives and limbs which constantly strikes the old, who remember the\njoyous youthful fearlessness of their fathers, as something altogether\nnew and far indeed from pleasant to contemplate.\n\nNor are our personal acts of selfishness and cowardice on a small scale\nthe only logical consequences of the new principle which are already\nvisible. Cruelty of the most heinous and systematic kind is another\nresult. The unanimous resolution passed by the great Medical Congress\nin the year of grace 1881 has proclaimed that vivisection leads to\ndiscoveries conducive to the cure of disease, and _therefore_ should\nbe sanctioned and left unrestricted by law. That is to say, that all\nthe fiendish imaginations of men like Mantegazza and Schiff, and Goltz\nand Bernard, and Paul Bert, should be freely permitted in England for\nthe sake of a chance of useful hints for therapeutic science. Thus,\nthe whole medical profession in England stands committed to the demand\nthat the vice of cruelty in young men and old should be deliberately\nunchained, expressly for the sake of anticipated benefits to bodily\nhealth.\n\nSo far indeed has Doctor\u2019s Doctrine made its way that, whenever\nany Bill concerning sanitary measures or public hygiene is before\nParliament, there is exhibited by the speakers in the House, and by the\njournalists who discuss the matter, a readiness to trample on personal\nrights to an extent which would excite indignation, were any religious\nor commercial interest in question. Men may spread the most deadly\n_moral_ diseases, and teach doctrines which make virtue a mockery and\nlife a hopeless desolation, and scarcely an effort is made to stop\nthem. But let them threaten to spread bodily disease, and (unless they\nbe medical men, and thus authorized transmitters of infection) the most\nstringent measures are adopted; and besides a Compulsory Vaccination\nAct and the ever-infamous Contagious Diseases Acts, even while these\nsheets are passing through the press, no less than three Bills are\nbefore Parliament to make compulsory the notification of infectious\ndisease and segregation of infected persons. I am not now discussing\nthe merits of these Acts and Bills: I am only observing that the\nspirit wherewith they are carried forward is quite an innovation in\nEnglish legislation. Health of body has been accorded the importance\nwhich the--real or supposed--interests of the soul alone commanded two\ncenturies ago; and the tyranny of the priesthood of Hygeia threatens to\nbe as high-handed as ever was that of the Churches of Rome or of Geneva.\n\nLastly there is, outside of legislation, and hidden from the\nknowledge of the majority of the laity, one remaining application\nof the new principle of morals which more than all exhibits its\nevil, its disastrous tendency. For obvious reasons, I cannot write\nplainly of this moral poisoning, which I believe to be going on to a\nfrightful extent, both in this country and abroad. I can only quote\nsome observations made on it by an experienced minister of religion,\npublished in the _Modern Review_ for April, 1880:--\n\n Any one who will make a few casual inquiries will be amazed to\n discover the frequency with which medical men of high repute--men who\n are admitted to the friendship of good and unsuspecting women--offer\n counsel to young men, and even to boys, which strikes at the root\n of all morality, and indeed can proceed from nothing else than\n scepticism concerning the very possibility of morality itself. We\n speak what we know not of one, but of many, and what no medical man\n will deny, though many a medical man will revolt from the action of\n his fellow-practitioners as vehemently as we ourselves. What we ask of\n these purer spirits in the healing fraternity is that they will speak\n out on this and other matters of professional practice, and condemn\n their less honorable colleagues with no faltering tongue.\n\nThe Bishop of Bedford taking the chair at the meeting, May 3 of the\npresent year (1882), of the Social Purity Alliance, alluded to this\nheavy charge against the medical profession in the following terms: \u201cI\nknow what doctors say, and I here publicly protest against the terrible\nthing that is often said by doctors to young men,--that sin is good for\ntheir health. I say God forgive those who have said it.\u201d\n\nBut it will be replied: \u201cAll these evils have existed for ages. There\nhave always been found selfish, cruel, cowardly, and profligate men,\nready to transgress when their inclinations goaded them, willing to\nrank their own health, life, and enjoyment far before the law of God or\nthe interest of their fellows. What signifies, then, a new formula of\nselfishness?\u201d\n\nIt signifies, I venture to say, a great deal. Hitherto, men did\nevil; but they (or their neighbors for them) had at least the grace\nto recognize that it was evil. The selfish man was charged with\nselfishness. The cruel man did not assume the airs of a benefactor\nof mankind. The coward was kicked as a poltroon, not rewarded with\nsympathetic smiles for his candor. The man who sought the dens of vice\ndid not go thither with his conscience pacified by his physician\u2019s\norders in his pocket. To teach men that \u201ca practice conducive to\nhealth is _ipso facto_ morally right\u201d is then, at one and the same\nmoment, to damp every aspiration after the nobler kinds of virtue, and\nto supply a justification for every meaner kind of vice.\n\nNeither selfishness, nor cowardice, nor cruelty, nor unchastity, can\nbe justifiable by the plea that they may conduce to the bodily health\nof one man or of a thousand men; and he who will save his life by such\nmeans will assuredly lose all that makes \u201clife worth living,\u201d all for\nwhich life was given.\n\n\n\n\nPESSIMISM, AND ONE OF ITS PROFESSORS.\n\n\nThe Rise and Progress of Buddhism in Europe may possibly form the\nsubject of a long chapter in the hands of a Mosheim of the twentieth\ncentury. Hitherto, among all Western nations, not less than among\nthe Jews, there has been a tolerable unanimous consensus that life,\non the whole, is good, and that it is a pleasant thing for the eyes\nto behold the sun. Happiness, like health, has been assumed to be\nthe normal condition of sentient beings; and misery, like disease,\nto be exceptional and abnormal. The dead have been pitied, inasmuch\nas they had passed away from so pleasant a world; more especially so\nby those classic peoples who believed that the departed dwelt in an\ninsubstantial realm of shadows. No energetic Northern race, however,\ncontented itself with a twilight Hades, but built up in imagination\na Valhalla of feast and war for the worshipper of Odin; and, for the\ndisciple of the Druid, a glorious ascension from the darkness of\n\u201cAbred\u201d to the light and felicity of \u201cGwynfyd.\u201d Christianity, in its\nperverted forms, Catholic ascetic and Calvinist, took away, indeed,\nmuch of the joyfulness of the old heathen world, and made divines speak\nof our earthly abode as a \u201ccity of wrath\u201d or \u201cvale of tears.\u201d But they\nwere all the more urgent that men should fight the good fight, of which\nthe crown should be \u201c_life_ everlasting\u201d in the New Jerusalem; and, for\nthe majority of their flocks, even if this sinful planet remained, it\nwould appear at all times, a sufficiently desirable habitation to make\ndeparture from it unwelcome.\n\nBrought up in these common views, probably not one of us modern\nEuropeans has perused, for the first time, a philosophical statement\nof the pessimist principles which underlie the vast religions of the\nfarther East, without a shock of astonishment. Individually, we may\nhave found our particular share of existence painful rather than\npleasurable. Disease, poverty, disappointment, bereavement, may have\nembittered our years. But that any order of men, outside of lunatic\nasylums, should lay down as a postulate, whereon to build religion and\nmorality, that Life is _per se_ an evil, and that, \u201cwhatever we have\nbeen, \u2019tis something better not to be,\u201d and proceed benevolently to\npoint out how we may, by much diligence, shake off not only this mortal\ncoil, but the entire burden of being, and arrive at the consummation\nof nonentity,--this is an idea revolutionizing the order of our\nconceptions, and as nearly incredible as any assertion dealing with\nthe vagaries of the human mind may be. Even yet, perhaps, some doubts\nmay legitimately linger as to whether the Buddhist creed, elsewhere\nthan in Nepaul (where it certainly does _not_ teach annihilation),\nreally intends by \u201cNirvana\u201d to set forth the emptiness, rather than the\nplenitude, of being. But that both Brahmin and Buddhist teachers have\nsystematically dealt with life as an evil rather than as a good, there\nis, I apprehend, no question among competent inquirers. Here, then, are\ntwo absolutely contrasted, fundamental conceptions of the totality of\nhuman existence,--the Western, that life is a blessing; the Eastern,\nthat it is a curse. The European cries,--\n\n  \u201c\u2019Tis life, not death, for which we pant,--\n  More life, and fuller, that we want.\u201d\n\nHe \u201cshudders at destruction,\u201d and better endures to face even the\ntremendous threat of an eternal hell than to relax the tenacity of\nhis belief in an immortal consciousness. The Indian, on the contrary,\ndevoutly hopes that a life (or several lives) of self-abnegation, may\nbring him to the bourne whence the traveller leaps into the gulf of\nnothingness. Marvellous to add, as climax, there seems more likelihood\nthat a certain number of highly educated Germans, Frenchmen, and\nEnglishmen, may learn to sigh for Nirvana than that our missionaries\nwill induce an equal number of intelligent Singalese, Chinese, or\nnatives of Siam, to exchange their dreary anticipations for the hope of\nheaven.\n\nNot to exaggerate the importance of the \u201cSchool\u201d (if such it can be\naccounted) of European Buddhists, we may, I think, properly afford to\nits existence the attention due to a remarkable \u201cfault\u201d in the strata\nof recent thought, and still more fitly ponder on the significant\ntokens, scattered through current literature, of pessimist tendencies\nquite other than the Western world has hitherto exhibited. Our modern\nowls may be heard responding to each other in their turrets of the\n_Nineteenth Century_ and the _Fortnightly Review_,--sometimes solemnly\nand seriously, as when Mr. Morley wrote of \u201cthat droning, piteous\nchronicle of wrong and cruelty and despair which everlastingly saddens\nthe compassionating ear like the moaning of a midnight sea\u201d; sometimes\nwith odious pretension and self-conceit when smaller men and foolish\nwomen hoot and croak. In the brightest intellectual circles, many of\nus have learned to listen with well-bred calmness to assertions from\nsmiling gentlemen and beautifully dressed ladies touching the general\nwrongness of all things, and the particular wretchedness of human\nnature, which, did we believe them, would cause us to rush from the\ndinner-table and hang ourselves on the nearest lamp-post. In Germany,\nmatters have proceeded further; and Schopenhauer has been for some time\nas much the fashionable Philosopher, as Wagner is the Musician, of the\nage.\n\nOf course there are various degrees and kinds of Pessimism everywhere\nto be noted. There is the Philanthropic Pessimist who thinks his\nfellow-creatures are merely wretched; and the Misanthropic Pessimist,\nwho thinks them both wretched and despicable. There is the Theistic\nPessimist, who still believes in God, but considers Him either to\nbe a \u201cbaffled Ormusd,\u201d or else to look down from such heights on\nhuman affairs as to regard them no more than we do the politics and\ncatastrophes of an ant-hill. And, finally, there is the Atheistic\nPessimist, who has abandoned the notion of an Intelligence at the helm\nof the Universe, and believes only in a blind Force, irresponsible\nfor all the misery and crime of which He--or rather It--is the cause.\nFor all these varied kinds of Pessimism there seem to be two quite\ndistinct sources,--a good and noble, and a bad and base one. Each of\nthese sources leads to results having an outward apparent similarity,\nand accordingly creates an illusory resemblance between the feelings\nand expressions of persons whose characters and actions are wide as the\npoles asunder. Let me endeavor to discriminate them.\n\nIt is, at the first glance, not a little remarkable that the\ndevelopment of Pessimism to which I have referred should have taken\nplace in an age of almost unparalleled public prosperity. Probably\nthe sufferings caused by disease, by want, and by injustice, are now\nat their minimum in the settled countries of Europe. And yet it is in\nour time that men are now beginning formally to pronounce the evil of\nthe world to exceed the good, and to treat what their fathers deemed\nthe \u201cbeneficent order of Providence,\u201d as too harsh and unjust a system\nto be attributed to a benevolent Deity, or indeed to any intelligent\nBeing at all. It was not in the days of old oppression and tyranny,\nof the great famines or the \u201cBlack Death,\u201d that there was any such\nrevolt. When earth was much more like hell than it is at present, few\nmen entertained any doubt that there was a God in heaven. Now that\nits worst wrongs are in course of alleviation or remedy, and that\nthere opens before our eyes a vista of almost illimitable progress for\nour race in happiness and virtue, the whole stupendous scheme is not\nunfrequently pronounced to be nothing better than a huge blunder.\n\nThe anomaly is certainly striking, and it may be carried further by\nnoting _who_ are those persons who find the world so bad a place.\nAs it is a prosperous age which has developed Pessimism, so it is\nalmost always prosperous people who are Pessimists. It is the rarest\nthing possible to hear any expression of such ideas from the lips\nof the suffering or the dying, or even from those who see their\nbeloved ones suffer and die. A hundred visits to sordid lodgings or\nmiserable hovels, to workhouses, jails, hospitals, asylums for the\nblind or the incurably diseased, will scarcely afford us the chance\nof catching a phrase indicating that the inmate of the dreary abode\nthinks the world awry, and Providence to blame for it. We must pass to\npleasanter scenes,--to the haunts of the well-paid lecture-frequenting\nartisan,--or the houses of the most cultivated and wealthy of the\nmiddle and upper classes, palaces which calamity has never visited, and\nwhere luxurious food, clothing, furniture, books, flowers, pictures,\nmusic, are accepted as matters of course; and _there_ we may, not\nimprobably, be told that \u201cnone but bigots who voluntarily close their\neyes to the terrible realities of life can dream of calling the world\na happy place, or speak of its design as beneficent.\u201d Sometimes there\noccurs in the experience of a single day a contrast, almost ludicrous,\nbetween the patience and gratitude manifested by some poor suffering\ncreature--perhaps dying of cancer on a pauper\u2019s pallet--and the\nexpression of revolt and despair used by a cultivated gentleman who is\npossessed of nearly every source of human enjoyment.\n\nAll this is not so unmeaning and perverse as it at first appears.\nThere is a reason why our generation--the happiest and, we will hope,\nperhaps, on the whole, the best the world has yet seen--should scan\nthe dread problem of Evil with other eyes than its predecessors; and\nthere are reasons, far from ignoble, why happy men and women should\nfind it harder to justify the ways of God to the miserable than those\nmiserable ones themselves to do so on their own account. In the first\nplace, our generation shrinks from the sight of physical anguish in\na way obviously unknown to our progenitors, who could ride gayly on\ntheir daily errands under gallows-trees loaded each with its sickening\nweight, or city gates decorated by decapitated heads; and who could\nfeast and sleep in the chambers of feudal castles while under their\nfloors miserable prisoners were pining in dungeons, or perhaps expiring\namid the unutterable horrors of the _oubliette_. They could stand\nby as unmoved spectators, or throw fresh fagots on the piles where\nheretics and witches were burning, and shout applause when half-hanged\ntraitors were cut down from the rope to be drawn and quartered.\nOppressions and injustices done by the strong against the weak were\nmatters of every-day experience in every town, almost in every parish\nand household. If such things seem to us calculated to provoke vehement\nindignation and rebellion against every Power above or below which\nsanctioned or permitted them, it must be asked _who_ was there in\nthose days likely to feel any similar indignation? The laws were not\nmore cruel than the men who made them, nor the legislators than the\nmass of the nation. This being the case, how should those who thought\nit right and just that their fellows should endure such tortures find\nanything mysterious in the severest decrees of Providence? The order of\nnature--harsh to the eyes of a John Stuart Mill or a Shelley--must have\nbeen mild enough to those of the _habitu\u00e9s_ of autos-da-f\u00e9, or even let\nus say to the nobles of France under that _ancien r\u00e9gime_ of which M.\nTaine has given us the picture.\n\nAnother difference between our age and all preceding ones, which\nspecially touches this matter, is that in former times men thought\nso little of the lower animals that their lot scarcely entered as an\nitem into calculation in the purview of the world. It was always the\nenigmas presented by _human_ inequalities, sufferings, and wrongs,\nwhich disturbed the doubter of old. His questions were, \u201cWhy do the\nwicked flourish like a green bay-tree? Why do the righteous perish,\nand none regardeth it? Why do the good and useful die in the flower of\ntheir years, and the evil live long in the land? Why, in short, is not\nthat great _justice of heaven_ (in which man everywhere intuitively\nbelieves, though his intuition has assuredly never been evolved by\nexperience), why is this not manifested in all the concerns of human\nbeings?\u201d The Book of Job posed the solemn question of this earlier\ndoubt; and the Book of Revelation, by opening up to the gaze of men a\nheaven where the poor and the persecuted will be forever blessed and\ntriumphant, afforded it a reply which, if far from complete, has yet\npractically sufficed to stay the faith of Christendom. By the fresh\nstress which Christianity laid on the doctrine of Immortality, and\nthe different relative importance which it assigned to the earthly\nand to the heavenly life, it fulfilled, in a profounder sense, the\nboast of the English statesman. It \u201ccalled up a New World to redress\nthe balance of the Old.\u201d The orthodox Catholic doctrine, that sin and\nsuffering are necessarily permitted by the Creator to allow scope for\nmoral freedom, may be made in a loose and general way to cover the\nlarger difficulties presented by the condition of all _moral_ beings,\nfor whose woes, if in any case unmerited, compensation is provided\nhereafter. So long, then, as the destiny of our own human race alone\noccupied any appreciable place in philosophy (and this was down to the\nearlier part of this century) there was not much room for Pessimism\nto find root among Western races. As to the brutes, few thought of\ntheir sufferings at all; and those who did so dismissed them with the\ndoctrine that they shared the consequences of the Fall, which caused\n\u201cthe whole creation\u201d to groan and \u201ctravail together in pain.\u201d\n\n  \u201cThese emmets, how little they are in our eyes!\n  We tread them to dust, and a troop of them dies,\n        Without our regard or concern,\u201d\n\nas Dr. Watts cheerfully observed of the poor little insects, even\nwhen he was calling us to remark their wondrous forethought and\nindustry. And larger animals more nearly akin to us were little more\n\u201cregarded\u201d than the ants, till the widening circles of our sympathies\nat last began to embrace the higher races of the brute creation; and\ntheir sufferings then, as a necessary consequence, immediately took a\nprominent place among the difficulties of theology. Geology first gave\na shock to the received explanation of their destiny by proving that\nanimals died painful deaths \u00e6ons before \u201cman\u2019s first disobedience\u201d\ncould have taken place, or man himself had existence on this planet;\nand since those, now distant, days of Dean Buckland\u2019s controversies,\nthe questions so opened out have pressed continually more upon the\nthought of humane and religious men. The faith for which such men yearn\nin our day is to be assured--\n\n  \u201cThat not a moth with vain desire\n  Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,\n  Or but subserves another\u2019s gain.\u201d\n\nNot one of their grandsires, probably, ever entertained any similar\nidea, but rather indulged a sublime contempt of the \u201cpoor Indian\u201d whose\n\u201cuntutored mind\u201d permitted him to hope that his dog might share his\nparadise.\n\nThese causes, then, I think,--namely, the growth of a finer sense of\npity for human woes, and the inclusion of the lower animals in the\nscope of our sympathies,--suffice to explain in great measure the\nreasons why some of the best of men in our generation feel the evil and\nmisery of the world, and display a leaning toward Pessimism unexampled\nin harder times.\n\nNearly all religious men, looking back upon life, seem disposed to be\nthankful _on their own account_, and to acknowledge that goodness\nand mercy have followed them all the days of their lives. They have\nnot been \u201cdealt with according to their sins,\u201d but have many a time\nbeen set free from nets of their own weaving, and helped out of the\nmire and clay of vice and passion. Viewed from _within_, such appears\nto be the common testimony concerning every good man\u2019s career. It is\nthe inexplicable mysteries in the destinies of their neighbors, as\nviewed _from outside_, and (as I have just said) the sufferings of\nthe harmless brutes, which causes such men now to doubt God and think\nthe world evil. Satan tempted the old Chald\u00e6an by heaping afflictions\non his own person. He tries the modern Job more cunningly,--by giving\nhim, Asmodeus-fashion, a wide bird\u2019s-eye view of the woes and wrongs of\nother people.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTo descend from the general proclivities of our age to those of\nindividuals toward Pessimism, the same paradox may be observed. As\nit is by no means altogether a bad sign of the times that there is\na keener consciousness afloat of the extent to which pain and wrong\nprevail in the world, so neither is it by any means an indication of\na bad disposition when a man takes a dark view of human nature and of\nlife. Timon may be a noble fellow, or very much the reverse. We must\nstudy him in both characters.\n\nThe noble Timon has started with an unusual share of generosity and\nsympathy, and has become embittered because he has found other men\nless good and true than himself. There is a certain average sincerity,\naverage unselfishness, average generosity and gratitude common among\nmen. He who has a little above the average of such fine qualities\nmeets on all sides disappointment. He finds people who display\nselfishness, where, as a matter of course, he would have sacrificed\nhis own convenience or interest to theirs; people who are mean where\nhe would have been liberal, and suspicious where he was as open as the\nday; and, finally, people who return his kindness with an ingratitude\ninexplicable to his generous mind, rich in its own benevolence. What,\nthen, can happen to our Timon but to begin to mistrust those whom he\nfinds so unlike himself, to shut himself from them (and so, perhaps,\nprovoke their mistrust in turn), and very commonly to bestow much of\nhis disappointed affections on animals, on whose fidelity he finds\nhe can more surely depend, and whose wrongs at the hands of cruel\nmen still further deepen his disgust of his own kind? All this time,\nanother man, whose generosity and sincerity were, at starting, a little\nbelow rather than above the average, has been passing through life\npleasantly astonished to find that his neighbors will show him more\nkindness than (he is conscious) he would in their places display,\nand rather more than less honest than he has reckoned to find them.\nThus, by a curious contradiction, the nobler-natured man is much\nmore liable than the baser to develop into the misanthrope; and it\nis the lofty kind of scorn and bitterness properly belonging to him\nwhich every Pessimist assumes, whether he truly feel it or not. It is\nalways _sous entendu_, in all tirades against human nature, that the\nspeaker is quite incapable of the weakness, folly, and wickedness he\ncondemns; and that, if he refers to the \u201cdark side of Providence,\u201d\n_he_ would have managed the universe on better principles. But it is\nextremely questionable whether we ought to give unlimited credit to\nthe genuineness of the indignation of those gentlemen who denounce the\nevils of the world, but never stir a finger to remove them; and whose\npersonal enjoyment of the good things of life--fine houses, clothes,\ndinners, pictures, bric-\u00e0-brac, pleasant conversation, and favorable\nreviews of their books--has, manifestly, never been clouded by their\nsombre sense of the dreadful destiny of mankind at large, nor their\nappetite for applause been impaired by their profound conviction of the\nfolly and contemptibility of the people by whom it is offered.\n\nA Timon, not at all of the nobler sort, seems to have been that great\nlight of recent German philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer. As Schopenhauer\ndied childless, it will, I hope, hurt the feelings of no one if we\ndissect his character candidly as that of the most prominent Pessimist\nof the age. It will be instructive, I think, to learn the \u201cnotes\u201d of\nsuch a character,--to study, in short, of what kind of stuff (so to\nspeak) a Pessimist is occasionally made. In justice, we must carry in\nmind that Schopenhauer accomplished a good deal in the philosophic\nway, besides preaching Pessimism. He worked out a metaphysical system\nof considerable depth and ingenuity,--one of the merits of which, at\nall events, may be accounted that it is readily applicable to quite\nother views than those of its author, respecting the nature and\ndestiny of mankind. With this formidable system, elaborated in his\ngreat work, _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, we have, however\n(happily for me, and probably for my reader), for our present purpose,\nno concern whatever, but only with his actions and character, such as\nMiss Zimmern, condensing the original German memoirs, sketched in a\nlife-like and transparently truthful manner in her Life of Schopenhauer.\n\nThe first \u201cnote\u201d of Schopenhauer\u2019s character, I should say, was his\nHEARTLESSNESS. He seems scarcely to have loved anybody--in any sense\nof the word worth considering--from his cradle to his grave. He made,\nindeed, after his father\u2019s death, much parade of respect for his\nmemory; but his filial piety, such as it was, stopped short at this\npoint. He disliked his sprightly, good-natured mother, and treated\nher with singular insolence. As to friendship, he avowed his opinion\nthat \u201cmen of much intellectual worth, more especially if they have\ngenius, can have but few friends\u201d; and he verified his own dictum\nas a first-rate genius by having, so far as we may judge, no real\nfriends at all, though in later life, when he became celebrated, he had\nnumerous flatterers and disciples. Love was even less in Schopenhauer\u2019s\nway than friendship, unless we are to call by the title the passion\nin its coarsest form. His opinion was that \u201cthe poetry of love is\nmainly illusion, a glittering drapery meant to mantle the solemnity\nof the thing as it really is\u201d (p. 222); and his actions were quite in\naccordance with this crass materialism. He led, his biographer states,\n\u201cno saintly ascetic life, nor did he pretend to this eminence.... He\ndespised women.... He was only different from ordinary men in that he\nspoke of what others suppressed; and his over-zealous disciples, who\nsaw the god-like in all his acts, even dragged these to the light of\nday.\u201d His \u201ccareless dallying with beauty\u201d (a euphemism, I presume, for\na loose life) but once brought him to wish for a permanent union. The\nonly woman whom he is recorded to have desired to marry was an actress,\nwho, at the time he was \u201cenraptured with her,\u201d was (fit position for\nthe wife of a great moral philosopher!) the recognized mistress of Duke\nCarl August.\n\nIt has sometimes happened that men who have been lacking in those\nfamily and friendly affections which are the most beautiful things in\nhuman life have yet almost atoned for their deficiency by their fervent\n\u201cEnthusiasm of Humanity.\u201d It is needless to say that Schopenhauer\u2019s\ncharacter displayed an impartial negation of both orders of feeling.\nHe neither loved men nor women in particular, nor man in general. He\ncarefully defined himself to be not a misanthrope, only a despiser of\nmen (p. 83). The higher a man stood mentally, he thought, the lower\nmust his fellow-men appear. That it was the divine part of the greatest\nto serve the least was the very last suggestion which would have\noccurred to his mind. \u201cI read,\u201d he observed, \u201cin the face of the Apollo\nBelvidere, the just and deep displeasure felt by the god of the Muses\nfor the wretched obstinacy of the Philistines\u201d; and, doubtless, Arthur\nSchopenhauer figuratively drew himself up, and felt as like the Apollo\nBelvidere as the corporeal circumstances of a German philosopher might\npermit.\n\nHe was \u201cpenetrated with the conviction that he had been placed in a\nworld peopled with beings morally and intellectually contemptible, from\nwhom he must keep apart.\u201d In his note-book (of rather a different cast\nfrom that of Marcus Aurelius), he wrote this piece of self-counsel:\n\u201cStudy to acquire an accurate and connected view of the utter\ndespicability of mankind in general, then of your contemporaries, and\nof German scholars in particular.\u201d\n\nThe second \u201cnote\u201d in Schopenhauer\u2019s character was his exceeding\nCOWARDICE. The modern Socrates would have deserted Athens at the\nplague, and run away at Potid\u00e6a. With what poltroonery he would\nhave behaved, when required to drink the hemlock, it is impossible\nto imagine. When his country was in the throes of war and political\ncrises, Schopenhauer always carefully moved out of the way. When there\nwas any kind of infectious disease prevalent, he fled to another city,\nso that half his journeys were mere panic flights. He left Berlin for\nfear of the cholera, Naples from alarm of the small-pox, and Verona\nbecause he took it into his head that his snuff was poisoned. He\nslept with loaded pistols close to his hand, and seized them at the\nslightest noise. When the postman brought him a letter, he started.\nHe used a cup of his own to avoid the contagion which might lurk in\na glass at a public table. He labelled his valuables with deceptive\nnames, and wrote his business memoranda in Greek. As we have seen,\nhe was not bellicose. Only once in his life is it recorded that he\nstruck a blow, and that was at a woman. Finding an acquaintance of his\nlandlady presumptuous enough to hold a coffee-party in his anteroom,\nSchopenhauer knocked her down with such violence that her right arm\nwas permanently disabled. Any other man, who had committed an act of\nsimilar brutality in a moment of passion, would probably have hastened\nto offer some compensation to his victim; but our philosopher, on the\ncontrary, hotly contested the poor woman\u2019s suit for legal redress,\nand quitted the town in disgust when he found himself compelled to\nmaintain her for life,--a period which (the non-sympathetic reader\nwill rejoice to learn) was extremely prolonged. The writer of an\nexceedingly able and thoughtful review of Schopenhauer\u2019s philosophy in\nthe _Contemporary Review_, some years ago, observed that his unamiable\ntraits are best excused by his own candid avowal that he liked his\nown mental physiognomy well enough, but his moral not at all. The\n_unalterableness of the natural character_ was one of his favorite\ndogmas. Certainly, the self-training by which many a naturally nervous\ntemperament has disciplined itself into courage, a selfish one into\ngenerosity, and a morose or peevish temper into gentleness, was as\nfar as possible from Schopenhauer\u2019s plan of life; and it opens to us\na rather alarming idea of the society of the future, if his followers\ngenerally should resolve to adopt his facile principle, and assume that\ntheir \u201cnatural characters,\u201d whatever they may chance to be,--selfish,\nfalse, dissolute, or cruel,--are \u201cunalterable.\u201d Such liberty, however,\nis probably reserved for those who may claim to be \u201cmen of genius\u201d\nlike their master, since he absolved himself from the ordinary duties\nincumbent on meaner mortals by the help of a theory which we may call\nthe Philosopher\u2019s Anti-nomianism. \u201cHe weighed his duties toward the\nworld,\u201d we are told, \u201cin the balance with the weight and intensity of\nhis natural gifts, and he came to the conclusion that a man gifted\nwith genius, by merely being and working, sacrifices himself for all\nmankind: therefore, he is free from the obligation of sacrificing\nhimself in particular individually. On this account, he may ignore\nclaims which others are bound to fulfil.\u201d[14]\n\nBut the third \u201cnote\u201d was, I venture to think, the true key of\nSchopenhauer\u2019s character. It was ARROGANCE. The philosophers whom the\nworld has hitherto honored have been generally noted for the opposite\nquality. As saints learn humility by gazing up at infinite holiness\nabove them, so sages acquire modesty by looking out on the boundless\nocean of truth, beside which their greatest discoveries appear but as\nthe pebbles which the child gathers by the shore. But the philosophers\nwho are so good as to enlighten us in these days scarcely belong to\nthe antiquated type of either a Socrates or a Newton. The pride and\nconceit of Arthur Schopenhauer, at all events, commenced in boyhood,\nand seems to have grown like a snowball till he died of old age. His\nmother (described as a woman of \u201cmodest, pleasing manners\u201d and amiable\ncharacter, who received habitually in her house such men as Goethe,\nthe Schlegels, Grimm, and Wieland) depicts him thus, when a lad yet\nengaged in collegiate studies: \u201cYour ill-humor, your complaints of\nthings inevitable, your sullen looks, the extraordinary opinions you\nutter _like oracles which none may presume to contradict_,--all this\ndepresses me. Your eternal quibbles, your laments over the stupid world\nand human misery, give me bad nights and unpleasant dreams.\u201d[15] This\nlittle preliminary glance at the youth of twenty enables us to judge\nwhat value should be attached to the plea urged on his behalf, that his\narrogance and bitterness were but the natural results of the neglect\nwith which his great book was received by an unappreciative public and\na jealous coterie of offended philosophers, the \u201cnecessary armor of\nscorn and self-defence\u201d which enabled him to hold his ground. The boy\nat college, it seems, long before he had written a work to instruct\nthe world, or had experienced anything but kindness and prosperity,\nthe healthy, rich, gifted, and independent young lad, was already\nhabitually \u201clamenting over the stupid world and human misery,\u201d and\nuttering, with \u201csullen looks,\u201d \u201coracles which none may presume to\ncontradict.\u201d\n\nAs he grew older, Schopenhauer learned to express his good opinion\nof himself and his works with serenest equanimity. No more _na\u00eff_\nexpressions of self-complacency have perhaps ever been penned than this\ngentleman\u2019s eulogiums on his own productions; as, for example, when he\nwrites to the publisher of his work that its \u201cworth and importance are\nso great that _I do not venture to express it_ even toward you, because\nyou could not believe me,\u201d and proceeds to quote a review \u201cwhich speaks\nof me with the highest praise, and says that I am plainly the greatest\nphilosopher of the age, which is really _saying much less than the good\nman thinks_.\u201d \u201cSir,\u201d he said to an unoffending stranger who watched him\nacross a _table d\u2019h\u00f4te_ (where he habitually acted the part of local\n\u201clion\u201d), \u201csir, you are astonished at my appetite. True, I eat three\ntimes as much as you, but, then, _I have three times as much mind_!\u201d\n(p. 159.) The reader who thinks that this speech could never have been\nspoken except in jest and to produce a good-humored laugh has not yet\nstudied Schopenhauer\u2019s saturnine temperament, to which a joke at his\nown expense must have been quite inconceivable. To others, perhaps,\nsuch barbarous intellectual insolence may seem a pardonable reaction\nfrom the tone of self-depreciation (often exceedingly insincere)\nwhich modern manners have enforced. But the old classic pride was\na very different thing from Schopenhauer\u2019s aggressive arrogance,\nwherewith he managed to blend gross and egregious vanity in quite a\nnovel combination. _On a les d\u00e9fauts de ses qualit\u00e9s_, but not usually\ntogether two apparently contradictory defects. In our simplicity,\nwe should have anticipated that the man who considered himself the\ngreatest philosopher of his age, and talked about the \u201cloneliness of\nthe heights\u201d of intellectual grandeur, would have disdained to trouble\nhimself about such miserable things as common newspaper reviews. We\nshould have been, however, much mistaken in such a guess. \u201cSchopenhauer\n(we are told) began to read German newspapers, now that they wrote\nabout him. He caused the veriest trifle that contained his name to be\nsent to him. He looked through all philosophical works for a mention of\nhimself. His intense contempt for women wavered, when he saw they could\nfeel interest in his works.\u201d What would Aristotle\u2019s \u201cMagnanimous Man\u201d\nhave said to this kind of littleness? \u201cHonor, from any other person\u201d\n(than the good), \u201cor on the score of trifles, he will utterly despise,\nand likewise he will despise dishonor.\u201d[16]\n\nLet it be remembered, too, that this was in Schopenhauer\u2019s old age.\nFor a _young_ author to be nervously excited about the reception of\nhis works is nothing blameworthy or ridiculous. He is looking for the\nconfirmation of the yet uncertain whispers of his own consciousness of\nability, or to the extinction of his hopes. But this exculpation cannot\napply to a man advanced in life and of established literary reputation,\nwhose opinion of his own exalted gifts had been fully expanded while he\nwas yet a lad at college.\n\nIs it too much to say that in this inordinate opinion of his own\npowers and merits lies the secret of this man\u2019s Pessimism, of his\ncontempt of other men, of his discontent with life, of his revolt\nagainst Providence? It is not wonderful that a man who looks on his\nfellows like Apollo Belvidere, slaying them with the arrows of his\nscorn, should find them wretched and unlovable; for no man, however\nhumble, is ever truly seen by him who looks _down_ on him, and thus\nlacks all the insight of love and sympathy, and all the charity of\none who forgives as he hopes to be forgiven. It is not wonderful that\na man who estimates himself as supremely wise, and condones his own\nfaults on the score of the unalterableness of natural character, should\nsurvey the world and find it a godless desert. Probably no human heart\never yet bloomed out into gratitude even under the brightest sunshine\nof prosperity, which had not once been ploughed up by self-reproach\nand softened by tears of repentance. In truth, any kind of religious\nsense is well-nigh incompatible with such pride as we are discussing.\nThe doors whereby other men enter the Temple,--the tender guidance of\nhuman affection, the awful strife of the higher self against passion\nand sin, the sacred moral ambition after yet unattained purity and\ngoodness,--all these are closed to him. Schopenhauer\u2019s religious\nhistory is a confirmation of the truth that it is not the marble-palace\nmind of the philosopher which God will visit so often as the humble\nheart which lies sheltered from the storms of passion, and all trailed\nover by the sweet blossoms of human affections.\n\nIt is actually ludicrous to compare this man\u2019s intensely selfish,\nvain, cowardly character with the magnificent compliments which he\npaid to virtue in the abstract, and to the ideal he draws of the\nperfect man, or \u201cascetic,\u201d in whom the very sense of individuality,\nnot to speak of self-regard, is annihilated: \u201cHe will no longer regard\nhimself as a real existence, comprised within the rigid line of\npersonality, and thus insulated and differentiated from the rest of\nthe universe. He will regard his separate being as a mere transitory\nphenomenon, a temporary objectivation of the sole real existence;\nand this recognition of his true position must necessarily destroy\nselfishness.... When a man ceases to draw an egotistic distinction\nbetween himself and others, and takes as much part in their sorrows\nas in his own, it naturally follows that such a one, recognizing his\nown self in all beings, must regard the endless griefs of all beings\nas his own, and thus appropriate to himself the sorrows of the whole\nworld.\u201d[17] The modern \u201cMan of Sorrows\u201d (if we may venture on so\nirreverent a comparison for the sake of the contrast) had, for his own\nuse, an easy method of \u201cappropriating\u201d the griefs of his kind. \u201cWe\ngather,\u201d says his keen-sighted critic of the _Contemporary Review_,\n\u201cfrom the accounts of his disciples, that he had arranged for himself\nan existence more than tolerable; for, while free from positive\nannoyance, he found a perfectly consistent and legitimate source of\npleasure in the disinterested contemplation of the idea of the world\u2019s\nsorrows.\u201d[18] A more easy form of martyrdom it is hard to imagine.\n\nIs it not somewhat surprising that a man like this, who, to do him\njustice, made no pretence of practising what he taught, but said\nopenly, with cynical effrontery, \u201cI preach sanctity, but I am no\nsaint,\u201d[19] should have exercised any influence over his generation?\nWe read, however, that \u201chis little band of disciples grew, and their\nfanaticism reached a ludicrous point. One entreated him to found a\ntrust for the purpose of keeping watch that no syllable of his works\nshould ever be altered; another had his portrait painted and placed in\na room like a chapel,\u201d[20] etc.\n\nThis particular hero-worship is, to my thinking, so portentous that I\nhave been tempted thus to study it at some length. For thousands of\nyears, the human race has gone on adding one noble type to another in\nits Pantheon,--the old heathen patriotism and heroism of a Theseus, a\nCodrus, a Curtius, a Regulus, the modest wisdom of a Socrates, and the\nstoic grandeur of a Marcus Aurelius. Christianity added yet saintlier\nvirtues to the ideal,--the charity, the purity, the religious fervor,\nand martyr devotion of a whole army of saints. Yet all these \u201cstars of\nour mortal night\u201d can, it seems, be obscured and forgotten; and men\nwho might have known and honored and followed them, like the Magi of\nold, prefer to dance after such a flaring link-light as Schopenhauer\nlifted over his own head! Observing this, and how his desolate\ndoctrine is gaining ground, and recognizing not a few of his personal\ncharacteristics (more especially his arrogance) among other thinkers\nnearer home, we are tempted to turn back fondly and regretfully to the\nhumblest old-fashioned goodness. Many of us had confidently trusted\nthat, when knowledge increased, wisdom and love would grow along with\nit; that, without losing the sacred lessons of the past, mankind\nwould obtain still deeper insight into moral truth, and that phases\nof character would appear more beautiful, more joyous, more perfectly\nrounded in all the gifts and graces of humanity than the world yet has\nseen,--the long-severed virtues of the hero and the saint combined at\nlast.\n\nAlas! if Schopenhauers are to increase and multiply among us, these\nhopes have been visionary, indeed! As his character emerges from\nhis biography, and stands clearly revealed to sight, memories of\nmany a man and woman of small account in the world rise up and range\nthemselves in our thoughts for comparison opposite to this great\nphilosopher. We remember those who, instead of flying from the terrors\nof pestilence or war, have freely gone to meet them at the call of\nbenevolence or patriotism. We remember those who, instead of finding\ntheir fellow-men \u201cdespicable,\u201d have been lifelong loving friends,\nfaithful and tender husbands, devoted parents and children, ardent\nphilanthropists, sacrificing wealth and health and every enjoyment\nthat they might relieve and bless the most miserable of mankind,--the\ncriminal, the diseased, the vicious, and abandoned. We remember those\nwho, instead of resting self-satisfied with the \u201cunalterableness\u201d of\ntheir own moral defects, have striven day and night, like the Pilgrim\nfighting on his knees against Apollyon, to purify their hearts of every\nstain, and, instead of arraigning Providence because their merits\nwere insufficiently rewarded, have blessed God most of all for their\nafflictions. We remember all these, and also we remember the glory of\npeace and patience on their pain-worn faces; and from the depths of our\nsouls comes the verdict that the dullest \u201cPhilistine\u201d of them all was,\nin the scale of true nobleness, worth a thousand pessimist philosophers.\n\nSchopenhauer was, in truth, the best illustration which could be found\nof the fallacy of the modern intellect-worship, the idolatry of mere\nmental force, which is scarcely less stupid and ignoble than the\nidolatry of the physical force of winds or waters. As baseness is more\ncontemptible in a king, and miserliness in a millionnaire, so are all\nmoral faults and littlenesses only more despicable when set on the\npedestal of genius. There are minds--and Schopenhauer\u2019s was one of\nthem--whose brilliancy is that of a light-house. Its best use is to\ndisclose the cold and troubled sea, and the dreary rocks whereon the\nunwary might make shipwreck.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe question, \u201cHow far is Pessimism _true_, and how far does the\nactual state of the world justify us in pronouncing life to be an\nevil?\u201d is far too vast and too solemn to be treated in this brief\npaper. One remark only must be made in abatement of the wide-sweeping\ndenunciations of the present order of things in which Pessimists\nhabitually indulge. If we take count of their arguments, we shall find\nthat at least one-third are built on the assumption (which nothing in\ngenuine philosophy warrants) that the \u201chypothesis of a God\u201d involves\nthe attribution to him not only of supreme but of _absolute_ power,\nand generally of a power which includes self-contradictions. We\nshould sweep away no inconsiderable number of difficulties, if we\ncould get fairly out of reach of this ever-recurring fallacy, and\nhear no more that God ought to make every creature absolutely happy,\nand also absolutely virtuous; and illume the martyr\u2019s glory, while\ninvariably extinguishing the martyr\u2019s pile. And, again, another third\nof the arguments of Pessimists rests on the yet more egregious and\nfundamental mistake that suffering is always to be accounted an evil,\nand may be lawfully weighed by them as such in holding the scales of\nthe world. The truth that it is \u201cgood to have been afflicted,\u201d that\nout of pain and grief and disappointment arise the purest virtues, the\ntenderest sympathies, the loftiest courage, the divinest faith,--this\nthrice-blessed truth, the very alphabet of spiritual experience, is,\nas a rule, quite overlooked by great philosophers of the order of\nSchopenhauer.\n\nWhen all corrections and deductions are made, a residue of profound,\nawful, inexplicable misery--misery of sinful man and misery of sinless\nbrutes--remains, alas! to form, doubtless, in time to come, as in\nthe ages which are past, the dread \u201cRiddle of the painful Earth.\u201d We\nmust expect it to press upon us ever more and more in proportion as\nour sense of justice and love rises higher, and our sympathies with\nunmerited suffering grow more acute. Whether the shadow which that\nmystery casts on religion will hereafter be in any degree relieved by\nfresh lights obtained through sounder theories of Nature, it were\nidle to guess. One thing seems clear enough; namely, that the spirit\nwherewith some modern Pessimists approach the tremendous problem is one\nwhich can never lead to its solution, and which in itself is calculated\nto form no inconsiderable addition to the gloom of human existence.\nThe world, to all who enter it, is very much what their anticipations\nmake of it,--full of matter for joy and gratitude, or for repining and\ndiscontent. It appears beautiful or dreary, according as they regard\nit through the cloudless, childlike eyes of cheerful trust or through\nthe dim and distorting spectacles of doubt and despair. No generation\nso miserable has yet seen the light as one which should be trained to\nexpect neither justice nor love from God, and to \u201ccultivate a connected\nview of the general despicability of mankind.\u201d\n\nAfter all, as Schopenhauer himself confessed (though he cared so\nlittle to practise the lesson), character--or, as Mr. Matthew Arnold\nwould say, conduct--is the great matter to which all theories are\nsubordinate. \u201cMoral goodness belongs to an order of things which is\nabove this life, and is incommensurable with any other perfection.\u201d\nThere is a certain value in the old test whereby a tree is known\nby its fruits. To such of us as have kept any foundations of faith\nstill standing, the presumption is surely enormous that the\nintellectual system which naturally produces courage, trustfulness,\nand loving-kindness, must be nearer to the Eternal Verities than\nthe blighting theory which brings forth such thorns and thistles as\ndeformed the character of the great Pessimist Philosopher of the\nnineteenth century.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[14] _Life_, p. 80.\n\n[15] _Life_, p. 32.\n\n[16] _Ethics_, Book IV., chap. iii.\n\n[17] _Life_, p. 208.\n\n[18] _Contemporary Review_, February, 1873.\n\n[19] _Life_, p. 108.\n\n[20] _Life_, p. 240.\n\n\n\n\nZOOPHILY.\n\n\nIt is a comforting reflection in a world still \u201cfull of violence and\ncruel habitations\u201d that the behavior of men to domestic animals must\nhave been, on the whole, more kind than the reverse. Had it been\notherwise, the \u201cset\u201d of the brute\u2019s brains, according to modern theory,\nwould have been that of shyness and dread of us, such as is actually\nexhibited by the rabbit which we chase in the field and the rat we\npursue in the cupboard. In countries where cats are exceptionally\nill-treated (_e.g._, the south of France), poor puss is almost as timid\nas a hare; while the devotion and trustfulness of the dog toward man in\nevery land peopled by an Aryan race seem to prove that, with all our\nfaults, he has not found us such bad masters after all. Dogs love us,\nand could only love us, because we have bestowed on them some crumbs of\nlove and good-will, though their generous little hearts have repaid the\ndebt a thousand-fold. The \u201cShepherd\u2019s Chief Mourner\u201d and \u201cGrey Friar\u2019s\nBobby\u201d had probably received in their time only a few pats from the\nhorny hands of their masters, and a gruff word of approval when the\nsheep had been particularly cleverly folded. But they recognized that\nthe superior being condescended to care for them, and their adoring\nfidelity was the ready response.[21]\n\nTwo different motives of course have influenced men to such kindness to\ndomestic animals, one being obvious self-interest, and the necessity,\nif they needed the creature\u2019s services, to keep it in some degree\nof health and comfort; and the other being the special affection of\nindividual men for favorite animals. Of the frequent manifestation of\nthis latter sentiment in all ages, literature and art bear repeated\ntestimony. We find it in the parable of Nathan; in the pictured tame\nlion running beside the chariot of Rameses; in the story of Argus in\nthe _Odyssey_; in the episode in the _Mahabharata_, where the hero\nrefuses to ascend to heaven in the car of Indra without his dog; in the\nexquisite passage in the _Zend-Avesta_, where the lord of good speaks\nto Zoroaster, \u201cFor I have made the dog, I who am Ahura Mazda\u201d; in the\nhistory of Alexander\u2019s hero, Bucephalus; in Pliny\u2019s charming tales of\nthe boy and the pet dolphin, and of the poor slave thrown down the\nGemonian stairs, beside whose corpse his dog watched and wailed till\neven the stern hearts of the Roman populace were melted to pity.\n\nBut neither the every-day self-interested care of animals by their\nmasters, nor the occasional genuine affection of special men to\nfavorite animals,--which have together produced the actual tameness\nmost of the domesticated tribes now exhibit,--seems to have led men to\nthe acknowledgment of moral obligation on their part toward the brutes.\nAs a lady will finger lovingly a bunch of flowers, and the next moment\ndrop it carelessly on the roadside or pluck the blossoms to pieces in\nsheer thoughtlessness, so the great majority of mankind have always\ntreated animals.\n\n  \u201cWe tread them to death, and a troop of them dies\n  Without our regard or concern,\u201d\n\ncheerfully remarked Dr. Watts concerning ants; but he might have said\nthe same of our \u201cunconcern\u201d in the case of the cruel destruction of\nthousands of harmless birds and beasts and the starvation of their\nyoung, and of the all but universal recklessness of men in dealing with\ncreatures not representing value in money.\n\nIt is not, however, to be reckoned as surprising that our forefathers\ndid not dream of such a thing as duty to animals. They learned very\nslowly that they owed duties to _men_ of other races than their own.\nOnly on the generation which recognized thoroughly for the first time\n(thanks in great measure to Wilberforce and Clarkson) that the negro\nwas \u201ca man and a brother\u201d did it dawn that, beyond the negro, there\nwere other still humbler claimants for benevolence and justice. Within\na few years passed both the emancipation of the West Indian slaves\nand that first act for prevention of cruelty to animals of which Lord\nErskine so truly prophesied that it would prove, \u201cnot only an honor to\nthe Parliament of England, but an era in the civilization of the world.\u201d\n\nBut the noble law of England--which thus forestalled the moralists\nand set an example which every civilized nation, with one solitary\nexception, has followed--remains even to this day, after sixty years,\nstill in advance of the systematic teachers of human duty. Even while\nevery year sermons specially inculcating humanity to animals are\npreached all over the kingdom, nobody (so far as the present writer is\naware) has attempted formally to include Duty to the Lower Animals in\nany complete system of ethics as an organic part of the Whole Duty of\nMan.[22]\n\nWithout pretending for a moment to fill up this gap in ethics, I would\nfain offer to those who are interested in the subject a suggestion\nwhich may possibly serve as a scaffolding till the solid edifice be\nbuilt by stronger hands. We must perchance yet wait to determine what\nare the right _actions_ of man to brute; but I do not think we need\nlose much time in deciding what must be the right _sentiment_, the\ngeneral feeling wherewith it is fit we should regard the lower animals.\nIf we can but clearly define that sentiment, it will indicate roughly\nthe actions which will be consonant therewith.\n\nIn the first place, it seems to me that a sense of serious\nresponsibility toward the brutes ought to replace our\n\u201clady-and-the-nosegay\u201d condition of _insouciance_. The \u201cages before\nmorality\u201d are at an end at last, even in this remote province of human\nfreedom. Of all the grotesque ideas which have imposed on us in the\nsolemn phraseology of divines and moralists, none is more absurd than\nthe doctrine that our moral obligations stop short where the object of\nthem does not happen to know them, and assures us that, because the\nbrutes cannot call us to account for our transgressions, nothing that\nwe can do will constitute a transgression. To absolve us from paying\nfor a pair of boots because our bootmaker\u2019s ledger had unluckily been\nburned would be altogether a parallel lesson in morality. It is plain\nenough, indeed, that the creature who is (as we assume) without a\nconscience or moral arbitrament must always be exonerated from guilt,\nno matter what it may do of hurt or evil; and the judicial proceedings\nagainst, and executions of, oxen and pigs in the Middle Ages for\nmanslaughter were unspeakably absurd. But not less absurd, on the\nother side, is it to exonerate men, who _have_ consciences and free\nwill, when they are guilty of cruelty to brutes, on the plea not that\n_they_, but the brutes are immoral and irresponsible.[23]\n\nA moral being is not moral on one side of him only, but moral _all\nround_, and toward all who are above, beside, and beneath him: just as\na gentleman is a gentleman not only to the king, but to the peasant;\nand as a truthful man speaks truth to friend and stranger. Just in\nthe same way, the \u201cmerciful man is merciful to his beast,\u201d as he is\nmerciful to the beggar at his gate. I may add that every noble quality\nis specially tested by its exhibition in those humbler directions\nwherein there is nothing to be gained by showing it and nothing to be\nlost by contrary behavior.\n\nThere is a passage from Jeremy Bentham, quoted in Mrs. Jamieson\u2019s\n_Commonplace Book_ and elsewhere, which will recur to many readers\nat this point: \u201cThe day may come,\u201d he says, \u201cwhen the rest of the\nanimal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been\nwithheld from them but by the hand of tyranny. It may come one day\nto be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin,\nor the termination of the _os sacrum_, are reasons insufficient for\nabandoning a sensitive being to the caprice of a tormentor.... The\nquestion is not, Can they reason? or Can they speak? but, Can they\nsuffer?\u201d\n\nLong before Bentham, a greater mind, travelling along a nobler road\nof philosophy, laid down the canon which resolves the whole question.\nBishop Butler affirmed that it was on the simple fact of a creature\nbeing SENTIENT--_i.e._, capable of pain and pleasure--that rests\nour responsibility to save it pain and give it pleasure. There is\nno evading this obligation, then, as regards the lower animals, by\nthe plea that they are not moral beings. It is _our_ morality, not\n_theirs_, which is in question. There are special considerations which\nin different cases may modify our obligation, but it is on such special\nreasons, not on the universal non-moral nature of the brutes (as the\nold divines taught), that our exoneration must be founded; and the onus\nlies on us to show cause for each of them.\n\nThe distinction between our duties to animals and our duties to our\nhuman fellow-creatures lies here. As regards them both, we are indeed\nforbidden to inflict avoidable pain, because both alike are sentient.\nBut, as regards the brutes, our duties _stop_ there: whereas, as\nregards men, they being moral as well as sentient beings, our primary\nobligations toward them must concern their higher natures, and include\nthe preservation of the lives which those higher natures invest with a\nsanctity exclusively their own. Thus, we reach the important conclusion\nthat the infliction of avoidable pain is the supreme offence as regards\nthe lower animals, but _not_ the supreme offence as regards man. Sir\nHenry Taylor\u2019s noble lines go to the very root of the question:--\n\n  \u201cPain, terror, mortal agonies, which scare\n  Thy heart in man, to brutes thou wilt not spare.\n  Are theirs less sad and real? _Pain in man\n  Bears the high mission of the flail and fan;\n  In brutes, \u2019tis purely piteous._\u201d\n\nPain is the one supreme evil of the existence of the lower animals, an\nevil which (so far as we can see) has no countervailing good. As to\ndeath, a painless one--so far from being the supreme evil to them--is\noften the truest mercy. Thus, instead of the favorite phrase of certain\nphysiologists, that \u201cthey would put hecatombs of brutes to torture to\nsave the smallest pain of a man,\u201d true ethics bids us regard man\u2019s\n_moral_ welfare only as of supreme importance, and anything which can\ninjure _it_ (such, for example, as the practice, or sanction of the\npractice, of cruelty) as the worst of evils, even if along with it\nshould come a mitigation of bodily pain. On this subject, the present\nBishop of Winchester has put the case in a nutshell. \u201cIt is true,\u201d he\nsaid, \u201cthat man is superior to the beast, but the part of man which\nwe recognize as such is his moral and spiritual nature. So far as his\nbody and its pains are concerned, there is no particular reason for\nconsidering them more than the body and bodily pains of a brute.\u201d\n\nOf course, the ground is cut from under us in this whole line of\nargument by those ingenious thinkers who have recently disinterred\n(with such ill-omened timeliness for the vivisection debate) Descartes\u2019\nsupposed doctrine, that the appearance of pain and pleasure in the\nbrutes is a mere delusion, and that they are only automata,--\u201ca\nsuperior kind of marionettes, which eat without pleasure, cry without\npain, desire nothing, know nothing, and only simulate intelligence as\na bee simulates a mathematician.\u201d If this conclusion, on which modern\nscience is to be congratulated, be accepted, it follows, of course,\nthat we should give no more consideration to the fatigue of a noble\nhunter than to the creaking wood of a rocking-horse; and that the\nemotions a child bestows on its doll will be more serious than those\nwe bestow on a dog who dies of grief on his master\u2019s grave. Should it\nappear to us, however, on the contrary (as it certainly does to me),\nthat there is quite as good evidence that dogs and elephants reason\nas that certain physiologists reason, and a great deal better evidence\nthat they--the animals--feel, we may perhaps dismiss the Cartesianism\nof the nineteenth century, and proceed without further delay to\nendeavor to define more particularly the fitting sentiment of man to\nsentient brutes. We have seen we ought to start with a distinct sense\nof some degree of moral responsibility as regards them. What shape\nshould that sense assume?\n\nWe have been in the habit of indulging ourselves in all manner\nof antipathies to special animals, some of them having, perhaps,\ntheir source and _raison d\u2019\u00eatre_ in the days of our remote but not\nillustrious ancestors,\n\n  \u201cWhen wild in woods the noble savage ran\u201d;\n\nor those of a still earlier date, who were, as Mr. Darwin says,\n\u201carboreal in their habits,\u201d ere yet we had deserved the reproach of\nhaving \u201cmade ourselves tailless and hairless and multiplied folds\nto our brain.\u201d Other prejudices, again, are mere personal whims,\nthree-fourths of them being pure affectation. A man will decline to sit\nin a room with an inoffensive cat, and a lady screams at the sight of\na mouse, which is infinitely more distressed at the _rencontre_ than\nshe. I have known an individual, otherwise distinguished for audacity,\n\u201cmake tracks\u201d across several fields to avoid a placidly ruminating\ncow. In our present stage of civilization, these silly prejudices\nare barbarisms and anachronisms, if not vulgarisms, and should be\ntreated like exhibitions of ignorance or childishness. For our remote\nprogenitors before mentioned, tusky and hirsute, struggling for\nexistence with the cave bear and the mammoth in the howling wilderness\nof a yet uncultured world, there was no doubt justification for\nregarding the terrible beasts around them with the hatred which comes\nof fear. But the animal creation, at least throughout Europe, has been\nsubdued for ages; and all its tribes are merely dwellers by sufferance\nin a vanquished province. Their position as regards us appeals to\nevery spark of generosity alight in our bosoms, and ought to make us\nashamed of our whims and antipathies toward beings so humble. Shall man\narrogate the title of \u201clord of creation,\u201d and not show himself, at the\nleast, _bon prince_ to his poor subjects? It is not too much to ask\nthat, even toward wild animals, our feelings should be those of royal\nclemency and indulgence,--of pleasure in the beauty and grace of such\nof them as are beautiful; of admiration for their numberless wondrous\ninstincts; of sympathy with their delight in the joys of the forest and\nthe fields of air. Few, I suppose, of men with any impressionability\ncan watch a lark ascending into the sky of a summer\u2019s morning without\nsome dim echo of the feelings which inspired Shelley\u2019s Ode. This is,\nhowever, only a specially vivid instance of a sympathy which might be\nalmost universal, and which, so far as we learn to feel it, touches all\nnature for us with a magic wand.\n\nIf we are compelled to fight with them, if they are our natural\nenemies and can never be anything else, then let us wage war upon them\nin loyal sort, as we contended against the Russians at Balaklava;\nand, if we catch any prisoners, deal with them chivalrously or at\nleast mercifully. This, indeed (to do justice to sportsmen, much as\nI dislike their pursuit), I have always observed to be the spirit of\nthe old-fashioned country gentleman, before the gross slaughtering of\n_battues_ and despicable pigeon-matches were heard of in the land.\n\nAs to domestic animals, their demands on us, did we read them aright,\nare not so much those of petitioners for mercy as of rightful claimants\nof justice. We have caused their existence, and are responsible that\nthey should be on the whole happy and not miserable. We take their\nservices to carry our burdens, to enhance our pleasures, to guard\nour homes and our flocks. In the case of many of them, we accept the\nfondest fidelity and an affection such as human beings scarcely give\nonce in a lifetime. They watch for us, work for us, bear often weary\nimprisonment and slavery in our service, and not seldom mourn for us\nwith breaking hearts when we die. If we conceive of an arbiter sitting\nby and watching alike our behavior and the poor brutes\u2019 toil and love,\ncan we suppose he would treat it as merely a piece of _generosity_ on\nour part, which we were free to leave unfulfilled without blame, that\nwe should behave considerately to such an humble friend, supply him\nwith food, water, and shelter, forbear to overwork him, and end his\nharmless life at last with the least possible pain? Would he not demand\nit of us as the simplest matter of _justice_?[24]\n\nFor those who accept the Darwinian theory, and believe that the\nrelationship between man and the brutes is not only one of similarity,\nbut of actual kinship in blood, it would have seemed only natural that\nthis new view should have brought forth a burst of fresh sympathy and\ntenderness. If our physical frames, with all their quivering nerves and\nsusceptibilities to a thousand pains, be, indeed, only the four-footed\ncreature\u2019s body a little modified by development; if our minds only\noverlap and transcend theirs, but are grown out of those humbler\nbrains; if all our moral qualities, our love and faith and sense of\njustice, be only their affection and fidelity and dim sense of wrong\nextended into wider realms,--then we bear in ourselves the irresistible\ntestimony to their claims on our sympathy. And if, like so many of the\ndisciples of the same new philosophy, we are unhappy enough to believe\nthat both man and brute when laid in the grave awake no more, then,\nabove all, it would seem that this common lot of a few pleasures and\nmany pains, to be followed by annihilation, would move any heart to\ncompassion. In the great, silent, hollow universe in which these souls\nbelieve themselves to stand, how base does it seem to turn on the\nweaker, unoffending beings around them, and spoil their little gleam of\nlife and joy under the sun!\n\nNothing is more startling to me than the fact that some of the leading\napostles of this philosophy, and even its respected author himself,\nshould in one and the same breath tell us that an ape, for example, is\nactually our own flesh and blood, and that it is right and proper to\ntreat apes after the fashion of Professors Munk and Goltz and Ferrier.\nThese gentlemen, as regards the poor _quadrumana_, are rather \u201cmore\nthan kin,\u201d and rather \u201cless than kind.\u201d\n\nFor those who, whether they believe in evolution or not, still hold\nfaith in the existence of a divine Lord of man and brute, the reasons\nfor sympathy are, in another way, still stronger. That the Christian\nreligion did not, from the first, like the Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and\nBrahminist, impress its followers with the duty of mercy to the brutes;\nthat it was left to a few tender-hearted saints, like St. Francis, to\nconnect the creatures in any way with the worship of the Creator, and\nto the later development of Protestantism to formulate any doctrine\non the subject of duty toward them,--is a paradox which would need\nmuch space to explain. Modern religion, at all events, by whatever\nname it is called, seems tending more and more to throw an additional\ntender sacredness over our relations to the \u201cunoffending creatures\nwhich he,\u201d their Maker, \u201cloves,\u201d and to make us recognize a latent\ntruth in the curiously hackneyed lines of Coleridge concerning him who\n\u201cprayeth best\u201d and also loveth best \u201cboth man and bird and beast.\u201d\nWhere that great and far-reaching softener of hearts, the sense of our\nown failures and offences, is vividly present, the position we hold to\ncreatures who _have never done wrong_ is always found inexpressibly\ntouching. To be kind to them and rejoice in their happiness seems\njust one of the few ways in which we can act a god-like part in our\nlittle sphere, and display the mercy for which we hope in our turn.\nWhichever way we take it, I conceive we reach the same conclusion. The\nonly befitting feeling for human beings to entertain toward brutes is,\nas the very word suggests, the feeling of _humanity_: or, as we may\ninterpret it, the sentiment of sympathy, so far as we can cultivate\nfellow-feeling; of pity, so far as we know them to suffer; of mercy, so\nfar as we can spare their sufferings; of kindness and benevolence, so\nfar as it is in our power to make them happy.\n\nThere is nothing fanatical about this humanity. It does not call on us\nto renounce any of the useful or needful avocations of life as regards\nanimals, but rather would it make the man imbued with it perform them\nall the better.[25] We assuredly need not, because we become humane,\nsacrifice the higher life for the lower, as in the wondrous Buddhist\nparable so beautifully rendered in the _Light of Asia_, where \u201cLord\nBuddha,\u201d in one of his million lives, gives himself, out of pity, to\nbe devoured by a famishing tiger who cannot feed her cubs, and\n\n          \u201cThe great cat\u2019s burning breath\n  Mixed with the last sigh of such fearless love.\u201d\n\nWe need not even copy the sweet lady in the \u201cSensitive Plant\u201d who made\nthe bees and moths and ephemerid\u00e6 her attendants:--\n\n  \u201cBut all killing insects and gnawing worms,\n  And things of obscene and unlovely forms,\n  She bore in a basket of Indian woof\n  Into the rough woods far aloof,--\n\n  \u201cIn a basket of grasses and wild flowers full,\n  The freshest her gentle hands could pull\n  For the poor banished insects, whose intent,\n  Although they did ill, was innocent.\u201d\n\nThis is poetry not meant for practice, and yet even these hyperboles\ncarry a breath as of Eden along with them. Of Eden did I say? Nay,\nrather of the later Paradise for which the soul of the greatest of the\nprophets yearned, where \u201cthey shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy\nmountain.\u201d\n\nI will not attempt here to define how the sentiment of humanity to\nthe brutes, thoroughly ingrained into a man\u2019s heart, would make him\ndecide the question of field sports. My own impression is that it would\nlead him to abandon first, and with utter disgust, such wretched\namusements as pigeon-matches and _battues_ of half-tame pheasants;\nand, later, those sports in which, as in fox-hunting and coursing\nand duck-shooting, the sympathy of the sportsman with his hounds and\nhorse, or his greyhound or retriever, is uppermost in his mind, to the\nexclusion of the wild and scarcely seen object of his pursuit. In nine\nkinds of such sports, I believe, out of ten, it is rather a case of\nill-divided sympathy for animals than of lack of it which inspires the\nsportsman; and not many would find enjoyment where neither horse nor\ndog had part,--like poor Robertson, of Brighton, sitting for hours in a\ntub in a marsh to shoot wild duck, and counting the period so spent as\n\u201chours of delight!\u201d\n\nBut there is one practice respecting which the influence of such a\nsentiment of humanity as we have supposed must have an unmistakable\nresult. It must put an absolute stop to vivisection. To accustom\nourselves and our children to regard animals with sympathy; to beware\nof giving them pain, and rejoice when it is possible for us to give\nthem pleasure; to study their marvellous instincts, and trace the\ndawnings of reason in their sagacious acts; to accept their services\nand their affection, and give them in return such pledges of protection\nas our kind words and caresses,--to do this, and then calmly consent\nto hand them over to be dissected alive, this is too monstrous to be\nborne. _De deux choses l\u2019une._ Either we must cherish animals--and\nthen we must abolish vivisection--or we must sanction vivisection;\nand then, for very shame\u2019s sake, and lest we poison the springs of\npity and sympathy in our breasts and the breasts of our children, we\nmust renounce the ghastly farce of petting or protecting animals, and\npretending to recognize their noble and lovable qualities. If love and\ncourage and fidelity, lodged in the heart of a dog, have no claim on us\nto prevent us from dissecting that heart even while yet it beats with\naffection; if the human-like intelligence working in a monkey\u2019s brain\ndo not forbid (but rather invite) us to mutilate that brain, morsel\nby morsel, till the last glimmering of mind and playfulness die out\nin dulness and death,--if this be so, then, in Heaven\u2019s name, let us\nat least have done with our cant of \u201chumanity,\u201d and abolish our Acts\nof Parliament, and dissolve our Bands of Mercy, and our three hundred\nSocieties for the Prevention of Cruelty throughout the world.\n\nThe idea of vivisection (to use the phrase of its two thousand\nadvocates who memorialized Sir Richard Cross) rests on the conception\nof an animal (a dog, for example) as \u201ca carnivorous creature, valuable\nfor purposes of research,\u201d--a mechanism, in short, of nerves and\nmuscles, bones and arteries, which, as they added, it would be a\npity to \u201cwithdraw from investigation.\u201d The crass materialism which\nthus regards such a creature as a dog (and would, doubtless, if its\nfollowers spoke out, be found similarly to regard a man) is at the\nopposite pole of thought and feeling from the recognition of the animal\nin its higher nature as an object of our tenderness and sympathy. We\ncannot hold both views at once. If we take the higher one, the lower\nmust become abhorrent in our eyes. There is, there ought to be, no\nquestion in the matter of a little more or a little less of torture,\nor of dispute whether an\u00e6sthetics, when they can be employed, usually\neffect complete and final or only partial and temporary insensibility;\nor of whether such processes as putting an animal into a stove over\na fire till it expires in ten or twenty minutes ought to be called\n\u201cbaking it alive,\u201d or described by some less distressing and homely\nphraseology. It is the simple idea of dealing with a living, conscious,\nsensitive, and intelligent creature as if it were dead and senseless\nmatter against which the whole spirit of true humanity revolts. It\nis the notion of such absolute despotism as shall justify not merely\ntaking life, but converting the entire existence of the animal into\na misfortune, which we denounce as a brutal misconception of the\nrelations between the higher and the lower creatures, and an utter\nanachronism in the present stage of human moral feeling. A hundred\nyears ago, had physiologists frankly avowed that they recognized no\nclaims on the part of the brutes which should stop them from torturing\nthem, they would have been only on the level of their contemporaries.\nBut to-day they are behind the age; ay, sixty years behind the\nlegislature and the poor Irish gentleman who \u201cruled the houseless\nwilds of Connemara,\u201d and had the glory of giving his name to Martin\u2019s\nAct. How their claim for a \u201cfree vivisecting table\u201d may be looked back\nupon a century to come, we may perhaps foretell with no great chance\nof error. In his last book, published ten years ago, Sir Arthur Helps\nwrote these memorable words: \u201cIt appears to me that the advancement\nof the world is to be measured by the increase of humanity and the\ndecrease of cruelty.... I am convinced that, if an historian were to\nsum the gains and losses of the world at the close of each recorded\ncentury, there might be much which was retrograde in other aspects of\nhuman life and conduct, but nothing could show a backward course in\nhumanity\u201d (pp. 195, 196). As I have said ere now, the battle of mercy,\nlike that of freedom\n\n                        \u201cOnce begun,\n  Though often lost, is always won.\u201d\n\nEven should all the scientific men in Europe unite in a resolution\nthat \u201cvivisection is necessary,\u201d just as all the Dominicans would\nhave united three hundred years ago to resolve that autos-da-f\u00e9 were\n\u201cnecessary,\u201d or as all the lawyers and magistrates that the _peine\nforte et dure_ was \u201cnecessary,\u201d or as the statesmen of America\ndid thirty years ago that negro slavery was \u201cnecessary,\u201d yet the\n\u201cnecessity\u201d will disappear in the case of the scientific torture of\nanimals as in all the rest. The days of vivisection are numbered.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[21] A touching story of such sheep-gathering was recently told me on\ngood authority. A shepherd lost his large flock on the Scotch mountains\nin a fog. After fruitless search, he returned to his cottage, bidding\nhis collie find the sheep, if she could. The collie, who was near\ngiving birth to her young, understood his orders, and disappeared in\nthe mist, not returning for many hours. At last, she came home in\nmiserable plight, driving before her the last stray sheep, and carrying\nin her mouth a puppy of her own! She had of necessity left the rest of\nher litter to perish on the hills and in the intervals of their birth\nthe poor beast had performed her task and driven home the sheep. Her\nlast puppy only she had contrived to save.\n\n[22] The best effort to supply the missing chapter of ethics is\nthe charming and eloquent volume, _Rights of an Animal_, by E. B.\nNicholson. I thankfully recognize the candor wherewith the author\nhas tackled the difficult problems of the case, and the value of his\ndemonstration that the law of England assumes the fundamental principle\nthat cruelty to an animal is an offence _per se_, and that it is not\nnecessary to show that it injures any human owner or spectator. In this\nrespect, as in all others, our Act (11 and 12 Vict. c. 39) immeasurably\ntranscends the French _Loi Grammont_, which condemns only cruelty\nexhibited in public places and painful to the spectators. Mr. Nicholson\njustifies vivisection only so far as it can be rendered absolutely\npainless by an\u00e6sthetics. To such of us as have seen through that\ndelusion, _cadit quaestio_.\n\n[23] As a recent example of this doctrine, see an article in the\n_Fortnightly Review_ for Feb. 1, 1882. \u201cIs it not,\u201d the author says,\n\u201cthe very basis of ethical doctrine(!) that the moral rights of any\nbeing depend on its ethical nature?\u201d\n\n[24] I have endeavored elsewhere to work out this hypothesis of an\numpire between man and brute, as a method of helping us to a solution\nof the problem of what are and what are not lawful actions on our parts\ntoward animals. The reader who may be interested in the inquiry may\nobtain my pamphlet, _The Right of Tormenting_, price 2_d._, at the\noffice of the Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection, 1\nVictoria Street, Westminster.\n\n[25] In fact, many men who pursue such trades, notably butchers,\nare genuinely humane, and do their best to get through their work\nin the most merciful way. Several of them have recently expressed\nwarm satisfaction on obtaining Baxter\u2019s mask, whereby oxen may be\ninstantaneously killed without the chance of a misdirected blow. The\nmask is to be obtained from Mr. Baxter, Ealing Dean, W.\n\n\n\n\nSACRIFICIAL MEDICINE.\n\n\nThe world has done wrong to laugh at the old lady who reproved her\nsailor grandson for \u201ctelling her such a scandalous fib as that he\nhad seen a fish fly in the air,\u201d but restored her confidence to the\nhopeful youth when he proceeded to narrate how he had picked up a wheel\nof Pharaoh\u2019s chariot on the Red Sea shore. Practically, we all jump\neasily at beliefs toward the level of which we have already climbed\nby previous knowledge (or previous prejudice, as it may chance), and\nrefuse, donkey-wise, to budge an inch toward those which happen to be\non a plane above our preconceived notions of what either is or ought\nto be. It is this propensity, of course, which makes the most baseless\ncalumny mischievous by paving the way for the next slander against its\nobject. And it is it, also, which grants interminable leases of life to\nfalse systems of physics and religion by securing a welcome for every\nfiction and fallacy which at any time may seem to favor them, and\nclosing the door in the face of truths which militate against and might\nexplode them.\n\nA curious study of the \u201cGrammar of Assent,\u201d as used by the majority of\nmankind in the matter which comes nearest to their own business and\nbosoms, might, I think, be made by unearthing the preconceived notions\nand preparatory ideas which must needs exist as regards the healing\nart, and which can have enabled doctors confidently to prescribe, and\npatients meekly to accept, the horrid and shocking remedies in use\nfrom the earliest period,--remedies of which it is a mild criticism\nto say that they were worse than the diseases they professed to cure.\nHad the minds of men concerned with medical inquiries been really\nfree from antecedent convictions,--blank sheets of paper whereon\nNature could have written down her facts, which experience might have\nread and collated,--it is clear enough that good diet, exercise,\nand cleanliness, and the occasional use of simple preparations of\nherbs, would early have constituted the primitive and sound rules of\nmedical science, to be supplemented, as time went on, by discoveries\nof the therapeutic value of more rare vegetable substances and of a\nfew minerals. Never could practical observation, by any possibility,\nhave suggested that it would be beneficial to a sick man to make him\nswallow potable gold or powdered skulls, or a bolus of decomposed old\ntoads and earth-worms. The _un-_\u201cscientific use of the imagination\u201d can\nalone have dictated these and scores of no less absurd and obnoxious\nprescriptions, prompted by some _a priori_ theory of what _ought_,\nantecedently to experience, to be suitable for the cure of disease, and\n\u201cin accordance with the eternal fitness of things.\u201d\n\nWhat, then, were the notions in obedience to which these marvellous\nremedies were ordained? If we exclude from present consideration\nall the really useful therapeutic agents, discovered doubtless by\ngenuine experience and recorded by the ancient physicians, Galen and\nHippocrates, Dioscorides and Avicenna, and all the rest, and also set\naside those which, though not really useful, might have been readily\nmistaken for being so by imperfect early observation, we find the\nimmense residue of absurd and monstrous recipes to fall into two\ncategories; namely, the remedies which were exceedingly costly and the\nremedies which were either very painful or very disgusting. In other\nwords, a large part of the medical science of all past ages proves\nthat the doctors and their patients valued remedies _in proportion\nto the price to be paid for them_, either in money or in suffering.\nIn short, they adopted freely the Doctrine of Sacrifice as applied\nto medicine. Considering that Nature nearly always proceeds on\nprecisely the opposite track,--that she does not ask us \u201cto do some\ngreat thing,\u201d but, like the true prophet, only bids us \u201cwash and be\nclean\u201d; makes the cheapest and commonest things the most wholesome,\nand affords us normally, by our instinctive desire or loathing, the\nsurest test of the fitness or unfitness of food for our use,--there\nis something exceedingly curious in the all but universal assumption\nof mankind that it was only necessary to find something particularly\nrare and expensive, or else something extraordinarily revolting, to\nobtain a panacea for all the woes of mortality. It was ridiculous (in\nthe estimation of our forefathers) to suppose that a great noble or\nking should dissolve pearls in his drink or swallow liquid gold, and\nyet, forsooth, be no better after all than a poor wretch who could\nafford himself only a little milk or water. Still more incredible was\nit that a man should submit to some agonizing scarification or actual\ncautery, or should compel himself to bolt some inexpressibly disgusting\nmess which his doctor had taken a year to concoct and distil through a\nscore of furnaces and retorts, and yet, when all was over, receive no\nmore benefit than if he had endured no hardship, or had only drunk some\ncowslip julep or herb tea. Such tame and impotent conclusions could\nnot be received for a moment. If patients would only _pay_ enough or\n_suffer_ enough, they _must_ be cured. This, it really seems, was the\nunderlying conviction of men of old, on which half the therapeutics of\npast times were unconsciously based.\n\nLet us cull a few illustrations of the ingenious development of those\nprinciples by the invention of nostrums distinguished by one or other\nof the grand characteristics, roughly definable as costliness or\nnastiness. Perhaps, ere the close of our brief review, we may find we\nhave less reason than we fancy at starting to congratulate ourselves on\nthe disappearance of this phase of human folly, or to rest assured that\ninductive science alone now rules in the sick-room, and that neither\ndoctors nor patients retain any faith in sacrificial medicine.\n\nThe use of costly things as remedies for disease constitutes a kind of\n_haute m\u00e9decine_ necessarily of limited application. With the exception\nof the great search for the _Aurum Potabile_ in the Middle Ages, there\nare much fewer traces of it than of the other form of sacrifice, in\nwhich the patient _payait de sa personne_. Everybody could be scarified\nor made to swallow worms and filth; but there were not many patients\nwho could afford to pay for emeralds to tie on their stomachs in cases\nof dysentery, as recommended by Avenzor, nor for \u201ceight grains of\nthat noble lunar medicine, the wine of silver,\u201d nor for \u201cdissolved\npearls,\u201d either of which (Matthioli assures us) is \u201csovereign against\nmelancholy.\u201d Dioscorides might in vain recommend powdered sapphires\nfor starting eyes, or St. Jerome vaunt their virtues for many other\ntroubles, to the majority of sufferers in their own or any other age.\nCoral was more within popular reach; and probably a considerable number\nof believing souls have followed Galen\u2019s prescription and tried its use\nfor spitting of blood, and Pliny\u2019s recommendation of it for the stone.\nAvicenna found that a cordial made of it is \u201csingularly productive\nof joy\u201d; and Matthioli says it has \u201ctruly occult virtues against\nepilepsy,\u201d whether \u201chung about the neck or drunk in powders.\u201d[26]\nEmeralds or rubies, and even silk (then a rarer substance in Europe\nthan now), afford, according to Dioscorides, relief in a variety of\nailments; but of course nothing could be so generally, and indeed\nuniversally, useful as gold. He who could discover how to make men\nactually drink the most costly of metals would teach them nothing\nless than the secret of immortality. The _Aurum Potabile_, or noble\n\u201cSolar Oyl,\u201d especially when mixed with the \u201cLunar Oyl\u201d of silver, and\n\u201cMercurial Oyl,\u201d forms, as Bolnest assures us, \u201ca great Arcanum, fit to\nbe used in most diseases, _especially in chronick_.\u201d By itself alone,\nindeed, the drinkable gold was understood to be an elixir of life,--a\nconclusion not a little remarkable, when we consider that the only real\nvalue of the metal is its convenience as a circulating medium and for\nthe fabrication of ornaments, and that the artificial importance thus\nattached to it must have so affected men\u2019s minds as to cause them to\nidealize it as a sort of divine antidote to disease and death.\n\nIn an earlier and truer-hearted age, Paradise was believed to be\na garden, and it was the Fruit of a Tree of Life which would make\nmen live forever. But when, as Gibbon satirically observes, in the\ndissolution of the Roman world, men coveted only a place in the\nCelestial City of gold and pearl, the secret of immortality was sought\n(not inappropriately) at the bottom of a Rosicrucian crucible.\n\nThere was, it must be confessed, a profound _vulgarity_ in this whole\nsystem of costly medicine, which it would be flattering to ourselves\nto think we had in our day quite overpassed and discarded. But in\ntruth, though we are not wont to dissolve pearls or powder emeralds or\ndrink solar or even lunar \u201cOyl,\u201d it may be fairly asked whether we do\nnot contrive to melt down a handful of sovereigns in every attack of\nillness to very little better purpose than if we had simply given them\nto an old alchemist to put in his furnace and make for us an elixir\nof life? What are these long rows of items in our druggist\u2019s bill for\ndraughts, embrocations, liniments, blisters, gargles, and what not,\nrepresented, when the housemaid clears our room for convalescence, by a\nwhole regiment of quarter-emptied phials and pill-boxes on our table?\nWhat are those considerable drafts recorded in our check-book, not only\nfor the attendance of our customary medical adviser (which might be\nreasonable), but for the visits of the eminent consulting physician,\nbrought down, perchance, fifty or five hundred miles to look at us for\nfive minutes while we lay speechless in our fever? Did anybody ever\nuse one-half, or even one-third, of the expensive medicines ordered in\nevery illness from the pharmacy day after day? Or did anybody find a\nmedical man, in view of a patient\u2019s straitened circumstances, telling\nhis anxious friends that the remains of the last bottle of his physic\nwould answer as well as a new one, or that they might readily change\nit, by adding a few drops of some fresh ingredient, instead of ordering\nanother six ounces from the chemist, to be set aside in its turn, half\nused, to-morrow? Or (what is still more to the purpose) did anybody\never hear of a case wherein the physician summoned for consultation\n(possibly at enormous cost) has given his honest opinion that the\nregular medical attendant of the patient has mistaken his case, and\nthat the treatment ought to be altogether reversed?\n\nThe same idea has been at the bottom of our proceedings and those of\nour ancestors which we ridicule; namely, that if we do but spend money\nenough, a cure _must_ follow.\n\nBut, as I remarked before, the notion that costliness of itself is a\ntest of medicinal virtue has been, necessarily, far less prolific of\nresults than the kindred idea that by the pain and disgust entailed\non a patient might be estimated the value of the remedy applied to\nhis disease. As to disgust, it would really appear as if some ancient\nprophets of the healing art, some Ph\u0153bus Epicurios or \u00c6sculapius, must\nhave laid down as a principle for the selection of health-restoring\ncompounds and concoctions, \u201cBy their nauseousness ye shall know them.\u201d\nElse were the recipes for all the hideous, abominable witch-broths,\nwherewith the older books of medicine are replete, quite unaccountable\non any theory of human sanity. Many of them (which weak-souled patients\nhave swallowed by the ounce and the pound) were of a kind which it\nis quite impossible to quote; nor can we wonder that, as Plato tells\nus, the Athenian physicians were wont to engage the great rhetorician\nGorgias to accompany them and persuade their patients to take their\nprescriptions. Let the following, however, be taken as moderate\nexamples:--\n\n \u201cTake what Animal soever thy fancy best liketh, and thou thinkest\n most fit to prepare. Kill it and take it (but separate nothing of\n its impurities, as feathers, hoofs, hairs, or other heterogeneous\n substance), bruise all in a large and strong mortar to a fit\n consistency, put it then into a vessel for putrefaction, and put\n upon it of the blood of animals of the same kind so much as may well\n moisten it, or, which is better, cover it all over. Shut close the\n vessel and set it to putrifie, _in fimo equino_, for forty dayes that\n it may ferment.\u201d (The result is to be distilled, calcined, rectified,\n and distilled over again and again, \u201cseven times to separate its\n phlegme,\u201d till finally) \u201cthou hast a pleasant [!!], safe, and noble\n Animal Arcanum to fortifie the animal life, and restore health and\n vigor to its languishing spirit, till God doth call for its final\n dissolution and separation.\u201d--_Aurora Chymica_, p. 6.\n\nThis was bad enough, but a great advance (in the line of sacrifice)\nwas made when to the mere odiousness, we may say beastliness, of the\ndose _per se_ could be added the horror of eating what had once formed\npart of a human body,--in short, of cannibalism. The _ordonnances_\nwhich follow really seem to have a connection with ancient idol-rites\nof human sacrifice, and possibly (had we means of tracing them) might\nbe fathered on the earliest worshippers of Hesus or of Odin. The\nseasons of the year (spring and autumn) wherein the victim must die\n(very carefully defined in these prescriptions) seem to give color\nto this view. Down to the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, Helps\ntells us, the Aztecs used yearly to slay a young man in spring that\nthe nobles might eat his heart as a sort of sacrament. Anyway, it is\nrather startling to find that just two hundred years ago in London the\nphysician in ordinary to the King recommended cannibalism to Englishmen\nwithout the smallest apology or hesitation.\n\n _A Mummiall Quintessence._\n\n Take of the flesh of a sound young man, dying a natural death about\n the middle of August, three or four pounds. Let the flesh be taken\n from his thighs or other fleshy parts. Put it into a fit glass and\n pour upon it spirit of wine. Let it stand so three or four days.\n Take out the flesh and put it upon a glass plate, and imbibe it with\n spirits of salts. Let it stand uncovered, but in the shade, where no\n dust or other filth may fall upon it. Be sure you often turn it,\n and, being well dried, you may put it up in a fit jar and keep it for\n use.--_Aurora Chymica_, chap. iii.\n\nA still more efficacious remedy, \u201cproducing wonderful effects both\nin preserving and restoring health,\u201d may be obtained by distilling,\nfiltering, calcining, and coagulating this \u201cMummiall\u201d till it have\na \u201csaccharine taste,\u201d when the \u201cmatter may be left of the thickness\nor consistency of honey, which must be kept in glass vessels closely\nshut.\u201d (_Ibid._, p. 8.)\n\nIf the \u201csound young man\u201d should have been killed in the spring instead\nof in \u201cthe middle of August,\u201d the learned Dr. Bolnest is not without a\nremedy. His flesh is, indeed, no longer useful for a \u201cMummiall,\u201d but\nhis blood may be made into a \u201cvery high balsam, exceeding much the\npowers and virtue of natural balsam; a potent preservative in time of\npestilence, leprosie, palsie, and gout of all sorts.\u201d\n\n \u201cTake of such blood a large quantity. Gather in glass vessels. Let it\n settle some time till it hath thrown out all its waterish humor, which\n separate by wary inclination. Take now of this concrete blood five\n or six pounds, which put to ten or twelve pints of spirits of wine.\n Shake them well together, and let it digest six or eight days in warm\n ashes.\u201d Distil. Add the fixed salt drawn out of the _caput mortuum_ of\n the blood by \u201ccalcination,\u201d \u201csolution,\u201d \u201cfiltration,\u201d \u201ccoagulation,\u201d\n often repeated; \u201cand what shall remain behind is the Arcanum of Blood\u201d\n (p. 10).\n\nWhen obtained in the manner above described, this invaluable remedy\nis \u201cto be taken in broth or treacle-water with a fasting\u201d (and let us\ndevoutly hope an unusually vigorous) \u201cstomach.\u201d Only one caution is\nnecessary. The \u201csound young man\u2019s\u201d blood must have been shed \u201cwhen\nMercury was above the horizon and in conjunction with the sun in Gemini\nor Virgo.\u201d\n\nAfter the broth of man\u2019s blood, a \u201cBalsamick Remedy for Arthritick\nPains,\u201d composed of the bones of a man \u201cwhich hath not been buried\nfully a year,\u201d beat up into a powder, calcined, and applied on lint,\nappears a comparatively mild and pleasant receipt. So, likewise, is\nthe \u201cQuintessence of Toads,\u201d to be composed in the month of June or\nJuly of a \u201cgreat quantity of overgrown toads,\u201d reduced, calcined,\nand distilled as usual, and then \u201cdissolved in spirit of oranges or\ntreacle-water ready for use,\u201d either externally, when it cures \u201ccancers\nand pestilential venom,\u201d or internally, against \u201call sorts of poison.\u201d\n\nThe above prescriptions are taken, be it said, not from the manual\nof one of those vulgar quacks to whom we are too apt to credit every\nabsurdity of ancient medicine, but from a serious treatise by Edward\nBolnest, physician in ordinary to the King (1672), dedicated to George\nDuke of Buckingham, and described on the title-page as \u201cShewing a\nRational [!] Way of preparing Animals, Vegetables, and Minerals for\na Physical Use, by which they are made most efficacious, safe, and\npleasant Medicines for the Preservation and Restoration of the Life of\nMan.\u201d How honest was the worthy author in his belief in his \u201cMummiall\nQuintessence,\u201d and all the rest, may be judged from his frank avowal\n\u201cto the Reader\u201d that the medicines prescribed he might \u201c_in some\nmeasure_ in time of need trust to,\u201d because, adds Dr. Bolnest candidly,\n\u201cI never yet from the best of medicines always found those certain\neffects I could have desired.\u201d\n\nThese were, however, refined preparations compared to the prescriptions\nin use in still earlier generations. In the great folio of M. Pietro\nAndrea Matthioli (Venice, 1621), adorned with hundreds of really\nadmirable woodcuts of medicinal herbs and flowers, there are directions\nfor rubbing wounds with cow-dung, swallowing beeswax, silk, sweat, and\nsaliva, and drinking hare\u2019s blood and dog\u2019s dung dissolved in milk as\na cure for dysentery. Nervous people are to dine on cooked vipers.\nPersons with the toothache are to apply to their teeth a serpent\u2019s\nskin steeped in vinegar, or to powder the callosities on a horse\u2019s\nlegs, and stuff their ears therewith. A black eye may be treated with\na poultice of human milk, incense, and the blood of a tortoise. For\nthe not very serious affection of hiccough a beverage is recommended,\nof which the chief ingredient is the flesh of a mummy; thus affording\nus further evidence that cannibalism survived in medicine, and was\napproved by the faculty in Italy as well as England, down to a very\nrecent period. Besides these \u201cstrange meats,\u201d Matthioli regularly\nclassifies in a table a multitude of what he is pleased to call \u201csimple\nmedicines,\u201d among which are to be found the bodies, or parts of bodies,\nof wolves, scorpions, centipedes, ostriches, beavers, and dogs, the\ncast-off skins of serpents, the horns of unicorns (when attainable!),\nthe hoofs of asses and goats, beeswax, silk, asphalt, and several\nfilthy substances which cannot here be named. Albertus Magnus (_vide_\nthe curious little black-letter volume, _Le Grat Albert_, in the\nBritish Museum) orders nervous patients to eat eagles\u2019 brains, whereby\nthey may acquire the courage of the king of birds; while the brains of\nthe owl, the goat, the camel, etc., convey the peculiar qualities of\neach of those animals. Pliny\u2019s great work, it is needless to say, is a\nrepertory of marvellous counsels and observations. Earth taken out of a\nhuman skull acts as a depilatory, and benefit is derived from chewing\nplants which have happened to grow in the same unpleasant receptacle.\nOn the principle, we presume, of \u201cI am not the rose, but I have dwelt\nnear the rose,\u201d herbs growing on a manure heap are found especially\nefficacious as remedies for quinsy. The hair of man, taken from a\ncross, is good for quartan fevers, and human ear-wax is the only proper\napplication to a wound occasioned by a human bite. The uses of saliva\nare numberless, and fill a whole chapter of the _Natural History_.\n\u201cFasting spittle,\u201d in particular, applied to the eyes, is an infallible\ncure for ophthalmia,--a remedy which Persius treats with blameworthy\nscepticism as an old-womanly practice. In cases where bread has stuck\nin the throat, a piece of the same loaf should be inserted in the ears.\nThe use of the fluid which exudes from the pores of the skin is so\nvaluable that (Pliny assures us) the owners of the Grecian gymnasia\nmade a thriving trade by selling the scrapings of the bodies of\nathletes, which, \u201ccompounded with oil, is of an emollient, calorific,\nand expletive nature.\u201d If any lady desire to cultivate an interesting\nand pallid appearance, she ought to imitate Drusus, who drank goats\u2019\nblood to make it appear that his enemy Cassius had poisoned him. For\nmelancholy (an affection which seems to have given great concern to\nthe old doctors), Dioscorides recommends black hellebore held in the\nmouth,--certainly a recipe on hom\u0153opathic principles, since a mouthful\nof hellebore would scarcely naturally serve, like the Psalmist\u2019s wine\nand oil, either to make glad the heart of man or to give him a cheerful\ncountenance. A better remedy for the same melancholy is \u201cbroth of old\ncock,\u201d our Scotch friend cockaleekie.\n\nFor some unexplained reason, two only among the ills to which flesh is\nheir, and they among the most serious,--frenzy and inflammation of the\nstomach,--seem to have escaped from the dread _r\u00e9gime_ of Sacrificial\nMedicine, and indeed are treated with surprising lenity. Dioscorides\nthinks that frenzy can be cured by asparagus and white wine, and\nconsiders that the patient suffering from gastritis should have a\nplaster of roses applied to the seat of his disease!\n\nBesides the \u201cexhibition\u201d of nauseous and revolting draughts,\nboluses, and pills, the system of Sacrificial Medicine has at all\ntimes commanded many other ingenious resources for the creation of\nunnecessary pain, trouble, and annoyance to sick persons and their\nfriends. If, for example, a stiff-necked patient were unmanageable in\nthe matter of some particularly disagreeable dose, he might still be\ninduced to go on vexing nature by some out-of-the-way diet, and potions\nrepeated at stated intervals, till faith or life succumbed in the\nstruggle. One old physician, \u00c6tius, in this way prescribed for the gout\na separate dietary for every month of a whole year. Another, the great\nAlexander of Tralles, ordained three hundred and sixty-five potions,\nso arranged as to furnish out a course for two years; whereupon Dr.\nFriend, the learned author of the _History of Physick_, remarks that\n\u201chis receipts were as good as any of those which our new pretenders to\nphysick make use of,\u201d but adds the discouraging dictum, \u201cAfter all,\ngout is a distemper with which it were best not to tamper.\u201d\n\nThen there were fearful tortures in the way of excoriations, of which\nSt. John Long\u2019s famous remedy was a notable example,--blisters,\ncauteries, and setons, too unpleasant to dwell upon. Scarification was\na comparatively merciful form of these inflictions. It was practised,\naccording to Prosper Albinus (_Hist. Phys._, p. 17), in the following\nagreeable manner: \u201cFirst, make a strait [tight] ligature on the leg;\nthen rub the leg below it, put it into warm water, and beat _till it\nswells_, and so scarify\u201d! Something worse than this was practised\ndown to the present generation in the case of wounds. It is in the\nwriter\u2019s recollection that an unhappy groom who had lost a piece of\nflesh out of the calf of his leg sought assistance after his accident\nfrom a motherly old cook, the medical adviser in ordinary of the whole\nhousehold. The good woman evidently held the doctrine of Sacrificial\nMedicine deep in her soul, as well as a due estimate of the utility,\nunder all circumstances, of the art of cookery. Encouraging the poor\nyoung man with suitable reflections on the purifying use of salt and\nfire, she accordingly rubbed a handful from her salt-box into the\nwound, and then held the miserable limb steadily to the kitchen fire!\n\nA bath of blood has been frequently employed to resuscitate exhausted\npatients. When C\u00e6sar Borgia barely survived swallowing his share\nof the bottles of poisoned wine which his respectable father, Pope\nAlexander VI., had intended for the Cardinal, but took by mistake for\nhimself and his son, it is said that an ox was brought into C\u00e6sar\u2019s\napartments and disembowelled, to enable him to get into it and receive\nsuch vitality as the warm, bleeding carcass might impart. We are here\nat the point where Sacrificial Medicine assumes the vicarious form,\nand the poor brutes are made to suffer instead of the human patients\nfor the benefit of the latter. In an account of the birth of the Duc\nde Bourgogne, grandson of Louis XIV., in the _Curiosit\u00e9s Historiques_\n(p. 48), amid the description of the raptures of the splendid court\nassembled on the occasion, there is a casual mention of an incident\naffording a wonderful contrast to all this royal joy and magnificence.\nThe attendant chief _accoucheur_, the celebrated Dr. Clement, to\nprevent suffering on the part of the mother (the Dauphine), applied\nto her person the skin of a sheep, newly flayed. To obtain this quite\nfresh, a butcher was engaged to skin the animal alive in the adjoining\nroom; and, being anxious to offer the skin as quickly as possible to\nthe doctor, he carried it into the chamber of the Dauphine, leaving\nthe door open. The sheep, in its agony, followed him, and ran in,\nbleeding and skinless, among the shrieking crowd of courtiers and\ngrandees. In modern times, worse things than these are done to animals,\nprofessedly for the benefit of mankind; but they are now performed\nquietly in physiological laboratories, not paraded in public, else it\nis to be believed that even the most selfish among us would cry, \u201cHold!\nwe desire no cure of disease, no scientific knowledge, at any such\nhorrible price.\u201d\n\nYet, again, there was a class of Sacrificial Remedies whose merit\nconsisted in requiring the patient to travel a long way, or to apply\nto some hardly accessible personage, to obtain relief. There were Holy\nWells having no medicinal properties whatever, which cured all the\nmultitudes of people who made long and painful pilgrimages to reach\nthem. More remarkable still were the benefits derived in cases of\nscrofula from being touched by a king,--a privilege, it may be safely\nguessed, not accorded without some delay and solicitation, and possibly\nnot without fees to royal attendants, scarcely disinterested witnesses\nof the miracles which followed. The history of this particular delusion\nwould alone form a very curious chapter, since Archbishop Bradwardine,\nin 1348, appealed to the whole world in proof of the wonder, till\nSamuel Johnson\u2019s scarred and mighty head was subjected to the royal\ntouch. When we recall the fact that only in the eighteenth century\ndid a special religious service for the ceremony cease to form a part\nof the Liturgy of the Church of England, we do not seem to ourselves\nto have yet advanced a great way beyond this harmless superstition.\nIndeed, it is only in the present generation that the scientific name\nof the malady has generally superseded its familiar title of the\n\u201cKing\u2019s Evil,\u201d or by ellipsis \u201cthe Evil,\u201d by which it is even now known\nin remote parts of the country.\n\nWhere it was impossible to obtain help from a king, there yet remained\nthe possibility of being touched by somebody else, who might possess\nsome rare and peculiar privilege and fitness for healing disease.\nThe odd malady, popularly called \u201cshingles,\u201d for example, somehow\nsuggested to the sufferers the desirability of having recourse to some\nspecial agency of relief; and this was found in persons who had either\nthemselves eaten the flesh of an eagle, or whose fathers or ancestors\nhad done so. Within the last thirty years, a gentleman\u2019s servant in\nWales has been known to perform a journey of forty miles across the\nmountains to be touched by a man whose grandfather had eaten an eagle.\n\nFinally, there is a large heterogeneous class of prescriptions,\nobviously owing their origin to the principle of Sacrificial Medicine,\nof which the simple rule has been to prevent the miserable patient\nfrom adopting any mode of relief for his sufferings which Nature might\npoint out, and adding to them fresh pain by any ingenious device which\nmay occur to his physician. Of this kind was the treatment of fever\nin vogue till quite recently, when the patient was carefully shut up\nin a close room, with well-curtained bed and warm bedclothes, and\nwas prohibited from relieving his thirst with any cold drink. Truly,\nif Marcellus Sidetes, who is said to have written forty-two books\nin \u201cheroic\u201d verse \u201cconcerning distempers,\u201d had given us a picture\nof all the misery which must have been occasioned in the world by\nthe really _insolent_ disregard of Nature and common sense shown in\nthese matters,--how many thousands of lives have been thrown away,\nand through what maddening misery the survivors must have struggled\nback to life,--those poems, instead of being forgotten by the world,\nmight have done us precious service by reminding us that there is some\ncounterweight to be placed in the scale wherein we are wont to measure\nour debts of gratitude to medical science.\n\nAnother appalling device was that of the renowned English physician,\nJohn of Gaddesden, who introduced the practice of treating the\nsmall-pox by wrapping up the patient in scarlet, hanging his room in\nscarlet, and in fact compelling him to rest his feverish eyes only\non that flaring hue. John tried this notable device, according to\nhis own showing, on one of the sons of King Edward I. (it does not\nappear to which he refers), and complacently adds to his report,\n\u201c_et est bona cura_.\u201d In those days, however, doors and windows were\nnot made air-tight, and up the capacious chimneys a considerable\nportion of fresh air must always have rushed. It was reserved for a\nlater generation to perfect the ingenious system for aggravating and\nintensifying fever by pasting down the modern window, closing the\nregisters, and (as a climax) engaging nurses to lie beside the sufferer\nto keep up the heat! The writer heard some years ago from the lips of a\nMember of Parliament, now deceased, the recital of his own treatment\nas a boy, in or near London, under a severe attack of small-pox. His\nlife being specially valuable as that of an only son, his affectionate\nparents, by the advice of a distinguished physician, obtained the\nservices of _two fat women_, who were established permanently in bed\non each side of the child during the whole course of the disease! What\nstipend was offered to tempt these poor obese females to perform this\nawful service has escaped from the record.\n\nReading over all these marvellous prescriptions, it is a refreshing\nexercise to picture the fashionable \u201cleech,\u201d the Gull or Jenner of the\nperiod, physician in ordinary to the King or Queen, suave and solemn,\nfilled to the brim with all the conscious dignity of Science, standing\nbeside the sick-bed of some mighty prince or peer, and giving to the\nawe-stricken attendants his high commands to hang the room with scarlet\ncloth, or to bring to the patient one of the horrid messes prepared\nwith such infinite pains under his direction, in his own laboratory.\nWe can almost hear him condescendingly explaining to the chief persons\npresent what occult relationship exists between the small-pox and\nthe scarlet cloth, or how the Arcanum of Toads comes to be specially\nvaluable, having been composed of the fattest old toads, selected\nprecisely at the right season,--_videlicet_ midsummer. Of course, in\neach successive generation there was nothing for the unlearned laity\nto do but to bow submissively to the dicta of the exponent of Science\nas it existed at the time. People may always laugh at what is past\nand gone; but to suspect that living men may be mistaken, or that new\nsystems of medicine, philosophy, or theology, may be destined, like the\nold, to \u201chave their day and cease to be,\u201d is audacity to which no one\nshould advance. We dare not, therefore, suggest that, to our grandsons,\nhalf our modern nostrums (of which the fashion comes in freshly one\nseason and usually falls into disrepute a few years after) may possibly\nappear scarcely a degree less ridiculous than the Arcanum of Toads or\nthe Mummiall Quintessence. It was not much worse, after all, to make\na patient drink a dead man\u2019s blood than to rob him of his own, in the\n_Sangrado_ style to which (in the memory of us all) the world owes\nthe loss of Cavour. It would have been a mercy to a poor Florentine\nlady, lately deceased, had her physician counselled her merely to eat\nearth-worms pickled in vinegar, or green lizards boiled alive in oil,\nas recommended by Dr. Salmon, instead of bleeding her from the arm\nnineteen times in the fortnight following her confinement and (as may\nbe readily understood) preceding her untimely death.\n\nSacrificial Medicine, however, in its simpler and more easily\nrecognizable forms, is undoubtedly on the wane, though a good deal\nof its spirit may still be traced in our behavior to the sick. To\nhom\u0153opathy (as to many another kind of heresy), we probably owe\nsomewhat of the mitigation of orthodoxy; and children, noticing the\nbusts of Hahnemann in the shop windows, may be properly taught to bless\nthat great deliverer who banished from the nursery those huge and\nhateful mugs of misery,--black founts of so many infantine tears,--mugs\nof sobs and sighs and gasps and struggles unutterable, from one of\nwhich Madame Roland drew the first inspiration of that martyr spirit\nwhich led her onward to the guillotine, when she suffered herself to be\nwhipped six times running, sooner than swallow the abominable contents.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[26] As the modern mind may be a little puzzled as to the mode in\nwhich some of these substances can be introduced into our internal\neconomy, the following extract from the _Family Dictionary_ of Dr.\nSalmon (1696) may throw light on the subject: \u201cCORAL, to prepare,--Take\nsuch a quantity as ye think convenient. Make it into a fine powder by\ngrinding it upon a Porphyry or an Iron Mortar. Drop on it by degrees a\nlittle rosewater, and form it into balls for use. After this manner,\nCrabs\u2019-Eyes, Pearls, Oister shells, and Precious stones are prepared\nto make up Cordials compounded of them and other suitable materials\nfor the strengthening of the heart in fevers, or such like violent\ndiseases, and to restore the Decays of nature.\u201d Ebony is swallowed by\nrasping it in shavings and making a decoction.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FITNESS OF WOMEN FOR THE MINISTRY OF RELIGION.\n\n\nAmong the anomalies of our social state may be counted the fact that,\nwhile it is generally admitted that women are more religious than men,\nit is to men that in our age and country the Ministry of Religion is\n(with infinitesimal exceptions) exclusively committed. While nine\npersons out of ten are conscious that their earliest sentiments of\npiety have been derived from a mother, and that a sister or a wife\nhas alone enabled the troubled faith of their latter years to survive\nthe shocks of worldliness and doubt, there is yet not one recognized\nchannel by which these waters of life, stored in the fountain of\nwomen\u2019s hearts, can flow beyond the narrowest borders; while, on the\ncontrary, it is not too much to surmise that to a very large number\nof clergymen, well-meaning, learned, and conscientious, the sense of\ndryness of soul in all that concerns the more spiritual part of their\noffice is a perpetual self-reproach. _Habitans in Sicco_ writes every\nautumn in the newspapers to complain he can obtain no refreshment from\nhis weekly sermon at any church in his neighborhood, while around him\nall the time are private wells and underground rivers of the purest\nelement of feeling for which he thirsts. It is a case of\n\n  \u201cWater, water, everywhere,\n  But not a drop to drink.\u201d\n\nWhat we want first and above all things in our ministers of religion is\n_that they should be intensely religious_; and knowing this, and that\nall other gifts and acquirements are comparatively of small avail for\nthe purpose, we deliberately exclude from the sacred office that moiety\nof the community among whom this special and most precious grace is, at\nall events, least rare.[27]\n\nThe reasons for this exclusion are, however, amply sufficient to\naccount, historically, for the anomaly. They are of two kinds, which\nI shall take leave to characterize as the Bad and the Good. There is\na very deep-rooted prejudice, inherited from the ascetics of early\nChristianity, whereby the idea of womanhood is connected with very\nbase associations. It is impossible to ignore this fact in any review\nof the religious position of the sex; and it is therefore better to say\nbluntly that, from this point of view, a woman is looked upon rather as\nan emissary from the pit than a \u201cdaughter of the Lord Almighty,\u201d rather\na temptation to earthly passion than a helpmate to heavenly purity.\nSpringing up when the old classical world had sunk into a corruption\nand foulness which we can now probably little realize in imagination,\nthe frenzy of asceticism which was nourished among the deserts of the\nThebaid and attained its full growth in the monasteries of Greece and\nItaly,--the origin of all the legends of which the \u201cTemptation of\nSt. Anthony\u201d is the type,[28]--has left almost ineffaceable traces\nthroughout the nations of Europe; of course much more sharply marked in\nthe Latin and Greek Churches, which have canonized these poor fanatics,\nand still set apotheosized virginity on one of the thrones of heaven,\nthan among Protestant communities, wherein marriage has been always\nplaced on a moral level with celibacy, and Martin Luther has been\nthoroughly absolved for his conjugal affection for the singularly plain\nold lady whose portrait by Lucas Cranach we beheld some years ago in\nthe Exhibition of Old Masters in Burlington House.[29] Nevertheless,\neven among Protestant Christians, a certain impression has remained,\nthe reverse of the faith of their old Teuton forefathers, that women\nwere nearer to the mind of the Divinity than men. The highest religious\n_status_ a woman could attain in Milton\u2019s opinion was a sort of deputy\npiety,--\n\n  \u201cHe for God only, she for God in him\u201d;\n\na type which, considering the kind of representatives of the Deity\nwhich some of Adam\u2019s descendants have proved to their wives, is\nscarcely to be ranked as elevated. The paramount influence of St.\nPaul\u2019s mind in generating (as Rowland Williams expresses it) the\nreligious atmosphere which Protestants breathe, and the great\ncelibate Apostle\u2019s semi-ascetic feelings about women, have seemingly\ncounteracted the hereditary predisposition of Saxondom to reverence\nthem. His treatment of Marriage (reproduced in the exordium of the\nSolemnization of Holy Matrimony in the English Book of Common Prayer,\nand apparently intended to show how _un_holy are the sentiments\nassumed to form the usual basis of that alliance) has certainly tended\nto preserve the prestige of Scriptural dignity and authority for\nsentiments on such subjects derived from Southern races and coarser\ntimes, and which might else have died out ere now in Teutonized Europe.\nThat, considering the hysterical behavior of his male converts, when\n\u201cevery one hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a\nrevelation, hath an interpretation,\u201d[30] prudence justified St. Paul in\nprohibiting female locutions in public worship may be fully conceded.\nBut the unhappy petrifaction of his current directions, whereby (like\nso many other Biblical utterances) they have become laws for all time\nand every divergency of circumstance, has been attended with lamentable\nconsequences. No Jewish law-giver ever bade the Miriams and Deborahs,\nthe Esthers and Judiths, of his race, \u201ckeep silence,\u201d and hide their\ndiminished heads from regard, to \u201cthe angels,\u201d or to anybody else\nin or out of temple or camp; and the consequence has been (as a very\nremarkable paper by a Jewish lady has pointed out)[31] that female\npatriots, judges, and prophetesses have played a noble and conspicuous\npart through the whole history of Judaism. But (not to speak profanely)\nSt. Paul has been supposed to act like Louis XIV., when he forbade that\nany more healing wonders should be done at the tomb of the Abb\u00e9 Paris:--\n\n  \u201cDe par le Roi--D\u00e9fense a Dieu,\n  De faire miracle en ce lieu.\u201d\n\nIf it were to please Providence to inspire a woman with any of the\ngifts of the prophetic or ministerial offices, if ever the promise\nshould be fulfilled to the letter that \u201cyour sons and _your daughters_\nshall prophesy,\u201d and that the impulse to speak holy words were to\nseize her in the most natural and appropriate place, to wit, in\nchurch, St. Paul is quoted as authority to check any such irregular\nand unsuitable proceeding: \u201cI suffer not a woman to speak in church.\u201d\nThe result has been that, except among the Quakers (who have coolly\nset the prohibition aside, and seemingly profited not a little by so\ndoing), Christian rivals to the heroines of Judaism are not producible.\nDuring these last eighteen centuries, among all the millions of women\nin whose hearts the precepts of Christ have been sown and borne rich\nfruit, there may well have been a few whose eloquence and fervor of\npiety would have influenced the heart of men as much as a St. Bernard\nor a Peter the Hermit, and whose words, like those of a Tauler, a\nF\u00e9nelon, or an \u00e0 Kempis, would have remained a spiritual treasure for\nall time. But if such have lived and felt and thought, and longed\nperhaps to speak to their fellow-men out of the abundance of their\nhearts, their mouths have been effectually stopped. Order has reigned\nin the Churches so far as they were concerned, and whatever light they\nmight perchance have borne into the dark places of the earth, instead\nof being set on a candlestick, has been carefully covered up under a\nbushel.\n\nSuch are, I venture to think, the bad reasons for the exclusion of\nwomen from the ministry. Good ones, however, are certainly forthcoming,\nif perchance, when weighed in the scale against the arguments in favor\nof such an innovation, they prove less heavy. They are drawn from\ncircumstances, some of which pertain to the order of nature, and can\nnever be altered; while others might be, or are already in process of\nchange.\n\nThe functions of a minister of religion, as understood in modern times\n(apart from priestly claims to administer sacraments by special divine\ncommission, with which we need not concern ourselves here), are,\nroughly speaking, twofold: 1st, public prayer and preaching; and, 2d,\npastoral ministrations in the homes of the members of the congregation.\nRegarding the first, women labor under several disadvantages, sometimes\namounting to disabilities. Though women\u2019s voices, _when good_, reach\nfarther than those of men, a considerable number are deficient in the\nphysical vocal power indispensable to make themselves heard in an\nassembly numbering above one or two hundred persons. Nothing would be\nmore pitiable and ridiculous than for one of these ladies, whatever\nmight be her mental gifts, to mount a pulpit and, with feeble voice\nrising only to crack in an occasional screech, to attempt to pour forth\nexhortations which three-fourths of her audience could not hear, and\nunder which the remainder would writhe in an auditorial purgatory.\nSecondly, there can be no question that the average female intellect is\nbelow the average male intellect, and consequently that there are fewer\nwomen than men up to the mark of intellectual competence, below which\npreaching, however well intended, and even inspired by genuine and true\nfeeling, is apt rather to \u201cgive occasion to the enemy to blaspheme\u201d\nthan to tend to edifying. If the foolish things of the world often\nconfound the wise, the foolish people in it provoke and distract them;\nand, even to their humblest hearers, many such well-meaning silly ones\nwould be little else than the blind leading the blind into a ditch.\nLamentable as it would be to hear a shrill feminine squeak delivering\nfrom the desk the majestic periods of Job and Isaiah, it would be\ndoubly deplorable to listen to a thin and only too distinctly audible\nsoprano enouncing alternately from the pulpit platitudes, ineptitudes,\nand blunders, such as memory recalls only too keenly to many of us as\namong the severest trials of the domestic circle. A special peril in\nthis matter also lies in the ill-omened circumstance that the greater\nthe folly of the woman, so much greater, alas! is generally to be found\nher propensity to preach in private, and therefore, it may presumably\nbe dreaded, her proclivity to extend to a larger sphere the benefit of\nher exhortations. It has been the observation of the present writer,\nthrough a long experience, that masculine and feminine folly usually\ndiffer in this essential particular. A man fool dimly perceives he is\na fool, and holds his tongue accordingly; or (if the vanity of his\nsex prevent him from arriving consciously at any such conviction or\nconclusion) he deems that as prudence is the better part of valor, so\nis silence the proper garb of wisdom, and that the less he wastes on\nan ungrateful world the precious jewels of his ideas, the more credit\nshall he have for those supposed to remain in the casket of his mind.\nA man who talks much is nine times out of ten a clever and brilliant\nperson, and may possibly be the most profound of thinkers, who brings\nout of the inexhaustible treasury of his imagination things new and\nold. A woman fool, on the contrary, usually does not find out, till\nshe is old and ugly and the habit of silly chatter is irretrievably\nsettled, that she is a fool at all: probably for the simple reason\nthat the more folly she talks, the more delighted her male admirers\ngenerally show themselves with her discourse. Even if she does not\nhappen to think herself particularly clever or well-informed, she has\nbeen taught to believe that ability in a woman is rather a defect to\nbe concealed than a gift to be exhibited, and that, as the sagacious\nChinese proverb has it, \u201cThe glory of a man is knowledge, but the\nglory of a woman is to renounce knowledge.\u201d Accordingly, without the\nslightest reticence or dread of exposure, she tumbles out of her untidy\nbrain notions as trivial and _mesquin_ as the contents of her own\ndisorderly work-basket,--here a button and there a spangle, a thimble,\na bit of crochet, a string of beads, a tangled skein of silk, and a\nlittle ribbon marked with inches wherewith to measure the universe.\nThe result of this difference in the display of folly is naturally to\nlend color to a somewhat exaggerated estimate of that surplusage of\nfeebleness and frivolity in the feminine scale, of the existence of\nwhich, alas! there can be no doubt, but which is perhaps less than is\nsupposed out of proportion with the correlative dulness and stupidity\nin the masculine balance. As the immortal Mrs. Poyser sums up the\nmatter, \u201cWomen _are_ fools. God Almighty made them so to match the men.\u201d\n\nThus, then, two arguments at least against admitting women to the\nministry rest on natural and inevitable grounds: some women are\nphysically, some other women mentally, incapable of adequately\nfulfilling its duties. And to these adverse reasons others are added\nby the actual though not inevitable conditions of society. Women, up\nto the present time, have been almost indefinitely less well educated\nthan men, and only their superior quickness and tact prevented this\ninequality from telling disastrously in common life; while nothing\ncould hinder it from doing so, were they to undertake the office of\npublic teachers. By hook or crook, with little teaching (and that\nteaching generally fourth or fifth rate of its kind), women have\nmanaged pretty generally to scrape together and store up in their\nmemories in a happy-go-lucky way a certain quantity of knowledge,\nuseful and ornamental enough to pass muster. Women\u2019s culture, when\nwomen are cultivated, sometimes (perhaps we may say often) possesses\nrather more breadth than that of men, and includes a good many topics\nrarely included in the masculine curriculum. It is therefore well\nsuited to furnish pleasure to the possessor and entertainment to\nher acquaintance and readers; but the accuracy and definiteness of\nknowledge which men obtain, thanks to their much abused classical and\nmathematical training, are what every ordinarily educated woman with\na grain of sense sighed for, till the day when the great movement for\nthe Higher Education of Women reared a more fortunate generation. Now,\nit is clearly highly desirable, if not absolutely indispensable, that\na person who may be called upon to treat publicly and didactically,\nif not controversially--and let us hope and pray that women will not\ngenerally take to controversy!--almost every subject in the range of\nthe higher interests of man, who at least ought not to regard any\nsuch interest as foreign ground, should possess not merely wide, but\naccurate information, and be as far as possible above the liability to\ncommit any gross blunders. This is of course viewing the subject apart\nfrom any special theological training such as the older Churches have\ndeemed almost the first qualification for the ministerial office. Even\nthe poor Capuccini preaching friars, whose astounding ignorance of\nprofane history and science affords inexhaustible tales of merriment\nin Italy, who talk of \u201cthe great St. Augustine of Hippo, who crowned\nKing Alfred, who signed Magna Charta,\u201d and are wont to indulge in such\nfigures of rhetoric as imaginary sniffs round the pulpit at the smell\nof the roasting flesh of St. Lawrence on his gridiron,--even these\npoor old fellows have received adequate instruction in the doctrines,\nthe legends, and the moral and penitential systems of their Church.\nProverbially ignorant as are the Greek Popes and the Nestorian, Coptic,\nand Maronite priests, they, too, are perfectly well \u201cup\u201d in all those\nrecondite dogmas which are supposed to be their peculiar concern, and\ncan tell with unerring certainty whether the Second Divine Person\nhad two natures or two wills, or only one of each, or whether the\nThird positively proceeded from the First only, according to Greek\northodoxy, or from the First and Second, according to that of Rome and\nCanterbury. Nearer home, of course, theological education is a wider\nand more serious matter. If young priests at Maynooth are taught the\nastronomical system which makes the sun go round the earth, and the\nmoral system of Peter Dens, which is nearly as completely the reverse\nof truth, they still receive an enormous amount of something which goes\nby the name of instruction, and in the matters of scholastic theology\nand casuistry are probably qualified to beat a great many eminent\nD.D.\u2019s of Oxford and Cambridge. Here in England, and in Scotland\nalso, every Church, Established and Dissenting, has its college or\ncolleges for training its clergy, either apart from or together with\nstudents intended for lay professions; and, without the degree or\ncertificate afforded by such institution, the entry into the ministry\nis barred. Christendom, in short, has, like Judaism, its \u201cSchools of\nthe Prophets\u201d; and nobody is invited to prophesy, even if he be pious\nand gifted as John Bunyan, who has not passed through them and learned\nhis lesson.\n\nThe necessity for this theological training, so far as it concerns\nthe insurance of orthodox doctrine from the acolyte when he becomes a\npreacher, of course falls to the ground when we contemplate an order of\nthings quite outside the orthodox churches, and such as it is not to\nbe anticipated they will sanction for many a day. Our female preacher\nis by the hypothesis, for the present at all events, either quite\nirregularly connected with the orthodox sects, a Minister Unattached\nor Amateur Pastor (and some such there are at this moment doing a\nvast deal of good work, _e.g._, Miss Catherine Marsh and the sister of\nMr. Spurgeon); or if ever officially recognized, and a professional\nminister, then as belonging to some heterodox communion, such as the\nSalvation Army; or those in America, which profit by the services of\nthe Rev. Ph\u0153be Hanaford, the Rev. Antoinette Brown, and the late Rev.\nCelia Burleigh; and the Unitarian congregation at Melbourne, which\nhonored itself by choosing for their pastor Martha Turner, a lady whose\ngreat abilities and noble spiritual feeling seem to me to hold out the\nvery example we seek of what a woman in the pulpit may and ought to\nbe.[32] No necessity exists compelling a female preacher who enlists\nunder the banner of religious freedom to undergo the particular mental\ndrill which qualifies the Romanist or Anglo-Catholic clergyman for\nthe performance of all the peculiar intellectual labors and combats\nnecessary to his office, and included in the duty of honestly believing\nexactly all which his Church believes, and being equipped to do battle\nwith anybody who believes anything less or anything more. But is there\non this account less reason that the candidate for another kind of\nministry should undertake less severe studies and go through a less\ncomplete mental training than the embryo priest, Latin or Anglican?\nThe reverse has been most wisely maintained by the Unitarian body in\nthis country, whose scheme of theological culture (if the present\nwriter may presume to estimate it) is wider and deeper than that which\nis demanded to qualify the possessor for the See of Canterbury. The\nteacher of religion who is to be something more than the expounder of\na ready-prepared catechism,--who is to lead his flock not merely into\none particular paddock, and to water them exclusively at one particular\npond, but into every field of sweet and wholesome herbage, and beside\nevery stream of living waters,--whose duty it will be to pluck up\nthe cruel brambles, and clear away the piles of stones of doubts and\ndifficulties which grow and are flung by careless hands along the path\nof faith and life,--such a teacher ought to be furnished with every aid\nwhich learning can offer. Above all, I should hold that a woman who\nshould venture to assume this high and arduous task specially needs\nsuch equipment, since, for a long time to come, she must expect to\nbe more than others the mark of question and criticism; and the very\neagerness of her own mind may (unless weighted by solid erudition)\ncarry her more quickly and more remotely astray. Every one must have\nnoticed how there are some persons full of originality and mother-wit,\nwho continually fancy they are making fresh observations and theories,\nwhile their next neighbor, who has never had an idea properly his own,\ncan tell them off on his fingers what ancient sage first made their\nobservation, and when and by whom in the Middle Ages their theory\nwas broached, and how it was refuted and abandoned by all thinking\npeople several centuries ago. The merely original man makes himself\nridiculous for want of learning, and is, in fact, always beginning _de\nnovo_ at the bottom of the ladder of human thought. The mere scholar\nis nothing better than a Conversations-Lexicon, and never exercises\nany influence except that of a useful drag on the ideas of his friends\nwhen they are going down-hill. The true teacher must indispensably\ncombine both the gift of originality and the acquirement of such stores\nof knowledge as shall enable him to trace doctrines and hypotheses to\ntheir sources,--to know what has been said for and against them by the\ngreater thinkers of the world who have dealt with them,--and, in a\nword, to know exactly how far he is or is not a heretic, and not be (as\nis the commonest of cases) a heinous heretic while he believes himself\nstrictly orthodox, and strictly orthodox and even commonplace when he\nenunciates what he fondly conceives to be a bold and startling heresy.\nAll this applies (for reasons too obvious to need animadversion)\npre-eminently to teachers of the more impulsive sex. Accordingly, we\nmust admit that the argument against female ministers of religion,\nfounded on the lower educational _status_ of women at present, is, so\nfar as it goes, perfectly valid.\n\nLastly, there is an argument which I imagine would half-consciously\ninfluence many serious-minded people against the admission of women to\nsuch an office. Women are (thanks to all sorts of causes, historical,\npolitical, personal, with which we need not concern ourselves)\nactually much _deconsidered_ by men. Would not their deconsideration\nbe reflected on Religion itself, were they to become its authorized\nministers? With enormous labor, the Broad Church school has been trying\nto efface the stamp of effeminacy from their order, to cultivate\n\u201cmuscular Christianity,\u201d and make laymen of the order of the author\nof _Sword and Gown_ remember that a priest is not necessarily an old\nwoman. If many women, old or young, enter the ministry, will not\nthis effort to redeem the character of the order be entirely thrown\naway, and the impression become quite ineffaceable that Manliness\nand Godliness are two orbs always seen in opposition, and never in\nconjunction? I confess I should feel such a fear as this to form a\nvery cogent argument, were it altogether well founded.\n\nLet us now, before attempting to discuss the possible advantages to be\nset against all these objections to the religious ministry of women,\nbriefly run back over the heads we have passed, and see if there be not\nsome answer to each objection, or at least some hope that its force\nmight with time and care be neutralized.\n\nFirst, there was noticed the ascetic feeling, inherited from the old\nmonks, of the essential _unholiness_ of women, and their consequent\nunworthiness to meddle with sacred things. This idea has probably\noccurred for the first time to many an English lady when she has\npenetrated by chance into some hallowed precinct, some tempting and\nshadowy cloister, of a monastery in Italy or Syria, and has been\ndriven out tumultuously by a whole flock of cowled and sandalled\nbrethren, cackling like so many geese at the intrusion of a cat\ninto a hen-house. Perhaps, as at Vallombrosa among the Apennines,\nor St. Saba in the desert, she has seen the gentlemen of her party\ncourteously received and comfortably lodged within the noble walls of\nthe convent, while she has been left to such nocturnal repose as might\nbe found in a flea-haunted pavilion outside, or in her tent pitched\nin a valley of centipedes. She has been accustomed to think of women\ngenerally as of the types common in decent English society, a little\nstrait-laced, or perhaps a little \u201cgushing,\u201d as the case may be; and\nshe has very honestly taken it for granted that, if there be any\nserious harm in the world, it is the opposite sex who are principally\nto blame. Suddenly, it is revealed to her that, by a large number of\nher fellow-creatures, she herself and all her female belongings,--her\neminently respectable governesses, the Misses Prunes and Prism; her\ndear old grandmother, Mrs. Goody-Good; and her majestic aunt, Lady\nBountiful,--all are looked upon as little better than so many Succubi\nof Satan, sent to lure the souls of those ridiculous old monks to\ndestruction. The shock has not rarely produced a peal of ungovernable\nlaughter such as those hoary cloisters had never echoed ere profane\nSaxon Balmorals trod their pavement; but, when _la pazza Signorina\nInglese_ has retired to her hotel or her tent, she finds that a new\nand very unpleasant light has been thrown on matters whereon she had\nnever reflected before. Modern English Ritualism and Monasticism are\ndoing their best, in more ways than need now be specified, to introduce\ninto English life these Oriental and gross ideas about women, that\npseudo-purity which is most impure. In so far as they prevail, they\nwill do us an injury quite incalculable. Needless to say that, to\npeople trained in such a school, a female minister of religion would\nbe a monstrous thing. _Almost_ as well might the creature trill out\nthe melodies of _La Traviata_ or _La Grande Duchesse_, or perform her\npart in a ballet in the costume of a sylph! The view of womanhood\ntaken by these ultra-sanctified persons and by the most cynical and\nprofligate old _rou\u00e9s_ is practically the same. Surely, it is to be\nhoped that all this worse than folly will be swept away in the blast\nof public impatience and indignation which sooner or later must burst,\nlike a breath of wholesome autumn storm, through the incense-laden\natmosphere of Ritualism, and consign to the four winds all its trumpery\nof millinery, chandlery, and upholstery, and the thoroughly base and\nmaterialistic ideas which have come in along with them!\n\nSecondly, among the bad reasons for the exclusion of women from the\npulpit, we have referred to St. Paul\u2019s dictum, \u201cI suffer not a woman\nto speak in church.\u201d Whatever high degree of human wisdom we must all\nattribute to the greatest of the apostles, or even divine authority, as\nthe orthodox hypothesis of inspiration would give to his words, there\nis absolutely no ground at all for the assumption that, _because_ he\nforbade women to affront public opprobrium by preaching when women\nlived habitually shut up, each in her _gynaeceum_, he would, likewise\nhave forbidden them to offer religious exhortations in a sacred place,\nwhen public sentiment has become reconciled to their appearance in the\nstreets, on the stage, in the lecture-room, and even on the platform.\nThe coolness, indeed, wherewith the most orthodox persons always _do_\npractically take for granted that Scriptural precepts, however rigid in\nform and seemingly intended by their authors for perpetual observance,\nare to be set aside without scruple, as applying to a bygone state of\nthings, when they do _not_ chime in with their own inclinations and\nprejudices, is only to be paralleled by the tenacity wherewith they\nmaintain their authority under every vicissitude, when they happen to\ncoincide with them. Let any one who quotes St. Paul\u2019s incidental remark\nabout women speaking in church be called on to avow how far he has\ntaken to heart the solemn decree issued in the Encyclical Letter of the\none great Council of the assembled apostles, in the awfully mysterious\nwords, \u201cIt seemed good unto the Holy Ghost _and to us_\u201d (as if these\nwere two separate opinions) \u201cto lay upon you (the Gentile world) no\ngreater burden than these necessary things,--to abstain from meats\noffered to idols, ... and from things strangled, and from blood.\u201d Lives\nthere a modern Christian whose conscience would in the smallest degree\nbe troubled by taking the rice and ghee from a Hindu temple, eating\na rabbit strangled in a snare, or partaking of a black-pudding or a\nBologna sausage?\n\nPassing now to the more reasonable reasons against admitting women to\nthe ministry,--the natural and incurable disabilities, physical and\nmental, under which not a few of them labor,--the answer comes at once\nto hand. Those among them who are unfitted for the office must not\nundertake it, any more than dumb or stuttering or imbecile men. There\nis no more difficulty in exclusion in one case than in the other,\nthough there may be a few more persons necessarily excluded.\n\nAs to education, the case is much more serious. Certainly, unless women\ncan receive the same solid and extensive training as male theological\nstudents (rather more strict and rigid than less so), to make up for\nwhat may have been wanting of exactness in their girlish school-room\neducation, the appearance in our pulpits of a number of female heads\nlightly stored with learning or logic would be to the last degree\nill-omened. But is there the smallest necessity why this should be?\nIf the desire of a woman to devote herself to religious work were of\nany depth or worth consideration, she would not only be willing, but\n_crave_, to pass through the severest studies, to fit herself to the\nutmost of her abilities for so high and sacred a task; and it is no\nlonger an hypothesis, but a demonstrated fact, that if women choose to\nstudy and have the fair opportunity of doing so, there are not a few of\nthem capable at all events of attaining to those levels whereon men of\nthe learned professions habitually take their stand. If a few fickle or\nweak-minded women were to enter as students such an institution, let\nus say, as Manchester New College, they would be very speedily \u201cchoked\noff,\u201d and no more harm would be done than by the scores of youths\n\u201cplucked\u201d at Oxford and Cambridge, and led to change their programme\nof life. Those women, on the contrary, who should pass successfully\nthrough such an intellectual and moral sieve, might thenceforth be very\nsafely trusted.\n\nAgain: the fear that Religion itself might come to be deconsidered, as\na result of the deconsideration of the sex of its ministers, must prove\ngroundless, if, instead of bringing a fresh element of weakness into\npreaching and prayer, it should prove that (as I shall hope presently\nto show) women are likely to pour a new stream of life into what has\nso often become dry and unprofitable. After all, the inner heart of\nhumanity honors in its very core spiritual graces, over the physical,\nthe intellectual, and even the moral. Not the conquerors, not the\nphilosophers, not even those who have displayed most _virtue_ apart\nfrom religion, have been adored and deified among men, but the prophets\nand saints who have ascended the mountain-peaks of Prayer and thrown\nopen the windows of Heaven.\n\nNow, as we look back over the Christian centuries during which the\nspiritual, God-loving, anti-carnal impulse sent forth from Jud\u00e6a\nhas passed on, transmitted in waves of emotion from age to age and\nland to land, does it not seem probable that among those who have\nreceived it most fully, and might have helped its transmission most\neffectually, there have been thousands of women? In effect, history\nnotoriously shows that, in the apostolic time and at the period of the\nconversion of Europe, at least half the work achieved was due to the\nardor wherewith noble ladies not a few took up the task of introducing\nand disseminating Christian ideas through courts and camps. But, when\nthe age for this kind of female patronage was over, the powers of\nwomen to aid the cause which so many of them have had next to their\ninnermost hearts have been narrowed within the walls of the home or\neven of the cloister. I do not doubt that this home influence of\nwomen has indeed been incalculably great and beneficent. It is hard\nto conceive what would be the sort of religion remaining in an island\ncolonized by men only, and with a population recruited only by boys\ntoo young to remember a mother\u2019s care. The chances might lie between a\nsociety of Trappists, or a herd such as the gold-diggers of a \u201cRoaring\nCamp\u201d in a Californian gulch. But, because the religious influence of\nwomen in their homes has been inestimably beneficial, is it, I ask,\nany reason for resting satisfied that they should exercise no such\ninfluence outside their doors? Surely there might have been prevision\nof just such a state of things as has existed now for more than a\nthousand years in Christendom, in the warning of the great Founder of\nChristianity that a light (when we are so happy as to possess a light)\nshould be set on a candlestick and not under a bushel. If ever the\ntime comes when the spiritual home influence of women is allowed to\nradiate into the outer circle of public life, there is every reason to\nbelieve that the inestimable element of spirituality will make itself\nfelt, touching the hearts of men with new softness, awakening their\nconsciences with the power of mother-like gentleness, and inspiring\nquite a new reverence, alike for women and for religion.\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d it will be said, \u201cthis is all very well, if women should, by\nsome happy chance, succeed well as preachers and ministers. If, on the\ncontrary, they fail, and make a miserable _fiasco_ of their attempt,\nwhat ridicule will they not draw on the most sacred things! Is it wise,\nis it allowable, to incur such a risk?\u201d\n\nFeeling a good deal of sympathy with such an alarm as this, having a\nterror (possibly exaggerated) of some day undergoing the frightful\nexperience of listening, in a place of worship from which I could\nnot decently escape, to the ignorant, shallow, dogmatic folly which\nit has been my occasional penance to hear from women elsewhere, and\nwhich has, undoubtedly, a character of its own still more ignorant,\nmore shallow, and more dogmatic than any folly commonly to be heard\nfrom men, I here humbly confess that for many years such a possibility\nhas with me almost outweighed the actual probability that women would\nin general fulfil the duties of the ministry exceptionally well.\nBut longer reflection has tended much to remove my fears, while it\nhas strengthened my hopes. In the first place, I look with extreme\nconfidence to such a sifting process as a good theological college\ncourse would inevitably effect, to exclude from concurrence all the\nfrivolous, the half-hearted, the weak-minded,--all those women, in\nshort, who should not prove capable of strong and steady mental labor,\nand willing to undergo it for several consecutive years. From such\nas should pass triumphantly through an ordeal of this kind, nothing\nvery outrageous in the way of folly or contemptible in the way of\nfeminine \u201ctwaddle\u201d would need to be apprehended. And, again, there\nis a second and very satisfactory ground for reassurance. Female\nministers will certainly not (at all events for a very long time to\ncome) be appointed to lecture us by any despotic authority. They\ncannot, indeed, be ministers at all, unless some of us distinctly\ndesire them to minister for our particular benefit. By a happy decree\nof fate, it takes at least two or three persons at any time to form a\ncongregation. There must be the hearers of the discourse as well as the\nspeaker; and, as even the sternest sticklers for the rights of women\nare not likely to proceed so far as to demand compulsory attendance at\nfemale preachments, there will always remain open a door of hope and\nrefuge whereby the oppressed may go free. The same argument applies\nin this case as to the everlastingly reproduced fallacy about the\nfranchise; namely, that, if their political disabilities be removed,\nwomen will invade the benches of St. Stephen\u2019s. As nobody can ever be\nelected an M.P., unless he or she find a majority of some constituency\nto choose him or her as the best candidate, so neither can anybody\nbecome a minister in one of the free churches, unless he or she find a\ncongregation ready to \u201csit under\u201d him or her, as a tolerable preacher.\nIn either case, the woman who could so singularly impress the majority\nof electors[33] or of parishioners with the conviction of her supreme\nfitness as to induce them to choose her for the political or religious\noffice would be, undoubtedly, so very remarkable a person that it would\nbe ten thousand pities the world should be deprived of her services.\n\nLet us now turn to the other side of the shield. Having discussed\nthe validity of the arguments against the admission of women to the\nministry, let us see what is to be said directly in favor of such an\ninnovation.\n\nIn the first place, it is obvious that women have certain special\naptitudes and qualifications (as well as the above-named inaptitudes)\nfor such an office. We have been hitherto speaking as if the work of a\nminister lay almost exclusively in the pulpit and reading-desk; but we\nmust remember that a very large and very important part of it lies also\nin the homes of the members of the congregation, in the hour of their\nsorrows and difficulties, their sicknesses, doubts, repentances, death.\nCan any one doubt that the tender and ready sympathies of women,\nand their superior tact and discernment of character, their natural\ntendency to soothe and exhort rather than to upbraid or threaten, are\nqualities more valuable for such service than any which men, however\npious, well-meaning, and learned in casuistry, usually bring to such\ntasks? As a matter of fact, women do, instinctively, perform the\noffice of ministering angels on these occasions all over the land,\nwithout waiting for any license or consecration; while many of the\nbest of the clergy either suffer all their days from unconquerable\nshyness and the sense of their own want of tact, or run speedily into\nthe ruts of professional consolations and exhortations in formal\nphraseology, meaning little or nothing to speaker or hearer. Of all\nthe irritating--I might say maddening--things in human life, there\nis nothing worse than to be addressed in the hour of mortal agony\nand despair, when our hearts, riven to the core, could scarcely bear\nan angel\u2019s touch, by a smug, self-satisfied personage, who inflicts\non us his cut-and-dried consolations and exhortations to perfect\nquiescence and cheerful resignation; all the time revealing, by every\nword and gesture, how utterly incapable he is of comprehending even\nthe shadow of our grief. It would be difficult to estimate how many\npeople (especially the intelligent men of the humbler classes, who\nare the principal victims of these tormentors),--men who would have\nsuffered themselves to be led with childlike submission by any wise and\nloving hand, even through the wicket-gate of prayer and repentance,\nto the heavenly way,--have been, on the contrary, goaded by tactless\nparsons into hardness and rebellion. It is real, genuine, spontaneous\n_sympathy_ which alone can authorize any one to approach the sacred\nborders of a great sorrow. Can any one doubt that women would, as a\ngeneral rule, feel this more tenderly, more genuinely than men? The\nfear would be that the strain on the heart of a good woman, minister of\na large congregation, would be so great as very sensibly to tell upon\nhealth and life.\n\nFurther, outside the region of sentiment, and even in the intellectual\nway, so far as it concerns social influence, a woman has special\nfacilities. If she have extensive knowledge (and I am presuming she\nwill have acquired a good deal before entering the ministry), it will\ngenerally be more _ready to hand_ than that of a man. Her humor, if\nshe possesses a grain of that precious quality, will have the great\nadvantage, in all wordy skirmishing, of being playful, quick as\nlightning, and always at command,--not like the ponderous satire which\ntakes an hour to get out of its sheath, or the peculiarly masculine\ntype of wit which the owner--\n\n        \u201cBeareth not about,\n  As if afraid to use it out,\n  Except on holidays or so,\n  As men their best apparel do.\u201d\n\nHer logic--if by happy circumstance she has really trained her mind to\nwork logically--will not lose the famous feminine faculty for springing\nto the top of the stairs while the man is steadily walking up the\nsteps, because she has acquired the power of recognizing whether she be\non the right landing or the wrong.\n\nRegarding the rhetorical faculties of women, I may first remark that,\nby a well-known law of acoustics, a female voice will, if equally\nstrong, reach further and be audible more clearly at a distance than\nthat of a man; and, for some kinds of eloquence, at all events, its\nsofter and purer tones will probably find their way most easily to the\nheart. What her actual powers of oratory may be is one of the problems\nof the future; but the experience of feminine public speaking during\nthe last few years seems to point to a curious but not inexplicable\nfact,--namely, that, given the same _ideas_, a woman will generally\n_express_ them more easily than a man, at least than an Englishman.\nThis gift of facile and appropriate expression is obviously one\ndependent on a special faculty of the brain (the loss of which\nconstitutes _aphasia_), and is very variously distributed among races,\nand also, I think, between the sexes. Oratory, which is dependent upon\nit for its machinery, as a pianist on his fingering, is proverbially\nrare among men of our nation, though, when it does exist, it seems to\nreach sometimes to the climax of power and grandeur. English_women_,\non the contrary (so far as we yet may guess), possess more often the\nready-wordedness, the fluency and _verve_ of speech, of the Celt or\nthe Italian. Either the feminine nervous temperament is favorable to\nthis faculty, or (as I would rather imagine to be the case) the root\nof the difference lies in the region of sentiment, and women speak\nmore fluently because they are more apt to be carried away by interest\nin their subject or sympathy with their audience. The dread of making\nhimself ridiculous by stammering, by talking injudiciously, or making a\nmistake of any kind, is so deeply ingrained in the mind of the ordinary\nEnglish gentleman that, if one--not a barrister or clergyman, and\nconsequently not inured to the sound of his own voice--be called on\nsuddenly to return thanks at a wedding-breakfast, he will, nine times\nout of ten, stutter and hum-and-haw, and, after putting every one on\nthorns, will end by making some extraordinarily _malapropos_ joke, like\nthe celebrated one of Lord Feenix in _Dombey and Son_. Or, if he be\naware overnight that he will be called on to address his own tenants on\nthe morrow, his slumbers will be considerably less sound than if he had\nbeen warned he must go out and fight a duel at sixteen paces. As to an\nEnglishman taking kindly to public speaking when advanced in life, so\nmiraculous an event, I believe, is scarcely on record.\n\nNearly the contrary of all this holds true as regards women. Those\namong them who are willing to speak in public seem to be carried\naway the moment they begin by feelings which leave little room for\nself-reflection, whatever pangs of shyness and diffidence they may have\nendured beforehand.[34] But is it not very superfluous to expatiate on\nthe special gifts of speech assigned by nature to womankind, since in\nall ages their proneness to over-exert them has been the theme of jest\nand satire, and at no very remote date hostelries were adorned by the\nsign of the \u201cGood Woman,\u201d meaning a woman with no tongue; penal laws\nwere in force against the creature (now happily classified among the\nExtinct Mammalia), the Common Scold; and even tombstones were enlivened\nby a sort of dig at the sleeper beneath, as in the case of the\ncelebrated Arabella Young, whose death is specified as the date when\nshe \u201cbegan to hold her tongue\u201d? Perhaps it is not unjust to entertain\nthe suspicion that masculine wit may sometimes have proved rather tardy\nin parrying the thrusts of that \u201clittle member,\u201d which we all know is\nsharpened in so terrible a furnace, and that the ponderous sarcasms\nrecorded against its misuse may be likened to the boulder-stones thrown\nby Polyphemus after the retreating and exultant Greeks.\n\nJoke or no joke, it is quite certain that women are even exceptionally\nendowed with several, if not all, of the qualities necessary to\noratory. The originality and depth of their ideas and the culture they\nhave received may in many cases be open questions; but there can be no\ndoubt at all that, when they have got the ideas, they will find out\nremarkably well how to express them.\n\nIt is time now to pass to the graver part of our subject,--the\nvalue which may attach to women\u2019s thoughts about Religion; for, if\nthat value be trifling, it will be all the more unfortunate, should\nthey possess any facilities for imposing them upon us by wordy\nfluency,--that \u201cfatal fluency\u201d which the best men in America have\ndeplored as among the gifts of their countrymen.\n\nThoughts of the class which are properly expressed in pulpits are,\nof course, of various kinds. There are thoughts which are purely\nreflections and speculations of the intellect on critical and\nphilosophical problems, and which an able lawyer, an acute critic, or\na profound metaphysician can make as well, or better, than a prophet\nor a saint; nay, in which a Mephistopheles might excel a Tauler. It is\nno doubt sometimes necessary (though surely by no means so frequently\nas some preachers seem to take for granted) to offer thoughts of this\nclass to a congregation, and, in short, to read out in church an\narticle which _minus_ the text might have appeared in a Review. If it\nbe a very lofty and religious mind from which such thoughts emanate,\nthey will of course possess an elevating power proportioned to the\nmomentum of such a mind brought to bear on ordinary intellects. To be\nlifted by sermons of this class into the serene and purified atmosphere\nof noble speculation will of itself effect a quasi-religious result,\nindependently of any conviction of theological truths which may or may\nnot be brought away. The hearers who have followed for half an hour\nthe upward flight of one of these eagle souls will return to the petty\nconcerns, interests, pleasures, anxieties of common life, calmed and\nennobled, and able to see all things in more just proportions. On the\nother hand, if the preacher be merely a clever critic or metaphysician,\nwho deals with sacred themes as a counsel with the case in his brief,\nthe result of his sermons, however brilliant and interesting they may\nbe found by an intellectual audience, and triumphantly satisfactory to\nthose who find their cherished opinions clinched by his arguments, will\nbe the reverse of religious. The listeners will go away, not awed and\ncalmed, but eager for controversy and confirmed in self-confidence,\nhaving lost any benefit which they might have derived from the previous\nacts of worship. They have been made to rise from their knees to\nsit down instantly in the seat of the critical, always very closely\ncontiguous to that of the scornful.\n\nOf this intellectual and theoretical class of sermons it is not to be\nanticipated that women will preach many. I should rather say that one\nof the good things which may be hoped from the introduction of women\ninto the ministry may prove to be the falling out of fashion of a class\nof discourses which can only be beneficial or desirable in the case of\nexceptional mental greatness, combined with a piety warm and powerful\nenough to hallow every region of thought into which it may pass.\n\nAgain, there is an order of thought more practical than this, and\nsurely more suitable to form the sequel of a service of prayer;\nnamely, ideas concerning duty in all its forms, religious, social, and\npersonal. It is amazing, considering the place which Christianity in\nevery phase assigns to obedience to the will of God, how exceedingly\nsmall a space lessons and discussions concerning what _is_ that Divine\nWill, as regards every-day conduct, ever take in Christian instruction.\nWe are eternally exhorted to repent; but what are the sins and failures\nwhich ought to be included in our penitence, few preachers take the\npains to inform us. We are exhorted to \u201crenounce the devil and all his\nworks\u201d; but what those \u201cworks\u201d may be, as distinguished from works\nof righteousness in the shop, the camp, the bar, the exchange, the\ninterior of our homes, we are left to find out for ourselves. Sermons\ntreating carefully and thoughtfully any subject of the kind are among\nthe most rare of clerical addresses. Bishop South confesses, indeed,\nthat two-thirds of Christianity are a Christian temper. But how many\ntimes have any of us heard rebuked from the pulpit that odious\nsullenness which makes the unhappy inmates of the same home with the\nsulky person live in a perpetual November, or yet the despotic violence\nand anger which threaten them like a perpetual thunder-storm brewing in\nthe distance? What master of a household is told, by the only man who\n_dare_ tell him, that his tyranny, his harshness, perhaps his cruelty,\nexercised hourly on wife or child or any luckless dependant, make up a\nsum total of misery to them and of offence on his part, worse than the\nresults of many a sudden crime, and certainly involving no less guilt?\nWhat wife and mother is told that her selfishness, her bickerings, her\ndiscontent, her spitefulnesses, are sins for which no prate of high\nreligious feeling or incessant fussing about church-going can possibly\natone? And, again, as regards other offences,--let us say, lying and\ndishonesty,--when have we heard wise and just definitions of them from\nour pastors, or fitting exhortations to nobler standards of veracity\nand probity than are common in the world? In the upper classes of\nsociety, a certain slipshod rule of thumb on these subjects is pretty\ngenerally received. But where did we learn it? Certainly not when\nwe occupied our seats in church, but rather at the dinner-table, in\nthe playground at school, at the club, or in the drawing-room. Among\nthe lower ranks, where this traditional code, of honor rather than\nof morality, does not hold equal sway, the ignorance which prevails\nconcerning the very rudimentary principles of truth and probity is\noften no less startling than deplorable. The neglect of the clergy\nof all denominations to draw clear definitions on these matters of\nhourly concern, so that their flocks may at least _know_ what is right,\nsupposing they are so fortunate as to be able to inspire them with a\nresolution to _do_ it when known, is of a piece with the indifference\nof all the churches to moral heresies of the most soul-debasing kind,\nwhile they punish to the utmost of their powers the faintest divergence\nfrom theological orthodoxy.\n\nI cannot but think that, if women now enter the pulpit, a great many\nmore sermons will be preached dealing with these points of practical\nethics. The concrete and the personal will probably always possess\nkeener interest for the majority of women than the abstract, the vague\nand the universal; and there is, moreover, if I mistake not, a very\ndistinct superiority in the womanly propensity to translate ideas into\naction, over the man-of-the-world habit of admitting high and rigid\nprinciples in theory, while practising quite other rules in commerce,\npolitics, and social affairs. A very eminent thinker and scholar, a\nleader of thought at Oxford, once remarked to me with characteristic\nsimplicity, \u201cI do not know how to account for the fact, but I notice\nthat, when a good woman is convinced that something is true or\nright, she tries immediately in some way to square her beliefs and\nconduct accordingly; whereas when I have, perhaps by infinite labor,\nsucceeded in convincing a man of the same thing, he goes on just as\nhe did before, without altering his behavior a jot, and as if nothing\nhad happened!\u201d Now, I think this practical tendency of the feminine\nnature (though it will perhaps be less marked hereafter when women\nsubmit more generally to the friction of contact with many minds) will\ninevitably show itself in a preference for the inculcation of definite\nduties rather than for the vague declamations about repentance and\nregeneration which so often leave their hearers perfectly undisturbed\nand on the high way (as they think) to heaven, leading lives of odious\nselfishness, and combining profit and piety after the fashion of the\ncelebrated grocer, \u201cSand the sugar, John--and then come in to prayers.\u201d\n\nIt has been often remarked that the most profound difference between\nmodern and classical civilization lies in the contrast between the\nvalue attached by each to private morals. The virtue of the individual\nwas of old treated as altogether subordinate in importance to the\ninterests of the State. In our time, we have almost come to recognize\nthat states and churches--nay, society itself--exist for the sake of\nbuilding up individual souls to their perfection; and there is every\nreason to expect that this sense of the supreme importance of morals\nover every other human concern will rather increase than dwindle\nthrough all time to come.\n\nNow, it would certainly appear that this _Hebraism_, as Mr. Arnold\ncalls it, is rather characteristic of the higher sort of women.\nThe moment a woman rises above the passion for personal admiration\nand the struggle for petty social ambition or sordid matrimonial\nscheming, to which so large a number of unhappy ones are trained and\nconsigned from girlhood, on the principle of \u201ckeeping women in their\nproper sphere,\u201d--the moment, I say, that a woman has been lifted by\neducation or her natural force of character above all this frivolity\nand baseness, we almost invariably find in her a degree of earnestness\nabout ethical and ethico-religious questions which is far more rarely\ntraceable among men. It is true that her exclusion from a great many\nfields of masculine interest naturally centres her thoughts more\non such subjects, and that, when those exclusions are more or less\nremoved, we must expect to see more frequently women absorbed in the\nsame worldly interests as men, and perhaps some who now think night\nand day of a ball will be equally eager about a bill in Parliament.\nStill, I believe that, independently of circumstances, women have a\nspecial tendency (as Renan avers of the Celtic race) to \u201clong after the\ninfinite,\u201d and to yearn to bring an element of sacredness and nobleness\ninto the transactions of daily life such as their moral aspect alone\naffords. I believe that nine women out of ten (of the better sort, of\nwhom I have spoken) would, if they had the choice, oftener speak of\nduty and religion than of any other themes.[35] If this be so, it would\nfollow that, as time goes on, instead of women falling behind in the\nprogress of humanity, that progress will constantly tend to bring women\nmore to the front as students and expounders of morality.\n\nThere is another aspect of this matter also, which fairly deserves\nconsideration. Many good Christians have remarked that, while they\nwould fain take Jesus Christ as their \u201cGreat Exemplar,\u201d they find\nnothing in his life indicating what his example would have been in\nthe very closest and most important of human relations of husband or\nfather. Surely there is no less reason for women to be conscious of a\nlacune in their moral instructions, when they are received exclusively\neither from mothers and governesses who may be utterly unfit for such\nan office, and who often merely pass on traditional moral heresies, or\nelse from masculine pastors whose whole moral parallax is necessarily\ndifferent from that of a woman, and who practically know next to\nnothing of the trials, temptations, and duties of her lot. We have had\nof recent years in many of our churches, and notably in St. Paul\u2019s\nCathedral, courses of sermons addressed by various clergymen to men\nalone, from which women have been rigidly excluded. Would it be too\nmuch to hope that some time or other, in some humble chapel (since\nno one would dream of devoting the national religious edifices to\nthe exclusive use of women for a single hour), women may enjoy the\nprivilege of being especially addressed by pastors of their own sex,\nwho may talk to them at once with cultured minds and experienced hearts?\n\nAnd, lastly, besides the Intellectual and the Moral classes of thoughts\nto be offered from the pulpit, there is a third,--of which, alas! we\nknow far too little,--the Spiritual. The store of this latter class\nof thoughts is probably extremely small even in minds of richest\nexperience. They seem rather to distil slowly in precious drops from\nthe wounds in the tree of life than to be capable of manufacture by the\nhelp of culture and reflection. They are the thoughts which concern the\nbaseness, the loathsomeness, the misery of sin (felt and considered as\n_Sin_, not as Error or Vice), the glory and beauty and joy of Holiness,\nfelt as _Holiness_, not as Prudence or Virtue. They teach the laws of\nour spiritual existence; the hygienics of the soul; the \u201cWay toward\nthe Blessed Life.\u201d In some sense, sermons which contain thoughts like\nthese may be called Moral Discourses; for they touch the very springs\nof our moral nature, and send us forth heart-smitten for the past,\nheart-strengthened with resolutions for the future. They are the most\npowerful moral levers which human agency ever applies to our souls. But\nthey are the reverse of didactic, ethical disquisitions, or expositions\nof the detailed code of virtue. They lie in another region of feeling\nand appeal to another class of our faculties than the ratiocinative.\nWe do not sit and judge them, but they come from above and judge us.\nWhen they strike us most forcibly, we never feel the temptation (as we\nare so often inclined to do at the best bits in the critical or the\nmoral discourse) to express our approbation by the familiar tokens of\npublic applause. On the contrary, it is our own breasts we are fain\nto beat; while, if our lips move, it is to murmur the prayer of the\npublican.\n\nWill women preach sermons of this order and filled with thoughts like\nthese? It is impossible to foretell with certainty; yet here, if\nanywhere, may we expect to find the special gifts of women brought\nout at last from their hidden treasuries. It has been said of almost\nevery great spiritual teacher that there has been something feminine in\nhis nature, something more of tenderness and purity, more of insight\ninto and sympathy with others, than belongs to lesser men. In Jesus\nChrist, the ideal characters of both sexes seem almost equally blended.\nOf course there are other qualities besides the characteristically\nfeminine ones needed to form the highest kind of religious teacher;\nbut the sterner qualities are no more invariably deficient in women\nthan are the softer ones always lacking in men, and it seems the\nreverse of improbable that women may arise uniting both in hitherto\nalmost unexampled degree. Let us remember that, after all, the one\ngreat Force of the spiritual world--its correlated Gravitation, Light,\nElectricity, Magnetism, and Vital Force, all in one--is pure Divine\nLOVE. This alone, radiating from the Sun of Love in the heavens, moves\nand vivifies the soul; and to it alone it responds as the flower to\nthe orb of day--we know not how. The human spirit which receives from\non high the largest influx of this divine light and warmth thereby\nbecomes a focus of reflected power and fervor for all those who can be\nbrought into spiritual contact with it. It is the \u201clove of God shed\nabroad\u201d in the heart,--the love of that goodness which God is, and\nfor which man is made, whose germs even now the illumined eye of love\ndiscerns deep-latent in every human soul,--in a word, the love of God\nand love of man, in whose might all spiritual miracles are done, all\nleprous souls cleansed, all demon passions cast out, all blind eyes\nopened, all maimed and crippled faculties made whole. If we could but\nfind the most profoundly-loving, the most unselfishly, nobly, purely\nloving of men or women now living upon earth, and set him or her in the\nmidst of us to be our teacher, our friend, our guide into the ways of\npeace and blessedness, we should have gained a help better than all the\nphilosophers and theologians, the monks and the hermits, could ever\ngive. I will not take on myself to affirm that such most loving heart\nbeats in a woman\u2019s breast. It may well be that there are men as tender\nin feeling as any mother whose spirit ever yearned over her infant\u2019s\ncradle. But there is at least an equal chance of a woman\u2019s supremacy,\nand almost a certainty that, on a secondary level of loving-kindness\nand unselfishness, we should find many more women than men. It is quite\nimpossible, I think, that this difference should not make itself felt,\nand a new impulse be made to flow through all the channels of spiritual\nlife whenever the influence of women may be brought to bear directly\nand largely on the religious feelings of the community.\n\nLastly, and chiefly. It is a truism to say that the character of our\nreligion depends on our idea of God; but who has taken note of this\nfamiliar fact sufficiently to recognize that all the _traditional_\npart of that solemn idea has come to us uniformly in a way deplorably\none-sided, and that side the least lovable? I do not overestimate\nthe importance of _any_ idea of God which comes to us through our\nfellow-men. It seems to me that, from the first dawn of the religious\nlife, the child has a dim sense (apart from his teacher\u2019s lessons)\nof some beneficent and righteous Power around and within him; and\nthat when the Sun rises on any soul in the awful hour which saints\nhave likened to a new birth, there is obtained, even through all the\nmists of earth, a direct vision of the ineffable glory, which evermore\ncauses the words of other mortals, and even the man\u2019s own attempt to\nrender in language his sense of that great Love and Holiness, to seem\nunreal and worse than inadequate. When _that_ stage is reached, it is\nprobably of little consequence what a man\u2019s pastor may tell him about\nGod\u2019s character. All he says is only like a book which describes a\nperson we ourselves have known or a place we have visited. Nobody can\nmake the man believe (at least so long as his own living faith and\nopen vision endure) that the Being whom he meets in the hour of prayer\nis less than All-good, unutterably Holy, even though the dogmas he\naccepts practically attribute to him a totally different character.\nThe only injury he can suffer is a negative one: he is denied the help\nand sympathy which he needs, and which it is the proper office of his\nminister to supply to him. But at an earlier stage, when all religious\nexperience is yet vague and dim, when faith must of necessity be\nprovisional and taken on trust at second hand,--at that period there\ncan be no question of the misfortune of receiving cold, hard, narrow\nnotions about God, instilled by teachers who themselves have little\nlove or no direct spiritual knowledge, and have chiefly borrowed their\nideas from the confessedly imperfect rendering, age after age, of\nother men\u2019s experience. How is a young soul ever to turn to God, when\nGod is represented to it as One from whom it would far more naturally\nturn away? And let it be remembered that the attributes of God which\ncall out the spontaneous love and adoration of the heart are precisely\nthose whose meaning is most completely lost and evaporated in the dry\nformularies of the intellect, and can never be truly conveyed except\nby one whose own heart responds to them through all its depths. Power,\nWisdom, Justice, are divine characteristics, of which the meaning may\nbe indicated by any teacher with a clear head and command of language.\nBut I disbelieve that any one who is not himself full of love and\ntenderness has ever, since the world began, yet transmitted to another\nsoul the truth that God is Love.\n\nThere is little to wonder at, after all, in the mournful fact that the\nreligion which as it rose from the heart of Christ was supremely the\nreligion of Divine Love became, as the centuries went by, colder and\nharder and more cruel, till the irony was complete, and the doctrine\nof the Mount of Galilee was illustrated by the fires of the Spanish\nInquisition. _Who_, we may ask, were the teachers of Christianity\nduring the intervening ages? Who were they through whose lips and\nwritings the lessons gathered from the lilies and the sparrows, and the\nstory of the Prodigal, were transmitted to each new-born generation?\nThey were _men_, exclusively men; nay, men who, in taking their office,\nrenounced those ties of natural affection through which the Author of\nNature has caused the human heart to grow tender, and to be taught the\npractice of unselfishness. To fit themselves to convey to the hearts\nof their brethren the gospel of the Fatherhood of God, they began by\nrenouncing the experience of human fatherhood for themselves. The\nApostolic Succession, of which the great Churches still boast, was\nfor fifteen centuries a school for the transmission of ideas about a\nDivine Parent down a long chain of childless celibates. We Protestants\nhave corrected this mistake, and the men who tell to _us_ the story of\nthe Prodigal are at least able to speak out of the abundance of their\nhearts when they say that, \u201clike as a father pitieth his children,\nso the Lord hath mercy on them that fear Him.\u201d But is there not one\nstep even further to be taken? Is not the compassion of \u201ca mother\nfor the son of her womb\u201d a still profounder image of the Divine Love\nthan the father\u2019s pity? Ought it not also to be brought home to our\ncomprehensions (if in any measure human words may so bring it) through\nthe lips of mothers and motherly-hearted women?\n\nThe loss out of our religion of all those ideas which may be classed\nas the doctrine of the motherhood of God has been attended with evils\ninnumerable. The Church of Rome, in obedience to a vehement popular\ninstinct, has sought to make up for the defect by Mariolatry. The\northodox Protestant Churches, by sternly adhering to their masculine\nTrinity, have indeed preserved the awe and moral reverence which the\nDivine Kingship and Fatherhood demand, and which the paganism of virgin\nworship has obliterated. But how much have they not lost by excluding\nthose sentiments which can only be given to One in whom we recognize\nnot only justice, holiness, and beneficence, but also tenderness,\nsympathy, love? The truth is we are so constituted that great benefits\nreceived,--if we think of them as bestowed merely because it is right\nand good to give them, and not from love for ourselves,--so far\nfrom awakening in us spontaneous emotions of gratitude, have rather\nan opposite tendency, and seem to lay on us an obligation to be\ngrateful, which is a sort of burden, and from which all minds save the\nmost generous have a proclivity to escape. To hundreds of us, large\ndonations from just and well-meaning but unaffectionate fathers have\nfailed to waken the smallest throb of genuine gratefulness; while some\nmere trifle given by a loving mother--a flower from a well-remembered\nrose-tree, a scrap of her needlework--has filled our eyes with tears.\nIn excluding, then, in a great degree from view that which I may\npresume to call the maternal side of religion, the Churches, so far as\nthey have done it, have dropped the golden chain whereby human hearts\nmay be drawn, and have kept in their hands the iron one which can only\ncontrol the reason and the conscience. Is it possible to estimate the\namount of loss to religion which this signifies, or how many thousands\nof souls might have been won by _love_ to a life of piety and holiness\nwho have refused to obey the bit and bridle of sterner motives, and\nhave wandered off and been lost in the wilderness of practical atheism?\n\nIf there be, then, as I humbly believe and trust, in the nature of\nour great Parent above, certain characters of tenderness and sympathy\nwith His creatures which are more perfectly shadowed, more vividly\nreflected, in the love of human mothers for their children than by\naught else on earth; if there be, in short, a real meaning in the old\nlesson that God created woman as well as man in His own image,--the\nimage being only complete in the complete humanity,--then I think it\nfollows that there is urgent need that woman\u2019s idea of God should have\nits due place in all our teaching of religion. I think that there must\nbe truths in this direction which only a woman\u2019s heart will conceive\nand only a woman\u2019s lips can teach,--truths, perchance, which have come\nto her when baby-fingers have clung round her neck in the dark while\ninfant trust overcame infant terror, and she has asked herself was\nthere anything in heaven or earth which could make her cast down to\ndestruction, or even let slip from her clasp of care and guardianship,\nthe helpless little child thus lying in her arms,--a living parable of\nall our race in the everlasting arms of God.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[27] It will be seen that I differ _toto caelo_ on this point from Mr.\nMahaffy in his interesting recent essay on the _Decay of Preaching_.\nHe seems to me only to recognize the _moral and intellectual_ forces\nwhich move men, and these compared with the spiritual are only what\nmechanical ones are to the electric.\n\n[28] Ingoldsby\u2019s rendering of this world-famous story, the favorite\ntheme of so many eminent painters, is probably no very exaggerated\nreading of the general impression of the monastic mind respecting the\nfair sex:--\n\n  \u201cThere are many devils which walk this world,\n          Devils great and devils small,\n          Devils short and devils tall;\n  Bold devils which go with their tails unfurled,\n  Sly devils which carry them quite upcurled;\n\n         *       *       *       *       *\n\n  But a laughing woman with two bright eyes\n          Is the worsest devil of all!\u201d\n\n\n[29] I know not on what authority the familiar jovial couplet has been\nattributed to the great Reformer:--\n\n  \u201cWer liebt nicht Wein, Weib, und Gesang\n  Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang.\u201d\n\nThe ascetic spirit had very far departed, at all events, from the\nauthor who composed it.\n\n[30] I. Cor. xiv., 26. If this graphic description had applied to a\n_female_ assembly, should we have ever been allowed to forget the\ncircumstance?\n\n[31] \u201cThe Hebrew Woman,\u201d by Constance de Rothschild (Mrs. Cyril Flower).\n\n[32] A sermon by this lady on \u201cThe Sacrament of Life,\u201d preached and\nprinted at Melbourne, would amply justify, I think, to every reader the\nabove remark.\n\n[33] In the case of the M.P., this would need to be a majority of\n_men_, seeing that the whole female contingent of qualified voters will\nonly (if admitted) add about a fifth or sixth to the register.\n\n[34] This at least is the impression left on me by the female speakers\n(some twenty perhaps) whom I have chanced to hear. I never knew one\nof them \u201chum\u201d or \u201chaw,\u201d or stammer, or break down, even when (as in\none very remarkable case) the gentle and learned speaker had never\naddressed an audience till the occasion, when she had already passed\nmiddle life. Among the most remarkable phenomena of the present day,\nI reckon the preaching of Mrs. Booth, the wife of the General of the\nSalvation Army. The combination of fervent zeal with practical good\nsense in her extempore discourses must be admired even by those who\ndiffer most widely from her views.\n\n[35] A curious illustration of this is to be found in a passage in the\nfirst series of Mrs. Kemble\u2019s charming autobiography published three\nyears ago. She describes the late Lady Byron as often expressing envy\nof her (Mrs. Kemble\u2019s) public readings, and her longing to have similar\ncrowds in sympathy with her own impressions. \u201cI made her laugh,\u201d says\nMrs. Kemble, \u201cby telling her that more than once, when looking from\nmy reading-desk over the sea of faces uplifted toward me, a sudden\nfeeling had seized me that I must say something _from myself_ to all\nthose human beings whose attention I felt at that moment entirely at\nmy command, and between whom and myself a sense of sympathy thrilled\npowerfully and strangely through my heart as I looked steadfastly at\nthem before opening my lips; but that on wondering afterwards what I\nmight, could, would, or should have said to them from myself, I never\ncould think of anything but two words--\u2018_Be good!_\u2019\u201d (Page 317.)\n\n\n\n\nTHE HOUSE ON THE SHORE OF ETERNITY.\n\nAN ALLEGORY.\n\n\nTwo simple-minded men, who had dwelt all their lives in a country far\ninland, at last undertook a long journey together. This happened many\nages ago, when there were no such things as printed books or village\nschools, and when the people in isolated districts saw no travellers,\nand knew nothing of the great world beyond the hills which closed their\nhorizon.\n\nWolfgang and Athelstane, so our pilgrims were called, walked on over\ndowns and heaths, and through the vast forests of oak which then\noverspread the land, till at last, after a night\u2019s toilsome march, they\ncame, in the early dawn, to a spot which seemed to them the strangest\nthey had ever visited. Walls of rock shut out any distant view; but\nimmediately before them on a gentle declivity there stood a structure,\nmuch larger than the humble cottages which Wolfgang and Athelstane had\ninhabited, and of a singularly different form. Instead of a pointed\nroof of thatch or tiles, there was, on the top, a flat floor of boards;\nwhile beneath, where there should have been a solid square foundation,\nthere was a long thin wedge, almost like a roof which had been reversed\nand turned downward. Also, through the floor rose up two long, slender,\ntree-like erections, with all the branches carefully smoothed away.\nCrossbars were slung on these poles, and ropes connected them together;\nwhile a great roll of coarse woven stuff, like sackcloth, lay folded\nup beside them. At one end, and outside of the wooden structure, hung\na huge beam, standing, as it seemed, in some unaccountable relation\nto the rest of the fabric, and connected with it by machinery passing\ninto the interior. All these singular things were slowly and carefully\nnoted by our two humble travellers, as they walked round the wooden\nbuilding in the morning twilight. No one was near who could afford them\nan explanation of the use or purpose of what they saw; and their doubts\nand wonder grew every moment.\n\n\u201cWhat can it mean?\u201d said Wolfgang. \u201cWhat did the builder--whoever he\ncan have been--intend by such a mansion as this?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is clear enough,\u201d answered Athelstane, thoughtfully, \u201cthat it is\nthe work of some very ingenious hands. How soundly and skilfully it is\nall fitted together!\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue,\u201d replied his comrade; \u201cand yet ought we to say it is well made\nbefore we can tell for what purpose it is constructed? To me it seems\nthat our own old huts of wattled willow and turf were, after all, of a\nbetter shape for a house to stand on the ground.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you think this is a house, _only_ a house?\u201d said Athelstane,\nsuddenly looking up.\n\n\u201cWell, if it be not a house, what else can it be?\u201d said Wolfgang. \u201cLet\nus try to look inside of it, and examine it more closely.\u201d\n\nThe two men soon contrived to enter the edifice which so puzzled them;\nand presently Wolfgang exclaimed triumphantly:--\n\n\u201cSee! there can be no question more on the matter. This is only a\nhouse. Here are seats and tables for men to sit at, and beds for them\nto sleep in; and here is a fire-place and a great iron pot to cook\nfood. Now, you can have no hesitation. It is just a wooden house, and\nrather stupidly planned.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have no doubt,\u201d said Athelstane, \u201cthat it is intended for a\nhabitation; but is it not inexplicable that a builder who can work so\ncleverly should construct it so unsuitably for a common house? Why is\nit not made to stand squarely and steadily on the ground? What is the\nsense of these long soaring poles standing up through the middle, with\nthe coils of ropes and bales of sacking? And this? This is the most\nmysterious thing of all,\u201d said Athelstane, placing his hand on a wheel,\nwhich instantly stirred the great beam at the back.\n\n\u201cThey are strange certainly,\u201d replied Wolfgang,--\u201cvery strange and\nuseless things, I should say, about a house which would be much more\ncomfortable and answer its purpose better without them. I cannot agree\nwith you that the builder was really a clever man, or knew what he\nwas about, else he would never have erected those poles or made that\nsenseless, upside-down roof, instead of a foundation; or, above all,\nhave constructed that totally unmeaning apparatus behind the whole\nstructure.\u201d\n\n\u201cI differ from you,\u201d said Athelstane, after some moments more of\nreflection. \u201cI think it is we who are not clever or ingenious, and who\ncannot find out what the carpenter who made this building intends to\ndo with it. I do not believe that singular form beneath (so little fit\nfor a building only intended for a house), nor those poles and ropes\nand vast sheets of woven stuff, nor yet that mysterious great beam,\nwere all added to a mere house for nothing,--for no purpose whatever.\nI think, Wolfgang,\u201d and Athelstane laid his hand on his friend\u2019s arm\nearnestly,--\u201cI think what we are looking at is something _more than a\nhouse_. I think _it is not intended to stand always where we see it_.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are dreaming, Athelstane,\u201d said Wolfgang, with a short laugh.\n\u201cWhere on earth should a house go, if it is not to stand always where\nit is built? Who would want to move such a structure as this?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not know,\u201d said Athelstane, humbly. \u201cI do not profess to\nunderstand the mystery of it: only I see that the master carpenter who\nbuilt it must have been a very great carpenter indeed; and I cannot\nbelieve that he has made all these things in vain, or for no important\npurpose. If he wanted only a house, why did he not simply build a house\nstanding flat on the ground, and with no shafts piercing the air, and\nno vast guiding beam at the back? Trust me, friend Wolfgang, this is\nsomething more than the common abode of which alone you seem able to\nthink.\u201d\n\nWhile the two simple-minded men yet talked together, the sun had risen,\nand there was a sound of many waters and of rising waves; and through\nan opening in the rocks, which the travellers had not perceived in the\ntwilight, the great ocean became revealed to their eyes. Higher and\nhigher rose the tide, till it almost reached where the strange wooden\nbuilding still lay motionless; and the travellers retreated a little up\nthe shore, and stood, awe-struck and breathless, watching what might\nhappen. Then down from the cliff above ran a band of mariners, and\nleaped on board the vessel, and hauled in the anchor; and presently the\nwaves lifted up the ship, and she floated bravely on the waters. Very\nsoon, the mariners set the sails, which had lain idly on the deck, the\npilot placed his hand on the rudder and guided the noble barque, and\nshe was borne by the winds of heaven far off beyond the uttermost ken\nof the two poor travellers upon the shore.\n\nThen, after a time, Wolfgang turned to his companion, and said:\n\u201cAthelstane, you spoke truth. Yon House-of-the-Sea was made, as you\nforesaw, for other use than to stand upon the ground. It was planned\nfor a different element,--the free world of waters. And now we see\nwhat was the purport of so many things which before seemed to us\nuseless,--the keel, the masts, the sails, the marvellous and mysterious\nrudder. How wonderful it is! How wise and far-seeing the great\ncarpenter who made the ship!\u201d\n\nAs Wolfgang spoke, Athelstane lifted his head, which had drooped in\nheavy thought, and he saw the wide ocean leaping in the morning light\nstretched out before him, and the new-risen sun smote his face with\nglory. And Athelstane laid his hand on Wolfgang\u2019s arm, and spoke as his\nfriend had never heard him speak before, for it was as a man in whose\nsoul a great new thought had sprung to life: \u201cAye, Wolfgang, aye,\u201d he\nsaid; \u201cbut if that marvellous work of human hands was not made only for\nearth, do you think _we_ were made for nothing better than the life\nwhich now we lead,--to eat and drink, and marry, and toil, and sleep,\nand die, and be forgotten? Are not _we_ too, O Wolfgang, made for other\nthings than these? Are we not fitted for some other element than that\nin which now we have our being, some other existence than that which\nyet we lead? If we were intended only to live our few years of animal\nlife on earth and then perish, why were we given minds to plough the\nseas of thought, and aspirations to point to heaven, and love to swell\nbeneath the breath of affection, and conscience to guide us on our way\nas the pilot lays on it his mighty hand? O Wolfgang! we could perceive\nthat the ship was intended to float on the great ocean which we had\nnever beheld. Can we not see that we and all our race are made to live\nin a world yet unseen, wider, freer, grander a thousand times than\nearth,--a world which we shall enter whensoever the tide of death shall\nlift us up and bear us away?\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE PEAK IN DARIEN: THE RIDDLE OF DEATH.\n\n\nIt is somewhat singular that the natural longing to penetrate the great\nsecret of mortality should not have suggested to some of the inquirers\ninto so-called \u201cSpiritual\u201d manifestations that, before attempting\nto obtain communication with the _dead_ through such poor methods\nas raps and alphabets, they might more properly, and with better\nhope of gaining a glimpse through the \u201cgates ajar,\u201d watch closely\nthe _dying_, and study the psychological phenomena which accompany\nthe act of dissolution. Thus, it might be possible to ascertain, by\ncomparison of numerous instances, whether among these phenomena are any\nwhich seem to indicate that the mind, soul, or self of the expiring\nperson, is not undergoing a process of extinction, but exhibiting such\ntokens as might be anticipated, were it entering upon a new phase of\nexistence and coming into possession of fresh faculties. It is at\nleast conceivable that some such indications might be observed, were\nwe to look for them with care and caution, under the rare conditions\nwherein they could at any time be afforded; and, if this should prove\nto be the fact, it is needless to dilate on the intense interest of\neven such semblance of confirmation of our hopes. I must earnestly\nprotest, however, at starting, that, in my opinion, to regard anything\nwhich could be so noticed as being _more_ than such a confirmation,\nor, as if it could constitute an argument for belief in a future life,\nwould be foolish in the extreme, seeing the great obscurity and the\nevanescent nature of all such phenomena. Our faith in immortality\nmust be built on altogether different ground, if it is to be of any\nvalue as a part of our religion or of our philosophy. But, assuming\nthat we are, individually, already convinced that the quasi-universal\ncreed of the human race is not erroneous, and that \u201cthe soul of a man\nnever dies,\u201d[36] we may not unreasonably turn to the solemn scene of\ndissolution, and ask whether there does not sometimes occur, under one\nor two perhaps of its hundred forms, some incidents which point in the\ndirection of the great fact which we believe to be actually in process\nof realization? According to our common conviction, there is a moment\nof time when the man whom we have known in his garb of flesh casts it\naside, actually, so to speak, before our eyes, and \u201cthis mortal puts on\nimmortality.\u201d As in Blanco White\u2019s beautiful sonnet, he is, like Adam,\nwatching his first sunset, and trembling to lose sight of the world,\nand the question to be solved is whether darkness has enshrouded him,\nor whether\n\n  \u201cHesperus with the hosts of heaven came,\n  And, lo! Creation widened in his view\u201d;\n\nand he may have asked himself,--\n\n  \u201cWho would have thought such darkness lay concealed\n  Within thy beams, O Sun? or deemed,\n  While flower and leaf and insect stood revealed,\n  That to such countless orbs thou mad\u2019st us blind?\u201d\n\nand life, like light, had been only a deception and a veil.\n\nWe have walked in company with our brother, perchance for years,\nthrough the \u201cwilderness of this world,\u201d over its arid plains of toil\nand through its sweet valleys of love and pleasure; and then we have\nbegun to climb the awful Andes which have always loomed before us at\nour journey\u2019s end,--their summits against the sky,--and beyond them the\nundiscovered land. Onward, a little before us, as chance may decide,\nour companion perhaps mounts the last acclivity; and we see him slowly\napproach the mountain\u2019s crown, while our lagging steps yet linger on\nthe slopes below. Sometimes, ere he reach the hill-top, he is enveloped\nin cloud, and then we see him no more; but again, sometimes, he remains\nin the full sunlight, and though distant from us, and beyond the reach\nof our voice, it is yet possible for us to watch his attitude and\nmotions. Now, we see him nearing the summit. A few steps more, and\nthere must break on his vision whatever there may be of the unknown\nworld beyond,--a howling wilderness or a great Pacific of joy. Does he\nseem, as that view bursts on him, whatsoever it may be,--does he seem\nto be inspired with hope or cast down with despair? Do his arms drop\nin consternation, or does he lift them aloft with one glad gesture of\nrapture, ere he descend the farther slope, and is lost to our sight\nforever?\n\nIt appears to me that we may, though with much diffidence, answer this\nquestion as regards some of our comrades in life\u2019s journey, who have\ngone before us, and of whom the last glimpse has been one full of\nstrange, mysterious, but most joyful promise. Let us inquire into the\nmatter calmly, making due allowance both for natural exaggeration of\nmourning friends, who recall the most affecting scenes, and also for\nthe probable presence of cerebral disturbance and hallucination at the\nmoment of physical dissolution.\n\nOf course, it is quite possible that the natural law of death may\nbe that the departed always sink into a state of unconsciousness,\nand rather dip beneath a Lethe than leap a Rubicon. It is likewise\npossible that the faculties of a disembodied soul, whatever that may\nbe, may need time and use, like those of an infant, before they can be\npractically employed. But there is also at least a _possibility_ that\nconsciousness is not always lost, but is continuous through the passage\nfrom one life to another, and that it expands rather than closes at\nthe moment when the bonds of the flesh are broken, and the man enters\ninto possession of his higher powers and vaster faculties, symbolled\nby the beautiful old emblem of Psyche\u2019s emancipated butterfly quitting\nthe shell of the chrysalis.[37] In this latter case there is a certain\n_prima facie_ presumption that close observation ought to permit us\noccasionally to obtain some brief glimpse, some glance, though but\nof lightning swiftness and evanescence, revealing partially this\ntranscendent change.\n\nIn a majority of deaths, the accompanying physical conditions hide from\nthe spectators whatever psychological phenomena may be taking place.\nThe sun of our poor human life mostly sets behind an impenetrable\ncloud. Of all forms of death, the commonest appears to be the awful\n\u201cagony\u201d with its unconscious groans and stertorous breath. The dying\nperson seems to sink lower and lower, as if beneath the waters of an\nunfathomable sea; a word, a motion, a glance, rising up at longer\nand longer intervals, till the last slow and distant sighs terminate\nthe woful strife, and the victory of Death is complete. When this is\nthe mode of dissolution, it is of course hopeless to look for any\nindication of the fate of the soul at its exodus; and the same holds\ngood as regards death in extreme old age, or after exhausting disease,\nwhen the sufferer very literally \u201cfalls asleep.\u201d Again, there are\ndeaths which are accompanied by great pain or delirium, or which are\ncaused by sudden accidents, altogether hiding from our observation the\nmental condition of the patient. Only in a small residue of cases, the\nbodily conditions are such as to cause neither interference with nor\nyet concealment of the process of calm and peaceful dissolution in the\nfull light of mental sanity; and it is to these only we can look with\nany hope of fruitful observation. I ask whether in such cases instances\nhave ever been known of occurrences having any significance taken in\nconnection with the solemn event wherewith they are associated. Does\nour forerunner on the hill-top show by his looks and actions, since\nhe is too far off to speak to us, that he beholds from his \u201cPeak in\nDarien\u201d an Ocean yet hidden from our view?\n\nI should hesitate altogether to affirm positively that such is the\ncase; but, after many inquiries on the subject, I am still more\ndisinclined to assert the contrary. The truth seems to be that, in\nalmost every family or circle, a question will elicit recollections of\ndeath-bed scenes, wherein, with singular recurrence, appears one very\nsignificant incident,--namely, that the dying person, precisely at the\nmoment of death, and when the power of speech was lost, or nearly lost,\nseemed _to see something_; or rather, to speak more exactly, to become\nconscious of something present (for actual sight is out of question)\nof a very striking kind, which remained invisible to and unperceived\nby the assistants. Again and again, this incident is repeated. It is\ndescribed almost in the same words by persons who have never heard of\nsimilar occurrences, and who suppose their own experience to be unique,\nand have raised no theory upon it, but merely consider it to be\n\u201cstrange,\u201d \u201ccurious,\u201d \u201caffecting,\u201d and nothing more. It is invariably\nexplained that the dying person is lying quietly, when suddenly,\nin the very act of expiring, he looks up,--sometimes starts up in\nbed,--and gazes on (what appears to be) vacancy with an expression of\nastonishment, sometimes developing instantly into joy, and sometimes\ncut short in the first emotion of solemn wonder and awe. If the dying\nman were to see some utterly unexpected but instantly recognized\nvision, causing him a great surprise or rapturous joy, his face could\nnot better reveal the fact. The very instant this phenomenon occurs,\ndeath is actually taking place, and the eyes glaze even while they gaze\nat the unknown sight. If a breath or two still heave the chest, it is\nobvious that the soul has already departed.\n\nA few narrations of such observations, chosen from a great number\nwhich have been communicated to the writer, will serve to show more\nexactly the point which it is desired should be established by a larger\nconcurrence of testimony. The following are given in the words of a\nfriend on whose accuracy every reliance may be placed:--\n\n\u201cI have heard numberless instances of dying persons showing\nunmistakably by their gestures, and sometimes by their words, that\nthey saw in the moment of dissolution what could not be seen by\nthose around them. On three occasions, facts of this nature came\ndistinctly within my own knowledge; and I will therefore limit myself\nto a detail of that which I can give on my own authority, although the\ncircumstances were not so striking as many others known to me, which I\nbelieve to be equally true.\n\n\u201cI was watching one night beside a poor man dying of consumption. His\ncase was hopeless, but there was no appearance of the end being very\nnear. He was in full possession of his senses, able to talk with a\nstrong voice, and not in the least drowsy. He had slept through the\nday, and was so wakeful that I had been conversing with him on ordinary\nsubjects to while away the long hours. Suddenly, while we were thus\ntalking quietly together, he became silent, and fixed his eyes on\none particular spot in the room, which was entirely vacant, even of\nfurniture. At the same time, a look of the greatest delight changed the\nwhole expression of his face, and, after a moment of what seemed to be\nintense scrutiny of some object invisible to me, he said to me in a\njoyous tone, \u2018There is Jim.\u2019 Jim was a little son whom he had lost the\nyear before, and whom I had known well; but the dying man had a son\nstill living, named John, for whom we had sent, and I concluded it was\nof John he was speaking, and that he thought he heard him arriving. So\nI answered,--\n\n\u201c\u2018No. John has not been able to come.\u2019\n\n\u201cThe man turned to me impatiently, and said: \u2018I do not mean John,\nI know he is not here: it is Jim, my little lame Jim. Surely, you\nremember him?\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Yes,\u2019 I said, \u2018I remember dear little Jim who died last year quite\nwell.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Don\u2019t you see him, then? There he is,\u2019 said the man, pointing to the\nvacant space on which his eyes were fixed; and, when I did not answer,\nhe repeated almost fretfully, \u2018Don\u2019t you see him standing there?\u2019\n\n\u201cI answered that I could not see him, though I felt perfectly convinced\nthat something was visible to the sick man, which I could not perceive.\nWhen I gave him this answer, he seemed quite amazed, and turned\nround to look at me with a glance almost of indignation. As his eyes\nmet mine, I saw that a film seemed to pass over them, the light of\nintelligence died away, he gave a gentle sigh and expired. He did not\nlive five minutes from the time he first said, \u2018There is Jim,\u2019 although\nthere had been no sign of approaching death previous to that moment.\n\n\u201cThe second case was that of a boy about fourteen years of age,\ndying also of decline. He was a refined, highly educated child, who\nthroughout his long illness had looked forward with much hope and\nlonging to the unknown life to which he believed he was hastening. On a\nbright summer morning, it became evident that he had reached his last\nhour. He lost the power of speech, chiefly from weakness; but he was\nperfectly sensible, and made his wishes known to us by his intelligent\nlooks. He was sitting propped up in bed, and had been looking rather\nsadly at the bright sunshine playing on the trees outside his open\nwindow for some time. He had turned away from this scene, however,\nand was facing the end of the room, where there was nothing whatever\nbut a closed door, when all in a moment the whole expression of his\nface changed to one of the most wondering rapture, which made his\nhalf-closed eyes open to their utmost extent, while his lips parted\nwith a smile of perfect ecstasy. It was impossible to doubt that some\nglorious sight was visible to him; and, from the movement of his eyes,\nit was plain that it was not one, but many objects on which he gazed,\nfor his look passed slowly from end to end of what seemed to be the\nvacant wall before him, going back and forward with ever-increasing\ndelight manifested in his whole aspect. His mother then asked him, if\nwhat he saw was some wonderful sight beyond the confines of this world,\nto give her a token that it was so by pressing her hand. He at once\ntook her hand, and pressed it meaningly, giving thereby an intelligent\naffirmative to her question, though unable to speak. As he did so, a\nchange passed over his face, his eyes closed, and in a few minutes he\nwas gone.\n\n\u201cThe third case, which was that of my own brother, was very similar\nto this last. He was an elderly man, dying of a painful disease, but\none which never for a moment obscured his faculties. Although it was\nknown to be incurable, he had been told that he might live some months,\nwhen somewhat suddenly the summons came on a dark January morning.\nIt had been seen in the course of the night that he was sinking; but\nfor some time he had been perfectly silent and motionless, apparently\nin a state of stupor, his eyes closed and his breathing scarcely\nperceptible. As the tardy dawn of the winter morning revealed the rigid\nfeatures of the countenance from which life and intelligence seemed to\nhave quite departed, those who watched him felt uncertain whether he\nstill lived; but suddenly, while they bent over him to ascertain the\ntruth, he opened his eyes wide, and gazed eagerly upward with such an\nunmistakable expression of wonder and joy that a thrill of awe passed\nthrough all who witnessed it. His whole face grew bright with a strange\ngladness, while the eloquent eyes seemed literally to shine, as if\nreflecting some light on which they gazed. He remained in this attitude\nof delighted surprise for some minutes, then in a moment the eyelids\nfell, the head drooped forward, and with one long breath the spirit\ndeparted.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA different kind of case from those above narrated by my friend was\nthat of a young girl known to me, who had passed through the miserable\nexperiences of a sinful life at Aldershot, and then had tried to drown\nherself in the river Avon, near Clifton. She was in some way saved from\nsuicide, and placed for a time in a penitentiary; but her health was\nfound to be hopelessly ruined, and she was sent to die in the quaint\nold workhouse of St. Peter\u2019s at Bristol. For many months, she lay in\nthe infirmary, literally perishing piecemeal of disease, but exhibiting\npatience and sweetness of disposition quite wonderful to witness. She\nwas only eighteen, poor young creature, when all her little round\nof error and pain had been run; and her innocent, pretty face might\nhave been that of a child. She never used any sort of cant (so common\namong women who have been in Refuges), but had apparently somehow got\nhold of a very living and real religion, which gave her comfort and\ncourage, and inspired her with the beautiful spirit with which she\nbore her frightful sufferings. On the wall opposite her bed, I had\nhung by chance a print of the \u201cLost Sheep\u201d; and Mary S., looking at\nit one day, said to me, \u201cThat is just what I was and what happened to\nme; but I am being brought safe home now.\u201d For a long time before her\ndeath, her weakness was such that she was quite incapable of lifting\nherself up in bed, or of supporting herself when lifted; and she,\nof course, continued to lie with her head on the pillow, while life\ngradually and painfully ebbed away, and she seemingly became nearly\nunconscious. In this state she had been left one Saturday night by the\nnurse in attendance. Early at dawn next morning,--an Easter morning,\nas it chanced,--the poor old women who occupied the other beds in the\nward were startled from their sleep by seeing Mary S. suddenly spring\nup to a sitting posture in her bed, with her arms outstretched and her\nface raised, as if in a perfect rapture of joy and welcome. The next\ninstant, the body of the poor girl fell back a corpse. Her death had\ntaken place in that moment of mysterious ecstasy.\n\nA totally different case again was told me by the daughter of a man\nof high intellectual distinction, well known in the world of letters.\nWhen dying peacefully, as became the close of a profoundly religious\nlife, he was observed by his daughter suddenly to look up as if at\nsome spectacle invisible to those around, with an expression of solemn\nsurprise and awe, very characteristic, it is said, of his habitual\nframe of mind. At that instant, and before the look had time to falter\nor change, the shadow of death passed over his face, and the end had\ncome.\n\nIn yet another case, I am told that at the last moment so bright a\nlight seemed suddenly to shine from the face of a dying man that the\nclergyman and another friend who were attending him actually turned\nsimultaneously to the window to seek for the cause.\n\nAnother incident of a very striking character was described as having\noccurred in a family united very closely by affection. A dying lady,\nexhibiting the aspect of joyful surprise to which we have so often\nreferred, spoke of seeing, one after another, three of her brothers\nwho had long been dead, and then, apparently, recognized last of all a\nfourth brother, who was believed by the bystanders to be still living\nin India. The coupling of his name with that of his dead brothers\nexcited such awe and horror in the mind of one of the persons present\nthat she rushed from the room. In due course of time, letters were\nreceived announcing the death of the brother in India, which had\noccurred some time before his dying sister seemed to recognize him.\n\nAgain, in another case, a gentleman who had lost his only son some\nyears previously, and who had never recovered from the afflicting\nevent, exclaimed suddenly when dying, with the air of a man making a\nmost rapturous discovery, \u201cI see him! I see him!\u201d\n\nNot to multiply such anecdotes too far,--anecdotes which certainly\npossess a uniformity pointing to some similar cause, whether that\ncause be physiological or psychical,--I will now conclude with one\nauthenticated by a near relative of the persons concerned. A late\ncolonial bishop was commonly called by his sisters \u201cCharlie,\u201d and\nhis eldest sister bore the pet name of \u201cLiz.\u201d They had both been\ndead for some years, when their younger sister, Mrs. W., also died,\nbut before her death appeared to behold them both. While lying still\nand apparently unconscious, she suddenly opened her eyes and looked\nearnestly across the room, as if she saw some one entering. Presently,\nas if overjoyed, she exclaimed, \u201cO Charlie!\u201d and then, after a moment\u2019s\npause, with a new start of delight, as if he had been joined by some\none else, she went on, \u201cAnd Liz!\u201d and then added, \u201cHow beautiful\nyou are!\u201d After seeming to gaze at the two beloved forms for a few\nminutes, she fell back on her pillow and died.\n\nAn instance--in many respects especially noteworthy--of a similar\n_impression_ of the presence of the dead conveyed through another sense\nbesides sight is recorded in Caroline Fox\u2019s charming _Journals_, Vol.\nII., p. 247. She notes under date September 5, 1856, as follows:--\n\n\u201cM. A. Schimmelpenninck is gone. She said just before her death, \u2018Oh, I\nhear such beautiful voices, and the children\u2019s are the loudest.\u2019\u201d\n\nCan any old Italian picture of the ascending Madonna, with the cloud\nof cherub heads forming a glory of welcome around her as she enters\nthe higher world, be more significant than this actual fact--so simply\ntold--of a saintly woman in dying hearing \u201c_beautiful voices, and the\nchildren\u2019s the loudest_\u201d? Of course, like all the rest, it may have\nbeen only a physiological phenomenon, a purely subjective impression;\nbut it is at least remarkable that a second sense should thus be under\nthe same glamour, and that again we have to confront, in the case of\n_hearing_ as of _sight_, the anomaly of the (real or supposed) presence\nof the beautiful and the delightful, instead of the terrible and the\nfrightful, while Nature is in the pangs of dissolution. Does the brain,\nthen, unlike every known instrument, give forth its sweetest music as\nits chords are breaking?\n\nInstances like those recorded in this paper might, I believe, be\nalmost indefinitely multiplied, were attention directed to them, and\nthe experience of survivors more generally communicated and recorded.\nReviewing them, the question seems to press upon us, Why should\nwe _not_ thus catch a glimpse of the spiritual world through that\nhalf-open portal wherein our dying brother is passing? If the soul of\nman exist at all after the extinction of the life of the body, what is\nmore probable than that it should begin at the very instant when the\nveil of the flesh is dropping off to exercise those spiritual powers\nof perception which we must suppose it to possess (else were its whole\nafter-life a blank), and to become conscious of other things than those\nof which our dim senses can take cognizance? If it be not destined to\nan eternity of solitude (an absurd hypothesis), its future companions\nmay well be recognized at once, even as it goes forth to meet them. It\nseems indeed almost a thing to be expected that some of them should\nbe ready waiting to welcome it on the threshold. Is there not, then,\na little margin for hope, if not for any confident belief, that our\nfondest anticipations will be verified; nay, that the actual experience\nof many has already verified them? May it not be that, when that hour\ncomes for each of us which we have been wont to dread as one of\nparting and sorrow,--\n\n  \u201cThe last long farewell on the shore\n  Of this rude world,\u201d\n\nere we \u201cput off into the unknown dark\u201d,--we may find that we only leave\nfor a little time the friends of earth to go straight to the embrace of\nthose who have long been waiting for us to make perfect for them the\nnobler life beyond the grave? May it not be that our very first dawning\nsense of that enfranchised existence will be the rapture of reunion\nwith the beloved ones whom we have mourned as lost, but who have been\nstanding near, waiting longingly for our recognition, as a mother may\nwatch beside the bed of a fever-stricken child, till reason reillumines\nits eyes, and with outstretched arms it cries \u201cMother.\u201d\n\nThere are doubtless some to whom it would be very dreadful to think of\nthus meeting on the threshold of eternity the wronged, the deceived,\nthe forsaken. But for most of us, God be thanked, no dream of\ncelestial glory has half the ecstasy of the thought that in dying we\nmay meet--and _meet at once_, before we have had a moment to feel the\nawful loneliness of death--the parent, wife, husband, child, friend of\nour life, soul of our soul, whom we consigned long ago with breaking\nhearts to the grave. Their \u201cbeautiful\u201d forms (as that dying lady\nbeheld her brother and sister) entering our chamber, standing beside\nour bed of death, and come to rejoin us for ever,--what words can\ndescribe the happiness of such a vision? It _may_ be awaiting us all.\nThere is even, perhaps, a certain probability that it is actually the\nnatural destiny of the human soul, and that the affections which alone\nof earthly things can survive dissolution will, like magnets, draw the\nbeloved and loving spirits of the dead around the dying. I can see no\nreason why we should not indulge so ineffably blessed a hope. But, even\nif it be a dream, the faith remains, built on no such evanescent and\nshadowy foundation, that there is One Friend,--and He the best,--in\nwhose arms we shall surely fall asleep, and to whose love we may trust\nfor the reunion, sooner or later, of the severed links of sacred human\naffection.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[36] There is an argument which, I believe, now influences more or less\nconsciously the minds of many intelligent persons against the belief in\nthe immortal life. It amounts to this: Granted that there is a God, and\nthat he is absolutely benevolently disposed toward mankind, it does not\nfollow (as commonly assumed) that He will bestow immortality on man,\nbecause _it is quite possible that there may be an inherent absurdity\nand contradiction in the idea of an immortal finite creature_,--it may,\nin short, be no more within the scope of divine power to create an\nimmortal man than to make a triangle with the properties of a circle.\nIf we could be first assured that the thing were _possible_, then\narguments derived from the justice and goodness of the Deity might be\nvaluable, as affording us ground for believing that He will do that\npossible thing. But, while it remains an open question whether we are\nnot talking actual nonsense when we speak of an ever-living created\nbeing, such reflections on the moral attributes of God are beside the\nmark. No justice or goodness can be involved in doing that which, in\nthe nature of things, is impossible.\n\nNow, of course, there is a little confusion here between a _future_\nlife--a mere _post-mortem_ addition of so many years or centuries to\nthis mortal existence--and an _immortal life_, which, it is assumed,\nwill continue either in a series of births and deaths or in one\nunbroken life forever and ever. In the former idea, no one can find\nany self-contradiction. It is only the latter notion of immortality,\nstrictly so described, which is suspected of involving a contradiction.\nPractically, however, the two ideas must stand or fall together; for\nalmost every argument for the survival of the soul after death bears\nwith double force against its extinction at any subsequent epoch of its\nexistence.\n\nTaking then the future life of a man as, to all intents and purposes,\nthe immortal life, we are bound to confront the difficulty,--\u201cWhat\nright have we to assume that immortality and creaturehood are\ncompatible the one with the other?\u201d\n\n_A priori_ argument on such a matter is altogether futile. We know\nand can reason literally nothing about it. For anything we could urge\n_antecedent to the observation of a man\u2019s actual state_, it was,\napparently, just as probable that he could not be made immortal as\nthat he could be made so by any conceivable power in the universe. But\nwe are not quite in the position of lacking all such _a posteriori_\nassistance to our judgment. We can see how God has actually constituted\nthe human race, and the problem is consequently modified to this: \u201cAre\nthere any signs or tokens that _man_ is meant for something more than\na mere mundane existence?\u201d It is obvious that, if immortality were an\nattribute which in the nature of things he could never share, nothing\nin his mental or moral constitution would have been made with any\nreference to such an unattainable destiny. If, on the other hand, there\nbe in his nature evidences of a purpose extending beyond the scope\nof this life, and stretching out into the limitless perspective of\neternity, then we are authorized to draw the inference that the Author\nof his being planned for him a future existence, and, of course, knew\nthat he might enjoy that divine heritage.\n\nHere, then, the argument lies in manageable shape before us. It is\ntrue we only see a small portion of humanity, as it has yet been drawn\nout; but just as mathematicians can determine, from any three given\npoints, the nature of the curve to which they belong, so we have enough\nindications to guide us to a conclusion respecting the character of our\nrace. In every department of our nature, save our perishable bodies,\nwe find something which seems to point beyond our threescore years\nand ten,--something inconsistent with the hypothesis that those years\ncomplete our intended existence. Our busy intellects, persistently\nwrestling with the mysteries of eternity; our human affections craving\nfor undying love; our sense of justice, born of no past experience of a\nreign of Astrea, but resolutely prophesying, _in spite_ of experience,\na perfect judgment hereafter; the measureless meaning which moral\ndistinctions carry to our consciences; the unutterable longing of our\nspirits for union (not wholly unattained even here) with the living\nGod, the Father of spirits,--all these things seem to show that we are\nbuilt, so to speak, on a larger scale than that of our earthly life.\nThe foundations are too deep and wide, the corner-stones are by far too\nmassive, if nothing but the Tabernacle of a day be the design of the\nArchitect. In brief, then, we may admit freely that, for aught we know,\n\u201cGod could not give to a triangle the properties of a circle,\u201d and\nyet, nevertheless, hold our faith undisturbed, since we find that the\nline which His hand has actually drawn _is a_ CURVE _already_,--a few\ndegrees of the circumference of a stupendous circle.\n\n[37] There is an insect, the Lunar Sphinx Moth, which exhibits, in\nits first stage, not only the usual prevision for its security while\nin the helpless chrysalis state, but a singular foresight of its own\nrequirements when it shall have become a winged moth. Having made, by\neating its way _upward_ through the pith of a willow, an appropriate\nhiding-place, it finds itself with its head in a position in which,\nwere it to become a moth, it could never push itself down, and escape\nat the aperture below. The little creature accordingly, before it\ngoes to sleep, laboriously turns round, and places its head near the\nentrance, where, as a moth, it will make its happy exit into the fields\nof air. There seems something curiously akin in the unaccountable\nforesight of this insect, of a state of existence it has never\nexperienced, and the vague and dim sentiment of immortality, common to\nmankind since the days of the cave-dwellers of the Stone Age.\n\n\n\n\n\u201c_A VERITABLE HAND-BOOK OF NOBLE LIVING._\u201d\n\n\nTHE DUTIES OF WOMEN.\n\nA COURSE OF LECTURES\n\nBy FRANCES POWER COBBE.\n\n\nCRITICAL NOTICES.\n\n An eminent American clergyman, writing from London, says:--\n\n \u201cIt is the profoundest, wisest, purest, noblest book, in principle,\n aim, and tone, yet written upon the True Position of Woman in Society.\n It should be circulated far and wide among all classes of our\n countrywomen. It should be made a class-book in our schools. It should\n become the \u2018Hand-Book\u2019 and _Vade Mecum_ of young American girls.\u201d\n\n \u201cAs I turn the pages of this book, I am struck with its candor,\n sympathy, and insight, and wish that it might be read and pondered\n by both conservative and radical women. The former might learn the\n relation of freedom to duty, and the latter may well consider the\n perils which surround each onward step.... Miss Cobbe might have\n called her book \u2018Old Duties in New Lights.\u2019 It must help many women to\n lead sincere, self-reliant lives, and to determine at critical moments\n what their action shall be.\u201d--_Mrs. Elizabeth K. Churchill, in the\n Providence Journal._\n\n \u201cThe best of all books on \u2018Women\u2019s Duties.\u2019 Now that George Eliot\n is gone, there is probably no woman in England so well equipped for\n general literary work as Miss Cobbe.\u201d--_Col. T. Wentworth Higginson,\n in Woman\u2019s Journal._\n\n \u201cI desire to commend it to the careful perusal of women in our own\n country, as a book full of timely counsel and suggestion, and to all,\n as a valuable contribution to the literature of ethics.\u201d--_Julia Ward\n Howe, in Christian Register._\n\n \u201cJust now, the first \u2018Duty of Women\u2019 is to read this whole book with\n studious self-application; for it is rich in saving common sense, warm\n with the love of man, and consecrated by the love of God.\u201d--_Miss\n Harriet Ware Hall, in Unitarian Review._\n\n \u201cWhat is best in the whole book is that she founds her teaching for\n women so strongly in the deepest and simplest moral principles that\n her thoughts come with a force and breadth which win for them at once\n a respectable hearing.\u201d--_London Spectator._\n\n \u201cOne of the notable books of the season.... No true woman can\n read these lectures without being stirred by them to completer\n life.\u201d--_Morning Star._\n\n \u201cIn Miss Cobbe\u2019s latest book, \u2018The Duties of Women,\u2019 there is much to\n be commended for its common sense and its helpfulness. Miss Cobbe goes\n down to the principles underlying the topics of which she speaks; and\n the strength with which she utters her thoughts is the strength of\n conviction and of earnest purpose.\u201d--_Sunday School Times._\n\n \u201cThis is the very volume needed for parents to intrust to their\n daughters when leaving home for school, and for earnest friends to\n offer young brides, as a wedding gift.\u201d\n\n\n  Fourth Edition. Cloth. 12mo. $1.00.\n  New Cheap Edition. Paper. 25 cents.\n\n\n_For sale by booksellers, and mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the\nprice, by_\n\nGeo. H. Ellis, Publisher, Boston.\n\n\n\n\nA YEAR OF MIRACLE.\n\nA Poem in Four Sermons.\n\nBY WILLIAM C. GANNETT.\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n  =1. Treasures of the Snow.=\n  =2. Resurrection.=\n  =3. Flowers.=\n  =4. The Harvest Secret.=\n\n  Square 18mo, limp cloth, red edges,       Price 50 cents.\n  Extra cloth, heavy paper, full gilt,      Price $1.00.\n\n\n \u201cThe thoughtful reader will find A YEAR OF MIRACLE a source of genuine\n and permanent delight.\u201d--_Boston Transcript._\n\n \u201cA delightful companion for an hour of meditation.\u201d--_Zion\u2019s Herald._\n\n \u201cThe sermons are wonderfully beautiful. They are veritable poems, and\n poems of a high order.\u201d--_Woman\u2019s Journal._\n\n \u201cThe theme is hackneyed: the thing is not, neither is Mr.\n Gannett\u2019s performance. Such discourses would grace the best pulpit\n anywhere.\u201d--_Boston Advertiser._\n\n \u201cThe several subjects chosen are as hackneyed as the theme of a\n school-girl\u2019s composition; but the treatment is singularly rich,\n fresh, and sparkling. Mr. Gannett combines in happy measure qualities\n rarely found together,--a wide range of reading and observation, with\n brooding thought and solitary fancy, the naturalist\u2019s keen sight and\n the poet\u2019s deeper insight. His study of the outer world is close\n and careful, his use of scientific detail and illustration apt and\n striking, with nothing of parade and pedantry. In almost every page,\n we feel the finer touch of genius, and a deep but unobtrusive spirit\n of worship.\u201d--_Literary World._\n\n \u201cWe doubt if more exact and beautiful writing can be found than in\n these four sermons. They are not sermons, judged by ordinary homiletic\n methods; but, by their effect in awakening the devotional spirit, they\n are eminently so. They are full of science, and yet full of religion,\n so far as faith in and reverence for the Supreme enter into religion.\n This is a little book, but a full book.\u201d--_Christian Advocate._\n\n \u201cIf the author of _The Imitation_ had the genius of medi\u00e6val piety,\n Mr. Gannett has the genius of the religion of this nineteenth century.\n Here is reverence, here is poetry; but here is nature and science, and\n reason, too, all taken up in the solvent of a living faith. The four\n seasons of the year, in these four discourses, suggest four festivals\n of love and trust, symbolize four natural sacraments of religion.\n Scarcely anywhere will be found thinking and believing more suggestive\n and helpful in these questioning times than under the second theme,\n \u2018Resurrection.\u2019\u201d--_St. Louis Spectator._\n\n \u201cMr. Gannett has written some of the most undying religious hymns\n and lyrical poems in the language, and puts a wonderful amount of\n soul into whatever he writes in this little volume. The titles give\n an inkling of what the little book contains. It is one of the most\n delightful expositions of the glory and divinity of the outer world\n that has ever been written. It is in the vein of Wordsworth and\n Emerson and Lowell and Herbert; and whoever enjoys God\u2019s great world\n outside of man\u2019s heart will be glad to have it near him in his joyous\n and devout moments.\u201d--_Standard of the Cross._\n\n\nFor sale by Booksellers everywhere, and sent by mail postpaid on\nreceipt of price by\n\n  GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher,\n  141 Franklin Street,       Boston, Mass.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Notes\n\nPage 91: \u201cconsummation of nonenity\u201d changed to \u201cconsummation of\nnonentity\u201d\n\nPage 127: In the footnote, \u201cperformed her tasl\u201d changed to \u201cperformed\nher task\u201d","title":"The Peak in Darien, With Some Other Inquiries Touching Concerns of the Soul and the Body: An Octave of Essays","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":57031}