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Vol 51: The Classics
Lectures on The Harvard Classics
By William Allan Neilson, Ph.D.
GENERAL EDITOR
AND THE FOLLOWING ASSOCIATE EDITORS
George Pierce Baker, A.B.
Ernest Bernbaum, Ph.D.
Charles J. Bullock, Ph.D.
Thomas Nixon Carver, Ph.D., LL.D.
William Morris Davis, M.E., Ph.D., Sc.D.
George H. Chase, Ph.D.
Roland Burrage Dixon, A.M., Ph.D.
William Scott Ferguson, Ph.D.
J. D. M. Ford, Ph.D.
Kuno Francke, Ph.D., LL.D.
Charles Hall Grandgent, A.B.
Chester Noyes Greenough, Ph.D.
Charles Burton Gulick, Ph.D.
Lawrence Joseph Henderson, M.D.
Frank W. C. Hersey, A.M.
Henry Wyman Holmes, A.M.
William Guild Howard, A.M.
Robert Matteson Johnston, M.A.
(Cantab.)
Charles Rockwell Lanman, Ph.D., LL.D.
Gustavus Howard Maynadier, Ph.D.
Clifford Herschel Moore, Ph.D.
William Bennett Munro, LL.B., Ph.D.,
LL.D.
A. O. Norton, A.M.
Carleton Noyes, A.M.
Charles Pomeroy Parker, B.A. (Oxon.)
George Howard Parker, S.D.
Bliss Perry, L.H.D., Litt.D., LL.D.
Ralph Barton Perry, Ph.D.
Chandler Rathfon Post, Ph.D.
Murray Anthony Potter, Ph.D.
Roscoe Pound, Ph.D., LL.M.
Fred Norris Robinson, Ph.D.
Alfred Dwight Sheffield, A.M.
Oliver Mitchell Wentworth Sprague,
A.M., Ph.D.
William Roscoe Thayer, A.M.
Frederick Jackson Turner, Ph.D.,
LL.D., Litt.D.
Charles Henry Conrad Wright, M.A.
P. F. Collier & Son Corporation
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1914
BY P. F. COLLIER & SON
MANUFACTURED IN U. S. A.
IP,Y 1 9 1953
CONTENTS
PAGE
HISTORY 7
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By Robert Matteson Johnston, M. A. (Cantab.),
Assistant Professor of Modern History in Harvard University. ... 7
II. ANCIENT HISTORY. By William Scott Ferguson, Ph. D., Professor of
History in Harvard University 23
III. THE RENAISSANCE. By Murray Anthony Potter, Ph. D., Assistant Professor
of Romance Languages in Harvard University 30
IV. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Robert Matteson Johnston, M. A.
(Cantab.) 36
V. THE TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. By Frederick
Jackson Turner, Ph. D., LL. D., Litt. D., Professor of History in Harvard
University 41
POETRY 48
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By Carleton Noyes, A. M., formerly Instructor
in English in Harvard University 48
II. HOMER AND THE EPIC. By Charles Burton Gulick, Ph. D., Professor of
Greek in Harvard University, and (1911-1912) in the American School
of Classical Studies at Athens 66
III. DANTE. By Charles Hall Grandgent, A. B., Professor of Romance
Languages in Harvard University 71
IV. THE POEMS OF JOHN MILTON. By Ernest Bernbaum, Ph.D., Instructor
in English in Harvard University 76
V. THE ENGLISH ANTHOLOGY. By Carleton Noyes, A. M 8 1
NATURAL SCIENCE 87
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By Lawrence Joseph Henderson, M. D., Assistant
Professor of Biological Chemistry in Harvard University 87
II. ASTRONOMY. By Lawrence Joseph Henderson, M. D. .... 105
III. PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY. By Lawrence Joseph Henderson, M. D. . . no
IV. THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. By Lawrence Joseph Henderson, M. D. . . 115
V. KELVIN ON "LIGHT" AND "THE TIDES." By William Morris Davis, M. E.,
Ph. D., Sc. D., Sturgis-Hooper Professor of Geology, Emeritus, in
Harvard University, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, Exchange Professor to the University of Berlin and to the
Sorbonne 120
PHILOSOPHY 125
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By Ralph Barton Perry, Ph. D., Professor of
Philosophy, Harvard University 125
II. SOCRATES, PLATO, AND THE ROMAN STOICS. By Charles Pomeroy Parker,
B. A. (Oxon.), Professor of Greek and Latin, Harvard University. . 143
i
2 CONTENTS
PHILOSOPHY Continued PAGE
III. THE RISE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. By Ralph Barton Perry, Ph. D. . . 148
IV. INTRODUCTION TO KANT. By Ralph Barton Perry, Ph. D 153
V. EMERSON. By Chester Noyes Greenough, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of
English, Harvard University 158
BIOGRAPHY 163
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By William Roscoe Thayer, A. M., Knight of
the Order of the Crown of Italy, editor of Harvard Graduates'
Magazine 163
II. PLUTARCH. By William Scott Ferguson, Ph. D., Professor of Modern
History, Harvard University 181
III. BENVENUTO CELLINI. By Chandler Rathfon Post, Ph.D., Assistant Pro-
fessor of Greek, Harvard University 186
IV. FRANKLIN AND WOOLMAN. By Chester Noyes Greenough, Ph. D., Assistant
Professor of English, Harvard University 191
V. JOHN STUART MILL. By O. M. W. Sprague, A.M., Ph.D., Edmund
Cogswell Converse Professor of Banking and Finance, Harvard
University 196
PROSE FICTION 201
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By William Allan Neilson, Ph. D., Author of
"The Origins and Sources of The Court of Love," "Essentials of
Poetry," editor of "The Chief Elizabethan Dramatists," etc., general
editor of "The Tudor Shakespeare," "The Types of English Literature." 201
II. POPULAR PROSE FICTION. By Fred Norris Robinson, Ph. D., Professor of
English, Harvard University 219
III. MALORY. By Gustavus Howard Maynadier, Ph. D., Instructor in English,
Harvard University 224
IV. CERVANTES. By J. D. M. Ford, Ph. D., Smith Professor of the French and
Spanish Languages, Harvard University, corresponding member Royal
Spanish Academy (Madrid) and Hispanic Society of America. . . 230
V. MANZONI. By J. D. M. Ford, Ph. D 235
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 239
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By Bliss Perry, L. H. D., Litt D., LL. D., Pro-
fessor of English Literature, Harvard University, formerly editor Atlan-
tic Monthly, Harvard Lecturer at die University of Paris 239
II. WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES READ. By William Allan Neilson, Ph. D. . . 254
III. THEORIES OF POETRY. By Bliss Perry, L. H. D., Litt. D., LL. D. . . . 259
IV. ESTHETIC CRITICISM IN GERMANY. By William Guild Howard, A. M.,
Assistant Professor of German, Harvard University 266
V. THE COMPOSITION OF A CRITICISM. By Ernest Bernbaum, Ph. D., Instructor
in English, Harvard University 271
EDUCATION 276
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By Henry Wyman Holmes, A.M., Assistant
Professor of Education, Harvard University 276
CONTENTS 3
EDUCATION Continued PAGE
II. FRANCIS BACON. By Ernest Bernbaum, Ph.D., Instructor in English,
Harvard University 292
III. LOCKE AND MILTON. By Henry Wyman Holmes, A. M., Assistant Pro-
fessor of Education, Harvard University 297
IV. CARLYLE AND NEWMAN. By Frank W. C. Hersey, A. M., Instructor in
English, Harvard University 304
V. HUXLEY ON SCIENCE AND CULTURE. By A. O. Norton, A. M., Professor of
Education in Wellesley College 309
POLITICAL SCIENCE 314
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By Thomas Nixon Carver, Ph. D., LL. D., David
G. Wells Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University. . . . 314
II. THEORIES OF GOVERNMENT IN THE RENAISSANCE. By O. M. W. Sprague,
A. M., Ph. D., Edmund Cogswell Converse Professor of Banking and
Finance, Harvard University 332
III. ADAM SMITH AND THE "WEALTH OF NATIONS." By Charles J. Bullock,
Ph. D., Professor of Economics, Harvard University 337
IV. THE GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION. By William Bennett
Munro, LL. B., Ph. D., LL. D., Professor of Municipal Government,
Harvard University 342
V. LAW AND LIBERTY. By Roscoe Pound, Ph.D., LL. M., Carter Professor
of General Jurisprudence, Harvard University 347
DRAMA 352
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By George Pierce Baker, A. B., Professor of
Dramatic Literature, Harvard University 352
II. GREEK TRAGEDY. By Charles Burton Gulick, Ph. D., Professor of Greek,
Harvard University, and (1911-1912) in the American School of
Classical Studies at Athens 369
III. THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. By William Allan Neilson, Ph. D. ... 374
IV. THE FAUST LEGEND. By Kuno Francke, Ph. D., LL. D., Professor of the
History of German Culture, and Curator Germanic Museum, Harvard
University 379
V. MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA. By Ernest Bernbaum, Ph. D., Instructor in
English, Harvard University 384
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 389
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By Roland Burrage Dixon, A. M., Ph. D., Assist-
ant Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University 389
II. HERODOTUS ON EGYPT. By George H. Chase, Ph. D., Assistant Professor
of Classical Archaeology, Harvard University 407
III. THE ELIZABETHAN ADVENTURERS. By William Allan Neilson, Ph. D. . 412
IV. THE ERA OF DISCOVERY. By William Bennett Munro, LL. B., Ph. D.,
LL. D., Professor of Municipal Government, Harvard University. . . 417
V. DARWIN'S VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE. By George Howard Parker, S. D.,
Professor of Zoology, Harvard University 422
RELIGION 427
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. By Ralph Barton Perry, Ph. D., Professor of
Philosophy, Harvard University 4 2 7
4 CONTENTS
RELIGION Continued PAGE
II. BUDDHISM. By Charles Rockwell Lanman, Ph.D., LL. D., Professor of
Sanskrit in Harvard University 446
III. CONFUCIANISM. By Alfred Dwight Sheffield, A. M., Instructor in Wellesley
College 451
IV. GREEK RELIGION. By Clifford Herschel Moore, Ph. D., Professor of Latin
in Harvard University, Professor in American School of Classical Studies
in Rome, 1905-6 457
V. PASCAL. By Charles Henry Conrad Wright, M. A., Professor of French
in Harvard University 462
The Lecture Series on the contents of The Harvard Classics ought
to do much to open that collection of literary materials to many
ambitious young men and women whose education was cut short by the
necessity of contributing in early life to the family earnings, or of sup-
porting themselves, "and who must therefore reach the standing of a
cultivated man or woman through the pleasurable devotion of a few
minutes a day through many years to the reading of good literature."
(Introduction to The Harvard Classics.) The Series will also assist
many readers to cultivate "a taste for serious reading of the highest
quality outside of The Harvard Classics as well as within them." (Ibid.)
// will certainly promote the accomplishment of the educational object
I had in mind when I made the collection. CHARLES W. ELIOT.
The Harvard Classics provided the general reader with a great store-
house of standard works in all the main departments of intellectual
activity. To this storehouse the Lectures now open the door.
Through the Lectures the student is introduced to a vast range of
topics, under the guidance of distinguished professors.
The Five-Foot Shelf, with its introductions, notes, guides to reading,
and exhaustive indexes, may thus claim to constitute with these Lec-
tures a reading course unparalleled in comprehensiveness and authority.
WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON.
HISTORY
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR ROBERT MATTESON JOHNSTON
HISTORY alone, of all modes of thought, places the reader
above his author. While the historian more or less dili-
gently plods along his own narrow path, perhaps the one
millionth part of all history, every avenue opens wide to the imagina-
tion of those who read him. To them history may mean anything
that concerns man and that has a past; not politics only, but art, and
science, and music have had their birth and growth; not institutions
only, but legends and chronicles and all the masterpieces of litera-
ture, reflect the clash of nations and the tragedies of great men.
And it is just because the reader is merely a reader that the full joy
of history is open to him. He wears no fetters, so that even were
he bent on mastering the constitutional documents of the United
States he could turn aside with a calm conscience to listen to the
echoes of dying Roland's horn in the gorge of Roncevaux or to stand
by Cnut watching the North Sea tide as it lapped the old Dane's
feet.
In all directions, in almost every branch of literature, history
may be discovered, a multiform chameleon; and yet history does
not really exist. No one has yet composed a record of humanity;
and no one ever will, for it is beyond man's powers. Macaulay's
history covered forty years; that of Thucydides embraced only the
Peloponnesian war; Gibbon, a giant among the moderns, succeeded
in spanning ten centuries after a fashion, but has found no imitators.
The truth is there is no subject, save perhaps astronomy, that is
quite so vast and quite so little known. Its outline, save in the sham
history of text books, is entirely wanting. Its details, where really
known to student's, are infinitely difficult to bring into relation. For
this reason it may be worth while to attempt, in the space of one short
7
8 HISTORY
essay, to coordinate the great epochs of history, from the earliest to
the most recent times.
The practical limit of history extends over a period of about three
thousand years, goes back, in other words, to about 1000 B. C. Be-
yond that we have merely scraps of archaeological evidence; names
of pictures engraved on stone, to show that in periods very remote
considerable monarchies flourished in Egypt, along the Euphrates,
and in other directions. It was not these people who were to set
their imprint on later ages, it was rather what were then merely
untutored and unknown wandering tribes of Aryans, which, work-
ing their way through the great plains of the Volga, the Dnieper,
and the Danube, eventually forced their way into the Balkan and
the Italian peninsulas. There, with the sea barring their further
progress, they took on more settled habits, and formed, at some dis-
tant epoch, cities, among which Athens and Rome were to rise to
the greatest celebrity. And about the year 1000 B. C., or a little
later, Greece emerges from obscurity with Homer.
Just as Greece burst from her chrysalis, a Semitic people, the Jews,
were producing their counterpart co Homer. In the Book of Joshua
they narrated in the somber mood of their race the conquest of
Palestine by their twelve nomad tribes, and in the Pentateuch and
later writings they recorded their law and their religion. From this
starting point, Homer and Joshua, whose dates come near enough
for our purpose, we will follow the history of the Mediterranean and
of the West.
THE LEADERSHIP OF GREECE
First the great rivers, the Nile and the Euphrates, later the great
inland sea that stretched westward to the Atlantic, were the avenues
of commerce, of luxury, of civilization. Tyre, Phocaea, Carthage, and
Marseilles were the early traders, who brought to the more military
Aryans not only all the wares of east and west but language itself,
the alphabet. Never was a greater gift bestowed on a greater race.
With it the Greeks developed a wonderful literature that was to
leave a deep impress on all Western civilization. They wove their
early legends into the chaste and elegant verse of the Homeric epics,
HISTORY 9
into the gloomy and poignant drama of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides. They then turned to history and philosophy. In the
former they produced a masterpiece of composition with Thucydides
and one of the most delightful of narratives with Herodotus. In the
latter they achieved their most important results.
Greek philosophy was to prove the greatest intellectual asset of
humanity. No other civilization or language before the Greek had
invented the abstract ideas: time, will, space, beauty, truth, and the
others. And from these wonderful, though imperfect, word ideas
the vigorous and subtle Greek intellect rapidly raised a structure
which found its supreme expression in Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno.
But from the close of the Fourth Century before Christ, the time of
Aristotle and his pupil Alexander the Great, Greek began to lose
its vitality and to decay.
This decadence coincided with events of immense political im-
portance. Alexander created a great Greek Empire, stretching from
the Mediterranean to the Indus. After his death this empire was
split into a number of monarchies, the Greek kingdoms of the East,
of which the last to survive was that of the Ptolemies in Egypt.
This perished when Augustus defeated Cleopatra and Antony at
Actium in B. C. 31, exactly three hundred years after Alexander's
final victory over Darius at Arbela.
THE DOMINATION OF ROME
During these three hundred years a more western branch of the
Aryans, the Romans, had gradually forced their way to supremacy.
It was not until about B. C. 200 that Rome broke down the power
of Carthage, got control of the western Mediterranean, and then sud-
denly stretched out her hand over its eastern half. In less than two
centuries more she had completed the conquest of the Balkans, Asia
Minor, and Egypt, and the Mediterranean had become a Roman lake.
The city of Rome may go back to B. C. 1000, and the legends and
history of the Republic afford an outline of facts since about B. C.
500, but it was only after establishing contact with the civilization
and language of Greece that the Romans really found literary ex-
pression. Their tongue had not the elasticity and harmony of the
Greek, nor had it the wealth of vocabulary, the abstract terms; it
IO HISTORY
was more fitted, by its terseness, clearness, and gravity, to be the
medium of the legislator and administrator. Under the influence of
foreign conquest and of Greek civilization, Rome, however, quickly
evolved a literature of her own, an echo of the superior and riper
one produced by the people she had conquered; it tinged with glory
the last years of the Republic and the early ones of the Empire, the
age of Augustus. Virgil produced a highly polished, if not convinc-
ing, imitation of Homer. Lucretius philosophized a crude material-
istic universe in moderate hexameters. Cicero, with better success
and some native quality, modeled himself on Demosthenes; while
the historians alone equaled their Greek masters, and in the states-
manlike instinct and poisoned irony of Tacitus revealed a worthy
rival of Thucydides.
Latin and Greek were the two common languages of the Mediter-
ranean just as the unwieldy Republic of Rome was turning to im-
perialism. The Greek universities, Athens, Pergamon, and Alexan-
dria, dictated the fashions of intellectualism, and gave preeminence
to a decadent and subtilized criticism and philosophy perversely
derived from the Greek masters of the golden age. But a third in-
fluence was on the point of making itself felt in the newly organized
Mediterranean political system that of the Jews.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE JEWS
To understand the part the Jews were now to play, it is necessary
first of all to look back upon the general character of the social and
political struggles of those ancient centuries. At the time of Homer's
heroes, and, in a way, until that of Alexander the Great, states were
small, generally a city or a group of cities. War was constant, and
generally accompanied by destruction and slavery. As the centuries
slipped by, the scale increased. Athens tried to create a colonial
empire as did Carthage, and the great continental states, Macedon
and Rome, followed close at their heels. In the last century or so
before Christ, war was nearly continuous on a vast scale, and it
was attended by at least one circumstance that demands special con-
sideration.
Social inequality was a fundamental conception of the ancient
world. The Greek cities in their origin had been communities ruled
HISTORY II
by a small caste of high-bred families. The social hierarchy pro-
ceeded down from them to the slave, and war was waged on a
slave basis, the victor acquiring the vanquished. The great wars
of the Roman Republic against the Greek monarchies were huge
treasure-seeking and slave-driving enterprises that reduced to servi-
tude the most able and most refined part of the population of the
conquered countries. Rome had created a great Mediterranean
state, but at a terrible price. The civilization she had set up had no
religion save an empty formalism, and no heart at all. It was the
Jews who were to remedy this defect.
All through the East and in some parts of the West the Jewish
merchants formed conspicuous communities in the cities of the Em-
pire, giving an example of spiritual faith, of seriousness and rectitude,
that contrasted strongly with what prevailed in the community. For
materialism and epicureanism were the natural outcome of a period
of economic prosperity; religion was at its best formalistic, at its
worst orgiastic; ethical elements were almost wholly lacking. Yet
a revolt against the soullessness and iniquities of the times was pro-
ceeding and men were prepared to turn to whatever leaders could
give them a system large enough to satisfy the cravings of long-
outraged conscience, and large enough to fill the bounds of the
Mediterranean Empire. Three Jews Jesus, Paul, and Philo came
forward to do this work.
Jesus was the example, the man of conscience, the redeemer God.
For in this last capacity he could readily be made to fit in with the
Asiatic cults of the sun and of redemption which were at that time
the most active and hopeful lines of religious thought. Paul was
the Jew turned Roman, an imperialist, a statesman, of wide view
and missionary fervor. Philo was the Jew turned Greek, the angel
of the Alexandrian schools, who had infused Hebraic elements
into the moribund philosophizing of the Egyptian Greeks, and
thereby given it a renewed lease of life. That lease was to run just
long enough to pour the Alexandrian thought into the Christian
mold and give the new religion its peculiar dogmatic apparatus.
For three centuries, until A. D. 312, Christianity was nothing in
the Mediterranean world save a curious sect differing widely from
the hundreds of other sects that claimed the allegiance of the motley
12 HISTORY
population sheltering under the aegis of the Emperors. During those
three centuries the Mediterranean was a peaceful avenue of im-
perial administration, of trade, of civilizing intercourse. Its great
ports teemed with a medley of people in whom the blood of all
races from the Sahara to the German forests, and from Gibraltar
to the valley of the Euphrates, was transfused. The little clans of
high-bred men who had laid the foundations of this huge interna-
tional empire had practically disappeared. The machine carried
itself on by its own momentum, while wars remained on distant
frontiers, the work of mercenaries, insufficient to stimulate military
virtues in the heart of the Empire. It was, in fact, the economic
vices that prevailed, materialism, irreligion, and cowardice.
The feeble constitution of the Empire was too slight a framework
to support the vast edifice. Emperor succeeded emperor, good, bad,
and indifferent, with now and again a monster, and now and again
a saint. But the elements of decay were always present, and made
steady progress. The army had to be recruited from the barbarians;
the emperor's crown became the chief reward of the universal
struggle for spoils; the Empire became so unwieldy that it tended
to fall apart, and many competitors sprang up to win it by force
of arms.
THE CHRISTIANIZING OF ROME
In 312 such a struggle was proceeding, and Constantine, one of the
competitors, casting about for some means to fortify his cause against
his opponents, turned to Christianity and placed himself under the
protection of the Cross. Whatever his actual religious convictions
may have been, there can be no doubt that Constantine's step was
politic. While the pagan cults still retained the mass of the people
through habit and the sensuous appeal, Christianity had now drawn
to itself, especially in the western parts of the Empire, the serious
minded and better class. Administrators, merchants, men of posi-
tion and influence were Christian. Constantine needed their aid,
and fulfilled the one condition on which he could obtain it by adopt-
ing their faith.
Thus suddenly Christianity, after its long struggle and many per-
secutions, became the official religion of the Empire. But Christianity
HISTORY 13
was exclusive and the Emperor was its head; so conformity was
required of all citizens of the Empire, and conformity could
only be obtained by paying a price. The masses were wedded to their
ancient cults, their ancient gods, their ancient temples, their ancient
rites. To sweep them away at one stroke and to substitute some-
thing different was not possible. So a compromise was effected.
The priests, the temples, the ritual, the statues, remained, but they
were relabeled with Christian labels, under cover of which Christian
ideas were slipped in. A great metamorphosis took place of which
the intelligent traveler and reader of to-day can still find traces :
"The fair form, the lovely pageant that had entwined the Mediter-
ranean with sculptured marble, and garlands of roses, and human
emotion, was fading into stuff for the fantasies of dreamers. The
white-robed priest and smoking altar, the riotous procession and
mystic ritual would no longer chain the affections of mankind. No
longer would the shepherd blow his rude tibia in honor of Cybele,
no longer would a thousand delicious fables, fine wrought webs of
poetic imagination, haunt the sacred groves and colonnades of the
gods. Day after day, night after night, as constantly as Apollo and
Diana ran their course in heaven, had all these things run their
course on earth; now, under the spell of the man of Galilee, they had
shivered into a rainbow vapor, a mist of times past, unreal, unthink-
able, save where the historian may reconstruct a few ruins or the
poet relive past lives. And yet the externals in great part remained.
For it was at the heart that paganism was struck, and it was there
it was weakest. It had attempted, but had failed, to acquire a con-
science, while the new faith had founded itself on that strong rock.
Christianity had triumphed through the revolt of the individual
conscience; it was now to attempt the dangerous task of creating a
collective one." 1
THE FALL OF ROME
The establishment of Christianity at Rome came not a moment
too soon to infuse a little life into the fast-decaying Empire. Con-
stantine himself helped to break it in two, a Roman and a Greek
half, by creating a new capital, Constantinople. More ominous yet
1 Johnston, "Holy Christian Church," p. 146.
14 HISTORY
was the constant pressure of the Teutons at the frontier, a pressure
that could now no longer be resisted. By gradual stages they burst
through the bounds, and at the time Christianity was becoming
the official religion of the Mediterranean world, Germanic tribes
had already extorted by force of arms a right to occupy lands within
the sacred line of the Rhine and of the Danube. From that moment,
for a century or more, the processes of Germanic penetration and of
Roman disintegration were continuous, culminating in 375 with
the great Germanic migrations and in 410 with the sack of Rome
by Alaric and the Goths.
During the terrible half century that followed, the Roman world
was parceled out among a number of Germanic princes, and of the
old order only two things were left standing, a fragmentary empire
of the East centering in Constantinople, and a bishopric of Rome
of vastly increased importance that was soon to be known as the
Papacy, and that already showed symptoms of attempting to regain
by new means the universal dominion which the Emperors had lost.
The Germans were crude and military; the Latins were subtle
and peaceful, and when the storm of conquest swept through the
West they sought safety in the cloister. "There, under the protection
of the Latin cross, a symbol the barbarians dare not violate, what
was left of Roman intellectualism could cower while the storm blew
over, presently to reissue as the army of Christ to conquer, with new-
forged weapons, lands that the legions of their fathers had not even
beheld." 2
The Latin churchmen quickly learned how to play on the credulity
and the superstition of the simple German, while setting before him
the lofty ideals and ethics of Christianity. They not only held him
through religion but they soon became the civil administrators, the
legislators, the guiding spirits of the Germanic kingdoms.
Civilization had now taken on a marked change, had become a
composite in which Christianity and Teutonism were large factors.
Perhaps this was all clear gain; but in the economic and material
sense there had been great losses. Enormous wealth had been de-
stroyed or scattered, and imperial communication had broken down.
The trader was no longer safe on the Mediterranean; the great
2 Johnston, "Holy Christian Church," p. 162.
HISTORY 15
roads of Rome were going to ruin; boundaries of military states
barred old channels of intercourse. Under these conditions civiliza-
tion could only be more localized, weaker than before. And in fact
the Teutonic kingdoms pursued for some time an extremely check-
ered course.
THE RISE OF ISLAM
Then came, in the seventh century, a new and even more terrible
blast of devastation. Mohammed arose, created Islam, and started
the great movement of Arab conquest. Within almost a few years
of his death the fanaticized hosts of Arabia and the East were
knocking at the gates of Constantinople, and swept westward along
the southern shores of the Mediterranean until the Atlantic barred
their steps. They turned to Spain, destroyed the Visigothic kingdom,
crossed the Pyrenees, and reached the center of Gaul before they
were at last checked. The Franks under Charles Martel defeated
them at Tours in 732, and perhaps by that victory saved Christen-
dom. Had the Arabs succeeded in this last ordeal, who knows what
the result might not have been? As Gibbon characteristically wrote:
"A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand
miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the
repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the
confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not
more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet
might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the
Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be
taught in the schools of Oxford and her pulpits might demonstrate
to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of
Mahomet."
On the wreck of the Arab hopes the descendants of Charles Martel
founded a monarchy which blazed into ephemeral power and glory
under Charlemagne. In the year 800 the greatest of Prankish rulers
revived the imperial title, and was crowned by the Pope in the basil-
ica of St. Peter's. But the old Empire could not be resuscitated,
nor for the matter of that could the Prankish monarchy long
maintain the preeminent position it had reached. A new visita-
tion was at hand, and Charlemagne before he died saw the hori-
1 6 HISTORY
zon of his northern seas flecked by the venturesome keels of the first
of the northern pirates.
THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
For about two centuries Europe passed through an epoch of the
deepest misery. Danes and Scandinavians ravaged her from the
northwest, Saracens from the south, so that only the upper Rhine
and Danube, harboring a rich Teutonic civilization, escaped de-
struction. The Carlovingian Empire broke into pieces, Prankish,
Lothringian or Burgundian, and Germanic, with the last of which
went the imperial title. And this disintegration might have con-
tinued indefinitely to chaos had not feudalism appeared to fortify
and steady declining civilization.
Only force could successfully resist force, and at every threatened
point the same mode of local resistance sprang up. Men willing and
able to fight protected the community, and exacted in return certain
services. They soon began to build castles and to transmit their
powers, together with their lands, to their heirs. Lands soon came to
be viewed as related to other lands on conditions of military and
other services. The Church followed the example, until, finally, by
the eleventh century, one general formula underlay western Euro-
pean ideas: that every individual belonged to a class, and enjoyed
certain rights on the performance of various services to a superior
class, and that at the head of this ladder of rank stood either the
Emperor, or the Pope, or both. The last step was a highly controver-
sial one; on the first all men were agreed.
By this time feudalism had done its best work in restoring more
settled conditions, and bringing to a conclusion the northern and
southern piracy. From Sicily to the marches of Scotland, Europe
was now one mass of small military principalities, only here and
there held together in more or less efficient fashion by monarchies
like those of France and England, or by the Empire itself. Every
trade route was flanked by fortifications whence baronial exactions
could be levied on the traders. And when, under more peaceful
conditions, great trading cities came into existence in Italy, Ger-
many, the Netherlands a fierce struggle arose for mastery between
burghers and feudal potentates.
HISTORY IJ
Meanwhile the Church itself had developed great ambitions and
suffered the worst vicissitudes. While under the Prankish protection,
Rome had acquired the temporal domain she was to hold until Sep-
tember 20, 1870, when she was dispossessed by the newly formed
Kingdom of Italy. With this territorial standing, and impelled for-
ward by the mighty traditions of ancient Rome and of the Church,
she deliberately stretched out her hand under Gregory VII (Hilde-
brand) in an attempt to grasp the feudalized scepter of Europe.
The Germanic Empire, the offshoot of the greater domain of Charle-
magne, resisted. The great parties of Guelphs and of Ghibellines,
imperialists and papalists, came into existence, and for a long period
tore Germany and Italy in vain attempts at universal supremacy.
Inextricably bound up with the feudal movement, and with the
enthusiasm for the service of the Church that Rome for a while
succeeded in creating, came an interlude, religious, chivalrous, eco-
nomic, the Crusades. Out of superabundant supplies of feudal sol-
diers great armies were formed to relieve the Holy Places from the
profaning presence of the infidels. The East was deeply scarred with
religious war and its attendant butcheries, and little remained in
permanent results, save on the debit side. For the Crusades had
proved a huge transportation and trading enterprise for the thrifty
republics of Genoa and Venice, and led to a great expansion of ori-
ental trade; while the West had once more been to school to the
East and had come back less religious, more sceptical. And from the
close of the period of the Crusades (1270) to the outbreak of the
Reformation, two hundred and fifty years later, economic activity
and the growth of scepticism are among the most prominent facts,
while immediately alongside of them may be noted the birth of the
new languages, and, partly resulting from all these forces, the Ren-
aissance.
THE RENAISSANCE
For a while the Papacy, spent by its great effort of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, went to pieces. The Latin ideas for which it
stood began to lose ground rapidly as Dante created the Italian lan-
guage (1300), and as, in the course of the next two centuries, French,
English, and German assumed definite literary shape. There was
not only a loss of faith in Latin forms, but a desire to transmute
1 8 HISTORY
religious doctrine into the new modes of language, and especially
to have a vernacular Bible. Assailed in this manner, Rome stimu-
lated theological studies, helped to create the mediaeval universities,
and tried to revivify the philosophy which Alexandria had given
her in the creeds by going back to the texts of the golden age of
Greece with Aquinas.
It was of no avail. Europe felt a new life, a new nationalism mov-
ing within her. Voyages of discovery to India, to America, first
stirred imaginations, and later poured into the itching palms of
ambitious statesmen, soldiers, artists, vast stores of gold. The pulse
of the world beat quicker. Constantinople fell, a thousand years
after its foundation, into the hands of the Turk, and its stores
of manuscripts, of art, of craftsmen, poured into Italy. Men became
inventors, innovators, artists, revolutionaries. Cesare Borgia at-
tempted, but failed, to create an Italian empire. Martin Luther at-
tempted to secede from the Church, and succeeded.
He declared that a man could save his soul by the grace of God
only, and on that basis started a wrangle of ideals and of wordy
disputations that plunged Europe once more into an inferno of war-
fare. It lasted until 1648, the peace of Westphalia, when it was found
that on the whole the northern parts of Europe had become Protes-
tant and the southern had remained Catholic.
FRANCE AND ENGLAND
At this very moment Louis XIV was beginning the reign that
was to mark out for France the great position she held in the Europe
of the last two centuries. The age of feudalism was fast passing.
The last great feudatories had worn out their strength in the wars
of religion. The monarchy had gained what they had lost, and now
set to work in the splendor and pageantry of Versailles to reduce
the once semi-independent feudal soldier into a mincing cour-
tier. The Bourbons succeeded in large part. They remained the
autocrats of France, with the privileged orders of the clergy and
aristocracy at a low level beneath them, and in unchecked control
of the machinery of government. That machinery they soon began to
abuse. Its complete breakdown came with the French Revolution in
1789.
HISTORY 19
This dramatic event resulted from a large number of convergent
and slow-acting causes. Among them we may note the fearful mis-
management of the Bourbon finances, inadequate food supply, and
the unrest of a highly educated middle class deprived of all influence
and opportunity in matters of government. That class got control
of the States General which became a national assembly, and set to
work to destroy Bourbonism in the name of liberty, equality, and
fraternity. Between the inexperience of this assembly and the im-
potence of the Court, rose the wild force of the Parisian mob, which
eventually drove France into war with outraged Europe, and brought
the Bourbons, with thousands of the noblest and best as well as a
few of the worst people of France, to the guillotine.
War which became successful, and the feebleness of the republican
government that succeeded the Reign of Terror, inevitably made
for a military dictatorship and a restoration of the monarchy. Na-
poleon Bonaparte, the greatest upstart in history, held France by his
magnetic gaze and iron grasp for fifteen years, while he organized
her as no European country had ever been organized, and with her
might in his control darted from torrid Egypt to arctic Russia in a
megalomaniac frenzy of conquest. He fell, leaving France so ex-
hausted that, for a brief spell, the Bourbons returned.
It had taken all Europe to pull down France and Napoleon, and
in the end distant Russia had dealt the most fatal wound. Yet it
was England that had proved the most constant, the most stubborn,
and the most triumphant enemy. And the quarrel between these
two countries, France and England, was that which went furthest
back in history.
For a while, during the dark epoch that followed Charlemagne,
the Normans had held by conquest a sort of middle country between
France and England. Under their duke, William, they conquered
England itself in 1066, and there set up a strong insular monarchy.
Their foothold in France, however, brought the Anglo-Norman
kings in conflict with their neighbor, and wars were to rage between
the two countries with only rare intermissions until 1815. At first
their object was largely territorial possession; later economic factors
grew more apparent, until in the eighteenth century and under Na-
poleon the struggle had become one for over-sea colonial empire.
2O HISTORY
SPAIN AND THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG
In the sixteenth century, with the House of Tudor on the English
throne, the perennial struggle of the English sovereigns against
France became complicated by the appearance of a new continental
power that might under given circumstances join hands with the
older enemy. This was Spain.
Since their defeat by the Franks at Tours, in 732, the Arabs had
steadily lost ground. For several centuries, however, they had pros-
pered in Spain, and there they had developed learning and the arts
with splendid success, at a moment when Christian Europe was
still plunged in darkness. But presently the feudal principalities
lodged in the Pyrenees and Asturian mountains began to gain
ground, and finally toward the end of the fifteenth century these
states came together in a united monarchy that conquered the last
Arab kingdom and founded modern Spain.
At this very moment, by one of the most remarkable coincidences
in European history, marriage alliances and other circumstances al-
most suddenly threw the Spanish kingdom, the great inheritance
of the Dukes of Burgundy, and the kingdom of Hungary, into the
hands of the Hapsburg dukes of Austria, who were to seat their
ruling princes on the imperial throne of Germany almost uninter-
ruptedly until the old Germanic empire closed its days in 1806.
This huge concentration of power in the hands of the Emperor,
Charles V (1519-1556), gave a marked turn to the situation created
by the outbreak of the Reformation. For France, which remained
Catholic, and England, which became Protestant, had both to face
the problem of the overtopping of the European equilibrium by the
inflated dominions of the Hapsburgs. This accounted for much in
the constantly shifting political adjustments of that age. It was not
until the close of the reign of Louis XIV (Treaty of Utrecht, 1713)
that the Hapsburg power was about balanced by the placing of a
Bourbon prince on the throne of Spain. From that moment France
and Spain tended to act together against England.
In England the religious upheaval lasted roughly about a century,
from Henry VIII to Cromwell; on the whole, it was less violent
HISTORY 21
than on the Continent. Its chief results were the establishment of
the Anglican Church and of those more markedly Protestant sects
from among which came the sturdy settlers of New England.
THE FOUNDING OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
It was during the wars of religion that England came into a
struggle with the new Hapsburg-Spanish power. It had its tremen-
dously dramatic episodes in the cruise of the Great Armada, and
its fascinatingly romantic ones in the voyages of discovery and semi-
piratical exploits of the British seamen who burst the paper walls
that Spain had attempted to raise around the southern seas. The
broad ocean, the gold of the Indies, the plantations of sugar, of to-
bacco, of coffee, the growing settlements and countries of a new
world, these became the subject of strife from that time on. And as
Spain declined in her vigor after the Armada, and a century later
became the client of France, so the struggle narrowed itself to one
between the latter power and England.
In the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), England established her su-
premacy in this world-wide struggle, and although in the next war
she lost her American colonies, yet when she met France again in
1793, her trade and manufactures, her unrivaled geographical and
economic situation, and her politic and businesslike statesmanship,
had placed her at the head of the nations of Europe. She joined the
European alliance against France in 1793, and with only two short
intervals remained in the field against her until at Waterloo, twenty-
two years later, Napoleon was finally defeated by Wellington and
Bliicher.
During this gigantic struggle France faced two problems, that of
the sea and England, that of the land and the three great military
powers of northeast Europe Austria, Russia, Prussia. Toward the
end, after Napoleon had failed in Spain and got into a death grapple
with Russia, it was the Continental issue that obscured the other.
But England kept her eye firmly fixed on the sea, on colonies, on
water-borne trade; so that when at the Congress of Vienna (1815)
the powers parceled out the shattered empire, England was left by
common consent the only great sea and colonial power.
22 HISTORY
MODERN EUROPE
A period of reaction followed the fall of Napoleon, but in 1848
it came to a close in a storm of revolution. Population had grown,
means of communication were multiplying fast and promoting in-
tellectual as well as economic activity, political privileges were un-
duly restricted, governments were old-fashioned. In Italy, and in
Germany where the old empire had perished in 1806, were the seeds
of a new nationalism. From Palermo to Paris, and from Paris to Vi-
enna, a train of revolutionary explosions was fired, and for two years
Europe was convulsed. A new Bonaparte empire arose in France,
and in Italy and Germany a national idea was founded, though not
for the moment brought to its consummation. That was to take
twenty years more, and to be vastly helped by the tortuous ambitions
of Napoleon III ably turned to use by Cavour and by Bismarck.
In 1859 France helped the House of Savoy to drive Austria from the
valley of the Po, and thereby cleared the way for the liberation and
fusion of all Italy by Cavour and Garibaldi. In 1866 Prussia expelled
the House of Hapsburg from Germany, and four years later consoli-
dated her work by marching to the walls of Paris at the head of a
united German host which there acclaimed William of Hohenzollern
chief of a new Germanic empire.
What has happened since then, and chiefly the scramble for colo-
nies or for establishing economic suzerainty, belongs more to the
field of present politics than of history. For that reason it may be
left out of account. And so indeed has much else been left out of
account for which the limit of space fixed for this essay has proved
altogether too narrow. If a last word may be added to help the
reader to gather in the harvest from that trampled and mutilated
field which we call history let it be this, that everything turns on a
point of view, on a mental attitude. The reader is the spectator of
the pageant; he must be cool to judge and discriminate, with no bias
toward praise or blame, content merely to observe as the constant
stream unfolds itself in all its changing colors, but with a mind
ready to judge human actions and motives, an imagination ready to
seize on the ever-living drama of fact, and a heart ready to respond
to those countless acts of heroism that have ennobled great men and
great races, and with them all humanity.
II. ANCIENT HISTORY
BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM SCOTT FERGUSON
OF the three periods o approximately fifteen hundred years
each into which the history of the Western World falls,
two belong to the domain of antiquity.
The first of these "links in the chain of eternity" includes the rise,
maturity, and decay of the Oriental civilization at its three distinct
but interconnected centers, Egypt, Babylonia, and Crete-Mycenae.
The second reaches from 1200 B. C. to 300 A. D., and it too is filled
with the growth, fruition, and decline of a civilization the high
material and intellectual culture of the Greeks and Romans. Over-
lapping this for several centuries, the third or Christian period runs
down to our own time. The nineteenth century of our era may be
regarded as the opening of a fourth period, one of untold possibilities
for human development.
The Greeks, like the Christians, went to school for many centuries
to their predecessors. Their earliest poems, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey"
of Homer, are in one sense a legacy from the Cretan-Mycenaean age,
in which the scene of their action is laid. None the less, like the
peoples of mediaeval and modern Europe, the Greeks owed the pro-
duction of their most characteristic things to their own native effort.
It was in the eighth and seventh centuries B. C. that the Greeks
became a new species of mankind. In this, the time of their expan-
sion from an ^Egean into a Mediterranean people, they shook off
the bonds which had shackled the Oriental spirit, and, trusting to
their own intellects, faced without flinching the grave problems of
human life. When they then awoke to a realization of their position,
they found themselves in the possession of cities which were at the
same time states. Political connection between them there was none,
and slender indeed were the ties of sentiment, language, and religion
which bound to one another the Hellenes of Miletus, Corinth, Syra-
cuse, Marseilles, and the hundreds of other Greek city-states then in
23
24 HISTORY
existence. The complexity of the map may be appreciated by ob-
serving that Crete alone had twenty-three distinct states. In Greece,
as elsewhere, cities in which life was at once national and municipal
proved the most favorable soil for the growth of free institutions.
THE INDIVIDUALISM OF GREECE
The keynote of the formative age of Greece was the rise of indi-
vidualism. Poets freed themselves from the Homeric conventions,
and dealt not as of yore with the deeds of ancient heroes, but with
their own emotions, ideas, and experiences. They laid aside the
measure and diction of the Epos and wrote every man and woman
in his native rhythm and dialect. Sculptors and painters, long since
accustomed to work in the spirit of a school, and to elaborate more
and more scrupulously certain types of art, now became conscious
that so much of their work was of their own creation that they
began laying claim to it by adding their signatures.
The problems of religion were no longer satisfactorily settled by
the Homeric revelation. They forced themselves directly upon the
attention of every thinking individual. One man remained orthodox,
another took refuge in the emotional cults of Dionysos and Demeter,
another revolted and sought to explain the world as a product of
natural laws and not of divine creation. Men who had earlier been
obscured by their respective families, clans, and brotherhoods, now
severed themselves for all public purposes from these associations,
recognizing only the authority of a state which threw open its
privileges to all alike. There were revolters in politics as there were
revolters in religion and in art: the tyrants are the kinsmen of the
personal poets, Archilochus, Sappho, Alcaeus, and of scientists like
Thales of Miletus and the Ionian physicists.
The Asiatic Greeks were in general the leaders at this time, and
Miletus was the greatest city in the entire Greek world.
SPARTA ATHENS THEBES
The sixth century which followed was an age of reaction. Men
shrank from the violent outbreaks of the preceding generations. It
was the time of the "seven wise men," of the precept "nothing in
excess," of the curbing of aristocracies with their claim to be a law
HISTORY 25
unto themselves. During this epoch of repression a rich and diversi-
fied culture which had developed in Sparta was narrowed down to
one single imperious interest war and preparation for war. With
the leveling down of the Spartan aristocracy went the decay of the
art and letters of which it had been the bearer. The Spartan people
became an armed camp living a life of soldierly comradeship and of
puritanical austerity, ever solicitous lest its serfs (there were fifteen of
them to every Spartan) should revolt and massacre, ever watchful
lest the leadership which it had established in Greek affairs (there
were 15,000 Spartans and 3,000,000 Greeks) should be imperiled.
In Athens the course of development had been directly the opposite
of this. There, too, the nobles were ousted from their monopoly
of political rights, but on the other hand, the serfs were admitted to
citizenship. The men who molded Athens in its period of demo-
cratic growth were themselves aristocrats who never doubted for
a moment that the culture of their order would ennoble the life of
the masses. Hence no pains or expenses were spared by them to build
and maintain at their own cost public palcestrce and gymnasia
in which poor and rich alike could obtain a suppleness and grace of
body that added charm and vigor to their movements; and to insti-
tute so-called musical contests in which the people generally had to
participate, and the preparation for which incited all classes to study
literature and art above all to learn the words and the music of
lyric and dramatic choruses. The aristocracy died down in Athens,
but the Athenians became the aristocracy of all Greece.
That they did so was largely the work of their most brilliant
statesman, Themistocles, whose "Life" by Plutarch is included in
The Harvard Classics. 1 Under his far-sighted guidance Athens built
an invincible fleet at great financial sacrifice, cooperated with Sparta
with singular devotion and unparalleled heroism in beating off the
Persians, and established her maritime empire. Aristides 2 was at
first his unsuccessful rival and later his faithful collaborator, and
Pericles, 3 whose interest in science, philosophy, jurisprudence, art,
and literature makes him the best exponent of the culminating epoch
of Greek development, profited sagaciously by their work. He both
perfected the institutions of Athenian democracy and defined and
1 Harvard Classics, xii, 5. z H. C., xii, 78. 3 H. C., xii, 35.
26 HISTORY
organized its imperial mission. No man in high place ever took
more seriously the doctrine that all citizens were equally capacitated
for public service, yet no more ardent imperialist than he ever lived.
The truth is that Athenian democracy with all that it implies
was impossible without the Athenian maritime empire. The sub-
ject allies were as indispensable to the Athenians as the slaves, me-
chanics, and traders are to the citizens of Plato's ideal republic.
This empire Sparta sought to destroy, and to this end waged
fruitless war on Athens for ten years (431-421 B. C.). What she
failed to accomplish, Alcibiades, 4 the evil genius of Athens, effected,
for at his insistence the democrats embarked on the fatal Sicilian
expedition. After the dreadful disaster which they sustained before
Syracuse (413 B. C.), their dependencies revolted and ceased paying
them tribute; whereupon, unable to make head against the Sicilians,
Spartans, and Persians, who had joined forces against her, Athens
succumbed in 405 B. C. It is doubtful whether any other city of
50,000 adult males ever undertook works of peace and war of similar
magnitude. Athens led Greece when Greece led the world.
The Spartans took her place, but they held it only through the
support given them by their confederates, Persia and Syracuse. When
they quarreled with the Persians they at once lost it; regained it by
the Kings' Peace of 387 B. C., but only to fall before Thebes sixteen
years later. Thebes depended solely upon her great warrior-states-
man, Epaminondas. His death in battle, in 362 B. C., meant the
downfall of the Theban supremacy, and at the birth of Alexander the
Great in 356 B. C. the claim could be made that what the Greeks
had sought for two hundred years had now been accomplished: all
the European Greek cities, great and small, were again free as they
had been in the seventh century. In reality, as Plutarch's biography
of Demosthenes 5 shows, they lived rent by factional struggles, in
constant fear and envy of one another, and under the shadow of a
great peril which union, not disunion, could alone avert.
MACEDON
Philip of Macedon united Greece under his own leadership, and
with the power thus secured Alexander the Great laid the Persian
4 //. C., xii, 106. 5 H. C., xii, 191.
HISTORY 27
Empire prostrate and open for swift and persistent Greek coloniza-
tion. As Machiavelli in his "Prince" 6 points out, "his successors had
to meet no other difficulty than that which arose among themselves
from their own ambitions." This was sufficient, however. It led to
a thirty years' war such as had never before been seen. At its end
the Graeco-Macedonian world was paralyzed by an unstable balance
of power in which Egypt, under the Ptolemies, by using its great
wealth to maintain a magnificent fleet held Macedon and Asia in
check. The unification of Italy under Rome (343-270 B. C.) and the
subsequent destruction of the Carthaginian Empire (264-201 B. C.)
brought into hostile conflict with Egypt's enemies a military state
which was far stronger than any individual Greek kingdom. This
state had a population of 5,000,000, an army list of 750,000, and it
could keep 100,000 men in the field for many years at a stretch.
Such a force could be stopped only by a federation of the entire
Greek world. The Greeks again paid the just penalty for their
disunion, and after a bitter struggle they sank under the Roman
sway.
THE RISE OF ROME
The Romans who conquered the Greeks were not "gentlemen"
like Cicero 7 and Caesar 8 and their contemporaries of a hundred and
fifty years later. Their temper is only partially revealed in Plu-
tarch's "Coriolanus," 9 in which a legend which, however, the Ro-
mans and Greeks of Plutarch's time (46-125 A. D.) believed to be
a fact is made to illustrate the alleged uncompromising character
of their political struggles and the lofty virtues of their domestic
life. In fact, they had many of the qualities of Iroquois, and when
they took by storm a hostile city, their soldiers uncultured peasants,
once the iron bonds of discipline were relaxed often slew every
living thing which came in their way: men, women, children, and
even animals. The world was not subdued by Rome with rosewater
or modern humanitarian methods.
Five generations later the Italians were in a fair way to being
Hellenized, so powerful had been the reaction of the eastern prov-
inces upon them in the interval. During this epoch of rapid dena-
6 H. C., xxxvl, 7. 7 H. C., xii, 218. 8 H. C., xii, 264. 9 H. C., xii, 147.
28 HISTORY
tionalization, the Roman aristocracy, which had guided the state first
to internal harmony, then to stable leadership in Italy, and finally
to world-empire, became divided against itself. The empire had
nurtured a stock of contractors, money lenders, grain and slave
dealers the so-called equestrian order which pushed the great
landed proprietors, who constituted the senate, from position to po-
sition; wrested from them control of the provinces which it then
pillaged most outrageously, and helped on the paralysis of govern-
ment from which the rule of the emperors was the only escape.
The youth of Cicero coincided with the suicidal strife between the
agrarian and the commercial wings of the aristocracy. Cicero, being
a "new man," had to attach himself to great personages like Pompey,
in order to make his way in politics, so that his political course and
his political views were both "wobbly"; but he had at least one
fixed policy, that the "harmony of the orders" must be restored at
all costs. 10 This, however, was impracticable.
THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF JULIUS AND AUGUSTUS CAESAR
The empire had also bred a standing army, and the necessity that
this be used against the Teutons, Italians, Greeks, and Gauls bred
leader after leader who could dictate terms to the civil government.
The last of these was Julius Caesar. He was the last because he
decided not to coerce the senate, but to put himself in its place. His
short reign (49-44 B. C.) is a memorable episode in the develop-
ment of Rome, in that it was the first reappearance of a world mon-
archy since Alexander the Great's death. Caesar is greeted in contem-
porary Greek documents as "the Saviour of the entire race of men."
After his murder a quarrel arose between rival candidates for the
command of the troops Caesar's troops, as the assassins found to
their sorrow. Antony, 11 his master of horse, finally took one half
of them with him to the East, to finish Caesar's projected campaign
against the Parthians, to live in Alexandria at the feet of Cleopatra,
Caesar's royal mistress who was not only an able and unscrupulous
woman, but also the heir of a bad political tradition to bring Egypt
into the Roman Empire by annexing the Roman Empire to the Egyp-
tian crown. The most that can be said for him is that he was a kind
10 See Cicero's "Letters" in Harvard Classics, ix, 79. n H. C., xii, 322.
HISTORY 29
of bastard Caesar. On the other hand, Augustus, Caesar's adopted
son, to whom the command of the rest of the troops fell, proved to
be a statesman of the highest order. He roused national and repub-
lican feeling in Italy against Antony and his Egyptian "harlot";
but, after defeating them at Actium in 31 B. C., he had to reckon
with the demon or was it a ghost? which he had conjured up.
This he did by establishing a peculiar compromise between repub-
licanism and monarchy called the principate, which lasted, with
fitful reversions to Caesar's model, and gradual degeneracy toward
a more and more complete despotism, until the great military revolt
of the third century A. D. occurred, when the Roman system of
government, and with it the Graeco-Roman civilization, sank in
rapid decay. For two hundred and fifty years sixty millions of peo-
ple had enjoyed the material blessings of peace and orderly govern-
ment. They had cut down forests, made the desert a garden, built
cities by the hundreds, and created eternal monuments of the sense
for justice and magnificence which penetrated from Rome to the
ends of the known world. Then they became the helpless prey of
a few hundred thousand native and barbarian soldiers. The decline
of the Roman Empire is the greatest tragedy in history.
During the principate the prince or emperor seemed to be the
source of all actions, good and bad. Upon the will and character
of a single individual hung suspended, apparently, the life and weal
of every human being. It was, therefore, natural for this age to be
interested in biography. Hence Plutarch is at once a "document"
for the time in which he lived and a charming "betrayer" of the
Graeco-Roman world on which he looked back.
III. THE RENAISSANCE
BY PROFESSOR MURRAY ANTHONY POTTER
f^ AHE Renaissance followed what is, even now, sometimes
called the Dark Ages. The almost inevitable inference is
JL that a period of darkness was succeeded by one of light.
The veil of night rent asunder, the world, rejoicing in the sun's
rays, with glad energy again took up its work. But much of the
darkness of what are more fitly called the Middle Ages is due to
the dimness of vision of those who have baptized the period with
a forbidding name, and if we called the Renaissance an age of light,
is it not because we are dazzled by mere glamour? After all, the
Renaissance was the offspring of the Middle Ages, and a child must
frequently bear the burdens of its parents.
One of the burdens of the Middle Ages was obscurantism, and ob-
scurantism is that which "prevents enlightenment, or hinders the
progress of knowledge and wisdom." Instead of dying at the close of
the Middle Ages, it lived through the Renaissance, wary and alert,
its eyes ever fixed on those whom it regarded as enemies, falling upon
them from ambush when because of age or weakness their courage
flagged, and it triumphed in the sixteenth century. It can never die
as long as there are men. Neither can superstition die, nor fear, nor
inveterate evil passions, which, if they smolder for a time, will
unfailingly burst forth and rage with greater fury. If such be your
pleasure, you can, with some plausibility, represent the Renaissance
as darker than the Middle Ages. Machiavelli, 1 the Medicis, and the
Borgias have long been regarded as sin incarnate in odious forms.
Making all due allowances for exaggeration and perversion of truth,
the Renaissance was not a golden age, and the dramas of horror 2 are
something more than the nightmares of a madman. And yet it is
a luminous age. The sun has its spots, and the light of the Renais-
1 For Machiavelli's political ideals, see his "Prince" in Harvard Classics, xxxvi, 5,
and Macaulay's essay "Machiavelli" in Harvard Classics, xxvii, 363.
2 See, for example, Webster's "Duchess of Malfi," in Harvard Classics, xlvii, 753.
30
HISTORY 31
sance is all the more intense because of the blackness of the inter-
mingling shadows.
THE INDIVIDUALISM OF THE RENAISSANCE
No age can be adequately defined by a short phrase, but it was a
happy thought which prompted the statement that the Renaissance
was the age of the discovery of man. Add the importance, not only
of man in general, but of the individual. It is true that men of
marked individuality abounded in the Middle Ages. You have
only to think of Gregory the Great, Gregory of Tours, Charlemagne,
Liutprand, Abelard, and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. What is new
is a general awakening to the fact that the perfection of individuality
is so important, and the desire to force your contemporaries and
posterity to regard you as different from other men.
It might be said, with a certain amount of exaggeration of course,
that the mediaeval man was Plato's dweller in the cave, who suc-
ceeded at last in making his escape into the light of day, and so
doing became the Renaissance man enraptured by what lay within
his field of vision, and allured by the infinite promise of what lay
beyond. And as if the actual world cramped him, he must discover
ideal realms and live in the past and the future as well as the
present.
THE REVIVAL OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY
His interest in antiquity is well known. With the ardor of treasure
hunters, scholars sought for classical manuscripts and antiquities,
in France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and the East, and the
enthusiasm excited by their success could not have been greater had
they discovered El Dorado. They were generous with their treas-
ures, door after door opening upon antiquity was thrown back, and
men swarmed through them eager to become better acquainted with
their idols and obtain from them information which their teachers
of the Middle Ages were powerless to furnish. Some were so
dazzled and docile that, instead of freeing themselves from bond-
age, they merely chose new masters, but, after all, more gracious
ones.
Petrarch, anticipating Andrew Lang, writes letters to dead authors.
32 HISTORY
Of Cicero he says: "Ignoring the space of time which separates us,
I addressed him with a familiarity springing from my sympathy
with his genius." And in his letter to Livy: "I should wish (if it
were permitted from on high), either that I had been born in thine
age, or thou in ours; in the latter case, our age itself, and in the
former, I personally should have been the better for it." Montaigne
says that he had been brought up from infancy with the dead, and
that he had knowledge of the affairs of Rome "long before he had
any of those of his own house; he knew the capitol and its plan
before he knew the Louvre, and the Tiber before he knew the Seine. 3
THE RENAISSANCE CURIOSITY
This infatuation for antiquity may seem bizarre, but it did not
exclude intense interest on the part of the Renaissance man for
the world about him, his town, his country, and remote as well as
neighboring nations. Petrarch likes to speak of the marvels of
India and Ceylon. There were drops of gypsy blood in his veins,
but he was afraid of stealing time from his beloved books, and
remains an excellent example of the "far-gone" fireside traveler,
who in his study roamed through distant parts, spared the in-
clemency of the weather and the incommodities and dangers of
the road.
Montaigne, who loved "rain and mud like a duck," was of stronger
fiber. "Nature," he says, "has placed us in the world free and
unbound; we imprison ourselves in certain straits." "Travel is, in
my opinion, a very profitable exercise; the soul is then continually
employed in observing new and unknown things, and I do not
know, as I have often remarked, a better school wherein to model
life than by incessantly exposing to it the diversity of so many
other lives, fancies and usances, and by making it relish so perpetual
a variety of forms of human nature."
From one source or another, then, the Renaissance men acquired
an immense number of facts, and were able to retain them; for
much is said about their inexhaustible memory. The important
thing to know is what they did with them. Was their passion for
3 Cf. Montaigne's "Institution and Education of Children" in Harvard Classics,
xxxii, 29-71; and especially on his own education, pp. 65-69. See also Sainte-Beuve's
essay "Montaigne" in Harvard Classics, xxxii, 105.
HISTORY 33
facts that of a miser for his gold, of a savage for shiny, many-
colored beads?
A fact is a delightful, wholesome thing. To the everlasting credit
of the Renaissance men they appreciated its value, and worked
hard to acquire it, thus grappling with reality. No longer would
they merely scan the surface of things; they would pierce, as Dante
said, to the very marrow with the eyes of the mind. Two or more
centuries later than Dante, Machiavelli complained that his con-
temporaries loved antiquity, but failed to profit by the lessons which
are implicit in its history. But Machiavelli was not entirely just.
The Renaissance men were tender gardeners, and in their loving
care every fact, every theory, every suggestion burgeoned, flowered,
and bore fruit.
Some of them, it is true, recognized limitations to the versatility
characteristic of the spirit of the age. Pier Paolo Vergerio, after
reviewing the principal branches of study, states that a liberal educa-
tion does not presuppose acquaintance with them all; "for a thorough
mastery of even one of them might fairly be the achievement of a
lifetime. Most of us, too, must learn to be content with modest
capacity as with modest fortune. Perhaps we do wisely to pursue
that study which we find most suited to our intelligence and our
tastes, though it is true we cannot rightly understand one subject
unless we can perceive its relation to the rest." These words might
well have been written to-day. Very probably they were equally
apposite in the Renaissance; yet they seem cautious, almost over-
timorous, in a period when so many men were not only accomplished
scholars, authors of repute, capable public servants or statesmen, con-
noisseurs of the fine arts, painters, sculptors, and architects them-
selves. There seems to have been nothing that they could not do if
they wished.
THE AGE OF DISCOVERY
Every interest was turned to account. In their pursuit of per-
fection they required an ampler environment. The age of the Ren-
aissance is the age of the great discoveries, of Diaz, Columbus,
Vasco da Gama, Vespucci, the Cabots, Magellan, Francis Drake, 4
4 For the narratives of these explorers see H. C., xliii, 2 iff., xxxiii, 129 ff.
34 HISTORY
and others, whose journeys were undertaken with a far different
purpose than the mere satisfying of restless curiosity.
Equally practical was the study of the heavens. The stars had
long been regarded as flaming beacons in the sky, prophets and
guides for man to his ultimate goal. Their influence, benign or
malignant, determined the fates of individuals and nations. It
behooved the prudent man to consult them, and he studied the
hidden workings of nature not only to comprehend them, but to
make them serve his purpose. There were many failures, but if the
Renaissance is the age of Faust, it is also that of Copernicus.
In the study of the world about him, of the firmament, of the
past and the future, the Renaissance man felt his subject was some-
thing created. In his turn he took up the role of creator. To escape
from an importunate world he called into existence the Arcadia of
the pastorals, the fairyland of the adult man. It has almost vanished
from our sight, but its music and fragrance still hover in the air.
Another manifestation of dissatisfaction with the actual world, more
practical, is the creation of ideal commonwealths, Cities of the Sun,
or Utopias. 5
THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY
The lover of beauty, nowadays shrinks from the Utopias of the
Renaissance, but the practical men of that age cherished beauty
with an affection we can hardly conceive. It was bone of their
bone and flesh of their flesh. It was the one guest ever sure of
welcome. Dante, in the tornata of his first ode, says: "Ode! I
believe that they shall be but rare who shall rightly understand
thy meaning, so intricate and knotty is thy utterance of it. Where-
fore, if perchance it come about that thou take thy way into the
presence of folk who seem not rightly to perceive it; then I pray
thee to take heart again, and say to them, O my beloved lastling:
'Give heed, at least, how beautiful I am.' " They would give heed,
and to such extremes did many Renaissance men go in their worship
of beauty that they prostituted her and debased themselves. The
majority remained sound of heart, and though tortured with doubts,
and stumbling again and again, they succeeded in making them-
selves worthy of communion with God.
5 See, for example, Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" in H. C., xxxvi, 135.
HISTORY 35
Last of all, the question might be asked : is the Renaissance more
than a period of storm and stress, a link between the Middle Ages
and Modern Times? Like every age, it is one of transition, but it
is also one of glorious achievement. If any one doubts this, let him
remember only a few names of the imposing roll call Petrarch,
Boccaccio, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Montaigne, Calderon, 6
Lope de Vega, Cervantes, 7 Shakespeare, 8 and in their ranks Dante 9
takes his place with the same serene and august confidence with
which he joined the company of Virgil and Homer.
6 H. C., xxvi, sff . 7 H. C., xiv.
8 For works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the Elizabethan drama, see
H. C., xlvi and xlvii.
9 H. C., xx.
IV. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
BY PROFESSOR ROBERT MATTESON JOHNSTON
THE French Revolution concentrates within the narrow space
o five years, from the 5th of May, 1789, to the 9th of
Thermidor, 1794, all that man can conceive as most dramatic,
repulsive, uplifting, terrifying, glorious, and disheartening. There
is never a happy medium about it, nothing balanced or discriminat-
ing; everything is extreme, human emotion rising to the most in-
tense collective utterance at the pangs of starvation, of murder, of
oppression, of tyranny, at the joy of decisive action and of climbing
the heights whence liberty and betterment can be seen streaking the
horizon with hope. That is why the Revolution fascinates the
ordinary reader more than perhaps any other period of history. It
sets before him the bounds of the sublime and of the ignoble, of
all that lies undeveloped in himself never, in all probability, to find
expression.
THE CONTRASTS OF THE REVOLUTION
How extraordinarily difficult to interpret such a movement! Even
Carlyle, with all his passionate humanity, fails to catch the figure
of that unfortunate woman who tramped through the empty streets
of Paris at dawn one gray autumn day, starvation and despair in
her eyes, mechanically tapping her drum and lugubriously chanting:
"Du pain! Du pain!" ("Bread! Bread!") That distressing figure,
poignant in all its naked emotions, was to uproot the Bourbons
from Versailles, to make of Paris once more the capital of France,
and by that deed to divert the whole current of French history
from a channel of two centuries. And that is the contrast, the
difficulty, at every point. Mirabeau is a venal and corrupt individual
whose turpitude insistently pursues us, and yet at moments he is the
statesman of grand vision whose eye unerringly pierces through the
veil of time. Charlotte Corday is but a simple and quite unimportant
36
HISTORY 37
young woman from the country; she drives a knife into Marat's
heart, and with that heroic gesture flashes light to the very depths
of a terrific crisis.
HISTORIES OF THE REVOLUTION
A curious fact about the French Revolution, but not so strange
as it would seem when one thinks the matter over, is that there
should be no good history of it. The three outstanding books are
those of Michelet, Carlyle, and Taine; and all three are destined
to live long as masterpieces, intellectual and artistic; yet not one
of them is wholly satisfactory to the present age, whether for its
statement of facts, for its literary method, or for its mentality; while
there is no sign at the present day that we are likely soon to get
another great history of the Revolution. On the contrary, the
tendency is for historians to concentrate their attention on the end-
less details or varied aspects of the movement, finding in each of
these a sufficient object for the exercise of their industry and talents.
Following that example, we may here perhaps best touch on the
reaction between France and England in terms of the Revolution,
and particularly in regard to those two famous books, Voltaire's
"Letters on the English," 1 and Burke's "Reflections on the French
Revolution." 2
THE REVOLUTION OF IDEAS
The early part of the eighteenth century witnessed a great change
in the current of ideas in France. The death of Louis XIV, and the
coming to power of Philippe Due d'Orleans as regent, dispelled
all the old prestige of glittering Versailles, and gave France a wit
and debauchee for ruler who cared nothing for pomp or etiquette.
He enjoyed life after his own unedifying fashion; he gambled
and encouraged stock exchange speculation; he relaxed the muzzle
and let slip the courtier's leash with which Louis had curbed the
great men of letters of his epoch. And immediately French writers
dashed away into the boundless field of political satire and criticism.
Montesquieu led off with his "Lettres Persanes," in 1721, and Vol-
taire followed hard at his heels with his "Letters on the English,"
in 1734. The hounds of spring were at winter's traces.
1 Harvard Classics, xxxiv, 65. 2 H. C., xxiv, 143.
38 HISTORY
VOLTAIRE'S DARING
Montesquieu's violent arraignment of the old order passed only
because he seasoned it more than generously with a sauce piquante
that titillated the depraved taste of the Regent to a nicety. Voltaire's
book was in even worse case; it was immediately condemned, and
an order was issued to arrest the author and imprison him in the
Bastille. Voltaire had to fly for safety. And yet, to a modern reader,
the "Letters on the English" doubtless seems a perfectly mild affair.
It is only by bearing in mind the conditions of political despotism
that then existed in France that one can realize the boldness of the
book. In it Voltaire gives his impressions of England in his
supremely lucid style, but after the fashion of the man who throws
a ball at some object from which he tries to catch it on the rebound.
He is writing of England, but he is thinking of France; and in the
customs and institutions of the former he seeks the examples from
which he can measure those of his own country.
Voltaire is, on the whole, inclined to think well of the strange
people whom he visited across the Channel, though he cannot
avoid the conclusion that their philosophy, liberty, and climate lead
straight to melancholia. England appears to him the land of con-
tentment, prosperity, order, and good government. Monarchy is
restrained by a well-balanced parliamentary system, and above all
there is toleration in matters of faith and in matters of opinion. He
frankly admires, and calls on his countrymen to copy, what seems
to him the most admirable of models. It may be noted, however,
that he is clearly nervous of strictly political questions, and he always
prefers getting around to his plea for tolerance by the circuitous
road of religion.
AN ENGLISH VIEW OF THE REVOLUTION
With Burke, more than half a century later, we get the strongest
possible contrast. He admires nothing; he reprobates everything;
he foresees the worst. For one thing, the Revolution had now
actually broken out. Already its best aspects were becoming ob-
scured, as disorder fast grew, and as the National Assembly de-
liberately adopted a policy of destruction to defeat Bourbon apathy
HISTORY 39
and insouciance. France appeared to be threatened with anarchy,
and that seemed to Burke more intolerable than the long-continued
conditions of tyranny and misgovernment that were responsible for
it. He was an old man, and more conservative than in his younger
days. To him the glorious revolution of William of Orange and the
Whigs seemed the perfect model, and the parliamentary institutions
of Britain the ideal form of government. The disorders of Paris
and the methods of the National Assembly shocked and wounded
him, so he turned on them and rent them. He admitted, indeed,
that he was not in a position to pronounce judgment: "I do not
pretend to know France as correctly as some others," and so he
confined himself to the role of the advocate. His pleading against the
Revolution echoed through the Courts of Europe, carried conviction
in almost every quarter where doubt existed, and to this day remains
the most effective indictment against the men who made modern
France. The success of Burke's book was in part due to the fact
that its publication was followed by the Reign of Terror, which
seemed to prove the author's argument, but above all to its brilliant
and noble, if somewhat too ample, style. Of this one example only
will be given:
BURKE ON MARIE ANTOINETTE
"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of
France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted
on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful
vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering
the elevated sphere she just began to move in glittering like the
morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a Revolu-
tion! And what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion
that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added
titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love,
that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against
disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should
have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant
men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers. I thought ten
thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge
even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry
40 HISTORY
is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has suc-
ceeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever." 3
Thus Burke proudly looked down on the miseries of France,
while Voltaire had admiringly looked up to the prosperities of Eng-
land. And we who come more than a century later, while recogniz-
ing their preeminence as men of letters, may perceive that as thinkers
they were perhaps a little too near their objects. Burke's arguments
are always admirable but unconvincing; while Voltaire's often justi-
fied praise of the English reposes on an obvious failure to understand
them.
3 H. C., xxiv, 212-213.
V. THE TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT
OF THE UNITED STATES
BY PROFESSOR FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER
EPANSION has been the very law of American life. In the
treaties which record the successive annexations of the terri-
tory of the United States we may read the story of the
nation's acquisition of its physical basis, a basis comparable in area
and resources not to any single European country but to Europe as
a whole. If a map of the United States is laid down upon a map
of Europe drawn to the same scale, with San Francisco resting on
the coast of Spain, Florida will occupy the land of Palestine, Lake
Superior will be adjacent to the southern shore of the Baltic, New
Orleans below the coast of Asia Minor, and the shores of North
Carolina will nearly coincide with the eastern end of the Black Sea.
All of Western Europe will lie beyond the Mississippi, the western
limits of the United States in 1783. These treaties 1 mark the stages
by which the Union acquired an area equal to all nations west of
the Black Sea.
THE BOUNDARIES OF THE NEW NATION
Freed from the fear of French attack after the peace of 1763, the
thirteen colonies declared their independence. Against the wishes
of Spain, and even against the pressure of her French ally in the
Revolutionary War, the United States secured from England by the
treaty of I783 2 boundaries which extended along the Great Lakes,
west to the Mississippi, and south to Florida, as well as the free
navigation of the Mississippi. Spain recovered from Britain Florida
which she had conquered in the course of the war.
But these boundaries were only paper rights, for England failed
1 The references in this lecture are to the volume of American Historical Docu-
ments, and especially to the collection of treaties, Harvard Classics, xliii.
2 H. C.,xliii, 174.
41
42 HISTORY
to give up her posts on the Great Lakes, alleging the neglect of the
United States to carry out the provisions of the treaty in regard to
loyalists and debts, and Canadian officials encouraged the Indians
across the Ohio to resist the advance of the Americans. In similar
fashion on the southwest Spain denied the right of England to con-
vey to the Union the territory between the Alleghenies and the Mis-
sissippi, and withheld the navigation of the river by means of her
possession of New Orleans. She also, in the period of the weak con-
federation, intrigued with leaders of the Kentucky and Tennessee
settlements to withdraw them from the Union; and, like England,
she used her influence over the Indians to restrain the American
advance.
While Indian wars were in progress north of the Ohio during
Washington's administration, the French Revolution broke out, and
England feared not only that the American expeditions against the
Indians were in reality directed against the posts which she retained
on the Great Lakes, but also that the United States would aid France
in a general attack on her. Breaking her historic alliance with Spain,
the French Republic, in 1783, tried to involve, first the Government
of the United States and then the western frontiersmen in attacks
upon Florida and Louisiana.
These were the critical conditions which in 1794 resulted in Jay's
mission and treaty by which England agreed to give up the western
posts.
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE MISSISSIPPI
Alarmed at the prospect of a union of England and the United
States, Spain not only made peace with France at Basle in 1795, but
also, by Pinckney's treaty in that year, conceded to the United States
the Mississippi boundary and the navigation of the river. The latter
concession was vital to the prosperity of the Mississippi Valley, for
only by way of this river could the settlers get their surplus crops to
a market.
It had become clear by 1795 that, with rival European nations
threatening the flanks of the American advance, interfering in
domestic politics, and tampering with the western frontiersmen, the
United States was in danger of becoming a mere dependency of the
HISTORY 43
European state system. 3 Partly to ensure such a dependence of the
United States upon herself, and partly to procure a granary for her
West Indian Islands, France now urged Spain to give her Louisiana
and Florida, promising protection against the American advance.
The Alleghenies seemed to the leaders of French policy the proper
boundaries for the Union. At last; in 1800, Napoleon so far mastered
Spain as to force her to yield Louisiana to him; and the Spanish
Intendant at New Orleans, pending the arrival of French troops,
closed the Mississippi to American commerce. The West was in a
flame. It had now acquired a population of over three hundred and
eighty thousand, and it threatened the forcible seizure of New
Orleans. Even the peaceful and French-loving President Jefferson
hinted that he would seek an English alliance, and demanded the
possession of the mouth of the Mississippi from France, arguing
that whoever held that spot was our natural enemy. Convinced that
it was inexpedient to attempt to occupy New Orleans in view of the
prospect of facing the sea power of England and an attack by the
American settlers, Napoleon capriciously tossed the whole of the
Province of Louisiana to Jefferson by the Louisiana Purchase Treaty 4
of 1803, and thereby replenished his exchequer with fifteen million
dollars, made friends with the United States, and gave it the pos-
sibility of a noble national career by doubling its territory and by
yielding it the control of the great central artery of the continent.
EXTENSION OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
The expansive spirit of the West grew by what it fed on. The
Ohio valley coveted Canada, and the South wished Florida, where
England exercised an influence upon the Spanish administration. It
was the West that took the lead bringing on the war of 1812. In
the peace negotiations in 1814 Great Britain tried to establish a
neutral zone of Indian country between Canada and the Ohio Valley
settlements, but by the treaty 5 the United States retained its former
possessions. By the convention of 1818 they extended the boundary
between Canada and the United States from the Lake of the Woods
to the Rocky Mountains along the forty-ninth parallel, leaving the
3 Compare "Washington's Farewell Address," in H. C., xliii, 237, 238, 239; 243-246.
4 H. C., xliii, 250. 5 H. C., xliii, 255.
44 HISTORY
disputed Oregon country open to each nation for a term of years
without prejudice to the rights of either.
ACQUISITION OF FLORIDA AND TEXAS
In the same years the United States was pressing Spain to re-
linquish Florida. Claiming West Florida and Texas as a part of
the Louisiana Purchase, the Government annexed the former piece-
meal in 1810 and 1812. Taught by General Jackson's successful
although unauthorized invasion of Florida in 1818 that she held
that position on the Gulf only at the pleasure of the United States,
and hopeful, perhaps, to avert the threatened recognition of the
revolting Spanish-American colonies, Spain ceded Florida in i8i9, 6
drawing an irregular line between her possessions and those of the
United States which left* Texas as well as the other southwestern
territory in Spain's hands. Recognition of the revolted republics
followed in 1823 and thereafter the Union had to deal with Mexico
in place of Spain in acquiring mainland possessions. Russia with-
drew her claims to territory south of 54 40' in 1824, and as a result
of the negotiations which preceded this action, as well as by the
prospect of European intervention in Spanish America, President
Monroe in 1823 announced the famous Doctrine 7 which declared
the American continents no longer subject to European colonization
or intervention to oppress them or control their destiny.
Early in the thirties American missionaries entered the Oregon
country where the Hudson's Bay Company held sway under the
English flag. American settlers, chiefly descendants of the hardy
frontiersmen of the Mississippi Valley, also made settlements in
Mexico's province of Texas. In 1836 the Texans revolted, declared
their independence, and appealed to the United States for annexa-
tion. The northeastern boundary was settled by the Webster-Ash-
burton treaty 8 in 1842, leaving the fate of Oregon still undetermined.
In that very year an emigration of American farmers began across
the plains and mountains to that distant land, and relations between
the Union and England became strained. In Texas, also, European
interests were involved, for in the long interval between the forma-
tion of the Texan Republic and its annexation by the United States,
6 H. C., xliii, 268. 7 H. C., xliii, 277. *H. C., xliii, 280.
HISTORY 45
England and France used their influence to keep it independent.
California, moreover, furnished reason for apprehension, for Eng-
land had shown an interest in its fate, as Mexico, torn by internal
dissensions, gave evidence that her outlying provinces were likely
to drop from her nerveless hands.
The slavery contest now interrupted the old American expansive
tendencies, for while the South raised its voice of warning against
the possibility of a free Texas under British protectorate and de-
manded its annexation, the Whigs and anti-slavery men of the
North, alarmed at the spread of slavery and the prospect of new
slave States, showed opposition to further territorial acquisition in
the Southwest. But in the election of 1844, which was fought on the
issues of the "reoccupation of Oregon and the reannexation of
Texas," Polk, a Tennessee Scotch-Irishman, representing the his-
toric expansive spirit, won the Presidency. Texas was annexed as a
State under a joint resolution of Congress in 1845, before Polk was
inaugurated, and immediately thereafter he determined that if
Mexico made this annexation an occasion for war, she should be
compelled to cede us California and her other Southwestern lands
as the price of peace.
TO THE PACIFIC
He compromised the Oregon question with England by the
Treaty of 1846, accepting the forty-ninth parallel as the boundary,
in spite of the campaign cry of "fifty-four forty or fight." The same
year the Mexican war began, in which American troops overran
California and the intervening land.
With the American flag floating over the capital of Mexico, a
strong movement began to hold Mexico itself, or at least additional
territory. But by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo 9 in 1848 the
line was drawn along the Gila River and from its mouth to the
Pacific. Agitation for a southern route to the Pacific led to the
further acquisition of a zone south of the Gila by the Gadsden
Purchase of 1853.
By these annexations between 1846 and 1853 the United States
gained over 1,200,000 square miles of territory. Gold was discovered
9 //. C., xliii, 289.
46 HISTORY
in California in 1848, and unimagined riches in precious metals,
timber, and agricultural resources were later revealed in this vast
new empire. But most important of all was the fact that the nation
had at last made its lodgment on the shores of the Pacific, where it
was to be involved in the destiny of that ocean and its Asiatic shores.
The South, deprived of the benefits of these great acquisitions by
the compromise of 1850, tried in vain to find new outlets by Cuban
annexation. But the Civil War resulting from the rivalries of the
expanding sections engrossed the energies of the nation. At the
close of that war, Russia, which had given moral support to the
North when England and France were doubtful, offered the United
States her Alaskan territory and, not without opposition, Secretary
Seward secured the ratification of a treaty 10 in 1867 by which nearly
six hundred thousand square miles were added to our domains.
For nearly a third of a century after the Civil War the energies
of the Union were poured out in the economic conquest of the vast
annexations in its contiguous territory. In 1892 the Superintendent
of the Census announced that the maps of population could no
longer depict a frontier line bounding the outer edge of advancing
settlement. The era of colonization was terminating. The free lands
were being rapidly engrossed and the Union was reaching the con-
dition of other settled states.
THE ISLAND POSSESSIONS AND THE PANAMA CANAL
In this era the old expansive movement became manifest in a
new form by the Spanish-American War and the acquisition of land
oversea. It was the recognition of the independence of Cuba 11 by the
United States in 1898 and the intervention to expel Spain which
brought about the Spanish-American War; but once involved in
that war, the naval exigencies led to the conquest of the Philippines,
and Porto Rico as well as Cuba. Considerations of strategy also
facilitated the annexation of Hawaii 12 in 1898.
By the treaty of peace 13 in 1898 Spain ceded the Philippines and
Porto Rico and withdrew from Cuba, which obtained its autonomy
by the recall of the American troops in 1902.
H. C., xliii, 432. " H. C., xliii, 440. 12 H. C., xliii, 437.
13 H. C., xliii, 442.
HISTORY 47
The events of the war, and especially the dramatic voyage of the
Oregon around Cape Horn from the Pacific Coast to share in the
fight off Santiago, gave an impetus to the long debated project of
constructing the Isthmian Canal by the United States. With her
vastly increased power in the Pacific, her new possessions in the
Caribbean Sea, and the astonishing growth on the Pacific coast, the
canal seemed a necessity, and almost a part of our coast line. By
the Hay-Pauncefote treaty of 1901, England withdrew the obstacles
arising from the Clay ton-Bui wer treaty of 1850, and the United
States acquired the rights of the French Company, which had failed
in its undertaking to pierce the isthmus. When in 1903 Colombia
rejected a treaty providing for the canal, a revolution broke out in
Panama. President Roosevelt with extraordinary promptness recog-
nized the Republic of Panama and secured a treaty 14 from this
republic which was ratified in 1904, granting the canal zone and
various rights to the United States.
Thus at the beginning of the twentieth century the long process
of attrition of the United States upon the Spanish Empire was
brought to this striking climax. The feeble Atlantic colonies had
won a land extending across the continent, they had acquired de-
pendencies in the Caribbean, in the Pacific, and off the coast of
Asia, and they had provided for connecting the two oceans by the
Panama Canal.
14 H. C., xliii, 450.
POETRY
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY CARLETON NOYES, A. M.
/" ^HE human heart has ever dreamed of a fairer world than
the one it knows. No man, however dark his spirit, however
JL cramped his senses, is quite without the yearning after wider
horizons and a purer air. In a happy moment earth seems to hold
for all the promise of larger things. The moment passes; and the
world closes in again, actual, bare, unyielding, as before. Yet among
men there are some endowed with vision, an insight more penetrat-
ing and more sustained. To their liberated spirit the world unfolds
a farther prospect. Earth clothes itself for them in radiant vesture,
mute forms are speaking presences, the riddle of life resolves itself
into a meaning. To them it is granted to arrest the moment of
illumination, otherwise so fleeting; and, gifted further with a shap-
ing power, they are able to re-create the moment in enduring forms.
The men of vision are the seers and prophets; the shapers of the
revelation, re-creating it, are the artists and the poets.
What each of us is seeking the poet has already found. Poetry is
the step beyond, which we were about to take, but were not certain
of the way. In our experience from year to year, we are not without
glimpses of beauty in the world, a sense of meaning somewhere
within the shows of things. Of this beauty and this meaning poetry
is a fuller revelation. The poet gives us back the world we already
know, though it is a world transfigured; he draws his material from
stores to which we all have access, but with a difference. His vision,
clearer and more penetrating, transfigures the facts and discloses
the beauty only waiting to be thus revealed. His fresh sight of this
beauty quickens in him an emotion of wonder and of joy which
impels him to expression. Seeing the world in new combinations,
he selects from the common store of experience certain images
48
POETRY 49
colored by his mood. Of these images he weaves a pattern of words,
which re-create the beauty he has seen and are charged with that
deeper significance he has divined within the outward manifestation.
It is just because he sees farther and feels more intensely that he is
a poet; and then because he is able to phrase his experience in words
which have the power to create the vision and the meaning in us.
So the poet fashions that fairer world of which the heart has
dreamed; and by the mediation of his art it becomes ours for an
enduring possession. If this be indeed the office and destiny of
poetry, we may well ask whence it draws its inspiration and by
what means it accomplishes its high ends.
THE ORIGIN AND COURSE OF NARRATIVE POETRY
The older poetry of a people takes shape around a story. Child-
hood dearly loves a tale; for its simple heart finds the way out of a
reality it does not understand by contriving a world of make-believe.
The young imagination, not yet beset by too urgent actualities,
admits no bounds to its wide exercise. In the childhood of the race,
objects are spirits, moved by their own inner life. Natural forces are
gods, acting capriciously upon the fortunes of men. A man more
cunning or more powerful than his fellows becomes a hero or a
demigod in memory and tradition. So a child too animates the
common things of his little world with a life of their own that suits
the purposes of his active fancy. He endows them with a part in his
play, and they act out the story that he weaves around them. The
imagination of childhood demands action, deeds done and stories
told, high adventures of gods and heroes, or the tangled fortunes of
princes and damsels, of knights and captive ladies, of fairies and
sprites. So a fable builds itself out of free imaginings.
The love of a story never passes. All through its long history, in
every land and among every people, poetry has not ceased to interest
itself in all conceivable happenings of life. But the stream of poetry
is fed by many sources, and it takes color and volume according to
the channels through which it flows. From the "Iliad" to "Enoch
Arden," to cite typical instances which by no means set the farther
or the nearer bounds of narrative poetry, both the subject and the
form have undergone varied and profound changes. This movement,
5O POETRY
as each nation develops its own art and culture, has been in the
direction from the general to the particular, from the interests of
the entire nation to the affairs of private persons. Out of the stirrings
and strivings of a whole people toward expression is gradually
evolved the separate individual artist or poet.
CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIMITIVE POETRY
In elder days men worked and played together. The single mem-
ber of the clan or the individual citizen was completely merged in
the unity of the tribe or the state. His welfare depended upon the
welfare of the group, his interests were bound up inextricably with
the life of the community as a whole. This fact explains the range
and character of the earlier poetry of any people. All nations have
their own distinctive beginnings, and these are widely distributed in
time: the term "earlier," therefore, is relative to each nation. Ex-
amples of such earlier poetry are the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," on
the one hand though these represent the culmination rather than
the beginning of an age, which, however, is relatively early and on
the other hand, the English traditional ballads. 1 In point of time
these two instances are separated from each other by about two
thousand years, but as earlier poetry they have this trait in common,
that they are not the work of any one man. Such poetry as this is
not made; it grows. It springs as a kind of spontaneous expression
of the life of the group. An incident of common concern to the
whole people, a situation involving the fortunes of all, furnishes
the occasion and the motive of the tale. Necessarily some one, any
one, unknown by name, starts it on its course. The story is told
and retold : passing from lip to lip, it receives changes and additions.
Again, finally, some one, unknown by name, gives it the form in
which it is written down and so preserved. But it is the poetry of
a people rather than of a man.
This poetry has certain traits which serve to mark it as popular
or national. In the case of poems of greater scope, like the "Iliad"
or "Beowulf," it deals with action in the large. The heroes whose
deeds it celebrates are the possession of the kindred or the race;
they are kings and men of might or valor, known to all in the national
Harvard Classics, xl, 51-128.
POETRY 51
traditions. Even the gods are not absent; they play a dominant part
in the action. Similarly in the popular ballads, the persons of the
story, though drawn from humbler life, acquire a legendary interest
which makes them typical figures and invests them with general
importance. Such poetry, then, mirrors the ideals of the group or
the nation. It is shaped and colored by the religious beliefs of the
people or by vague questionings and vaguer answers as to the
nature and meaning of things. By the kind of persons it sets in
action, by the deeds they do and the passions they feel, this poetry
becomes the projection and expression of life at its best as the whole
people conceives it to be. It is the nation's interpretation of itself.
One characteristic these tales have which, apart from their form
as verse, makes them poetry. The world which they give back is
idealized. They come into being in response to men's love of a story.
But the action which they embody is not the petty and common-
place round of daily affairs; the action is heightened and intensified.
What we call the "glamour of romance" is over it. The free imag-
ination is at work to fashion a more engaging and significant world.
The stories told are of a time long past, in a happier and golden
prime. This, they say, is the world as it was; would that it were
so now, or might be again! Across the obscure yearnings of the
present need, seen at a distance in the fresh light of mornings gone,
the men of an elder age are figured of heroic mould. Their virtues,
their passions, and their faults are nobler than the common breed.
The world in which they move and do is an ampler scene, bathed in
a freer air. This transfiguring of things, making them bright, in-
tense, and full of a farther meaning, is the spirit of poetry.
THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALISM
As civilization progresses, the individual begins to define himself
more sharply against the background of his group. The common
effort of the group has wrought out for itself the arts of life; the
store of culture is gradually enriched by collective striving. Then
a time comes when the various functions of life tend to be dis-
tributed more and more among the separate members of the com-
munity; and to them it becomes possible to develop their own
special gifts and aptitudes as potter, weaver, smith. One day a
52 POETRY
man arises who has the gift of song. Conscious of himself now as
an individual, he takes the stories which the fathers have told,
threads of legend and tradition, and weaves them into a new pattern.
As the earlier poetry was the expression of the collective ideals of
the group, so now the poem conceived and shaped by a single maker
is animated by his own special purpose; colored by his personal
emotion, it reflects the world as he himself sees it : and it becomes in
this wise the expression of his individual interpretation of life. 2
Thus a new spirit comes into narrative poetry. Less and less it is
spontaneous, impersonal, objective; more and more it is the product
of a deliberate, self-conscious art; the choice of subject and the
manner of presenting it are determined by the poet's own feeling.
The world from which he draws his material is nearer home. His
characters are more immediate to everyday experience; what they
lose in glamour they gain in directness of appeal. Interest in the
action for its own sake does not flag, but the persons who move in
it are more closely and definitely expressive of what the poet thinks
and feels. He chooses his characters because they embody con-
cretely and so exemplify the conception he has formed of a sig-
nificant situation. The story of the mythical hero Beowulf and his
fight with the weird sea-monster Grendel is succeeded by Chaucer's
"Canterbury Tales." 3 Here the poet assembles a motley company,
of high and low degree, of clerical and lay, sketched from the life
with exquisitely humorous fidelity. The stories they tell to pass the
stages of their pilgrimage are as varied as themselves none, how-
ever, more characteristic of the new temper of poetry than the Nun's
Priest's tale. Now
A povre widwe somdel stope in age,
Was whylom dwelling in a narwe cotage,
Bisyde a grove, stondyng in a dale. 4
And the hero of the tale is "Chauntecleer"! The cock discourses
learnedly of dreams, and for authorities he invokes the great names
of antiquity. But he succumbs to inexorable fate, figured by "Russel
the fox," while the denizens of the barnyard act the chorus to his
2 As illustrating the contrast in point of view of the work of the individual poet
and of national poetry, it is interesting to compare the acute self -consciousness of
Tennyson's "Ulysses" (//. C. t xlii, 977) with the downrightness of Homer's hero.
3 H. C., xl, ii. 4 H. C., xl, 34.
POETRY 53
tragedy. The poem in its mock heroics is a sly satire of the grand
manner of the romantic epic. But beyond the entertainment it fur-
nishes by the way, in it is reflected Chaucer's own genial though
shrewd criticism of life; and we enjoy this contact with the poet's
own personality. So in all narrative poetry of conscious art, whether
the "Faerie Queene" or "Paradise Lost," Keats's "Endymion" or
"Enoch Arden," whether it portrays the figures of romance and fable,
or whether it treats the high argument of God's ways with man or
a tragedy of humble souls, we discern the image of a heightened
and intenser world, which serves finally to express the poet's own
way of conceiving life, his interpretation of experience.
THE RISE OF THE LYRIC
The same trend toward greater personality in expression which
changes the import of narrative poetry gives rise to poetry of a
different kind and purpose. As the individual emerges out of the
mass into consciousness of himself, he is made aware that life comes
to him, in contrast to other men, with a difference. The world is his
world, passions are his passions, events take their significance as they
relate themselves somehow to his own experience. The great sky
arches overhead, brightly blue or piled with tossing clouds. Outward
in every direction reaches the broad earth, a crowded pageantry of
color and form and sound and stir. Just at the center, the meeting
point of all these energies, stands a man, thinking, feeling, willing.
Upon him as a focus converge all rays of influence from the inclosing
world. Responding to their impact, he perceives a sudden harmony
within the tumult of sensation and flashing idea, a harmony which
is beauty, and his whole being is flooded with emotion. His joy,
wonder, worship, surge to expression. Out of the chaos he compels
a new order, the image of his perception; and this he bodies forth
in material form through the medium of words, shaping it after the
pattern of his perception, and moulding it to his mood. The mighty
pulse of nature bids him to sing, to voice his insight and his feeling
in accordant rhythm. So out of the fullness of his spirit, quickened
by the beauty of the world and its inner meaning, wells a song.
The lyric is born.
54 POETRY
It lies not on the sunlit hill
Nor in the sunlit gleam
Nor ever in any falling wave
Nor ever in running stream
But sometimes in the soul of man
Slow moving through his pain
The moonlight of a perfect peace
Floods heart and brain. 5
So the external world weaves endlessly its subtle patterns of
beauty and meaning, at times well hidden indeed, but yielding
finally their secret to the ardent searchings of the human heart.
Often the lyric springs, as it seems spontaneously, out of a sheer
joy of things.
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude 6 sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude 7 nu 8
Sing cuccu!
Awe 9 bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth 10 after calve cu;
Bulluc sterteth, 11 bucke verteth, 12
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu, well singes thu, cuccu:
Ne swike 13 thu naver nu;
Sing cuccu, nu, sing cuccu,
Sing cuccu, sing cuccu, nu!
The bird's note gives the key. The poet responds, his joy overflows
into images, his melody voices the music of Spring! As this is
one of the earliest lyrics in our language, so it is also, in spirit, form,
and content, a veritable spring song of the lyric mood.
For the lyric poem is born in emotion. Its moving spirit is song.
5 William Sharp. 6 Loud. The final e's are pronounced as syllables.
7 Wood. 8 Now. 9 Ewe. 10 Loweth. Leaps.
12 Runs to the greenwood.
13 Cease. The music to which this lyric was sung in the first half of the thirteenth
century still exists.
POETRY 55
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
"Pipe a song about a lamb!"
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again;"
So I piped: he wept to hear.
"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!"
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read."
So he vanish'd from my sight;
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear. 14
The impulse to music is the lyric's source. But the fragile, delicately
wrought vessel of lyrical form is capable of inexhaustible variety
and wealth of content. It may hold as an aroma the evanescent
mood of a moment; or into it may be poured the accumulated
treasures of a ripe experience. The only limitation of a lyric is
that it shall sing; otherwise it is free to range earth and sky and the
inmost chambers of the heart.
THE SCOPE OF THE LYRIC
The lyric, therefore, is a poet's fullest outpouring of himself.
More than any other form of poetry it is toned to his mood, and
breathes the intensity of his emotion. But it is capable also of a
burden of thought, provided only that the thought take wing and
rise from the shell of abstraction into the full-embodied life of
warm and colored image. In its simplest import the lyric is a cry.
14 William Blake. H. C., xli, 584.
56 POETRY
A sudden fresh vision of beauty releases the deep sources of joy, and
the emotion, gathering about the image that has quickened it, wells
forth in rhythmic pulse, into surgent, glowing words.
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun
O'er which clouds are brightening,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 15
The song of a skylark, playing across the strings of the poet's inter-
preting and transfiguring temperament, is etherealized into a rarer
music. It floats us back the bird's song; but it is the very spirit of
poetry.
Another poet thus describes this instant experience of beauty in
its full immediacy:
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. 16
But fresh, immediate vision may be attended by insight; the poet
sees deeper, feels more, and into the precious vessel of his verse he
pours a richer meaning:
15 Shelley. H. C., xli, 829.
16 Wordsworth. H. C., xli, 635^.
POETRY 57
I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. 17
As poetry, these verses in themselves have not quite the lyric impetus.
They move to a stately music suited to the calm elevation of mind,
in which "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" is now
"recollected in tranquillity." They describe, however, rather than
illustrate, the lyric temper. They are still charged with emotion
which heightens and intensifies the actual material stuff out of
which they are woven, and so they are true poetry. But the burden
of thought tends to impede that upward spring of feeling which
is the essence of the lyric mood.
The range of lyric poetry is limited only by the capacities of the
human spirit; it is coextensive with the height and depth of man's
mind and heart. A lyric is some one poet's interpretation of the
beauty, the wonder, the profound mystery, of life as he perceives
and feels it, by the magic of word-image made visible to the inward
eye, by the weaving of tone and measured beat made vocal in the
soul. In swift, vivid phrase it may picture a butterfly or a world; in
richly-freighted word it may seem, for an illumined moment, to
unlock the vast secret of life, discovering truth. The lyric may be an
iridescent jet of song, piercing the silence; it may be a mighty hymn,
resolving discords and voicing the praise of things. No mood is
denied it; joy and sorrow, hope and regret, tears and laughter, lie
within its compass. Its characteristic note is intense personality.
But the true poet transfigures the beauty he has seen in his little
17 Wordsworth. H. C., xli, 635^.
58 POETRY
corner of the earth into cosmic vistas, opening to infinity, and trans-
mutes his private joys and griefs into the great passionate fountains
of universal happiness and suffering accessible to all men.
THE ELEMENTS OF POETIC FORM
Any subject may be turned to the uses of poetry according as the
poet conceives it in a certain way. At once more sensitive and more
creative than other men, the poet sees life more intensely and more
beautifully. He is stirred by the splendor or tenderness of nature's
pageantry of shifting colors and impressive forms; he is quickened
to penetrating thought by his insight into the living principle which
shapes the world, and by his sense of the varying significance of
men's purposes and destiny. His emotion impels him to express his
perception, carrying lightly also its burden of thought, in an ordered
pattern of word-symbols, which reproduce images from the external
world, but which invest them with associations and implicate further
meanings. To this transcript of the immediate and actual world he
adds:
The gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream.
Thus to transfigure the world and life, under the stimulus of feel-
ing and by the power of insight, is the magic and the mystery of
the poet. So, too, poetry may range through the vast, complex
whole of experience, to draw thence its inspiration and its material.
But life may be thus conceived poetically, and yet the idea may be
expressed in prose. To give it poetical expression, there must pulse
through the subject matter, whatever guise it wear, that deep up-
welling of emotion which prompts the poet to phrase his thought
in the word-pattern which is a poem.
The poetic impulse, rising out of vision and emotion, utters itself
in speech, but speech flowing in measured pulse and cast in a de-
terminate mould. As the stuff out of which the web of poetry is
woven is both intellectual and emotional, though the two elements
may combine in varying proportions, so these elements together go
to the shaping of the final total form. This form, comprising both
the measured flow of words and their ultimate arrangement in a
POETRY 59
pattern, 18 is a poem. And this form is not accidental or arbitrary,
but is conditioned by the nature itself of the human mind and spirit.
THE NATURE AND SOURCE OF RHYTHM
Within the texture of every poem beats a pulse like the throb of
coursing blood in a living body; and this pulse or rhythm is the life
of poetic form. Indeed rhythm is the very heart of the universe itself.
No manifestation of the active principle in the great frame of things
is so intimate or so pervasive. Day and night, flow and ebb, the
perfect return of the seasons, the breath of our nostrils and the
stars in their courses echo alike its mighty music. In the little prac-
tical affairs of life, no less than in earth's orbic sweep through stellar
spaces, rhythm is a law of movement, to which all sustained action
instinctively conforms. It makes movement easier, as in labor
whether the quick tap of a smith's hammer on his anvil or the
long-drawn tug of a gang at a rope. Soldiers, marching to an
ordered step, lighten the fatigue of weary miles. Rhythm also
makes movement pleasurable, as in the dance. And, conversely,
the perception of rhythm in things external to oneself is both easy
and pleasurable. Alike in its subjective and its objective aspects,
therefore, rhythm is in essential harmony with the spirit of man.
As the order of the universe is shot through with a living pulse,
so emotion, too, if sustained, tends to express itself in rhythm. The
emotional stimulus of the perception of beauty, or the excitement
attending insight into the deeper truth of life, quickens the heart-
throb; this heightened activity overflows to expression in words
which reproduce the measured beat of the impetus out of which
they spring. And so a poem comes to birth. In its most primitive
forms, some scholars tell us, poetry is but the voice accompaniment
to the rhythms of bodily movement in work and play. 19 A woman
grinding corn back and forth between two stones, keeps time by
the crooning of unreasoned words in endless repetition. A fragment
of an old spinning song echoes in Ophelia's ravings: "You must
sing Down-a-down, An you call him a-down-a. O, how the wheel
18 For this suggestion of poetry as a "pattern" I am indebted to Professor J. W.
Mackail's Oxford Lectures on Poetry.
19 See F. B. Gummere, "The Beginnings of Poetry."
60 POETRY
becomes it!" Lithe-bodied men shout in unison their war chant, as
they tread the circle of the dance. Youths and maidens in common
festival recite in turn the verses of a ballad, caught and flung back
in the refrain. The principle holds true throughout the age-long
evolution of poetry. From the earliest to the latest manifestations
of the poetic impulse, in the instinctive voicing of physical move-
ment and in the highly wrought creations of mature art, the great
deep pulse at the heart of things finds utterance.
Lo, with the ancient
Roots of man's nature,
Twines the eternal
Passion of song.
Deep in the world-heart
Stand its foundations,
Tangled with all things,
Twin-made with all.
Nay, what is Nature's
Self, but an endless
Strife toward music,
Euphony, rhyme ?
God on His throne is
Eldest of poets:
Unto His measures
Moveth the Whole. 20
This is the origin and reason-why of rhythm in poetry. What-
ever the poet's mood, whether it be an outburst of sheer joy or the
chastened calm of meditation, his verse is the counterpart, made
audible, of his emotion, and moves to an accordant rhythm. The
swift but sustained flow of Homer's dactylic hexameters, reciting
the deeds of heroes; the stately procession of Milton's iambic pentam-
eter, unfolding a drama of Heaven and Hell; the soaring flight of
Shelley's skylark; the pounding hoof-beats of Browning's mad ride,
I sprang to the stirrup, and Jons, and he,
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; 21
20 William Watson. 21 H. C., xlii, 1066.
POETRY 6 1
whether forward thrust or steady march or winged flight, the lilt
of the verse expresses the emotional stress and impetus within it.
THE EFFECT OF RHYTHM
And more. For the rhythm of verse not only expresses the emotion
out of which it springs; this it also communicates. It imparts to
the hearer its own energy and kindles him to a like emotion. Poetry
has much in common with other kinds of literature. Prose may
render a heightened image of the world, as in the novel; it may
rouse to action, as in oratory. In essence, imaginative literature may
have a constant element within its various manifestations. What
primarily distinguishes poetry from prose is this element of definite
rhythm. By virtue of it, poetry is more immediate and more intense
in its appeal. The "imitative movements," psychologists would say,
set going in our own organism, rouse in us a corresponding emotion.
Rhythm, too, makes for ease of perception, and is in itself, a source
of pleasure. When rightly managed, it serves also to emphasize the
intellectual content of the verse. The rhythm of poetic form is not
a mechanical contrivance, but is the inevitable thrust of the passion
within. At its best, it is never monotonous. It should not be a
regularly recurring series of alternate beats, or "sing-song"; by subtle
variations of stress, corresponding both to the emotional impetus
and to the meaning of the words, it may unfold itself in undulations;
the surge of the inner tide may break in dancing wave crests, an
infinite variety of light and shade, playing over the surface of the
great central unity. The meter may change step at need, obedient
to an inner law.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death. 22
And so on through a surpassingly beautiful poem. The meter, or
measured foot, is not evident here, but inevitably we feel a deep-
drawn throb that lays hold on us, and carries us to its own mood.
To such lines as these we gratefully accord the honorable name of
poetry.
22 Walt Whitman, H. C., xlii, 1417.
62 POETRY
Rhythm alone, however, is not enough to constitute a poem. A
mere drone of words in meaningless repetition, though it may illus-
trate one of the origins of poetry, is not poetry itself. There must
be progress in the recurrence, and the repeat must build itself up into
a pattern. Any bit of experience, to be truly understood or vitally
assimilated, must be apprehended as a whole. In the tumult of the
world external to him the mind of man insistently demands order
and significance. Nature has compelled the poet to her own rhythm;
that is his inspiration. The poet must now compel nature to his
purposes of expression; that is his art. His temperament has vibrated
to the sweep of cosmic influences; now his mind enters as a control-
ling and organizing force to shape his perception and his meaning
into a single total unity. Out of rhythm in repetition and com-
bination he frames a harmony. And so his poem presents a whole-
ness of impression. His pattern is built of the repeat of single ele-
ments: metrical bars or feet compose the line or verse; lines combine
into stanzas; and stanzas fashioned after a common design succeed
one another in progress to the end. Here again, the structure is
not mechanical or arbitrary: each verse is measured to the turn of
the thought; and the formal unity of the whole poem corresponds
to the unity of mood or idea that the poem is framed to express.
THE WORD-ELEMENT IN POETRY
The poet's medium, or means of expression, is words. The painter
works with color, the sculptor with form, the musician with tone.
Color and form and tone are pleasurable in themselves, as sensations;
they become beautiful and significant by force of what they may be
made to express. So words in themselves also have a sensuous value.
When used as instruments of beauty, they may add to the rhythmic
structure of a poem the element of melody. This tonal quality is
secured most easily and obviously by rhyme, which is perfect con-
cord of vowel sounds together with the consonants following to
complete the syllable, as in sight, night. Besides adding musical
value to the phrase, rhyme, when adroitly managed, serves to define
the pattern of the poem and to emphasize the meaning of the words
in which it falls. Lesser components of the melodic element are
assonance, alliteration, and tone-color. Assonance is the repetition of
POETRY 63
the same vowel sound within syllables, but with different consonants,
as shape, mate. Alliteration is the agreement in sound of initial
syllables, as in "The lisp of /eaves and the ripple of rain." Allitera-
tion, combined with stress, is the essential verse-principle of Anglo-
Saxon poetry; it is used to-day at the risk of obscuring the sense by
overloading the ornament. The melodic quality of tone-color is more
subtle; it is the suggestion of the meaning of the words by the tonal
quality and value of their syllables, as in "Sweet dimness of her
loosened hair's downfall," where the slow change in vowel quality,
e, I, 6, a, seems to invest the image with a kind of "penumbra" of
sound. These are the notes of the poet's gamut; the master crafts-
man employs them with a just reticence to enhance the sensuous
appeal of his art.
But poetry is not only emotional and sensuous in its appeal. By
virtue of its medium of words, it is adapted to an extent that the
arts of painting, sculpture, and music are not to the expression of
intellectual ideas. It gains in potency, however, in the measure that
it phrases these ideas not in abstract terms but concretely. Words
are not color or form, but they can suggest it by means of images.
Emotion always has an object, which calls it out and represents it.
The image in the word becomes the expression of the poet's own
feeling; and it is also the symbol and occasion to others of a like
emotion. How much Wordsworth's apostrophe to Duty gains in
persuasion by the beauty of suggested images! So the idea embodies
itself and becomes warm and vivid, rousing the hearer's imagination
to vision and kindling him to emotion. This evocative power of
words is the secret of the poet, and is hardly to be analyzed. It
attaches to the tonal beauty of their syllables, in themselves and in
rhythmic combination; it derives from their vividness of image,
and from the associations, both intellectual and emotional, which
cling around them like an aroma and an exhalation.
Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art:
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores. 23
23 Keats, H. C., xli, 898.
64 POETRY
Who can say wherein lies the witchery of this word-music! It can
only be felt. In addition to the common meaning of its terms,
therefore, language seems to have a further expressiveness. This
new significance is the creation of the poet, wrought out of the
familiar words by his cunning manipulation of them. The wonder
of the poet's craft is like the musician's,
That out of three sounds he frames, not a fourth sound, but a star. 24
THE ONENESS OF CONTENT AND FORM
Poetic form rouses the whole being to sympathetic action by its
rhythm; it delights the ear by its melodious tone; the logic of its
coherent harmonic structure satisfies the mind; its word-images
stimulate the imagination by their power of evocation. So poetry
adds to fact its intellectual worth and all the emotional value inhering
in it. Finally form and meaning become one. And most intimately
so in lyric poetry. Here we feel that just this idea could not be
expressed, just that emotion could not be communicated, in any
other way. The essence and mystery of the song are in the singing.
A poem is a fragment of life rounded into momentary complete-
ness. It compels the chaos of immediate sense impressions into
forms of beauty, and so it builds a fairer world. It catches the
rhythms that pulse at the mighty heart of things and weaves them
into subtle and satisfying patterns; its verbal melodies waken in the
soul dim echoes of the desired music of the spheres. It floods life
with unaccustomed light. But it is illusion only in that it sees
beyond the changing shows of nature and discerns the loveliness
which the human spirit would fain believe is the vesture of the
Eternal. Poetry is not illusion, but rather the express image of a
higher reality. The poet would compass life and utterly possess it.
Not as a patient observer of nature's processes, not a passive spectator
of the moving play of human fate, he loves what he beholds. To
him, as to a lover, the world yields something of its secret. By
force of imaginative, creative vision, he sees life in its wholeness,
though but for an illumined moment. Emotion and insight fuse into
an image of perfection. To the poet truth reveals itself as beauty.
24 Browning's "Abt Vogler," H. C., xlii, 1100-1102.
POETRY 65
But the revelation is never finished. Therefore all great and true
poetry is the utterance of an inspiration. It is the dream of a world
ever realized and yet ever to be won. In the words of one of its
prophets: "Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge it is as
immortal as the heart of man."
II. HOMER AND THE EPIC
BY PROFESSOR CHARLES BURTON GULICK
EPIC poetry might be described as that in which fewest poets
have achieved distinction. Homer, Virgil, Milton are the
names which occur to the mind when we try to define the
type, but beyond these three it is hard to find any who have success-
fully treated a large theme with the dignity, grandeur, and beauty
which the heroic poem demands.
This is because the standard was set at the beginning; and when
we analyze the method and the purpose of these great poets, Homer
emerges as the one supreme and incomparable master of them all.
For, in "Paradise Lost," 1 Milton was too often diverted from the
true office of the poet by theological controversy; Virgil's "^Eneid" 2
is the highly studied product of a self-conscious age, and was
deliberately written to exalt the greatness of imperial Rome.
THE PREDECESSORS OF HOMER
And yet, although the art of Homer is more naive and unconscious
than Virgil's, it is a mistake to think, as the eighteenth century
thought, that Homer represents the childhood of the race. Fresh,
vigorous, spontaneous, swift, he none the less stands at the end of
many generations of singers. From them he inherited traditions of
versification, diction, and phrase that reach back to the very earliest
emergence of the Greeks from barbarism.
The material of the first epic songs was quite simple. In the
beginning the tribal gods would be the theme of a hymn of praise
or thanksgiving; and since the heroic ancestors of the chieftains
were thought to be the sons of gods, it was easy to pass from god to
man and contemporary exploits in some famous raid were not for-
gotten. Sacred hymn became heroic lay. Popular poetry it was,
in the sense that it appealed strongly to popular interest and local
1 Harvard Classics, iv, 87-358. 2 H. C., xiii.
66
POETRY 67
pride. But it remained the possession of heaven-gifted singers whose
profession was hereditary.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EPIC
During the twelfth century before Christ there came a mighty
upheaval, involving the fall of Mycenae and the final ruin of her
splendid civilization. New adjustments of territory took place,
and wholesale migrations of Greek-speaking peoples, calling them-
selves Achaeans, ^Eolians, lonians, or Boeotians, to the littoral of
Asia Minor. The stir and adventure of moving tribes, the prowess
of their champions, the mingling of men of the same race, though
of different clans, on the edge of a country where barbarians filled
the hinterland, developed a new pride in national achievement and
furnished, in fact, just the conditions most favorable for the develop-
ment of the epic. Legends brought from home, where the fathers
had lived a simpler life, began to expand to larger proportions.
Achilles and Hector, who had possibly been rival chiefs on the
border between southern Thessaly and Bceotia, now became, in the
conception of the bards, magnificent princes, fighting, not for cattle,
but for national existence. The scene of their exploits is shifted
from the old homeland to the new, and as the imagination of the
emigrants grew with their larger life in the new country, so their
legends came to embody more incident, to take on more brilliant
coloring, and to voice higher national pretensions.
Thus Agamemnon, whose power on the Greek mainland had by
no means been limited to the one small citadel of Mycenae, snugly
built among the hills of Argos, had room to expand to something
like imperial dimensions through the patriotic impulse of these
later epic singers. Growing more skillful in characterization, they
helped to rear the great antithesis between Achaean and Trojan,
between Greek and barbarian, the West and the East; they founded
Hellenism.
THE TROY OF HISTORY
That the story of the Trojan War, embellished as it is with
mythical details, reflects historical facts actual conflicts between
the Achaean and ^Eolian immigrants on the one hand, and the
68 POETRY
Dardanian inhabitants of the Troad, on the other, is now no longer
doubted. The "Iliad," which in its present form is the work of a
single genius, is the result of complicated processes which include
the borrowing, adaptation, and enlargement of old material and the
invention of new.
It is not free from inconsistencies in detail and occasional lapses
in interest. "Even the good Homer nods," says Horace. But though
he nods now and then, he never goes to sleep.
The "Odyssey" 3 probably belongs to a somewhat later era than
that in which the "Iliad" took final shape. The wanderings of
Odysseus reflect newer experiences of the same Achaean stock which
had won success in stirring conflicts in Asia, and was now pushing
out in ships over the Mediterranean to compete with the Phoenician
trader. The "Odyssey" presupposes the events described in the
"Iliad"; unlike the "Iliad," it is not a story of battles and sieges, but
of adventure and intrigue which center about a bold sailor.
It is full of the wonder of a new world; of strange escapes; of ship-
wreck and the terrifying power of winds and waves; of monsters
and witches and giants; of encounters with pirates, and exploration
into wild countries, even to the borders of the earth and to the under-
world. It has furnished the model of some of Sindbad's 4 adventurers,
and is the precursor of Gulliver and Munchausen. It has given to
later poetry the lotus-eaters 5 and the Sirens, and to the language of
proverb Scylla and Charybdis, and has enriched our nursery books
with some of their most entrancing characters. As a relief to the stir
and trial of the hero, it pictures the happiness and beauty of rural
life, and presents the noblest portrait of a faithful wife in all
literature.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE "ODYSSEY"
Th* 3 dramatic structure of the "Odyssey" has always been admired.
The entrance of the hero is postponed in order to develop the
situation and introduce his lovable, if somewhat futile, son Telem-
achus, together with some characters made familiar by the "Iliad":
Nestor, Helen, and Menelaus. We are then transported to Calypso's
3 H. C., xxii, 9. 4 H. C., xvi, 231-295.
5 Cf. Tennyson's poem in H. C., xlii, 993.
POETRY 69
Isle, there to find Odysseus chafing under restraint. There ensue the
departure, the anger of Poseidon, the wreck, and the rescue in the
land of the Phaeacians. The scene shifts to the brilliant court of
their king, Alcinous, before whom Odysseus recounts the wonderful
adventures which preceded his arrival at Calypso's island. In Phaeacia
Odysseus meets Nausicaa, the fairest and most radiant girlish figure
in Greek literature. Nothing will better illustrate the difference
between Homer and Virgil than a comparison of Nausicaa's words
of parting with the violent outpourings of Dido's spirit when ^Eneas
leaves her. 6 This part of the "Odyssey" is also highly interesting
and important for the way in which the bard Demodocus represents
the traditions and methods of the heroic lay.
The second half of the story begins when the Phaeacians carry
Odysseus home. Disguised as a beggar, he meets with a series of
encounters which give full play to the dramatic devices of recognition
and irony, so skillfully practiced later on the Greek stage. He dis-
closes himself to Telemachus. Then his old dog Argos recognizes
him, in a scene full of pathos. Finally, after a supreme trial of
strength and skill, and the slaughter of the suitors, the husband
makes himself known to his wife, and then to his aged father. Faults
of repetition there are in plenty; but they only show with what
fondness the epic poets loved to linger on the story, and how eager
their audiences were to have the tale prolonged.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE HOMERIC POEMS
The Greeks were fond of recounting personal details about their
great men, but they were unable to tell about a real Homer. The
later legends concerning his life are meager, and almost wholly
disregarded by the scholars of Alexandria. His blindness is a trait
often remarked to-day among the popular singers in the villages
of Greece and Macedonia. It is beautifully portrayed in the well-
known bust in the Naples Museum. Seven cities claimed the honor
of being his birthplace. They were mostly on the shores of Asia
Minor or the adjacent islands a fact which attests what we knew
before from the language of the poems, that their latest composers
were Ionian Greeks, and that the poems had a vogue on that coast
6 See "jEneid," in H. C., xiii, i63ff.
JO POETRY
a long time before wandering rhapsodists carried them to the main-
land. It is not known when they were first committed to writing.
Although the Greeks knew how to write as early as the ninth
century before Christ, and possibly long before that time indeed,
writing is mentioned once by Homer it played no important part
in the earlier transmission of the poems, and it was not until the
reign of the tyrant Pisistratus in Athens, in the sixth century, that
they were gathered together and set down definitely in the form
in which we have them. Thus virtually committed to the guardian-
ship of the Athenians, who were the leaders of culture from the
sixth to the third centuries, the poems passed to the custody of the
Alexandrines, who prepared elaborate editions with notes, and
divided them into the "books" twenty-four each in which they
appear to-day.
The Romans studied them sedulously, and to Quintilian, as to
Plato, Homer was the fountain of eloquence. The western world
during the Middle Ages had more frequent recourse to Roman
versions of the tale of Troy, but with the revival of learning Homer
sprang almost immediately into his rightful position at the head of
the ancients, and has ever since held firm hold of the affections of
all cultivated men and women.
III. DANTE
BY PROFESSOR CHARLES HALL GRANDGENT
DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265-1321) is rightly called the
supreme exponent of the Middle Ages. In no other writer,
ancient or modern, do we find the spirit of a great period
so completely reflected as the mediaeval soul is mirrored in him. It
was the epoch of mighty builders and mighty theologians, of religious
exaltation, of sturdy, militant faith the age that produced the grand
cathedrals and the "Summa Theologise," the age of the Crusades,
of St. Bernard and St. Dominic, the age of St. Francis. So essentially
is Dante a poet of God that the epithet "Divine" has by universal
consent been attached to the work which he called a "Comedy";
and so manifest is his architectural genius that his poem inevitably
suggests comparison with a huge Gothic church. The troops of
figures that live eternally in his pages, representing all types of
contemporary man from burgher to Pope, diversify without obscur-
ing the symmetrical outlines of his plan a plan sufficiently vast to
embrace nearly all that was of much importance in profane and
sacred science.
THE PLAN OF THE "DIVINE COMEDY"
The "Commedia," 1 with its three books and its hundred cantos,
relates the whole progress of a soul from sin, through remorse,
meditation, and discipline, to the state of purity that enables it to
see God. Lost in wickedness, the poet suddenly comes to his senses
and tries to escape from it, but in vain. Reason, moved by grace,
thereupon leads him step by step to a full understanding of evil, in
all its ugliness and folly; and he at last turns his back upon it. His
next duty is to cleanse his soul by penance, until its innocence is
gradually restored. Then Revelation descends to meet him, and
1 See Harvard Classics, xx, and General Index, under Dante, in vol. 1.
72 POETRY
lifts him heavenward, higher and higher, even to the presence of
his Maker. All this is set forth allegorically in the form of a journey,
under the guidance of Virgil and then of Beatrice, through the
underground kingdom of Hell, up the lonely mountain of Purgatory
to the Garden of Eden, and thence through the revolving spheres to
Paradise.
THE MEDIEVAL VIEW OF THE WORLD
To us the universe of the Middle Ages seems small. The whole
duration of earthly life, from Creation to Judgment Day, is limited
to some 7,000 or 8,000 years. Our globe, a solid, motionless ball,
surrounded by air and by fire, is the center of the material world.
About it turn the nine successive skies, transparent, shell-like,
hollow spheres, bearing the sun, the moon, the planets, and the fixed
stars, which together constitute the force called Nature. Outside
this round universe of matter is the Paradise of pure spirit, the limit-
less abode of God, the angels, and the blest. The angels, ministers
of the Lord, direct the movements of the celestial bodies, thus shaping
existence here below and the characters of men. Of the earth's sur-
face much more than half is covered by water; but on one side,
with Jerusalem in the middle, is the clover-shaped continent of
Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Christian world is ruled by two
great powers, one spiritual, one temporal, both ordained by God:
Papacy and Empire, founded by Christ and by Caesar. Unrighteous
ambition has brought them into conflict with each other.
Of ancient history, and of all the wealth of classic literature and
art, but little was known, and that little was translated into terms
of the present; for the historical sense was quite undeveloped, and
so was the idea of progress, so dear to us moderns. To the mediaeval
mind, Solomon, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne were very much
alike. The most noteworthy survivors among the authors of pagan
Rome were Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Cicero and Livy; to these
should be added the Christians, Boethius and St. Augustine, and the
scholars and theologians who followed. Greek was lost; but Aristotle,
in Latin garb, began in the thirteenth century to dominate European
thought, and Platonism had been potent in shaping St. Augustine's
doctrine some 800 years before.
POETRY 73
THE LEARNING AND LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS OF DANTE
Most of the learning of his age Dante possessed the science of
Albertus Magnus, the philosophy of Aristotle, the theology of St.
Thomas Aquinas, the fragment of Latin literature that time had
spared. We find abundant evidence of it, not only in the "Divina
Commedia," but also in the unfinished "Convivio," or "Banquet,"
an encyclopaedic work in the shape of a commentary on some of the
author's poems.
He wrote Latin with fluency and vigor: besides his letters and a
couple of eclogues, he composed a treatise, "De Monarchia," on the
relation of state to church, and began a discussion of verse forms
and the use of the Italian language in poetry, called "De Vulgari
Eloquentia"; there is ascribed to him also a lecture, the "Quaestio
de Aqua et Terra," debating a curious problem of physical geog-
raphy. But while his facts, ideas, and interests were those of his
day, certain traits differentiate him from his fellows: with Petrarch
he shares intensity of feeling and strong personality; with Chaucer
and Boccaccio clearness of vision and the gift of vivid dramatic char-
acterization; with none, his artistic reaction to the wilder aspects of
nature, his stupendous imagination, his conciseness, his power of sug-
gestion. In language, too, he stands quite apart from his predecessors
and contemporaries. Such picturesqueness, such wealth of vocabu-
lary, had never been conceived since classic antiquity. Before him, in
fact, clerical Latin had been the regular medium of serious discourse.
His use of the vernacular for the elucidation of philosophy and
religion was a daring innovation, which he defends in the "Con-
vivio." Especially in his own country was the modern tongue
despised, and the literary output in Italian, before the fourteenth
century, was correspondingly meager.
LITERARY FASHIONS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Northern France had long since witnessed a glorious development
of narrative poetry, of warlike epic and courtly romance songs of
kings and feudal lords, adventures of knights (particularly those of
the Round Table 2 ) in distant lands and times. Out of liturgical
2 See Dr. Maynadier's lecture on "Malory" in the course on Prose Fiction.
74 POETRY
service had grown the drama. Symbolism, long familiar in the
interpretation of ancient poetry and of holy writ, had made its way
into creative art, and had produced the "Romance of the Rose,"
that wonder of the thirteenth century. Satire, which in this poem
is combined with the allegorical theme of the quest of love, had
found separate expression in the versified episodes called "fabliaux,"
and in the tales of Reynard the Fox. Much of this literature had
been carried to Italy, as to other countries of Europe. No less re-
nowned than the North French epic, 3 and hardly less influential
abroad, was the great school of amatory lyric poetry that had sprung
up in southern France a poetry of restricted scope but of exquisite
artistry, which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was sung and
imitated at many an Italian court. Not until the time of Frederick II,
however, do we find similar verse composed in an Italian tongue.
About this great emperor clustered a band of clever, artificial love
poets known as the Sicilian School. In Tuscany the vernacular was
used for lyric purposes by a group of uninspired but ingenious
rhymesters, for the most part close followers of Provencal models.
At Bologna, too, the famous university town, the new art began to
be cultivated in the middle of the thirteenth century. Here lived
Guido Guinizelli, whom Dante calls his master, the first poet to
formulate definitely that theory of love which was to govern the
"sweet new style."
DANTE'S CONCEPTION OF LOVE
According to this doctrine, love is an attribute of the "gentle"
heart alone. There it slumbers until aroused to activity by a worthy
object. The woman who awakens this "gentle" love must be a
symbol of the angelic nature, or "heavenly intelligence"; and de-
votion to her is worship. In the generation after Guinizelli his
teaching was extended by a circle of gifted writers, who introduced
the poetic fashion into Florence, a busy commercial town, already
perhaps the most prosperous of the bustling, ambitious, jealous,
quarrelsome little commonwealths of Italy. Members of this literary
company were Dante's "first friend," Guido Cavalcanti, and Dante
himself. We find, to be sure, a less novel conception of love in some
3 Cf. "The Song of Roland" in H. C., xlix, 95ff.
POETRY 75
of our poet's works : in his sweet verses on a certain young lady who
pitied him in his bereavement, in his occasional complimentary
sonnets and ballads, in his wildly passionate and beautiful songs
concerning a youthful person whom he calls "Pietra." In his canzoni
to Lady Philosophy we have excellent examples of the amatory form
put to an allegorical use. For a more literal expression of the new
thought we must look to the compositions inspired by his ideal lady,
Beatrice and, among them, to the maturer ones. Some years after
the death of his beloved, Dante selected from his previous verse a
series of poems illustrating the phases of his inner life under Bea-
trice's influence, and surrounded them with a dainty prose ex-
planation. This is the "Vita Nuova," or "New Life."
IV. THE POEMS OF JOHN MILTON
BY DR. ERNEST BERNBAUM
THOUGH most of us acknowledge that Milton dwells on
the heights of English poetry, we are likely, because of
his very sublimity, to look up to him with awe, as un-
approachable. The charm of the minor poems of his youth may be
felt without difficulty; but the obstacles to loving intimacy with his
most important works, those into which he poured "the precious
lifeblood of a master spirit," seem many and forbidding. We re-
member that Byron sneered at his angels and archangels joining
in quibbles, and we apprehend that his theology must be dull or per-
plexing. We open "Paradise Lost" * at almost any page, and meet
with phrases and allusions that are unfamiliar. Habituated by our
contemporary literature and journalism to receive an easy delight
from the shocking, the bizarre, and the exceptional, we are not
immediately attracted by an art whose characteristics are dignity
and restraint. In Dr. Johnson's words, "we desert our master and
seek for companions." As if to encourage our truancy, there arise
those who question whether, after all, Milton is a master. The chief
of a prominent American library refuses to advise the reading of
"Paradise Lost," an ultra-modern critic professes to have discovered
"new literary valuations" which at last destroy the poet's long-
established reputation, and respectable literary journals actually find
it necessary to defend a fame that had seemed imperishable.
THE SOURCES OF MILTON*S GREATNESS
The serious-minded who, despite such babblings, conclude that
he to whom every great man of letters from Dryden to Meredith
has granted the crowning laurel must surely be one whom it is an
honorable privilege to know, may be assured that the obstacles to
familiarity with Milton are not at all insuperable. From three
1 Harvard Classics, iv, 87-358.
76
POETRY 77
sources especially does his greatness arise the strength of his imagi-
nation, the harmony of his verse, and the truth of his thought. Each
of these will become more clearly apparent to the reader if he will
accept certain practical suggestions. To grow aware of the astound-
ing imaginative power of Milton in "Paradise Lost," "Paradise
Regained," 2 "Samson Agonistes," 3 and even the "Nativity Ode," 4
one should before turning to those works read the biblical passages,
in each case brief, which gave the poet the outlines of his themes.
It need hardly be said that such a story as that of Adam and Eve
has in the Bible a simple and poignant beauty which is perfect in
its way; but when one turns from the few chapters that contain it
and follows the course of the great epic, one begins to realize how
sublimely Milton's imagination enlarges our conceptions of the past,
the distant, and the unseen. Nor is it only realms, forces, and spirits
unvisited and unknown that he reveals. Read the short account of
Samson, or of the temptation of Christ; observe how few, though
graphic, are the strokes of characterization; and you will thereupon
in "Samson Agonistes" and "Paradise Regained" recognize with
what vision Milton has penetrated into the hearts of hero and Lord
and devil.
The mistake which prevents a full enjoyment of the musical
beauty of Milton's blank verse is to read it silently a sure way to
make it seem like prose curiously printed. Aloud the blind poet
uttered the most and the best of it; and aloud it should be read.
Only thus can the artistic sense that slumbers within us be aroused
to feel responsively the grandest rhythm and resonance that ever
proceeded from an English tongue. Like ocean breakers, in varying
lengths and with tireless energy, it beats and surges upon our emo-
tions; and presently we are ready to receive those elevated thoughts
it is marvelously designed to instill, because the sound has lifted us
into a mood exalted above our ordinary state. He who thus comes
to feel the artistic powers of Milton has taken a decisive step toward
literary culture: he will thenceforth not easily be imposed upon by
whatever is imaginatively weak or fantastic; and his ear, once at-
tuned to the "grand style" of the master, will no longer delight in
verse that is thin or harsh.
2 H. C., iv, 3^9. 3 H. C., iv, 414. 4 H. C., iv, 7.
78 POETRY
MILTON AS PROPHET
But Milton did not use his poetical powers for the mere pleasure
of exercising them. In him, as in Isaiah, the great artist is embodied
in the greater prophet. This is a commonplace, yet many approach
Milton as if it were untrue. In the case of "Paradise Lost," ad-
mittedly the fullest expression of his message, the first two books are
mistakenly recommended as typical. In them, to be sure, are superbly
displayed his artistic powers, but certainly not his dominant thought.
In fact, to confine oneself to them has proved a direct way to mis-
understand him. Because they deal with the fallen angels, we have
arising the persistent error that Satan is the hero of "Paradise Lost,"
and that the arch-rebel preoccupied the poet's interest. The result
in our day, when belief in a personal devil is faint, is the impression
that Milton devotes his genius to themes that, however picturesque,
possess for us slight moral significance. And so we have the pitiable
result that the mere artist is admired, but the prophet not hearkened
to. Yet his message, grasped as a whole, comes home to our very
hearts.
THE THEME OF "PARADISE LOST"
The theme of Milton is not primarily Satan, nor even God and
angels, but humanity. Not only do the opening lines of "Paradise
Lost" proclaim the subject "man's disobedience," but throughout the
epic it is the fate of man that is made the issue of every event in
the universal creation. Thus Milton begins his story, not when
Satan is conspiring against God, but when the defeated devil turns
his revengeful thought toward the future inhabitants of the earth.
Of that new world man is solemnly made the lord, God himself
descending to breathe into him a spiritual life. It is to warn man
against his fall that the rebellion in heaven is related; and in the
central books it is the glory and the weakness of human nature that
we see displayed. Finally, the future history of the world is com-
municated to Adam, not so much to manifest the absolute power of
God or the futility of Satan's hate, as to assure the children of God
of his eternal love toward them. In short, the subject is not theology
but religion not the nature of God and of Satan, but the relation of
POETRY 79
the powers of good and of evil to ourselves. Could a poet deal with
a problem of more compelling and everlasting interest to us? The
reader who focuses his attention upon the human beings in "Paradise
Lost" will do what the poet did, and will, though accidental details
may elude him, follow Milton's essential thought. The descriptions of
heaven and hell, which may not correspond precisely to the reader's
notions of the states of bliss and of misery, will recede into the back-
ground, where they belong; and gradually there will rise before him
Milton's idea of the true meaning of human life.
MILTON'S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE
To reduce that idea to a prose formula would be to impoverish and
debase it; but a hint or two concerning its general character may
suggest its importance to the individual conscience. On the one hand,
no poet, not even Shakespeare, has thought more nobly of the glo-
rious capacities of man. Man is to Milton no miserable puppet o
chance, no slave of his environment (Adam and Eve sin despite
ideal surroundings), but an unhampered master of his fate, God
himself endowing him with freedom of the will, and all the spirits
of the universe interested in the use he may make of that liberty.
On the other hand, no poet has felt more profoundly the constant
peril of man's exalted state. Unless he in his freedom throws off
all worldly temptations, even the most seductive, punishment for his
disloyalty to spiritual laws is visited not only upon himself but upon
his innocent fellow men. The grave moral predicaments of the Lady
in "Comus," 5 of Adam and Eve, of Christ in "Paradise Regained,"
and of Samson, are not exceptional, but typify the real state of man
in every moment of his life. Here a sublime opportunity, there a
fatal danger, the decision absolutely in his own hands! Yet there
is no panic, no wild cry for relief; the spirit is as serene as the utter-
ance is restrained. Uncompromising independence in earthly con-
cerns, patient humility before God these are the virtues that will
redeem us at last.
Hasty as this glance at Milton's ideas must be, it reminds us of
the source of his power. In his first good poem, the "Nativity Ode,'*
5 H. c., iv, 44.
80 POETRY
he yearned to hear that music of the heavenly spheres, hymning
divine truth, to which most mortal ears are ever deaf; and from then
until his end, amid the din of terrestrial turmoil, he was hearkening
for the voice of God. Thus inspired, he has ever revived those who
have learned to resort to him, sending each forth with a braver
heart, a serener mind, and a reawakened conscience. Wordsworth,
sadly observing the worshipers of earthly idols, exclaimed:
Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
and the best in succeeding generations have echoed the sentiment.
Sceptics may question parts of Milton's doctrine; but they will not
easily shake its center, for that is embedded in the pertinacious moral
convictions of the English peoples. The noblest American tradition,
which founded the New England commonwealths, and from which
to depart is a kind of betrayal of our inmost selves, is precisely that
ideal of freedom from man's dominion and conscientious obedience
to God's stern will, which is the very spirit of Milton. To commune
with him is therefore to gain patriotic enlightenment as well as re-
ligious insight and poetical culture. 6
6 See also Bagehot's essay on Milton in H. C., xxviii, 165.
V. THE ENGLISH ANTHOLOGY
BY CARLETON NOYES, A.M.
THE English Anthology, contained in Volumes XL to XLII
of The Harvard Classics, comprises a selection of represen-
tative poems in English from Chaucer to Walt Whitman,
a period of about five hundred years. In the range and variety of
subject and forms, these volumes bear eloquent witness to the mani-
fold creative power of poetry. But the very abundance of their
treasures suggests certain problems, at the same time that it offers
material for their solution. What is the subject of poetry, and what
the meaning of these varied forms? How shall the reader find his
way to the poetry that is truly for him, and how may he win from
it what it holds of present delight and of lasting service?
It is evident that the spirit of poetry, intensely real but elusive as
a sky-born Ariel, may incarnate itself in many forms and wear a
rainbow vesture. As indicated in the General Introduction, the shap-
ing purpose of a poem is either the narrative interest or the lyric
mood. But these two impulses are subject to wide modifications.
The differences do not affect the character of each instance as poetry;
to note them, however, furnishes a convenient formula of descrip-
tion and provides a clue to the fuller comprehension of the motive
of a given poem.
THE KINDS OF POETRY
When the poet's interest lies in action, incident, and situation,
his poem takes the form of narrative. When such a poem attains
a certain magnitude, when the action is on a large scale, and the
personages are of sufficient eminence and importance, it becomes
an epic. The epic may be relatively primitive and single-hearted like
the "Iliad," the "Odyssey," 1 "Beowulf," 2 or the "Nibelungenlied." It
may still recite the deeds of heroes in an earlier golden prime and
1 Harvard Classics, xxii, 9ff. 2 H. C. t xlix, 5#.
8l
82 POETRY
yet be the product of a conscious, highly elaborated literary art,
like Virgil's "^neid." 3 Or again, while celebrating a lofty theme,
it may be the deeply personal expression of the poet's own interpre-
tation of experience and the world, as with Dante and Milton. In
lesser compass than the epic, a narrative poem, like the ballads** or the
more conscious poetical romances and tales? may range over the
whole wide domain of men's adventures and fortunes, rinding
nothing human foreign to it.
Narrative thus stories forth the doings of others; the lyric rises
out of oneself. And here again the scope is limitless. A lyric may
phrase emotion in its purest essence: it is then the absolute lyric or
song. The emotion, gathering about a simple little scene in nature,
may utter itself briefly and beautifully in an idyl; conceived on a
more extensive scale, a poem of rustic life, actual or feigned, becomes
a pastoral. 5 The passion of grief finds voice in the elegy J A lyric
may mirror the large aspects of nature as colored by the poet's feeling,
and so it passes over into descriptive poetry. Sensuous elements may
be subordinated to thought or to sympathy; and the poem so in-
spired expresses reflection and sentiment. Exaltation of thought and
mood, moving through sustained and complex metrical form, finds
a fitting medium in the ode. 8 Even wit and satire, if feeling mingle
with the intellectual element, are not outside the scope of poetical
expression, as in the epigram. Poetry also provided only that it
still be poetry may be didactic. Although the true function of po-
etry, as of all art, is not to teach, but to interpret life beautifully, to
touch the heart and kindle the whole being to heightened activity, yet
a poem may voice moral ideas, as in Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" :
Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
3 H. C., xiii, 73ff. 4 H. C., xl, 5ifT.
5 Cf., for example, Chaucer's "Nun's Priest's Tale," H. C., xl, 341!, or Burns's
"Tarn o' Shanter," vi, 388f7.
6 For examples, see H. C., xl, 247, 254, 430; xli, 556, 615, 765.
7 For examples, see Milton's "Lycidas," //. C., iv, 72; H. C., xl, 447; xli, 856;
xlii, 1130.
8 For examples, see H. C., xl, 298, 380, 384, 447, 452ff.; xli, 476, 539, 595, 649,
728, 833, 876ff.
POETRY 83
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. 9
Out of the narrative interest, a primary instinct with men, and
out of the interest, only gradually developed, in individual character
for its own sake, is evolved a special literary form, called drama.
Here the poet embodies his feelings and ideas in the persons of
others. He no longer speaks for himself; he endows the figures of
his creation or observation with an independent substantive life
of their own. The narrative interest is still strong, for the dramatist
shows his personages in action, but he allows them to work out
their own destiny in accordance with the inner necessity of their
natures. In the drama, then, the poet's own "criticism of life" is
implied rather than directly expressed. The drama, as a literary form,
is a domain by itself. In so far as it is poetical, it does not differ
essentially from other kinds of poetry, and the same principles hold
true throughout all manifestations of the poetic spirit.
Distinctions of motive and form, though numerous and varied,
are not to be emphasized for their own sake. These categories may
be recognized in the large, but in concrete, single instances they tend
to overlap and to intermingle. The narrative poem has another in-
terest than the lyric, but it may be touched with the lyric passion; the
drama is different from either and combines both. For the lover of
poetry, however, it is not important to devise labels and apply them
correctly. Classification suggests the arrangement of a museum. But
poetry is a spirit, a living energy. We cannot imprison it in a defini-
tion. It calls for welcome and response.
In essence and in effect poetry is an interpretation of experience.
A poem is an expression, in beautiful and significant form, of the
poet's passion to understand and to possess his world. But, though
a poem embodies what some one man has thought and felt, we must
not mistake the poet's representative character nor fail to grasp the
universalizing power of his work. The individual poet is but an
instrument: he speaks for all men. So, in our turn, as we enter by
imaginative sympathy into his mind and feeling, we re-create his
*H. c., xli, 650-651.
84 POETRY
experience in ourselves. The kind of poetry which finds us first is
that which relates itself somehow to our immediate interests. Its
appeal depends upon what we bring to it of our own knowledge
and sensibility. We understand it because it phrases what we have
ourselves perceived and felt, though vaguely. Thus it interprets
our present lot, intensifying its quality and weaving its tangled
threads into a satisfying pattern. The poetry which seems to beckon
to us and is able to hold us longer is the figuring forth of experience,
already ours in part, into which we may enter more abundantly;
it helps us to take the step beyond. The poetry to which we finally
make our way 'the great things of all time is the revelation of
farther depths of insight, of unsounded depths of emotion. Such
poetry as this compels us to its own temper and mood. It is not only
revelation, it is creation; for out of the otherwise common things
of life it builds a quite new world for our possession.
If we seek a standard by which to try the quality and value of a
poem, we find it most immediately in our present need. But we must
be sure that the need is real, not a passing caprice, that it is intrinsi-
cally and profoundly a part of our expanding life. That poem is truly
for us, and so far good, which reveals beauty to us and some kind of
significance; for it can thus sustain and nourish us and minister to
our growth. But there is an objective standard as well. This is
found first of all in the poet's genuineness of feeling. Does the word
exactly measure the emotion it is intended to express ? Without this
primary and underlying sincerity of purpose, all the graces of form
and phrase cannot satisfy for long. Granted this sincerity, however,
we may say that that greatest poetry is that which gathers into itself
and radiates the most of reality, that which discloses the deepest
insight into life, and is charged with the fullest intensity of emotion,
matched by the greatest fitness and power of expression.
By the witchery of its music and the radiance of image, poetry
may rightly give pleasure to a leisure moment. Apprehended in its
deeper import, it may be one of the serious pursuits of life. To see
the world poetically is itself a kind of success. Although some quiet
spirits are content with the passive reception of beauty in nature
and in art, yet the poetic interpretation of life is not incompatible
with high moral endeavor, and may even be a stimulus to it, kin-
POETRY 85
dling in us a passionate ardor to know and to do. The revelation
which poetry affords carries us beyond the enjoyment of the instant;
as it leads us out into a more beautiful world, it brings us deeper
into the true significance of things, and so it widens our spiritual
horizon. As we see farther and feel more intensely, we are enabled
more amply to understand the meaning of our own life in its rela-
tion to the whole.
The reading of poetry, therefore, helps toward the organization
of experience. The ideal waits in the actual. It is the privilege of the
poet, gifted with vision, to discern the ideal, and by the energy of
creative phrase to summon it into warm and vivid reality. He mar-
shals the fragments of experience into a harmony with which we
may link up our own broken efforts; disclosing the inner meaning
of our blind purposes, he brings them into a unity of direction
and achievement. So he reveals us to ourselves. As the poet inter-
prets it for us, the big scheme of things is seen to be more beautiful
and more intelligible. In effect, the real appreciation of poetry is
communion with the great souls of earth: In their struggles and
their conquests we read the purpose of our own efforts and the
aspiration of our hearts.
Yet the beauty and significance which perhaps we had missed
without his leading the poet but restores to us after all. For the
poet is not final; nor is poetry, with the appreciator, an end in
itself. In the result it sends us back to life, to possess the world
more abundantly in ourselves. It gives us, in terms of wide-ranging
subject and in varied forms, the great moments of experience; but
it is to make those moments intimately and wholly our own. We
must love poetry, if we are to understand it: appreciation, therefore,
is a discipline and a development. But if we are to win from poetry
its deepest final meaning, we must actually live it. Though it has
power to console, sustain, inspire, poetry is not a substitute for life,
it is not an escape or refuge. Rather, it is a challenge to fuller living;
and to that end it is a guide and a support.
Poetry is a fruition and a promise. Exhaustless and immortal,
the spirit of poetry is ever conquering new beauty and new truth.
So equally there is no limit set to what we may compass for ourselves
in appreciation. Our enjoyment at any moment is the measure of
86 POETRY
our own capacity. Like the sea's horizon, the bounds of poetry are
traced only by the sweep of our vision. The ocean's verge advances
always before us with our progress; there is always an infinite which
still awaits.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and
the pleasure and \nowledgc of everything in them, shall we be fill'd
and satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue
beyond. 10
10 Walt Whitman.
NATURAL SCIENCE
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR LAWRENCE J. HENDERSON
NATURAL science is the latest of man's great achievements.
The other important agents of civilization long ago at-
tained their full stature, and many of the finest products
of human endeavor, like literature and the fine arts, have been
through many centuries the common possession of the race. Even
music, the most modern of the arts, is no longer young. But only
in the last half century has science reached maturity and revealed
its titanic power for good and evil in the reconstruction of the sur-
roundings of our life. Yet to-day, after a few brief decades of the
scientific era, agriculture, transportation and communication, food,
clothing and shelter, birth and death themselves in truth almost
all of man's experiences and activities are different from what they
were before, and the earth which he inhabits is transformed so that
it is with difficulty that he can imagine the conditions of life in past
centuries.
Meantime, these very changes which science has wrought have
combined with the great generalizations of science to modify philos-
ophy and to direct the current of religious thought. Here again the
effects are sometimes good, sometimes evil, but they are always pro-
found and widely influential. Most wonderful of all is the growth
of natural knowledge itself, the basis of these changes. Ever more
extensive and complete is the description of nature; all things are
counted, measured, and figured, then analyzed and classified. Out
of such orderly knowledge generalizations and laws arise, and with
the help of experiment and mathematical analysis receive their con-
firmation, until at length positive knowledge appears to extend to
almost all phenomena, and, except the origin of things, little seems
87
00 NATURAL SCIENCE
quite obscure or wholly unknown, while much is very securely es-
tablished.
The history of science and of its influence on civilization is in
some respects the simplest of the departments of history, for it is less
complicated by those incalculable forces which, springing from man's
passions and personal interests, make up much of the charm and
difficulty of general history. Deprived of these psychological ele-
ments, the history of science is in fact more nearly a part of the
natural history of man; it is concerned with the latest stage of his
struggle with the environment, with his cunning and deliberate
devices to master it, and with the marvelous structure of theoretical
knowledge which he has built up in the process.
ANTHROPOLOGY
Our lives are mainly occupied with the material world, with pro-
duction and distribution of food and clothing, and the construction
of dwellings which shall adequately protect us from the cold, the
wind, and the rain. All higher human activities rest upon the suc-
cessful establishment of these as a foundation. Hence progress, as
the word is commonly understood, is most often a step in the control
of the environment to the end of better production, construction, and
distribution of some commodity. Such progress is not perhaps what
the heart of man most ardently desires, but it is, at all events, the one
kind about which there can be no doubt.
Many of the most wonderful advances in mastery of the environ-
ment are prehistoric, the results of good fortune and gradually wid-
ening experience utilized by primitive men of native intelligence.
Thus clay is used as the filling for a basket, its baking is accidentally
observed, and pottery results; again a log, through a long series
of gradual changes and small inventions, becomes transformed into
a good boat or canoe.
Sophocles, in a famous chorus of the "Antigone," has celebrated
such achievements:
STROPHE I.
Many the forms of life,
Wondrous and strange to see,
NATURAL SCIENCE 09
But nought than man appears
More wondrous and more strange.
He, with the wintry gales,
O'er the white foaming sea,
Mid wild waves surging round,
Windeth his way across:
Earth of all Gods, from ancient days, the first,
Unworn and undecayed,
He, with his ploughs that travel o'er and o'er,
Furrowing with horse and mule,
Wears ever year by year.
ANTISTROPHE I.
The thoughtless tribe of birds,
The beasts that roam the fields,
The brood in sea-depths born,
He takes them all in nets
Knotted in snaring mesh,
Man wonderful in skill,
And by his subtle arts
He holds in sway the beasts
That roam the fields, or tread the mountain's height;
And brings the binding yoke
Upon the neck of horse with shaggy mane,
Or bull on mountain crest,
Untameable in strength.
STROPHE II.
And speech, and thought as swift as wind,
And tempered mood for higher life of states,
These he has learnt, and how to flee
Or the clear cold of frost unkind,
Or darts of storm and shower,
Man all-providing. 1
Many will always regard this as the final expression of man's
wonder and admiration at that which man has done in winning
his civilization. But while we admire and marvel at the feats
of primitive man, we must not forget to distinguish a very important
difference between such and many achievements of civilized man
1 See Harvard Classics, viii, 265-266, for another translation of this chorus.
9O NATURAL SCIENCE
in fact, between prehistoric works and deeds and all the greatest
scientific achievements. Very wonderful as the early progress was,
think of civilized man's failure to domesticate animals, and, incom-
parably important, think of the winning of fire, it lacked a certain
germ of growth, which is familiar to us in our own times. Each
thing came by itself, it came by accident, and it did not directly
lead to other things. Beyond living one's life and waiting for some-
thing to turn up so that one's ingenuity might be exercised, there
was no method of discovery or invention; the knowledge that ex-
isted was not systematized; there was no generalization from expe-
rience; and each invention, aside from its particular utility, led to
nothing else. How different have been the effects of Pasteur's dis-
covery of the place of micro-organisms in nature! 2 Almost at once
the causes of many of the gravest diseases of man and other animals
became known. There followed the discovery of means of avoiding
disease, of curing disease, and we are now well on the way to blot
out some of the oldest scourges of humanity. Such are a few of the
results in medicine. When the chemical and agricultural results are
added, Pasteur appears already to have influenced the life of almost
every civilized man.
Clearly the early advances of practical knowledge are not to be
confounded with natural science. They belong to the period of
human development which is the concern of the anthropologist, and
they only concern us as they help to an understanding of what science
really is.
ANCIENT SCIENCE
A very little true science did, however, exist at the dawn of history,
such as a description of the zodiac and astronomical knowledge, upon
which more or less perfect calendars could be based, and knowledge
of the properties of triangles which was useful in surveying after
the Nile floods. To this slender store the earliest of the Greek philos-
ophers contributed new discoveries, but before long the genius and
power of the Greek mind led to overweening confidence in specula-
tion unaided by observation and experiment, and, as a result, the
Z H. C., xxxviii, 364-382, and Lecture IV in this course.
NATURAL SCIENCE 91
great period of Athens is not scientifically of the highest importance.
Aristotle, to be sure, and his pupil Theophrastus, contributed very
greatly to sound knowledge of animals, plants, and rocks, but in the
theoretical sciences vague ideas based upon words rather than phe-
nomena or clear and precise concepts led them astray.
"The most conspicious example," says Bacon, "of the first class
[i. e., of the Rational School of Philosophers] was Aristotle, who
corrupted natural philosophy by his logic: fashioning the world out
of categories; assigning to the human soul, the noblest of substances,
a genus from words of the second intention; doing the business
of density and rarity (which is to make bodies of greater or less
dimensions that is, occupy greater or less spaces), by the frigid
distinction- of act and power; asserting that single bodies have each
a single and proper motion, and that if they participate in any other,
then this results from an external cause; and imposing countless
other arbitrary restrictions on the nature of things; being always more
solicitous to provide an answer to the question and affirm some-
thing positive in words than about the inner truth of things; a
failing best shown when his philosophy is compared with other
systems of note among the Greeks. For the Homceomera of Anaxa-
goras; the Atoms of Leucippus and Democritus; the Heaven and
Earth of Parmenides; the Strife and Friendship of Empedocles;
Heraclitus's doctrine how bodies are resolved into the indifferent
nature of fire, and remolded into solids; have all of them some
taste of the natural philosopher some savor of the nature of things,
and experience, and bodies; whereas, in the physics of Aristotle you
hear hardly anything but the words of logic; which in his meta-
physics also, under a more imposing name, and more, forsooth, as a
realist than a nominalist, he has handled over again. Nor let any
weight be given to the fact that in his books on animals and his prob-
lems, and other of his treatises, there is frequent dealing with ex-
periments. For he had come to his conclusion before; he did not con-
sult experience, as he should have done, in order to do the framing
of his decisions and axioms; but, having first determined the ques-
tion according to his will, he then resorts to experience, and, bend-
ing her into conformity with his placets, leads her about like a
92 NATURAL SCIENCE
captive in a procession; so that even on this count he is more guilty
than his modern followers, the schoolmen, who have abandoned
experience altogether." 3
Later, when Alexandria became the center of the Greek world,
and the limitations of metaphysics had become somewhat more evi-
dent, there was a return to positive science. For nearly a thousand
years men, notably Aristarchus, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Euclid,
Hero, and Ptolemy, labored at Alexandria, employing the true
methods of science and collecting valuable stores of information in
astronomy, geometry, trigonometry, optics, heat, and even anatomy.
The greatest of the scientific work of antiquity was done during
the Alexandrine period by Archimedes at Syracuse. It consists in
the creation of the science of statics.
The Romans, practical men according to Disraeli's definition,
those who practice the errors of their forefathers did little to ad-
vance the sciences, and, when the dark ages extinguished all intellec-
tual endeavor, it was little enough that men had achieved in science,
compared with their other deeds.
Yet it is certain that both true science and the true methods of
science had been established in antiquity. It was not so much the
errors of the ancient world as the errors of the Middle Ages in inter-
pretation of the ancient world, and the undue importance that was
assigned to Aristotle, which held back science during the first cen-
turies of the Renaissance.
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that if the science of an-
tiquity at its best, in the mechanics of Archimedes, the descriptive
astronomy of Hipparchus, the geometry of Euclid, and the zoology
of Aristotle, did manifest most of the characteristics of method and
treatment which we know to-day, nearly all of the results of modern
science, the modifications of life and civilization, are lacking in an-
tiquity. Ancient science was in great part sterile; modern science is
now the principal agent in social evolution.
RISE OF MODERN SCIENCE
It was not until the seventeenth century that modern science gained
a secure footing. Just as in antiquity, the minds of men once more
3 Bacon's "Novum Organum," Bk. I, Ixiii.
NATURAL SCIENCE 93
ranged over the whole field of the intellectual and the imaginative,
and produced many works of commanding genius in many different
subjects before again buckling down to the more sober tasks of
science, which they were doomed to labor upon till now, and quite
possibly forever.
Leonardo da Vinci, most versatile of all men, had, to be sure,
successfully sought the solution of problems in mechanics, and pa-
tiently studied anatomy and, in truth, almost every department of
science. But, great as was his insight into the phenomena of matter
and motion, and it was perhaps not less than his insight into the fine
arts, his work remained without effect, because unknown.
Before Galileo there are but two modern men of science whose
importance is capital, Copernicus and Vesalius. The work of Coper-
nicus, 4 though destined finally to tear a veil from before the eyes
of men, did not amount to a proof of the heliocentric hypothesis, nor
was it at once profoundly influential upon thought. As for Vesalius,
he labored upon human anatomy, a subject which has never exerted
a wide influence upon the large affairs of civilization. The number
of men who, in the sixteenth century and even before, pursued nat-
ural science with industry was considerable. But tradition, belief
in authority, and the superstitions of the pseudo-sciences of astrology
and alchemy, long and successfully resisted the advance of knowl-
edge. Time-honored ideas, nevertheless, had received a rude shock
at the hands of Copernicus, and by the year 1600, when Giordano
Bruno was burned at the stake, the far-spreading influence of the
heliocentric hypothesis, both in its direct hearing, and as an illustra-
tion of the power of the untrammeled human intellect, was evident
to most thoughtful men.
There followed in the next century such a revolution in thought
as has seldom occurred in the whole course of history. To this many
factors contributed; the commanding genius of a few great men,
Newton, Galileo, Harvey, 5 Kepler, Huygens, Descartes, 6 Bacon, 7
Leibnitz; the growth of algebra, which made possible the invention
of analytical geometry by Descartes, and the calculus by Newton and
later independently by Leibnitz; the inventions of the telescope and
4 H. C., xxxix, 52-57. 5 H. C., xxxviii, 62*?.
6 H. C., xxxiv, sff. 7 H. C., xxxix, n6ff.
94 NATURAL SCIENCE
compound microscope, greatly increasing the powers of the eye;
finally, that indefinable modernizing of the human mind wrought by
the whole Renaissance, which made sound thought once more pos-
sible, and for the first time produced in Galileo a man worthy to
stand beside Archimedes.
In many respects the seventeenth century is the most interesting
in the history of science, and certainly science is the most important
human interest in the history of this century. Galileo begins it.
"Modern science is the daughter of astronomy; it has come down
from heaven to earth along the inclined plane of Galileo, for it is
through Galileo that Newton and his successors are connected with
Kepler." 8 The investigation of the falling body, and the establish-
ment of the algebraical and geometrical laws of fall by Galileo,
joined with Kepler's great discoveries of the laws of planetary mo-
tion, and informed by the hypothesis of Copernicus, led to Newton's
"Principia," B a work (the only other one by an Englishman) that
stands out like that of Shakespeare, towering over all else.
This incomparable book contains all the essential principles of the
science of mechanics. Since the year 1687, when it was published,
the labor of many men of great genius has only availed to polish,
to refine, and to embellish a subject which they could not really
extend. In the course of the studies leading up to this work, Newton,
incidentally as it were, invented the differential and integral calculus,
which became the source not only of countless achievements in
mathematics and science, but of perhaps the bitterest controversy
in the annals of learning.
The work of Newton in establishing the science of mechanics was
dependent upon a variety of other achievements of the century, in
addition to the directly contributory labors of Kepler and Galileo.
Especially important were the earlier progress of mathematics,
marked by the invention of logarithms by Napier and independently
by Biirgi, and the above mentioned discovery of analytical geometry
by Descartes. Newton's work was also dependent upon the grow-
8 Bergson, "Creative Evolution," translated by Mitchell, p. 335.
*H. C., xxxix,
NATURAL SCIENCE 95
ing power and precision of scientific instruments and measure-
ments.
This development of mechanics from Galileo to Newton is perhaps
the best illustration of the method of scientific progress. Upon a vast
basis of accurate descriptive knowledge, erected partly by Tycho
Brahe and partly by earlier astronomers, observations with instru-
ments of precision and high power, quantitative experiments, and
finally mathematical calculations produced in little more than half
a century a work which it taxes the highest powers of the specially
trained human mind to understand, and which has withstood all
criticism for two centuries, the most critical in history.
HARVEY AND THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD
Only less important than that of mechanics was the development of
biology in the seventeenth century. William Harvey, supported by
the excellent work of anatomists that had begun with Vesalius, but
held back by many vestiges of the old superstitious belief in author-
ity and the garbled teachings of Hippocrates and Galen, in the early
years of the century discovered the circulation of the blood. 10 After
long and most admirable investigations and self-criticism, in the year
1628 he gave this discovery to the world.
It is impossible to imagine a more illuminating contrast between
the false learning of the Middle Ages and the sound positive knowl-
edge of modern times than is presented in Harvey's book. For at
almost every point the work of Harvey himself has quite as much
the modern flavor as that of Newton. The introduction presents the
old traditional views on the physiological functions of heart and
lungs, and bewilders with its meaningless play with words. There
follow upon this the simplest descriptions of observations and ex-
periments, and the soundest reasoning from such positive knowledge,
till one feels that he has passed from a dream into reality.
The work of Harvey, like so much of the work of great English-
men, was isolated, and the full development of biology came some-
what later, in mid-century and thereafter. In this later growth,
aided by the microscope and the principles of mechanics, the studies
of Swammerdam, Grew, Malpighi, Redi, Borelli, Leeuwenhoek,
10 H. C., xxxviii, 62ff.
96 NATURAL SCIENCE
and others, provided many important data in the most widely dif-
ferent departments of biology. But natural history lacked the great
foundation of accurate descriptive knowledge, arranged in order, that
astronomy possessed, and, as a result much of the great work which
the biological renaissance began was interrupted for a century.
Among the feats of seventeenth-century biology were microscopical
studies of the anatomy of both plants and animals (Nehemiah Grew,
Malpighi, Leeuwenhoek), the beginnings of embryology (Harvey,
Swammerdam), mechanical physiology (Borelli) including recogni-
tion of the nature of reflex action by Descartes, experimental studies
tending to overthrow belief in spontaneous generation (Redi), and
even observations on the physiological action of poisons.
In this century, in spite of the admirable work of Robert Boyle,
somewhat overestimated in his own day however, chemistry lan-
guished under the sway of a false theory. Similarly, heat, electricity,
and magnetism were of no great importance, unless the magistral
work on magnetism of William Gilbert, physician to Queen Eliza-
beth, published in 1600, be reckoned.
Two other departments of physical science, however, the study
of atmospheric pressure and optics, were more fortunate. Torricelli
and Viviani, pupils of Galileo, Otto von Guericke, Pascal, and Boyle
investigated the barometer and the pressure of gases and worked
up the fundamental conclusions. Optics was investigated by no less
men than Newton and Huygens, and at their hands underwent a
wonderful practical transformation. But this subject requires a pe-
culiarly subtle theoretical foundation, and the times were not yet
ripe even for a Newton to enter the true path of theoretical specula-
tion.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The great result of seventeenth-century science was to show the
world that simple and exact laws of nature can be discovered. At
the time of their discovery the most important thing about Galileo's
law of falling bodies and Newton's "Principia" was their amazing
novelty. Familiarity with such results of science has bred the mod-
ern contempt for superstition and anti-intellectual views concerning
the phenomena of nature.
NATURAL SCIENCE 97
It must be confessed, however, that the immediate results of
man's new-found confidence in the intellect were often very unfor-
tunate. For there can be little doubt that it was the successes of the
Newtonian dynamics and of mathematical analysis which gave the
philosophers of the eighteenth century their assurance of the possi-
bility of like simple, exhaustive, accurate, positive, and wholly
satisfactory treatments of the most complex of human affairs, in-
cluding economics and politics, to say nothing of the biological
sciences. Vain efforts in such directions consumed much of the
best energy of the century, and such striking failures tended to
obscure the real progress of knowledge when more modest or at
least more simple problems were involved.
There were three principal tasks for eighteenth-century science.
The organization of scientific men which had been begun in the
preceding century with the Royal Society of London and the
Academic des Sciences of Paris had to be widened and enlarged. The
work of Newton had to be evolved and spun out finer and finer
with the aid of a more and more flexible mathematical art. Above all,
the description of nature had to be extended in every direction and
classified, as the basis of further progress. In promoting the organiza-
tion of science Leibnitz is the great figure. In the development of
mathematical physics there are to be noted the Bernoulli family,
Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace. In natural history Linnaeus stands out
preeminent, though Buffon must not be forgotten, and, as the century
nears its close, biologists in the modern sense begin to appear.
One achievement of the century could not be foreseen the crea-
tion of scientific chemistry by Lavoisier, aided by Scheele, Priestley
and others, a deed hardly second to that of Newton and Galileo in
its importance of science and civilization, and far the most important
scientific advance of a hundred years.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The last decades of the eighteenth century and the first of the
nineteenth were a period of profound change politically, socially,
economically, and industrially, and not less scientifically. The scien-
tific renaissance had come in the seventeenth century and culminated
in Newton. The succeeding period had sufficed to develop his
98 NATURAL SCIENCE
immortal work and to collect a vast array of facts in the descriptive
sciences. At the same time the spirit of positive knowledge had been
applied to the steam engine and the arts, and in very different di-
rections had influenced the work of Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon,
Adam Smith, and many others. However they may have differed
among themselves, all these men felt the new forces, and responded
to them with novel criticism of religion, society, history, and politi-
cal economy.
Lavoisier had provided the instruments and methods for a revolu-
tion in chemistry quite as great as Newton's in physics. But chem-
istry differs very greatly from physics in the applicability of mathe-
matics, and a vast experimental edifice had to be raised before,
toward the end of the nineteenth century, anything like the complete-
ness of the Newtonian mechanics could be attained in the younger
science. Moreover the atomic theory had to be developed, had to
be interwoven with the kinetic theory of gases which sees the mole-
cules in endless motion, had to be extended with the help of geom-
etry, before this was possible. Still, a new tendency had formed,
which now has become one of the steadiest streams of scientific
progress.
Following upon the work of Franklin and Coulomb and many
others, the discoveries of Galvani and Volta, of Oersted and Ampere,
and above all, of Faraday, 11 in electricity, providing batteries and
currents, showing the relationship of electrical to magnetic, chemi-
cal, optical, mechanical, and thermal phenomena, constituted an-
other tendency, and both of these have had a profound influence
upon the arts. Young and Fresnel created a new science of light.
Heat became yearly more important with the development of the
steam engine and the growth of physiological and electrical science.
The work of Sadi Carnot, Mayer, Joule, Helmholtz, 12 Lord Kelvin, 13
and others led, in the middle of the century, to the principles of
thermodynamics, and to the laws of the conservation and degrada-
tion of energy.
THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Microscopical anatomy was revived and, advancing through the
11 H. C., xxx, 7-170. n H. C., xxx, 173-248. 13 H. C., xxx,
NATURAL SCIENCE 99
work of many trained observers, led to the recognition of the cell
as the morphological element of living things, with this as a basis,
to the systematic development of the whole of histology; and so to a
new embryology and pathology. Thus the names of Schleiden,
Schwann, Von Baer, and Virchow have become immortal.
Rigid ideas based upon classification, which had long tottered
before the assaults of Lamarck, Goethe, Erasmus, Darwin, Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire, and others, finally fell before Charles Darwin's 14 tri-
umphant conception of natural selection by survival of the fittest,
perhaps the most influential idea upon the thought of his time that
has ever been put forward by any man. Out of this have grown
the study of heredity and, partly through the efforts of Darwin's
cousin, Francis Galton, a new doctrine of perfectibility.
In another department of biology, the study of the phenomena of
digestion, fermentation, putrefaction, etc., after varying fortunes,
culminated in Pasteur's 15 discovery of the role of micro-organisms,
confirming the views of Redi and Swammerdam against sponta-
neous generation. The results of Pasteur's discoveries have now
swelled into the greatest material benefit ever conferred by one man
upon his fellows. They have led to antitoxins, immunity, and the
greater part of preventive medicine, as well as to antisepsis and asepsis
(Lister), 16 and so to the principal triumphs of surgery.
THE ORGANIZATION OF RESEARCH
Experimental methods, guided by mechanics, optics, heat, elec-
tricity, and chemistry, were now systematically applied to physiol-
ogy, then to psychology, and, with the help of the cellular hypoth-
esis and the sciences of embryology, evolution, heredity, immunity,
etc., they have transformed biology.
Everywhere, if other mathematical methods fail, the statistical
method is being applied and in suitable cases, as, for example, life
insurance, with great success; thus literally bringing order out of
chaos.
Meantime the world has learned that science pays. Accordingly
14 "Origin of Species," in H. C., xi. 15 H. C., xxxviii, 273-382.
16 H. C., xxxviii, 257.
IOO NATURAL SCIENCE
professorships have multiplied, societies have become more nu-
merous, journals are endowed, institutes of research established, the
Nobel prizes founded, and a livelihood is provided for large num-
ber of workers.
The number of working scientists, if not their quality, has enor-
mously increased. An army has been organized and disciplined,
and an amount of work which can scarcely be imagined has been
produced. Scientific literature has now become a flood that has to
be canalized with the help of special journals of various descriptions
devoted solely to its review, description, and orderly classification,
in order that it may be utilized at all.
The forward march of science has now become inevitable, like that
of civilization itself. This vast army of workers are engaged, with
no stake in the outcome, with no concern for the influence of their
work upon church or state or any other human institution or inter-
est, according to known and tried and proved rules, by description,
measurement, experiment, and mathematical analysis, in multiply-
ing our reliable, positive knowledge of the world around us. Year
by year this knowledge grows, by leaps and bounds when com-
manded by genius, slowly and painfully at the hands of most men,
but steadily and surely always.
SCIENCE AND THE STATE
One of the principal results of the extension of science is its incor-
poration with the state. Astronomers royal have existed for three
centuries, but to-day we have Departments of Agriculture with many
scientific bureaus, and we badly need Departments of Public Health.
Moreover, the vast increase of knowledge of a highly technical char-
acter has made it impossible for the executive, the legislative, and
the judicial departments of government even to have an intelligent
opinion regarding much with which they must deal. Hence the
expert is acquiring an importance which is scarcely guessed even
by most thoughtful persons, and government by expert commissions
and expert advisers of the legislature and the judiciary appear to be
inevitable features of the future state.
NATURAL SCIENCE 1 01
THE GROWTH OF SPECIALIZATION
The main currents of nineteenth-century science have produced
more and higher specialization than ever before. Descartes was
philosopher, scientist, and mathematician; some of the great men
of the eighteenth century were hardly less so. Even through a large
part of the nineteenth century many of the greater men ranged
widely over the field of science and mathematics. To-day the force
of circumstances has largely changed all that. The chemist is likely
to look upon the physicist, or even the physical chemist, with sus-
picion on account of his mathematical interests. On the other hand,
the mathematician, unlike Newton, Euler, and Gauss, is commonly
no longer a physicist at all. There are to-day very few men who
possess even a superficial acquaintance with all the principal de-
partments of science, and between the work of the astronomer,
on the one hand, and that of the anatomist, on the other, there is
perhaps no closer relationship than the fact that both employ
optical instruments in their researches.
Then nineteenth century will ever be known in history for at least
two of its scientific achievements the unification of our knowledge
of matter, energy, and life, and the final organization of the army
of scientific workers, whereby discovery ceased to be dependent
solely upon the individual and became a part of the business of
humanity at large, at length and for the first time systematically
undertaken.
THE UNIFICATIONS OF SCIENCE
i. Conservation of Energy
The middle of the nineteenth century witnessed the discovery of
all three of the great unifications of science. These are the unifica-
tion of energy by the discovery of the principle of the conservation
of energy, the unification of matter by the discovery of the periodic
system, and the unification of life by the work of Charles Darwin.
Not for decades after Bolton and Watt, as the result of commercial
necessity, introduced the idea of measuring energy in horsepower,
IO2 NATURAL SCIENCE
was the real nature of the relationship between heat and mechanical
power critically examined, save once in a quickly forgotten investi-
gation by Sadi Carnot. But at length the speculations and calcula-
tions of Julius Robert Mayer, the admirable experimental researches
of Joule, and the profound studies of Helmholtz and others estab-
lished the principle of the conservation of energy 17 in short, demon-
strated the proposition that energy is one and indestructible, how-
ever it may manifest itself as heat, or light, or electricity, or other-
wise.
2. Periodicity
Somewhat later the work of Newlands, Lother Meyer, and Men-
deleeff brought to light an extraordinary series of relationships,
periodically recurring properties, among the elements. It would be
impossible briefly to explain this relationship, but a simple analogy
may serve to show its nature.
ii 12 13 14 15
21 22 23 24 25
3 1 33 34 35
4 1 4 2 43 45
5 1 52 53 54 55
Giving the numbers above arranged, there can be no doubt, first,
that they have been correctly arranged, and secondly, that the num-
bers 32 and 44 are missing, but have a place in the table. In other
words, it is possible to predict the "properties" of the two missing
numbers. In like manner, the studies of MendeleefJ showed similar
connections among the elements. These could be arranged, as he
showed, in the order of their atomic weights, in a table very similar
to the above, in which the variation in properties was regular and
periodically recurrent, but with certain gaps in the classification.
Judging from the elements surrounding such gaps, Mendeleef? pre-
dicted the properties of the missing elements in certain cases in
which the missing elements have now been supplied by chemical
research. The results have invariably confirmed the Russian chem-
ist's predictions, as may be seen from the following data concerning
the element germanium:
17 H. C.,xxx, i 73 ff.
NATURAL SCIENCE
103
PREDICTION
OBSERVATION
Atomic weight
72.. O
72.. *
Specific gravity
S-S
^.469
Atomic volume
11.
11.2.
Specific gravity of oxide
4-7
4.703
Boiling point of chloride
Less than 100
86 '
Specific gravity of chloride
I Q
I Q
Specific gravity of ethyl compound
-
0.96
Lower than water
Thus it has become clear that the elements are all related to one
another. It is not known how to explain this relationship perhaps
they have been evolved in an orderly manner from something else
but, at all events, matter is not only indestructible (Lavoisier),
but it makes up a unitary system. To-day we feel sure that we are
acquainted with nearly all the stable varieties of matter that exist
in the universe, though of course there remain a great variety of
arrangements of this matter which are unknown to us.
3. Biological Evolution
The only well-known phenomenon that cannot be completely
described in terms of matter and energy is life, with its peculiar
characteristics of consciousness and thought. In the year 1859 biol-
ogy yielded to the unifying idea of Charles Darwin. Many had pre-
viously suspected that all living things are blood relations; the
discoveries of embryologists in particular had proved that the simi-
larities among living things are far more profound than had been
formerly realized. But Darwin provided a plausible explanation
of the development of more complex beings by a continuous evolu-
tionary process, and this led to the world's final decision in favor
of the hypothesis of transformation.
It is possible that some of Darwin's hypotheses may in the end be
discarded, but it appears to be wholly unlikely that the world will
ever give up its belief in the evolution of organic beings, in all their
multitudinous forms, from earlier and simpler types, and probably
originally from one or more exceedingly simple forms.
Finally, the change in the relation of science to civilization, ac-
complished in the nineteenth century, marks a new epoch in history.
IO4 NATURAL SCIENCE
For the first time humanity has systematically undertaken the task
of conquering the environment. A new organ of the social body,
like the financial or the military, has been created and has assumed
relations with the other parts of the great organism of modern
society.
System replaces chance in the greater part of human affairs, man-
ufacturing, warfare, medicine, commerce itself, have become "scien-
tific"; they advance steadily, ruthlessly, and carry man with them;
whither he cannot guess.
II. ASTRONOMY
BY PROFESSOR LAWRENCE J. HENDERSON
AGRONOMY was destined to liberate the modern intellect
from the bondage of the Middle Ages, and by teaching
man that the earth is not the fixed center of the universe,
but a satellite of one among many stars, to shake the confidence with
which he had long regarded the universe as made for him, the
earth for his abode, the heavens for his enjoyment. This is the
great contribution of astronomy to thought; to civilization it has also
contributed some of the most important advances, such as an ac-
curate calendar, the standard of time, and the exact measure of
time, sound methods of navigation and geography; and commencing
earlier than all the other sciences, it has built up one of the most
admirable structures of scientific knowledge.
Astronomy was long the leader among the sciences, and as such
gave to the world trigonometry, in part logarithms, and Newton's
dynamics. But though astronomical progress has by no means
ceased, the accelerated growth of other sciences first physics, then
chemistry, and of late biology has rendered it less conspicuous.
The continued importance of astronomy is, however, well illustrated
by the marvelous results of spectrum analysis, while to-day the study
of nebulae and of the physics of the sun possesses the highest interest.
HIPPARCHUS AND THE PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM
The principal results of ancient astronomy go by the name of
Ptolemy (the Ptolemaic system), but are mainly due to the labors
of Hipparchus.
Hipparchus knew the latitude and longitude of 150 fixed stars
within a fraction of a degree, when, in the year 134 B. C., a new
star of the first magnitude suddenly appeared. Encouraged by this
extraordinary event, he applied himself diligently to astronomical
measurements, establishing the position of more than 1,000 fixed
105
IO6 NATURAL SCIENCE
stars. It was no doubt this sound basis of accurate quantitative data,
and the familiarity with his subject which such work provided, that
led to his great achievements. He discovered the precession of the
equinoxes, and measured it with considerable accuracy; he measured
the length of the day with an error of but six minutes; but his great
achievement was a mathematical device whereby the position of the
sun and, with less accuracy, the positions of the moon and planets
could be calculated.
The essential features of this device consisted in imagining the
sun to move in a circle of which the earth was not quite the center;
this is 'the excentric of ancient astronomy. Another more difficult
idea was that of epicycles. These two mathematical ideas did very
good service in the work of Hipparchus, for the practical purposes
of the calendar. But later, in the hands of Ptolemy, and in the suc-
ceeding centuries, they ceased to be arbitrary assumptions, or even
mere theories, and in the Middle Ages became dogmas which were
held most tenaciously and blindly. As astronomical knowledge
slowly increased, it became necessary to make the theory more and
more complex in order to fit the facts, and, long before the work of
Copernicus, astronomical theories had reached a degree of absurdity
that could not have endured in any other age. Yet more than one
of the astronomers of antiquity had believed that the earth moves,
either rotating on its axis, or revolving round the sun, or both.
THE COPERNICAN THEORY
Copernicus was born at Thorn in Poland (1473) of a German
mother. Educated first in medicine, he studied astronomy in Vienna,
and he was later in Italy (1495-1505) at the height of the Renaissance.
When he returned home, his uncle, the bishop of Ermeland, pre-
sented him with a clerical position at Frauenburg. Here for forty
years he labored to bring astronomical calculations and observations
into harmony, and finally, long after he had become convinced of the
soundness of the heliocentric view, published the work 1 which marks
the first great step in modern science, a work which he saw for the
first time on his deathbed in 1543.
1 See his Dedication of his "Revolutions of Heavenly Bodies," Harvard Classics,
xxxix, 52-57.
NATURAL SCIENCE IO7
Copernicus showed that all the difficulties which the movements
of the planets present would become very much less if the moon were
left the only satellite of the earth, and the earth itself and all the
planets were assumed to move around the sun. He did not prove-
in truth being wise and realizing his own limitations, he did not
seek to prove this hypothesis, but only to present the reasons why
it must appear the most probable explanation of the principal astro-
nomical phenomena.
The new doctrine made converts slowly. At first it was opposed
by the professional astronomers, with whose time-honored habits
it interfered, and who were, for the most part, not competent to
understand it. Later the opposition of the great Tycho Brahe worked
against it for many years. Still later the opposition of theologians
effectually cut off many converts, most notably Descartes. But the
discovery of Kepler's laws completely destroyed the Ptolemaic sys-
tem, and must have convinced nearly all reasonable men of the cor-
rectness of that of Copernicus. These famous laws are as follows:
The line joining the sun with a planet sweeps over equal areas in
equal periods of time. Every planet moves in an ellipse with the
sun at one focus. The squares of the times of the revolution of any
two planets are in the same ratio as the cubes of their mean distances
from the sun.
GALILEO AND NEWTON
The next important step in the growth of knowledge of the solar
system was Galileo's study of the laws of fall and the composition of
two kinds of motion, like fall and projection, as in the case of a
projectile. This was followed by Newton's magnificent extension
of gravity from the earth to the whole of space, with the assumption
and proof that the intensity of gravitational attraction varies inversely
as the square of the distance.
These ideas, combined with Kepler's laws, led at once to the
theory of planetary motion and its proof, in Newton's "Principia." 2
The motion of the planets appeared as the resultant of their tend-
ency to go on in the direction in which they were moving (inertia),
and their tendency to fall to the sun (gravitation). The problem
2 H. C., xxxix, 1 50, and see General Index in vol. 1, under Newton.
IO8 NATURAL SCIENCE
yielded completely, so far as two bodies are concerned, to the mathe-
matical genius of Newton.
Still the revolution of the earth about the sun was not, by many
astronomers, considered to be proved, while some even denied it.
For if the earth really revolved about the sun, the relative positions
of the stars ought not to appear the same to us from different parts
of the orbit. Yet no difference in their places at the two solstices
could be detected, although the stands of the observer were sepa-
rated by a hundred and eighty million miles in the two instances.
James Bradley was the first person to obtain important results
from the investigation of this problem of parallax. He found, not,
to be sure, a periodic change of the apparent position of the stars
that could be explained as parallax, but a different change of posi-
tion, quite unexpected. This he called aberration, and recognized
that it was due to a composition of the motion of the earth and of
the light from the star itself, which is analogous to the entry of
rain falling straight down, yet into the open front of a moving
carriage. Here, nevertheless, was a proof, the more valuable because
unexpected, of the earth's motion. It was not until 1837 that Bessel
finally measured the parallax of a fixed star, and this finally ended
the problem. The whole difficulty had been due merely to the enor-
mous distance which separates us from the nearest of the stars.
SPECTRUM ANALYSIS
A new period in the history of astronomy followed upon the dis-
covery of spectrum analysis by Bunsen and KirchhofT. At the outset
the chemical composition of the sun revealed itself. Later that of
the stars became known; still later it became possible to classify
the stars on the basis of their spectra, and at length it has become
evident that variations in spectra are at least largely due to differ-
ences in the age of suns (the length of time during which cooling
has gone on), that all stars are probably very much alike both
chemically and physically, and that our sun is probably very much
like all other stars. The geological doctrine of uniformity has been
extended to astronomy.
This results in renewed interest in the nebular hypothesis and in
novel speculations regarding the origin of the solar system. In like
NATURAL SCIENCE 109
manner, the problem of the physicochemical nature of the sun, and
of the processes which take place within it, assumes great interest;
for, if the universe be homogeneous, we may extend our local dis-
coveries to the utmost confines of space. These, however, have
themselves turned out not so unapproachable as a few years ago
they seemed to be. Certain peculiarities of star spectra enable astron-
omers to judge of the motion of stars both relative to the earth and in
rotation. The behavior of variable stars can also in part be accounted
for by ingenious hypotheses.
Thus the old science preserves its youth and promises to continue
its contributions to the growth of human understanding.
III. PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY
BY PROFESSOR LAWRENCE J. HENDERSON
THE history of physical science in the ancient world is
marked by few notable results. The monochord, earliest of
scientific apparatus, led to the discovery of the elements of
harmony; geometrical optics in its simplest form was developed;
Hero of Alexandria and others familiarized themselves with some
of the phenomena of steam and air pressure; even Aristotle, whose
influence in this department was on the whole so harmful during
two millenniums, possessed much curious and interesting informa-
tion. But, apart from the great work of Archimedes in mechanics,
there is little that bears the imprint of genius in the physics and
chemistry of antiquity. Most of the knowledge of the time was no
better than a collection of rules of the various trades, such as dyeing,
for instance.
THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF ARCHIMEDES
Archimedes established the science of statics. He discovered the
law of the lever, that unequal weights are in equilibrium when
their distances (from the fulcrum) are inversely proportional to
their weights; he developed the idea of center of gravity, and dis-
covered rules concerning it; and he discovered the laws of floating
and immersed bodies, including the so-called principle of Archi-
medes, which enabled him, as the story goes, by weighing Hiero's
crown in air and then in water, to detect that the goldsmith had
debased the metal. This work of Archimedes, together with his
remarkable mathematical feats, marks him as one of the mightiest
of human intellects, fully worthy of a place among the greatest of
the Greeks.
But, in spite of Archimedes, it was in fragmentary and disjointed
form that the physical science of antiquity was transmitted with-
out important change through the Middle Ages to the Modern
NATURAL SCIENCE III
World. We have already seen somewhat of the additions which
the seventeenth century contributed, especially in dynamics, from
Galileo to Newton. It does not appear that, apart from the chemical
work of Lavoisier, the eighteenth century provided much of the very
highest novelty and value in this field. Perhaps the researches of
two Americans, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Thompson, who
became Count Rumford, in electricity and in heat respectively, are
among the best which the century affords, as they are at the summit
of all American scientific work.
LAVOISIER AND THE RISE OF MODERN CHEMISTRY
Lavoisier's achievement consisted in his recognition of the fact
that weight is neither increased nor diminished in chemical changes,
and in the elevation of this discovery, which has since been many
times confirmed with ever-increasing accuracy, into the guiding
principle of chemical investigation, the law of conservation of mass.
This advance involved the introduction of the balance as the chief
instrument of chemical research. Lavoisier's great success depended,
further, upon the fact that he chose the process of oxidation and
reduction (the reverse of the reaction of oxidation) for study. Not
only is oxygen the most active of chemical elements, if both intensity
and variety of chemical behavior be considered, and far the com-
monest upon the earth's surface, but also the most important chem-
ical processes are reactions of oxygen.
The partial tearing off of oxygen from the carbon of carbonic
acid and the hydrogen of water is the first step in the formation of
all organic substances in the plant, and the recombination of oxygen
with plant products the chief chemical activity of the animal. All
this and much more Lavoisier recognized, and thereby revealed
the true nature of another great phenomenon of nature. These in-
vestigations also disclosed, in the sequel, the chief source of all the
energy which is available for the purposes of man.
It is only the energy stored up in the plant (originally the energy
of the sunlight shining upon the green leaf of the plant and trans-
formed by the action of chlorophyll) which is contained in all coal,
wood, all kinds of oil, including petroleum, alcohol, in short every
fuel. And it is exclusively by the union of the fuels with oxygen
112 NATURAL SCIENCE
once more to form water and carbonic acid that this energy is lib-
erated, as in the human body itself, and utilized by man. 1 The re-
sulting water and carbonic acid can then be used over again by the
plant. The nature of this cycle of matter was clearly recognized by
Lavoisier. This is the basis of nearly all our industry and commerce.
THE WAVE THEORY OF LIGHT
The next great achievement of physical science is commonly re-
garded as the establishment of the wave theory of light 2 by Young
and Fresnel. This view had been put forth in the seventeenth cen-
tury in a very weighty form by Huygens, and it had even been held
before him by the versatile Hooke. On the assumption that light
is propagated as undulations, Huygens had given a most satisfactory
account of the laws of reflection and refraction; and he had had
good success even in his application of the theory to the very difficult
problem of double refraction in Iceland spar. Huygens, however,
did not succeed in establishing his hypothesis, and Newton's prefer-
ence for the so-called emission or corpuscular theory of light weighed
heavily against the theory of waves.
Newton himself never quite rejected the wave theory of light, and,
in truth, at many points in his writings seems strongly to favor it.
But there are propositions in his works which led his followers to
the positive assertion of the emission hypothesis. The great mathe-
matician Euler, on the other hand, adopted, in the eighteenth cen-
tury, the undulatory theory. Between his purely theoretical views
and the Newtonians there was great controversy.
Again at the beginning of the nineteenth century the undulatory
theory was set forth, this time, however, on the basis of exact obser-
vations upon the colors of thin plates, by Thomas Young, one of the
most versatile men of genius of the country. The contributions of
Young were destined to prevail, but, in spite of their soundness, they
were treated with contempt by his contemporaries and forgotten for
twenty years, until revived by the confirmations of Fresnel. Fresnel,
moreover, gradually developed the mathematical theory of this intri-
cate subject, and at length, supported by Arago, he won over the
^ee Faraday on the "Chemical History of a Candle" in H. C., xxx, 86-170.
2 See Kelvin's account of the theory in H. C., xxx. 251-273.
NATURAL SCIENCE 113
scientific world to the belief in light waves and the luminiferous
ether with its strange and paradoxical characteristics.
THE WORK OF FARADAY
Of all the results of scientific experimentation, those of Faraday
probably contributed most to the recognition of the connection be-
tween the different manifestations of energy, which was a necessary
preliminary to the discovery of the principle of the conservation of
energy. 3 This is but one of the merits of Michael Faraday, whom
many have thought the very greatest of scientific experimenters,
and who was certainly one of the noblest and most inspired of men.
The work of Faraday is of a richness and variety that baffles de-
scription. He was interested in every department of physical science,
and he was a great discoverer wherever his interests rested. His
earliest work was chemical, following that of his teacher Davy.
Here he discovered new compounds of carbon, for the first time
liquefied several gases, studied the diffusion of gases, the alloys of
steel, and numerous varieties of glass. Next he turned to electricity,
his chief interest thenceforth. With a voltaic pile he decomposed
magnesium sulphate. This led later to his fundamental electro-
chemical law. Choosing purely physical problems, he for the first
time produced the continuous rotations of wires and magnets round
each other, and in 1831 he discovered induced currents. The great-
ness of his work in this department has been explained by the most
competent of all critics, Clerk Maxwell.
"By the intense application of his mind he had brought the new
idea, in less than three months from its first development, to a state
of perfect maturity. The magnitude and originality of Faraday's
achievement may be estimated by tracing the subsequent history
of his discovery. As might be expected, it was at once made the
subject of investigation by the whole scientific world, but some
of the most experienced physicists were unable to avoid mistakes
in stating, in what they conceived to be more scientific language
than Faraday's, the phenomena before them. Up to the present
time, the mathematicians who have rejected Faraday's method of
stating his law as unworthy of the precision of their science have
3 See Faraday on "Forces of Matter," H. C., xxx, 7-85.
114 NATURAL SCIENCE
never succeeded in devising any essentially different formula which
shall fully express the phenomena without introducing hypotheses
about the mutual action of things which have no physical existence,
such as elements of currents which flow out of nothing, then along
a wire, and finally sink into nothing again.
"After nearly half a century of labor of this kind, we may say
that, though the practical applications of Faraday's discovery have
increased and are increasing in number and value every year, na
exception to the statement of these laws as given by Faraday has
been discovered, no new law has been added to them, and Faraday's
original statement remains to this day the only one which asserts
no more than can be verified by experiment, and the only one by
which the theory of phenomena can be expressed in a manner which
is exactly and numerically accurate, and at the same time within the
range of elementary methods of exposition." 4
4 "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 9th ed., ix, 30.
IV. THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
BY PROFESSOR LAWRENCE J. HENDERSON
A3NG the central problems of biology and scientific medicine,
those which group themselves about the bacteriological and
pathological investigations of Pasteur 1 have been very fully
represented in The Harvard Classics. This is due partly to the
fact that Pasteur, in providing an explanation of the conditions of
life of micro-organisms and of the effects of their activities, con-
tributed many missing links to the science of life, and unified our
knowledge of the interrelations of living things. For, in its various
ratifications and connections, Pasteur's problem is one of the most
extensive, as it is one of the most important, in the whole domain
of science. It includes or touches the subjects of fermentation and
putrefaction, with the old problem of spontaneous generation and
the whole question of genesis, the cause of infectious diseases and
the manner of their communication, the nature and mechanism of
immunity, including vaccination and antitoxins, and a host of other
equally important matters. The work of Pasteur has led to modern
surgery through the work of Lister, 2 to a large part of modern
hygiene, sacrificing the lives of many investigators in the process;
to new methods in chemical industry and agriculture, and it has
created untold wealth and saved countless lives.
THE QUESTION OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION
Aristotle, though his knowledge of embryology in at least one in-
stance that of the smooth dog-fish was very great and very exact,
appears at times to have been willing to assume spontaneous genera-
tion of such large animals as the eel, for instance, as a common oc-
currence. But there can be no doubt that even in antiquity common
sense sometimes felt itself more or less in opposition to such an idea,
1 Harvard Classics, xxxviii, 275ff .
2 See Lister, "On the Antiseptic Principle," in H. C., xxxviii, 257 fi.
"5
Il6 NATURAL SCIENCE
and it was natural enough for the men of the seventeenth century,
when stirred by the new spirit of scientific research, to seek to solve
a problem which has always been of the highest interest, and never
far from the minds of thoughtful naturalists.
In this great century the most important investigations of such
problems were those of Harvey, Redi, and Swammerdam. Harvey's
embryological observations are far less valuable than his study of
the circulation of the blood. 3 It may, in truth, be questioned if he
surpassed Aristotle in any way as an embryologist. But, at all events,
his work served to draw the attention of his successors to this subject,
and, however vague his ideas about spontaneous generation in cer-
tain lower forms of life, he at least took a firm stand in favor of
the theory of generation from the egg in most cases.
The work of Redi is of greater interest and importance. He made
elaborate studies of the putrefaction of flesh, saw flies lay their
eggs therein, and on gauze when the flesh was protected with it. He
saw maggots develop in the unprotected meat, while the use of
gauze prevented their development. He found that meat of one
kind could support maggots which formed more than one kind
of fly, and that the same species of fly could come from different
kinds of meat. Hence he concluded that the generation of the fly
is from an egg, and that there is no spontaneous generation involved
in the putrefaction of meat.
Swammerdam, one of the greatest of naturalists, and many others
confirmed the observations and conclusions of Redi, and, by ob-
serving again and again normal generation from the egg in many
other species of minute organisms, did much to undermine the confi-
dence with which the unaccountable appearance of living things
was ascribed to spontaneous generation.
Meanwhile the microscopical studies of Leeuwenhoek had revealed
the presence of hosts of minute organisms in putrid fluids and, in
the eighteenth century, the problem of spontaneous generation was
transferred to the origin of microscopic life. This problem in turn
was answered unfavorably to spontaneous generation by Spallan-
zani. His new method of investigation was to seal up an infusion
3 See Harvey, "On the Motion of the Heart and Blood of Animals," in H. C.,
xxxviii 59ff.
NATURAL SCIENCE I IJ
of meat in a glass flask; next the flask was immersed in boiling
water until the contents had been thoroughly heated throughout,
and then the behavior of the solution on standing was observed.
After thorough heating no signs of putrefaction were revealed to
the eye or to the nose; no living things were ever visible in the
solution under the microscope. But on admitting the air to the
flasks putrefaction soon set in and thus proved that the fault was not
with the effect of heat upon what is to-day called the culture
medium, but that putrefaction had not previously occurred simply
because all germs originally present had been killed by heat; ster-
ilized, in short.
THE CELL THEORY AND FERMENTATION
The early nineteenth century made two highly important new
contributions to the old problem : the view that all living things are
made up of cells as their ultimate structural elements; and, secondly,
acquaintance with various digestive ferments contained in liquids
like the gastric juice, which are now known to be cell free, yet are
capable of bringing about processes resembling fermentation. The
latter discovery led at a later date to the distinction between organ-
ized (living) and unorganized ferments.
Out of the cell theory have grown the wonderful modern sciences
of embryology, largely through the efforts of K. E. von Baer, and
pathology, in which Rudolf Virchow has a similar position. The
study of ferments and fermentation, and of simple chemical agents
which can produce like changes, has led to many new problems and
to new methods of attacking old ones.
The chemical aspects of fermentation 4 have a special historical
importance because they are especially associated with Pasteur's dis-
coveries. Trained as a chemist, he applied the exact methods of
physical science to the biological problem, and solved what had been
thought by many insoluble. The studies of Pasteur convinced the
scientific world that life as we know it never originates spontane-
ously, that minute living organisms microbes, germs, bacteria are
far more active agents in this world than had been guessed. Such
organisms turned out to be the essential factors in fermentation of
4 See Pasteur, "The Physiological Theory of Fermentation," in H. C., xxxviii, 275*?.
Il8 NATURAL SCIENCE
all kinds, save only those due to digestive ferments; it is such organ-
isms which form alcohol, sour milk, make vinegar, etc. Thus in the
organic cycle the role of the organisms formed of a single cell at
length appeared to be a great one. Everywhere present, borne by the
wind, they are the true scavengers; for nothing, no matter how small,
can escape them. But they are more than this. Wherever they find
organic matter, dead or alive, that can support life, they seize upon
it; they transform many of the most important waste products of
the animal into the food of the plant; they grow within larger living
things, and by their growth cause disease, or do not, according to
their nature. In short, it is their activity, invisible but omnipresent,
fitting in at every point where gaps would otherwise occur, which
completes the organic cycle.
IMPORTANCE OF THE WORK OF PASTEUR
At length the chemical processes of life upon the earth were uni-
fied. Living things were seen to make up a single community, the
great laboratory through which alone matter flows in its everlasting
cycle.
The results of Pasteur's discoveries and of the methods of inves-
tigation which he introduced are probably already greater than the
results of Napoleon's life. The simple great man, who almost alone
among the scientists of the nineteenth century equals the genius and
virtue of Faraday, shares with the latter the first position among
those who have revolutionized our twentieth-century world.
Pasteur's discoveries explained at once such observations as those
of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 5 They gave a clue to such mysterious
processes as vaccination. 6 And one after another each great pest
has yielded up its secret cause a specific micro-organism to the
disciples of Pasteur.
TOXINS, ANTITOXINS, AND IMMUNITY
Yet such discoveries are but a beginning in the explanation of
disease. It soon appeared that there is something vastly more im-
5 See Holmes, "The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever," in H. C., xxxviii, 257.
6 See Jenner's original publications on vaccination against smallpox in H. C., xxxviii,
NATURAL SCIENCE 119
portant about a bacterium than its ability to grow in the body viz.,
the kind of poison which it yields; else why the difference between
typhoid fever and tuberculosis? Thus arises the search for such
poisons or toxins, a fruitful and important department of medical
investigation. But what of the fate of the toxin in the body what
of this effect upon the host? The result of researches upon this
line has been the discovery of antitoxins and the science of immunity.
In another direction the progress of micro-biology has been quite
as important. Evidently it is not with the help of toxins that yeast
forms alcohol and carbonic acid from sugar; it is with the help of
enzymes or soluble ferments. These are imprisoned within the cell,
but otherwise they resemble pepsin and the other soluble ferments
of digestion. But if the yeast cell performs its chemical functions
with the help of soluble ferments, why not all other cells as well?
Such is in truth the case. Hence the study of the chemical processes
which make up the activity of unicellular organisms has explained
much that takes place in every living thing. In short, our progress
in the solution of the fundamental problem of physiology, the
physico-chemical organization of protoplasm, depends in no small
degree upon studies of those minute living things which have but
a single cell within which to enclose all the activities of an indi-
vidual being.
V. KELVIN ON "LIGHT" AND
"THE TIDES"
BY PROFESSOR W. M. DAVIS
SCIENTIFIC essays, like those by Lord Kelvin on Light 1 and
The Tides, 2 should be read several times by the studious
reader, and each time from a different point of view. In the
first reading, the reader seeks for information offered by the author;
in the second, the reader examines the scientific method by which
the author has gained his information; in the third, the reader's
attention should be directed to the style of presentation adopted
by the author in telling his story. After an attentive study of Kel-
vin's essays from these different sides, many a reader will find
that he has made a distinct intellectual advance.
THE ESSAYS AS STATEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC RESULTS
The first reading of either essay will disclose some of the most
marvelous results that have been reached by scientific investigation.
For example, it has been discovered that light is of an undulatory
nature; that the vibrations of light quiver at the rate of several
hundred millon of million times a second; that light is transmitted
over interplanetary distances with a velocity of nearly 200,000 miles
a second; and that for the transmission at such a speed through what
seems to us to be empty space, as between the sun and the earth,
there must be a continuous, extremely tenuous, and highly elastic
medium, all pervading and universally extended, to which the name,
luminiferous ether, is commonly given. It is of course not to be
expected that all these and many other results, physical, geometrical,
and numerical, can be easily acquired; some paragraphs must be
gone over more slowly than others, and many of them should be re-
1 Harvard Classics, xxx, 25 iff. 2 H. C., xxx, 274ff.
120
NATURAL SCIENCE 121
viewed more than once; some are difficult of comprehension because
they are without the vivid experiments by which they were illus-
trated in the original lecture; and others because they are compressed
into terse statements without explanation. But at the end of what is
here called the "first reading," many of the conclusions announced
regarding the nature of light should be fairly familiar. Similar ex-
amples may be drawn from the lecture on the tides; the larger share
of mathematical considerations here encountered may make the sec-
ond essay more difficult than the first; if some readers do not clearly
understand, for example, the statement regarding diurnal inequality
(p. 291), they may be excused, for the statement is very brief;
similarly, the account of the tide machines (pp. 293-297) is too dense
to be really comprehended by a non-mathematical reader, previously
uninformed on such matters as harmonic analysis.
THE ESSAYS AS EXAMPLES OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD
The second reading of the essays, directed to an examination of
the scientific method employed by the author, should have for its
most valuable result a better appreciation of the nature of "theoriz-
ing" than most persons possess. The immediately observable ele-
ments of such phenomena as light and tides are called "facts"; but
an intelligent inquirer is soon persuaded that the facts of observa-
tion are really only a small part of the total phenomena. For exam-
ple, some invisible factors must determine that the noonday sky
overhead is blue, and the horizon sky near sunset or sunrise is yellow
or red. Or, some unseen factors must determine the strength of the
tides and their hour of occurrence varying from day to day. How
can light travel at its incredibly rapid velocity ? How can the moon
cause changes of sea level on the earth? The true answers to such
questions would acquaint us with phenomena that, in spite of their
invisibility, take place just as truly as the phenomena that we observe.
Such unseen phenomena might be called "facts of inference," to dis-
tinguish them from "facts of observation." To discover the facts
of inference and to demonstrate their connection with the facts of
observation is the effort of all theorizing. A theory is, in brief, a
statement in which the supposed facts of inference are reasonably
122 NATURAL SCIENCE
connected with the known facts of observation. How is such a
statement reached? and when it is reached, how do we know that
it is right? To answer such questions fully would demand a whole
treatise on scientific method, here impossible; our intention is simply
to point out that an introductory understanding of scientific method,
much better than none, can be gleaned by a careful second reading
of Kelvin's and of the other scientific essays in this collection, with
the constant effort to learn how the announced results have been
attained.
Notice, first, that for an active mind, it is "impossible to avoid
theorizing" (p. 281). The lesson from this is to beware of those
so-called practical persons who say they do not theorize; what they
really do is to theorize in an unsafe, unscientific manner; for they,
like everyone else, wish to understand more than they can see. The
desire to theorize should not be resisted, but theorizing should be
carefully cultivated and its results should be carefully held apart
from those of observation. Notice, second, that, some facts of ob-
servation having been gained, the inquisitive mind at once sets about
inventing schemes that may possibly include the mental counter-
parts of the unseen phenomena, or facts of inference, and then pro-
ceeds to determine the correctness of the inventions by certain logi-
cal devices or tests. That particular scheme is finally adopted as true
which stands all possible tests. The tests are mostly experimental
in the study of light; they are largely computational in the study
of the tides. Notice, third, how ingenious the scientific mind must
be to conceive the extraordinary schemes by which the unseen phe-
nomena are supposed to combine with the seen, so as to make a rea-
sonably working total process; how far these mental processes must
go beyond the mere determination of visible facts by observation;
how active the imagination must be to picture the invisible processes
of the invented scheme; and also how free from prepossessions, how
docile the scientific mind must be, in order to follow the experimental
or computational demonstrations wherever they may lead! Still more
important, notice how large a share of the standard content of
science, as illustrated by the essays on light and tides, is made up of
what are here called "facts of inference," and not simply of facts
of observation.
NATURAL SCIENCE 123
THE MERE OBSERVER VCTSUS THE THEORIZER
The problem of the tides may be illustrated by a parable. Once
there was a keen, unimaginative observer living on a seacoast, where
a perpetual pall of clouds covered the sky, concealing the sun and
moon, but where the tides, with their periodic variations, were
familiar matters; he would gain a good knowledge of the facts of
observation, but he would have no knowledge of their meaning as
revealed by the unseen facts of inference. At the same time a
philosophical hermit was living alone under the clear skies of a
desert continental interior, where he was totally ignorant of the
oceans and their tides, but familiar with the motions of the sun
and moon, and acquainted with the law of gravitation, in accordance
with which the heavenly bodies move; he might from this beginning
go on with a series of inferences, or deductions, which would in
the end lead him to say: "These distant bodies must exert unequal
attractions on different parts of the earth, but the earth is too rigid to
yield to them; if, however, a large part of the earth's surface were
covered with a sheet of water, the attractions of the sun and moon
would produce periodic variations in the level of such a sheet" . . .
and so on. After a time, the long-shore observer sets out upon his
travels and meets the hermit in the interior desert, who asks him:
"Do you happen to have seen a large sheet of water, in which periodic
changes of level take place?" "I have indeed," the observer exclaims,
"and I was on the point of telling you about the changes of level in
the hope that you could explain them; but how did you know that
the changes occurred?" "I did not even know," the hermit replies,
"that there was a vast sheet of water in which they could occur; but
I felt sure that, if such a water sheet existed, it must suffer periodic
changes of level, because . . ." The evident point of the parable is
that the keen observer and the speculative hermit are both combined
in a trained scientific investigator; he performs the two tasks of
observation and of explanation independently, as if he were two
persons; and his philosophical half finally accepts as true that par-
ticular scheme or theory which leads to the best understanding of
the facts gained by his observational half.
124 NATURAL SCIENCE
THE ESSAYS AS MODELS OF EXPOSITION
The third reading is devoted to the style of presentation, and this
brings the reader more closely into relation with the author. The
object of the third reading is thus unlike that of the second, which
considered the author in relation to his problem; while both these
are unlike the first, in which the reader did not think of the author
but only of the subject treated. A few leading characteristics of
presentation in the first essay may be pointed out; the reader may
afterward make for himself a similar analysis of the second essay.
Note first that the more difficult subject of light is introduced by
the analogous and easier subject of sound (pp. 252-256); this is as
if the author kindly took the reader by the hand and guided him
along an easy path toward a lofty summit. Note again the care
which the author takes to lead the reader by easy steps from small
to large numbers, and the sympathetic encouragement that he gives :
"You can all understand it" (p. 258). Consider the homely illus-
tration of the teapot (p. 259) and the large concept which it aids
you in reaching. Recognize the personal touch given by the reference
to the famous work of the American physicist, Langley (p. 259);
and a little later to the epoch-making discovery of the spectrum by
Newton. See again a homely illustration in the mention of shoe-
maker's wax, and with it Kelvin's quaint allusion to his Scotch birth
(p. 264). Passing over several other matters, consider the care which
this profound investigator, himself able to grasp the most com-
plicated mathematical formulae, gives to illustrating the nature of
ether vibrations by means of a small red ball in a bowl of jelly (p.
271).
The first reading ought to excite a desire to learn more about light;
the second, to understand more fully the method of science; the third,
to know more intimately some of the great men of the world. Thus
the careful reading of one thing creates an appetite for reading many
other things: and therein lies the greatest teaching value of any
reading whatever.
PHILOSOPHY
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR RALPH BARTON PERRY
How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.
SINCE Milton wrote thus gallantly in its behalf, philosophy
has fairly succeeded in living down its reputation for being
"harsh and crabbed." No one who has made the acquaintance
of Scholastic Philosophy, the philosophy of the Middle Ages, and
still the established philosophy in Milton's day, can escape a secret
sympathy with the view of these "dull fools." But in the course of
the last three centuries, philosophy, especially English and French
philosophy, has become more free in form, more imaginative, and
more self-expressive. So that the critics and belittlers of philosophy
to-day, too numerous, alas! to make it safe to call names, have taken
up new ground. Philosophy is condemned, not for being unmusical
but for being unpractical. The music of Apollo's lute is itself under
suspicion, being too unsubstantial and too remote to suit the temper
of an age of efficiency and common sense.
PHILOSOPHY AND EFFICIENCY
I sincerely wish that I could recommend philosophy on grounds
of efficiency and common sense. I should be listened to, understood,
and believed. I should at once insinuate myself into the confidence
of my reader. If I could but say: "Now look here! Philosophy is
just a matter of plain, hard-headed common sense"; or, "If you
want to succeed, try philosophy. It will help you to make and to
125
126 PHILOSOPHY
sell, to outstrip competitors, and to be efficient in whatever you
undertake"; if I could make such an appeal to you, your instincts
and prejudices would secure me your ready sympathy. But I should
have deceived you. What I should thus have recommended to you
would not be philosophy. For philosophy is neither plain nor
hard-headed; nor is it a means of success, as success is ordinarily
construed. This is the case, not accidentally, but in principle. The
very point of philosophy lies in the fallibility of common sense, and
in the arbitrariness of vulgar standards of success. Philosophy is
one of those things that must be met on its own ground. You must
seek it where it is at home; if you insist upon its meeting you half-
way it will turn out not to be philosophy at all, but some poor com-
promise the name or husk of philosophy with the soul gone out
of it. No one can understand what philosophy means unless he lets
it speak for itself and in its own language. If philosophy is good,
it is because it contributes to life something different, something
peculiarly its own, and which cannot be measured by any standards
save those which philosophy itself supplies.
PHILOSOPHY AND COMMON SENSE
If we cannot justify philosophy by common sense, we can at least
contrast it with common sense, and so approach it from that more
familiar ground. Since we must admit that philosophy is at odds
with common sense, let us make the most ot it. What, then, is
common sense ? First of all it is evident that this is not a common-
sense question. One of the things peculiar to common sense is that
it must not be questioned, but taken for granted. It is made up of
a mass of convictions that by common consent are to be allowed to
stand; one does not ask questions about them, but appeals to them
to determine what questions shall be asked. They are the con-
servative opinion, the solidified and uniform belief, on which men
act and which is the unconscious premise of most human reasoning.
As a man of common sense, I use common sense to live by or to
think by; it is a practical and theoretical bias which I share with
my fellows, but which I do not think about at all.
Now suppose that in some whimsical and senseless mood I do
think about common sense. Something very startling happens. This
PHILOSOPHY 127
once unchallenged authority is proved to be highly fallible. Its spell
is gone. It at once appears, for example, that common sense has had
a history, and that it has varied with times and places. The ab-
surdities of yesterday are the common sense of to-day; the common
sense of yesterday is now obsolete and quaint. The crank of the
sixteenth century was the man who said that the earth moved; the
crank of the twentieth century is the man who says that it does not.
Moreover, once common sense is thus reflected upon, it is seen to
be in part, at least, the result of wholly irrational forces, such as
habit and imitation. What has been long believed, or repeatedly
asserted, acquires a hardness and fixity from that fact; in the future
it is always easier to believe, more difficult to disbelieve, than any-
thing recent or novel. And what others about us believe, we tend
unconsciously to reflect in our own belief, just as our speech catches
the accent and idioms of our social circle. Furthermore, a belief
once widely diffused takes on the authority of established usage. It
is supported by public opinion, as anything normal or regular is sup-
ported; unbelievers are viewed with hostile suspicion as unreliable
and incalculable. "You can never tell what they will do next." Or
they are forcibly persecuted as a menace to the public peace. I have
called habit and imitation "irrational" forces. By that I mean that
they have no special regard for truth. They operate in the same
way to confirm and propagate a bad way of thinking as a good way
of thinking. It does not follow that common sense is necessarily
mistaken; indeed reasons can be adduced to show that common
sense is a very good guide indeed. But if so, then common sense is
justified on other grounds; it is not itself the last court of appeal.
Common sense, despite its stability and vogue, perhaps on account
of its stability and vogue, is open to criticism. We cannot be sure
that it is true; and it may positively stand in the way of truth through
giving an unwarranted authority to the old and familiar, and through
shutting our minds so that no new light can get in.
The philosopher, then, is one who at the risk of being thought
queer, challenges common sense; he sets himself against the majority
in order that the majority may be brought to reflect upon what they
have through inertia or blindness taken for granted. He is the
reckless critic, the insuppressible asker of questions, who doesn't
128 PHILOSOPHY
know where to stop. He has a way of pinching the human intelli-
gence, when he thinks it has gone to sleep. Every time there is a
fresh revival of philosophical interest, and a new philosophical
movement, as there is periodically, this is what happens. Some
eccentric or highly reflective individual like Socrates, or Bacon, or
Descartes, or Locke, or Kant, strays from the beaten track of
thought, and then discovers that although it was easier to move
in the old track, one is more likely to reach the goal if one beats out
a new one. Such a thinker demands a re-examination of old
premises, a revision of old methods; he stations himself at a new
center, and adopts new axes of reference.
Philosophy is opposed to common sense, then, in so far as common
sense is habitual and imitative. But there are other characteristics
of common sense with which the true genius of philosophy is out of
accord. We can discover these best by considering the terms of
praise or blame which are employed in behalf of common sense.
When ideas are condemned as contrary to common sense, what is
ordinarily said of them ? I find three favorite forms of condemnation :
ideas are pronounced "unpractical," "too general," or "intangible."
Any man of common sense feels these to be terms of reproach. It
is implied, of course, that to be agreeable to common sense, ideas
must be "practical," "particular," and "tangible." And it is the office
of philosophy, as corrective of common sense, to show that such
judgments, actual and implied, cannot be accepted as final.
PHILOSOPHY AND THE PRACTICAL
What is meant by "practical," in the vulgar sense? Let me take
an example. Suppose a man to be trapped on the roof of a burning
building. His friends gather round to make suggestions. One
friend suggests that a ladder be brought from next door; another
friend suggests that the man climb to an adjoining roof and descend
by the rain pipe. These are practical suggestions. A third friend,
on the other hand, wants to know what caused the fire, or why the
man is trying to escape. He is promptly silenced on the ground that
his inquiries are beside the point. Or approach a man in the heat
of business and offer him advice. You will soon find out whether
your advice is practical or not. If you have invented something, a
PHILOSOPHY 129
physical or industrial mechanism, that will facilitate the matter in
hand, you show that you are a practical man, and there is a chance
that you will be listened to. But if you ask the business man why
he is trying so hard to make money, and express some doubt as to
its being worth while well, let the veil be drawn. He may see you
"out of hours," but you will scarcely recover his confidence. "Prac-
tical," therefore, would seem to mean relevant to the matter in hand.
It is usual with adults to have something "in hand," to be busy about
something, to be pursuing some end. The practical is anything that
will serve the end already being pursued; the unpractical is anything
else, and especially reflection on the end itself. Now the philosopher's
advice is usually of the latter type. It is felt to be gratuitous. It
does not help you to do what you are already doing; on the con-
trary, it is calculated to arrest your action. It is out of place in the
office, or in business hours. What, then, is to be said for it? The
answer, of course, is this : It is important not only to be moving, but
to be moving in the right direction; not only to be doing something
well, but to be doing something worth while. This is evidently
true, but it is easily forgotten. Hence it becomes the duty of
philosophy to remind men of it; to persuade men occasionally to
reflect on their ends, and reconsider their whole way of life. To have
a philosophy of life is to have reasons not only for the means you
have selected, but for what you propose to accomplish by them.
PHILOSOPHY AND GENERALIZATION
Common sense also condemns what is "too general." In life it
is said to be a "situation" and not a theory that confronts us. The
man who is trusted is the man of experience, and experience is
ordinarily taken to mean acquaintance with some group of individual
facts. In political life what one needs is not general ideas, but
familiarity with concrete circumstances; one must know men and
measures, not man and principles. Historians are suspicious of
vague ideas of civilization and progress; the important thing is to
know just what happened. In the industrial world, what is needed
is not a theory of economic value, but a knowledge of present costs,
wages, and prices. As a preparation for life it is more important to
train the eye and the hand, which can distinguish and manipulate,
I3O PHILOSOPHY
than the reason and imagination, which through their love of
breadth and sweep are likely to blur details, or in their groping
after the ultimate are led to neglect the immediate thing which
really counts. Common sense would not, of course, condemn gen-
eralization altogether. It has too much respect for knowledge, and
understands that there is no knowing without generalizing. There
must be rules and classifications, even laws and theories. But the
generalizing propensity of mind must be held in restraint; after
a certain point it becomes absurd, fantastic, out of touch with fact,
"up in the clouds." The man of common sense, planted firmly on
the solid ground, views such speculations with contempt, amuse-
ment, or with blank amazement.
Philosophy offends against common sense, then, not because it
generalizes, for, after all, no one can think at all without generaliz-
ing; but because it does not know when to stop. And the philosopher
is bound to offend, because if he is true to his calling, he must not
stop. It is his particular business to generalize as far as he can. He
may have various motives for doing this. He may be prompted by
mere "idle curiosity" to see how far he can go. Or he may believe
that the search for the universal and the contemplation of it con-
stitute the most exalted human activity. Or he may be prompted
by the notion that his soul's salvation depends on his getting into
right relations with the first cause or the ultimate ground of things.
In any case he is allotted the task of formulating the most general
ideas that the nature of things will permit. He can submit to no
limitations imposed by considerations of expediency. He loses his
identity altogether, unless he can think more roundly, more com-
prehensively, or more deeply, than other men. He represents no
limited constituency of facts or interests; he is the thinker at large.
PHILOSOPHY AND THE TANGIBLE
It is significant that facts are reputed to be "solid," general ideas
to be of a more vaporous or ghostly substance. Thus facts possess
merit judged by the third standard of common sense, that of
"tangibility." If we go back to the original meaning, the tangible,
of course, is that which can be touched. Doubting Thomas was a
PHILOSOPHY 131
man of common sense. Now we have here to do with something
very original and elemental in human nature. Touch is the most
primitive of the senses. And if we consider the whole history of
living organisms, it is the experience or the anticipation of contact
that has played the largest and the most indispensable part in their
consciousness. That which can have contact with an organism is a
body; hence bodies or physical things are the oldest and most
familiar examples of known things. The status of other alleged
things is doubtful; the mind does not feel thoroughly at home and
secure in dealing with them. Physical science enjoys the confidence
of common sense because, though it may wander far from bodies
and imagine intangible ethers and energies, it always starts with
bodies, and eventually returns to them. Furthermore, even ethers
and energies excite the tactual imagination; one can almost feel
them. The human imagination cannot abstain from doing the
same thing even when it is perfectly well understood that it is
illegitimate. God and the soul are spirits, to be sure; for that there
is the best authority. But when they have passed through the
average mind they have a distinctly corporeal aspect, as though the
mind were otherwise helpless to deal with them.
Philosophy is not governed by an animus against the physical.
Indeed philosophy is bound to recognize the possibility that it may
turn out to be the case that all real substances are physical. But
philosophy is bound to point out that there is a human bias in favor
of the physical; and it is bound so far as possible to counteract or
discount that bias. Philosophy must nurture and protect those
theories that aim especially to do justice to the non-physical aspects
of experience, and protest against their being read out of court as
"inconceivable" or inherently improbable. A generation ago philos-
ophy was usually referred to as "mental and moral" philosophy.
There is a certain propriety in this, not because philosophy is to
confine itself to the mental and moral, but because philosophers alone
can be depended upon to recognize these in their own right, and
correct the exaggerated emphasis which common sense, and science
as developed on the basis of common sense, will inevitably place on
the physical.
132 PHILOSOPHY
OUR UNCONSCIOUS PHILOSOPHIZING
Philosophy, then, can afford to accept the unfavorable opinion of
common sense, and may even boast of it. Philosophy is unpractical,
too general, and intangible. If the condemnation implied in these
terms were decisive and final, then philosophy would be compelled
to give up. But philosophy is not merely contrary to common sense,
for it emancipates the mind from common sense and establishes the
more authoritative standards by which it is itself justified.
Though I should have persuaded you that philosophy is a strange
thing which you must visit abroad in its own home, nevertheless I
now hope to persuade you that you once entertained it unawares.
Though, if philosophy is now to enter, you must expel from your
mind the ideas that make themselves most at home there, this same
philosophy was once a favorite inmate. Only you were too young,
and your elders had too much common sense, to know that it was
philosophy. Unless you were an extraordinary child you were very
curious about what you called the world; curious as to who or what
made it, why it was made, how it was made, why it was made as
it is, and what it is like in those remote and dim regions beyond
the range of your senses. Then you grew up, and having grown up,
you acquired common sense, or rather common sense acquired you.
It descended like a curtain, shutting out the twilight, and enabling
you to see more clearly, but just as certainly making your view more
circumscribed. 1 Since then you have come to feel that the questions
of your childhood were foolish questions, or extravagant questions
that no busy man can afford to indulge in. Philosophy, then, is
more nai've than common sense; it is a more spontaneous expression
of the mind. And when one recovers this first untrammeled curiosity
about things, common sense appears not as the illumination of
mature years, but rather as a hardening of the mind, the worldliness
and complacency of a life immersed in affairs. It would not be unfair
to say that the philosophical interest is the more liberal, common
sense having about it something of the quality of professionalism.
But there is another and a more important sense in which philos-
1 Cf. Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
Early Childhood," in Harvard Classics, xli, 595.
PHILOSOPHY 133
ophy is entertained unawares. It underlies various mature activities
and interests whose standing is regarded as unquestionable. When
these activities or interests are reflected upon, as sooner or later they
are sure to be, it appears that they require the support of philosophy.
This is most evident in the case of religion. We all of us participate
in a certain religious tradition, and with most of us the principal
elements of that tradition are taken for granted. We assume that
there is a certain kind of life, a life of unselfishness, honesty, fortitude
and love, let us say, that is highest and best. We assume that the
worth of such a life is superior to worldly success; that it betokens a
state of spiritual well-being to which every man should aspire, and
for which he should be willing to sacrifice everything else. We
assume, furthermore, that this type of life is the most important
thing in the world at large. Thus we may suppose that the world
was created, and that its affairs are controlled, by a being in whom
this type of life is perfectly exemplified. God would then mean to
us the cosmic supremacy of unselfishness, love, and the like. Or we
may suppose that God is one who guarantees that those who are
unselfish and scrupulous shall inherit the earth, and experience
eternal happiness.
DOUBT
Now observe what happens when one is overtaken with doubt.
One may come to question the worthiness of the ideal. Is it not
perhaps a more worthy thing to assert one's self, than to sacrifice
one's self? Or is not the great man after all one who is superior
to scruples, who sets might above right? Who is to decide such a
question? Surely not public opinion, nor the authority of any in-
stitution, for these are dogmatic. Once having doubted, dogma will
no longer suffice. What is needed is a thoughtful comparison
of ideals, a critical examination of the whole question of values
and of the meaning of life. One who undertakes such a study, every
one who has made even a beginning of such a study in the hope
of solving his own personal problem, is ipso facto a moral philos-
opher. He is following in the steps of Plato and of Kant, of Mill and
of Nietzsche, and he will do well to walk for at least a part of the
way with them.
134 PHILOSOPHY
Or suppose that our doubter questions, not the correctness of the
traditional ideal, but the certainty of its triumph. Suppose that, like
Job, he is impressed by the misfortunes of the righteous, and set to
wondering whether the natural course of events is not utterly in-
different to the cause of righteousness. Is not the world after all a
prodigious accident, a cruel and clumsy play of blind forces? Do
ideals count for anything, or are they idle dreams, illusions, a mere
play of fancy ? Can spirit move matter, or is it a helpless witness of
events wholly beyond its control ? Ask these questions and you have
set philosophical problems; answer them, and you have made
philosophy.
It is possible, of course, to treat doubt by the use of anaesthetics.
But such treatment does not cure doubt. With many, indeed,
anaesthetics will not work at all. They will require an intellectual
solution of intellectual questions; their thought once aroused will
not rest until it has gone to the bottom of things. And problems for-
gotten in one generation will reappear to haunt the next. But even
if it were possible that the critical and doubting faculty should be
numbed or atrophied altogether, it would be the worst calamity that
could befall mankind. For the virtue of religion must lie in its
being true, and if it is to be true it must be open to correction as
enlightenment advances. Salvation cannot be won by a timid cling-
ing to comfortable illusions.
What should be done for the saving of our souls depends not upon
an imaginary state of things, in which the wish is father to the
thought, but upon the real state of things. Salvation must be founded
on fact and not on fiction. In short, the necessity of philosophy fol-
lows from the genuineness of the problems that underlie religion.
In religion, as in other activities and interests, it will not do forever
to assume that things are so; but it becomes important from time to
time to inquire into them closely and with an open mind. So to
inquire into the ideals of life and the basis of hope, is philosophy.
PHILOSOPHY AND ART
Let us turn to another familiar human interest, that of the fine
arts. There exists a vague idea, sometimes defended by the con-
noisseur, but more often ignored or repudiated by him, that the
PHILOSOPHY 135
greatest works of art must express the general or vhe universal.
Thus we feel that Greek sculpture is great because it portrays man,
whereas most contemporary sculpture portrays persons; and that
Italian painting of the Renaissance, expressing, as it does, the Chris-
tian interpretation of life, is superior to the impressionistic landscape
which seizes on some momentary play of light and color. Now I
do not for a moment wish to contend that such considerations as
these are decisive in determining the merit of art. It may even be
that they should not affect our purely aesthetic judgments at all.
But it is clear that they signify an important fact about the mind
of the artist, and also about the mind of the observer. The Greek
sculptor and the Italian painter evidently have ideas of a certain
sort. They may, it is true, have come by them quite unconsciously.
But somehow the Greek sculptor must have had an idea not of his
model merely, but of human nature and of the sort of perfection that
befits it. And the Italian, over and above his sense of beauty, must
have shared with his times an idea of the comparative values of
things, perhaps of the superiority of the inner to the bodily life, or
of heaven to this mundane sphere. And the observer as well must
have a capacity for such ideas, or he will have lost something which
the artist has to communicate. The case of poetry is perhaps clearer.
Historical or narrative poems, love poems to a mistress's eyes or lips,
evidently dwell on some concrete situation or on some rare and
evanescent quality that for a moment narrows the mind and shuts
out the world. On the other hand, there are poems like Tennyson's
"Higher Pantheism," and "Maud," Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra,"
Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," or Matthew Arnold's "Dover
Beach," 2 in which the poet is striving to express through his peculiar
medium some generalization of life. He has had some wider vision,
revealing man in his true place in the whole scheme of things. Such
a vision is rarely clear, perhaps never entirely articulate; but it be-
tokens a mind struggling for light, dissatisfied with any ready-made
plan and striving to emancipate itself from vulgar standards.
And one who reads such poetry must respond to its mood, and
stretch the mind to its dimensions.
It is not necessary for our purpose to argue that the merit of poetry
2 See H. C., xlii, 1004, 1015, 1103, 1137; xli, 635.
136 PHILOSOPHY
is proportional to the breadth of its ideas; but only to see that breadth
of ideas is an actual feature of most poetry that is with general
consent called great. The great poets have been men whose imag-
ination has dared to leave the ground and ascend high enough to
enable them to take the world-wide view of things. Now such
imagination is philosophical; it arises from the same impulse as
that which generates philosophy, requires the same break with com-
mon sense, and fundamentally it makes the same contribution to
life. There is this difference, that while the poetic imagination either
boldly anticipates the results of future arguments, or unconsciously
employs the results of arguments already made, philosophy is an
argument. Poetry, because it is a fine art, must present a finished
thing in sensuous form; philosophy, because it is theory, must
present definitions of what it is talking about, and reasons for what
it says. And there is need of both poets and philosophers since for
every argument there is a vision and for every vision an argument.
PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE
The term "science" is now commonly employed to designate a
band of special knowledges, headed by physics, pushing rapidly
into the as yet unknown, and converting it first into knowledge,
then into invention, and finally into civilization. Science is patron-
ized and subsidized by common sense; and it is a profitable invest-
ment. But science, although often like Peter it repudiates philosophy
and disclaims ever having known it, is of philosophical extraction
and has philosophical connections that it cannot successfully conceal.
Precisely as you and I were philosophers before the exigencies of life
put a constraint upon the natural movements of the mind, so human
knowledge was philosophical before it was "scientific," and became
divided into highly specialized branches, each with a technique and
plan of its own. There are many ways in which the philosophical
roots and ligaments of the sciences are betrayed. The different
sciences, for example, all have to do with the same world, and their
results must be made consistent. Thus physics, chemistry, physiology,
and psychology all meet in human nature, and have to be reconciled.
Man is somehow mechanism, life, and consciousness all in one.
How is this possible? The question is evidently one that none of
PHILOSOPHY 137
these sciences alone can answer. It is not a scientific problem, but a
philosophical problem; and yet it is inseparably connected with the
work of science and the estimate that is to be put on its results.
Again, science employs many conceptions with no thorough exam-
ination of their meaning. This is the case with most, if not all, of
the fundamental conceptions of science. Thus mechanics does not
inform us concerning the exact nature of space and time; physics
does not give us more than a perfunctory and formal account of the
nature of matter; the greater part of biology and physiology proceeds
without attempting carefully to distinguish and define the meaning
of life; while psychology studies cases of consciousness without tell-
ing us exactly what, in essence, consciousness is. All of the sciences
employ the notions of law and of causality; but they give us no
theory of these things. In short, the special sciences have certain
rough working ideas which suffice for the purposes of experimenta-
tion and description, but which do not suffice for the purposes of
critical reflection. All of the conceptions which I have mentioned
furnish food for thought, when once thought is directed to them.
They bristle with difficulties, and no one can say that science, in
the limited sense in which the specialist and expert use the term,
accomplishes anything to remove these difficulties. Science is able
to get along, to make astonishing progress, and to furnish the instru-
ments of a triumphant material civilization, without raising these
difficulties. But suppose a man to ask, "Where do I stand, after all
is said and done? What sort of a world do I live in? What am
I myself? What must I fear, and what may I hope?" and there is
no answering him except by facing these difficulties. There is no
one who will even attempt to answer such questions except the
philosopher.
THE PROBLEM OF ETHICS
When philosophy goes about its work it proves necessary to
divide the question. There are no sharply bounded subdivisions of
philosophy; as problems become more fundamental, they tend to
merge into one another, and the solution of one depends on the
solution of the rest. But the mind must do one thing at a time in
philosophy as in other affairs. Furthermore, the need of philosophy
138 PHILOSOPHY
is felt in quite different quarters, which leads to a difference of
approach and of emphasis.
Perhaps that portion of philosophy that is most easily considered
by itself is Ethics, or what was a generation ago usually referred to
as Moral Philosophy. There is no better introduction to Ethics
than Plato's famous dialogue, "The Apology," 3 in which Socrates,
defending himself against his accusers, describes and justifies the
office of the moralist. As moralist, Socrates says that he took it upon
himself to question men concerning the why and wherefore of their
several occupations. He found men busy, to be sure, but strangely
unaware of what they were about; they felt sure they were getting
somewhere, but they did not know where. He did not himself
pretend to direct them, but he did feel sure that it was necessary to
raise the question, and that in that respect, at least, he was wiser than
his fellows. The moral of Socrates's position is that life cannot be
rationalized without some definite conception of the good for the
sake of which one lives. The problem of the good thus becomes the
central problem of Ethics. Is it pleasure, or knowledge, or worldly
success? Is it personal or social? Does it consist in some inward
state, or in external achievement? Is it to be looked for in this
world, or in the hereafter? These are but variations of the same
problem, as it is attacked in turn by Plato, Aristotle, Christian
theologians, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, and the whole line of
moral philosophers. Other special problems emerge, and take their
place beside this. What, for example, is the relation of moral virtue
to the secular law? In Plato's "Crito," 4 Socrates teaches that it is
the first duty of the good man to obey the law, and submit to punish-
ment, even though he be innocent; because the good life is essentially
an orderly life, in which the individual conforms himself to the
political community to which he belongs by birth and nature. Hobbes
reached the same conclusion on different grounds. Morality, he
says, exists only so far as there is authority and law; to save himself
from the consequences of his own inherent selfishness and un-
scrupulousness, man has delivered himself up forever to the state,
and save so far as enforced by the state there are no rights or duties
at all. Either one obeys the law or one lapses into that primitive
3 H. C., ii. 5. 4 H. C., ii, 31.
PHILOSOPHY 139
outlawry in which every man is for himself, the hunter and the
prey. How different is the teaching of Rousseau, 5 who prophesied
for an age in which men were sore from the rub of the harness, and
longed to be turned out to pasture. The law, Rousseau preaches, is
made for man, not man for the law. Man has been enslaved by his
own artificial contrivances, and must strive to return to the natural
goodness and happiness that are his rightful inheritance. These
are the questions that still lie at the basis of our political philosophy,
and divide the partisans of the day, even though they know it not.
A somewhat different and perhaps more familiar turn is given to
moral philosophy by Kant. e With him the central idea in the moral
life is duty. It is not consequence or inclination that counts, but the
state of the will. Morality is founded on a law of its own, far deeper
than man-made statutes. This law is delivered to the individual
through his "Practical Reason," and it is the last word in all matters
affecting the regulation of conduct. Thus Kant puts the accent where
Protestant and Puritanic Christianity puts it; whereas Plato, bidding
us look to the rounding and perfecting of life, is the spokesman of
that perennial Paganism that flourishes as vigorously to-day as it
did before the advent of Christianity.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Closely connected with Moral Philosophy there stands a group of
problems that forms the nucleus of what may be called Philosophy
of Religion. Suppose that a provisional answer has been obtained
to the questions of Ethics. The good has been defined, and the duty
of man made clear. What hope, then, is there of the realization
of the good ? May we be sure that it lies within the power of man
to perform what duty prescribes? Thus there arises, first of all, the
question of the status of man. Is he a creature, merely a link in
the chain of natural causes, able at most to contemplate his own
helplessness ? Or is he endowed with a power corresponding to his
ideals, a power to control his destinies and promote the causes which
he serves? This is the old and well-known problem of freedom.
If you want to know what can be said for the prerogatives of man,
read Kant; if you want to know what is made of man when he is
5 H. C., xxxiv, 165. 6 H. C., xxxii, 305, 318.
140 PHILOSOPHY
assigned the status of creature merely, read Hobbes. 7 And what
shall be said of the chance of man's surviving the dissolution of his
body, and entering upon another life in which he is not affected by
the play of natural forces? The immortality of man is most
elaborately and eloquently argued in Plato's "Phaedo," 8 and again
in Kant's "Critique of Practical Reason." But the crucial question
in this whole range of problems is the question, not of man, but of
God. What, in the last analysis, controls the affairs of this world?
Is it a blind, mechanical force, or is it a moral force, which guaran-
tees the triumph of the good, and the salvation of him who performs
his duty? This is the most far-reaching and momentous question
that can be asked, and it takes us over to that branch of philosophy
that has acquired the name of "Metaphysics."
METAPHYSICS
The term "Metaphysics" has acquired a colloquial meaning that
will mislead us unless we are on our guard. It is commonly used
to mean such theories as have to do with the mysterious or occult.
There is a certain justification for this usage, in that metaphysics is
speculative rather than strictly experimental, and in that it takes us
beyond the first appearances of things. But this is a question of
method, and not of doctrine. To be a metaphysician one must push
one's thinking to the uttermost boundaries, and one must not rest
satisfied with any first appearances, or any common-sense or con-
ventional conclusions. But there is no unnecessary connection what-
ever between metaphysics and the doctrine that reality is mysterious
or transcendent or supernatural or anything of the kind. It is
entirely possible that metaphysics should in the end conclude that
things are precisely what they seem, or that nature and nature alone
is real. Metaphysics is simply an attempt to get to the bottom of
things, and ascertain if possible what is the fundamental constitu-
tion of reality, and what its first and last causes. There are two
leading alternatives: the theory that justifies the belief in God; the
theory that discredits it, reducing it to a work of the imagination,
an act of sheer faith, of an ecclesiastical fiction. The classic example
of the latter type of metaphysics, ordinarily known as Materialism,
7 H. C., xxxiv, 311. *H. C., ii, 45.
PHILOSOPHY
is to be found in Hobbes. An excellent example of the former is to
be found in the writings of Bishop Berkeley. 9 As Hobbes sought
to show that the only substance is body, so Berkeley sought to show
that the only substance is spirit. The nature of spirit, according
to Berkeley, is first and directly known in that knowledge which
each man has of himself. Then, in order to account for the inde-
pendent and excellent order of nature, one must suppose a universal
or divine spirit that causes and sustains it, a spirit that is like our-
selves in kind, but infinite in power and goodness.
THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
A fourth group of problems that assumes great prominence in
the literature of philosophy is called the Theory of Knowledge.
Although of all philosophical inquiries this may seem at first glance
most artificial and academic, a little reflection will reveal its crucial
importance. Suppose, for example, that it is a question of the
finality of science, or the legitimacy of faith. The question can be
answered only by examining the methods of science in order to
discover whether there is anything arbitrary in them that limits
the scope of the results. And one must inquire what constitutes
genuine knowledge, or when a thing is finally explained, or whether
there be things that necessarily lie beyond the reach of human
faculties, or whether it be proper to allow aspirations and ideals to
affect one's conclusions. Bacon 10 and Descartes, 11 the founders of
modern philosophy, devoted themselves primarily to such questions,
so that all thought since their time has taken these questions as the
point of departure. Furthermore, philosophy has called attention
to a very peculiar predicament in which the human thinker finds
himself. He seems compelled to begin with himself. When Des-
cartes sought to reduce knowledge to a primal and indubitable cer-
tainty he found that certainty to be the knowledge that each thinker
has of his own existence, and of the existence of his own ideas. And
if a thinker begins with this nucleus, how is he ever to add anything
to it; how is he ever to be sure of the existence of anything which
is not himself or his ideas ? On the other hand, while my knowledge
is most certainly of and within myself, yet it can scarcely be knowl-
9 H. C., xxxvii, 189. 10 H. C., xxxix, 1 16, 143. H. C., xxxiv, 5.
142 PHILOSOPHY
edge unless it takes me beyond myself. This has become the central
difficulty of philosophy. It is a genuine difficulty, and yet everybody
neglects it except the philosopher. Berkeley was led by an exam-
ination of this difficulty to conclude that if reality is to be assumed
to be knowable, then it can be composed of nothing but thinkers
and their ideas. And in this conclusion Berkeley has been followed
by the whole school of the idealists, the school which has numbered
among its members the most eminent thinkers of later times, and
has inspired notable movements in German and English literature.
Other schools have been led by an examination of the same difficulty
to quite different conclusions. But this difficulty has been the crux
of modern thought, and no one can hope to debate fundamental
issues at all without meeting it.
Such, then, are some of the matters that at once come under dis-
cussion when one attempts to think radically and fundamentally.
Philosophy is brought to these and like problems because it expresses
the profound restlessness of the mind, a dissatisfaction with ready-
made, habitual, or conventional opinions, a free and unbounded
curiosity, and the need of rounding up the world and judging it for
the purposes of life.
II. SOCRATES, PLATO, AND THE
ROMAN STOICS
BY PROFESSOR CHARLES POMEROY PARKER
WHEN Socrates grew up in the city of Athens, in the gen-
eration just after the Persian Wars, any Athenian citizen,
however poor he might be, was at liberty to arrange his
own life as he wished. Socrates made up his mind that money-
making was not worth while, in comparison with the liberty to
spend his time in thinking about truth. There was a great deal of
lively thinking in the Greek world then, and Athens, under Pericles, 1
not only was winning her empire, but was finding that great
thinkers, or at any rate their thoughts, loved to come to her. Pythag-
orean philosophers were wide awake in those days. They were
discovering truth about the art of healing, they spent much successful
work on astronomy, they were making progress in music, they
studied mathematics, especially geometry. Many philosophers of
other schools were studying fire, air, water, and earth, claiming that
they changed into each other, as we say solids melt into liquids,
and liquids dissolve into gases, and as some thinkers suppose that
gas atoms are made up of electric units. Others were impressed by
the great expanse of the sky, and said that the only way to find
truth was to think of the universe as a great unchanging sphere.
Others, again, held a doctrine of atoms, tiny invisible shapes of
hard matter, which by combining or separating made the changing
world.
SOCRATES AND ANAXAGORAS
Socrates, eagerly studying all these theories, heard at last of a
philosopher, Anaxagoras, who said that Thought makes the world;
but Anaxagoras did not seem to him to show the rational way in
which Thought would work. Rational Thought, as Socrates viewed
1 Harvard Classics, xii, 35ff.
M3
144 PHILOSOPHY
it, always tries to obtain some practical good. Merely to show how
one physical thing changes into another, or sets another in motion,
does not account rationally for the world; and Anaxagoras, though
he talked about Thought, did not seem to Socrates to get at the
heart of rational activity. But Socrates, having once caught the
suggestion of Thought as a cause, never could set it aside. To
inquire into the nature of rational activity implies a careful study
of men and of human minds.
SOCRATES AND THE PYTHAGOREANS
Now in that Age of Pericles there was a great interest in men
and all that concerned human life. Socrates loved to talk with
men. This put him in especial sympathy with the Pythagoreans,
who valued human souls and said that men are immortal. Pythag-
oras, the founder of that school of thought in the previous century,
had organized a brotherhood of students, bound to each other by
ties of religion, austere life, and high thinking. This brotherhood
had tried to influence and improve the political life of the cities
where they lived. In the days of Socrates they had given up politics,
but never had lost their religious and human interest. Not only did
they work in healing, in astronomy, in music, and in geometry; they
wanted to find the essence of justice, beauty, life, and health. Such
essences seemed to give all the reality to human life. The Pythag-
oreans conceived of them, strangely enough, as somehow mixed up
with geometry. Indeed, we ourselves are apt to speak of justice as
the square thing; but this metaphor of ours was perhaps a reality to
their minds. Different forms or shapes, cubes, spheres, pyramids,
triangles, circles, and squares, may have seemed to them the essences
of the world, and they took a Greek word, tSeo, which meant form
in those times, to express their notion of essence; in that sense they
tried to find the ideas of beauty, or of temperance, or of health.
Socrates, being interested in this line of thought, made up his mind
to find the ideas. But he was not satisfied with such a geometrical
notion of things as the Pythagoreans seem to have held. He wanted
to talk with men, and study life as it was reflected in human thoughts,
hoping thus to get clearer notions of reality which would be practical
help to himself and others. A thing is made beautiful by the beauty
PHILOSOPHY 145
in it. What is beauty ? This was an important question for a Greek
thinker; and to find the ideally beautiful life might be worth our
effort also. An act is made just by the justice in it. What is the
essence of justice? We and Socrates alike want to know that.
Socrates found such inquiries puzzling, and was reduced to a kind
of despair.
THE MISSION OF SOCRATES
Perhaps it was at this time that the Oracle of Delphi which was
controlled by influences highly sensitive to all the life of the time,
said one day to an inquirer that Socrates was the wisest of men.
This declaration was very perplexing to Socrates himself, who felt
keenly his own ignorance. Eagerly questioning all kinds of men, to
see if they could not give him wisdom after all, he soon found that
their notions about the real essences of things were confused and
contradictory. He realized that his mission was to clear up the
thoughts of men. This is the first step in rational thinking, to define
clearly our thoughts and agree about the essential nature of the
things which our words denote.
SOCRATES AND PLATO
The "Apology," "Crito," and "Phaedo" 2 of Plato present to us
dramatically, in Plato's words, the thoughts of Socrates. They all
deal with the last days of his life, in which his thoughts may well
have been at their ripest. Very probably Plato developed some of
the thoughts of Socrates to their logical results, going beyond what
the master actually said, and giving the tendencies of his thinking.
But we shall hardly get nearer to the essence of the real Socrates
than by reading these dialogues. For instance, he would seem to
have felt that souls are the permanent things; their very essence
is to live and give life; justice, temperance, piety, beauty, and such
ideas are eternal essences which give reality to the human world.
Possibly the greater flights of imagination in the "Phaedo" belong to
Plato, and the perfecting of the whole theory; many have supposed
that all the philosophy of the dialogue is Plato's. To disentangle his
thought from his master's is hard; the two are really one great
*H. c., ii, 5,31, 45ff.
146 PHILOSOPHY
movement of human thought, which has affected the world pro-
foundly. One line of its influence is seen in Aristotle, who, in spite
of all his differences, was strongly influenced by the doctrine of real
essences. Another line of Socrates's influence is seen in Stoicism.
ZENO AND STOICISM
Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, was a native
of Cyprus, perhaps a merchant, who was shipwrecked on a certain
voyage, and as a result of this apparent misfortune turned to
philosophy. Men who wanted to be philosophers were likely to
come to Athens in those days, two or three generations after
Socrates, Zeno, being at Athens, one day sat down, so the story
goes, by a bookseller's stall, where the bookseller was reading aloud
from a book of Xenophon, the "Memorabilia," which described the
conversations of Socrates. Greatly interested, Zeno inquired of the
bookseller where such men as Socrates lived. Just at that moment
Crates, a good man, a poor man, who formed his life on the life
of Socrates, was passing by. The bookseller pointed to him, saying:
"Follow this man." Zeno rose up and followed Crates; and the
result was that Socrates's belief in the supremacy of reason and in
the human soul and in the value of human life and freedom pro-
foundly affected the teaching of Zeno. We may not search out now
the other influences felt in Stoicism. The scientific, religious, and
logical doctrines of this school are very important, and their develop-
ment is interesting. But certainly the Socratic thought is strongly
felt in this famous school.
THE ROMAN STOICS
Four or five centuries later, Epictetus, 3 a slave (afterward a freed-
man), and Marcus Aurelius, 4 an emperor of Rome, in their medita-
tions or conversations on human life show the living flame of thought
which was kindled in Socrates, and handed down from him for
many generations. We are apt to think of Stoics as men who crushed
all their feelings, and went about the world with solemn faces and
sad hearts, bearing trouble as they might. But the best Stoics of all
times cared much for human nature and human freedom. They
3 H. C., ii, iiyff. 4 H. C., ii, 193(1.
PHILOSOPHY 147
studied men, and found man's nature to be essentially rational. The
terrible thing to them was to see this rational soul losing its self-
control and, bewildered in a vain struggle to find happiness by sub-
mission to the outside world, getting into a turmoil of fluttering
excitement over things which were not in its own power. But what
was in their own power they tried to handle divinely, with real
energy. For they felt that man's rational soul is akin to the good
Power which makes and moves the universe. And herein they agreed
with Socrates. The slave and the emperor were in harmony with
the free Athenian.
III. THE RISE OF MODERN
PHILOSOPHY
BY PROFESSOR RALPH BARTON PERRY
WE WERE once taught that after having slept soundly
through "the Dark Ages," Europe was suddenly awakened
in 1453 by the Fall of Constantinople. We now know
that it had been light all the while and 'that Europe had, to say the
least, been in a very lively state of somnambulism. We know that
for many centuries before 1453 men had been living very intensely
and very nobly; and with a seriousness and elevation of thought
that have perhaps had no parallel. The age that created Gothic art,
and dreamed so splendid a dream as the Holy Roman Empire, can
scarcely be said to be lacking in imagination and enlightenment.
But that something important happened to the European mind in
and about the fifteenth century no scholar is so iconoclastic as to
deny. It was not so much an awakening of thought as a change of
direction which proved in the sequel to be amazingly fruitful. It
may perhaps best be described as a return to the sources. This is
characteristic of all of its more notable manifestations, such as the
retrospect of antiquity, the reexamination of institutions, and the
more direct observation of nature. This turn of thought back to the
originals and roots of things, this general freshening up by the
admixture of new experiences, had its effects upon every interest
and work of man. So there was, among other things, a Renaissance
philosophy, which meant chiefly a new study of some ancient philos-
ophy. Pico of Mirandola founded a new cult of Plato; Pomponatius
defended the Greek or Alexandrist interpretation of Aristotle against
the Averroist and orthodox interpretations; while Montaigne 1 re-
vived the ancient scepticism. But what was more significant for the
1 For Montaigne, see Harvard Classics, xxxii, 5, 9; and on the Renaissance in
general see Lecture III in the series on History and Lecture III (on Cellini) in the
series on Biography.
148
PHILOSOPHY 149
future of philosophy, came not directly through the influence of the
spirit of the age upon philosophy, but through the influence of this
spirit first upon science, and, indirectly through science, upon
philosophy. The great men of the age, so far as the future of
philosophy is concerned, were not Pico and Pomponatius, but Coper-
nicus and Galileo.
THE COPERNICAN DISCOVERY
,2
Copernicus 2 ventured to assert that the earth moved. He could
scarcely have astonished and disturbed men more if he had
actually set it moving. The belief in the earth as the firm center of
creation, lighted by sun and moon, encircled by celestial spheres,
and furnished for the great drama of man's fall and redemption
this belief was itself the firm center of all human belief. It seemed
impossible to move it without bringing down in ruin that whole
grand scheme of things to which man had been fitting himself for
centuries, and where he had at length come to feel himself at home.
How shall one find a place for God, and a place for man, and how
shall they find one another, in a universe with neither beginning
nor end, neither center nor boundaries? This was the problem to
which the great martyr Bruno devoted himself, and his death in
1600 may well serve as a monument to mark the beginning of
modern philosophy.
Bruno saw that the world can no longer be divided into terres-
trial and celestial regions, with the empyrean beyond. There can
be no God above nature, or before or after nature, because nature
itself is infinite. The universe is a system of countless worlds, none
more divine than the rest. God is therefore not local, but universal;
he is the life and beauty of the whole. This idea, recovered by
Bruno from Stoicism and Neo-Platonism, and appropriated to the
needs of the age which Copernicus had robbed of its ancient land-
marks, persisted in the latent pantheism of Descartes and his fol-
lowers, and in the avowed pantheism of Spinoza, was suffered to
lapse during the eighteenth century, was revived again by Lessing 3
and Herder, and became one of the central ideas of the great
2 See Copernicus's Dedication of his "Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," H. C.,
xxxix 52.
3 See Lessing's "Education of the Human Race," H. C., xxxii, 185.
150 PHILOSOPHY
Romantic and Hegelian movements in Germany in the nineteenth
century.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF GALILEO
Copernicus contributed to modern thought an epoch-making
hypothesis. Galileo contributed something less definite, but even
more germinal a new method. It would be safer to say that he
represented two methods, the method of discovery, and the method
of exact or mathematical description. He was neither the only dis-
coverer of his age nor the only mathematical physicist, but he was
the preeminent embodiment of both of these moving ideas.
In 1610, a year or so after the construction of his telescope, Galileo
published his "Sidereal Messenger," "announcing," to quote from
the title-page, "great and very wonderful spectacles, and offering
them to the consideration of every one, but especially of philosophers
and astronomers; which have been observed by Galileo Galilei . , .
by the assistance of a perspective glass lately invented by him;
namely, in the face of the moon, in innumerable fixed stars in the
milky-way, in nebulous stars, but especially in four planets which
revolve round Jupiter at different intervals and periods with a
wonderful celerity." This is the Galileo of the telescope, the prophet
of an age of discovery. But greater than the Galileo of the telescope
is the Galileo who formulated the three laws of motion, and so
became the founder of the modern science of dynamics. He ex-
plained the fall of bodies to the earth, not by ascribing them to a
vague force of gravity, but by formulating exact mathematical ratios
of time and distance, so that it was possible to deduce, predict and
prove, with quantitative exactness. In other words he brought the
clearness and certainty of mathematics into the field of physical
events.
MODERN EMPIRICISM
Now this twofold influence of Galileo is the most important
source of what is new in modern philosophy. Bacon and Locke
were philosophical observers, trusting sense above reason, and ani-
mated by the spirit of discovery. Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza
were mathematical philosophers, advocates of reason, not so much
concerned at first to widen knowledge as to make it more certain.
Bacon (1561-1626) was the founder of modern "empiricism," or
PHILOSOPHY
the philosophy of sense-experience. He criticized those faults of his
age that he thought stood in the way of clear seeing, such faults
as verbalism, anthropomorphism, or undue regard for tradition
and authority. He formulated a new "Organon" ("Novum Or-
ganum" 4 ), a logic and methodology which was to correct and
supplement the Aristotelian organon, and afford a basis for scientific
procedure. But Bacon was significant not so much for what he
formulated as for what he prophesied. He was the first to dream
that magnificent dream which has been so largely realized in the
course of the last century: the dream of the progressive control of
nature through the patient and self-denying study of it. The king-
dom of man, the "New Atlantis," 5 is to be founded on knowledge.
"Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the
cause is not known, the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be
commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as
the cause, is in operation as the rule." Observe nature in order that
you may use nature, thus converting it into the habitation, instru-
ment, and treasure of man. Here is the supreme maxim of our
modern world, and the chief ground of its peculiar confidence and
hopefulness.
MODERN RATIONALISM
Descartes and Hobbes were the founders of modern rationalism,
but each in a different way. Descartes (1596-1650) found mathe-
matics a model of procedure. In other words, he proposed that men
should philosophize after the manner of mathematics. He did not
believe that mathematics, with its applications to physics, was itself
the highest knowledge. He sought rather to formulate a logic that
should be as exact as mathematics, but more fundamental and
universal; thus affording a basis for the demonstration of the
higher truths concerning God and the soul. The "Discourse on
Method" 6 is a record of the author's profound regard for mathe-
matics and of his own search for a like certainty in philosophy.
But Hobbes (1588-1679) was a follower of Galileo in a different
sense. He proposed not so much to imitate mathematics as to adopt
and extend it. He represents that idea which La Place so eloquently
proclaimed a century later, and which the work of Newton seemed
4 H. C., xxxix, n 6, 143. 5 H. C., iii, 143. 6 H. C., xxxiv, 5.
152 PHILOSOPHY
so nearly to realize, the idea of a universal mechanism, in which
the laws of bodily motion should apply even to the origins of nature
and to man. It was hoped thus to bring it about that all things
should be as demonstrably known, and as certainly predictable, as the
velocities and orbits of the planets. To this end the author of "The
Leviathan" 7 regards both man and society, the little man and the
giant composite man, as simply delicate and complicated mechan-
isms, moved by an impulse of self-seeking.
These, then, are the three forms in which the science of the
Renaissance as embodied in Galileo is communicated to modern
philosophy. Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes became in turn the
sources of the new tendencies that make up the philosophy of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The empiricism of Bacon
was renewed in Locke, 8 who applied "the plain historical method"
to the study of the human mind; continued by Berkeley, 9 who
reduced even being to perception ("esse est, percipi") ; was brought
to a sceptical crisis in Hume; 10 but persisted as the national philos-
ophy of England. The rationalism of Descartes afforded a basis
for the great metaphysical systems of Continental philosophy, for
the monism of Spinoza and the pluralism of Leibnitz; was degraded
to a mere formalism and dogmatism in Wolff; but nevertheless per-
sisted in the new idealistic German philosophy which was inspired
by Kant. The physical philosophy of Hobbes, mingled with similar
elements drawn from the philosophies of Locke and Descartes, de-
veloped into the French materialistic movement which attended the
outbreak of the Revolution, and remains the model for all philos-
ophers who seek to make a metaphysics out of physics. The forms
which these three tendencies assumed during the eighteenth century,
and especially their excessive emphasis on facts and necessities, pro-
voked the great reaction which bore fruit in the following century,
but which was already anticipated in Pascal's philosophy of faith 11
in Rousseau's philosophy of feeling, 12 and in Lessing's philosophy of
development. 13
7 H. C., xxxiv, 311. 8 H. C., xxxvii, 9.
9 f/. C., xxxvii, 189. 10 H. C., xxxvii, 289.
11 H. C., xlviii. 12 H. C., xxxiv, 165. 13 H. C., xxxii, 185.
IV. INTRODUCTION TO KANT
BY PROFESSOR RALPH BARTON PERRY
IT IS generally admitted that Kant is one of the great epoch-
making philosophers, like Socrates and Descartes. There are
two things that are universally true of intellectual epoch-
makers: first, they embody in themselves certain general tendencies
of their age, which are usually due to a reaction against the more
pronounced tendencies of the previous age; second, their thought
is peculiarly germinal, and among their followers assumes a maturer
form, in which the originators would scarcely recognize it as their
own. Let us consider these two aspects of the philosophy of Kant.
REVOLT AGAINST PURE EMPIRICISM AND PURE RATIONALISM
From among the pronounced tendencies of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries I shall select two for special emphasis. In the
first place, it was characteristic of these two centuries to isolate and
over-emphasize either one or the other of the two great sources of
human knowledge, sense-perception or reason. Locke and his fol-
lowers attempted to convert reason into a mere echo of sense; while
for Descartes and his followers, sense was always viewed with sus-
picion as confusing the intellect, or as supplying only an inferior
sort of knowledge which must yield precedence to "rational science."
Extreme sensationalism or empiricism seemed to have reached an
impasse in Hume; while rationalism degenerated into formalism and
word-making in WolfT. Thus Kant's greatest work, the "Critique
of Pure Reason" (1789), was an attempt to correct these extreme
views by making the necessary provision for both sense-perception
and reason. Perception without conception, he said, is blind; while
conception without perception is empty. Kant's critique was aimed
first at excessive emphasis on sense-perception. He showed that the
bare sequence of sense-impressions can never yield the connections,
necessities, unities, laws, etc., which are required for science. The
153
154 PHILOSOPHY
intellect must supply these itself. They constitute what Kant called
"categories," the instruments which the mind must use when it
works in that peculiar way which is called knowing. But it follows
that they are not by themselves sufficient for knowledge. They
cannot themselves be known in the ordinary way because they are
what one knows with. And since they are instruments, it follows
that they require some material to work upon; they cannot spin
knowledge out of nothing. Hence the data of sense are indispensable
also. In short, to know is to systematize, by the instrumentalities
native to the mind, the content conveyed by the senses. This is the
Kant of the first Critique, the Kant of technical philosophy who
numbers many faithful devotees among the thinkers of to-day.
REASSERTION OF THE SPIRITUAL
A second and more general tendency of seventeenth and eighteenth
century philosophy was its comparative neglect of what are vaguely
called the "spiritual" demands. These centuries themselves may be
regarded as a reaction against what was thought to be the excessive
anthropomorphism of earlier times. Man had erred by reading him-
self into his world; now he was to view it impersonally and dis-
passionately. He might prefer to record the findings of perception,
or the necessities of reason, but in either case he was to repress his
own interests and yearnings. Of course at the time it was confidently
expected that morality and religion would in this way be served best.
Men believed in the possibility of a "natural religion," without
mystery or dogma, a rational morality without authority, and a
demonstrable theology without either revelation or faith. But
gradually there developed a sense of failure. Man had left himself
too much out of it, and felt homeless and unprotected. Early in
the seventeenth century Pascal had announced the religious bank-
ruptcy of the mathematical rationalism of Descartes. 1 Natural
religion was readily converted into atheism by Hume. The most
vigorous and stirring protest against the whole spirit of the age
was made by Rousseau, who urged men to trust their feelings, make
allowance for the claims of the heart, and return to the elemental
and spontaneous in human nature. The same note was caught up by
1 See Pascal's "Thoughts," Harvard Classics, xlviii, 34^.; 4o8ff.
PHILOSOPHY 155
Jacob! and Herder. Finally Lessing, in his "Education of the Human
Race" (lySo), 2 turned the attention of philosophy to the history of
culture, to the significance of human life in its historical unfolding.
It is a strange paradox that Immanuel Kant, valetudinarian and
pedant that he was, should have represented this rising revolt of
sentiment and faith. But such was the fact. Let us, then, view him
in this light.
THE KANTIAN REVOLUTION
One of the most famous of Kant's remarks was that he proposed
to effect a Copernican Revolution in thought. As Copernicus had
established a new center for the planetary system, so he proposed to
establish a new center for knowledge. This new center was to be
the mind itself. The errors of the earlier period had been largely
due, he thought, to the attempt to make knowledge center in the
object, it being expected that the mind should reflect, either by per-
ception or reason, the nature of an outward and independently exist-
ing thing. This method leads inevitably, said Kant, either to
scepticism or to what is just as bad for philosophical purposes,
dogmatism. The new way is to expect that the object shall conform
to the mind. Thus nature, which in the earlier view was construed
as an external order by which the mind is affected, or which the
mind is somehow to reproduce by its own ratiocination, is now con-
strued as the original creation of the mind. It owes all of its arrange-
ments and connections, even its very distribution in space and time,
to the constitution of the knower. The mind imposes its conditions
on the object, and thus gets out of nature what it has already put
into it. The bearing of this on man's spiritual claims is apparent.
It is now nature that is creature; and man, in virtue of his intelli-
gence, that is creator. The fatal world of fact and necessity, that
seemed so alien to spirit, turns out to be but an expression of the
intellectual part of spirit.
THE SPHERE OF THE WILL
But a Rousseau might still complain that this victory of spirit
over matter was dearly bought, since it left the rest of spirit in
2 H. C., xxxii, 185.
156 PHILOSOPHY
harsh subjection to the intellectual part. What guarantee is there
that the intellect, thus clothed with authority, will make due
allowance for the claims of sentiment and conscience ? Kant's answer
lies in his famous doctrine of the "primacy of the practical reason." 3
Nature, he says, is indeed the work of the theoretical faculties; and
the theoretical faculties can recognize only facts and laws. But the
theoretical faculties are themselves but the expression of something
deeper, namely, the will. Thinking is a kind of action, and action
in general has its own laws, revealed in conscience, and taking
precedence of the rules that govern any special department of action,
such as knowing. This does not mean that conscience over-rules
the understanding, or that the will can violate nature; but that
conscience reveals another world, deeper and more real than nature,
which is the proper sphere for the exercise of the will. This is the
world of God, freedom, and immortality. It cannot be known in
the strict sense, only nature can be known; but it can and must be
believed in, because it is presupposed in all action. If one is to live
at all, one must claim such a world to live in. So Kant, who began
by justifying science, ended by justifying faith.
THE FOLLOWERS OF KANT
I have said that it was the fate of epoch-makers to have their ideas
promptly converted into something that they never meant. Kant
was a cautious, or as he terms it, a "critical" thinker. He concerned
himself with questions regarding the possibility of knowledge and
the legitimacy of faith; and avoided so far as possible making
positive assertions about the world. But his followers were fired
with speculative zeal, and at once passed over from "criticism" to
metaphysics.
There resulted the great Romantic and Idealistic movement that
formed the main current of philosophical thought during the nine-
teenth century.
In the idealistic movement the Kantian theory of knowledge is
united with a pantheistic tendency that may be traced continuously
back even to Plato himself. According to this pantheistic view,
nature and God are the same thing viewed differently. God, fore-
3 H. C., xxxii, 305^, 3i8ff.
PHILOSOPHY 157
shortened and taken in the limited perspectives defined by man's
earth-bound intelligence, is nature; nature, consummated, seen in
its fullness and harmony, is God.
For all we have power to see, is a straight staff bent in a pool;
And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;
But if we could see and hear, this Vision were it not He? 4
Nature, on Kantian grounds, is the work of intelligence, and
intelligence, in turn, obeys some deeper spiritual law. That law,
when interpreted according to the Platonic-pantheistic tradition, is
the perfection of the whole. There are many possible variations of
the view. The perfection of the whole may be regarded as a moral
perfection, the ideal of the moral will, as suggested by Kant, and
more positively and constructively maintained by Fichte; or as the
ideal of reason, as was maintained by Hegel and his followers; or
as a general realization of all spiritual values, a perfection transcend-
ing moral and rational standards, and more nearly approached in
the experience of beauty, or in flashes of mystical insight, as was
proclaimed by the sentimentalists and romanticists. In the popular
literary expressions of the view, these varieties have alternated, or
have been indiscriminately mingled. But it is this view in some
form that has inspired those English poets and essayists, such as
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Emerson, Tennyson, and Brown-
ing, who so profoundly influenced the men of the last generation.
There is thus a continuous current of thought from the closest
philosophy of the sage of Konigsberg to the popular incentives and
consolations of to-day.
4 Tennyson, "The Higher Pantheism," H. C., xlii, 1004.
V. EMERSON
BY PROFESSOR CHESTER NOYES GREENOUGH
TE IS," said Matthew Arnold of Emerson, "the friend and
I 1 aider of those who would live in the spirit." These well-
JL JL known words are perhaps the best expression of the
somewhat vague yet powerful and inspiring effect of Emerson's
courageous but disjointed philosophy.
EMERSON AS LAY PREACHER
Descended from a long line of New England ministers, Emerson,
finding himself fettered by even the most liberal ministry of his
day, gently yet audaciously stepped down from the pulpit and, with
little or no modification in his interests or utterances, became the
greatest lay preacher of his time. From the days of his undergraduate
essay upon "The Present State of Ethical Philosophy" he continued
to be preoccupied with matters of conduct: whatever the object of
his attention an ancient poet, a fact in science, or an event in the
morning newspaper he contrives to extract from it a lesson which
in his ringing, glistening style he drives home as an exhortation to
a higher and more independent life.
EMERSON AND CALVINISM
Historically, Emerson marks one of the largest reactions against
the Calvinism of his ancestors. That stern creed had taught the
depravity of man, the impossibility of a natural, unaided growth
toward perfection, and the necessity of constant and anxious effort
to win the unmerited reward of being numbered among the elect.
Emerson starts with the assumption that the individual, if he can
only come into possession of his natural excellence, is the most god-
like of creatures. Instead of believing with the Calvinist that as a
man grows better he becomes more unlike his natural self (and
158
PHILOSOPHY 159
therefore can become better only by an act of divine mercy), Emer-
son believes that as a man grows in excellence he becomes more like
his natural self. It is common to hear the expression, when one is
deeply stirred, as by sublime music or a moving discourse: "That
fairly lifted me out of myself." Emerson would have said that such
influences lift us into ourselves.
THE OVER-SOUL
For one of Emerson's most fundamental and frequently recurring
ideas 1 is that of a "great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in
the soft arms of the atmosphere," an "Over-Soul, within which every
man's particular being is contained and made one with all other,"
which "evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and be-
come wisdom and virtue and power and beauty." 2 This is the
incentive the sublime incentive of approaching the perfection which
is ours by nature and by divine intention that Emerson holds out
when he asks us to submit us to ourselves to all instructive influences.
These instructive influences, according to Emerson, are chiefly
Nature, the Past, and Society. Let us notice how Emerson bids us
use these influences to help us into our higher selves.
NATURE
,3
Nature, which he says 3 "is loved by what is best in us," is all about
us, inviting our perception of its remotest and most cosmic prin-
ciples by surrounding us with its simpler manifestations. "A man
does not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which bind the
farthest regions of nature." 4 Thus man "carries the world in his
head." 5 Whether he be a great scientist, proving by his discovery
of a sweeping physical law that he has some such constructive sense
as that which guides the universe, or whether he be a poet beholding
trees as "imperfect men," who "seem to bemoan their imprisonment,
rooted in the ground," 6 he is being brought into his own by per-
ceiving "the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind of
material objects, whether inorganic or organized." 7
Perhaps most clearly put in "The Over-Soul," Harvard Classics, v,
2 H. C.. v, 134. 3 H. C., v, 227. *H. C., v, 230. 5 H. C, v, 230.
6 H. C., v, 229. 7 H. C., v, 237.
i6o
PHILOSOPHY
THE PAST
Ranging over time and space with astonishing rapidity and bind-
ing names and things together that no ordinary vision could connect,
Emerson calls the Past also to witness the need of self-reliance and a
steadfast obedience to intuition. 8 The need of such independence,
he thought, was particularly great for the student, who so easily
becomes overawed by the great names of the Past and reads "to
believe and take for granted." 9 This should not be, nor can it be if
we remember what we are. "Meek young men grow up in libraries
believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which
Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and
Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these
books." * ' When we sincerely find, therefore, that we cannot agree
with the Past, then, says Emerson, we must break with it, no matter
how great the prestige of its messengers. But often the Past does not
disappoint us; often it assists us in our quest to become our highest
selves. For in the Past there have been many men of genius; and, in-
asmuch as the man of genius has come nearer to being continually
conscious of his relation to the Over-Soul, it follows that the genius
is actually more ourselves than we are. So we often have to fall
back upon more gifted souls to interpret for us what we mean but
cannot say. Any supreme triumph of expression, therefore, should
arouse in us not humility, still less discouragement, but renewed
consciousness that "one nature wrote and the same reads." " So it
is in travel or in any other form of contact with the Past : we cannot
derive any profit or see any new thing except we remember that "the
world is nothing, the man is all." 12
SOCIETY
Similar are the uses of Society. More clearly than in Nature or
in the Past, we see in certain other people such likeness to ourselves,
and receive from the perception of that likeness such inspiration,
that a real friend "may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature." 13
8 The uses of the past and the right spirit in which to approach it, are finely set
forth in "The American Scholar" (H. C., v, 5ff).
9 Bacon, "Of Studies" (H. C., iii, 122).
10 H. C., v, g. "H. C. f v, 10, ii. 12 H. C., v, 22. 13 H. C., v, 112.
PHILOSOPHY l6l
Yet elsewhere Emerson has more than once urged us not to be "too
much acquainted" 14 : all our participation in the life of our fellows,
though rich with courtesy and sympathy, must be free from bending
and copying. We must use the fellowship of Society to freshen, and
never to obscure, "the recollection of the grandeur of our destiny." l
EMERSON'S UNIVERSALITY
Such, in some attempt at an organization, are a few of Emerson's
favorite ideas, which occur over and over again, no matter what
may be the subject of the essay. Though Emerson was to some
degree identified, in his own time, with various movements which
have had little or no permanent effect, yet as we read him now we
find extraordinarily little that suggests the limitations of his time
and locality. Often there are whole paragraphs which if we had
read them in Greek would have seemed Greek. The good sense
which kept him clear of Brook Farm because he thought Fourier
"had skipped no fact but one, namely life," kept him clear from
many similar departures into matters which the twenty-first century
will probably not remember. This is as it should be in the essay,
which by custom draws the subjects for its "dispersed meditations"
from the permanent things of this world, such as Friendship, Truth,
Superstition, and Honor. One of Emerson's sources of strength,
therefore, is his universality.
HIS STYLE
Another source of Emerson's strength is his extraordinary com-
pactness of style and his range and unexpectedness of illustration.
His gift for epigram is, indeed, such as to make us long for an
occasional stretch of leisurely commonplace. But Emerson always
keeps us up not less by his memorable terseness than by his
startling habit of illustration. He loves to dart from the present to
the remotest past, to join names not usually associated, to link pagan
with Christian, or human with divine, in single rapid sentences,
such as that 16 about "Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and
Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who worshiped
Beauty by word or by deed."
14 H. c., v, 208. is H c Vt 209 IG H c v 2I3
1 62 PHILOSOPHY
Not less notable than his universality of thought, his compactness
of style, and his swiftness and range of illustration, is Emerson's
delightful benignity of tone. It would be hard to find any one whose
opposition is so high minded, whose refusal is so gentle, whose good
will though perhaps never anxious is so uniformly evident. The
sweetness of Emerson's face, as we know it from his most famous
portrait, is to be felt throughout his work.
If, in spite of all these admirable qualities, Emerson's ideas seem
too vague and unsystematic to satisfy those who feel that they could
perhaps become' Emersonians if there were only some definite articles
to sign, it must be remembered that Emerson wishes to develop inde-
pendence rather than apostleship, and that when men revolt from a
system because they believe it to be too definite and oppressive, they
are likely to go to the other extreme. That Emerson did go so far
toward this extreme identifies him with a period notable for its
enthusiastic expansion of thought. That he did not systematize or
restrict means that he was obedient to the idea that what really
matters is not that by exact terminology, clever tactics, and all the
niceties of reasoning a system of philosophy shall be made tight and
impregnable for others to adopt, but rather that each of us may
be persuaded to hitch his own particular wagon to whatever star for
him shines brightest.
BIOGRAPHY
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER
BIOGRAPHY is the key to the best society the world has ever
had. By the best society I do not mean those exclusive circles,
based on wealth, privilege, or heredity, which have flourished
at all times and in every place. I mean the men and women who,
by the richness of their talents or the significance of their careers, or,
it may be, by some special deed, have emerged from the throng. One
of the strongest instincts planted in us is our aversion to bores.
Biography, as by a short cut, admits us to the fellowship of the
choice spirits of the past four thousand years, among whom we shall
find entertainment in endless variety. And not entertainment only;
for entertainment is not the end of life, but its sweetener and
strengthener.
To develop our talents for good, to build up character, to fit our-
selves, like the cutwater of a ship, to cleave whatever seas of ex-
perience Fate may steer us into, to set ourselves a high, far goal and
always consciously, through storm or shine, to seek that goal that is
the real concern of life. On this quest biography shows the way by
example.
Most of us have intervals of tedium or depression when we try to
get out of ourselves. Or it may be some stroke of ill-fortune, some
sorrow, some moral lapse, some desperate blunder, locks us up within
ourselves as in a dungeon. Then biography comes to our rescue,
and we forget ourselves in following the career of other men and
women who may have passed through similar ordeals. The loneli-
ness of grief loses some of its poignancy, the agonizing isolation
which sin creates round the sinner is broken in upon by the knowl-
edge that others have suffered or failed, and yet found strength to
endure and to return.
163
164 BIOGRAPHY
Evidently, great fiction, whether it be in the form of drama,
tragedy, or novel, serves the same purpose of taking us out of our-
selves, by teaching us how imaginary persons plan and act, undergo
joy or pain, conquer or fall. I do not wish to belittle any fiction
which can justify itself by substantial charm or symbolical import;
and as I shall discuss later some of the relations between fiction and
biography, it will suffice to remark now that the highest praise that
can be bestowed on the creations of fiction is that they are true to
life. Achilles, sulking in his tent; Othello, maddened by jealousy;
visionary Don Quixote, mistaking windmills for giants; Mephis-
topheles, Becky Sharp, Colonel Newcome, Silas Marner, and all the
other immortals in the world of fiction live on by virtue of their liL -
likeness. But life itself, and not its counterfeit, is the very stuff of
biography.
BIOGRAPHY NOT MERE EULOGY
One reason why biography dropped behind in the race for popular-
ity with fiction is that it was taken for granted that the biographer
must deal in eulogy only. His subjects were usually marvels we
may almost say monsters of virtue. Most of us are so conscious of
being a composite of good and bad that we are properly sceptical
when we read of persons too pure and luminous to cast a shadow.
We tolerate the pious fibs carved in an epitaph on a tombstone
the lapidary, as Dr. Johnson remarked, is not under oath; we dis-
count the flattery of the avowed panegyrist, but when the epitaph or
the eulogy is puffed out through a volume or two of biography, we
balk and decline to read.
Lives of this kind are seldom written nowadays. They are too
obviously untrue to deceive any one. Candidates for political or
other office may connive at pen portraits of themselves which no
more resemble them than Apollo; but these productions, like the
caricatures of the day, are soon forgotten. In earlier times, even
among English-speaking folk, laudation was the accepted tribute
which the lower paid to the higher. Among monarchs, prelates,
nobles, generals, poets, artists, or persons of the smallest distinction
whatsoever, modesty could not be called a lost art, because it had
never been found. And only recently a prime minister, equally
BIOGRAPHY 165
cynical and subtly subservient, divulged that even he could not ap-
pease his sovereign's appetite for adulation. In general, however,
it is now commonly the fashion to assume the virtue of modesty by
those who have it not, and the professional flatterer finds fewer
opportunities than formerly. Yet we need only glance at the biog-
raphies which have come down to us from the ages most addicted to
artificial manners and speech in order to see that these, too, bear the
stamp of sincerity. There is always the unconscious record, the
expression or tone peculiar to the time, to betray them; and then,
few writers have ever been cunning enough to dupe more than one
generation their own.
Nobody need forego the inestimable delights of biography from
fear of being the dupe of some devious biographer. It requires no
long practice to train yourself to sift the genuine from the false a
branch of intellectual detective work which possesses the zest of
mystery, abounds in surprises, and can be carried on at your own
fireside.
So inevitably does temperament register itself that it cannot be
concealed even in autobiography, which some persons unwisely avoid
because they suppose that those who write their lives set out with the
deliberate purpose of painting themselves as more wise or virtuous,
clever or courageous, than they really were. But though any special
incident narrated by a Benvenuto Cellini cannot be verified, the sum
of his amazing "Life" * reveals to us Cellini himself, that perfect
product of the Italian Renaissance in its decline versatile, brilliant,
wicked, superstitious, infidel, fascinating, ready to kill himself toil-
ing to perfect a medal, or to kill a neighbor for some passing whim.
Even Goethe, who wrote the most artificial of autobiographies, re-
composing the events of his childhood and youth so as to give them
sequence and emphasis that belong to a work of fiction, even he,
Olympian poseur that he was, could not by this device have hidden,
if he had wished, his essential self from us.
We may well dismiss, therefore, the suspicion which has some-
times hovered over biography. The best lives are among the most
precious possessions we have; even the mediocre, or those less than
mediocre, can furnish us much solid amusement; and there are
1 Harvard Classics, xxxi; and cf. Lecture III, below.
1 66 BIOGRAPHY
many biographical fragments which reveal to us the very heart of
their subject, as surely as a piece of ore-bearing quartz the metal
embedded in it.
THE PLEASURE OF BIOGRAPHY
The delights of biography are those of the highest human inter-
course, in almost limitless diversity, which no one could hope to
enjoy among the living. Even though you were placed so favorably
that you became acquainted with many of the most interesting per-
sonages of your own time, were it not for this magic art, which
makes the past present and the dead to live, you would still be shut
out from all acquaintance with your forerunners. But, thanks to
biography, you have only to reach out your hand and take down a
volume from your shelf in order to converse with Napoleon or Bis-
marck, Lincoln or Cavour. You need spend no weary hours in ante-
chambers on the chance of snatching a hasty interview. They wait
upon your pleasure. No business of state can put you off. They
talk and you listen. They disclose to you their inmost secrets. Carlyle
may be never so petulant, Luther never so bluff, Swift never so
bitter, but they must admit you, and the very defects which might
have interposed a screen between each of them living and you are
as loopholes through which you look into their hearts. So you may
come to know them better than their contemporaries knew them,
better than you know your intimates, or, unless you are a master
of self-scrutiny, better than you know yourself.
The mixed motives which we seldom dissect in our own acts can
usually be disentangled without difficulty in theirs. Through them
we discover the true nature of traits, fair or hideous, of which we
discern the embryos in ourselves; and however far they rise above
us by genius or by fortune, we see that the difference is of degree
and not of kind. The human touch makes us all solidaire. Were it
not so, the story of their lives would interest us no more than if
they were basilisks or griffins, phantasmal creatures having no pos-
sible relations with us.
Just now I mentioned at random some of the very great statesmen
and leaders in religion and letters, access to whom in the flesh would
presumably have been impossible, but with whom the humblest of
BIOGRAPHY 167
us find many contacts in their biographies. Often we are surprised
by a thought or feeling or experience such as we have had and
scarcely heeded, but which at once takes on dignity from being
shared with the illustrious man. Still, the touchstone of biography
is not merely greatness, but interest and significance; and herein it
coincides with its twin art, portraiture. The finest portraits, assum-
ing equal skill in the technique of their painting, are not of kings
and grandees, but those which embody or suggest character. Queen
Victoria's face, though a Leonardo had painted it, could never rivet
the world's attention or pique the world's curiosity as Monna Lisa's
has done. In ten minutes one has revealed the uncomplex and
uninspired nature behind it; while after four hundred years the
other still fascinates us by its suggestive and perpetually elusive
expression.
So the lives of persons who were inconspicuous, measured on the
scale of international or enduring fame, are sometimes packed with
the charm of individuality. Such, for instance, is "The Story of My
Heart," by Richard Jeffries. You may not like it one friend to
whom I recommended it told me he found it so exasperating that
he threw it into the fire but you cannot deny, if you are reasonably
sympathetic, that it is the genuine utterance of a genuine man.
Solomon Maimon's biography is another of this sort, in which we
see an unusual personality shackled by the cruelty of caste. John
Sterling had talent, but he died too young to achieve any work of
lasting note; and yet, thanks to Carlyle's exuberantly vital memoir
of him which reminds me of one of Rembrandt's portraits
Sterling will live on for years.
THE DIFFICULTY OF BIOGRAPHICAL WRITING
These examples will suffice to prove that a great biography does
not require a great man for its original; but it does require a great
biographer. For biography is an art, a very high art; and, if we judge
by the comparatively small number of its masterpieces, we must
conclude that the consummate biographer is rarer than the poet, the
novelist, or the historian of similar worth.
The belief that anybody can write a life is one of the widespread
fallacies. As if anybody could paint a portrait or compose a sonata!
1 68 BIOGRAPHY
When some notable person dies, it is ten to one that his wife or
sister, son or daughter, sets to work to compile his memoir. The
result, at its best, must present a partial, family point of view,
hardly more to be trusted than the official biographies of kings
and queens.
It was the public relations of the gentleman that warranted writ-
ing about him at all; but from his wife doting, perhaps or from
his child spoiled, possibly we shall hear of him chiefly in his
role as husband or as father.
Personal affection, devotion even, may be and usually is a handi-
cap, which the family biographer cannot overcome. The wise sur-
geon does not trust himself to perform an operation on his dearest;
neither should a biographer.
Knowledge, sympathy, and imagination the biographer must
possess; these, and that detachment of the artist which is partly
intuition and partly a sort of conscience, against which personal con-
siderations plead in vain. Thus, although Boswell, the master biog-
rapher among all those who have written in English, felt toward
Johnson admiration little short of idolatry, yet, when he came to
write, he was the artist striving to make a perfect picture, and not the
worshiper hiding his idol in clouds of incense. Sir George Trevelyan
was Macaulay's nephew, and therefore likely to be hampered by
family reserves; but in him the quality of biographer so far surpassed
the accident of nephew that he, too, was able to produce a biography
which portrays Macaulay as adequately as BoswelPs portrays
Johnson.
Such exceptions simply prove the rule : detachment which ensures
fairness and knowledge, sympathy, and imagination uniting in
a faculty which we may call divination are indispensable.
CULTIVATING THE TASTE FOR BIOGRAPHY
The taste for biography, if it be not born in you, is quickly
acquired. Many and many a person has had it first aroused in boy-
hood by Franklin's "Autobiography," 2 that astonishing book, which
enchants you when you are young by its simplicity and its teeming
incidents, and holds you when you are old by its shrewdness, its
Z H. C., i; and cf. Lecture IV, below.
BIOGRAPHY 169
tonic optimism, its candor, its wisdom, its humor. Franklin has
done for himself what Defoe did for the fictitious Robinson Crusoe;
but his sphere was as wide as Crusoe's was confined. Follow his
fortunes and you will soon be swept into the main currents of
history, not in Philadelphia or the Colonies only, but in Europe.
And after you have digested the information which Franklin pro-
vides so naturally, you will recall again and again the human touches
in which his book abounds: his remarks on his marriage: his con-
fession that, when he began to take an account of stock of his moral
condition he found himself much fuller of faults than he imagined;
his admission that he acquired the appearance of humility though
he lacked the reality; the irony of his report of Braddock's con-
versation; but to mention its characteristic passages would be to
epitomize the book. Each reader will have his favorites and when
he reaches the end of the fragment, with its unfinished sentence, he
will regret to part from such a mellow companion. What a treat
the world missed because Franklin died before he had narrated his
experiences between 1775 and 1785, that decade when, we may
truly say that, if Washington was the Father, Franklin was the
Godfather of his country.
Perhaps, however, you were led into biography through other
channels. The life of Napoleon or of Caesar, of some painter, poet,
man of letters, inventor, or explorer, may have been the first to
attract you; but the outcome will be the same. You will feel that
you have gained a new companion, as real as your flesh-and-blood
intimates, but wittier, wiser, or more picturesque than they; a friend
whose latchstring is always out for you to pull; a crony who will
gossip when you desire, who will never desert you nor grow cold
nor yawn at your dulness, nor resent your indifference. For the
relation between you is wholly one-sided. His spirit is distilled in
a book, like some rare cordial in a flask, to be enjoyed or not accord-
ing to your mood. He bestows his all himself: but only on con-
dition that you supply the perfect sympathy requisite for understand-
ing him.
This relationship between the reader and the dead and gone who
have perpetuated themselves in literature is absolutely unique. In
all other affairs there must be reciprocity, the interplay of tempera-
I7O BIOGRAPHY
ments, the stress of moral obligation; but in this transaction the
author gives all, and the reader takes all (if he can) without thought
of making returns, and without incurring the imputation of being
a sponge or a parasite. If you are a free man, no intermediary stands
between you and the author who draws you or repels you according
to the subtle laws of affinity. Rarely, rarely among the living is that
condition for ideal companionship realized.
THE VARIETY OF BIOGRAPHY
Because of the unique terms which exist between author and
reader, we associate with sinners not less than with saints, and are
unburdened by a sense of responsibility for their acts. In daily life
few of us, happily, come face to face with perverts and criminals;
but through biography we can, if we will, measure the limits of
human nature on its dark side in the careers of such colossal rep-
robates as Cassar Borgia and his father; or monsters of cruelty like
Ezzelino and Alva; or traitors, spies, and informers, from Judas to
Benedict Arnold and Azeff; or of swindlers and more common
scoundrels, George Law and Cagliostro and latter-day "promoters,"
and that peculiarly offensive brood the pious impostors.
In the long run, however, we make our lasting friends among
those who are normal but not commonplace, who seem to carry our
own better traits to a degree of perfection which we have not
attained, or who have qualities which we lack but envy. Unlikeness
also is often a potent element of charm. I recall a frail little old lady,
the embodiment of peace, so gentle that she could not bear to have
a fly harmed, who devoured every book about Napoleon and seemed
almost to gloat over the details of his campaigns. Conversely, more
than one great captain has concentrated his reading in one or two
books of religion.
Having entered the realm inhabited by those who live through
the magic of biography, we cannot dwell there long without meet-
ing friends for whom we have sought in vain among our actual
associates. In finding them we often find our best selves. They
comfort us in our distress, they clarify our doubts, they give fresh
impetus and straight aim to our hopes, they whisper to us the
mystic word which unfolds the meaning of life; above all they
BIOGRAPHY
teach us by example how to live. Then we feel that our gratitude
is barren and unworthy unless it spurs us to emulation. Unenviable
indeed is he whose heart never
ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old !
The dead but sceptered sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.
No matter what his creed may be, no man is so self-sufficient and
original as not to be under the sway, whether he acknowledges it
or not, of dead but sceptered kings; and biography brings them
nearer to us and humanizes them, and thereby adds to the perti-
nence of their teaching. These are the supreme benefits conferred
by biography; but as no healthy soul lives continuously in a state
of ecstasy, so there are many moods in which we turn to other com-
panions than the prophets. We require relaxation. Our intellect not
less than our spirit craves its repast. Honest amusement is its own
justification. Biography offers the widest possible choice for any
fancy.
DR. JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE
One of the surest ways to secure unfailing pleasure is to naturalize
yourself as a member of some significant group. Take, for instance,
Dr. Johnson and his circle. Having disclosed to you the imperish-
able Doctor, Boswell will whet your curiosity as to the scores of per-
sons, great and small, who figure in the biography. You will go
in pursuit of Sir Joshua Reynolds and of Garrick, of Gold-
smith and of Burke: and you will soon discover that a mere
bowing acquaintance with any of these will not satisfy you. When
Gibbon enters the scene, you will be drawn to his autobiography.
Chatham and Fox, North and Sheridan, must all be investigated.
You will wonder why the other members of the Club unite in de-
claring Beauclerk the peer of the best of them in wit; and after
much digging, you will conclude that, for lack of other evidence,
you must accept Beauclerk on the strength of their commendation.
As your circle widens, it will take in Fanny Burney whose memoirs
are so much more readable now than her "Evelina"; Mrs. Thrale
that type of the eternal feminine, whose mission it is to cheer Genius
172 BIOGRAPHY
by appreciating the man in whom it dwells; Mrs. Montague, the
autocratic blue-stocking, who made and unmade literary reputations;
and many others, from Paoli the vanquished patriot of Corsica to
Oglethorpe the colonizer of Georgia.
The material for knowing Johnson's group is extraordinarily
rich. It consists not only of formal biographies and histories, but
of letters, recollections, diaries, anecdotes, and table talk which are
often the very marrow of both history and biography. You cannot
exhaust it in many seasons. Horace Walpole alone will outlast any
fashion. Little by little you will come to know the chief per-
sonages in youth and in age, from every point of view. You can
watch them develop, or trace the interactions of one upon the other.
The minor folk also will become real to you Lovett, the trusty
servant, and the old ladies with whom the Doctor drank tea, the
chance frequenters of the coffeehouses where he thundered his
verdicts on books and politics, the pathetic derelicts whose old age
he solaced with a pension. You will experience the pleasure of
filling gaps in the dramatis personce and the stage setting, or in dis-
covering a missing link of evidence. And so at last you can mix
with that company at will. No matter what the cares and torments
of your day, at evening you can enter their magic city, forget your
present, and follow in imagination those careers which closed in
time so long ago, but live on with undimmed luster in the timeless
domain of the imagination. And during all this delightful ex-
ploration, you have been learning more and more about human
nature, the mysterious primal element in which you yourself have
your being.
Instead of the province over which Dr. Johnson rules, you can
choose from among many others. Take up the Lake School of poets
Byron, Shelley, and Keats the mid- Victorian statesmen and men
of letters the founders of our Republic Emerson and his con-
temporaries and by the same method you will find your interest
wonderfully enhanced. It is not the surface of life, but its depth
and height that it behooves us to know; and we can get this knowl-
edge vicariously from those who have soared highest or dropped
their plummet farthest into the unfathomable deeps.
BIOGRAPHY 173
THE VALUE OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Autobiography is an important and often very precious product
of biography. The common prejudice, that because it is egotistical
it must be tedious, does not hold water. The impulse toward self-
expression exceeds all others save the instinct of self-preservation.
The artist blessed with great talent expresses himself through that
talent, whether it be painting or sculpture, literature or eloquence.
Let him strive never so hard to be impersonal, the tinge of his mind
will color it; the work is his work. Men of pure science discover
abstract laws by experimenting with material sterilized as far as
possible from any taint due to a personal equation; but this does not
lessen our interest in them as human beings. Far from it. We are
all the more curious to learn how men, subject to our passions, contra-
dictions and disabilities, have succeeded in exploring the passionless
vastitudes of astronomy and the incomputably minute worlds of
atoms and electrons.
We rejoice to find Darwin worthy of being the prophet of a new
dispensation Darwin, the strong, quiet, modest man, harassed
hourly by a depressing ailment, but patient under suffering, and
preferring truth to the triumph of his own opinions or to any other
reward.
If self-conceit, or egotism, be rather too obtrusive in some auto-
biographies, you will learn to bear it if you regard it as a secretion
apparently as necessary to the growth of certain talents as is the
secretion which produces the pearl in the oyster. If a pearl results,
the pearl compensates. And, after all, such conceit, like the make-
believe of little children, is too patent to deceive us. It is the
thought that they are trying to humbug us into supposing them
greater than we know them to be that irritates us in the conceit of
little men. But since conceited men have been great, even very
great, although this blemish in them offends us, it ought not to
blind us to their other positive accomplishments! And how much
harmless amusement we owe to such unconscious humorists! When
Victor Hugo grandly announces: "France is the head of civilization;
Paris is the head of France; I am the brains of Paris," are we seized
with a desire to refute him? Hardly. We smile an inward smile,
174 BIOGRAPHY
too deeply permeating and satisfactory for outward laughter. So
Ruskin's inordinate vanity in "Praeterita" cannot detract from the
iridescent beauties of that marvelous book; it seems rather to be
the guarantee of truthfulness.
Whatever may be your prepossessions, you cannot travel far in
the field of biography without recognizing the value, even if you
do not feel the fascination, of autobiographies, of which in English
we have a particularly rich collection. I have spoken of Franklin's,
to which Gibbon's may serve as a pendant. It discloses the eigh-
teenth-century cosmopolite, placid, rational, industrious, a consum-
mate genius in one direction, but of tepid emotion; who immor-
talized in a single line his betrothal which he docilely broke at his
father's bidding: "I sighed as a lover," he writes, "but I obeyed as
a son."
Halfway between the man of pure intellect, like Franklin and
Gibbon, and the man of sentiment, comes John Stuart Mill, 3 in
whom the precocious development of a very remarkable mind did
not succeed in crushing out the religious craving or the life of the
feelings. Newman's "Apologia," largely occupied in the vain en-
deavor to transfuse the warm blood of the emotions into the hardened
arteries of theological dogmas, stands at the other extreme in this
class of confessions.
Contrast with it John Woolman's "Journal," 4 the austerely sincere
record of a soul that does not spend its time in casuistical inter-
pretations of the quibbles propounded by mediseval theologians,
but dwells consciously in the immediate presence of the living God.
Our only quarrel with Woolman is that, owing to his complete
other-worldiness, he disdains to tell us facts about himself and about
his time that we would gladly hear.
In other fields there is equal abundance. Many soldiers have
written memoirs; enough to cite General Grant's, to parallel which
we must go back to Caesar's "Commentaries." Authors, poets, men
of affairs, the obscure and the conspicuous, have voluntarily opened
a window for us. From Queen Victoria's "Leaves from a Journal,"
to Booker T. Washington's "Up from Slavery," what contrasts, what
richness, what range!
3 H. C., xxv; and cf. Lecture V, below. 4 H. C., i, i6gfi.
BIOGRAPHY 175
And in other lands also many of the pithiest examples of human
faculty are to be sought in autobiographies. To Benvenuto Cellini's
life I have already referred. Alfieri, Pellico, Massimo d'Azeglio,
Mazzini, Garibaldi are other Italians whose self-revelations endure.
The French, each of whom seems to be more conscious than men
of other races that he is an actor in a drama, have produced a
libraryful of autobiographies. At their head stands Rousseau's "Con-
fessions," in style a masterpiece, in substance absorbing, by one of
the most despicable of men.
THE RELATION OF BIOGRAPHY TO HISTORY
In the larger classification of literature, biography comes midway
between history and fiction. One school of historians, indeed, un-
willing to cramp their imaginations into so mean a space as a
generation or a century, reckon by millenniums and lose sight of
mere individuals. They are intent on discovering and formulating
general laws of cosmic progress; on tracing the collective action of
multitudes through long periods of time; on watching institutions
evolve. In their eyes, even Napoleon is a "negligible quantity."
I would not for a moment disparage the efforts of these investi-
gators. Most of us have felt the fascination of moving to and fro
over vast reaches of time, as imperially as the astronomer moves
through space. Such flights are exhilarating. They involve us in
no peril; we begin and end them in our armchair; they attach to
us no responsibility. The power of generalizing, which even the
humblest and most ignorant exercise daily, sheds upon us a peculiar
satisfaction; but we must not value the generalizations we arrive at
by the pleasurableness of the process. Counting by the hundred
thousand years, individual man dwindles beyond the recall of the
most powerful microscope. So we may well disregard an aeon or
two in speculating on the rate of progress between oligocene and neo-
lithic conditions. But after mankind have plodded out of geology
into history there is nothing more certain than that the masses have
been pioneered by individuals. You can prove it wherever two or
more persons meet one inevitably leads.
As the race emerged from barbarism, the number and variety of
individuals increased. Men in the mass are plastic; or, to change
176 BIOGRAPHY
the figure, they are like reservoirs of latent energy, awaiting the
leader who shall apply their force to a special work. In many cases
the great man is far from being the product of his time, but he has
some interior and unborrowed faculty for influencing, controlling,
we may even say hypnotizing, his generation. It is idle to suppose
that a Napoleon can be explained on the theory that he is the sum
of a hundred, or ten thousand, of his average French contemporaries.
He shared certain traits with them, just as he had organs and
appetites common to all normal men; but it was precisely those un-
common attributes which were his and not theirs that made him
Napoleon.
We may safely cultivate biography, therefore, not merely as an
adjunct of history, but as one of history's mighty sources. In pro-
portion as the materials concerning a given period or episode abound,
it becomes easier to trace the significance of the great men who
directed it easier and most entrancing, for in this detective work we
are shadowing Destiny itself. We see how some apparently trivial
personal happening Napoleon's lassitude due to a cold at Borodino,
Frederick the Second's seasickness on starting on his crusade,
McDowell's cholera morbus at the first battle of Bull Run was
the hazard on which Fate hung the issue of history. We see, further,
that men and women are not abstractions that what we regard as
laws in human evolution are the result of the motives and deeds
motives and deeds of human beings; and that a flaw or twist in a
single individual may break the current of development or deflect it
into an unexpected channel.
The lives of state builders and of state preservers and pilots offer,
accordingly, a double attraction: they show us history at those
moments when, ceasing to be abstract and impersonal, it turns upon
us recognizable human features and works through the heart and
brain of highly individualized genius. They show us also biography,
when individual genius becomes so powerful that it diffuses itself
through multitudes, yet is never more truly itself than in this
diffusion.
THE RELATION OF BIOGRAPHY TO FICTION
On the other hand, biography touches fiction at many points.
Novelists discovered long ago the allure which any period except
BIOGRAPHY 177
the present for the present has always been Time's black sheep
exerts over the imagination.
The three-legged stool was only that and nothing more to our
Puritan ancestors; now it is a piece of old Plymouth or old Salem,
glorified by that association, and by the possibility that Governor
Bradford or Priscilla Mullens may have sat on it. There lies the
spell which historical novelists have cast with stupendous effect;
and, having the environment, they introduce into it the historical
personages who once belonged there.
The novelist, by his trade, may take or reject what he pleases;
so that, if he finds the facts of history intractable, he may change or
omit them. Or, since his deepest interest, like the biographer's, is in
persons and the unfolding of character, he may achieve a lifelike
portrait. At best, however, historical personages, as they appear in
fiction, can never escape from the suspicion of being so far modified
by the novelist that they are no longer real.
As to the larger question of the relative value of fiction and
biography, we would not dogmatize. We would no more promote
biography by abolishing fiction if it were possible than we would
magnify sculpture by dwarfing painting. And yet, if talents equal
to those of the foremost novelists had been or were devoted to writ-
ing biography, the popularity at least among cultivated readers
of the two branches of literature might be reversed. As I have said,
the utmost achievement for the novelist is to create an illusion so
perfect that the characters in his books shall seem to be real.
In other words, so far as concerns reality, the novelist leaves oft
where the biographer begins. And if the novelist has an apparent
advantage in dealing with unruly facts, he is under the immense
disadvantage of being restricted in his choice of characters. So
true is this that, if all other records except the novels of the past
century were to be destroyed, posterity five hundred years hence
would have slight means of knowing the men and women through
whom human evolution has really operated in our age. In no art
has the process of vulgarization gone so far as in fiction. The novelist
to-day dares not paint goodness or greatness; his upper limit is
mediocrity; his lower is depravity, and he tends more and more to
exploit the lower.
178 BIOGRAPHY
An art which, pretending to mirror life, instinctively shuts out a
large province of life an art which boasts that it alone can display
human personality in all its varieties and yet becomes dumb before
the highest manifestations of personality has no right to rank
among the truly universal arts painting and sculpture, the Eliza-
bethan drama and biography.
All the myriad novelists writing in English since 1850 have not
created one character comparable to Abraham Lincoln or to Cavour,
nor have the romances imagined any hero to match Garibaldi. Or,
to take contemporary examples, what novelist would venture to
depict, even if his imagination could have conceived, a Theodore
Roosevelt or a J. P. Morgan? For myself, if it were necessary, in a
shipwreck, to choose between saving the Georgian novelists and
Boswell's "Life of Johnson," I would unhesitatingly take Boswell.
THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY
Before concluding, let me recur to biography as an art. You
cannot read far in this field without being struck by the great
differences in the ability of biographers. One makes a brilliant
subject dull, or a juicy subject dry; while a biographer of other
quality holds you spellbound over the life story of some relatively
unimportant person. Gradually you come to study the laws of
the art; to determine how much depends upon the biographer and
how much on the biographee; above all, to define just what portion
of a given subject's life should be described. Remember that not a
hundredth part of any life can be recorded. The biographer must
select. But what? The significant, the individual, the revealing.
How shall those be settled? By the judgment of the biographer.
Selection and perspective are the sun and moon of all art, and
unless they shine for him, his portrait will be out of drawing. When,
for instance, the writer on Havelock devotes almost as much space
to his piety as to his military achievement, you recognize the faulty
selection; or when another describes General Grant's later mis-
fortune as the dupe of a financial sharper as amply as his Vicksburg
campaign, you have a fine example of bungled perspective. With
practice, you will learn how to recover some of the true features of
the victims of such distortions.
BIOGRAPHY 179
Comparison, the mother of Criticism, will help you to ampler
pleasures. I have already suggested comparing Woolman's, Frank-
lin's and Mill's autobiographies; but the process can be carried for-
ward in many directions. You can investigate what matters were
regarded as essential for a biographer to tell at any period. Plutarch,
for instance, has left a gallery of portraits of ancient statesmen and
soldiers. 5 Wherein would the method and results of a modern
Plutarch differ from his ? If Boswell, and not Xenophon, had written
the familiar life of Socrates, what would he have added ? What do
you miss in quaint Izaak Walton's lives of Wotton and Donne and
Herbert ? 6 Do we really know Napoleon better, for all the thousands
of books about him, than we know Caesar ? How far does sameness
of treatment in Vasari's "Lives" blur their individuality?
These and many other questions will stimulate you in any com-
parative reading of biography. They all refer to three deeper
matters: differences in the skill of biographers; changes in the angle
of curiosity from which the public regard celebrities; and, finally,
the variation, slowly effectuated, in human Personality itself.
The outlook for biography never was brighter. Its votaries will
practice it with a constantly increasing skill. The demand for
veracity will not slacken. The public, grown more discerning, will
read it with greater relish.
The fact that the persons and events whom the biographer depicts
were real will lend to them an additional attractiveness.
Given life, the first impulse of life, the incessant, triumphant
impulse, is to manifest itself in individuals. From the beginning
there has never been a moment, or the fraction of a second, when
the universe, or the tiniest part of it, became abstract. In the world
of matter, not less than in the organic world of animals and plants,
always and everywhere and forever individuals! from atom to
Sirius, nothing but individuals! Even in the protean transmutation
of one thing into another, of life into death and death into life,
individuality keeps pace with each changing stage.
Since the process of individualization is from lower to higher,
from simple to complex, the acknowledged great men in history, or
the persons who stand out from any mass, are endowed with
5 H. C., xii, and Cf. Lecture II, below. 6 H. C., xv, 323,
l8o BIOGRAPHY
unusual qualities, or with common qualities in an uncommon degree
an endowment which gives them more points of contact, more
power, more interest, more charm. These are the men and women
whom biography perpetuates. The master creations of fiction spring
from the human brain; the subjects of biography are the very
creations of God himself: the realities of God must forever transcend
the fictions of man.
II. PLUTARCH
BY PROFESSOR W. S. FERGUSON
PLUTARCH was a kindly man, well educated in philosophy
and rhetoric. He lived between 46 and 125 A. D. in little,
out-of-the-way Boeotian Chseronea. He spent his days lecturing
and in friendly correspondence and conversation with many culti-
vated contemporaries among both Greeks and Romans. He was for-
tunate in his age. "If a man were called to fix the period in the
history of the world during which the condition of the human race
was most happy and prosperous, he would," says Gibbon, "without
hesitation, name that" in which Plutarch wrote. It was the twilight
time of antiquity; and in the works of Plutarch 1 are clearly mirrored
the charm and languor, the incentive to stroll and loiter, and the
dimming of vision, characteristic of the hour before "the sun sank
and all the ways were darkened."
PLUTARCH'S SUPERSTITION
His versatility is remarkable, and he has ever at hand an apt
illustration for every situation; but his fertility tempts him to digress,
and his learning is not matched by critical power. An admirable
example of his mode of thought as well as an epitome of his natural
philosophy appears in the following passage from his "Life of
Pericles": "There is a story, that once Pericles had brought to him
from a country farm of his, a ram's head with one horn, and that
Lampon, the diviner, upon seeing the horn grow strong and solid
out of the midst of the forehead, gave it as his judgment, that, there
being at that time two potent factions, parties, or interests in the
city, the one of Thucydides and the other of Pericles, the govern-
ment would come about to that one of them in whose ground or
estate this token or indication of fate had shown itself. But that
Anaxagoras, cleaving the skull in sunder, showed to the bystanders
1 For a volume of selected "Lives," see Harvard Classics, xii.
181
l82 BIOGRAPHY
that the brain had not filled up its natural place, but being oblong,
like an egg, had collected from all parts of the vessel which con-
tained it, in a point to that place from whence the root of the horn
took its rise. And that, for that time, Anaxagoras was much admired
for his explanation by those that were present; and Lampon no
less a little while after, when Thucydides was overpowered, and
the whole affairs of the state and government came into the hands
of Pericles. And yet, in my opinion, it is no absurdity to say that they
were both in the right, both natural philosopher and diviner, one
justly detecting the cause of this event, by which it was produced,
the other the end for which it was designed. For it was the business
of the one to find out and give an account of what it was made,
and in what manner and by what means it grew as it did; and of
the other to foretell to what end and purpose it was so made, and
what it might mean or portend. Those who say that to find out the
cause of a prodigy is in effect to destroy its supposed signification as
such, do not take notice that, at the same time, together with divine
prodigies, they also do away with signs and signals of human art
and concert, as, for instance, the clashings of quoits, fire-beacons,
and the shadows on sun-dials, every one of which things has its
cause, and by that cause and contrivance is a sign of something else.
But these are subjects, perhaps, that would better befit another place."
HIS CURIOSITY AND HIS PATRIOTISM
Plutarch was a widely read man. The world in which he lived
was rather the world which his mind portrayed than that upon
which his eyes looked. In other words, he lived in his past much
more fully than in his present. For everything that had happened
he had a gentle but persistent curiosity. Customs hallowed by time
evoked in him the utmost tenderness; but his nature was without
a vestige of fanaticism. To the hot, strenuous youth of his age, to
zealots for preserving the old, and to harsh innovators alike he
seemed probably a trifler and perhaps a bore. They must have
turned with impatience from his universal charity; for he was a
widely loyal man, loyal to his petty civic duties, his family obliga-
tions, his friends, his reputation, his race.
By his interest in, and profession of, practical morality Plutarch
BIOGRAPHY 183
was called to be a biographer, but it is to his loyalty to his people
that we owe his "Parallel Lives." In their composition he was
guided by the desire to show the arrogant Romans and the later
Greeks in whose midst he lived, that a great Hellenic man of affairs
could be put in worthy comparison with every outstanding Roman
general and statesman.
SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHIC BIOGRAPHY IN ANTIQUITY
Biography in antiquity was a branch of science and also a branch
of philosophy. Scientific biography was interested in facts as such,
in the collocation of miscellaneous information about persons. It
laid claim to objectivity of details, but left free room for individuality
to display itself in their selection. The principle of choice might
be pruriency, political, class, or philosophic animosity, or mere love
of scandal. Such biography might be with or without style, with
or without painstaking: it was commonly without critical method.
The precipitate of much lost scientific biography lies before us in
the "Lives of the Twelve Caesars" by Plutarch's contemporary,
Suetonius.
In Plutarch's "Parallel Lives," we have, on the other hand, the
precipitate of much lost philosophic biography. He stands for us at
the end of a long development, in the course of which many con-
temporary, or approximately contemporary, biographies were pro-
duced, each to be superseded perhaps by its successor, as they all
were finally superseded and destroyed by those of Plutarch. The
plundering of the countless books and pamphlets, plays, and
memoirs, cited in the "Parallel Lives," the culling of the multitude
of anecdotes and bons mots with which they are set and enlivened,
were by no means the personal work of Plutarch. Many, if not
most, of them he found gathered for him by his nameless predeces-
sors. He was under no professional sense of duty to look up and
verify his references, and he regularly omitted to do it. Mistakes
abound in Plutarch's "Lives." But even the historian finds them
pardonable when he has the assurance that the materials in con-
junction with which they appear were taken by men of greater
patience and leisure than Plutarch from works, many of them lost,
reaching back over the centuries to the earliest Greek literature.
184 BIOGRAPHY
PLUTARCH'S OWN CONTRIBUTION TO HIS "LIVES"
The "Lives" of Plutarch are thus in a sense the product of many
ages and of many minds. But, like mediaeval cathedrals, they have
unity of design and style. This is not wholly the result of their
origin in a community of philosophic biographers. It is in large
part the result of Plutarch's own architectonic powers. He was far
from being a colorless and characterless compiler. His "Lives"
seldom seem "lumpy." They reveal, throughout, the quaint per-
sonality of the author. His philosophic standpoint is betrayed in
almost every line of criticism they contain. His mastery of literary
technique is never wanting. The quiet humor, unobtrusive and
delicate, is unmistakably his. Piquancy is a Greek trait, and Plutarch
was a Greek. He is never indecent, as his contemporaries under-
stood that term, but he never forgot the natural human interest in
the intimate relations of men and women. His dramatic sense needs
no more than mention: Shakespeare's debt to Plutarch in his "Julius
Caesar," "Coriolanus," and "Antony and Cleopatra" speaks volumes
on this point.
Yet, when everything has been said in praise of his fine qualities,
it is still true that his mind, like that of the philosophic biographers
who preceded him, was an unfortunate medium for the great men
of affairs of antiquity to have to pass through on their way to us.
They were all sicklied over by the pale cast of ethical interpretation.
Men of flesh and blood, actuated by all the reasons and passions of
which human beings of diverse but distinguished endowments were
capable, tend to appear as puppets exemplifying laudable virtues and
deterrent vices. Man whose natures are truly revealed only in the
work which they accomplished are isolated from their societies, and
characterized by what they did or said at insignificant moments.
Trivialities serve Plutarch's purpose of ethical portraiture as well as
or better than the historic triumphs and failures of his heroes. Trite
ethical considerations are made decisive for the formation of policies
and the reaching of decisions instead of the realities of each historical
situation. Hence one of the chief duties of modern historians and
modern historical biographers has been to murder "Plutarch's men,"
and put in their stead the real statesmen and generals of ancient
BIOGRAPHY 185
times. The latter part o their task, however, they could not even
attempt without the materials Plutarch furnishes to them. As for the
difficulty of the former, it is well disclosed by the story MahafTy tells
of the illiterate Irish peasant who said of a certain fortunate neighbor
that "he had as many lives as Plutarch."
III. BENVENUTO CELLINI
BY PROFESSOR CHANDLER RATHFON POST
^ \HE Italian Renaissance 1 produced many works, such as the
polemics of the humanists upon subjects that have long since
JL lost their significance, which are interesting rather as illus-
trations of cultural conditions than for their intrinsic value. Com-
positions like the pastoral romance of Sannazzaro, or the dramas
based upon Senecan or upon Plautine and Terentian models, acquire
importance as revivals of ancient literary types and as the seeds
from which later great masterpieces were to be evolved. Much
smaller is the number of works in which, as in the sonnets of Michel-
angelo, the absolute value preponderates over the historical. Still
fewer, such as the writings of Machiavelli, 2 have the distinction of
possessing an equal interest archasologically and in themselves, and
to this class the "Autobiography" of Benvenuto Cellini 3 belongs.
No other production of the period embodies more vividly the
tendencies of the Renaissance or enjoys a more universal and endur-
ing appeal. We can best appreciate it by considering it under these
two aspects.
CELLINI AS A TYPE OF RENAISSANCE INDIVIDUALISM
Its great importance as a document for the study of contemporary
Italian life is obvious to the reader, but its temper also is strikingly
related to certain spiritual movements of the day. Of the two
determinative characteristics of the Renaissance, humanism, or the
devotion to antiquity, and individualism, or the devotion to self-
development, Benvenuto emphasizes the latter. The very natural
transition from a study of self to the study of other personalities
gave rise to the genre known as biography, eminent instances of
1 See Professor Potter's lecture on the Renaissance in the course on History.
2 Harvard Classics, xxxvi, jfi ; and xxvii, 363*!.
3 H. C., xxxi. The dates of his life are 1500-1571; the "Autobiography" was first
published in 1568.
1 86
BIOGRAPHY 187
which are Vespasiano da Bisticci's "Lives of Illustrious Men," and
Giorgio Vasari's more renowned "Lives of the Most Excellent
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects." Autobiography, however, is
an even more pronounced manifestation of individualism, and as
the composer of the first great and definite example of this literary
form in modern times, Benvenuto stands forth as a brilliant ex-
ponent of his age. It is possible, doubtless, for an author to exhibit
in an autobiography little of his own individuality, confining him-
self largely, like Trollope, to a narrative of events and a discussion
of his books; but such was not the spirit of the sixteenth century, and
Benvenuto even exceeds his time. He strips to the very soul. Un-
blushingly he lays bare alike his virtues and his vices, his public
and his most private actions, his loves and hatreds. He seems un-
conscious of modesty's existence, and takes a palpable delight, which,
by the magic of his style, he causes the reader to share, in analyzing
his own passions and in recounting his own deeds and misdeeds;
typical and widely varying examples are the affair with the Sicilian
girl, Angelica, 4 the terrible revenge for his brother's assassination, 5
the celestial visions experienced in his long and gruesome in-
carceration. 6
THE CORRECTNESS OF HIS ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF
Hand in hand with this attitude struts an exalted opinion of his
own charms, prowess, and artistic superiority. In his conceit (for
it is only a heroic form of this defect), he embodies not only
individualism but also the concurrent phenomenon of humanism,
which resurrected from ancient Rome such self-appreciation as
appears so disagreeably in Cicero. With his high estimate of his
own art modern criticism does not unqualifiedly agree. Of his labor
as goldsmith so little that is certainly authentic remains that judg-
ment is difficult; the chief extant example, the saltcellar of Francis I.
now in the Imperial Treasury at Vienna, is unpleasant in com-
position and too ornate. In his few plastic works on a large scale,
one of which, the bronze bust of Bindo Altoviti, America is for-
tunate enough to possess in the wonderful collection of Mrs. John L.
4 H. C., xxxi, 127-138. 5 H. C., xxxi, 98-106.
B H. C., xxxi, 235, 241.
1 88 BIOGRAPHY
Gardner, Boston, he is perhaps less affected than most of his rivals
by the degeneration into which Italian sculpture lapsed in the second
and third quarters of the Cinquecento; but in comparison to the
productions of the earlier Renaissance, or of his contemporary Michel-
angelo, his profound affection and admiration for whom form one
of his noblest traits, he betrays too close a dependence upon the
antique, a tendency to excessive nicety and elaboration, derived from
his training as a jeweler but unsuited to the broader manner of
monumental statuary, a leaning toward ostentatious and luxuriant
decoration, and a fatal predilection for sacrificing aesthetic con-
siderations to the display of virtuosity in composition and in
processes. All these characteristics are exemplified in what remains
from his work, and may also be read between the lines of the "Auto-
biography." The inclination to a display of skill is especially evident
in the absorbing and famous description of the casting of the Per-
seus. 7 Over his whole art, as indeed over most of the art of the
later sixteenth century, there broods a certain deadness and a sense
of the perfunctory, which are strangely contrasted with the spon-
taneity that runs from his pen. The somewhat unjustifiable bragga-
docio about this phase of his activity arouses suspicions as to the
veracity of the tales about his courage and other achievements. Some
of the details, such as the worm that he vomited forth after his long
sickness, 8 or the sight of the demons in the Colosseum, 9 seem
hardly credible, but it must be remembered that we are dealing with
a man of a high-strung, nervous temperament, whose imagination
easily materializes the visions of his mind. Other episodes, like the
various brawls and homicides in which he engaged, or the escape
from the Castel Sant' Angelo, are improbable from our standpoint,
but not in an epoch of extravagances like the Renaissance or for one
of those supermen of Cellini's caliber, in which the period was so
rich. Much of the "Autobiography" receives confirmation from con-
temporary documents, and its main fabric is certainly trustworthy,
though highly colored, doubtless to increase its artistic worth and
to set off to advantage the central figure of the writer.
I have spoken of Benvenuto as a superman, and herein, too, he is
7 See frontispiece in H. C., xxxi, and pp. 376-383-
8 H. C,, xxxi, 170. 9 H. C., xxxi, 127-128.
BIOGRAPHY 189
a result of the astounding development of the individual witnessed
by the Renaissance. In his versatility he is second only to such giants
of universal talent as Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, and
Michelangelo. He excels equally as musician, goldsmith, and sculp-
tor; he is an adept with the sword and with the musket; his skill as
a diplomatist is paralleled only by his merriness as a jester; a lan-
guishing lover one day, he is a fierce murderer the next; a part of his
imprisonment he spends in devising a miraculous escape, and the
rest in mystic religious trances; he can write you passable occasional
sonnets and respectable treatises on art; and finally he bequeaths to
the world what is probably the most remarkable autobiography in
existence.
CELLINI'S MORALITY
Much of his activity is far from Christian. Benvenuto vies with
Pietro Aretino for notoriety as an exponent of that Paganism which
was a consequence, on one hand, of the indiscriminate acceptance of
all that was ancient, even the license of decadent Rome, and, on
the other, of the inevitable degeneration of self-development into
self-gratification. The loose morals of the Renaissance have been
much exaggerated by such writers as John Addington Symonds,
who base their assertions too confidently upon the prejudiced Prot-
estant accounts of the north and upon the short stories or noudle
of the period, which magnify current abuses for humorous purposes.
The ethical condition of Italy had still remained fairly sound in
the fifteenth century, and it was not until now in the sixteenth that
a debased humanism and individualism were developed to the bitter
end with an effect that was baneful, but not so entirely fatal as is
very commonly supposed. Almost every page of the "Autobiog-
raphy," however, betrays the absence of any adequate moral standard.
Cellini fathers an illegitimate child or cuts down an enemy as lightly
as he sallies forth on a hunting expedition. There is little or no reali-
zation of sin; religion he has, but a religion which, however fervent,
is divorced from morality and consists chiefly in an emotional mysti-
cism and an observance of lovely and impressive ceremonies. He
has shaken of! the Christian curb upon the passions, and emulating
the Paganism, not of the great days of antiquity, but of the Greek
and Roman decline, he gives free rein to self.
I9O BIOGRAPHY
VALUE OF THE "AUTOBIOGRAPHY"
The historical importance of the work, then, lies, not only in its
painting of contemporary life, but also in its lively presentation of
the individualism, the versatility, and the Paganism of the late
Renaissance; its intrinsic value is proved by an almost unique and
widespread popularity from among so much Italian literature of
the sixteenth century that is forgotten or known only to specialists.
Benvenuto has succeeded in transfusing it with the magnetism of his
own personality. So intimate is the manner which he adopts that
we seem to be, not readers, but a company of boon companions
listening to good tales, half the attraction of which is afforded by
the very force and charm of the speaker's genial character. The
matter is often such as should be bruited only in this society; the
style is distinctly that of an easy conversationalist, full of picturesque
Tuscan idioms, colloquial to the last degree, frequently lapsing into
the loose grammar that is permitted to the raconteur. Behind this
apparent facility, however, is concealed the art of a supreme master
of narrative, who knows how to choose the piquant episodes and
details and to 'exclude the irrelevant; who dexterously avoids monot-
ony by contrasts of high lights and shadows; who is all the greater
because he nowhere reveals the methods of his craft, but appears
always the clever and spontaneous entertainer.
IV. FRANKLIN AND WOOLMAN
BY PROFESSOR CHESTER NOYES GREENOUGH
IN ALL the literature of fact as distinguished from the literature
of fiction hardly any kind of book surpasses a good biography
in its power to interest and instruct. It combines the suspense
of the novel with the actuality of history. It fills in the detail with-
out which history would be too impersonal, and it shows us how peo-
ple, not at all points unlike ourselves, have ordered their lives what
their guiding principles have been, and how principles have some-
times been modified to meet circumstances. Especially in the case
of autobiography is all this true, for here we have the pleasure of
feeling that the record is both authentic and intimate. The best
of biographers, however learned, vivid, or philosophical, leaves
between us and the past an interval which only a good autobiography
can span. Such an autobiography may possess great historical value
if its author was intimately connected with significant events and
had some capacity to perceive their causes and their effects. But
if the writer happens to be earnest about his career, free from self-
consciousness, and blest with a good prose style, we have sufficient
reasons for valuing the record of his life even though the historical
importance of it may be quite secondary. Such is the basis of our
permanent regard for autobiographies like those of Benjamin Frank-
lin 1 (1706-1790) and John Woolman 2 (1720-1772).
THE BREAKING DOWN OF PURITANISM
Neither Franklin nor Woolman would have been at home among
the makers of the literature which is most significant of America
before their time. The latter as a Quaker, the former as a person
whose general attitude may be indicated by his casually uttered
remark 3 that he was usually too busy to go to church, would have
been either punished or cast out (if not both) by most New England
1 Harvard Classics, \, 58. 2 H. C., i, 1698. 3 H. C., \, 16, 17.
191
192 BIOGRAPHY
communities, who acquiesced in the banishment of some and the
whipping or execution of others, in order that by uniform obedience
to the theocratic ideal the purpose of the founders might be fulfilled.
But in the eighteenth century there began to be a change. The
growing interest in science, the influence of such writers as John
Locke, the rise of other learned professions than the ministry, the
advance of the merchant class, the increasing concern about political
relations with the mother country, the founding of other churches
than the Congregational ones which hitherto had virtually consti-
tuted an Establishment all of these influences make American life
and letters in the eighteenth century radically different from the
century of colonization. Strikingly unlike each other as Franklin
and Woolman are in most respects, they agree in representing as-
pects of the American mind that could hardly flourish in American
literature until in the eighteenth century that literature began to
move out of New England and its intolerant church.
FRANKLIN'S METHODS IN LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
The career of Franklin well illustrates these changes. He finds
himself cramped in Boston and moves to Philadelphia. He pays
the most careful attention to the matter of writing well, 4 because
he sees that it pays to consult the convenience of the reader. In his
writing he employs the secular arts of humor and irony and takes
particular care to "forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments
of others, and all positive assertions of [his] own." 5 He seeks the
convenience of mankind also by various mechanical improvements
and by the better organization of certain departments of the public
service. His experiments in pure science mark him as patient, ob-
servant, and logical to an unusual degree. But most of his attention
in business, science, and public service is given to matters of im-
mediate utility.
FRANKLIN IN POLITICS
In politics he was eminently successful, though probably not en-
tirely uncorrupt. He managed delicate affairs of state with con-
spicuous coolness and skill. He was particularly useful to the colo-
4 H. c., i, 1 6. 5 H. c., i, 87.
BIOGRAPHY 193
nies in explaining abroad the actual condition and views of the
average American. His solid merits and unusual tact made him a
great favorite in France, where, as commissioner for the colonies,
he attained a personal popularity which was of the greatest advantage
to his country. In spite of some loss of reputation from the suspi-
cion that he had not always used his privileges unselfishly, Franklin
returned to America to spend his last years in a position of honor not
much below that of Washington himself.
FRANKLIN'S MORALS AND RELIGION
Such eminence was not achieved without the most careful manage-
ment. Indeed, the fact that most strongly impresses a reader of
Franklin's "Autobiography" is the astonishing degree to which he
regulated his acts and developed his character by a system of what,
in the language of our day, might almost be termed "scientific man-
agement." For example, he drew up, 6 as many others have done,
a list of virtues and of precepts for attaining them. Then, apparently
untroubled by any suspicion that what he was doing was at all
funny, he kept a tabular record which showed, week by week, how
good a score he was making in the important game of living a
moral life. His entire attitude toward life was of this prudential
sort. Sins which would have prostrated a Puritan in the fear of
eternal torment are to Franklin a matter of regret because of their
expense and their injurious effect upon his health. Virtue he seems
to have regarded chiefly as a means to the favor of man. The favor
of God, which the Puritan implored in fasts and vigils, Franklin
tranquilly expected as the outcome of a life regulated by prudence
and virtue. "Having experienced the goodness of that Being in con-
ducting me prosperously through a long life," he wrote to President
Sdles of Yale, "I have no doubt of its continuance in the next,
though without the smallest conceit of meriting such goodness."
JOHN WOOLMAN'S RELIGION
Strikingly different in almost every respect are the life and aims
of John Woolman. "There was a care on my mind," he writes, "so
to pass my time that nothing might hinder me from the most steady
6 H. c., \, 79 ff.
194 BIOGRAPHY
attention to the voice of the true Shepherd." 7 This is the guiding
principle of a life so inconspicuous in its outward circumstances and
immediate rewards that we cannot possibly apply to it that some-
what worldly and dubious word "career," yet so steadily and un-
consciously holy as to deserve our most affectionate regard.
Even as a young man Woolman began to be troubled by his own
sins and by the dissolute life of many around him. Sometimes he
felt moved to speak to others of their manner of life; oftener he
concerned himself only with his own shortcomings and found that
although "nature was feeble," yet "every trial was a fresh incitement
to give himself up wholly to the service of God." 8 From the humility
of Woolman's utterances one can hardly doubt that his own sins
were less grave than he felt them to be, or that his warnings to
others had no touch of the pharisaical about them, but came from
a heart that unaffectedly desired the good of all men.
WOOLMAN AND SLAVERY
Having learned the trade of a tailor, and having perceived that
large possessions are an unnecessary temptation and trouble, Wool-
man began to journey about and to "pursue worldly business no fur-
ther than as truth opened [his] way." 9 He presently began to be much
concerned about the evils of slavery, at that time practiced by
Quakers as by others, and quietly set his face against an institution
which he believed was destined to be "grievous to posterity." 10 To
act upon his convictions in this matter was not always easy or profi-
table, as we see from the account 11 of his refusal to write the will
of a certain Quaker slaveholder. Woolman felt regret at the loss of
the employment and at the necessity of giving offence. But far more
deeply he felt "that acting contrary to present outward interest, from
a motive of Divine love and in regard to truth and righteousness,
and thereby incurring the resentment of people, opens the way to a
treasure better than silver, and to a friendship exceeding the friend-
ship of men." 12
The temper shown in this incident is typical of the entire journal,
and it inclines one to believe that such beautiful serenity and modesty
7 H. C., i, 180. 8 H. C., i, 176. 9 H.C., 1,177. 10 H. C., i, 183.
11 H. C., i, 1 88, 189. n H. C., i, 189.
BIOGRAPHY 195
as Woolman's are perhaps more rare, as they are certainly more lovely,
than mere avoidance of sin. Woolman's care was not to be seen of
men, but to be prompted by "the pure spirit which inwardly moves
upon the heart." 13 A man taught, as he was, "to wait in silence,
sometimes many weeks together," u until he hears God's voice, is
not likely to offend by an appearance of self-seeking or self-praise.
Yet it would be a mistake to leave these two interesting and in-
structive autobiographies with the feeling that one is the record of
a pure and exalted spirit, the other a story of mere self-seeking.
Woolman, though both in deed and in temper, far above this world,
wrought no small part of a great practical reform. If Franklin's life
seems earthy in comparison, it should be remembered that, what-
ever his motives, he did manage to confer upon his country such
benefits in science, in literature, diplomacy, practical arts, and public
welfare as should entitle him to a respect which we may well deny
to many of his rules for practicing the art of life. We could spare
the practical advantages of having had among us a man like Frank-
lin only if it were necessary to do so in order that the inner light
which guided John Woolman might not be extinguished.
13 H. c.,i, 175. 14 H. c.,i, 176.
V. JOHN STUART MILL
BY PROFESSOR O. M. W. SPRAGUE
THE first three chapters of the "Autobiography of John Stuart
Mill," 1 by far the most interesting part of the work, are
concerned with the methods and results of his extraordi-
nary education. Under the direct supervision of his father he began
serious study with Greek at the tender age of three; at twelve he had
covered the equivalent of the classical and mathematical requirements
for graduation at the English universities, while in history and phil-
osophy he had gone far beyond the requirements of those institu-
tions of learning. Thereafter he continued his studies with unflagging
industry, though along more special lines and in large measure in-
dependently, very much after the manner of scholarly graduates of
the universities ten years his senior. Before he was twenty he had
edited a ponderous legal treatise in a fashion which would have
been highly creditable to any scholar in the full maturity of his pow-
ers. He was then, at twenty, clearly five, and perhaps ten, years in
advance of that stage of intellectual acquirement which he would
presumably have reached if he had received the education then, or,
indeed, now, customary.
THE SUPPOSED ADVANTAGES OF PRECOCITY
By Mill himself this industrious childhood and youth was looked
upon as an unmixed blessing. In the opening paragraph of the
"Autobiography" he expresses the opinion that his experience shows
that usually the early years of life are little better than wasted.
But though no one can doubt that the rigorous mental discipline
to which the younger Mill was subjected by his father was highly
effective, educational methods fortunately have not been influenced
by it in the slightest degree. Contrasted with accepted methods,
his education was superior in only one respect it did save time.
1 Harvard Classics, xxv.
196
BIOGRAPHY 197
It enabled Mill to begin work as a mature writer at an unusually
early age. But even so it does not follow that he was consequently
able to do more or better work during his life than he would have
otherwise accomplished. The addition of five or ten years at the
outset of a life of normal length, and the work accomplished during
those particular years, are not necessarily a net addition to its total
achievement. Before drawing this conclusion we should need to be
sure that physical strength and mental alertness were not prematurely
lessened in consequence of the early training. After all, for contin-
uous constructive intellectual work, the keeping of the mind open to
new impressions and ideas is the one thing fundamentally important;
and, while Mill was far superior to many of the world's great think-
ers in this respect, this trait does not seem to have been due to the
character of his education.
THE DEFECTS OF MILL'S EDUCATION
That he was deprived of the ordinary activities and pleasures of
childhood and youth does not seem to have been an occasion of regret
to Mill. As a philosopher and psychologist he might have been
expected to recognize that his exclusive absorption in study during
his early years must have narrowed the range of his knowledge of
life and his capacity to act with and to lead other men. Mill's atti-
tude toward life was always, and especially in the earlier years of
his career, excessively intellectual. He exaggerated the force of
reasoned conclusions as a factor in individual conduct and as a
means of bringing about social improvement. One cannot but feel
that the few years saved by Mill in the acquiring of knowledge from
books involved some sacrifice of knowledge and understanding of
the ordinary impulses and motives of men and women.
Still another defect in an education such as Mill received remains
for consideration, though happily he escaped its threatened conse-
quences. His father was one of the foremost of the utilitarian phil-
osophers. He applied the principles of that school to the various
problems of individual and of social improvement earnestly and with
no lack of dogmatism. He impressed his views upon the mind of
his son when he was far too young to subject them to critical
analysis and to form an independent judgment regarding them
190 BIOGRAPHY
through comparison with the opinions of other thinkers and from
experience of life itself. Mill's early writings are, therefore, and quite
naturally, little more than the expression of the views of his father
with such acute modifications as might be expected from one gifted
with his powerful intellect.
THE STARVING OF EMOTION
In the course of time the utilitarian philosophy, in the form in
which it had come to him from his father, ceased to satisfy the dis-
tinctly more emotional nature of the son. He became so completely
disillusioned with the dry content of this philosophy that he became
depressed, lost all joy in work and therewith the capacity for con-
structive intellectual effort. 2 Perhaps the most valuable part of the
"Autobiography" is the account of this distressed and anxious period,
and of the various influences which widened his horizon and
humanized his views of life and its significance. Being a man of
books, it was largely through a change in the character of his read-
ing that he found solace. The poems of Wordsworth were the most
potent single influence. It is altogether likely that a person born with
less varied natural endowments would have remained content with
and fixed in the cast of thought resulting from premature acquaint-
ance with a single school of philosophy.
MILL'S CONTRIBUTION TO UTILITARIANISM AND LIBERALISM
This experience is reflected in the contribution made by Mill to
utilitarian ethical theories. While adhering to the position that
happiness is simply the sum total of pleasures, he made a distinction
between higher and lower qualities of pleasure, regarding the higher
as indefinitely more desirable than the lower. The criteria for
making an exact classification of pleasures were, however, not fully
and adequately worked out by Mill. Various branches of knowledge,
in particular psychology and sociology, had not been developed
sufficiently far for the purpose. On this, as on many other subjects,
the work of Mill has been superseded, owing to fundamental differ-
ences in methods of approach even more than to the accumulation
of additional data. Among influences of special far-reaching impor-
2 See H. C., xxv, 85-95.
BIOGRAPHY 199
tance may be mentioned the evolutionary hypothesis, and what may
be called, in contradistinction to the intellectual analytical psychology
of Mill's time, the scientific psychology of the present.
The most influential of all Mill's writings has been "The Prin-
ciples of Political Economy," published in 1848. In writing this
treatise, Mill had two purposes in view. In the first place, he wished
to bring together the many improvements which had been made
in the principles of the subject since the appearance of "The
Wealth of Nations" 3 in 1776 and, following the example of Adam
Smith, to illustrate their practical applications. Here he was con-
spicuously successful. Many writers in recent years have set them-
selves the same task with no such measure of accomplishment.
In the second place, he wished to relate economic principles and
phenomena to his own social ideals and social philosophy. The
character of these social ideals and the nature of his social philosophy
are abundantly set forth in the "Autobiography," 4 where particular
attention is given to the influence upon his mind of his wife and of
Auguste Comte, the father of the science of sociology. It can hardly
be said that Mill was fully successful in this effort. The purely
economic part of the treatise and the social philosophy are not fused
together and at times are positively contradictory. Nevertheless, the
treatise gained in human interest from the effort thus made, and at
all events the way was indicated toward a broader treatment of
social and economic questions than had been customary among econ-
omists since the time of Adam Smith.
The personality revealed in the "Autobiography" is one that can-
not fail to command respect and admiration. An ardent desire for
social as well as individual progress is conspicuous both in the analy-
sis of the growth of his own mind and in what is said about his own
writings. Detailed consideration of the various reforms which he
advocated in his writings is impossible within the narrow limits
of a single lecture. In a general way it may be noted that Mill
expected greater results from the removal of obstructions to freedom
of thought and action 5 and from education than in fact have been
realized. It is now more clearly evident that the removal of re-
3 H. C., x, and see lecture on Adam Smith in the course on Political Science.
*H. C., xxv, 141-147.
5 See also the lecture on "The Idea of Liberty" in the series on Political Science.
2OO BIOGRAPHY
strictions is often no more than an indispensable preliminary to posi-
tive means of improvement and that opportunities thus provided
are by no means certain to be made use of. After making every
qualification, however, the liberal movement of the nineteenth cen-
tury surely made possible a long step forward in human progress.
In this movement the writings of John Stuart Mill were a potent
factor.
PROSE FICTION
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR W. A. NEILSON
I
"IT "IT THEN the literary historian seeks to assign to each age its
%/%/ favorite form of literature, he finds no difficulty in deal-
T T ing with our own time. As the Middle Ages delighted in
long romantic narrative poems, the Elizabethans in drama, the Eng-
lishman of the reigns of Anne and the early Georges in didactic
and satirical verse, so the public of our day is enamored of the
novel. Almost all types of literary production continue to appear,
but whether we judge from the lists of publishers, the statistics of
public libraries, or general conversation, we find abundant evi-
dence of the enormous preponderance of this kind of literary enter-
tainment in popular favor.
EARLY FORMS OF FICTION
Though the instinct for a good story, on which the interest in
fiction is based, is of immemorial antiquity, and may well be as old as
human speech, the novel, as we understand it, is comparatively mod-
ern. The unsophisticated folk tale, represented by the contents of
such collections as that of the brothers Grimm, 1 lacks the element
of lifelikeness both in incident and character, and is too limited in
scale to be regarded as anything but a very remote ancestor. The "Fa-
bles" ascribed to JEsop 2 are mere anecdotes with a moral. The myths 3
of both the Mediterranean and the Northern nations are not pri-
marily concerned with human life at all. Epic poetry, 4 besides de-
riving from its verse a sustained emotional elevation usually im-
1 Harvard Classics, xvii, 47 ff. 2 H. C., xvii, nfT.
3 As contained, for example, in the "Odyssey," H. C., vol. xxii, and the "Song
of the Volsungs," xlix, 249(1.
4 For examples in H. C., see "Odyssey," vol. xxii; "^Eneid," vol. xiii; "Paradise
Lost" and "Paradise Regained," iv, 878. and 359ff.; and cf. the lectures on Poetry.
201
2O2 PROSE FICTION
possible in prose, finds its central interest, not in individual personal-
ity or the passion of love, but in some great national or racial issue.
The romances 5 of the Middle Ages, though usually centering in
the fortunes of individuals and often dealing with love, are super-
ficial in treatment, loose in construction, and primarily interesting
as marvelous adventure. The jabliaux* of the same period, which,
with the novelle 1 of the Renaissance, belong to the ancestry of the
short story of the modern magazine, are concerned with single
situations, and do not attempt to display a whole phase of life in
its subtlety and complexity. All these forms contain, in the imagina-
tive nature of their material, an element common to them and the
novel; but the negative statements which have been made regarding
each show how much they fall short or go beyond our modern
conception of prose fiction.
THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
Yet, though differing in these important and often fundamental
respects from the modern novel, these earlier varieties of imagina-
tive narratives contributed in a number of ways to the making of
the type dominant to-day. In the sixteenth century, for instance, we
find appearing, first in Spain and then in England, the so-called
picaresque novel, 8 a story told in the first person by a roguish servant,
who passes from master to master and exposes both his own rascality
and the seamy side of the more fashionable life of his time. Many
of the episodes are of the kind narrated in the fabliaux and novelle,
but they are strung together by the history of the rogue hero. This
type has persisted with variations, especially the loss of the servant
element, down to our own time, and reached its highest pitch of art in
English in Thackeray's "Barry Lyndon."
The Elizabethan romance, represented by such a work as Sir
Philip Sidney's "Arcadia," is in respect of realism much farther from
our novel than the picaresque tale. But in its abundance of senti-
ment and frequency of moral purpose, it has elements which the
novel of roguery lacked. Characterization, which so far had rarely
5 Cf., especially Malory, H. C., xxxv,
6 Such as the Tales of the Miller and the Reeve in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales."
7 Such as the stories in Boccaccio's "Decameron."
8 The earliest English example is Nash's "Jack Wilton, or the Unfortunate Traveller."
PROSE FICTION 203
been a prominent feature in any form of fiction except the drama,
was developed in the seventeenth century in a peculiar species of
writing known as the Character? outside of fiction altogether. The
character was a short sketch of a typical figure of the time, used
largely for purposes of social satire, apparently general in its appli-
cation, but not infrequently written with an individual in view.
We find this form elaborated in a slight setting of situation and
narrative in the De Coverley papers 10 contributed by Addison and
Steele to the "Spectator"; and when the novel in the modern sense
arose about a generation later, the practice in the analysis and pres-
entation of typical human beings which the character had afforded
proved of considerable service.
NOVEL AND DRAMA
Perhaps more contributive than either the older story of romantic
adventure or the character sketch, was the drama. The seventeenth
century had seen, especially in comedy, the drama descending from
heroic themes of kings and princes to pictures of contemporary life
in ordinary society, not highly realistic as we understand the term,
yet reproducing many of the types and much of the atmosphere
existing around the author. It had cultivated the sense of a well-knit
plot, of effective situation, and of the interplay of character and action
all elements transferable to prose narrative. And when, in the
middle of the eighteenth century, we find the novel beginning to
take the place of the stage as the dominant kind of imaginative
entertainment, it is easy to see how much the younger form owed
to the elder. There had long been an interchange of material be-
tween the two species. In the time of Shakespeare, to go no farther
back, the playwrights frankly dramatized familiar stories from his-
tory, romance, and novella, and occasionally the story of a popular
play was retold in prose narrative. Both processes are familiar
to-day. Many successful novels appear later on the stage, and not
a few successful plays are "novelized." There are, of course, marked
differences in the kind of thing that can be best told by narrative
or action respectively, and the failure to recognize these differences
accounts for the frequent ill success of this kind of translation. But,
9 Among the best-known collections is that of Overbury. 10 H. C., xxvii, 83ff.
204 PROSE FICTION
after all allowance for this has been made, many of the elements of
effective story-telling remain common to both novel and play.
DEFOE AND RICHARDSON
The two chief claimants for the credit of founding the modern
English novel are Daniel Defoe 11 and Samuel Richardson. Defoe's
stories depend for their unity chiefly upon the personality of the
leading character. They are usually series of episodes strung alon^
the thread of the hero's or heroine's life. Many of them, from their
pre-occupation with the criminal classes, approach the picaresque;
and even "Robinson Crusoe," justly the most popular, is more an
adventure tale than a novel. His most notable characteristic is a
singular realism, achieved by a skillful selection of matter-of-fact
details, which produces a circumstantial effect like that of a modern
newspaper report. But the realism, clever though it is, is mainlv
external; and comparatively little in the way of insight into charac-
ter or motive is to be found in most of his stories.
The great works of Richardson, "Pamela," "Clarissa Harlowe,'
and "Sir Charles Grandison," are novels without question. Not onl)
does he achieve a large unity of action, building into a shapel)
structure round his central figure a complex of persons, motives
and social conditions, but he deals in detail with the inner life of hi;
characters, and he gives to passion and sentiment the pervading
importance that has now become traditional in this form of litera-
ture. Sentiment, indeed, with him often enough degenerated intc
sentimentality, and he dwelt on the emotional and pathetic elements
in his narrative with a deliberation and an emphasis successfully
calculated to draw from his readers the greatest possible lachrymose
response.
FIELDING, SMOLLETT, STERNE, GOLDSMITH
It was largely this exaggeration of the pathetic, and the idealizing
of the chief character in order to gain an opportunity for the pa-
thetic, that led Fielding 12 to begin his first novel, "Joseph Andrews,'
as a parody of Richardson's "Pamela." Pamela had been pictured
as a virtuous maid-servant, chastely resisting the approaches of her
11 H. C., xxvii, 132. 1Z H. C,, xxxix, 176.
PROSE FICTION 205
young master, and Fielding planned the story of Pamela's brother
Joseph, placed in a corresponding position toward his mistress, to
ridicule the absurdities of his predecessor's method. But he soon
became interested in his hero for his own sake, and in this novel,
and still more in his masterpiece, "Tom Jones," he treated human
nature with a robust frankness that earned for him the famous com-
pliment of his disciple, Thackeray, that he was the last English
novelist who dared to draw a man.
Some of Fielding and perhaps more of Defoe is to be found in
the sordid tales of Tobias Smollett; and in Laurence Sterne we have
the sentimental tendencies of Richardson carried to the last extreme,
but mingled in extraordinary fashion with a conscious humor that
doubles back on the sentiment, the whole related in a style of re-
markable individuality and brilliant wit. In the same period, Oliver
Goldsmith produced his one novel, "The Vicar of Wakefield," a
delicately drawn picture of a phase of contemporary society enriched
with a group of characters, broadly typical, but delineated with an
abundance of tender sympathy and gentle humor.
FICTION IN THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
Meantime, there had begun in England, as elsewhere, that com-
plex reaction against the intellectualism of the eighteenth century
known as the Romantic Movement. Among its more obvious
phases was the revival of interest in remote places and periods, and
especially in the Middle Ages. The extent to which this interest
was ill-informed and merely sentimental is nowhere better illustrated
than in the rise of the so-called "Gothic Romance." This variety of
fiction is usually regarded as beginning with "The Castle of Otranto"
of Horace Walpole, the son of the great Whig minister, Sir Robert
Walpole, and the type of the fashionable dilettante of the London
of his day. Walpole had no real understanding or sympathy for
the spirit of the Middle Ages, but one of his fads was mediaeval ar-
mor, furniture, and architecture, and out of this arose his curious half-
sincere experiment in fiction. The real leader in the production of
this sort of "thriller," however, was Mrs. Radcliflfe, 13 who was fol-
lowed by Clara Reeves 14 and scores of minor imitators. The novels
13 For example "The Mysteries of Udolpho." u As in "The Old English Baron."
2O6 PROSE FICTION
of these ladies were set in a vaguely remote period of chivalry, their
scenes were ancient castles, with concealed panels, subterranean
passages, and family ghosts; their plots turned upon the usurpation
of family estates by wicked uncles or villainous neighbors, and on
the reparations and sufferings of missing heirs and heroines of "sensi-
bility"; and their characters were the stereotyped figures of ordinary
melodrama. A special development of this type appeared in the
"School of Terror" headed by M. G. Lewis, whose nickname of
"Monk" Lewis was derived from his novel of "Ambrosio, or the
Monk," in which the terrifying and, it must be said, the licentious
possibilities of the Gothic romance were carried to a high pitch.
This, on the whole, rather worthless species, which had been
accompanied by many feeble attempts at a more definitely historical
type of novel, culminated surprisingly in the romances of Sir Walter
Scott. Scott, however, had in his training and in his vast reading a
basis for historical and romantic fiction all his own. He stripped the
Gothic type of romance of its sentimentality and absurdity, strength-
ened it with his great fund of historical and legendary information,
gave it stability with his sanity and humor, and interest by his crea-
tion of a great series of vigorous and picturesque creations. The art
of fiction has gained in technical dexterity since Scott's day, stories
now begin sooner and move more rapidly, conversation is reported
with a greater life-likeness, the tragedy in human life is more often
given its due place; but the entrancing narratives of Scott, with all
their deliberation, are likely to retain their charm, and his men and
women still have blood in their veins. He created the historical
novel, not only for Britain but for Europe, and all its writers since
have been proud to sit at his feet.
GENTEEL REALISM THE NOVEL OF MANNERS
In the time of Doctor Johnson, Fanny Burney, the daughter of
a noted musician, and lady-in-waiting to the Queen, gathered out
of her experience of London society materials for her "Evelina,"
a novel of manners shrewdly observed and acutely chronicled. She
is the chief predecessor of Scott's contemporary and rival, Jane
Austen, the daughter of a provincial clergyman, whose knowledge
of the world was practically confined to the county in which she
PROSE FICTION 2O/
lived and the watering places, like Bath, where she spent an occa-
sional vacation. But she had tact enough to confine her books 10 to
the life she knew; and this life, with its squires, its curates, its old
ladies, its managing mothers and eligible daughters, is pictured with
a minuteness and fidelity that has scarcely been surpassed. She writes
smoothly, with an evasiveness in her characteristic irony that makes
her personality hard to grasp, while it prevents that personality
from coming between the picture and the spectator. Limited in
scope, commonplace in incident, and deliberately ordinary in type
of characters, her novels have the exquisite finish and perfection
of a miniature.
Parallel in some respects to Miss Austen's novels of English pro-
vincial life are Miss Edgeworth's, 16 dealing with the Irish, and Miss
Ferrier's 17 with the Scottish field. Together these ladies stand at
the head of that still vigorous branch of fiction which in America is
mapping the life of the whole country with sectional novels, like
those of New England by Miss Jewett, Miss Wilkins, and Mrs.
Riggs, of the South by James Lane Allen, George W. Cable, and
Thomas Nelson Page, of the Middle West by Meredith Nicholson
and Booth Tarkington.
THE GREATER VICTORIANS
Fifty years ago the world of readers was divisible into the parti-
sans of two great novelists, who, despite their limitations, made more
obvious by the development of fiction on the Continent, still rank
among the highest. William Makepeace Thackeray, who went back,
as has been said, to the work of Fielding for his models, devoted
himself chiefly to the picturing of English society, in the more re-
stricted sense of the word, from Queen Anne to Queen Victoria.
Definitely and perhaps restrictedly English in his outlook on life,
his view of the human scene is somewhat insular. His natural senti-
ment was tempered by an acute perception of the meaner elements
in human nature to such a degree that his work has a strong satirical
element, and some have even been misled into thinking him charac-
15 E.g., "Pride and Prejudice," "Sense and Sensibility," "Emma." For a satire on.
the Gothic Romance, cf. her "Northanger Abbey."
16 E.g., "Castle Rackrent," and "The Absentee." 17 E.g., "Marriage."
2C)8 PROSE FICTION
teristically a cynic. Gifted with a superb style, with profound sym-
pathy and insight into human emotion, and with a power of render-
ing the picturesque aspects of a society, Thackeray remains a great
master.
The work of his contemporary, Charles Dickens, has had an even
greater popular success. Dickens's early career gave him a knowledge
of a much humbler grade of society than Thackeray pictures, and
at the same time left him with a vivid sense of the wrongs under
which the more unfortunate members of that society suffered. This
led him to devote many of his works to the redress of social griev-
ances, and connects him with the general humanitarian movements
of modern times. Powerful as was Dickens's influence for reform
in his own time, it seems clear that the very specific nature of the
evils he attacked is bound to impair the permanence of his work, as
it always impaired the artistic value. But we relish still his buoyant
humor and geniality, the binding interest of his complex though
sometimes confusing plots, and the charm of his immense throng
of creations, typical to the point of caricature, but in their setting
vital, appealing, and eminently memorable.
SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE NOVEL
In spite of the abundant humor in both Thackeray and Dickens,
the novel with them had become a very serious form, the vehicle of
important moral and social truths. In the hands of its more notable
masters, serious it has remained. The prevalence of the scientific
point of view, so marked since the promulgation of the theories
of Charles Darwin, has left distinct traces on the history of fiction.
The philosophical and scientific learning of George Eliot appears
in her work in the emphasis on the reign of law in the character of
the individual, and, although she too possesses a rich vein of humor,
the charming playfulness in which her immediate predecessors per-
mitted themselves to indulge is replaced by an almost portentous
realization of the responsibilities of art and life. In Thomas Hardy,
too, the scientific influence is plainly felt, the overwhelming power
of environment and circumstance being presented with a force so
crushing as to leave the reader depressed with a sense of the help-
lessness of the individual, without any compensating faith in a benev-
PROSE FICTION 209
olence controlling the external forces which overwhelm him. Yet
these writers display profound psychological insight, and make
distinguished contributions to the progress of the art of fiction in its
advance toward a more and more complete and penetrating por-
trayal of the whole of human life.
Less somber in tone, but no less brilliant in workmanship, are
the novels of George Meredith. Hampered in regard to the greater
public by a style at once dazzling and obscure, Meredith has been
acclaimed by his fellow craftsmen as a great master. Beginning
partly under the influence of Dickens, Meredith gained for himself
at length a peculiar and distinguished position as perhaps the most
intellectual of the English novelists, or, at least, the novelist who
concerns himself most with the intellectual processes of his character.
Yet he is far from impoverished on the emotional side, and there are
few scenes in fiction more poignant in their tragedy than that which
closes "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel."
Besides the influence of modern science, English fiction has latterly
been much affected by foreign models, especially French and Rus-
sian. The tracing of these streams, however, would bring us to the
consideration of men still writing, and involve us in a mass of pro-
duction which cannot be characterized here, and on which we can-
not hope to have as yet a proper perspective. The great amount
of distinguished writing in the field of the English novel which has
been revealed even in this rapid survey of its history will have sug-
gested to the reader why it was found hopeless to try to represent
it in The Harvard Classics. But these writers are easy of access,
and this is the side of literature which the modern reader is least
apt to ignore. Yet it is also the side which is most likely to be read
carelessly, without consideration of purpose or method; so that it
may now be worth while to try to come to some understanding
as to its aim and the conditions of its excellence.
II
THE PURPOSE OF FICTION
In considering the purpose which works of fiction may be sup-
posed to fulfill, it will be of interest and value to note what some
2IO PROSE FICTION
of the more prominent writers have said with regard to their rea-
sons for practicing the art. The more selfishly personal motives may
be passed over quickly. Money and fame have been desired and
welcomed by most authors, as by most men, but they help us little to
an understanding of the purpose of literature. Yet there are some
who have written with neither of these in view, like Jane Austen,
who died leaving a considerable part of her work unpublished, and
apparently without having sought to publish it. Since the motives
of men are more usually complex than simple, it is a safe assumption
that even those who have frankly written for a living, or who have
acknowledged the lure of ambition, have had other things in view
as well, and have not found profit or honor incompatible with
deeper and more altruistic aims.
Of these last, the most commonly claimed is the moral improve-
ment of the reader. No one has been more explicit about this than
Richardson, whose preface to "Pamela" is characteristic enough
to quote at length :
"If to divert and entertain, and at the same time to instruct and
improve the minds of the youth of both sexes;
"If to inculcate religion and morality in so easy and agreeable a
manner as shall render them equally delightful and profitable;
"If to set forth, in the most exemplary lights, the parental, the
filial, and the social duties;
"If to paint vice in its proper colours, to make it deservedly
odious; and to set virtue in its own amiable light, and to make it
look lovely;
"If to draw characters with justness and to support them dis-
tinctly;
"If to effect all these good ends in so probable, so natural, so
lively, a manner, as shall engage the passions of every sensible
reader, and attach their regard to the story;
"If these be laudable or worthy recommendations, the editor of the
following letters ventures to assert that all these ends are obtained
here, together."
In similar vein his "Clarissa" is "proposed as an exemplar to her
sex," and is made as perfect as is "consistent with human frailty."
PROSE FICTION 211
her faults being put in chiefly lest there should be "nothing for the
Divine grace and a purified state to do."
Fielding, though less verbose, is no less explicit. He claims for
"Tom Jones" that "to recommend goodness and innocence hath
been my sincere endeavour in this history," and that he has "en-
deavoured to laugh mankind out of their favourite follies and vices."
Of "Amelia" he says: "The following book is sincerely designed to
promote the cause of virtue." The frequent satirical tone of Thack-
eray, as well as the nature of his analysis of human motive, testifies
to his sharing Fielding's desire to drive men out of their follies and
vices by ridicule and contempt.
Dickens characteristically combines the improvement of the indi-
vidual with the reform of institutions. Of "Martin Chuzzlewit"
he says: "My main object in this story was to exhibit in a variety
of aspects the commonest of all the vices; to show how selfishness
propagates itself, and to what a grim giant it may grow from small
beginnings." Again, "I have taken every possible opportunity of
showing the want of sanitary improvements in the neglected dwell-
ings of the poor."
In contrast to such ethical claims as these, Scott's confession, "I
write for general amusement," sounds more than humble. Yet he
frequently repeats it. He hopes "to relieve anxiety of mind," "to
unwrinkle a brow bent with the furrows of daily toil." At times
he approaches the moral aim of his more serious brethren, "to fill
the place of bad thoughts and suggest better," "to induce an idler
to study the history of his country."
THE NOVEL WITH A PURPOSE
In contrast with these older statements of purpose is the assumption
prevailing among the more serious of modern novelists that fiction
is primarily concerned with giving a picture of life. This aim is
set forth not only in explanation of their own work, but as a test
of the value of that of others, irrespective of intention. By it is
displayed the peculiar danger of "novels with a purpose," whether
that purpose is moral or social. They point out that Richardson's
method of "exemplars," whether of virtue to be imitated or vice to
212 PROSE FICTION
be shunned, is apt to result in creations snow-white or pitch black,
which fail in truth because human nature, even in the best and
worst, is a complex of good and evil; and which fail in effectiveness,
because the reader finds no corroboration in his experience and re-
mains unconvinced of their reality. Similarly the novelist with a
theory to prove, of the stupidity or cruelty of bad poor laws, foul
prisons, red tape and the law's delays, as in Dickens; of the rights
of women, the falsity of Calvinism, the wickedness of commercial
marriages, as in more modern writers, is likely to drive his point
home by exaggeration, false proportion, some interference with the
natural way of the world. The aim to recommend virtuous action by
the display of "poetic justice" is open to the same objections. In
both cases there results loss of both truth and effectiveness. The same
may be true of both the satirical and the merely entertaining aims:
in the first, the emphasis on the traits held up to ridicule runs the
risk of going beyond the bounds of the normal; in the second, the
curious, the marvelous, the mysterious, or the amusing may be
sought for at the expense of the natural, with the result that the
reader's skepticism prevents his submitting himself to the illusion
of reality necessary for the enjoyment of the pleasure or the advan-
tages to be derived from imaginative art.
KINDS OF REALISM
The zeal for true pictures of life which thus censures the older
theories of "instruction and delight" is part of the modern tendency
to realism, and is connected with the triumph of the scientific point
of view. Indeed, its most extreme advocates are at times quite
explicit about this: "We should work," says Zola, "upon characters,
passions, human and social facts, as the physicist and chemist work
with inorganic bodies, as the physiologist works with living organ-
isms." On this theory he believed himself to have constructed his
novels; and though he did not carry it out as rigorously as he sup-
posed he did, the results of it are all too evident in the assembling
in his pages of vast masses of almost statistical facts, set down with-
out regard to taste, convention, or decency.
But not all modern realists interpret their creed in so mechanical a
manner. Many have held to the belief in true pictures of life with-
PROSE FICTION 213
out committing themselves to the extreme view that the record
should be untinged with the personality of the writer. And, indeed,
it is now fairly well agreed that such absolute objectivity, is neither
possible nor desirable. It is not possible for many reasons. All the
facts concerning any human episode, not to say life, cannot be re-
corded in a book, so infinitely numerous and complex are they,
linked to thousands of others which are necessary to a full statement
of them, and themselves involving a life history and an immemorial
ancestry. Thus in the most severely realistic work selection is nec-
essary, the selection of what seems significant to the author; and
with this selection the personal element has already entered. Again,
the sympathy of the author unconsciously determines questions of
relative stress and emphasis; and intimate qualities of temperament
and imagination afTect the atmosphere in which the most baldly
reported incidents take place.
ARTISTIC VerSUS LITERAL TRUTH
So we arrive at the important distinction between artistic and
literal truth. This is a distinction which everyone is accustomed to
recognize in daily intercourse, yet which even professional critics
are liable to muddle at times in the discussion of art. We all know
how it is possible to report the bare facts of an action or the actual
words of a conversation so as to convey to the hearer a totally false
impression. On the other hand, an accurate view of what was done
and said, with the right implications as to character, motive, and tone,
may be conveyed without any reproduction of facts, in the nar-
row sense, at all. The second method is clearly that at which the
artist should aim. His business is with the typical, not the individual;
the permanently characteristic, not the temporarily actual; the spirit,
not the letter.
Most of us have heard discussions of a book in which a critic has
urged as an objection that a certain incident is not lifelike, when a
friend of the author has triumphantly answered that that precise
incident is the thing in the work which actually happened. Sup-
posing that the criticism was just, we see at once that one of two
things must have occurred; either the author did not understand
what happened in real life, failed to see its true causes and relations,
214 PROSE FICTION
and so did not himself know the real facts; or else he reported
it out of its true relations, and so deprived the reader of the means
of knowing the real facts. An apparent third possibility might also
be mentioned; that the episode in question was what might be called
a "freak" happening, an abnormal occurrence like the birth of an
eight-legged calf, which, while historically actual, is really out of
the order of nature, and not in itself fit to be a link in the chain of
happenings which a true picture of life represents. Of course, such
an abnormality has a cause; but the obscurity of the cause makes
this possibility a special case under our first explanation it is not
easily displayed in connection with its true causes.
THE AUTHOR'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
It is evident, then, that the recording of mere detached fact, un-
touched by the author's personality, is not only impossible, but may,
when attempted, lead to the violation of actual truth. The door is
thus opened to the exercise of the artistic judgment, both in the
selection of material and in its manipulation and presentation. The
background of this judgment, as it were, is the general view of
human nature and of the world at large which the individual
author entertains. This view has been arrived at by the observation
and meditation which he has practised throughout his life; the
conclusions which it involves affect the interpretation of every-
thing that comes under his notice; and its first effect on his art is
in determining the choice of subjects to be treated. Individual peo-
ple and events will arrest his attention and suggest artistic treatment
according as they are happy illustrations of what he has perceived
to be general truths; and in his treatment he will not scruple to
modify them to make them more apt. He will choose what Bagehot
calls "literatesque" subjects, subjects fit to be put in a book, as he calls
picturesque subjects those fit to be put in a picture; and he de-
fines both as those summing up in a single instance the character-
istics that mark the class as a whole to which they belong.
DEFENSE OF THE NOVEL WITH A PURPOSE
Let us now compare this conclusion as to the legitimate purpose of
the novel with such a moral aim as that of Richardson. As a matter
PROSE FICTION 215
of fact, the difference lies more in his way of stating his theory than
in his practice. So far as his observation of life led him to believe
that people of the type of Pamela and Clarissa act in general as
these heroines do, and that their fortunes in general are determined
by their character and their society in the manner he represents,
so far he is merely using them properly as illustrations of the view
of life of which experience has convinced him. So far, however,
as he modifies their characters or careers to conform not to the way
the world is, but to the way he wants people to believe the world
is, he is artistically false, his picture fails in truth, and the modern
reader declines to be interested or convinced. The whole question
turns on which the author puts first, artistic truth or effect. If
he is more concerned with specific effects than with truth, his
"novel with a purpose" will deserve the contempt with which the
phrase is usually employed. If his main concern is with truth, his
"purpose," being merely a special illustration of the truth with what-
ever practical result in mind, will do no harm, but may add greatly
to the zest with which he paints his picture.
THE VALUE OF FICTION
Assuming the correctness of the view that the novelist's business
is to give true pictures of life, we are met by the question of the
value of this result. The answer to this is twofold: there is an
intellectual value and an emotional value.
The amount and range of experience that comes to the ordinary
man is of necessity limited. Most of us are tied to a particular locality,
move in a society representing only a few of the myriad human
types that exist, spend the majority of our waking hours attending
to a more or less monotonous series of duties or enjoying a small
variety of recreations. In such a life there is often no great range
of opportunity; and the most adventurous career touches, after all,
but a few points in the infinite complex of existence. But we have
our imaginations, and it is to these that the artist appeals. The dis-
criminating reader of fiction can enormously enlarge his experience
of life through his acquaintance with the new tracts brought within
his vision by the novelist, at second hand, it is true, but the vivid
writer can often bring before our mental eyes scenes and persons
2l6 PROSE FICTION
whom we can realize and understand with a greater thoroughness
than those we perceive directly through our senses. The materials
for the understanding of men and life are thus greatly increased, and
at the same time the data for the forming of those generalizations
which collectively make up our philosophy.
The basis of all sound altruistic activity is sympathy, and sym-
pathy again depends on the imagination. We acr tactfully and
effectively for the relief of another's suffering when we are able
imaginatively to put ourselves in that other's place. Now, familiarity
with well-described characters in fiction not only makes us ac-
quainted with a much wider variety of human beings and enables
us to understand them, but it provides us with a kind of emotional
gymnastic, increasing our capacity for putting ourselves whole-
heartedly and clear-mindedly in the other man's place. Thus such
familiarity is a corrective of both provincialism and selfishness,
broadening the outlook and enlarging the emotional range through
the development of the imagination. Here is an ethical result more
effective by far than that indicated by the old formula of "ex-
emplars," warnings, and poetic justice, and one that implies no
forcing of the truth to bring its lessons home.
THE METHODS OF FICTION
In what has been said about fiction as a picturing of life, some-
thing has already been implied as to the methods involved. There
remain, however, some other important questions of technic on
which we may briefly touch.
However true a writer's picture of life, it is of little value if it
does not impress itself on the reader. The question of effectiveness
is thus of great importance, and with certain classes of authors it
not infrequently absorbs them to the exclusion even of the question
of truth.
The most comprehensive element of effectiveness is structure.
A story that does not hang well together, in which the scenes are
mere scattered episodes, which has no palpable thread, no climaxes,
and no conclusion, is not likely to be read through, and, if it is, it
rouses no deep interest, intellectual or emotional, and leaves no
definite stamp on the memory. The factors which it lacks are
PROSE FICTION 217
those that give unity of structure. From this point of view, the
problem of the novelist is to make as close-knit and thoroughly
organized a plot as possible without violating natural probability
in appearance or reality. This is the greatest of technical problems
for the author, as the critical appreciation of structure is the last
power to be acquired by the careless reader; yet no sound capacity
for judging or enjoying fiction is possible to him who cannot thus
view the work as a whole.
Somewhat similar faculties are required on a smaller scale in the
handling of situation and incident. Many writers are able to pre-
sent these effectively in isolation; but the great writer treats them
not as beads on a string, but as stones in a great building.
Both plot and incident in turn must be vitally related to character.
Not only must the persons stand out clearly described and recog-
nizable as the people we know, but the things that happen and the
kind of characters through and to whom they happen, must re-
ciprocally explain each other. Much discussion has taken place with
regard to the propriety of explicit analysis of character in the novel,
some writers feeling bound to let a character's words and deeds
alone explain him as they do in the drama, others feeling free to
come forward in their own persons and explain frankly the motives
and feelings of their creatures. Much naturally depends on the way
it is done. Thackeray's friendly gossip with the reader behind the
backs of his dramatis personce is often so charming that we should
be loath to lose it; and often the explicit statement of the author
saves us much labor and prevents important misunderstanding.
On the other hand, there is unquestionably great satisfaction in
the drawing of our own inferences, and a considerable gain in the
illusion of reality when the actors are allowed to exhibit their quality
unaided by a talking showman.
The attempt has here been made to outline some of the main
principles of the art of fiction without adopting the partisan attitude
of any one school. Within the limits of these principles there is
room for a great variety of type, for realism and romance, for chroni-
cles of the commonplace and annals of adventure, for stirring tales of
action and subtle psychological analysis. The endless variety of
21 8 PROSE FICTION
human life supplies an equally endless variety of themes; and the
nature of the theme will properly lead to emphasis now on the ex-
ternal, now on the internal, now on the ordinary, now on the extraor-
dinary, with appropriate variation of the technical methods em-
ployed. But with all this variation the demand holds for truth to
the permanent and essential traits of human nature and human life,
and for vitality and interest in the presentation of this truth.
But what, the reader may ask, of the pleasure from novels? natu-
rally, since the giving of pleasure is usually assumed as the main end
of fiction. Well, pleasure largely depends on who is to be pleased:
there are readers who could demand no greater pleasure than that
sense of enlargement of personality, of the scope of experience
and sympathy, which has been put down as the chief value of the
novel. It may be claimed, also, that in the demand that fiction
should impress vividly and hold the interest powerfully we have pro-
vided for the seekers after pleasure. The greatest pleasure is to live
broadly and intensely, to feel oneself in a world significant at every
point and palpitating in response to our activities, and this the
greatest fiction surely tends to give. One of the finest of modern
masters of the art, Mr. Henry James, has summed up the matter
in an epigram as true as it is brilliant, that we are entertained by
the novelist because we live at his expense.
II. POPULAR PROSE FICTION
BY PROFESSOR F. N. ROBINSON
THE works to be dealt with in the present lecture are widely
separated in time and place. They include "^Esop's Fables,"
a collection which bears the name of a Greek slave of the
sixth century, but is actually a growth of many generations before
and after him; the "Arabian Nights," which contains Oriental
stories of diverse origin; the sagas of mediaeval Ireland, as repre-
sented by "The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel"; and the folk
origin; the sagas of mediaeval Ireland, as represented by the Grimms
or imitated by Hans Christian Andersen. In so broad a range of
writings there is naturally great variety of matter and style, and
there might seem at first to be few common characteristics. But
all the works mentioned or all except Andersen's tales are alike
in being popular prose fiction, and Andersen's collection is an artis-
tic imitation of similar productions.
THE MEANING OF "POPULAR"
The term "popular" is here employed, of course, in a technical
meaning, and does not have reference to vogue or popularity, in the
ordinary sense. Popular works, in the stricter definition of the term,
are anonymous and are held to be the product of many successive
authors. They commonly pass through a long period of oral trans-
mission before being committed to writing, and they are conse-
quently cast in a conventional or traditional, rather than an indi-
vidual, style and form. The exact nature and extent of popular
composition is a matter of dispute. In the case of ballad poetry,
with its dancing, singing throng, the process of communal author-
ship can sometimes be actually observed; but in the case of the prose
tales no such opportunity exists for collective composition. Still even
there the changes and additions introduced by successive narrators
make of a story a common product, for which no single author is
219
22O PROSE FICTION
responsible. Popular works in both prose and verse show various
stages of artistry; and just as in the Anglo-Saxon epic o "Beowulf," l
there is evidence of the hand of a single poet of high order, so in the
"Arabian Nights," 2 for example, one may suspect that the style and
structure were largely molded by a single writer, or group of writers,
of skill and literary training. There are many mooted questions
as to the history of the whole type, or as to the exact nature of
particular works, but there can be no doubt of the existence of a
great body of literature which is in a real sense public property
popular somehow in origin and transmission, and thereby deter-
mined in its character. Both the verse and the prose of this popular
sort are well represented in The Harvard Classics, the former by
the traditional ballads and the latter by the works enumerated above.
THE MODERN TASTE FOR POPULAR LITERATURE
Writings of the kind under consideration would probably have
had a less conspicuous place in a literary or educational collection
a few generations ago. For interest in popular literature, or, at
least, formal attention to it on the part of the learned and cultivated,
is largely a growth of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In
earlier periods, and especially in those when classical standards pre-
vailed, the study of literature meant primarily the study of great
masterpieces of poetry, philosophy, or oratory, and the art of criti-
cism consisted largely in the deduction of rules and standards from
such models. The products of the people, if noticed at all by men
of letters, were likely to be treated with condescension or perhaps
judged by formal standards, as Addison praised the ballad of "Chevy
Chase," 3 for conforming in great measure to the narrative method
of the "^Eneid." 4 But in more recent times the spirit of criticism
has changed, and writers have even swung to the opposite extreme
of adulation of all popular products. The part of the people in
composition has been magnified, until the "Iliad" or the "Beowulf"
has been conceived as the actual production of a whole community.
With this renewed admiration for popular literature in its highest
forms has come an enthusiastic interest in all the minor products
1 Harvard Classics, xlix, 5ff. 2 H. C., xvi, 158.
*H. C., xl, 93. 4 H. C., xiii.
PROSE FICTION 221
of popular or semi-popular composition, and vast numbers of schol-
ars have devoted themselves to the collection and investigation of
folk songs and folk tales from every corner of the world. Most in-
terest has doubtless centered in the poetry, as most labor and inge-
nuity has been spent upon the great epics, such as the "Iliad" or the
"Nibelungenlied." But the excellence of much popular prose narra-
tive has also been recognized, and this also has been very extensively
studied.
INFLUENCE OF POPULAR UPON ARTISTIC LITERATURE
Though popular fiction has not always occupied a dignified place
in the works on literary history, it has long exerted an important
influence on the more sophisticated forms of literature. In the an-
cient world, it is almost too obvious to point out, the myths upon
which drama and epic turned were at the outset often popular tales
of gods and heroes. The fable, as the embodiment of moral wisdom,
has been, of course, the constant resource of speakers and writers,
and in the hands of such poets as Marie de France in the twelfth
century, or La Fontaine in the seventeenth, it has received the highest
finish of art. Though the "Arabian Nights" collection, as a whole,
is of recent introduction into European literature, Oriental tales of
the sort which compose it circulated extensively in Europe from the
time of the crusades and supplied much material for the fiction of
the Middle Ages. In the last century, too, poets have found a rich
storehouse in the traditions of the days of "good Haroun Alraschid."
The folktales of northern Europe, again, as represented by Celtic and
Scandinavian sagas or by the modern German collection of the
Grimms, have been the source of much lofty poetry and romance.
Many a great play or poem goes back in substance to some bit of
fairy mythology or to a single tale like that of a persecuted Cinde-
rella, or of a father and son unwittingly engaged in mortal combat.
The splendid romances of King Arthur 5 have derived many of their
essential elements from popular sagas not very different in character
from the account of Da Derga 6 printed in this series. In the hands
of court poets or polite romancers the original stories were, of course,
often disguised beyond easy recognition. Their motives were
5 H. C., xxxv, losff. H. C., xlix,
222 PROSE FICTION
changed, and they were transferred to the setting o a higher
civilization. Oftener than not the authors who treated them were
wholly unaware of the history or meaning of the material. Yet a
chief result of the critical scholarship of the last hundred years
has been to show how the highest products of literary art are de-
rived from simple elements of popular tradition.
CHARACTERISTICS OF POPULAR NARRATIVE
From the historical point of view, then, popular fiction has an
important place in literary education. But in and for itself also,
without regard to historical standards, this great body of writings
possesses a direct human interest not inferior to that of the literature
of art. The works selected for the present series illustrate very
well the varieties of the type and the phases of life with which it
may be concerned. The collections of Andersen 7 and the Grimms 8
ofler, in general, the least complicated of narratives. The tales, or
Mdrchen (as they have come to be called in English as well as in
German), deal with simple episodes, localized, to be sure, but hav-
ing for the most part no marked national or personal character.
They are universal in appeal, and almost universal in actual occur-
rence wherever folklore has been collected. A very simple stage
of narrative is likewise exhibited by the ^Esopic fable. 9 The hero
tale of Ireland, on the other hand, is a more complex product. Here
there is accumulation of episodes, with something like epic structure;
and definite characters, half-historic and half-legendary, stand out as
the heroes of the action. The localization is significant, and the
stories reproduce the life and atmosphere of the northern heroic age.
Both the narrative prose and the numerous poems that are inter-
spersed in the sagas testify to the existence of a distinct literary tra-
dition, still barbaric in many respects, in the old bardic schools.
Finally, the "Arabian Nights" presents a still more elaborate devel-
opment in a different direction. The fundamental elements again are
beast fables, fairy lore, and popular anecdotes of love, prowess, or
intrigue; but they are worked up under the influence of a rich and set-
tled civilization and depict, with something like historic fullness, the
life and manners of the Mohammedan Middle Ages. The collection,
7 H. C., xvii, 221 fi. *H. C., xvii, 4 7 ff. 9 H. C., xvii, uff.
PROSE FICTION 223
like the works mentioned earlier, is of unknown authorship, and is
plainly the product of many men through many generations. But
the style gives evidence of a finished literary tradition; the nameless
and numerous contributors appear to have been men of books rather
than the simple story-tellers of an age of oral delivery. Though not
in the stage of individual authorship, the "Arabian Nights" stands
yet outside the range of the strictly popular and within the realm
of literary composition.
Even in its most elaborate development, however, popular fiction
remains something quite different from the customary modern novel
or narrative poem. It commonly lacks a sustained plot, worked out
with close regard to cause and effect. Still more characteristically it
lacks the study of character and the intellectual analysis of such varied
problems as occupy the fiction of the present age. The popular ro-
mances lay their stress chiefly on incident and adventure or simple
intrigue, and set forth only the more familiar and accepted moral
teachings. They represent, on the whole, an instinctive or tradi-
tional, rather than a highly reflective, philosophy of life. For all
these reasons they have come to be regarded chiefly as the literature
of children; a natural result, perhaps, of the fact that they origi-
nated largely in the childhood of civilization or among the simple
peoples in more advanced ages. But it is noteworthy that they
were not, in most cases, really intended for the young; and the man
or woman who has outgrown them completely has one serious loss
to set down against the gains of advancing years.
III. MALORY
BY DR. G. H. MAYNADIER
SIR THOMAS MALORY is unique among English writers.
His famous "Morte d'Arthur," which came from the press
of William Caxton, the first English printer, in 1485, he com-
pleted probably in 1470. Thus he wrote at a time when the printing
press was beginning to make the various European languages less
changeable than they had been when a gentleman's library might
consist of but a single parchment manuscript; he was near enough
to our own day to be the first English author whose work can now
be read with enjoyment and yet without special study. Save for an
occasional word which one must look up in a glossary like the ob-
solete wood, meaning frenzied a page of Malory, despite its archa-
isms of grammar and expression, is as intelligible as one of the latest
magazines or novels. Nevertheless, when he wrote, the world of
European civilization was still narrow materially and intellectually.
The Atlantic was its bound to the west; the Sahara, to the south;
the Far East was an almost mythical Cathay. The Renaissance had
scarcely made itself felt beyond Italy; to all but a very few scholars, the
old worlds of Greece and Rome and Palestine were known solely
through stories from poetry and history so metamorphosed that
King David, Julius Caesar, and Alexander the Great wore mediaeval
armor and held splendid court like Capet and Plantagenet kings.
In spirit Malory is as much of the Middle Ages as if he had died two
hundred instead of two score years before Columbus set out to
solve the mystery of the western seas. It is hard to believe that only
half a century after his death Englishmen should be reading Homer
at Oxford and Cambridge, and Luther translating the New Testa-
ment into German; that a few years more, and the leading countries
of Europe should be making plans for colonial empire which have
resulted in the world-powers of the present. Thanks to his living
in just the years that he did, Malory has left us in his "Morte d'Ar-
224
PROSE FICTION 225
thur" a work full of mediaeval spirit with almost no mediaeval
difficulty of language, though with a very charming suggestion of
mediaevalism in style.
LEGEND AND ROMANCE
Even if the "Morte d'Arthur" had not this charm of style, it
would be important in literature as giving the modern world the
most easily intelligible mediaeval version of what Tennyson called
"the greatest of all poetic subjects." Of the several valuable contri-
butions of the Middle Ages to the general store of European art and
thought, none is richer than their mass of legend stories of saints
and martyrs, of many local champions of more or less fame, and of
a few who attaining wider fame became great epic heroes of the
world. In nearly every case, poetic fame has a basis of historical
fact, but most of the superstructure, and all its adornment, is popular
story. Such a hero is Siegfried, 1 now the typical representative of
the Germanic hero-age, but at first no better known than half a
dozen other warriors, like Dietrich of Verona, whose stories grew
out of the unsettling migrations of the Germanic peoples in the
fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. Another is Charlemagne, 2 as colos-
sal a figure in mediaeval romance as in history is the monarch who
was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day in the year
800. An even greater epic hero of the Middle Ages is Arthur, who
is much better known to English readers than the others largely
because of Sir Thomas Malory.
THE HISTORICAL AND THE LEGENDARY ARTHUR
The historical basis of the Arthur-legends is the Anglo-Saxon con-
quest of Britain. In the three centuries after the first settlement of
the Germanic invaders in that island, the Britons were gradually
driven into the mountains of Wales and Cumberland and the penin-
sula of Cornwall, or they fled across the Channel to turn Armorica
into Brittany. Meanwhile they suffered almost uniform defeat. But
for a while about the year 500 they won victories that for nearly
half a century checked the Saxon advance. Their leader was Arthur,
1 See "The Song of the Volsungs" in Harvard Classics, xlix, 249^.
2 See "The Song of Roland" in H. C., xlix, 95ff.
226 PROSE FICTION
a good general, but probably not a king. Now men much in the
public eye attract stories to themselves, as witness the countless
anecdotes related of Abraham Lincoln. With peoples of slight
civilization, such stories are full of marvels and portents. Thus hero-
legends are made; thus the Arthur-legend grew up. Probably imme-
diately after Arthur's death, popular story began to increase his
fame. In the so-called chronicle of a British monk, Nennius, written
three hundred years after Arthur's victories, we have our sole liter-
ary glimpse of the romantic hero-legend in the making, for Nennius
associates several supernatural tales with the British leader. Presum-
ably among Britons on both sides of the Channel for Arthur won
his victories before the principal migration to Armorica similar
association of marvel and adventure with the national champion
was common. By degrees these hero-tales passed to the neighbors
of the Britons. Because of their interest and poetic charm they came
to be known in both France and England, though always purely
popular "old wives' tales" beneath the notice of serious writers.
The Norman Conquest, however, had quickened tremendously
interest in everything connected with Britain, even its legendary
heroes; and so, early in the reign of Stephen, grandson of the Con-
queror, the clerk, Geoffrey of Monmouth, drawing on the store of
British legend and altering it freely, ventured to publish his "History
of the Kings of Britain," an alleged chronicle in Latin prose. Here
we have for the first time in literary form the story of Arthur, King
of Britain, of his wide conquests, and of his death at the hands of
traitorous Mordred. Soon other authors, mostly Anglo-Norman
or subject to Anglo-Norman influence, began to use material
similar to Geoffrey's. They celebrated Arthur's Round Table, and
various knights whom Geoffrey had not mentioned. By the begin-
ning of the thirteenth century, the stories of Arthur and his knights
had become world literature, for Geoffrey's "Chronicle" and the first
French Arthurian romances had been translated or adapted into every
language of western Europe. Wherever they went, these stories re-
tained certain common traits. In all was poetic wonder; in all was
utter geographical confusion and historical inaccuracy; kings,
knights, and ladies were characters contemporary with the authors
who wrote about them; instead of the rough manners of the sixth
PROSE FICTION 227
century, there was the polish of mediaeval chivalry. And with the
exception of Geoffrey's work, the first Arthur-stories were in verse,
and the adventures of different knights formed the subjects of differ-
ent romances.
In historical inaccuracies, mediaeval authors did not change. Nor,
for that matter, did post-mediaeval authors; Arthur and his knights
remain for all time typical romantic representatives of the age of
chivalry. But early in the thirteenth century, writers began to turn
metrical romances into prose. Then they began to combine the ad-
ventures of one knight with another in one romance, till by degrees
there grew up vast jumbles of adventure which clumsily tried to give
something like comprehensive tales of the adventures of Arthur and
all his principal knights. Owing to multiplicity of sources and mis-
takes of scribes, these composite stories were sometimes contradictory
and confusing in the extreme. A late copy of one of them seems to
have been Malory's principal source. Probably he modified this
source by information from other manuscripts, and by independent
judgment in putting materials together. However that may be, he
has by no means brought order out of chaos. Yet, taken as a whole,
Malory's work has some organic structure. It is the best and clearest
comprehensive story of "King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of
the Round Table" that the Middle Ages have left us.
THE HISTORY OF THE GRAIL LEGEND
Like the other principal Round Table stories, the story of the Grail
came from ancient folk-tales, if not from the mythology, of the in-
sular Celts. Both British and Gaelic Celts knew tales of life-giving
or healing vessels analogous to the Grail; and they frequently asso-
ciated with such a vessel a spear and sometimes a sword. There is
even a tale of Irish fairies who had a caldron from which no man
ever went away unsatisfied, a spear, a sword, and a "stone of fate"
that is perhaps related to the stone "hoving on the water" from which
Galahad draws his fated sword. Explanations of the way in which
pagan talismans of old Celtic story changed into objects of Christian
significance in mediaeval story can probably never be more than con-
jecture. There is no doubt, though, that after the Grail story was
incorporated in the great Arthur cycle about 1175, the tendency was
228 PROSE FICTION
to make it more and more significant of mediaeval Christianity, per-
haps because the mysterious vessel called Grail suggested the sacred
mystery of the sacramental cup. So Percival, a good worldly knight,
the first hero of the Grail, was superseded in the early thirteenth
century by Galahad, invented by an unknown romancer for the sole
purpose, apparently, of being an ideally ascetic hero. Already the
Grail had become the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Sup-
per, and symbolical of the Communion Cup. A long account had
been written of its journey from Palestine to Britain, which is not
included in the "Morte d'Arthur." Marvels in the story were ex-
plained after the fashion of the scriptural interpretation of dreams.
Sir Lancelot, Galahad's father, was made to "come but of the eighth
degree from our Lord Jesu Christ." And among the many monkish
grafts on the old pagan tree was that so-called "wonderful tale of
King Solomon and his wife," and their three spindles, and Solomon's
ship, all of which is not so "wonderful" as senseless.
If Malory's version of the Grail legend is characteristic of mediaeval
romance in introducing the superstition and ignorance of mediaeval
Christianity, it introduces also its mystical beauty. Galahad in his
incomprehension of human temptation may lack human sympathy,
but he is a very fair picture of innocent youth when, led by "a good
old man, and an ancient, clothed all in white," he comes to sit in the
siege perilous, in red arms himself and a "coat of red sendal," and
"a mantel upon his shoulders that was furred with ermine." He
must be a very hard-headed agnostic or insensitive puritan who is
not awed by the "alighting" of "the grace of the Holy Ghost" on the
"knights when the Grail appears miraculously at Arthur's court, and
impressed by the celebration of the Mass at Carbonek and Sarras.
Also in secular ways, Malory's Grail chapters are typical of me-
diaeval romance. The institution of "courtly love" that is, a knight's
unquestioning obedience to his lady, such as we see in Lan-
celot's devotion to Guinevere the obligation to the vows of
knighthood, with its ideals of frankness, chastity, courtesy, and serv-
ice to all who are weak and suffering, and also the forgetting of
these vows in the heat of human passion all this may be found in
Malory's chapters of the Grail, as in the rest of his "Morte d'Arthur."
PROSE FICTION
As Caxton 3 says in the oft-quoted words of his Preface to Malory's
book: "Herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity,
friendliness, hardyhood, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate,
virtue, and sin." But the general impression of it all is of good rather
than evil, "of many joyous and pleasant histories, and noble and re-
nowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalry."
3 H. C., xxxix, 2otf.
IV. CERVANTES
BY PROFESSOR J. D. M. FORD
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA was born in
the little Spanish university town of Alcala de Henares,
in 1547. His father was a poor physician with a large
family and with somewhat nomadic propensities, haling his offspring
about from Alcala to various other cities, such as Valladolid, Madrid,
and Seville. The chances are that Miguel did not receive a university
training. It is conjectured, on fairly reasonable grounds, that he
qualified for teaching and became a tutor in a school at Madrid.
At all events, by 1569 he was attached to the train of the Italian prel-
ate, Acquaviva, who had come to Spain as papal nuncio, and with
the latter he went to Rome toward the end of that year.
He did not long remain there, for in 1570 he was a gentleman vol-
unteer on one of the vessels which, under Don John of Austria, in-
flicted a crushing defeat upon the Turk at the battle of Lepanto. In
the engagement Cervantes was wounded quite seriously in his left
hand, which remained forever after somewhat crippled. Still, after a
period of convalescence spent in Italy, he played a part in other cam-
paigns. Wearying of warfare, he took ship for Spain in September
of 1575, having first provided himself with letters of recommendation
from his military superiors and the viceroy of Naples. These cre-
dentials, by means of which he had hoped to obtain preferment at
home, proved to be his undoing, for his vessel was captured by
Moorish pirates and he was carried off to Algiers, where, because of
the terms of praise in which these letters spoke of him, he was deemed
a person of high degree and held for an excessively large ransom.
As his family and his friends could not raise the exorbitant sum
demanded for his release, he remained five years a captive at Algiers,
passing through most varied experiences. Finally, as a result of a
happy chance, he was liberated and could return to Spain. He has
himself adverted to the manner of his life as a slave at Algiers in
230
PROSE FICTION 23!
his play, "El trato de Argel," and in the episode of "El cautivo" in
"Don Quixote," and tradition has even more to say respecting it.
It would seem that he headed many attempts at escape on the part
of the Christian captives and nevertheless was not subjected to the
penalties for such attempts, of which empalement was the most
usual. Possibly his captors regarded him as a madman and therefore,
according to Mohammedan ideas, exempt from punishment for his
offenses.
LITERARY ACTIVITY OF CERVANTES
Back in Spain, he may have engaged again in military service
for a brief period, but, at all events, by 1584 he had entered seriously
upon a literary career, for in this year he had completed his pastoral
romance, "Galatea." This is a work of little merit, being as un-
natural and tedious in its treatment of the life of shepherds and
shepherdesses as are the many native and foreign works of its kind;
yet, occasionally it does betray some real emotion, and it is thought
to have brought to a happy termination his courtship of Catalina
de Palacios. A man without private means, now facing the exigen-
cies of married life, Cervantes conceived the idea of supplying his
needs by providing plays for the Spanish stage, which was already
entering upon its age of glory. The idea was a bad one, for of the
more than a score of pieces composed by him at this time not one
was either a dramatic or a financial success. Defeated in this purpose,
he was fain to fall back upon the meager salary which he gained as
a minor officer of the Royal Treasurer, for during some years after
1587 he was engaged in collecting provisions for the royal forces or
in extracting taxes from reluctant subjects of the king.
The sober facts at our command would incline us to believe that
Cervantes was leading a life of misery. No doubt he was, but in
spite of this he was constantly producing lyric effusions in praise of
one or another friend, or celebrating this or that event. Once for all
be it said that as a lyric poet Cervantes occupies quite a minor rank;
his verses are rarely imaginative or sprightly, and now and then,
as when he strikes the solemn note, does he rise to any great poetic
height. But Cervantes was not only versifying during all this time
that he was meeting with misfortune in carrying out the duties of
232 PROSE FICTION
his humble public office; he was doing something vastly more im-
portant for us all; he was contemplating the composition of the "Don
Quixote." Legend has it that he wrote the "Don Quixote" in prison,
but the legend is based on an unjustifiable interpretation of a pas-
sage in the Prologue to that novel. Still, the first thought of it may
have occurred to him in the enforced leisure of some one of his in-
carcerations, although the chances are that the actual writing of the
First Part extended over some years of the last decade of the six-
teenth century and through the first three or four years of the seven-
teenth. In 1605 the first edition of the First Part appeared, and the
story met with an acclaim which called forth speedily new editions
at home and abroad, and no few translations into foreign languages.
THE EXEMPLARY TALES
But eleven years more of life remained for Cervantes, and during
these, in so far as our knowledge goes, he met with no more worldly
prosperity than in the past; although it is possible that his pecuniary
distress was alleviated somewhat by modest returns from his books,
and by the bounty of his patron, the Conde de Lemos. In one of the
chapters of the First Part of the "Don Quixote" Cervantes mentions
by name a little tale of roguish doings, the "Rinconete y Cortadillo."
This, his own composition, reappears with eleven additional short
stories in the collection entitled "Novelas ejamplares," which was
issued from the press in 1612. Had he written nothing but the "Ex-
emplary Tales," his fame would be secure in the annals of Spanish
literature. They were the best-framed short stories so far produced
in Spanish; they are interesting and realistic, although at times
brutally offensive to morality. One of the proofs of the interest that
they excited abroad is to be found in the fact that English drama-
tists like Fletcher, Massinger, Middleton, and Rowley drew upon
them for the plots of some of their plays.
While composing these dramatic pieces, Cervantes was carrying
on apace a sequel to the First Part of the "Don Quixote." This
Second Part and conclusion of the story of the adventures of Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza he completed hurriedly and published
in 1615, upon learning that a spurious Second Part had been put
forth at Tarragona in Aragon in 1614 by a person who masquer-
PROSE FICTION 233
ades under the pseudonym of Fernandez de Avellaneda, and whose
identity remains an enigma. The days of Cervantes were drawing to
their close, but he continued to labor to the end, and on his dying
couch he put the finishing touches to a novel of love and adventurous
travel, the "Persiles y Sigismunda." On April 23, 1616, Cervantes
passed away at Madrid, nominally on the same day as Shakespeare,
but not precisely so on account of the difference still existing be-
tween the Spanish and the English calendar. His remains are sup-
posed to rest in a community house of the Redemptionists in the
Spanish capital.
THE PURPOSE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF "DON QUIXOTE"
For the modern world at large, the "Don Quixote" is that one
among the works of Cervantes which exercises a paramount claim
upon attention, and this it does both because it is the greatest novel
as yet produced in the literatures of civilization and because it is the
sole work of cosmopolitan importance that Spain has given to the
rest of humanity. But in giving it Spain gave a noble gift, one which
has brought unfeigned delight to the hearts and the minds of mil-
lions of human beings peopling both the Eastern and the Western
Hemisphere, and this delight remains ever fresh although three
centuries have passed since Don Quixote made his first sally forth.
Cervantes began the "Don Quixote" with the intention of making
it a satirical burlesque of the romances of chivalry, which for more
than a century before had beguiled the Spanish fancy with accounts
of absurdly impossible deeds of derring-do. Their influence served
only to entrance the Spanish mind, fascinating it with the glamour of
aspects of medievalism that had long since ceased to exist, and di-
verting its attention from the real world with its serious daily tasks.
As a matter of fact, the sway of the chivalric romances had begun
to weaken even before the close of the sixteenth century, but it was
from the "Don Quixote" that they received their death stroke, for
no new work of their kind appeared after the "Don Quixote" was
published. How did Cervantes achieve his purpose? Simply by
adopting the methods of the romance of chivalry and showing the
falseness of their application to modern life; in a word, by demon-
strating that they were out of date. But Cervantes built a structure
234 PROSE FICTION
far more grandiose than at first he had planned, for his work grew
under his hand and, transcending the author's original intent, be-
came a great modern novel which may be read and is generally read
with intense interest by countless thousands who know not at all and
care not at all that it is an attack upon a literary genre. "Under
Cervantes's vagabond pen," says Morel-Fatio, a masterly critic of the
work, "governed only by the inspiration of the moment, his 'Don
Quixote,' issuing forth from a simple idea [that of ridiculing the
novels of chivalry], of which no great development could have been
expected, has become little by little the great social novel of the
Spain of the beginning of the seventeenth century, in which all that
marks this epoch, its sentiments, passions, prejudices, and institu-
tions, has found a place. Hence the powerful interest of the book,
which, independently of its value as a work of the imagination, and
as an admirable treatise in practical philosophy, possesses in addition
the advantage of fixing the state of civilization of a nation at a pre-
cise moment of its existence, and of showing us the depths of its
conscience."
V. MANZONI
BY PROFESSOR J. D. M. FORD
A AS early a date in their literary history as the thirteenth
century, the Italians began to evince a propensity for tale-
telling, and they have continued to indulge it unremittingly
down to our own times. Until the nineteenth century, however,
they favored the short story or tale, rather than the longer and more
ambitious form of narrative prose fiction called the novel or romance.
If in the fourteenth century Boccaccio wrote his "Fiammetta," if
about the end of that century or at the beginning of the next
Andrea de Barberino compiled the "Reali di Francia," and if the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the appearance of the pastoral
romance (the "Arcadia"), and of novels of adventure as well as
others infused with the erotic, or the sentimental, or the moralizing
spirit, it must be admitted that all these works are either of poor
vein, or, as is the case for the "Fiammetta," the "Reali di Francia,"
and the "Arcadia" of Sannazaro, they are far more important in
other connections than as examples of prose fiction. The seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries present hardly anything of interest; with
the early nineteenth century and the publication of the "Lettere di
Jacopo Ortis" of Foscolo (1802) the true novel was inaugurated in
Italian, and with the historical romance, "I Promessi Sposi," of
Manzoni, first put forth in 1827, its lasting success was achieved.
LIFE OF MANZONI
Alessandro Manzoni (he never used his tide of Count) was born
of a patrician family at Milan, on March 7, 1785. His maternal
grandfather was the noted publicist, the Marquis Cesare Beccaria.
In his early studies, pursued mainly at Milan, he inclined naturally
towards belles lettres, and, reading assiduously by himself, he devel-
oped the seeds of genius within him. Toward the literary career
his steps were guided also by his relations with the kindly Italian
235
236 PROSE FICTION
poet, Monti, whom he venerated. In 1805 his mother took him to
Paris, where he frequented salons, the atmosphere of which was
wholly rationalistic and Voltairean, and in which he imbibed doc-
trines of skepticism. These, however, were not to last with him. At
this time there was formed his friendship with the French scholar
and man of letters, Claude Fauriel, who now and for many years
later helped to mold his mind. Back in Milan in 1808, he married
there in that year the Protestant lady, Enrichetta Blondel. Two
years later, she became a Catholic, and Manzoni, impelled by her
example and by a deep-rooted love, hitherto latent, for the ancestral
religion, followed her into the Church, to remain thereafter a sin-
cere and devout communicant. Abiding in the Milanese region, he
wrote there in 1821 his remarkable ode, the "Cinque Maggio,"
commemorating the death of Napoleon, and at about this same
time he commenced the composition of "I Promessi Sposi." When
it was fully published in 1827, he removed with his family to Flor-
ence, and for a while enjoyed the favor of the grand duke, who
decorated the walls of his palace with scenes from "I Promessi
Sposi," and the society of leading statesmen and writers, such as
Giusti, Capponi, Niccolini, and Leopardi. Returning ere long to
Milan, he had the misfortune to lose (1833) n ^ s w ^ e ? as we H as his
daughter, Giulia, who was married to the novelist Massimo d'Azeg-
lio. In the sorrow of this period he derived no little comfort from his
friendship with the brilliant although impetuous philosopher Ros-
mini and the novelist Tommaso Grossi. He remarried in 1837.
During the stirring days of 1848, he showed himself a sterling Italian
patriot, and urged his three sons to fight valiantly against the Aus-
trian arms then engaged in subjugating his native region of Lom-
bardy. With the success of the Austrians he retired voluntarily to
a villa on Lake Maggiore, but the liberation of Lombardy again in
1859 brought him prominently to notice. King Vittorio Emmanuele
bestowed honors upon him and assigned him a pension, which to
one in his straitened circumstances was very grateful. He was made
a senator in 1860, and played a part in the Assembly which proclaimed
the Kingdom of Italy. Shortly after, in 1864, he was one of the
National Assembly that voted for the transference of the capital from
Turin to Rome. The Holy City he never visited, but in 1872 he was
PROSE FICTION 237
elected an honorary citizen of Rome, and in the letter in which he
thanked the mayor for the courtesy shown him he expressed his joy
at the consummation of Italian unity. He died on May 22, 1873.
MANZONI AS A POET AND CRITIC
Among modern Italian poets Manzoni takes high rank. Besides
some minor lyrics and other poems of an occasional nature he wrote
the "Inni Sacri," hymns in which he gives poetical form to the
noblest and highest manifestations of the Christian religion, em-
phasizing especially the principles of charity, hope, and eventual
comfort for all human ills; the ode "Cinque Maggio," already men-
tioned; the ode "Marzo, 1821," dealing with the aspirations and
endeavors of the liberal party in Piedmont; and the two-verse
dramas, the "Conte di Carmagnola" and the "Adelchi." These
tragedies figure among the best productions of the Romantic move-
ment in Italy, and they are the first examples of the historical play
in Italian. The "Conte di Carmagnola" is concerned with the story
of the famous captain of free lances, Francesco Bussone, called Car-
magnola, who in the fifteenth century was undeservedly done to
death by his employers, the Venetians; the "Adelchi" turns upon
events in Lombardy back in the time of its king Desiderius and his
foe and conqueror, Charlemagne.
Noteworthy among the minor prose works of Manzoni are the
documents in which he discusses the validity of the French system
of unities as applied to dramatic composition ("Lettre a M.
Chauvet") and the purposes of the Italian Romantic school ("Lettera
al Marchese Cesare d'Azeglio sul Romanticismo"). In various writ-
ings he discusses the often-mooted question as to what is the true
form of speech for Italian literary expression, and he ranges himself
on the side of sanity by advocating the use of the Florentine vocabu-
lary on the part of Italian authors from all parts of the peninsula.
I PROMESSI SPOSI
His masterpiece is, of course, "I Promessi Sposi," 1 which, begun
as we have seen in 1821, occupied Manzoni for some six years with
its composition and its printing; yet, hardly had it appeared when,
faithful to his belief that the Florentine speech was the correct lan-
1 See Harvard Classics, vol. xxi.
238 PROSE FICTION
guage of cultured Italians, he set to work to eliminate the dialectisms
and Gallicisms in it, and the result was that in pure Tuscan the novel
appeared, after seventy-five reprints of the first edition had been
made, in the perfected form of 1842. Its main plot is simple; for
the central story is that of the long-deferred marriage of two peasants,
Lorenzo and his beloved Lucia. A tyrannical local potentate, aided
by the proverbial Italian bravos, forbids their nuptials, because his
own evil fancy has fallen upon the girl, and her parish priest, whose
duty it is to perform the marriage ceremony irrespective of all
exterior influences, avoids doing so through terror of the tyrant,
Don Rodrigo, and his bloodthirsty satellites. Eventually a pest
carries away Don Rodrigo, and the union of the lovers is effected.
They are married by their own timid parish priest, Don Abbondio,
who has, in the meantime, been taught his duty by his noble superior,
the saintly Cardinal Carlo Borromeo.
Following Sir Walter Scott, whom he expressly acknowledges as
his model for his methods, Manzoni gave to his novel an historical
setting, adapting it to the Romantic sentiments then dominating the
literary world. He chose for the period of action the three years
between 1628 and 1631, during the Spanish supremacy at Milan,
when a terrible famine and pestilence made desolate that part of
Italy, and he confined operations between Lake Como, which he
knew so well, and the city of Milan. Before undertaking the writing
of his great work he made a serious study of works dealing with the
pestilence and with administrative affairs of the time in which it
occurred. Then, with the intuition of the true artist, having the
historical and social conditions well in mind, and possessing the
power to analyze the most delicate of human feelings, he assembled a
number of characters of divers sorts, through the play of which he
presents us with a vivid picture of Lombardy in the early seven-
teenth century.
Next to Dante and Ariosto, Manzoni is, perhaps, the greatest of
Italian authors, the most universal in appeal. His worth was quickly
acknowledged abroad, by Goethe in Germany, by Chateaubriand in
France, by Scott in the British Empire, and the last named was
proud to have provoked imitation on the part of a genius of so high
an order.
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR BLISS PERRY
NO ONE can turn over the pages of The Harvard Classics
without realizing how much of the most delightful writ-
ing of the last three hundred years has taken the form of
the essay. No literary form is more flexible than this, and no form
except lyric poetry has touched upon a wider variety of topics. Yet
there is one subject of enduring human interest to which essayists
are perpetually turning, and upon which they always find something
new to say. It is the subject of Books and Reading. In the essays
which deal with this perennially interesting topic, there is a con-
stant expression of literary judgments judgments that convey racial
and national convictions, the ruling ideas of a generation or a school,
or the likes and dislikes of individuals. These judgments, properly
collected and classified, become the material for a history of literary
criticism. Indeed, a surprisingly large proportion of the epoch-
making documents of criticism are really essays, both in form and
mood.
IMPORTANCE OF THE ESSAY IN LITERARY CRITICISM
The significance of the essay in the formation and perpetuation
of critical doctrine is also apparent if one turns to the formal his-
tories of criticism. Systematic treatises on the theory of the fine
arts, including literature, have appeared at intervals since the time
of Aristotle. The science of aesthetics, as we know it, was developed
in Germany during the latter half of the eighteenth century, and
it forms an integral portion of the philosophical system of Kant
and of many other philosophers. But these formal treatises upon
the nature of beauty, involving as they do the analysis of the beautiful
as it exists in the natural world and in works of art, appeal primarily
239
240 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
to a few thinkers and scholars, and not to the general public. It is
true that men of genius like Goethe, Schiller, and Burke have the
faculty of discussing the philosophic basis of aesthetic theories in
such a way as to make them interesting and highly instructive to
the general reader. But as a rule the systematic treatises upon the
nature and history of the fine arts, and of literature in particular,
have been necessarily addressed to a limited audience. The dis-
cussions which have really caught the ear of the public have been
the casual utterances of brilliant men in the act of attacking or
defending a literary creed, of writing a preface to a book or a play, or
of hazarding, in some dialogue, pamphlet, or essay, a new opinion
about beauty, a new theory of poetry or of prose.
WHAT IS AN ESSAY .'
To understand, therefore, the history of actual critical opinion,
one must study the essay. It is a very variable, highly personalized
literary form : resembling now a dinner-table monologue or dialogue,
and now a letter to a friend. Here it is a mere sparkling fragment
of some solid mass of philosophical theory, and there it is a tiny jewel
of paradox, interrogation, or fancy; here an echo of some great his-
torical debate over tragedy or comedy, and there the first faint stirring
of some new, living idea, which by and by will be tossed about with
all the winds of doctrine. But however changeable this literary type
may be, one who reads the various essays in The Harvard Classics
can hardly fail to get a general notion of the nature of "the essay."
The type will gradually make itself clear to him, as something
different from the formal treatise, the dialogue or the letter or the
magazine article. He will learn to watch the type emerge into clear
outline with Montaigne 1 and Bacon. 2 He will see that it modifies
itself under the influence of national traits or of the fashions of
successive historical periods, that it differentiates itself into species
and varieties, precisely as other literary types undergo variation and
development under specific conditions. It will flourish in one age
and decline in another, as do the drama and the lyric, although,
like them, the essay represents a certain permanent mood which
never goes wholly out of fashion.
1 Harvard Classics, xxxii, sff. 2 H. C., iii, jfi.
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 24!
THE CRITICAL ESSAY
The reader who is interested in literary criticism will soon find
that the essay has been a particularly convenient form for conveying
literary theories from one mind or age to another. The "critical
essay," while conforming in general to the flexible laws of "the
essay," is used for a specific purpose. It deals with the emergence,
continuance, and disappearance of critical opinions; it records, in
an informal but none the less effective manner, the judgment of
Europe upon books. Let us take a specific example. Charles Lamb's
"Essay on the Tragedies of Shakespeare" 3 is a singularly perfect
specimen of "the essay" type. It is personal and casual. It opens with
the sentence: "Taking a turn the other day in the Abbey, I was
struck with the affected attitude of a figure, which I do not re-
member to have seen before, and which upon examination proved
to be a whole-length of the celebrated Mr. Garrick"; and then Lamb
passes, with apparent artlessness, from the affectations and tricks of
actors to the profound question of the possibility of an adequate
representation of the personalities of Hamlet and Lear upon the
stage. This personal essay, with its odd whims and fancies, deepens
page by page into a masterly critical essay, which makes a distinct
phase of the attitude of the English mind toward England's greatest
poet.
In similar fashion, Victor Hugo's preface to his drama "Crom-
well" 4 is a capital example of a personal essay an essay "rampant"
in its defense of the author's own literary creed. But that creed as
it happens, becomes also the triumphant creed of the young French
Romanticists. They rallied around the preface to "Cromwell" as
soldiers rally around a flag, and the essay became a concrete embodi-
ment of a new reaction against Classicism, a significant document
in the literary history of modern Europe.
NATIONAL CHARACTER IN THE ESSAY
The two essays which have just been mentioned personal in
their immediate character, and yet even more significant as repre-
senting doctrines which came to be held by a generation or a school
3 H. C., xxvii, 299. 4 H. C., xxxix, 337 ft.
242 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
may also serve to illustrate a third aspect from which essays may
be regarded. One may study them, in chronological order, as suc-
cessive indications of a national point of view. Thus the English
critical essay, in the Elizabethan period, in the seventeenth century,
or in any subsequent epoch, reveals the precise extent to which the
English mind accepts, modifies, or rejects the main body of European
critical doctrine. As affording material for such a chronological
study, it is not essential that any particular English critical essay
should be marked by personal distinction of style, or by special
critical acumen. The undistinguished mass of book reviews, of
gossip about writers, about the stage and other forms of contem-
porary art, is often the most valuable evidence of the instinctive
working of the English mind. What does an average bookish Eng-
lishman, in a given decade, understand by the words "tragic,"
"comic," "heroic," "the unities," "wit," "taste," "humor," "Nature"?
The historian finds the answer in a thousand casual expressions,
each one of which bears the stamp of the period and the race. The
Englishman interprets the general laws and phrases of European
criticism in terms of his own neighborhood and time, and a collec-
tion of English critical essays thus illustrates the traits of the English
national character.
THE HISTORY OF THE WORD "ESSAY*
Let us now turn from the broader relations of the essay with
criticism, and endeavor to ascertain precisely what the word "essay"
means. The older English form of the word is "assay," i. e., a trial
or experiment. It is derived, through the French, from a late Latin
word "exagium," which means a standard weight, or more precisely,
the act of weighing. The word "examine" comes from the same
Latin root. As defined by the "Century Dictionary," "essay" means i,
A trial, attempt or endeavor; 2, An experimental trial or test; 3, An
assay or test of metal; 4, In literature, a discursive composition con-
cerned with a particular subject, usually shorter and less methodical
and finished than a treatise; a short disquisition. Dr. Samuel John-
son, who was himself one of the most famous essayists of his day,
defines "essay" in his Dictionary as "A loose sally of the mind; an
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 243
irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition."
Possibly it was the Doctor's happy word "sally" which suggested to
a recent writer, Mr. F. N. Zabriskie, the following excellent defini-
tion: "The essay is properly a collection of notes, indicating certain
aspects of a subject, or suggesting thoughts concerning it; ... not
a formal siege, but a series of assaults, essays or attempts upon it."
It is for this reason that Mr. Zabriskie calls the essayist the ex-
cursionist of literature, the literary angler, the meditator rather than
the thinker; and he points out that the German mind is not adapted
to the essay, since the Germans are not satisfied to make mere
assaults upon a subject, mere excursions into it; they must go through
a subject from end to end and leave it a conquered territory.
THE FIRST MODERN ESSAYISTS
Montaigne, who was the initiator of the modern essay (1580),
laid stress upon its essentially autobiographic nature. He confesses
that he writes "not to discover things, but to lay open myself." He
thinks that an essay should be spontaneous and free from every
artificial trammel. It should have the characteristics of open, varied,
wide-ranging talk: "I speak unto paper as unto the first man I
meet." Lord Bacon, whose first edition of essays appeared in 1597,
is more orderly than Montaigne. He masses his material more
closely, keeps to his topic, packs his sentences as full as they will
hold. He is too austere for the leisurely, personal method of Mon-
taigne; he imparts his concentrated worldly wisdom coolly, almost
impassively; he loves the pregnant opening and close. "To write
just treatises," he says, "requireth time in the writer and leisure in
the reader, which is the cause that hath made me choose to write
certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously,
which I have called essays; the word is late, but the thing is ancient.
For Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius, if one mark them well, are but
essays that is, dispersed meditations." And finally, Addison, whose
essays sum up the early eighteenth century as completely as Mon-
taigne and Bacon represent the late Renaissance, is quite as explicit
as they are in emphasizing the informal character of this type of
literature: "When I make choice of a subject that has not been
244 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
treated on by others, I throw together my reflections on it without
any order or method, so that they may appear rather in the looseness
and freedom of an essay, than in the regularity of a set discourse."
THE ANTIQUITY OF THE ESSAY
"The thing is ancient"; there is no doubt of that. Analogies to the
mood of the modern essay and to its urbane, free, flexible
methods of discussion, may be found in the "Dialogues" of Plato, 5
in the "Lives" 6 and "Morals" of Plutarch, in the letters of Cicero, 7
Horace, and the younger Pliny, 8 in the gossipy "Attic Nights" of
Aulus Gellius, in the talks of Epictetus, 9 and the Meditations of
Marcus Aurelius. 10 There is nothing new under the sun; and there
were Greek and Roman gentlemen quite as capable as Montaigne of
writing with frankness, ease, quaintness, and an open-minded atti-
tude of skeptical inquiry. But though they often revealed the spirit
of the modern essayist, they were groping uncertainly after the
appropriate literary form. Montaigne's great achievement was to
hazard his fortunes in an unsurpassed series of "sallies," "assaults,"
"assays" upon a hundred entrenched topics, and always to come
bravely off so that his tactics became the model for all literary
skirmishes. To think and feel and write like Montaigne was to
produce the modern essay. Without his example, it is doubtful if
we should have had the essays of Lamb, of Emerson, and of
Stevenson.
EFFECT OF THE RENAISSANCE ON THE ESSAY
Supporting the whole theory and practice of Montaigne, un-
doubtedly, stood the Renaissance itself. This "re-birth" of the human
mind, this new awakening of vital energies and intellectual powers,
involved a new way of looking at the world. Nothing seemed quite
the same as it had been. Church and empire and feudal system were
apparently weakening; new nationalities, new languages were to
be reckoned with; new continents were explored, new inventions
altered the face of daily life; a new intellectual confidence, inquiry,
criticism, supplanted the mediaeval obedience to authority. There
5 See, for example, H. C., ii, 5*?. 6 H. C., xii, 58. 7 H. C., ix, gfi.
8 H. C., ix. 187. 9 H. C., ii, i !?# 10 H. C., ii, 193^.
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 245
was a new "weighing," "assaying" of all things. The actual world
was changing before men's eyes, and the inner world changed no
less. There was universal curiosity about individual capacities and
opinions, experiences and tastes. The whole "undulating and
various" scheme of things to use a favorite expression of Montaigne
was a direct provocative of the essay state of mind; and the essay
form, in turn, in its looseness, vagueness, and range, was singularly
adapted to the intellectual spirit of the period.
THE BOOKISH ESSAY
One type of Renaissance essay, for example, concerned itself with
a casual survey of the fragments of the classical and mediaeval world.
Modern books like Taylor's "Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages,"
and "The Mediaeval Mind," Einstein's "Italian Renaissance in Eng-
land," Sir Sidney Lee's "French Renaissance in England," Spingarn's
"Literary Criticism in the Renaissance," and Saintsbury's "History
of Criticism" set before us, with abundance of detail, the kind and
extent of knowledge of the past which was possessed by Renaissance
essayists. Caxton's naive Prologues and Epilogues 11 to the popular
classical and mediaeval books which he issued in English, Sir Philip
Sidney's chivalrous "Defense of Poesy," 12 and Edmund Spenser's
explanation to Sir Walter Raleigh of the purpose of "The Faerie
Queene" 13 are good illustrations of the attitude of typical English-
men toward the imaginative life of the past. Gregory Smith's col-
lection of "Elizabethan Critical Essays" affords a fairly complete view
of the critical ideas which sixteenth-century England had inherited
from Europe. The evolution of the English critical essay, during the
three hundred years which have elapsed since then, is mainly the
story of the preservation of these ideas and their modification or
transformation under the successive impacts of new intellectual
forces, and of differing social and literary conditions.
THE ESSAY AS EXPRESSIVE OF CURIOSITY ABOUT LIFE
Another type of essay, originating in the Renaissance, and a
favorite with Montaigne, deals not so much with books as with life
itself. The new culture, the novel intellectual perceptions, altered
11 H. C., xxxix, 5 ff. " H. C., xxvii, 5 ff. H c>> xxxix> 6l
246 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
at once the accepted theories of man's duty and destiny. Montaigne
does not dogmatize about these matters: he asks questions, he sug-
gests possible answers. The speculative essay, the philosophical and
scientific essay, the social essay which draws its materials from the
ever-renewed revelation of the actual life of man, all find their
source in an awakened curiosity. The enthusiasm, the gusto, with
which sixteenth-century men discussed every topic within their
range of vision, has remained an integral element of the effective
essay. A man may set himself sadly and grimly to work upon his
formal treatise, and write it through to the end with disillusion in
his soul. But the born essayist, though knowing well enough that
his raids into unconquered territory must be merely a perpetual
series of sallies and retreats, nevertheless advances gayly to the
assault. Like Lamb and Stevenson, he preaches without being a
preacher; like Huxley and Tyndall, he teaches when he means only
to inform; so communicable and infectious is this gift of curiosity
about life.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
There is a third type of essay, originating in the Renaissance
emphasis upon individualism, and confidently asserting itself upon
the pages of Montaigne, 14 Addison, Hazlitt, De Quincey, 15 Emer-
son, 16 Thoreau, 17 and a hundred other men. It is the autobiographic,
"egotistic" essay in which there is rarely any insolence of egotism,
but only an insatiable curiosity about oneself, and an entire willing-
ness to discuss that question in public. If you like the man who is
talking, this kind of essay is the most delightful of all. But it be-
trays a great deal, and like lyric verse the most intensely per-
sonalized mode of poetry it sometimes betrays too much. When
the right balance is struck between openness and conceit, or when,
as with Emerson, the man is sweet and sound to the core, the self-
revealing essay justifies itself. Indeed, it is thought by some critics
that the subjective or lyrical quality of the essay is a part of its
essential character. Thus Professor A. C. Bradley has asserted:
"Brevity, simplicity, and singleness of presentation; the strong play
14 H. C., xxxii, stf. 15 H. C., xxvii, 78*?., 267^.,
16 H. C., v, sff . 17 H. C., xxviii,
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 247
of personality, the subjective charm, the delicate touch, the limited
range of theme and of treatment, and the ordered beauty through
exclusion of all disordered moods and fiercer passions these flow
directly from the presence and dominance of the lyrical element,
and these are the constant features of the Essay."
One should add, perhaps, that all three of the essay types here
touched upon the "critical," the "ethical" or "philosophic," and the
"personal" were strongly colored during the Renaissance, as they
have been at intervals ever since, by the spirit of nationalism. French
criticism, in the sixteenth century as in the nineteenth, is very French.
English criticism, in Dryden and Arnold, is very English; the moral-
izing of Milton's tractates and of Samuel Johnson's "Lives of the
Poets," the personal assertiveness of Thoreau's essay on "Walking,"
and Lowell's essay on "Democracy" 18 bear the unmistakable accents
of England and of America. Blood tells, in the essay as else-
where.
ESSAYS AS HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS
In fact, one of the most interesting studies made available through
The Harvard Classics is the survey of various national moods in suc-
cessive historical periods. Take, for instance, the English essayists
of the eighteenth century. Here are characteristic utterances of men
so differently yet richly endowed as Addison and Swift, Steele and
Defoe, 19 Sidney and Samuel Johnson, Hume 20 and Burke, 21 yet the
student of the eighteenth century, whether he is reading Hume or
Burke on Taste, or Johnson explaining the plan of his great Dic-
tionary, 22 Defoe's ironical scheme for ridding the world of Dis-
senters, or Addison's delicately sentimental musings in Westminster
Abbey, detects, beneath all the differences in style and varieties of
personal opinion, the unmistakable traits of race, nation, and period.
These essays are thus historical documents of high importance. One
understands better, for reading them, the England of Marlborough
and of Walpole, the England of the Pitts and the four Georges. Any
one century, as Carlyle said long ago, is the lineal descendant of all
the preceding centuries, and an intelligent reading of the English
18 H. C., xxviii, 45 iff.
19 H. C., xxvii, giff., 83ff., 133^. 20 H. C., xxvii, 203.
21 H. C., xxiv, ii. 22 H. C., xxxix, i82ff.
248 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
essays of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries is
one of the best ways of learning that significant lesson.
ARISTOTLE AND THE CRITICAL ESSAY
Even if the reader of these essays has no special knowledge of
English history, and has hitherto paid but little attention to the in-
fluence of one school of thought upon its successors, he cannot
help discovering one difference between what we have called "the
essay" and its more specialized form "the critical essay." "The
essay" moves in a circle. Its orbit tends to return perpetually upon
itself. One may even say that the type was already complete in
Montaigne, and that since then it has made no real advance; that we
have only a succession of essayists, doing, of course with infinite
personal varieties of pattern, precisely what Montaigne showed them
how to do. But the critical essay advances, albeit by zigzag lines.
It is obliged to tack, as the winds of doctrine shift and the tides of
opinion ebb and flow, yet it is always steering, and not merely
drifting. Take, for example, the most famous critical essay of the
Greeks, the "Poetics" of Aristotle. It is an attempt to establish certain
fundamental principles of aesthetic criticism, such as the laws of
epic poetry and the nature of tragedy. It analyzed the structure of
contemporary works of literary art, tested the psychological effect
of poem and play upon the mind of the reader and spectator, and
laid down some shrewd rules for the guidance of poets. It is an
essay rather than an exhaustive treatise, but it is by no means the
sort of essay which Montaigne would have written had he been a
Greek. It is impersonal, analytical, scientific. And so logical is its
matter, so penetrating its insight, that it became a model of sound
critical procedure.
The "rules" of Aristotle, based as they were upon the facts of
human nature and the character of the literature of his day, de-
served the reverence with which they were treated by the men who
rediscovered them in the Renaissance. Trouble came only when the
attempt was made to apply them rigidly and mechanically to poems
and dramas of a type different from anything that Aristotle had
known. Yet out of this very confusion and necessity for readjust-
ment came the "critical essay" as we know it. Aristotle had set up
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 249
Truth as his beacon mark: Truth to the physical and psychological
facts, to the laws of beauty which are also laws of the mind. When
the critics of the Renaissance and of the age of Neo-Classicism in
France and England, confronted as they were by new facts, tried
loyally to adjust the Aristotelian formulae to the writings of Tasso,
Shakespeare, and Moliere, they made queer work of it. They en-
deavored to keep in mind both "the polestar of the ancients" and
the "rules of the French stage among the moderns," to say nothing
of the cross currents of actual contemporary fact. It was a difficult
course to sail, and it is no wonder that the history of the critical
essay exhibits every variety of daring or faltering seamanship. But
the beacon mark of Truth was there all the while, and though no
navigator has ever succeeded in beating quite up to it, it is reward
enough for the critical essayist if he seems to be making headway.
CRITICAL TRADITION AND THE ESSAY
The writer of the critical essay, in short, finds that his course has
been laid out for him by the very nature of the task which he has
undertaken. The mere essayist, as we have seen, can sail in a circle,
starting and ending with his own fancies; but the man who uses
the essay as the vehicle of criticism must use chart and compass;
must proceed from a given starting point to a definite point of
arrival. And he cannot do this if he is ignorant of the efforts of his
predecessors, and unaware of the general aims and methods of
critical procedure. If he is writing, for instance, on the theory of
poetry, he does not wish to leave the matter where he found it: he
desires to make, if he can, a contribution to that branch of human
knowledge. But he is not likely to succeed unless he has a tolerably
clear notion of just how far the world-old discussion has proceeded
at the point where he himself takes up the debate. When Horace
wrote that clever versified essay on the poet's art, an essay which
has been irreverently termed "the business man's guide to poetry,"
he had no intention of slavishly imitating the rules of the Greek
theorists. But after all, his father had sent him to a Greek Uni-
versity, and the ghosts of his old professors were peeping over his
shoulders as he wrote. And when, long afterward, the Italian Vida
and the Frenchman Boileau came to write their own verse essays on
250 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
the same topic, the ghost of the clever Roman held their pens. Sidney
and Shelley, in composing their eloquent Defences of Poetry, 23 had
probably no conscious thought of continuing the formal discussion
of poetic theory which the Greeks began and the Renaissance resus-
citated; nevertheless, their confessions of faith in poetry form an
essential chapter in the evolution of criticism. So with the prefaces
of Wordsworth and Coleridge and Walt Whitman. 24 These men
are innovators in theory and practice of their craft, but, like most
of the successful innovators and "modernists" in art, they possessed a
fairly accurate knowledge of the ancient defenses which they were
trying to carry by assault. Yet these assaults, no matter how bril-
liant, never really end the siege. The final truth escapes complete
analysis and definition. The history of the critical essay shows only
a series of approximations, a record of endeavors which must be
constantly renewed.
TYPES OF CRITICISM
Out of all this variety of effort, however, three tendencies of
criticism emerge. They are usually called the "judicial," the "inter-
pretative," and the "impressionistic." The theoretical distinction
between these tendencies of criticism is clear enough. "Judicial"
criticism passes judgment upon established facts. It deals primarily
with rules, with the "canons" of criticism, although it may, of
course, examine the principles upon which these rules are based.
Its estimates are likely to be dogmatic and magisterial. It says
bluntly, in the voice of Jeffrey, that Wordsworth's "Excursion" "will
never do"; that his "White Doe of Rylstone" is "the very worst
poem we ever saw imprinted in a quarto volume." It declares, with
Professor Churton Collins, that "Criticism is to literature what
legislation and government are to states." The aim of "interpreta-
tive" criticism, on the other hand, is not so much to pass judgment
upon a specific work, as to explain it. It seeks and establishes, if
possible, correct texts; it makes clear the biographical and historical
facts essential to an understanding of the work in question. It
finds and reveals the meaning and beauty there contained. It points
out the ethical and social significance of the literary product. To
23 H. C., xxvii, 5ff. and 329^. 24 See Lecture III, below.
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 251
explain a book, no doubt, is often tantamount to judging it; for if
the book be demonstrated to be full of corruption, that is the most
effective way of declaring it a corrupt book. Nevertheless, the object
of the "interpretative" or "appreciative" critic is primarily expository,
and he prefers that the reader himself should pass ultimate judgment,
in the light of the exposition which has been made. He puts the
needful facts before the jury, and then rests his case. Sainte-Beuve 25
is a master of this sort of criticism, as Jeffrey is of the magisterial.
The "impressionistic" critic, finally, does not concern himself over-
much with the canons. He leaves "universal considerations" and
"the common sense of most" to his rivals. Textual criticism bores
him. The examination of principles strikes him as too "scientific,"
the massing of biographical and historical details seems to him the
work of the historian rather than the critic. He deals frankly in his
own "impressions," his personal preferences, the adventures of his
soul in the presence of masterpieces. He translates the sensations
and emotions which he has experienced in his contact with books
into symbols borrowed from all the other arts and from the inex-
haustible stores of natural beauty. His rivals may call him a man
of caprice rather than a man of taste, but they cannot really confute
him, for such are the infinitely varied modes of physical and
psychological reaction to the presence of the beautiful, that nobody
knows exactly how the other man feels. We must take his word
for it, and the words of impressionistic criticism have often been
uttered with an exquisite delicacy and freshness and radiance that
make all other types of literary criticism seem for the moment mere
cold and formal pedantries.
THE UNION AND MERGING OF TYPES OF CRITICISM
So much for the theoretical distinction between the three tend-
encies. But no one can read many pages of the masters of modern
criticism without becoming aware that all three tendencies frequently
reveal themselves in the same man, and even in the same essay. Some
of the famous "impressionists," like Lamb, Stevenson, Lemaitre, and
Anatole France, know a great deal more about the "canons" than
they wish at the moment to confess. They play so skillfully with the
25 H. C., xxxii,
252 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
overtones of criticism because they know the fundamental tones so
well. Stevenson attempts "scientific" criticism in his essay on "Style,"
"historical" criticism in his essay on Pepys. 26 Jeffrey occasionally
writes "national character" criticism quite in the expository method
of Sainte-Beuve. Coleridge and Emerson, Arnold and Ruskin, 27 are
too many-sided and richly endowed men to limit their literary
essays to any one type of criticism.
The justification of this eclecticism of practice is found, as we
have tried to show, in the nature of the essay itself. It is the most
sinuous, varied, and individualized of all the forms of prose literature.
The moment it begins to deal with critical theory, however, it is
obliged to make its reckoning with some one or more of the processes
of judgment which have been evolved in the history of the race; it
tends then to become "historical," "scientific," "expository," "ju-
dicial"; it sails, as we have said, by the chart, instead of in the
capricious circle of purely personal preferences. And it is in this
relation of "the essay" to "the critical essay" that we discover some-
thing of the literary and social significance of essay writing. It meets
a need of the individual, and performs at the same time a function
for society. The individual reader turns to the essayists for delight,
for stimulus, for consolation, for a fortification of the will. Cicero
and Montaigne and Thoreau will talk to him about friendship and
books and behavior. What more can he ask for? He finds in the
essayists, as in the lyric poets, the reflection of his own moods, his
own tastes, his own varied contact with experience. In their com-
pany, as in the company of every form of art, he becomes intimately
aware of the fullness and richness of life. As for society at large,
the essayists and particularly those who have occupied themselves
with criticism have aided in the establishment of standards of
judgment. These standards are impersonal and relatively stable.
They alter somewhat, it is true, with the progress of civilization, and
with the temper of successive historical periods in each of the civil-
ized races of the world. But for any one generation the "norm"
exists. The departures from it and the returns to it constitute the
aesthetic and intellectual activity of that generation. Expansion and
contraction, the study of mankind followed by the study of individual
26 H. C., xxviii, 285*?. 27 H. C., xxvlii, 93^.
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 253
men and women; then a new series of generalizations followed by
another series of concrete applications of ideas to life that is the
history of culture. And while "the essay" has from time to time
asserted the claims of liberty in all matters of the mind, "the critical
essay" has with equal persistence recognized and maintained the
claims of authority. One generation needs, no doubt, that its literary
skirmishes should fight mainly on the side of freedom, and another
generation will need no less that they should rally to the defense of
law. There can be little doubt of the primary need of our own
generation in America. We shall find most profit in reading those
essayists who have a respect for literary standards, who are on the
side of law.
II. WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES READ
BY PROFESSOR W. A. NEILSON
THE history of English literary criticism may be said to begin
ivith Sir Philip Sidney's "Defense of Poesy." l A few treatises
on rhetoric and prosody preceded it, but it was with this
book that there reached England the first important influx from
the main current of the Italian and French criticism of the Renais-
sance. In the preceding centuries men had, of course, expressed
opinions about books; but these were random and personal, backed
by no theory, part of no system, the casual utterances of men who
merely knew what they liked.
THE EVIDENCE AS TO MEDI/EVAL TASTE IN LITERATURE
But the taste of an age can be inferred from other sources than
the formal judgments of official critics. The evidence of vogue,
when it can be obtained, is more significant, for the obvious reason
that a man's spending tells us more than his words of what he
values. For the centuries when books circulated in manuscript only,
the facts as to popularity are hard to get at, since the numbers of
those that have survived are the residuum of a thousand accidents;
but the introduction of printing in the latter part of the fifteenth
century affords an opportunity of an exceptional kind to learn which
of the works then in existence were judged most promising and most
worthy of the wider publicity which the new process made possible.
It is for this reason that William Caxton, the first of English printers,
is really an important figure in the history of literary opinion; for
not only did he preface the books he printed with quaint and in-
genuous statements of his own reasons for thinking them important,
but the mere fact of his choosing them is a valuable evidence of their
popularity as estimated by a shrewd man of business.
1 Harvard Classics, xxvii, 5-51; and cf. Professor Bliss Perry's lecture on "Theories
of Poetry" in this series.
254
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 255
THE PREPONDERANCE OF DIDACTIC LITERATURE
As a matter of fact, this evidence coincides remarkably with the
inferences that literary historians have drawn from other data. The
fables which pass under the name of "^Esop," z to begin with what
is probably the most ancient of the works he issued, had been popular
for many centuries, and the tangle of the relationships of the endless
mediaeval collections in various languages is one of the most puzzling
problems left for the modern scholar to solve. Their value Caxton
seems to take for granted, largely, we may presume, because the
didactic purpose which he always looks for first lies upon the sur-
face and did not need to be pointed out. Indeed, more than half of
the publications of Caxton, the Prologues and Epilogues of which
are printed in The Harvard Classics, are confessedly of that im-
proving kind for which the Middle Ages had so insatiable an appe-
tite. The "Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers" 3 and the "Dis-
tichs" 4 of Cato were collections of aphoristic wisdom, the appeal of
which is apparent, not merely from the number of copies made,
but also from the frequency with which we find them quoted by all
kinds of mediaeval writers.
THE GOLDEN LEGEND
The "Golden Legend" 5 was more specifically pious. It is the
best-known collection of those marvelous stories of saints which
happily performed the double service of cultivating faith and of
providing entertainment by their constant stimulation of the sense
of wonder. It is only the former of those services, however, which
is explicitly recognized by Caxton. "As gold is most noble above all
other metals, in like wise is this legend holden most noble above
all other works," he says, and he prays "that it profit to all them
that shall read or hear it read, and may increase in them virtue, and
expel vice and sin, that by the example of the holy saints amend
their living here in this short life."
2 H. C., xxxix, i7ff. 3 H c
4 H. C., xxxix, 15. 5// c xxxix
256 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
LITERATURE OF ENTERTAINMENT
Of Chaucer's works he prints the immortal "Canterbury Tales";
and in the "Proem" 6 to this book he expatiates in praise of Chaucer's
style and substance, both because "he comprehended his matters in
short, quick, and high sentences, eschewing prolixity, casting away
the chaff of superfluity, and shewing the picked grain of sentence
uttered by crafty and sugared eloquence" a characterization of the
first great master of English which few of his later critics have
bettered. The whole tone of this "Proem" is of a singularly noble and
elevated enthusiasm, and in its evident genuineness and warmth it
makes us forget that we are reading one of the earliest of English
publishers' advertisements.
THE TROJAN LEGEND AND THE
The story of Troy, as everyone is aware, was unknown to the
Middle Ages in the Homeric version. Two Latin prose works pur-
porting to be derived from Greek contemporary accounts by Dares
the Phrygian and Dictys the Cretan formed the basis of the mediaeval
tradition. These were elaborated into a French metrical romance
by Benoit de Sainte Maure in the twelfth century, and from him the
Sicilian Guido delle Colonne derived the material for his Latin prose
history of Troy. For the later Middle Ages Guido was the main
source. It is to this tradition that Boccaccio's romance of "Filostrato"
belongs, with Chaucer's expansion and paraphrase of it in his
"Troilus." On Guido also depends that French priest Raoul le
Feure, 7 whom Caxton translated in Bruges and Ghent, and "finished
in Cologne, in the time of the troublous world," when England was
torn by the Wars of the Roses, and there was little peace for letters
at home. Under these circumstances it is perhaps little wonder that
the chief justification he offers for his labor in translation is the hope
that the destruction of Troy "may be example to all men during
the world how dreadful and jeopardous it is to begin a war, and
what harms, losses, and death followeth."
The Troy story he continued in his translation of a French version
*H. C., xxxix, 1 8. For examples of the "Canterbury Tales," see H. C., xl, 11-51.
7 H. C., xxxix, 5ff.
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 257
of the "^Eneid" 8 of Virgil, "that noble poet and great clerk." In
this work he tells us he stood in great doubt between those advisers
who urged him to use language which could be understood of the
common people and those who wanted him to use the most curious
terms he could find. He chose a middle path, "forasmuch as this
present book is not for a rude uplandish man to labour therein ne
read it, but only for a clerk and a noble gentleman that feeleth and
understandeth in feats of arms, in love and in noble chivalry."
CAXTON ON MALORY
Finally, we have his Prologue to the great book of "King Arthur" 8
compiled by his contemporary, Sir Thomas Malory. If the Troy
story was the favorite classical tale in mediaeval times, the romances
connected with King Arthur were the most notable and the most
widely diffused of more recent imaginative literature. Founded on a
minute basis of old British history, the Arthurian legends had passed
from the chronicles into romance, finding their most important
artistic development in France, but spreading in translation and
paraphrase into every country of western Europe. At the close of
the Middle Ages, an English knight, Sir Thomas Malory, collected,
chiefly from French prose versions, materials for a loosely organ-
ized compilation of all the more important adventures, and retold
them in a style and spirit that make his book one of the great monu-
ments of English prose. For this book Caxton had the warmest
admiration; and, though here, if anywhere, we have a literature of
entertainment, in it also Caxton finds a possibility of moral and
spiritual improvement. Few of his words are better known than his
worthy praise of Malory : "And I, according to my copy, have down
set it in print, to the intent that noble men may see and learn the
noble acts of chivalry, the gentle and virtuous deeds that some
knights used in those days, by which they came to honour, and
how they that were vicious were punished and oft put to shame and
rebuke; humbly beseeching all noble lords and ladies and all other
estates, of what estate or degree they be of, that shall see and read
in this said book and work, that they take the good and honest
8 H. C., xxxix, 24. For a modern translation, see H. C., vol. xiii.
9 //. C., xxxix, 20. For the story of the Holy Grail from Malory, see H. C., xxxv,
105-214, and cf. Dr. Maynadier's lecture in the series on Prose Fiction.
258 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
acts in their remembrance and to follow the same, wherein they
shall find many joyous and pleasant histories and noble and re-
nowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalry. For herein may
be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardyhood,
love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue and sin. Do after
the good and leave the evil and it shall bring you to good fame and
renown. And for to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to
read in; but for to give faith and believe that all is true that is con-
tained herein, ye be at your liberty. But all is written for our
doctrine."
This last sentence sums up the chief points in the professional
faith of the father of English printing. Edification was assumed
by him as by his age as the prime, if not the only, justification for
writing and publishing. Yet, in spite of this narrow assumption,
Caxton and the authors he did so much to make accessible were
clearly sensitive to the element of delight as well as of instruction
in literature; and enough has been said of the contents of these
Prologues to show how rich they are in indications not only of what
the Middle Ages read, but why they read it.
As for Caxton's own motives, if we took him literally, we should
suppose that he translated and printed mainly to save himself from
the sin of idleness. Yet a more generous impulse is easily read be-
tween the lines; and it is no mere self-regarding purpose that finds
utterance in the words he penned as he closed wearily his long labor
on the "Recuyell of the Histories of Troy": "Thus end I this book,
which I have translated after mine Author as nigh as God hath
given me cunning, to whom be given the laud and praising. And
for as much as in the writing of the same my pen is worn, my hand
weary and not steadfast, mine eyne dimmed with overmuch looking
on the white paper, and my courage not so prone and ready to labour
as it hath been, and that age creepeth on me daily and feebleth all
the body, and also because I have promised to divers gentlemen and
to my friends to address them as hastily as I might this same book,
therefore I have practised and learned at my great charge and dis-
pense to ordain this said book in print, after the manner and form as
ye may here see, and is not written with pen and ink as other books
be, to the end that every man may have them at once."
III. THEORIES OF POETRY
BY PROFESSOR BLISS PERRY
AONG the various critical essays presented in The Harvard
Classics no group is more interesting than that which deals
with the theory of poetry. Our consideration of the literary
form or quality of the essay has already shown us that we should
not expect from the essayist an exhaustive treatise, but rather a free
and spirited and suggestive discussion of certain aspects of his sub-
ject. To write adequately upon the general theme of poetry, ex-
pounding its nature, its aesthetic and social significance, and its
technique, would be an enormously difficult task. But there are few
poets who have not uttered at one time or another some of the
secrets of this craft, or some phase of their admiration for it. Let us
glance at the essays of eight English and American poets, ranging
in time from the age of Elizabeth to the Victorian epoch: Sidney,
Dryden, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Poe, Whitman, and
Arnold. Four of this group, Dryden, Coleridge, Poe, and Arnold,
are acknowledged adepts in general literary criticism; while Sidney
and Shelley, Wordsworth and Whitman, have given expression to
some of the most eloquent and revealing things that have ever been
written about their own art of poetry.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
Sidney's "Defense of Poesy," * like Shelley's, is a reply to an attack,
but neither poet is very angry, nor does either believe that his oppo-
nent has done much harm. Shelley's antagonist was a humorously
Philistine essay by his friend Peacock. Sidney is answering some-
what indirectly a fellow Puritan, Gosson, whose "School of Abuse"
(1579) had attacked the moral shortcomings of ancient poetry and
the license of the contemporary stage. Yet Sidney's "pitiful defense
of poor poetry," as he playfully terms his essay, is composed in no
1 Harvard Classics, xxvii, 5ff.
259
260 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
narrowly controversial spirit, but rather in a strain of noble en-
thusiasm. He brings to his task a sufficient learning, a knowledge
of the poetics of Plato and Aristotle, and an acquaintance with the
humanistic critics of Italy and France. He knows his Homer and
Virgil, his Horace and Ovid, but he does not on that account despise
the "old song of Percy and Douglas." The nobility of Sidney's tone
and his beauty of phrasing are no less notable than the clear ordering
of his thought. In one close-packed paragraph after another, he
praises the poet as a teacher and creator, compares poetry with his-
tory and philosophy, and finds, as Aristotle has done before him,
that it is nobler than either. He discusses the various types of poetry,
testing their capacities for teaching and moving the reader. Then,
after a skillful refutation of the current objections against poetry,
he turns, like a true Englishman, to the poetry of his own race,
which was just then beginning, though Sidney did not foresee it, its
most splendid epoch. He condemns, for instance, as being "neither
right tragedies nor right comedies," that type of tragi-comedy which
Shakespeare was soon to make illustrious. This opinion is now
reckoned, of course, a heresy, as is Sidney's other opinion that verse
is not essential to poetry. Yet no one who loves Sidney can quarrel
with him over this or that opinion. His essay has proved itself, for
more than three centuries, to be what he claimed for the beautiful
art which he was celebrating a permanent source of instruction
and delight.
DRYDEN AS CRITIC
One hundred years after Sidney's untimely death, the prince of
English criticism was John Dryden. He made no pretense of actual
government: he "follows the Rules afar off." He is full of contra-
dictions, reflecting the changing hues of contemporary taste, com-
promising between the classic and the romantic, changing his views
as often as he likes, always readable and personal, always, in the
best sense, "impressionistic," always, as Professor Ker has said of him,
"sceptical, tentative, disengaged." His early essay "Of Dramatic
Poesy" is full of youthful zest for Shakespeare and romance. Then
he turns conformist, aiming "to delight the age in which I live"
and to justify its prevalent neo-classic taste; but presently he comes
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 26 1
back to his "incomparable Shakespeare," praises Longinus, and aban-
dons rhyme. In his next period he turns rationalist, and exalts
"good sense" and "propriety." In the last dozen years of his life his
enthusiasm for highly imaginative literature returns; he translates
Juvenal and Virgil, and modernizes Chaucer; he is "lost in admira-
tion over Virgil," though at heart he "prefers Homer." It is in this
final stage of his career as a critic that he writes the charming praise
of Chaucer, which is reprinted in The Harvard Classics. 2 It is the
perfection of essay writing. "Here is God's plenty," as he exclaims
of the elder poet, in whom he finds a soul congenial to his own.
Dryden did not, it is true, quite understand Chaucer's verse, else
he could never have found it "not harmonious," yet he makes royal
amends by admitting that "there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch
tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect." In
his earlier "Apology for Heroic Poetry" (1677) he salutes "the de-
ceased author of 'Paradise Lost,' " then three years dead, and calls
Milton's masterpiece "one of the greatest, most noble, and most
sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced."
WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
Dryden's best pages of criticism tempt one, in brief, to agree with
him in declaring that "Poets themselves are the most proper, though
I conclude not the only critics." The critical writings of Wordsworth
and Coleridge confirm us in that opinion. Wordsworth is less facile
than Dryden, and he does not range so far. Coleridge, by natural
endowment one of the greatest of literary critics, is desultory and in-
dolent. But the two men, when focusing their masterly powers upon
the defense and interpretation of that mode of Romantic poetry in
which their own creative energies were for a time absorbed, produced
criticism which has affected the whole subsequent development of
English literature. Coleridge's lecture on "Poesy or Art," 3 for in-
stance, is full of those flashes of penetrative insight which reveal
the born critic: Art "is the power of humanizing nature"; "passion
itself imitates order"; "beauty is the union of the shapely with the
vital"; "the subjects chosen for works of art should be such as really
are capable of being expressed and conveyed within the limits of
2 H. C., xxxix, I53ff. 3 H. C., xxvii, 255(1.
262 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
those arts." Wordsworth's "Preface" 4 to his epoch-making early
poems should be read in connection with Coleridge's comments in
the "Biographia Literaria," and in the light of the well-known fact
as to the proposed division of labor between the two young poets in
the composition of the "Lyrical Ballads." Coleridge intended to
treat supernatural objects as if they really existed. Wordsworth
wished to find in natural objects elements of novelty and surprise,
that is, the romance of everyday experience. The two methods
blended of course, like the colors at the extreme edges of the
spectrum. Wordsworth's successive statements of his purpose em-
phasize now his use of "the language of conversation in the middle
and lower classes," as if it were mainly a question of poetic diction;
then he stresses the necessity of truth to "the primary laws of our
nature," and debates the aesthetic question of "the association of
ideas in a state of excitement"; finally, he qualifies his first utterances
by pointing out that the diction should be a "selection of language
really used by men," and that the incidents and situations treated by
the poet should have "a certain colouring of the imagination." Such
criticism as this, if accompanied by close study of the verbal altera-
tions which Wordsworth made in the text of his poems as his theories
changed, is in the highest degree stimulating and profitable.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The influence of Coleridge is traceable throughout Shelley's "De-
fence of Poetry" 5 (1821). Shelley rides into the lists with as high a
heart as Sidney, to repel the attack, not of the "moralists" but of
the utilitarians. He is not conscious, like Sidney, Dryden, and
Arnold, of the history of criticism. He has steeped himself, it is
true, in Plato, but he writes with the enthusiasm of a new and per-
sonal vision. Poetry, to him, is primarily the expression of the
imagination: "it redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity
in man"; "it is the record of the best and happiest moments of the
happiest and best minds"; "a poem is the very image of life ex-
pressed in its eternal truth"; poetry "acts in a divine but un-
apprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness"; "a poet
participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one." Though the
4 H. C., xxxix, 267 ff., 2928., 3 1 iff. 5 H. C., xxvii, 3298.
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 263
student of poetical theory can easily claim that such sentences as
these are post-Coleridgean, they are really timeless, like the glorious
spirit of Shelley itself.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Poe's essay on "The Poetic Principle," 6 written to serve as a
lecture during the last year (1849) of his brief life, illustrates his
conviction that "the truly imaginative mind is never otherwise than
analytic." As applied to Shelley, this dictum is far from true, but
it expresses Poe's idealization of his own extraordinary gift for
logical analysis. He was a craftsman who was never weary of
explaining the trade secrets of his art, and though his criticism is
uneven in quality and uninformed by deep and accurate scholar-
ship, he expounded certain critical principles with incomparable
clearness.
In "The Poetic Principle," together with some popularization of
Coleridge, and some admixture no doubt of that "fudge" which
Lowell thought so inextricably compounded with Poe's "genius,"
there will be found the famous definition of the "Poetry of words
as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty." Poetry, according to Poe,
excites, by elevating the soul. But as all excitements, by psychological
necessity, are transient, it is only short poems that are truly poems
at all. Such brief and indeterminate glimpses of the supernal loveli-
ness, "the creation of supernal beauty," is the poet's struggle and
despair. If Poe's formulation of the task and method of poetry
lacks, as it doubtless does, universal validity, it is nevertheless a key
to the understanding of his own exquisitely musical fragments of
lyric verse.
WHITMAN ON AMERICA AND POETRY
Walt Whitman, like Poe and Coleridge, is mystic and transcen-
dental in his theory of poetry. Unlike them, he is an arch-rebel in
poetic practice. The Preface to "Leaves of Grass" 7 (1855) * s not so
much a critical essay as a manifesto. It is vociferous, impassioned,
inconsecutive. Some paragraphs of it were later turned into verse,
so rich was it in emotion. The central theme is the opportunity
6 H. C., xxviii,
264 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
which the immediate age in America offers to the poet. The past has
had its fit poetical expression, but the new world of democracy and
science now demands a different type of bard. The qualifications are
obdurately clear: he must love the earth and animals and common
people; he must be in his own flesh a poem, at one with the universe
of things; his soul must be great and unconstrained. He must per-
ceive that everything is miraculous and divine. The poet is to be
the priest of the new age, and of all the coming ages. Whitman
does not enter, in the Preface, upon the discussion of the technique
of his own unmetrical, rhapsodic verse. Yet this verse, which has
challenged the attention of two generations, and which is slowly
making its way toward general recognition, is scarcely to be under-
stood without a knowledge of the theory of poetry which underlies
it. The Preface states that theory, confusedly, if one tries to parse
and weigh it sentence by sentence, but adequately, if one watches
simply, as Whitman bids, the "drift" of it.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"I do not contest Mr. Walt Whitman's powers and originality,"
wrote Matthew Arnold in 1866, but he adds this warning: "No one
can afford in literature to trade merely on his own bottom and to
take no account of what the other ages and nations have acquired:
a great original literature America will never get in this way, and
her intellect must inevitably consent to come, in a considerable
measure, into the European movement." It is not the least useful
service of Arnold's own essay on "The Study of Poetry" 8 that it
takes us at once into this European movement. The essay was
written as a preface to a collection of English verse "one great
contributory stream to the world river of poetry." Arnold insists
throughout, in characteristic fashion, upon the necessity of develop-
ing a sense for the best, for the really excellent. He points out the
fallacies involved in the purely historical and the purely personal
estimates. He uses lines and expressions of the great masters as
"touchstones" for detecting the presence or absence of high poetic
quality. He takes Aristotle's remark about the "higher truth" and
8 H. C., xxviii, 6sff.
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 265
"higher seriousness" of poetry as compared to history, and tests
therewith the "classic" matter and manner of English poets.
There are pitfalls, without question, lurking in the path of Arnold's
apparently sure-footed and adroit method, but the temper of his
performance needs no praise. He brings us steadily and serenely back
to "the European movement," to the laws and standards that endure.
But he also teaches that life and art are inexhaustible in their re-
sources. "The future of poetry is immense"; that is the first sentence
of Arnold's essay; and it will be also the confirmed final truth of
any reader who has taken pains to acquaint himself with the
utterance of poets about poetry. Walter Bagehot wrote long ago:
"The bare idea that poetry is a deep thing, a teaching thing, the
most surely and wisely elevating of human things, is even now to
the coarse public mind nearly unknown. . . . All about and around
us a faith in poetry struggles to be extricated, but it is not extricated.
Some day, at the touch of the true word, the whole confusion will
by magic cease; the broken and shapeless notions will cohere and
crystallize into a bright and true theory." We are still waiting, no
doubt, for that true and final word, but if it is ever spoken, it is
likely to be uttered by one of the poets.
IV. AESTHETIC CRITICISM IN
GERMANY
BY PROFESSOR W. G. HOWARD
GDETHE admonishes the artist to create in forms of beauty,
not to talk about beauty, and it is certain that no man
ever became a poet from the study of an "art of poetry."
Language is abstract, and art is concrete, the understanding is slow
and emotion is swift, the reason may be convinced, but the senses
cannot be persuaded. There is no disputing about tastes. Neverthe-
less, we know that taste can be cultivated, and that understanding
not only makes the taste more discriminating but also multiplies
the sources of aesthetic pleasure. Artists as well as amateurs and
philosophers have ever sought to further such understanding.
The sculptor or the painter, whose primary means of expression
are forms and colors, assumes the secondary function of teacher when
he places at the disposal of his "school" the results of his studies in
technique or theory. The philosophical lover of art delights to
speculate on the constituents of beauty, and the critic boldly formu-
lates the laws upon the basis of which he judges and classifies.
Poetry, probably the earliest of the fine arts, was first subjected to
this aesthetic legislation; but music, dancing, sculpture, and painting
were soon brought under the same dominion, and have long been
regarded as sisters of one and the same household with poetry.
THE RISE OF ESTHETIC CRITICISM
Especially since the revival of learning in the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, practice in the arts has been accomplished by a
running commentary of theory. The men of the Renaissance, having
before them not merely numerous examples of Greek sculpture and
the epics of Homer and Virgil, but also Aristotle's "Poetics" and
Horace's "Art of Poetry," and seeing in these products of antiquity
266
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 267
the height of human achievement, attempted in various ways to
apply the canons of ancient taste to the settlement of contemporary
problems. Accordingly, we find in Italy and, following the Italians,
in France, England, and Germany, many writers on aesthetics only
gradually emancipating themselves from the constraint of certain
axioms which, being ancient, are unhesitatingly received as authori-
tative. Thus, all of the fine arts are, with Aristotle, regarded as arts
of imitation imitation, not of real but of ideal nature, of beautiful
nature, as the French call it; and this vague and elusive conception
is usually left without any very illuminating definition. Similarly,
a painting is thought of, after Simonides, as a dumb poem, and a
poem as a speaking picture; and, repeating a misunderstood phrase
of Horace, men confidently say, "Like picture, like poetry."
The tendency is, then, to assimilate or at most to compare the
several arts, and few observations penetrate beneath the surface.
Artists calculated proportions and devised elaborate rules of technical
procedure; writers of poetics discussed diction and rhetorical figures;
but in treatises on painting and poetry alike, three "parts" inven-
tion, disposition, and coloring furnished the traditional subdivisions.
Intelligence and industry seemed competent, if not to vie with the
ancient genius, at least to follow the paths that the ancients had trod.
With all their formalism, however, the critics seldom failed to insist
that the end of art is to arouse emotion; to instruct, indeed, but also,
as Horace had said, to please. Now pleasure is a personal reaction.
We may ask what it is that pleases us in a work of art, or what there
is in us that makes us sensitive to aesthetic pleasure; and the principal
advance that modern theory has made beyond the point reached by
the Renaissance consists in a better answer to the second question.
In other words, our theory has, or seeks, a psychological foundation.
LESSING
To be sure, that modern work in which the sharpest line is drawn
between the fields of painting and poetry, Lessing's "Laocoon," ap-
pears to treat the two arts in their most objective aspect, and is, in
fact, far more concerned with the means than with the purpose or
the substance of artistic expression. Lessing argues that if the means
268 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
of painting be lines and colors in space, and the means of poetry
articulate words in time, then evidently painting most properly
addresses itself to the treatment of stationary bodies, and poetry to
the treatment of successive actions; so that the attempt, carried too
far, to represent actions in painting and to describe bodies in poetry is
a perversion of the legitimate means of painting and poetry. We
should not forget the qualifications that Lessing made to this rigid
principle, nor the fact that he published only the first part of his
projected treatise. He referred the effect of painting as well as of
poetry to the imagination. But his purpose was to establish
boundaries determinable by the difference in artistic means; and his
"Laocoon" is a rationalistic document based upon knowledge and
observation of external facts, not upon a study of internal reactions.
BURKE
Among the many predecessors of Lessing in the realm of aesthetic
speculation, two men, not philosophers by profession, are conspic-
uous for attention to the personal phenomena which he did not
much consult; the Abbe Dubos in France and Edmund Burke 1 in
England. Dubos recognizes differences in the arts conditioned by
their symbols of expression; but he compares and rates the arts ac-
cording to their effect upon the senses, and so prepares the way for
a purely impressionistic criticism. Burke did not agree with the
Frenchman's ratings, nor did he in any manner imitate his book,
however much he respected it; but he was in substantial agreement
with Dubos as to the operation of aesthetic causes; and just as Dubos
saw in the desire of the mind to be stimulated by something the
prime motive for interest in the arts, Burke found in two of our
strongest passions, love and terror, a definition of the chief ends
of artistic endeavor, the beautiful and the sublime. 2 Burke was
not much affected by painting. This art, the aim of which is to
represent the beautiful, has, he says, little effect on our passions.
But poetry, to which he was sensitive, and which, he holds, does
not depend for its effect upon the power of raising sensible images,
is capable of stirring the passions with a vague sense of the sublime,
and is, strictly speaking, not an art of imitation.
1 Harvard Classics, xxiv, nfF. 2 H. C., xxiv, 29 ff.
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 269
BAUMGARTEN
Though reached by a different process, Burke's conclusion as to
the province of poetry is, in its negative aspect, identical with
Lessing's: words are ill adapted to the vivid presentation of objects
by means of detailed description. And though crude and mate-
rialistic, his "Inquiry" is an excellent introduction to the study of
aesthetics as a branch of psychology. The real founder of this
science, however, and the philosopher from whom it derives its
name, was a contemporary of Burke's in Germany, Alexander Gott-
lieb Baumgarten.
Adopting the monistic system of Leibnitz and Wolf, Baumgarten,
a clear thinker and a lover of poetry, but no connoisseur of the forma-
tive arts, undertook to fill the gap left by his forerunners in the
logic of the lower powers of the soul, that is, the senses. His theory
of the beautiful is general; he defines beauty as the perfection of
sensuous perception; but clinging to the maxim, "Like picture, like
poetry," he does not, in his application of the theory, progress far
beyond the treatment of poetry as the typical art, rating it, like
Burke, higher than painting. Poetry he defines as perfect sensuous
speech. So Milton says that poetry is more simple, sensuous, and
passionate than prose. And that perfection which is the definition
of beauty and of poetry is a set of harmonious relationships in the
object and between the object and the sensitive soul, of which the
intellect may take cognizance, but of which, above all, the senses
make us conscious, being impressed with an extensive clearness sep-
arable from intensive distinctness; so that a poem is a poem not for
the accuracy of any "imitation," nor for the loftiness of its idea,
nor for the elegance of its forms, but for the fullness of its appeal
to those functions which most immediately respond to man's con-
tact with his material environment; that is to say, for intuitively per-
ceptible reality.
SCHILLER
Baumgarten's doctrine was taken up by Lessing's friend, Men-
delssohn; it furnished fundamental presuppositions for "Laocoon";
and it persisted to the time of Kant and Schiller. Kant, the analyst
270 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
and rationalist, tended to separate the spheres of reason, sense, and
morals, and to refer all three to subjective judgment. But Schiller, 3
his disciple, fired as he was by moral enthusiasm, wished to find an
objective foundation for a theory of the beautiful that should make
aesthetics a mediator between science and ethics, and should give
to the beautiful the sanction of a perfecter of the mind, the heart,
and the will. Not unlike Lessing, whose "Education of the Human
Race" 4 meant a gradual liberation from leading strings and final
reliance upon trained natural faculties, Schiller conceived aesthetic
education as a process of freeing man from bondage to the senses and
leading him through culture to a state of more perfect nature, in
which, as of old among the Greeks, truth and goodness shall be
garbed in beauty. Civilization has been won through specialization,
division of labor; it is a gain for the community, but at the loss
of harmonious development of powers in the individual life. The
beautiful soul longs to restore the balance. If this be impossible in
the world of actuality, it is attainable in the world of appearance.
There the mind is free to follow the image of beauty and to endow
this image with the wealth of all its knowledge and all its goodness
not for any ulterior purpose, but in obedience to a native impulse.
And so the poet is the sole modern representative of perfect human-
ity, with all his powers, intellectual, sensuous, and moral, cooperat-
ing toward the realization of an ideal.
3 H. C., xxxii, 209*1
4 H. C., xxxii, i85ff. See also Goethe's "Introduction to the Propylaen," xxxix,
264!?, and Hume, "On the Standard of Taste," xxvii, 203.
V. THE COMPOSITION OF A
CRITICISM
BY DR. ERNEST BERNBAUM
OF THE critical essays not discussed in the previous lec-
tures the most important are those by Hugo, Sainte-Beuve,
Renan, Taine, and Mazzini. As their doctrines are quite
obviously related to those expounded in the foregoing pages, it seems
desirable to consider here the manner in which their opinions are
expressed. The critical essays published in this series are classics,
not merely because they contain significant doctrines about literature
but also because they are in themselves literary works. They con-
fer pleasure as well as profit. What distinguishes them from the
journalistic book review on the one hand, and the pedantic study
on the other, is their artistic composition. By what methods are
their artistic effects produced?
A DOMINANT IDEA
The title of a work cited by Sainte-Beuve suggests what a literary
criticism should not be. It runs as follows: "Michel de Montaigne,
a collection of unedited or little-known facts about the author of the
Essays, his book and other writings, about his family, his friends,
his admirers, his detractors." Sainte-Beuve, Taine, and the other
masters never present us with a "collection." They marshal their
numerous facts into a system, and dominate them with a thought
which, however complex, is coherent. Most of us arise from the
perusal of an author with a chaotic throng of impressions. But in
the mind of a true literary critic the chaos becomes order. Renan,
in his "Poetry of the Celtic Races," 1 "giving a voice to races that are
no more," lets us hear not a confusion of tongues but an intelligible
unity of national utterance sad, gentle, and imaginative. Hugo,
1 Harvard Classics, xxxii, 137.
271
272 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
surveying in his "Preface to Cromwell" 2 the highly intricate roman-
tic movement, sees therein the harmonious union of the grotesque
and the sublime. Sainte-Beuve answers his sweeping question, "What
is a Classic?" with the succinct definition a work that reveals in
a beautiful and individual manner an eternal truth or emotion.
Mazzini characterizes Byron as a subjective individualist, and Goethe
as an objective one. Taine, prefacing his "History of English Litera-
ture," 3 unlocks the riddle of literary growth with the keys "race,
environment, and epoch." The truth of these doctrines does not for
the moment concern us. What is important for us is that each of
these long essays may be summed up in a single sentence; for in
each a powerful mind grasps and expresses a single idea.
When a critic has conceived the leading idea of his essay, he is
still in danger of obscuring its presentation. The more richly in-
formed he is, the more he is tempted to. introduce facts not strictly
related to his dominant thought. But the great critical essayists,
resisting that temptation, subordinate all details to the general design.
Hugo, in sketching the development of the world's literature, se-
lects only those phases which forecast the timeliness of romanticism.
Sainte-Beuve and Mazzini, in dealing with the lives of Montaigne 4
and Byron, 5 which offer many opportunities for recounting interest-
ing but irrelevant incidents, mention only those which illustrate
their conception of the authors.
METHODICAL ARRANGEMENT
In the arrangement of the materials, the same conscious art is
observable. Each of the sections of the essays of Taine and Renan
is a firm and necessary foundation for those that succeed it. Not
until Renan has described the secluded national existence of the
Celts does he draw the resultant national traits of character, which
thereupon we are ready to trace intelligently in the various branches
of Celtic literature. The method of Taine's essay is even more ad-
mirably logical. To understand the growth of literature, he tells
us, we must know first "the visible man," next "the invisible man,"
then the race, environment, and epoch which determined his char-
2 H. C., xxxix, 337. 3 H. C., xxxix, 410.
4 H. C., xxxii, 105. 5 H. C., xxxii, 377.
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 273
acter, and finally the way in which those causes distribute their
effects. Thus is our progress through unknown fields made easy: we
are not asked to leap from point to point, or to retrace our way; our
guide takes us step by step along the path of his discovery.
ILLUSTRATIONS
The sustained and methodically expounded idea which is the
basis of every great critical essay would, however, like all abstrac-
tions, seem dull or unintelligible if it were not constantly and vividly
illustrated. The logical must flower in the picturesque. This even
the great critics occasionally forget : one or two passages in Mazzini's
essay would be more convincing if more fully illustrated by ref-
erences to Goethe's works; and the only pages of Hugo where our
interest flags a little are those in which he describes, without ex-
amples, the character of romantic verse. But such lapses are highly
exceptional. Taine, the most intellectual and least emotional of
these men, makes it a rule to clothe the skeleton of his theory in
flesh and blood. To show what he means by "the visible man," he
clearly portrays a modern poet, a seventeenth-century dramatist, a
Greek citizen, and an Indian Purana. Renan, to exhibit the Celtic
love of animals and nature, tells the story of Kilhwch and Olwen;
and to explain Celtic Christianity, recounts the legend of St. Bran-
dan. Sainte-Beuve states his definition of classicism in a few lines,
and devotes the rest of his essay to applying it to particular authors.
All these masters have the gift of happy quotation. Montaigne's
"I commend a gliding, solitary, and silent life," quoted by Sainte-
Beuve, and Goethe's "I allow objects to act tranquilly upon me,"
quoted by Mazzini, clarify and confirm out of the authors' own
mouths those impressions which the critics wish to impart. The as-
tonishing effectiveness of the close of Hugo's essay is due to his apt
quotations from Aristotle and Boileau, which seem to bring over
those great classicists to Hugo's romantic party.
The illustrations are not derived only from literary works. Taine,
insisting upon the delicacy with which a literature records changes
in national character, likens it to the sensitive instrument of a
physicist. The similes of Hugo are exceptionally frequent and
elaborate. "To make clear by a metaphor the ideas that we have
2J4 CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY
ventured to put forth," he writes, "we will compare early lyric
poetry to a placid lake which reflects the clouds and stars; the epic
is the stream which flows from the lake, and rushes on, reflecting
its banks, forests, fields, and cities, until it throws itself into the
ocean of the drama. Like the lake, the drama reflects the sky; like
the stream, it reflects its banks; but it alone has tempests and measure-
less depths." His poet "is a tree that may be blown about by all
winds and watered by every fall of dew; and bears his works as his
fruits, as the fablicr of old bore his fables. Why attach one's self to
a master, or graft one's self upon a model? It were better to be a
bramble or a thistle, fed by the same earth as the cedar and the
palm, than the fungus or the lichen of those noble trees." Mazzini
begins his comparison of Byron and Goethe by contrasting an Alpine
falcon bravely floating in the midst of a storm, with a tranquil stork
impassive amid the warring elements; and Renan prepares us for his
conception of Celtic literature by giving us at the outset the charac-
teristic tone of the Breton landscape. What the intellect has firmly
outlined, fancy and imagination paint in lively colors.
COMPARISON AND CONFLICT OF OPINION
An essay which has by these means achieved clearness may be
pleasant to read but still lacking in power. To give force to his
ideas about an author or a literature, the masterful critic exhibits
the peculiarity of his subject by the use of contrast. The brilliancy
of Mazzini's essay proceeds largely from its striking antithesis be-
tween Byron and Goethe. Renan enforces his doctrine of the indi-
viduality of Celtic literature by emphasizing the differences between
the French "Roland" and the Celtic "Peredur," between the gentle
Isolde and the "Scandinavian furies, Gudrun and Chrimhilde."
Hugo intensifies our conviction of the complex character of modern
life by describing the simplicity of the ancients.
If a critic does not observe this principle, we may say of his
essay: "These ideas are, to be sure, clear and enjoyable; but what
do they matter?" The great critics do not leave us calmly indifferent;
they are on occasion critics militant. Even the gentle Sainte-Beuve
admonishes the "Montaignologues," who, he feels, do not under-
stand the spirit of Montaigne. Taine manifests the novelty and
CRITICISM AND THE ESSAY 275
importance of his method of criticism by mentioning the imperfec-
tions of the eighteenth-century method. Mazzini reproves the ene-
mies and misinterpreters of Byron. Hugo above all shows the stim-
ulating value of pitting one's ideas against those of others. He calls
his essay his "sling and stone against the classical Goliaths"; and by
making his opponents utter their arguments against him gives to
his work the force of dramatic combat. Critical essays that thus
add vigor to lucidity arouse and delight our minds. When we rec-
ognize how skillfully they fuse logic, imagination, and emotion, we
perceive the superficiality of the distinction between so-called criti-
cism and so-called creative literature. Good criticism is indeed
creative, and its composition is a high art.
EDUCATION
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR H. W. HOLMES
IN ALL profitable thinking about modern education one cen-
tral fact is stated or assumed the fact that education has
become a public enterprise. To think of it as a matter mainly
of private interest, to discuss it chiefly in terms of personal develop-
ment, is to ignore the achieved conditions of civilized life and the
clear trend of progress. The spread of public schools is but the
obvious outward sign of a growing conviction concerning all edu-
cational endeavor. That conviction was long ago proclaimed and
has now become a guide to action the conviction that the commun-
ity has a vital stake in the education of every child. Education is
a common concern not merely because there are many children to
be educated, but because there can be no significant outcome in the
education of any child which is not of importance, not to him only,
but also to others, immediately to many, more remotely to all.
THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THE MODERN IDEAL
This has always been true. Modern life, with cities and the in-
ventions which belittle time and space, has only made it more
apparent and action upon it more pressing. No one can think with
penetration upon the results of education who does not come at
last to a fuller vision of the interdependence of men. That men
shall live less and less each for himself, more and more each for
the common good, is not merely a consequence of increasing num-
bers on the earth, but an essential condition of human progress, in
the individual as well as in society. It is a poor and meager culture
which does not end in greater power to serve. To become a man
is to become capable of living effectively with others and for all, in
276
EDUCATION 277
the normal relationships of life not in subservience to custom, but
in devotion to a welfare larger than one's own, a welfare at least not
incompatible, in the end, with the welfare of the world. It is not
enough to say that the common interest is at stake in the education
of every child; the very process of education is properly a training
for effective membership in the common life.
Such is the reasoning behind the great outlay of public money
on schools, libraries, museums, and other educational agencies.
Civilized communities undertake education as a part of their proper
business, not as a charity, but as a necessary public function. Schools
are tax supported and education is compulsory. The state claims
final authority to prescribe standards and to supervise even private
educational ventures. It calls on all citizens for their full support in
this task of conserving and developing human resources. It con-
siders every taxpayer as much in duty bound to support ultimate
social improvement through education as to direct social improve-
ment through public enterprises of any other sort. Personal return
cannot be taken into the account; the good to be achieved is primarily
a public good, in which the childless also share. And the problems of
education are problems of public policy, involving the whole theory
of the state, of government, of the social order, and of civic progress.
All educational questions have thus become increasingly com-
plex. The character of modern life makes even well-rounded per-
sonal development a matter of much difficulty, for the life of the
individual child is in some ways narrower to-day than it was in
simpler times. To secure for modern children the full exercise
of body, intellect, imagination, sympathy, and will is in itself a task
which calls for insight, energy, and cooperation, to say nothing of
money. Yet to provide for the formal cultivation of personal capac-
ities, faculties, and powers, is by no means to solve the problem of
education, even for a given child. The results may happen to be
good, but the problem has not been solved, for it has not been
adequately stated.
THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM CONCRETE, NOT ABSTRACT
It happens, in the first place, that "body, intellect, imagination,
sympathy, and will" are poor terms to use in the actual direction
278 EDUCATION
of teaching. They name abstractions which have induced more
futile educational discussion and more useless educational effort
than can ever be reckoned. No child is a collection of general
faculties which can be trained for universal use. But even when we
have discovered the special capacities with which the individual is
actually endowed, and with which we may therefore profitably
work, the problem is only in part before us. It is quite as important
to consider what our child is to do with his capacities, what stuff
he is to exercise them on. It is the content of education that gives
it social direction and social importance; from the public standpoint
it is the school, the course, the subject that mean most, for these
determine the concrete character of the individual's later activities
and interests. That ancient educational saw, "I care not what you
study, if you study it well," is profoundly misleading a mischievous
piece of common sense which hides the truth in order to emphasize
a part of it. No matter what "faculty" a subject "trains," it is the
information, the ideas, the ideals, principles, points of view, methods,
interests, enthusiasms, purposes, and sympathies it imparts that chiefly
determine its educational value. It is the content of a man's education
which helps most to fix his place in the community, his vocation,
his avocations, and his availability for special service.
RELATIVE NATURE OF "THE FUNDAMENTALS"
Education presents not one problem, therefore, but many. In the
earlier years, to be sure, all children need much the same intellectual
experience, at least in school. "The fundamentals" are the subjects
everybody ought to master. Thus at first there is only the complexity
of meeting individual differences among children the brilliant,
the backward, the well nurtured, the neglected. Complexity enough!
And even so, each subject presents, besides, its own problem of
social interpretation : "What everybody ought to master" in arithme-
tic or in geography is by no means clear, and new definitions of the
aim and scope of each subject are continually needed. Such defini-
tions must be made from the standpoint of public service and the
real demands of life, not from the standpoint of complete mastery
of the subject. A social view of education demands selection and
reorganization of the elements of knowledge. But beyond this is
EDUCATION 279
the fact that children cannot long be kept in the same educational
highway. The need to separate arises at least as early as adolescence,
the end of childhood and the gate of youth. Here differences of
native endowment, economic condition, and conscious purpose
force the first fundamental differentiation of schools, courses, and
classes. Even if, in some millennium of social justice, the stern
necessity of earning a living in the teens were to be done away, the
social necessity for variety of schooling would remain. Society needs
many kinds of thinkers and workers, just as there are many kinds
of aptitude to be trained. There is no "general course" which can
provide an "all-round education," in the sense of providing all that
is really needful for anybody who knows what is good for him.
To discover the best in education for one child or class of children,
though with the public interest well in mind, is to answer but one
of the questions the educator must hereafter always ask.
For the public interest goes far beyond the need of supplying
to all a uniform minimum of schooling. Democracy means far more
in education than the warding off of danger from illiteracy. It is
a crude and at bottom a wholly mistaken view of public education
which confines it to "the three R's," or to those admitted necessities
and such other subjects as the common good may dictate for the com-
mon school. The public interest is not met by merely elementary edu-
cation. It is met only when every prospective citizen may secure with-
out undue sacrifice that extent and kind of education which will
make him most efficient in his fundamental social relationships,
including his vocation. The state needs knowledge, efficiency, in-
sight, and idealism in industry, commerce, the arts, science, philos-
ophy, religion, and family life as much as in citizenship more nar-
rowly defined. The only logical result of the thoroughly social
character of education is public support of every socially profitable
kind of schooling, with commensurate public authority.
Democracy in education invites, to be sure, the evils of political
control; yet education is one of the few permanent means of coun-
teracting political evil. No one need fear to trust educational au-
thority to a public aroused to the meaning and value of education,
and this essential condition of public support depends on the slow
growth of public conscience and public intelligence. In any case,
280 EDUCATION
private initiative will long have an honorable part to play in educa-
tion and the very policy of the state may often best be served by
leaving the special and the higher schools in private hands: but
there are a few communities in which the extension of public pro-
vision and public authority in education is not imperative.
Of that extension what must be the guiding conceptions? Before
all else must come the honesty of an attitude at once scientific and
ethical. Educators must face the facts, without abatement of their
enthusiasm for ideals.
THE AIM OF EDUCATION SOCIALLY CONSIDERED
Teachers and school officers find before them not mere types of
humanity, with abstract virtues and vices, general habits, faculties,
and powers waiting to be cultivated for "life" as it may be philosophi-
cally defined; they have to deal with real and ever-varying human
beings, whose impulses, emotions, and purposes reach forward to
the actual challenge of the specific duties, interests, and rewards
of the real world. To provide, for every normal individual, whatever
his endowment, nurture, or experience, an opportunity to prepare
himself for a part in the legitimate work of the world, a share in its
proper pleasures, and an understanding of the meaning and value
of the life he leads this is the problem to be solved. What are the
things men do in which the public interest calls for intelligence and
efficiency such as may be got in schools? For the getting of such
intelligence and efficiency in the doing of such things, what schools
are needed? In these schools what subjects shall be taught and how?
These questions present the problem of education as it must be
viewed from the standpoint of the common good and the questions
presented by education viewed from any other standpoint are far less
important. No doubt we need, in the crash and strain of modern
life, remembrance of the old ideal of personal distinction. Grace is
worth too much to lose it beyond retrieving, even for efficiency.
But how impoverished now appears that aristocratic ideal which
made much of personal charm and little of social worth for which
the education of women could consist chiefly of dancing, French, and
hand embroidery! Whatever its faults and dangers, it is a stronger
age which approves for women schools of household economy, of
EDUCATION 28l
nursing, or philanthropy, so say nothing of clerical training, medi-
cine, or law. But he interprets the modern ideal too narrowly who
would have it take no account of beauty, leisure, or reflection. The
work of the world is fundamental, and in itself neither selfish nor
undignified; but the world's play its generous sport, its curious
science, its philosophic speculation, its art, and its worship is a re-
gion of enduring values. It is only the separation of work and play
that belittles either. A social conception of the ends of education
finds reason for folk-dancing and pageants in the public schools,
but none for the exploitation of children through premature indus-
trial training. The common good demands education for play no
less than education for work, education for the larger efficiency of
insight, breadth of view, and reflective intelligence no less than
education for the narrower efficiency of habit. Democracy cannot
perpetuate slavery through schools.
EDUCATION AND FREEDOM
But the essential conditions of freedom cannot be established
through education; only the love of it, the understanding of it, and
the power and will to use it for service can be gained from the most
liberalizing of curricula. The possibility and the extension of free-
dom are the work of direct social and political reform. It is futile,
meanwhile, to insist that liberal studies shall be all that schools shall
offer. It is simple error to insist that a traditional range of studies
the classics, science, mathematics, even history, or English provide
the only possible culture for freedom. Schools must meet the need
of the world as frankly and directly as they can, without squeamish
prejudice against practical or vocational studies. Shopwork may
afford more liberal culture to a given boy than Greek and the
problem of educational values is always thus specific. The only profit-
able distinction between liberal studies and vocational studies is one
which looks out and forward to the life the individual is to lead.
A man's calling, if it be of much difficulty, demands vocational
training; his life in the family, the community, the state, and the
church demands an education which may justly be called liberal;
the worthy use of his leisure demands an education which may
properly be called cultural. But what is vocational for the artist
282 EDUCATION
will be cultural for others; and a given subject may serve many
uses in every normal life. A complete education will prepare for
life in all its relationships, either by direct study of the problems
they present, or by the study of subjects valuable in one of them or
in all.
This conception of the ends to be attained is clear enough; it is
the means that fail. And the failure of means is due less to public
apathy than to inherent difficulty in finding them. New schools,
new courses, new subjects must be created. A new interpretation
of old subjects and a new method of teaching them must be worked
out. Much of our traditional teaching, especially in high schools,
academies, and colleges, goes quite astray; it is fruitless because its
uses are not clear or because they are not made clear; and the
"intellectual discipline" which is supposed to result from it either
does not occur or is not carried over into the conduct of mature life.
Mental and moral habits and ideals, such attitudes, tendencies, and
principles of conduct as "thoroughness," "order," "concentration,"
"self-reliance," may be taught by precept and example in the work of
any subject; in every case they must be generalized and held con-
sciously in mind, practiced and renewed in vision if they are ever
to permeate life. In this general training of the mind and will, the
unconscious effect of one subject is little better than that of another
of similar complexity and scope. Science is as good as Latin, and
mechanical drawing may be better than either. Much depends on
the ethical enthusiasm, the insight, the sympathy, and the leadership
of the teacher; much on the methods of teaching and class manage-
ment he employs. More depends on the traditions and the admin-
istrative, disciplinary, and social policies of the school. This is to
say that these precious moral results of education are chiefly matters
of personal contagion, direct inspiration, and experience in the com-
mon effort of work and play. They are achieved as much in the
home or on the playground as in the school. It is the specific habits
of attention, the special methods of observing, comparing, classify-
ing, and reacting on facts, the particular forms of skill, the definite
information, the peculiar outlook, the actual incentives which a given
subject may possess that make it serviceable in education. In these
things subjects differ and lend themselves to different uses. In these
EDUCATION 283
things history differs from dressmaking, science from agriculture.
And in these things the same subject will differ as it is taught
for different purposes, to pupils of different ages and different capac-
ities and motives. Literature cannot yield the same fruit in a night
school that it yields in a college. Under a conception of education
which demands preparation for all the essential activities of life, in
schools designed to meet the needs of every age and class, subjects
must be evaluated and organized anew.
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
The schools and courses now most needed are partly known,
partly to be conceived. Vocational education has come to stay, but
its various forms and alliances have yet to be completely determined.
The fear that vocational training will materialize and lower educa-
tion is groundless, even in theory. To train carpenters and printers
in schools instead of by apprenticeship is not a threatening educa-
tional revolution; doctors, lawyers, and engineers were once trained
by personal tuition under practitioners. Vocational training has long
existed in the higher professions; its establishment for industry
and business is the result of social changes which have undermined
apprenticeship; and the fact that this training is now given at
public expense shows a new sense of the social importance of labor.
In the life of the modern world artisans are no more to be neglected
than artists, farmers than philosophers. Vocational education is a
mighty step in advance, which offers inspiring opportunities for
the extension of general education, as an accompaniment of technical
training, to those who might otherwise have secured neither. Ought
we not to rejoice at the retention of boys and girls in schools, where
they can be under the disinterested influence of teachers, whereas
they might have drifted from one shabby and depressing experience
to another until they had been able, perhaps, to "pick up a trade,"
acquiring their views of life and their ethical principles and habits
who knows how? The pressing problem of vocational training is
not the problem of justification and defense, but of organization and
extension.
The kind and number of vocational schools to be established must
be settled partly by the economic return for special forms of voca-
284 EDUCATION
tional efficiency. In the long run the social need for efficiency in a
trade or profession determines the legitimate rewards of success
in that calling. The fact that people will pay well for medical skill
is an indication of social need for it. It cannot be said, of course,
that schools should be established to train men for every calling in
which they may earn a good living. A school may be established as
much to teach men the value of training for knowledge and power
in a special form of service as to prepare individuals to profit by
rendering that service; for it is only in the end that economic demand
justly reflects true social need. Accordingly, the public interest calls
upon the educator to define social need and correct social demand,
no less than to meet it. To plan a system of schools requires vision
of a new and better order, in which the wants of men, and their con-
sequent willingness to pay for the satisfaction of them, are more
reasonably founded in the general welfare. Yet in discussing the
advisability of training for any occupation, the possibility of earning
a living in it cannot be ignored. If agriculture could not be made
to pay we should not have agricultural high schools or agricultural
colleges. Even a school of philanthropy finds added sanction in the
fact that trained social workers are paid for their services. In voca-
tional education, then, there is at least an obvious basis for discussion
concerning schools, courses, and curricula. The state must train its
workers, and work for which there is fundamental need is work
which pays. Vocational education presents problems of the most
vexing sort, but its rationale is clear.
THE NEED FOR GENERAL EDUCATION
It is the persistent need for general education that complicates
the issue. Economic demand may justify child labor, but educational
theory does not. A theory of education which finds no place for vo-
cational education is antiquated and meager; but a theory which
considers only the requirements of work is meager and inhuman.
No training for special skill in a trade is conceivable in the elemen-
tary school: manual training, gardening, sewing, cooking, and agri-
culture have a place in childhood because children cannot learn by
books alone, but need a training of body, hand, and eye, of purpose,
EDUCATION 285
loyalty, and leadership which these subjects can provide. This need
does not disappear with adolescence, but generalized manual train-
ing constructive work on objects without economic value, the
making of childish gimcracks, of joints which join nothing, or of
seams which sew no garment ceases early to have even an educa-
tional value. The purely educational worth of any form of manual
training comes gradually to depend on the economic value of the
ends for which the pupil works. Manual training as a part of the
general curriculum of a high-school pupil must be practical training
in some form of manual skill of actual value in the working world.
Even a pupil who intends to go to college may well take one or two
courses of handwork in the secondary school, for the broadening
of his experience and outlook and the specific training he may thus
secure : a course in the elements of many occupations would be better
still. But this is not vocational education. True vocational education
aims at efficiency in a special field of work it trains printers, sten-
ographers, dressmakers, carpenters, mechanicians, doctors, lawyers,
clergymen, journalists, engineers. It brings into play the purpose to
earn a living by what one learns which President Eliot has called
the "life-career motive." It narrows, not unjustifiably, but inevitably.
The difficulty is to educate for citizenship, for the duties of parent-
hood and social living, for leisure, and for the interpretation of life
in spite of the need for early specialization, when that need is present.
That need does not arise altogether from differences in wealth.
After adolescence many pupils lack incentive for an education that
has no direct reference to a career. But the demand for vocational
training is so overlaid and entangled with economic pressure that
selection of candidates for vocational schooling on the ground of
individual aptitude and free choice is visionary. While our social
system permits comparative poverty to constrain the vast majority
of young men and women to go to work at the earliest possible age,
we must face the necessity of early specialization in training, what-
ever their capacity or need for further general culture. Education
can only emphasize the value of liberal studies and strive to include
in every curriculum as many as possible, and in profitable form.
It can also resist the tendency to specialize too soon.
286 EDUCATION
ECONOMIC PRESSURE IN EDUCATION
Education has thus to struggle, like government or philanthropy,
beneath the burdens imposed by the injustice of our economic order.
We must make educational provision for social conditions which
ought not to exist night schools for illiterate foreigners, specialized
vocational training for factory workers and shopgirls who ought to
have at least the time for a much extended general education in ad-
dition to their preparation for work. We must also be content to see
the high privilege of general education seized by boys and girls
whose easy lives make them careless of its value and inconstant in
its pursuit. These conditions schools themselves cannot change. But
by public provision and by scholarships the opportunity for prolonged
education may be kept open to the able and ambitious. The spirit
of teaching and school administration may help to prevent the forma-
tion of social caste. By precept and example democratic ideals and
the will to serve may be encouraged in those who are in danger
of losing them. And no academic bars need be hastily and blindly
set up as in the narrow interpretation of college entrance require-
ments or in failure to provide a reasonable opportunity for higher
education of some desirable sort against those who seek further
training after mistaken choice of a high-school course or the early
disadvantages of having to earn a living. In a democracy the educa-
tional system must at least guard jealously against the perpetuation
of special privilege. Schools must discourage the advance of the unfit,
not of the unfortunate.
Obviously there is need for wise guidance of individuals into the
kind of schooling which will best fit them for the life they can best
lead. Vocational guidance is but part of the larger problem of "the
redistribution of human talent" (a phrase recently and aptly coined
by Professor Carver) and it is often best to be accomplished as a
part of an educational guidance which takes account of the need for
liberal culture as well as for vocational training. Transcendent
ability is doubtless seldom obscured through lack of counsel or of
privilege; educational guidance will not discover many a mute in-
glorious Milton nor send to schools of pharmacy many a discouraged
Keats. It may prevent, however, less disastrous misfittings in a
EDUCATION 287
thousand cases, and therein is its sufficient sanction. But guidance
will be futile if there are no proper paths to tread. The money now
provided for schools must be increased many fold, if schools are to
become for all men the gates of opportunity and the highways to
service. We must remember, to be sure, that there are many educa-
tional agencies besides schools; libraries often do far more toward ed-
ucation. But any systematic education is schooling, and if the interests
of society are to be adequately met, all valuable forms of educational
activity must be organized, supported, and made available to the
individuals who seek to use them.
THE LINE OF ADVANCE IN EDUCATION
To increase the size of schools is not enough. Schools and classes
are already far too large. System is not enough. More schools and
courses, of greater variety; smaller schools and smaller classes, with
greater opportunity for personal contact between teachers and taught;
more teachers, of higher native capacity and better training all these
are needed. But these things we shall not have until the common
conception of schools and teachers has suffered change. We still
think of teaching too narrowly or too vaguely too narrowly if we
look upon teachers as purveyors of learning for its own sake, too
vaguely if we think of them as taskmasters in a dubious abstract
discipline of mind. The task of the teacher must be reconceived;
we must think of him and he must become a guide to worthy living,
teaching not only his subject but how to use it and what it is for,
making clear its incentives and ideals, its methods and its values, and
helping his pupils to interpret life more justly because they have
seen it in a new light. This is the larger opportunity of every teacher,
but especially of the teacher of a traditional subject in a traditional
course. The teacher of stenography may more safely confine himself
to skill and speed with dots and dashes than the teacher of Latin
to exactness in the use of tenses. The first task of any teacher is to
teach his subject well, but he cannot leave the social interpretation
and application of education wholly to principals, parents, school
pamphlets, and chance. If the public is to value the teacher's work
more highly, he must make it more valuable.
To become more valuable, teaching must develop both a science
288 EDUCATION
and a philosophy of its own, teachers must study their problems as
physicians study theirs and as statesmen theirs. For the problems of
teaching are at once problems of efficiency and problems of destiny.
The teaching of any subject calls for scientific study of methods and
ethical study of ends. How shall we teach it well? depends for its
answer in part on the answer to What shall we teach it for ? These
questions have not yet been answered with finality for any subject.
With due change of wording they may be asked of any school or
course: How shall we manage it well? and, What shall we manage
it for ? All questions of educational practice are thus both scientific
and philosophical.
(a) IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
In the elementary school we need better methods of drill greater
efficiency in the formation of habits, as for instance in arithmetic.
To gain it we must turn to experiments in the psychological labora-
tory and to exact measurement of arithmetical progress in the school.
It is only in the last few years that we have had an adequate knowl-
edge of what arithmetical ability is. We do not yet know with
much precision how it develops under different methods of instruc-
tion. The teaching of every subject suffers for want of accurate
records of results. We lack standards, fundamental tests, and a
sufficiently detailed knowledge of the psychology of the subjects
we teach. But measurement and experiment apply in the main to
memory work and the formation of habits. They will not quickly
show us how to relate one subject to another or to the life outside
school walls; they cannot yet help us to vitalize our subjects and make
them yield opportunity for independence and cooperation on the part
of our pupils. They will not soon teach us how to make learning a
light to life. In the arithmetic of the elementary school we need a
social philosophy to govern our selection of topics to be taught or
omitted, to justify varying emphasis on logical conceptions, drill in
calculation, or exercise with real problems. So in the teaching of
every subject we need new study, both exact and broad.
(b) IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL
In the work of the high school this double duty is even more
apparent. We face the immediate necessity of extending the period
EDUCATION 289
of compulsory school attendance far into the period of secondary
education. But we cannot lightly set aside both the need to earn
and the impulse to work, and the demand for workers will not
readily yield to the idealism of the educator who would ignore it in
favor of general culture. Compromise must be the outcome, but also
cooperation: we must have many forms of vocational training, and
employers of young workers must aid the state to educate them
through schemes of part-time schooling. Such schemes are already
in operation and commend themselves as both efficient and humane.
In this increased provision for schooling the purely technical sub-
jects lend themselves readily to measurement of results and standard-
ization of method; it is the subjects of larger social value, such as
civics or English, that must be studied anew, in the light of clearer
conceptions of their aims and closer observation of their effects. We
have to learn how to use these traditional means of education (and
such newer ones as the study of household sanitation or personal
hygiene) under new and trying conditions and with new purposes,
as the liberal adjuncts of many forms of vocational training.
Yet in the secondary school which aims wholly at general culture
(or at preparation for college, which is not supposed to be an ob-
stacle to general culture), the problems of aim and method in the
teaching of traditional subjects are more pressing still. How shall a
modern language be taught to some real purpose? For what pur-
pose shall it be taught? The actual mastery of the tongue can be
achieved very much more effectively than it is now achieved if
methods of teaching can be based on fuller knowledge of the
psychology of learning and completer tests of classroom work and
home study. The fundamental values of the subject can be more
clearly conceived and more directly pursued if we can shake our-
selves free from the befogging belief in general discipline as the
goal of teaching in this or any given subject. Ability to handle the
language as an instrument of thought and expression for the
achievement of this aim we need a new analysis of the fundamentals
and more accurate standards of progress : appreciation of the foreign
civilization represented in its literature for the achievement of this
aim we need new selection of material and more vital reference to
life. In this and in many traditional subjects teachers are constantly
290 EDUCATION
at work at this double adjustment, and from them as well as from
psychologists and students of education we may look for progress
and reform.
For scientific study of method, whether by experiment in the psy-
chological laboratory, by classroom test, or by exact statistical record,
can but provide the basis for constructive reorganization of teaching
in any subject; discussion of aims by educational leaders can but
define in general terms a new interpretation of material; the teachers
in the schools must make effective or prove visionary the ideals
thus achieved. If they cling to traditional conceptions and tried
methods as many do, especially in private schools they block
progress; and if by personal worth and the power of leadership
they win respect and affect deeply the lives of their pupils, the
weight of their conservatism is the harder to bear. But the hasty
and ill-considered application of scientific generalization or social
conception is an equal if a rarer fault. The teacher must master for
himself the science and the philosophy of his subject and be critical
practitioner as well. He must be open-minded, critical, constructive.
(c) IN THE COLLEGE
This attitude is more general among teachers and principals of
elementary schools and among school superintendents than among
teachers and masters of secondary schools; among public second-
ary-school teachers than among private secondary-school teachers;
and least general among college teachers. Yet to these latter the call
to professional study of the problems of their own work is loudest.
They have greatest need to test their results and possibly revise their
methods, to reconceive their aims and discover new ways to achieve
them. In America the college stands perforce for culture; yet it
clears itself with difficulty from the snares of technical specialization
in chosen fields of knowledge a specialization essentially vocational.
College professors must be specialists scholars in the full sense of
the term; but college students do not for their part commonly intend
or care to specialize in the same sense. To study one field with
greater thoroughness than others; to gain from it a disinterested en-
thusiasm for learning; to approach in one direction the limits of
achieved knowledge; to taste the joy of constructive intellectual
EDUCATION 291
effort; these are essential elements in a college student's curriculum.
But this does not call for the methods or ideals of graduate speciali-
zation, even in the student's chosen field. The privilege of college
study is the opportunity to reach safe ground, in all the more im-
portant fields of scholarship, for the exercise of reflective intelligence.
With a view to providing this opportunity college teachers may well
spare time from research for that close observation of methods and
results and that unprejudiced discussion of aims which are needed
in the teaching of all subjects everywhere.
II. FRANCIS BACON
BY DR. ERNEST BERNBAUM
'W "IT TE HONOR Francis Bacon as the prophetic inspirer of
%/%/ modern science. In perusing the long list of the activities
T Y of that scientific establishment which is described in the
closing pages of "The New Atlantis," 1 we are astonished by again
and again recognizing in its imaginary methods and achievements
precise anticipations of what is actually being done in modern medi-
cine, meteorology, engineering, aeronautics, etc. Bacon himself, to
be sure, modestly protested that he was but "stirring the earth a
little about the roots of science." He was indeed no great discoverer
of data, and from Harvey to Huxley the scientific specialists have
sneered at his rather futile experiments. Even his method, which
he sincerely believed a new and rapid way to complete mastery of
our environment, is now considered somewhat impractical. Yet the
prefaces to his "Instauratio Magna," 2 though no longer accurate
guideposts, are revered as monuments in the history of scientific
progress. They served an even nobler purpose than to show the
scientist just where to go; they sent him forth to seek his way with
a new and conquering spirit, the spirit of confidence and of coopera-
tion. The works of Bacon instilled in his successors the faith that
by united effort they would presently understand, and thus control,
those physical forces which in the past had toyed with the life of man,
and exposed him to poverty, disease, and all the accidents of circum-
stance. In this hope were undertaken the Royal Society and the
French "Encyclopedic" leading enterprises in advancing respec-
tively the discovery and the dissemination of rational knowledge.
"We shall owe most," says Diderot in his prospectus to the "Encyclo-
pedic," "to the Chancellor Bacon, who threw out the plan of a
universal dictionary of sciences and arts at a time when, so to speak,
neither sciences nor arts existed. That extraordinary genius, at a
1 Harvard Classics, iii, I43ff. 2 H. C., xxxix, n6tt.,
292
EDUCATION 293
time when it was not possible to write a history of what was known,
wrote one of what it was necessary to learn." Wherever experimental
investigators are to-day discovering new laws of nature, and thus
more and more subjecting the physical world to the welfare of
man, the spirit of Bacon is fruitfully at work.
BACON NOT PREOCCUPIED WITH SCIENCE
Among writers on education, the very magnitude of Bacon's po-
sition in the history of science has tended to overshadow his influence
in other respects. Yet he urged the development of science because
in his day it was relatively the most neglected and chaotic depart-
ment of human endeavor, and not because he thought it absolutely
and forever the most important. Newman himself does not insist
more strongly than Bacon on the truth that science, though great, is
not the complete satisfier of human needs. In "The Advancement of
Learning," the first part of the "Instauratio Magna," Bacon pleads
for the discovery and application to life, not merely of pure scientific
truth, but also of clear ideals of mental, moral, and spiritual well-
being. Religion and the so-called liberal studies had his eloquent and
loyal support. "The New Atlantis" presents us not only with the
model of a public institution of scientific research, but also with ideals
of social and personal character. His Utopia was not, as some mistak-
enly declare, a merely industrial civilization, but a Christian common-
wealth which exalted the humane feelings, family life, and artistic
beauty.
DISTINCTION BETWEEN HIS ESSAYS AND HIS OTHER WORKS
Both in the prefaces to the "Instauratio Magna" and in "The New
Atlantis," Bacon is thinking of the world as he believed it should
and would become. The assumption that he had a similar purpose
in his famous "Essays" 3 unfortunately misleads many modern critics,
and tends to obscure the peculiar merits of his most popular work.
Yet Bacon himself tells us that in his opinion we already had enough
books which enthusiastically described moral ideals, and that what
we really needed were accurate observations on the extent to which
3 H. c., Hi, 7ff.
294 EDUCATION
those ideals were attainable, and on the methods by which, under
the actual conditions of everyday life, they might be put into prac-
tice. What he wished to present in the essays was human life, not
as it ought to be, but as it is. "Let us know ourselves," he said, "and
how it standeth with us."
BACON NOT A CYNIC
The result is a portrait of mankind beneath which may be in-
scribed his characteristic sentence: "It is good to retain sincerity."
So accurate and candid an observer of human life is instinctively
disliked by persons of sentimental temperament, and they call Bacon
cynical and heartless. Ignoring his realistic intention, they turn, for
instance, to the essays on love and on marriage, 4 expecting eloquent
praise of what love and marriage may be at the very best; and they
are disappointed, perplexed, and sometimes disgusted with what they
find. In their haste they exclaim : "What a cold and calculating crea-
ture! All he says of the love between husband and wife is 'Nuptial
love maketh mankind!' " These accusations, which may substantially
be found in one of the best known editions of the "Essays," are as
inaccurate as they are typical. Any careful reader, not led astray by
the usual misconception of Bacon's purpose, will observe that the
kind of love which he discusses in his essay on that subject is "the
wanton love which corrupteth and embaseth," the condemnation
of which should hardly be considered objectionable. As for family
life (which, as I have mentioned, he idealizes in "The New Atlan-
tis"), it is true that he dispatches it briefly in the essay on love; but
in the essay on marriage he does not estimate it as cynically as we
are led to suppose. He points out, to be sure, that, as a matter of
sober fact, marriage may interfere with extraordinary public ambi-
tion; but he gives it preference over a selfish single life, he scorns
those who consider children mere "bills of charges" instead of "dear-
est pledges," and he calls matrimony a "discipline of humanity,"
that is, a school of kindness or a humane education. To study the
comparative merits and defects of many conditions of human life,
to mark the extent and the limitations of human faculties, and to
do so with even handed justice, is his ruling purpose.
4 H. c., iii, 21, 26.
EDUCATION 295
BACON AS A PRACTICAL ADVISER
To create an ideal of life is a noble task; but to penetrate some of
the perplexing realities of existence is as difficult and at least as
serviceable. This Bacon does with supreme success. A lawyer,
judge, and statesman, he knew the vicissitudes of life and the va-
rieties of human character. He observed his fellow men with the
eye of a genius, pondered their motives with the thoughtfulness of
a student, and recorded his observations with the precision of a
scientist. Time has wrought superficial changes in some of the so-
cial and political conditions he examined; but human nature and
human intercourse are essentially immutable, and the impressive
truth of his judgments is enduring. To this day he guides his
readers in the conduct of life; and if it be too much to say that
those who heed his advice will make no mistakes, it is certain that
they will blunder less frequently than does the average man who
knows him not.
HOW BACON TRAINS THE MIND
Bacon does more than enrich us with practical maxims applicable
to particular situations; he trains us to think more wisely in the face
of any and all occasions. He begins by informing, he ends by
educating. His essays, valuable as discussions of special topics, are
precious as exercises in a peculiar way of approaching all aspects of
life. This way is one unusual and not inborn; it runs counter to the
ways of the untrained mind. Just as children are apt to regard a
person as either "nice" or "horrid," many of larger growth tend to
look on anything as wholly good or wholly bad. Bacon method-
ically weighs advantages and disadvantages, and seeks to discover
which predominate. In many of his essays he reasons somewhat after
this manner: "This thing is good in this respect, but bad in that; it
is useful to this extent, but harmful beyond; it will aid this kind of
person, but will hinder that sort." For example, in describing youth
and age he assigns distinct superiority to neither, but points out the
special strength and the special weakness of each. Innovation, to
the radical pure delight, to the conservative mere destructiveness,
is to him neither the one nor the other. "Discriminate!" is his motto:
296 EDUCATION
things that men call by the same name are really of different values;
"some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few
to be chewed and digested." What he says about any given subject,
we may forget; but by frequent recourse to him we shall form the
judicious habit of mind.
HIS ESPECIAL SERVICE TO-DAY
Most of us can be judicious on a few occasions, especially on occa-
sions in which we are not deeply interested; but to be so habitually
has always been among the rarest of virtues. It probably never was
more rare than in this country at this time. In approaching the in-
tricate problems that confront us, we display boundless enthusiasm,
aspiration, and self-confidence. The defects in human character, the
fast-rooted evils in society, that have baffled the efforts of saints
and sages from the beginning of history, we hope to dispel by the
sheer energy of emotional fervor. We are too impatient to ascertain
the exact facts that are to be dealt with, we heartily dislike those
facts which disturb our preconceived notions; in plain words, we do
not love truth and we distrust the intellect. To Bacon, the intellect
was the indispensable aid to moral progress, whether of the indi-
vidual or of society. He does not dry up enthusiasm, but he teaches
us to make it effective by directing it into rational channels. In his
day he helped to rescue science from superstition, and in our own
he may save morality from sentimentalism.
III. LOCKE AND MILTON
BY PROFESSOR H. W. HOLMES
IN THE history of education the seventeenth century is a period
of much interest and importance. It is a time of earnest thought,
of noble expression, and of zealous and faithful effort; yet
throughout the century educational progress is at best sporadic.
For education, it is a century of preparation. That the reformers
of the period were thus pioneers whose endeavor bore, for the most
part, little immediate fruit, was an almost inevitable consequence
of the circumstances of their day.
Theirs was an age of reorganization in religion, in political life,
and in philosophy and science. The Thirty Years' War and the
Civil War in England were conflicts in which the basis of modern
religious toleration was laid in suffering and desolation. In America
the Colonies were begun. In England the continued struggle with the
House of Stuart resulted in the assurance of political liberty, to be
secured at length by an evolution without the price of blood which
the Continent, and especially France, had later on to pay. On the
Continent itself, despotisms, big and little, were strengthened, often
to the direct detriment of education. Meanwhile modern science
had its birth in the work of many a courageous intellectual adven-
turer, from Kepler and Galileo, astronomers, to Harvey, physiolo-
gist.
Francis Bacon was herald and journalist of that revolt against
scholasticism which attacked mediaeval error and superstition by the
new method of observation, experiment, and inductive reasoning.
With the writings of Descartes and his contemporaries began mod-
ern philosophy. In a century of such spiritual and material disturb-
ance, what wonder that there should have been much inspiration
to educational effort, with but little fixed accomplishment?
A new world of knowledge had already been partly explored;
but the schoolmasters had not entered it, and it was only years
297
290 EDUCATION
afterward that science became even meagerly available for school
purposes. A new method had also been discovered, a method not
more important in the search for truth than in the attainment of
intellectual freedom; but the schoolmasters did not know it, or
thought less of intellectual freedom than of more obvious results in
linguistic proficiency. A new need for universal education had
begun to be foreseen; but to the schoolmasters of the seventeenth
century democracy was not even a Utopian promise. Schools re-
mained, therefore, narrow in curriculum and authoritative in
method, and education the opportunity of the privileged. Writers
on practical school keeping, such as John Brimsley and Charles
Hoole, were more concerned over improvements in the teaching of
the classics than over fundamental changes in programs of study,
in the spirit of instruction and discipline, or in the extension of
educational opportunity.
COMENIUS AND "THE GREAT DIDACTIC"
To dream, therefore, in that time, of an educational system, state-
administered, state-supported, compulsory, and hence democratic;
a system serving the varying need of all individuals, yet aiming in
the education of each at a socially valuable result; a system culminat-
ing in great academies of research and experiment, with parallel
graduate schools for professional training, including the training
of teachers; a system, finally, in which all subjects were to be taught
and learned by the mind-freeing method of science, and all schools,
classes, and subjects to be ordered and managed in natural yet
effective ways: this was an achievement, even among reformers.
This dream and a life of effort to realize it must be credited to the
greatest educator of the century, who was neither John Locke nor
John Milton, but the Moravian bishop, John Amos Comenius.
SCOPE OF THE TREATISES OF LOCKE AND MILTON
It cannot be denied that neither Locke's "Thoughts on Educa-
tion" 1 nor Milton's "Tractate on Education" 2 is a document of such
historical importance as the chief work of Comenius, "The Great
1 Harvard Classics, in, 233$. 2 H. C., xxxvii, gfi.
EDUCATION 299
Didactic." Indeed we might well wish that both Locke and Milton
had studied this treatise and had written in the light of it. Their
minds, better trained, both of them, than that of the Moravian, and
more highly endowed by nature, might have given more perma-
nently profitable form to his far-reaching projects. At it is, Locke does
not refer to Comenius's work at all, and Milton refers to it only slight-
ingly, as by hearsay. Accordingly, although we have in the
"Thoughts" an essay on the education of a gentleman's son at home,
with the improvements on current practice suggested by the sound
sense of one of the first modern psychologists and one of the most
clear-headed of moral philosophers, and in the "Tractate" a scheme
for the education of the better classes under requirements suggested
by the vigorous mentality of a great poet and an ardent patriot, we
can find in neither much sympathy with the new movement for
science nor any forecast of democracy in and through education.
Yet these works of Locke and Milton are still readable and profit-
able English essays, whereas the "Didactica Magna" (which was
first written in Czech and later translated by its author into Latin)
is now to be remembered chiefly as an important document in the
history of education.
The power of Milton's prose, his generous vision, and his place
in English literature and English history lend an interest to the
"Tractate" aside from any present pertinence in Milton's practical
suggestions. Locke's place in English philosophy and the insight
and consistency of his views, especially as to the government of
children in the home, give to the "Thoughts" a permanent value.
If we read Milton's essay for the vigor and dignity of its style and
for its general inspiration, admitting the present inapplicability of
most of its detailed proposals, it will well repay us. If we take into
account the avowed limitation of scope in Locke's treatise and make
due allowance for the conditions of life and schooling in his day, we
may still find his advice worthy of careful study.
MILTON ON AIM AND METHOD IN EDUCATION
The aim of education set forth in the "Tractate" is majestic: "I
call therefore a compleat and generous Education that which fits a
3OO EDUCATION
man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices,
both private and publick, of Peace and War." It is plain that the
complexity of modern life makes it hopeless for any individual now
to realize this ideal. But it may be noted that Milton's conception
of education agrees with the modern conception in that it is social.
The individual is to be prepared for the duties of life, not cultivated
merely for the possession of accomplishments or learning. Indeed
the burden of the "Tractate" is that learning is to be put to use.
Milton insists, therefore, that the first principle of that "better
education in extent and comprehension far more large" for which
he pleads, shall be emphasis on matter rather than on form. Educa-
tion is to be primarily through literature and is to begin with Latin
grammar to this extent is Milton conventional; but it is to come
rapidly to the place where the content and meaning of the books
to be studied "the substance of good things" shall be chiefly the
aim in view. This advice is as sound to-day as it ever was; and if it
is less needed, it is still not without application. Abstractions and
technicalities of form so easily encumber teaching that we may
hardly expect ever to outgrow the warning not to give our pupils
"ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and
delightful knowledge."
If, then, Milton's scheme of national academies wherein picked
youths are to be brought to a mastery of every art, science, and pro-
fession be impracticable, we need not therefore fail to find in this
brief but pithy essay an ideal to be cherished. It is a plea for sound
learning. Learning to-day may be had from sources unknown to
Milton, and many sources he esteemed highly are to-day quite un-
important; but sound learning, now as then, is learning which
comes at the realities of life. The author of "Lycidas" and "Comus"
can never be accused of forgetting the requirements of form. We
may heed him the more, therefore, when he warns us against "in-
tellective abstractions" for "young unmatriculated Novices" and
the learning of "meer words or such things chiefly, as were better
unlearnt." Happily it is one effort of modern education, from the
first teaching of reading and arithmetic to the highest studies of the
university, to make learning serve life and to make life illuminate
learning.
EDUCATION 3OI
LOCKE ON THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN
In Locke's "Thoughts" we have no such comprehensive scheme as
is presented in the "Tractate." At another time Locke sketched in
outline a national system of education; here he deals only with the
home training of a gentleman's son. He scorns the schools of the
day, and urges great care in the selection of a tutor. Since Locke's
time schools have so improved that he might now revise his opinion
on this point, as he might on others; for it must be confessed that
Locke was not in the modern sense a student of child psychology,
nor of mental and physical development in general. Thus his
advice on the feeding of children, the general tenor of which is
good, could hardly be followed with safety in detail. But for us
the chief interest of Locke's essay is in his conception of the moral
discipline of children by their parents and teachers; and since he
was a man of keen observation, wide experience, clear principles,
and much human sympathy, his remarks on this subject are worth
careful study.
The gist of his counsel may be put thus: abandon the rod, except
as a last resort; abandon scolding, threats, rules, rewards, arguments,
and persuasion; train to right thinking and right action through the
use of approval and affection, with all their normal accompaniment
of benefits, when children behave properly, and of disapproval and
coldness, with their natural consequences in the withdrawal of
pleasures and companionship, when children misbehave. But above
all, use this moral discipline morally that is, with direct reference
to your child's motives, to his will in the matter, not with reference
merely to the outward effect of his actions. Locke urges, in reality,
a steady, consistent, sympathetic, yet dispassionate moral pressure
as the surest means of bringing children to good conduct. He would
have them learn "to love what they ought to love and hate what
they ought to hate" as a matter first of habit, to be approved by
reason only as they mature: but from the beginning he would have
children act not in mere conformity to external requirements, but
with a willing adoption of standards always clearly revealed and,
as time goes on, properly explained. He would use authority as a
moral agent to induce purpose.
3O2 EDUCATION
There is wisdom in Locke's words. Even under more modern
conceptions of child nature, parents can hardly find general prin-
ciples better than those he gives for guidance in the concrete exi-
gencies of moral training in the home. All moral training is difficult,
because it demands character and judgment: it is truly as much a
"training of parents" as of children. But although there is much to
be learned from modern writing on many an aspect of child life of
which John Locke was wholly ignorant, he put in his way certain
essential truths which have often been put since in different terms
but to the same effect.
As to learning, Locke agrees with the fundamental point in Mil-
ton's "Tractate." In Latin, he decries overemphasis on grammar
and would substitute for it extended reading. He would also com-
bine with literary study a training in handicraft, which parallels
Milton's scheme of learning from workers in the various fields of
practical activity. But the contrast between Locke's point of view,
which is individualistic, and Milton's, which is national, is brought
out by the fact that Milton would have practical men teach his
young academicians with a view to the serious use of their knowl-
edge and skill in public affairs, whereas Locke looks upon a handi-
craft chiefly as a good gentlemanly avocation.
On one point Locke has been generally misinterpreted. He has
been held to be a typical advocate of the "doctrine of formal dis-
cipline" the doctrine which asserts that studies are to be chosen
not because of their objective usefulness but because of their sup-
posed efficacy in the training of some intellectual "faculty" or in the
production of an obscurely defined (and in reality wholly mythical)
"general power." The passage on the training of memory, 176, is
clear proof that Locke held no such views as have been imputed to
him. He did insist, to be sure, on the necessity of intellectual and
moral discipline, but only on such discipline of specific habits of
mind and will as is generally admitted to be possible and desirable.
These two essays were written some three hundred years ago.
They reflect many customs, standards, and traditions foreign to
modern thought. They name men and books most modern readers
never heard of. Their authors were not even imbued with some
EDUCATION 303
of the most forward-looking conceptions and ideals of their own
day. But, these things admitted, we must also admit that the essays
are essentially fresh and valuable still and profit by their wisdom if
we can. 3
3 The best single book on education in the seventeenth century is Adamson's
"Pioneers of Modern Education," Cambridge University Press.
IV. CARLYLE AND NEWMAN
BY FRANK WILSON CHENEY HERSEY, A. M.
ADNG the great voices that stirred England in the early years
of the Victorian era, none were more eloquent than those
of Newman and Carlyle the one a suave ecclesiastic who
lighted again the candles of the mediaeval church; the other a volcanic
Scots peasant who set the Thames on fire. We may still hear the
sound of their voices, and note the vast difference in their appearance,
their manner, their tone and method, their appeal to their generation.
Matthew Arnold's description of Newman at Oxford 1 remains for-
ever in the memory:
"Who could resist the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding
in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's, rising
into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking
the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music
subtle, sweet, mournful? I seem to hear him still, saying: 'After
the fever of life, after weariness and sickness, fightings and despond-
ings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding; after all
the changes and chances of this troubled, unhealthy state, at length
comes death, at length the white throne of God, at length the beatific
vision.' "
Now the other man comes before us (noted by Caroline Fox in
her journals) :
"Carlyle soon appeared, and looked as if he felt a well-dressed
London audience scarcely the arena for him to figure in as a popular
lecturer. He is a tall, robust-looking man; rugged simplicity and
indomitable strength are in his face, and such a glow of genius in it
not always smouldering there, but flashing from his beautiful gray
eyes, from the remoteness of their deep setting under that massive
brow. His manner is very quiet, but he speaks like one tremendously
convinced of what he utters, and who had much very much in
1 See Newman's description of Oxford in Harvard Classics, xxviii, 47-50.
304
EDUCATION 305
him that was quite unutterable, quite unfit to be uttered to the
uninitiated ear; and when the Englishman's sense of beauty or
truth exhibited itself in vociferous cheers, he would impatiently,
almost contemptuously, wave his hand, as if that were not the kind
of homage which Truth demanded."
And this man flung forth such ringing words as: "Be no longer a
Chaos but a World or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were
it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it,
in God's name! "Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then.
Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole
might. Work while it is called To-day: for the Night cometh,
wherein no man can work."
NEWMAN AND THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
The careers of Newman and Carlyle were no more similar than
their personalities. Newman spent his life in the heat of theological
controversy. He was the leader and kindling spiritual force of the
Oxford Movement, 1833-1845, often called the Tractarian Move-
ment from "Tracts for the Times." This was a movement within
the Church of England to revive the Catholic doctrines which had
always been retained in the Prayer Book. These doctrines were the
apostolic succession, the priesthood, the sacramental system, and the
real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Anglican Church was
sadly in need of zeal. "Instead of heroic martyr Conduct," said
Carlyle 2 in 1831, "and inspired and soul-inspiring Eloquence, where-
by Religion itself were brought home to our living bosoms, to live
and reign there, we have 'Discourses on the Evidences,' endeavoring,
with smallest result, to make it probable that such a thing as Religion
exists." "Soul-inspiring eloquence" was just what Newman brought
to the Movement. Sunday after Sunday, year after year, his sermons
and tracts quickened the spirit of men. A mysterious veneration
gathered round him. "In Oriel Lane light-hearted undergraduates
would drop their voices and whisper, 'There's Newman.' " In his
eyes the Christian Church was "the concrete representative of things
invisible." The pageant of ritual was necessary to bring home the
symbolism of the Church to the imagination. Dogmas, far from
2 H. c., xxv, 338.
306 EDUCATION
being barnacles on Scriptural tradition, were defenses erected by
authority to preserve the spirit of primitive Christianity against bar-
nacles. Newman had defended the Church of England as the Via
Media the middle road between the theology of the Church of
Rome and the theology of Calvinism. But he and his younger fol-
lowers gradually came to believe that the weight of authority and
permanence was on the side of Rome. Tract 90, on the Catholic
doctrines in the Thirty-nine Articles, the bulwarks of the Protestant
Church, raised a storm of opposition in that church. And finally in
a dramatic scene at the Convocation of February 13, 1845, the Oxford
Movement was snuffed out. Newman at once left the Via Media
for the Via Appia and entered the Roman Catholic Church. Several
years later, in 1864, he became involved in a controversy with Charles
Kingsley, during which he wrote his religious autobiography, the
"Apologia pro Vita Sua." 3 This famous book, though it cannot be
considered a convincing refutation of the charges which Kingsley
brought against Rome, was a triumphant vindication of Newman's
integrity and nobility of spirit.
CARLYLE AND HIS TEACHING
With Newman, Carlyle had little sympathy. "John Henry New-
man," he said, "has not the intellect of an average-sized rabbit."
Carlyle' s own life 4 was spent in writing the histories of great move-
ments such as the French Revolution, and of great men such as
Cromwell and Frederick the Great. He thundered forth denuncia-
tions of the evils of society. The gospel he preached was of Books,
Silence, Work, and Heroes. "In Books lie the soul of the whole
Past Time." "Silence is the eternal Duty of a man." "Work while
it is called To-day." "Universal history is at bottom the history of
the Great Men who have worked here." These doctrines you will
find summed up in the Inaugural Address at Edinburgh. 5 "Carlyle,"
wrote George Meredith in one of the most luminous estimates 5 of the
Sage of Chelsea, "Carlyle was one who stood constantly in the
presence of those 'Eternal verities' of which he speaks. . . . The spirit
3 See George Moore's "Salve," chap, xv, for a vigorous attack on Newman's style.
4 For a full account see H. C. f xxv, 315.
5 H. C., xxv, 359.
6 See "The Letters of George Meredith," Vol. II, 332.
EDUCATION 307
of the prophet was in him. . . . He was the greatest of the Britons
of his time and after the British fashion of not coming near per-
fection : Titanic, not Olympian : a heaver of rocks, not a shaper. But
if he did no perfect work, he had lightning's power to strike out
marvelous pictures and reach to the inmost of men with a phrase."
THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
Could men so apparently antipodal as these in temperament,
utterance, and life have a thought or doctrine in common? Yet it
was the great paradox of the Victorian era that the heart of their
mystery, the source and pivot of their teaching, was the same domi-
nating idea. The same idea led one man to insist on the value of
the oldest clothes, and led the other to insist on getting rid of them.
This dominating principle was the "Doctrine of the Unconscious." 7
Carlyle first expounded this doctrine in his essay "Characteristics." 8
"The truly strong mind," he says, "view it as Intellect, as Morality,
or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its
strength; here as before the sign of health is unconsciousness. In our
inward, as in our outward, world what is mechanical lies open to
us; not what is dynamical and has vitality. Of our thinking, we
might say, it is but the mere upper surface that we shape into articu-
late Thoughts; underneath the region of argument and conscious
discourse lies the region of meditation; here, in its quiet mysterious
depths, dwells what vital force is in us; here, if aught is to be created,
and not merely manufactured and communicated, must the work go
on. Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial; Creation is great, and
cannot be understood." What is intuitive and spontaneous should
be our guide. "The healthy understanding is not the Logical,
argumentative, but The Intuitive." "The characteristic of right per-
formance is a certain spontaneity, an unconsciousness; 'the healthy
know not of their health, but only the sick.' " On this idea Carlyle
bases his doctrines of Work and Heroes. By work the spontaneous
self has a chance to reveal itself. Heroes are those Great Men who
are spontaneous and sincere, those masters of their time who draw up
into themselves the thoughts of masses of men.
7 For an extended account see Professor J. B. Fletcher's article "Newman and
Carlyle" in the "Atlantic Monthly," Vol. XCV, p. 669.
8 H. C., xxv, 319.
308 EDUCATION
Newman's belief in the power of the unconscious was equally firm
and thoroughgoing. In his sermon on "Explicit and Implicit Rea-
son," he means by "implicit reason" "unconscious meditation."
"Reasoning is a living, spontaneous energy within us, not an art."
"Progress," he said later, "is a living growth, not a mechanism; and
its instruments are mental acts, not the formulas and contrivances
of language." "As each individual has certain instincts of right and
wrong antecedently to reasoning, on which he acts and rightly
so has the world of men collectively. God gave them truths in His
miraculous revelations. . . . These are transmitted as the 'wisdom
of our ancestors.' " It was Newman's staunch belief in what is
intuitive and instinctive that made him accept the wisdom of the
race as more trustworthy than the reason of the individual. Con-
sequently he believed that Christian truth is preserved not by the
reasoning of the individual but by the diversified powers, insight,
and feeling which are found in a long-continuing society. For New-
man, therefore, the Catholic Church was the articulate voice of the
body of Christian believers in the past "the concrete representative
of things invisible." 9
These two great men, who did not understand each other, based
their teachings on the same initial principle the "doctrine of the un-
conscious." However far apart they were at the end, they insisted
with graceful pleading or with tumultuous eloquence on these high
moral truths: faith in what is spontaneous and sincere in one's own
nature, and spontaneous and instinctive submission to those highly
endowed men whose innate sincerity will redeem the world.
9 Readers interested in Newman should see the new "Life" by Wilfrid Ward.
Y. HUXLEY ON SCIENCE AND
CULTURE
BY PROFESSOR A. O. NORTON
HUXLEY'S address on "Science and Culture" 1 was delivered
in 1880, at the opening of Mason Science College in Bir-
mingham, England. Like many academic addresses, it not
only celebrates a local event, but also deals with questions of the
day, chosen to suit the occasion. Unlike most such addresses, how-
ever, it is of permanent value as a document in the history of a great
epoch in English educational progress. The event which it celebrates
marks "a crisis in the long battle, or rather of the long series of
battles" which were fought over education during the nineteenth
century; the discussion concerns two of the most significant edu-
cational reforms of that century; the speaker was a great leader in
the struggle which brought those reforms to pass; the style of the
address illustrates the "strenuous and attractive method of exposi-
tion" which characterizes all of Huxley's writings, and which was
a powerful means of winning public support for his views.
HUXLEY'S OPPONENTS: (i) THE BUSINESS MEN
The full significance of "Science and Culture" appears only when
it is placed in its historical setting. To-day Huxley's views seem
commonplace, because to-day everyone accepts them. Who, now-
adays, disputes his proposition that the sciences are an essential
element of modern culture? And who denies that "the diffusion
of a thorough scientific education is an absolutely essential condition
of industrial progress"?
In England in 1880, however, these ideas seemed shockingly radical
to a very large majority of the people who were doing the thinking
of the country and managing its affairs; and the advocates of scientific
1 Harvard Classics, xxviii, 2ogfi.
309
3TO EDUCATION
studies faced a powerful opposing party composed of two groups
the practical men of business, and the men of liberal education.
Scientific education was despised by practical business men be-
cause it seemed not only unnecessary, but actually harmful as a
preparation for business. English industries had flourished amaz-
ingly without the aid of the sciences, and the captains of industry
saw no reason to believe that "rule of thumb," by which they had
succeeded, would not continue to suffice for their needs. They
failed to see the importance of the connection between scientific
education and the industries; but it was even then perceived in Ger-
many, that "land of damned professors," with the result that Ger-
many rose, in the next twenty-five years, from industrial insignifi-
cance to the position of England's leading industrial competitor.
A further result was a general outcry in England for the kind of
training which Huxley advocated.
(2) THE CLASSICAL TRADITION
The entrance of the sciences into the circle of liberal studies also
met powerful opposition. School and university men in general
doubted, and most of them denied, that the sciences physics, chemis-
try, biology, geology, and the like were at all essential to culture.
And Huxley's conviction that, "for the purpose of attaining real
culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as effective as
an exclusively literary education" was as shocking to the academic
world of that day as the advent of a band of shooting cowboys would
have been to an English garden party. Huxley states very fairly the
working ideal of culture which was held by "the great majority of
educated Englishmen" of 1880, and which had shaped the whole
course of liberal education during the three centuries preceding: "In
their belief," he says, "culture is obtainable only by a liberal educa-
tion; and a liberal education is synonymous, not merely with educa-
tion and instruction in literature, but in one particular form of litera-
ture, namely that of Greek and Roman antiquity. They hold that
the man who has learned Latin and Greek, however little, is edu-
cated; while he who is versed in other branches of knowledge, how-
ever deeply, is a more or less respectable specialist, not admissible
into the cultured caste. The stamp of the educated man, the Uni-
EDUCATION 311
versity degree, is not for him." The best-trained university men
undoubtedly took a more liberal attitude than this, but schoolmasters
in general, and university men of mediocre quality, often maintained
this position with patronizing, not to say insolent, superiority.
(3) THE THEOLOGIANS
Another group of educated men also opposed scientific studies
especially biology on religious grounds. Since the appearance of
Darwin's "Origin of Species" in 1859 there had been "endless battles
and skirmishes" between scientists and theologians over the doctrine
of evolution. It is almost impossible for readers of this generation
to realize the bitterness of the feelings aroused over this doctrine, or
the violence with which, during the sixties and early seventies,
evolution and its champions were attacked. To clergy and the
devout laity alike it seemed to undermine theology and to sap the
very foundations of Christian belief. Scientists who defended it
Huxley chief among them were regarded as the deadly enemies
of religion, as rationalists, materialists, atheists beyond redemption.
Naturally, scientific studies were opposed on the ground that they
were anti-religious in their effect, the breeders of atheism, and the
destroyers of faith. The stormiest period of the debate had passed
by 1880, but the feelings which it aroused were still strong. And,
although Huxley does not directly address these opponents in
"Science and Culture," some reminiscences of the conflict may be
traced in its pages.
Under these circumstances, the address was hardly the tame affair
which it seems to readers of the younger generation. On the contrary,
it was the challenging utterance of a champion in the warfare of
science, at the crisis of the battle.
As above suggested, the two great reforms for which Huxley con-
tended in this address, and elsewhere, were, first, the diffusion of
scientific education as a benefit to industrial workers and an aid to
the industries themselves; second, the revision of the program of
liberal studies to include modern studies, especially the natural
sciences, as well as the traditional Latin and Greek. Thus he con-
fronted two of the three groups of opponents of scientific studies
the practical men of business, and the men of liberal culture.
312 EDUCATION
HUXLEY'S APPEAL TO THE BUSINESS WORLD
The first thing to note in reading the address is the skill with
which Huxley meets each of these antagonists. To the practical
men he appeals in a practical way. His appeal, summarized, is this:
I won't try to reason you out of your opposition to scientific educa-
tion. But consider what Sir Josiah Mason, the founder of this Col-
lege, has done. He is a practical man like yourselves, and yet he
believes in scientific education enough to spend a great part of his
fortune in providing it for young men and women who are to
enter the industries of Birmingham. No one is better qualified to
judge than he. This College is his practical answer to your practical
objections. I can say nothing which will add to its force.
Toward the close of the address Huxley returns to the charge
with evidence that the general sciences are of practical value to the
industries, and with the further remark that considered as culture
alone they are of practical value, for they both ennoble character
and increase and improve in quality the variety of desires which are
satisfied by the products of industry.
HIS APPEAL TO THE UNIVERSITY MEN
Huxley's method of dealing with the second group of antagonists
is very different from this. Here his appeal is to reason. He begins
with a definition of culture which hardly anyone could refuse to
accept. Next, he points out that the real matter on which they dis-
agreed is the answer to the question, How is culture to be obtained ?
Why do we differ so sharply on this matter? he asks. History tells
us why. The studies which have been supposed to give culture have
changed from age to age. In the Middle Ages theology was the sole
basis of culture, because it furnished the best ideals and standards
then available for the criticism of life. In the fifteenth century the
great body of classical literature was revealed to western Europe.
This in turn became the basis of culture, displacing theology, be-
cause in many ways it furnished better ideals and standards
especially in literature, sculpture, and above all in the use of reason.
But since the fifteenth century vast new sources of culture have de-
velopedthe modern literatures, modern music, modern painting,
EDUCATION 313
and above all the great structure of modern science, which gives us
ideals and standards of judgment drawn from a new field, the
book of Nature herself. The reason why we differ is clear. You
still live in the views of the fifteenth century, and you take no account
of the vast changes in our knowledge since that time. But if culture
is to be an effective criticism of modern life as we agree is it not
clear that the ideals and standards given by these new fields of learn-
ing must form a part of any scheme of complete culture? Thus by
clear definition, and by reasoning based on the historic facts, Huxley
drives home his conclusion with telling power.
HIS STYLE AND PERSONALITY
The style of the address deserves notice. It is characteristic of all
Huxley's writings. Perfect clearness and simplicity are its most
obvious qualities. So clear and simple is it, indeed, that one con-
stantly forgets that the printed page is before one. One seems to
be looking directly at the thought expressed rather than at the words
themselves, just as one looks through a clear window at a landscape.
At the same time, the style is never dry. The "bottled life" which,
according to a reviewer, Huxley always "infused into the driest topic
on which human beings ever contrived to prose," is evident here as
in all his writings. Forcible and interesting, as he always is, Huxley
also makes this address pungent by picturesque phrases and keen
thrusts at his antagonists.
A last word must be given to Huxley as a man. He was one of
the most distinguished and striking personalities of his day in Eng-
land. Hardly any character will better repay study. Let the reader
turn to his "Collected Essays," and especially to the two volumes
of his "Life and Letters," edited by his son. There he will find a
portrait, sharply drawn. It is the portrait of a passionate seeker of
truth, fearless in its defense against all odds, and at any cost to him-
self a man ruggedly honest and straightforward, big of mind,
broad of vision, the soul of simplicity, sincerity, and honor.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR THOMAS NIXON CARVER
(Getting an Income (.Business Economics)
[Utilising an Income (Home Economics)
{Direct
Taxation {
i Indirect
' Public
Revenue
Royalties
Economics
or, The Art
of Household "
Management
' Finance
(How the'
state can-
Public Domain
manage its
^Public Trading
own affairs)
k. Public Expenditure
By encouraging the production of
Public
wealth
(Political '
Economy)
By facilitating the exchange of com-
modities
Social EC on-
om\
(How the
By securing an advantageous distribu-
tion of wealth
general wel-
fare may be
By directing the wise consumption of
* promoted)
. wealth
THE term Economics, as originally used by the Greeks, meant
the art of household management, or the principles which
govern the wise management of the household. Xenophon's
treatise on this subject is a description of the management of a simple
agricultural household where problems of revenue and expenditure,
of business and home life, are not very sharply separated. In modern
times, particularly in urban life, the business, or the source of income,
is so sharply separated from the home, where the income is utilized,
that we now have two distinct branches of the subject instead of one.
To one branch we now give the name business economics, business
management, or business administration. The other is known by
such names as home economics, household economics, household
314
POLITICAL SCIENCE 315
management, domestic science, etc. That these two branches are now
so sharply separated as to seem unrelated is a commentary on how
far we have departed from the simple conditions of the self-sufficing
rural household, and how thoroughly we have divorced business
from life.
Xenophon also wrote a treatise on the Revenues of Athens. While
this cannot be regarded as a general treatise on public finance, it
serves at least to show that he had some interest in that field, which
may not inaptly be called public housekeeping. Every government,
considered as a corporate body, has needs of its own apart from those
of the people whom it governs. Whether it be a city, a state, or a
smaller governing unit, it must solve the problems of revenue and
expenditure just as a private household. Later writers applied the
term economics mainly to this group of problems to which we now
apply the name public finance, rather than to that group which in
the diagram above are included under Private Economics. In a
monarchy the providing of revenues for the king's household, and
the expenditure of those revenues in the support of the household,
may approximate very closely to the character of private economics,
as when the chief source of revenue is the royal demesne, or to public
economics when the chief source of revenue is taxation, and the king
is regarded merely as a public official to be supported as other public
officials are.
EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
In the mediaeval and early modern period, the chief interest in
economics had shifted from the private to the public aspects of the
science, but was still centered mainly in problems of public revenue
and expenditure, or, as we should now say, public finance. The chief
students in this field were the finance ministers, who were charged
with the office of raising revenue for the royal household and the
enterprises both constructive and military of the king. It was soon
apparent that the amount of royal revenue was strictly limited by
the wealth of the people. If larger revenues were needed, the people
must be made more prosperous in order that they might pay heavier
taxes. From that time forward students gave increasing attention
to the problems of national prosperity, until, at the present time,
316 POLITICAL SCIENCE
that is the primary object of interest, problems of public revenue and
expenditure being strictly subordinated. That is to say, instead of
trying to promote national prosperity in order that there may be
more taxes and other forms of public revenue, the modern policy
is to promote general prosperity for its own sake, and to raise
revenue for the government only when, and to the extent that, it is
necessary to do so in order to promote the general welfare.
MERCANTILISTS AND PHYSIOCRATS
Even when students began to focus their attention upon general
economic prosperity, it took them some time to develop a really
broad view of that problem. One school, known as the mercantilists,
emphasized commerce, particularly foreign commerce, to such an
extent as to make it seem that they identified prosperity with foreign
trade. Writers of this school, for example, were accustomed to point
out that an abundant supply of cheap labor was one factor in the
development of foreign trade, because with cheap labor the country
could compete with rival nations in international trade. This was
obviously not intended to promote the prosperity of the laborers
who were to supply the cheap labor. Another school, the physiocrats,
emphasized the importance of agriculture as the industry which
really produced a surplus over and above the cost of production.
Both these schools made the mistake of assuming an analogy
between public prosperity and private prosperity. A private business
which sells more than it buys, or takes in more money than it pays
out, is said to be prosperous. The mercantile school assumed the
same to be true of the nation at large, overlooking the fact that in
the nation at large what is profit to one man may be cost to some one
else, as in the case of the merchants who exported goods at a profit
because they paid the laborers so little for their work. Again, a
private business may be said to be prosperous when its products are
greater than its costs. In agriculture there is the rent of land, which
is not, strictly speaking, a cost, but a surplus income to the owner.
This surplus income is the surplus value of the produce over and
above the cost of producing it. Since very little rent was produced
by the handicraft manufacturers of the day, the physiocrats assumed
that these were not very profitable industries for the country at large,
POLITICAL SCIENCE 317
but that its main prosperity came from agriculture, where the main
surplus, namely rent, accrued. Like the mercantilists, they over-
looked the fact that this surplus might be the result, in part at least,
of the poverty of the farm laborers. With a given efficiency, the
cheaper they would work the lower the cost of growing crops and
the higher the rent of the land.
It was not until Adam Smith's epoch-making work, the "Wealth
of Nations," l was given to the world that students began to take a
really broad and comprehensive view of the problems of national
welfare. Different students naturally have different special interests,
but they generally realize the bearing of their specialties upon the
larger problem. It has seemed at times that too many were focusing
their attention upon production or exchange, and too few upon
problems of distribution. For the last twenty-five years the problem
of distribution has attracted more attention than all the others; but
now the idea is beginning to dawn that consumption is the most
important field of all, though it has been receiving the least attention
of any.
THE MEANING OF WEALTH
Now that economics is definitely focusing attention upon prob-
lems of national prosperity, it is important that the student should
understand clearly the leading concepts of the science before pro-
ceeding to study its literature. The leading concept is that of wealth,
but this is a term with two distinct but closely related meanings.
In the first place, it is the name of a condition of well-being, in
which sense it is not very different from the Saxon term weal, from
which it is descended. In the second and more usual sense, wealth
is the collective name for a category of goods. Goods are the means
of satisfying desires, but not all goods are wealth. Only those goods
are wealth upon which the satisfaction of desires depends in a very
special and practical sense. People desire air, sunlight, and a number
of other things which do not constitute wealth. But if they not only
desire a thing, but desire more than they have, or more than there
is to be had at once, then that thing is wealth. Their state of satis-
faction is definitely affected by the question of more or less of this
1 See Harvard Classics, x, and Lecture III in this Course.
3l8 POLITICAL SCIENCE
thing. More of it, more satisfaction; less of it, less satisfaction.
Though we could not live at all without air, yet we do not ordinarily
desire more than we have. There is enough to go around and satisfy
everybody. We should not notice the difference if there were a
little less. If special conditions should arise in any time and place
where there was not enough air for everybody, so that people should
desire more than they had, air would then and there be wealth.
Wealth may also be defined, tentatively, as the name of those
goods upon which weal or well-being depends, in this immediate and
practical sense. If our weal is increased by having more of a certain
class of things, and decreased by having less of them, those things
therefore constitute wealth. They become the objects of conscious
and active human desire and therefore of conscious and active
human endeavor. More bread, more weal; less bread, less weal.
Because we can say that, bread is wealth. Broadly speaking, every-
thing to which we can apply that formula in any time and place is
then and there wealth. Nothing is wealth which cannot be brought
under that formula.
This statement calls for one qualification, namely, that men may
not know upon what their weal or well-being depends. That upon
which they thinly that their well-being depends they will regard as
wealth. In other words, if they desire a thing, and desire more of it
than they have, that indicates that they think their weal, or state
of satisfaction, would be increased by having more of it. The fact
that they want more, and try to get it, either by producing or pur-
chasing it, indicates that they regard it as wealth, or as the means
to well-being. Therefore it sometimes happens that the student is
compelled to include some things under wealth which he regards as
not only useless but deleterious and immoral the means of satis-
fying vicious appetites, such as opium, tobacco, and alcohol. If one
were to make much of this qualification, he would probably choose
to divorce the word wealth from well-being, and define it as scarce
means of satisfying desires.
Any of these definitions will be found to harmonize perfectly with
another that has had some currency, namely, that wealth is the col-
lective name for all goods which have value or power in exchange;
for only those things which are desirable and scarce will have power
POLITICAL SCIENCE 319
in exchange, or value. In fact they are evaluated, bought and sold,
solely because they are scarce and some one wants more than he has.
THE MEANING OF ECONOMY
The idea of scarcity as an essential to the concept of wealth sug-
gests, next, the meaning of economy, which is another fundamental
concept of the science of economics. Economy suggests the adjust-
ing of means to ends, making a little go a long way, or, in the last
analysis, choosing among one's desires and sacrificing the less im-
portant in order that the more important may be satisfied. This
choice is forced upon us by the fact of scarcity, without which such
choosing would be unnecessary, since we could, if everything were
sufficiently abundant, satisfy all our desires without sacrificing any.
It is in the utilization of those things which are scarce that economy
is called for. These things which, being scarce, need to be econ-
omized in the interest of the largest satisfaction or well-being con-
stitute economic goods, for which wealth is only another name.
These are the things which have to be appraised, evaluated, and
compared with one another with respect to their utility, in order that
the limited supplies may be meted out and made to go as far as
possible in the satisfaction of human desires, and in order that they
may satisfy the greater rather than the lesser desires.
The economizing of scarce goods cannot be dissociated from such
outstanding facts as production and exchange. The things toward
which we must practice economy come to be esteemed or evaluated
in a very direct and practical sense which is not true of anything
else. When we desire a thing and desire more than we have, we
not only try to get more, either by purchase or by production, but
the more intensely we desire more of it the more we will give in
exchange for a given unit of it, or the harder we will try to produce
more of it. This process of evaluation gives such a thing power in
exchange in proportion to its scarcity, or rather in proportion to
the intensity of our desire for more. It also determines the direction
in which the productive energies of society will be turned. Whether
a given individual himself desires more of a thing or not, if there
is somewhere in the community such a desire for more as will give
the thing a high power in exchange, or a high value, that value will
32O POLITICAL SCIENCE
serve as effectively to induce the individual to produce it as though
he desired the thing itself.
THE LAW OF VARIABLE PROPORTIONS
The process of production, in turn, calls for a new exercise of
economy, because the means of production are scarce in some cases
and abundant in others. In the last analysis, all industry consists in
moving materials from one place to another. That is all that the
moving-picture machine, or the human eye as a mechanical device,
would reveal. But the mind sees plans, purposes, and laws back of
this process of moving materials. One of the great generalizations
of the scientific observer is that all this moving of materials is for
the purpose of getting things together in the right proportions. Of
course there are purposes back of all this, but the observed fact is
that every industrial purpose is carried out by getting materials to-
gether in the right proportion. All this moving of materials which
the eye sees is dominated by the law of proportionality, and the
skill of the producer consists first in knowing the right proportions
in which to combine materials, and, second, in his ability to bring
them together.
This applies everywhere from a chemical experiment to the
irrigation of a desert, from the work of the artist in his studio to
that of the farmer in his field. The chemist, however, works under
a law of definite proportions, under which chemical elements have
to be combined in exact mathematical ratios, whereas the greater
part of the work of production is under the law of variable pro-
portions. In the irrigation of a piece of land, for example, there are
variable quantities of water which may be used in the growing of a
crop. One cannot say that an exact quantity of water must be
applied, otherwise there will be no crop at all, or that the slightest
variation either way would utterly ruin the crop. Within fairly
wide limits of moisture a crop can be grown, though within these
limits the crop will vary somewhat but not exactly according to
the quantity of moisture provided.
Wherever the law of variable proportions holds, that is, wherever
the law of definite proportions does not hold, the product may vary
whenever any of the factors which are necessary to its production
POLITICAL SCIENCE 321
varies; but the product will seldom vary in exact proportion as any
single factor is varied. Adding one-tenth to the quantity of moisture
in the soil will seldom, and only accidentally, result in the increase
of exactly one-tenth to the crop. The same may be said with respect
to fertilizer, or to any single element of fertility, with respect
to the labor of cultivation, or with respect to any other single factor
which enters into the determination of the size of a crop. Moreover,
all this can be repeated with respect to any productive plant, say a
factory, and of the factors of production which have to be combined
in it.
The work of assembling the factors of production in any productive
establishment, whether it be a shop, farm, factory, or transportation
system, calls for a degree of knowledge and care comparable with
that of the chemist in the assembling of chemical elements, though,
as stated before, the chemist must follow definite formulae with
mathematical precision, because of the law of definite proportions.
This law of variable proportions is difficult to state concisely, but
the following formulae may serve to give a fairly accurate notion as
to its meaning and import. Let us assume that three factors, x, y,
and z, are necessary to get a certain desirable product, which we
will call p.
If 10 x with 20 y with 30 z will produce 100 p,
(1) more than no p;
(2) 110/7;
(3) less than no but more than 100 p;
(4) P>'
(5) less than 100 p.
If it should be found by experiment that the addition of one unit
of x resulted in (i) more than no p, or (2) no p, that would indi-
cate that the proportion of x to the other factors y and z was too
low. Since an additional unit of x will result in such a large increase
in the product, it is evident that more of x will be strongly desired,
as compared with more of y and z, for if there is too little of x in
the combination there must be too much of y and z. If, however,
it were found that the addition of one unit of x resulted in (4) 100 p
that is, no increase at all or (5) in less than 100 p that is, less
then ii A: with 20 y with
30 z will produce
322 POLITICAL SCIENCE
than was produced before it is obvious that the proportion of x
to the other factors is too high. Consequently, more of x will be
little desired as compared with y and z, because if there is too much
of x in the combination there must be too little of y and z. But if
the increase in x results in an increase of five units of product pro-
portional increase, in the product, then the factors are nearing the
right proportions. Whether it is better to increase x by one unit
will then depend upon the cost of x and the value of the increased
product. Let us suppose that the increase in x results in an increase
of five units of product (105 p). If one unit of x cost less than five
units of p, it will be profitable to increase the factor x from 10 to n;
otherwise it will not.
Of course the formula and all that comes after it could be repeated
with respect to y or z, as well as of x, if either were regarded as the
variable factor, x, y, and z may represent labor, land, and capital in
industry in general; they may represent different grades of labor in
any industry; they may represent nitrogen, potash, and phosphorus
in the soil; or they may represent any group of factors anywhere
combined to get any product. The essential thing to remember is
that in any combination the scarcest factor is the limiting factor,
and the product will vary more directly with that than with any
other. Since the variation in the product follows more sharply the
variation in this scarce factor than that of any of the more abundant
factors in the combination, it is not uncommon to speak of the
scarcest factor as having the highest productivity. Whether that
be an accurate use of terms or not, there is not the slightest doubt
that it will be most highly prized, will command the highest price,
and will need to be economized most carefully. This formula and
the remarks under it will serve to bring out the underlying physical
fact of productivity upon which the law of supply and demand is
based.
THE CONFLICT OF INTERESTS BETWEEN MAN AND MAN
That utility and scarcity, and these alone, are the factors which
give value to a thing, whether its utility consists in its power to
satisfy wants directly or indirectly, that is, whether it be an article
of consumption or a factor of production, is now perhaps sufficiently
POLITICAL SCIENCE 323
clear. That the factor of scarcity creates the necessity for economy
is also fairly obvious. That it is the source also of the conflict of
human interests out of which most of our moral and social problems
grow may not be quite so obvious, but the following considerations
will show it to be true. The fact of scarcity means that man has
wants for which nature does not spontaneously provide. This in
turn implies a lack of harmony between man and nature, which it
is the purpose of productive industry to restore.
That phase of the disharmony between man and nature which
takes the form of scarcity gives rise also to a disharmony between
man and man. Where there is scarcity there will be two men want-
ing the same thing; and where two men want the same thing there
is an antagonism of interests. Where there is an antagonism of
interests between man and man, there will be questions to be settled,
questions of right and wrong, of justice and injustice; and these
questions could not arise under any other condition. The antagonism
of interests is, in other words, what gives rise to a moral problem,
and it is, therefore, about the most fundamental fact in sociology and
moral philosophy. 2
This does not overlook the fact that there are many harmonies
between man and man, as there are between man and nature. There
may be innumerable cases where all human interests harmonize,
but these give rise to no problem and therefore we do not need to
concern ourselves with them. As already pointed out, there are
many cases where man and nature are in complete harmony. There
are things, for example, which nature furnishes in sufficient abun-
dance to satisfy all our wants, but these also give rise to no problem.
Toward these non-economic goods our habitual attitude is one of
indifference or unconcern. Where the relations between man and
nature are perfect, why should we concern ourselves about them?
But the whole industrial world is bent on improving those relations
where they are imperfect. Similarly with the relations between man
and man; where they are perfect, that is, where interests are all
harmonious, why should we concern ourselves about them? As a
matter of fact we do not. But where they are imperfect, where inter-
2 Cf . "The Economic Basis of the Problem of Evil," by T. N. Carver, in "Harvard
Theological Review," Vol. I, No. 6.
324 POLITICAL SCIENCE
ests are antagonistic and trouble is constantly arising, we are com-
pelled to concern ourselves whether we want to or not. As a matter
of fact, we do concern ourselves in various ways; we work out
systems of moral philosophy and theories of justice, after much
disputation; we establish tribunals where, in the midst of much
wrangling, some of these theories are applied to the settlement of
actual conflicts; we talk and argue interminably about the proper
adjustment of antagonistic interests of various kinds, all of which,
it must be remembered, grow out of the initial fact of scarcity
that there are not as many things as people want.
That underneath all these disharmonies there is a deep underlying
harmony of human interests is the profound belief of some. But
this belief, like that in a harmony between man and nature, is not
susceptible of a positive proof. It rests upon philosophical conjecture
and faith. To be sure, it is undoubtedly true that most men, even
the strongest, are better off in the long run under a just government,
where all their conflicts are accurately and wisely adjudicated, than
they would be in a state of anarchy, where everyone who was able
did what he pleased, or what he could if he was not able to do what
he pleased. This might possibly be construed to imply a harmony of
interests, in that all alike, the strong as well as the weak, are inter-
ested in maintaining a just government. But the argument is vio-
lently paradoxical, because it literally means that interests are so
very antagonistic that in the absence of a government to hold them
in check there would be such a multiplicity of conflicts, wasting the
energies of society, that in the end everybody would suffer, even
the strongest. This is an excellent argument in favor of the necessity
of government, but it is the poorest kind of an argument in favor of
the universal harmony of human interests.
Fundamentally, therefore, there are only two practical problems
imposed upon us. The one is industrial and the other moral; the
one has to do with the improvement of the relations between man
and nature, and the other with the improvement of the relations
between man and man. But these two primary problems are so
inextricably intermingled, and they deal with such infinitely varying
factors, that the secondary and tertiary problems are more than we
can count.
POLITICAL SCIENCE 325
THE CONFLICT OF MAN WITH NATURE
But whence arises that phase of the conflict with nature out of
which grows the conflict between man and man? Is man in any
way responsible for it, or is it due wholly to the harshness or the
niggardliness of nature ? The f ruitf ulness of nature varies, of course,
in different environments. But in any environment there are two
conditions, for both of which man is in a measure responsible, and
either of which will result in economic scarcity. One is the indefinite
expansion of human wants, and the other is the multiplication of
numbers.
The well-known expansive power of human wants, continually
running beyond the power of nature to satisfy, has attracted the
attention of moralists in all times and places. "When goods increase,
they are increased that eat them; and what good is there to the
owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?" is
the point of view of The Preacher. 3 It was the same aspect of life,
obviously throwing man out of harmony with nature, which gave
point to the Stoic's principle of "living according to nature." To
live according to nature would necessarily mean, among other
things, to keep desires within such limits as nature could supply
without too much coercion. Seeing that the best things in life cost
nothing, and that the most ephemeral pleasures are the most ex-
pensive, there would appear to be much economic wisdom in the
Stoic philosophy. But the pious Buddhist in his quest of Nirvana,
overlooking the real point that the expansion of wants beyond
nature's power to satisfy is what throws man inevitably out of har-
mony with nature and produces soul-killing conflicts sees in desire
itself the source of evil, and seeks release in the eradication of all
desire.
Out of the view that the conflict of man with nature is a source
of evil grow two widely different practical conclusions as to social
conduct. If we assume that nature is beneficent and man at fault,
the conclusion follows as a matter of course that desires must be
curbed and brought into harmony with nature, which is closely
akin to Stoicism, if it be not its very essence. But if, on the contrary,
3 H. C., xliv, 341342.
326 POLITICAL SCIENCE
we assume that human nature is sound, then the only practical con-
clusion is that external nature must be coerced into harmony with
man's desires and made to yield more and more for their satisfac-
tion. This is the theory of the modern industrial spirit in its wild
pursuit of wealth and luxury.
Even if the wants of the individual never expanded at all, it is
quite obvious that an indefinite increase in the number of individuals
in any locality would, sooner or later, result in scarcity and bring
them into conflict with nature, and therefore into conflict with one
another. That human populations are physiologically capable of
indefinite increase, if time be allowed, is admitted, and must be
admitted by anyone who has given the slightest attention to the
subject. Among the non-economizing animals and plants, it is not
the limits of their procreative power but the limits of subsistence
which determine their numbers. Neither is it lack of procreative
power which limits numbers in the case of man, the economic
animal. With him also it is a question of subsistence, but of sub-
sistence according to some standard. Being gifted with economic
foresight, he will not multiply beyond the point where he can main-
tain that standard of life which he considers decent. But and this
is to be especially noted so powerful are his procreative and domes-
tic instincts that he will multiply up to the point where it is difficult
to maintain whatever standard he has. Whether his standard of
living be high or low to begin with, the multiplication of numbers
will be carried to the point where he is in danger of being forced
down to a lower standard. In other words, it will always be hard
for us to make as good a living as we think we ought to have. Un-
satisfied desires, or economic scarcity, which means the same thing,
are therefore inevitable. It is a condition from which there is no
possible escape. The cause lies deeper than forms of social organiza-
tion: it grows out of the relation of man and nature.
THE INTERNAL CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
These considerations reveal a third form of conflict perhaps it
ought to be called the second a conflict of interests within the
individual himself. If the procreative and domestic instincts are
freely gratified, there will inevitably result a scarcity of means of
POLITICAL SCIENCE 327
satisfying other desires, however modest those desires may be,
through the multiplication of numbers. If an abundance of these
things is to be assured, those instincts must be only partially satisfied.
Either horn of the dilemma leaves us with unsatisfied desires of one
kind or another. We are therefore pulled in two directions, and this
also is a condition from which there is no possible escape. But this
is only one illustration of the internal strife which tears the indi-
vidual. The very fact of scarcity means necessarily that if one desire
is satisfied it is at the expense of some other. What I spend for
luxuries I cannot spend for necessaries; what I spend for clothing I
cannot spend for food; and what I spend for one kind of food I
cannot spend for some other kind. This is the situation which calls
for economy, since to economize is merely to choose what desires
shall be gratified, knowing that certain others must, on that account,
remain ungratified. Economy always and everywhere means a three-
fold conflict; a conflict between man and nature, between man and
man, and between the different interests of the same man.
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
This suggests the twofold nature of the problem of evil. Evil in
the broadest sense merely means disharmony, since any kind of
disharmony is a source of pain to somebody. But that form of dis-
harmony which arises between man and nature has, in itself, no
moral qualities. It is an evil to be cold or hungry, to have a tree
fall upon one, to be devoured by a wild beast, or wasted by microbes.
But to evils of this kind, unless they are in some way the fault of
other men, we never ascribe any moral significance whatever. It is
also an evil for one man to rob another, or to cheat him, or in any
way to injure him through carelessness or malice; and we do ascribe
a moral significance to evils of this kind to any evil, in fact, which
grows out of the relations of man with man. But, as already pointed
out, this latter form of evil moral evil grows out of, or results
from, the former, which may be called non-moral evil. Any true
account of the origin of moral evil must therefore begin with the
disharmony between man and nature.
Let us imagine a limited number of individuals living in a very
favorable environment, where all their wants could be freely and
328 POLITICAL SCIENCE
fully gratified, where there was no scarcity nor any need for economy.
Under a harmony with nature so nearly perfect as this, there could
arise none of those conflicts of interests within the individual, since
the gratification of one desire would never be at the expense of some
other; nor could there arise any conflict of interests among indi-
viduals, since the gratification of one individual's desire would never
prevent the gratification of another's. There being no conflict of
interests either within the individual or among different individuals,
there could never arise a moral problem. That would be paradise.
But suppose that wants should expand, or new wants develop; or
suppose that, through the gratification of an elemental impulse, num-
bers should increase beyond any provision which nature had made.
Paradise would be lost. Not only would labor and fatigue be neces-
sary, but an antagonism of interests and a moral problem would
arise. Human ingenuity would have to be directed, not only toward
the problem of increasing the productivity of the earth, but toward
the problem of adjusting conflicting interests. Questions of justice
and equity would begin to puzzle men's brains.
It would be difficult to find in this illustration any suggestion of
original sin or hereditary taint of any kind. The act which made for
increase of numbers, instead of being a sinful one, for which punish-
ment was meted out as a matter of justice, would, on the contrary,
be as innocent of moral guilt as any other. But the inevitable con-
sequence of it would be the destruction of the preexisting harmony,
giving rise, in turn, to a conflict of human interests. Nor does the
illustration suggest or imply any "fall" or change in human nature,
but rather a change of conditions under which the same human
qualities would produce different social results. Moreover, the illus-
tration does not depend for its validity upon its historical character.
That it to say, it is not necessary to show that there ever was a har-
mony between man and nature so nearly complete as the illustration
assumes to begin with. The fundamental basis of conflict is clearly
enough revealed by the illustration when it is shown to be inherent
in the nature of man and of the material world about him.
This theory of the origin of evil is already embodied in a well-
known story, which need not be interpreted as having a historical
basis in order to have a profound meaning more profound, prob-
POLITICAL SCIENCE 329
ably, than its most reverent students have seen in it. Once upon a
time there was a garden in which lived a man and a woman, all of
whose wants were supplied by the spontaneous fruits of the earth.
There was no struggle for existence, no antagonism of interests; in
short, that was paradise. But the gratification of a certain desire
brought increase of numbers, and increase of numbers brought
scarcity, and paradise was lost. Thenceforward man was to eat
his bread in the sweat of his brow. The struggle for existence had
set in. Man had to contend against either natural or human rivals
for the means of satisfying his wants, and every form of greed and
rapacity had a potential existence. When his eyes were opened to
these inherent antagonisms, that is, when he became a discerner of
good and evil, of advantages and disadvantages, both near and
remote, he became an economic being, an adapter of means to ends;
a chooser between pleasures and pains. In short, the process of in-
dustrial civilization, of social evolution, had made its first faint be-
ginning. The human race was caught in a network of forces from
which it was never to extricate itself. It was adrift upon a current
which set irresistibly outward no man knew whither.
THE ORIGIN OF INSTITUTIONS
In this antagonism of interests, growing out of scarcity, the in-
stitutions of property, of the family, and of the state, all have their
common origin. No one, for example, thinks of claiming property
in anything which exists in sufficient abundance for all. But when
there is not enough to go around, each unit of the supply becomes a
prize for somebody, and there would be a general scramble did
not society itself undertake to determine to whom each unit should
belong. Possession, of course, is not property; but when society rec-
ognizes one's right to a thing, and undertakes to protect him in that
right, that is property. Wherever society is sufficiently organized to
recognize these rights and to afford them some measure of protection,
there is a state; and there is a family wherever there is a small group
within which the ties of blood and kinship are strong enough to
overcome any natural rivalry and to create a unity of interests. This
unity of economic interests within the group is sufficient to separate
it from the rest of the world, or from other similar groups among
33O POLITICAL SCIENCE
which the natural rivalry of interests persists. Saying nothing of the
barbaric notion that wives and children are themselves property,
even in the higher types of society it is the desire to safeguard those
to whom one is bound by ties of natural affection, by sharing the
advantages of property with them, which furnishes the basis for the
legal definition of the family group.
THE FUNDAMENTAL POSITION OF ECONOMICS
Closely associated with the right of property as parts of it in
fact is a group of rights such as that of contract, of transfer, of
bequest, and a number of other things with which lawyers occupy
themselves. It would be difficult to find any question in the whole
science of jurisprudence, or of ethics, or politics, or any of the
social sciences for that matter, which does not grow out of the initial
fact of economic scarcity and the consequent antagonism of interests
among men. This reveals, as nothing else can, the underlying unity
of all the social sciences, that is, of all the sciences which have to do
with the relations between man and man; and it shows very clearly
that the unifying principle is an economic one. Even the so-called
gregarious instinct may very probably be the product of the
struggle for existence, which, in turn, is the product of scarcity
the advantage of acting in groups being the selective agency in the
development of this instinct. But that question, like a great many
others, lies beyond the field of positive knowledge. This does not
necessarily constitute economics as the "master science," with the
other social sciences subordinate to it; but it does signify that, if
there is such a thing as a master science, economics has the first
claim to that position among the social sciences. The economic
problem is the fundamental one, out of which all other social and
moral problems have grown.
ECONOMIC COMPETITION
This conflict of man with man, when uncontrolled by society,
either through moral codes or legal procedure, does not differ
materially from the struggle for existence among brutes. But there
is no human society which does not control the struggle in some way.
In fact the one purpose for which organized society exists is that of
POLITICAL SCIENCE 331
controlling the struggle and directing it into productive channels.
The self-interested individual cares nothing for production as such.
What he is interested in is the acquisition of things which are scarce.
If the easiest method of acquisition is that of production, then he
will produce. If there is some easier way, he will pursue that way.
The purpose of the law and government is to make it difficult and
dangerous to acquire by any other method than that of production,
or free and voluntary exchange of products, which means the same
thing. In so far as the state succeeds in this attempt and thus forces
all individuals to acquire by methods of production, it is justifying
its existence.
When the struggle for existence is thus turned into productive
channels, when every individual finds that he can acquire desirable
things only by producing them, or by offering the producer some-
thing of equal value in exchange for them, then the brutal struggle
for existence is transformed into economic competition. Perfect
economic competition is merely a system under which each indi-
vidual finds it most advantageous to acquire by productive or
serviceable effort of some kind, and so, in Adam Smith's words, "to
promote the public good while trying to promote his own."
When we consider that the individual's value to the rest of society
is measured by the excess of his production over consumption, while
his position in industry is determined by his rate of accumulation,
which is merely his acquisition minus his consumption, we shall see
how important it is that acquisition and production should be
identified. This may be expressed by means of the following
formulae :
The value of a man=his production his consumption.
His competing power=his acquisition his consumption.
When acquisition=production
Then his value=his competing power.
The purpose of the state is to make acquisition=production.
II. THEORIES OF GOVERNMENT IN
THE RENAISSANCE
BY PROFESSOR O. M. W. SPRAGUE
AERY small number of books on political and social subjects
have exerted a profound and continuous influence both
upon the development of thought and upon the determina-
tion of the policies adopted regarding public questions. Aristotle's
"Politics" and Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" 1 are notable
works belonging to this exceptionally distinguished group. A much
greater number of political writings had a potent influence at the
time of their composition but now possess little other than historical
significance.
Among such works may be mentioned Luther's "Address to the
German Nobility" and "Concerning Christian Liberty," 2 and Rous-
seau's "Social Contract." Machiavelli's "Prince" 3 and More's
"Utopia" 4 do not fall exactly within either of these categories. They
were not the starting points from which great and fruitful advance
in knowledge has been made, and at no time have they been power-
ful factors in determining the legislation or policy of any nation.
Both are indeed highly significant and characteristic products of
the age in which they were written; compared with the writings of
Luther, they were immensely less influential in shaping contemporary
opinion; but they are quite as representative of the thought of the
time and so possess great historic interest. Moreover, although the
specific conclusions of Machiavelli and of More have never been
followed closely in practice, they do exemplify in their work the
two strikingly different attitudes, one or the other of which in-
variably appears in the methods and conclusions of writers upon
political and social problems.
1 Harvard Classics, x, gfi. 2 H. C., xxxvi, 26^., 336^.
3 H. C., xxxvi, 7tf. 4 H. C, xxxvi,
332
POLITICAL SCIENCE 333
THE RENAISSANCE SPIRIT IN MACHIAVELLI AND MORE
The "Prince" and the "Utopia" were both written in the second
decade of the sixteenth century, at the time when those various in-
fluences which made the Renaissance period in history were being
most completely exemplified in education, art, morals, and indeed
in virtually every field of human activity and aspiration. In almost
every direction the human spirit had freed itself from mediaeval
traditional limitations; political and social arrangements among
others were subjected to philosophic analysis and investigation
unrestrained by ancient concepts and regardless of the revolutionary
conclusions that might be the outcome. Among the political writers
of the period, Machiavelli and More exhibited in pre-eminent
measure the working of the Renaissance spirit. Machiavelli sub-
jected governmental machinery and policy to the test of facts. More
subjected not only political but also social arrangements to the test
of what he deemed ideally desirable. Both are in agreement that
nothing in the social order is necessarily perfect even at the moment
and certainly not for all time. Institutions and customs are to be
judged by results, and all may be changed if something better can
be devised. This is distinctly the modern point of view. It is quite
as essentially the Renaissance point of view. Modern history begins
with the Renaissance.
CONTRAST IN METHOD
In an age like the present, marked by swift advance in the exact
sciences, the test of fact is apt to seem the one promising method of
approach to the investigation of political and social problems. The
test of the ideal exemplified in the "Utopia" has given the language
an adjective, "Utopian," which connotes the impractical, the
visionary, and even the fanciful. The test of fact exemplified in
Machiavelli has also, however, yielded an adjective, "Machiavellian,"
of even more damning connotation. If the test of fact is to be a true
test, all significant facts must be considered, and ideals are facts
of vast importance in the development and maintenance of social
arrangements. Machiavelli's method was scientific in its general
character; but his low estimate of human nature, founded as it was
334 POLITICAL SCIENCE
upon an assumption contrary to fact, rendered much of his analysis
fundamentally inexact and unscientific.
MACHIAVELLl's LIMITATIONS
Even within the field of the kind of facts to which he attaches
significance, Machiavelli's analysis was far from being compre-
hensive. At the time he wrote, and indeed for a century and more
before, Italy had been split up into a large number of political
entities, most of which were in a chronic state of political instability
not unlike that of many Central American countries to-day. Few
Italian rulers were secure from either domestic or foreign foes.
Machiavelli made much use of the comparative method in his
analysis, and properly; but as he was mainly concerned with the
means of securing and maintaining personal rule under conditions
which at best could not provide a solid basis for governmental
authority, his conclusions seldom possess general validity. They
were not applicable to the centralized governments of large terri-
torial areas then in process of development north of the Alps, where
the ruling dynasties were already strongly entrenched in power. It
is even more evident that his analysis affords little of practical value
in the solution of modern problems of government. Possibly there
is some analogy between the conditions described by Machiavelli
and the struggle for political power carried on upon a low plane
between rival bosses in misgoverned municipalities. One would,
however, search the pages of the "Prince" in vain for a remedy for
such ills of democratic government.
In the field of international politics, Machiavelli's analysis has
undoubtedly been measurably in accord with practice in his own
time and since. Ethical restraints have been relatively weak in the
dealings of the nations one with another; and it is a significant fact
that nowhere has Machiavelli found so many close readers as among
those statesmen who have been mainly concerned with foreign
affairs.
After making every qualification, it must still be recognized that
in the "Prince" Machiavelli took a long step in advance toward the
development of a sound method of analyzing political problems.
His example was, however, not followed very generally by writers
POLITICAL SCIENCE 335
on government in his own and the two succeeding centuries. Ques-
tions of divine right and theories of natural rights and natural law
rather than the facts of government absorbed the attention of most
publicists. In the nineteenth century more exact methods have been
adopted in this as in other fields of knowledge; but in bringing
about this desirable change little or no direct influence can be
attributed to the work of Machiavelli.
THE IMAGINARY COMMONWEALTH AS A FORM OF POLITICAL CRITICISM
With the exception of Plato's "Republic," the "Utopia" is the best
instance of the use of the device of an imaginary society as a vehicle
for analysis, and indeed arraignment, of social and political con-
ditions. During the mediaeval period, uniformity of ideals and con-
ditions throughout Europe was too great to suggest writings of this
character, but the discoveries in the New World disclosed the exist-
ence of societies which had never been in touch with the European
world. The assumption of the finality of European arrangements
was consequently somewhat weakened, at least for men of a re-
flective cast of mind. In placing his "Utopia" somewhere in the New
World, More must have greatly heightened the imaginative effect
of the work to readers of his own time. The sense of illusion thus
given at the outset is remarkably well maintained throughout. No
other creator of imaginary societies has been so successful in directly
impressing the reader with the feasibility of his scheme of social
betterment.
Later writers of Utopias have been commonly too anxiously con-
cerned to put together a society which should meet the criticisms of
experts in economics, sociology, and government. To attempt this,
is to miss the true aim and lose much of effectiveness in this style of
composition. It is certain that society will never be suddenly trans-
formed into something quite different which may be worked out in
advance by thoughtful investigators. Quite evidently also the exact
course of social evolution in the distant future cannot be foreseen.
Books like the "Utopia" are effective means of weakening the feel-
ing of complete satisfaction with the existing social order, a state
of mind which is neither helpful nor conducive to human betterment.
Effectiveness is far from being in direct ratio to the scientific pos-
POLITICAL SCIENCE
sibilities of the imaginary society described. The imaginary society
is simply the vehicle for satire and criticism of things as they are,
In other words, it is as literature and not as a scientific treatise that
ideal commonwealths should be considered. The possession of lit-
erary qualities has made a few of them effective. More's "Utopia"
meets this test admirably and is, therefore, properly included among
the Five-Foot Shelf of Books.
THE "UTOPIA" AND MODERN CONDITIONS
Some acquaintance with social conditions and politics in the time
of More adds much to the significance and interest of the book; but
society, and even more human nature, changes so slowly from age
to age that much of it can hardly fail to prove full of stimulating
suggestion even to readers familiar only with present conditions.
Speaking generally, our own society is no nearer that depicted in
the "Utopia" than was that of More's own period. In some respects
it is further removed from Utopian conditions, notably in the greater
relative importance of manufacturing and commercial as contrasted
with agricultural activities. In some directions changes have taken
place which all would agree are for the better, though they are con-
trary to the Utopian ideal. The government of "Utopia" was dis-
tinctly aristocratic. To a modern idealist the best of all conceivable
societies would certainly be democratic in form and in practice.
Slavery, though of an ameliorated sort, was an essential foundation
of the Utopian polity. No better illustration may possibly be found
of the difficulty experienced in getting away from the blinding in-
fluence of one's own environment, even when gifted with an ex-
ceptionally humane spirit and a powerful imagination. One may
hazard the hope, in this connection, that in the distant evolution of
society a higher level of improvement may be reached than can now
be foreseen.
III. ADAM SMITH AND "THE
WEALTH OF NATIONS"
BY PROFESSOR CHARLES }. BULLOCK
FROM 1752 to 1764 the author of "The Wealth of Nations'*
occupied the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow College,
and his writings were the natural outgrowth of the lectures
delivered to his college classes. Following an unbroken tradition
received from Greek philosophy, Smith conceived the province of
moral philosophy to be as broad as the entire range of human con-
duct, both individual and social. "Wherein," says Smith, "consisted
the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not only as an
individual, but as a member of a family, of a state, and of the great
society of mankind, was the object which the ancient moral philos-
ophy proposed to investigate." Smith's own lectures followed sub-
stantially this plan of treatment.
THE UNDERLYING THEORY OF SMITH'S PHILOSOPHY
At Smith's hands, however, many of the traditional subjects re-
ceived new treatment and development. In 1759, Smith published
his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," a treatise on ethics which imme-
diately won for him international fame as a philosopher. This
work presented the doctrine that the moral judgment is, in the last
analysis, an expression of impartial sympathy with the motives and
result of human action. From sympathy Smith derives the sense
of justice, which is "the main pillar of the social structure." Un-
derlying the book is the common eighteenth-century theory of a
beneficent natural order, by which it was held that a benevolent
Creator had so ordered the universe as to produce the greatest possi-
ble human happiness. In this view of the matter the problem of
philosophy, including politics and economics, is to discover the
natural laws which make for the happiness of God's creatures. Of
337
338 POLITICAL SCIENCE
these laws the chief seems to be that Providence has commended
the welfare of every man chiefly to his own keeping, not to that of
others; and has so ordered things that men, in pursuing their own
welfare within the limits set by justice, are ordinarily contributing
to the general welfare. Upon this doctrine of a natural harmony of
interests, Smith based his theory of natural liberty, according to
which every man, "as long as he does not violate the laws of jus-
tice," is naturally free to pursue his own welfare in his own way.
Smith projected, but never published, a treatise on jurisprudence
and government, subjects which in his lectures had naturally fol-
lowed ethics. His "Wealth of Nations," which was published in
1776, treated of political economy which in his lectures had followed
the subject of government.
HIS CONCEPTION OF WEALTH AND OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
"The Wealth of Nations" 1 combines a firm grasp of principles with
a remarkable knowledge of the facts of economic life, derived from
reading and personal observation. Smith's generalizations are usu-
ally supported by an appeal to the facts of economic life, and in this
manner he gives the work an air of reality that is lacking in many
economic treatises. He does not deal extensively with definitions.
Without defining wealth he plunges directly into the causes of
national opulence, but in the last sentence of his "Introduction"
states, parenthetically, that "real wealth" is "the annual produce
of the land and labor of the society." Even here he merely indicates
that he considers the annual income of a society as its real wealth:
whereas most economists prior to his time had conceived wealth
as the accumulated stoc\ of durable goods which a society possesses.
Again Smith commences the treatise without offering a definition
of political economy, and the nearest approach to such a definition
is found in the first sentence of the fourth book : "Political economy,
considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator,
proposes two distinct objects: first, to supply a plentiful revenue
or subsistence for the people, or, more properly, to enable them to
provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly,
to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for
1 Harvard Classics, Vol. x.
POLITICAL SCIENCE 339
the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the
sovereign."
PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION
Captious critics have pronounced the arrangement of "The Wealth
of Nations" unsystematic, but it is in fact well suited to Smith's pur-
pose. The first book studies the process by which wealth is produced
and then distributed among laborers, entrepreneurs, and landlords.
It lays down the doctrine that the increased productivity of the indus-
try of modern societies is due to division of labor. The discussion of
this subject is an economic classic, and the reader should observe
that Smith finds here an illustration of his cardinal doctrine that it
is self-interest, not the action of government, that has brought about
the improvement of economic conditions. Division of labor pre-
supposes exchange, and so Smith naturally proceeds to consider
money and price. His study of price leads to an investigation of its
component parts wages, profits, and rent; and thus Smith is led
to consider fully the subject of the distribution of wealth. His theory
of value at the hands of certain later writers becomes the classical
cost-of-production theory; while, given another slant, it becomes
the labor theory of Marx and the socialists. His theory of wages
becomes, at the hands of later writers, the wage-fund theory of the
classical English school. His theory of profits supplied much mate-
rial for his followers, particularly concerning the difference of profits
in the various employments of capital. His theory of rent, or rather
his three different theories, 2 needed to be reconstructed by Ricardo
before it could be added to our stock of economic principles.
THE NATURE AND USE OF CAPITAL
The second book investigates the nature and employment of
"capital stock," which is the force that sets laborers at work and
puts industry in motion. Smith holds that capital originates in sav-
ing, that its function is to maintain productive labor, and that it
may be either fixed or circulating.
2 He first treats rent as the surplus product of land above the substance of the
laborers. He also speaks of it as a form of monopoly income extorted by landlords;
and again, in treating of the rent of mines, says that it varies with fertility and
situation.
340 POLITICAL SCIENCE
Unproductive labor, the reader should observe, is not useless labor;
it may, indeed, be very useful 3 ; but it does not produce any durable
material product, and for that reason Smith does not consider it
productive. Parsimony, or saving, leads to an increase of the capital
available for the employment of productive labor; while spending
consumes funds which otherwise might have been given such em-
ployment.
Private frugality, due to the desire to better one's condition, is
the cause of the growth of capital and the increase of national opu-
lence; while government can do nothing more than protect the indi-
vidual and allow him liberty to act in the manner he finds most
advantageous. Finally Smith considers the different employments
of capital. Agriculture gives more employment to productive labor
than manufactures, and both are superior, in this regard, to trans-
portation and trade. Domestic trade gives more employment than
foreign, and foreign trade gives more than the carrying trade.
All these employments are useful; but a country with insufficient
capital to engage in all of them will increase in opulence most rap-
idly if it employs its capital in agriculture first of all, then engages
in manufactures and the home trade, and refrains from entering
upon foreign commerce and the carrying trade until the natural
increase of capital makes such a course advantageous. If govern-
ments merely withhold their hands, this is the course that industrial
development will actually follow under the free play of individual
self-interest. Smith's argument at this point is exceedingly important,
for it lays the foundation for his doctrine of freedom of trade.
HIS THEORY OF TRADE
After examining in the third book the various policies of restric-
tion and preference adopted by the countries of Europe, Smith in
the fourth book launches into the famous polemic against the so-
called mercantile system of political economy. Smith shows that
the restrictive measures of the mercantilists tended rather to prevent
men serving each other than to promote public opulence. He as-
sailed the theory of the balance of trade, much as David Hume had
done. Everywhere he vindicated the system of natural liberty, and
3 See "The Wealth of Nations," H. C., x, 258, 259.
POLITICAL SCIENCE 34!
maintained that prosperity is not manufactured by governments but
comes from "the natural effort of every individual to better his own
condition." After disposing of the mercantilists, Smith treats of the
"agricultural system" of political economy, which held that the net
produce of the land is the sole source of national opulence. Since
economists of this school had maintained that perfect liberty is the
only policy that can raise this annual produce to a maximum, Smith
considered their doctrines "the nearest approximation to the truth
that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy."
PUBLIC FINANCE
The fifth book treats of public finance. His chapter upon the ex-
penses of the sovereign is the first philosophical investigation of this
important subject. The second chapter presents a noteworthy treat-
ment of the subject of taxation, and lays down the celebrated maxims
which, perhaps, have been quoted oftener than any other paragraphs
in economic literature. Smith was especially successful in correlat-
ing his theory of taxation with his theory of the production and dis-
tribution of wealth, while on the practical side he proposed reforms
many of which were later adopted. The chapter on public debts,
while unduly pessimistic, criticizes forcibly the unwise financial
policies pursued by Great Britain and other countries during the
eighteenth century. In his theory of the essential nature of a public
debt Smith was undoubtedly correct.
"The Wealth of Nations" achieved instant success, went through
five editions in the author's lifetime, and was soon translated into
French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Danish. In the United States
it began to be quoted by statesmen before the end of the Revolution,
and an American edition was published at Philadelphia in 1789.
Alexander Hamilton's state papers show the clearest evidence of his
indebtedness to Smith's masterpiece. In time the book began to in-
fluence legislation, and to contribute powerfully to the removal of
obsolete restrictions on industry and commerce. Its place as an eco-
nomic classic is secure, and the lapse of time seems to detract nothing
from its eminence.
IV. THE GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN
CONSTITUTION
BY PROFESSOR W. B. MUNRO
r HISTORY is to perform properly its function as an agency of
.nstruction, it must be careful to record human events fairly
md with accuracy, otherwise the lessons which it asks posterity
to draw from the past are sure to be misleading. Now the most
reliable sources of information concerning all that has happened in
the public life of past generations are of course the contemporary
records, the writings of those who had a hand in the events them-
selves and the public documents which set new historical landmarks.
The makers of history are the men most competent to write about it;
they are the ones best qualified to interpret their own experience.
These writings are the piers upon which the historian builds his
long bridge of narrative, and the historical structure can be no
stronger than its foundations. American history is well supplied with
them, for it spans a period of only three centuries three modern
centuries in which men have written much concerning the outstand-
ing events of their own day. Due allowance must of course be made
for human shortcomings even in the records left to us by the wisest
and most open-minded of writers. But the fact remains that con-
temporary materials afford the only sure basis on which to build our
knowledge of what has gone before. The history of America, ac-
cordingly, may be best studied in the chronicles of early explorers,
in the narratives of those who first made their homes on this side
of the Atlantic, in the colonial charters and later State laws, in the
messages and decrees of presidents, the treaties with foreign nations,
the decisions of courts, the correspondence of public men, or, to put
it broadly, in the great mass of official and unofficial writings which
constitute the public literature of the New World.
342
POLITICAL SCIENCE 343
THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
The English settlements in America, during the century and a half
of their existence as colonies, encountered many difficult problems.
In the earlier years of this period there were troubles with the In-
dians; in the later years there were almost incessant bickerings with
the French colonists to the north. But in due time the redskins were
humbled and France was expelled from her American territory.
Then there were religious troubles which at times rent the English
colonies in twain. Some of these settlements, it is true, had been
founded as a protest against ecclesiastical bigotry at home; but that
did not make them tolerant of heresy within their own borders.
Those who failed to make outward compliance with the established
religious practices were in some cases harried out of the land, and
a rigid enforcement of this policy in Massachusetts led to the found-
ing of Rhode Island and Connecticut as separate colonies.
Another difficult problem was that of providing a satisfactory
frame of civil government. Every colony had its own series of ex-
periments embodied in charters, 1 fundamental laws 2 and bodies of
liberties. 3 At this historical distance these quaint documents make
instructive reading, for they portray with great fidelity the earliest
political ideals of the American people. Despite the rigor with which
these codes attempted to regulate the daily walk and conversation
of citizens, one can nevertheless trace in every line a firm loyalty
to the principle that governments should be of laws and not of men.
The faith in constitutional guarantees of civil liberty goes back to
the very origins of American government.
THE BREACH WITH ENGLAND
But the most difficult of all colonial problems was that of deter-
mining proper political relations with the motherland. While the
colonies were weak and exposed to external dangers these relations
gave rise to no acute controversies; but after 1760, when America's
economic interests had grown greatly in importance, and when the
1 First Charter of Virginia, Harvard Classics, xliii, 49-58.
2 The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639).
3 The Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641), etc., H. C., xliii, 6ofT.
344 POLITICAL SCIENCE
treacherous arm of France had been removed from the northern
frontiers then it was that serious estrangements began. Matters
which might have been easily adjusted under earlier conditions
became sources of open friction and ill-feeling; the breach widened
and active resistance to the authority of the home government ensued.
It is to be borne in mind, however, that the causes of the American
Revolution were neither superficial nor few. The Declaration of
Independence catalogues the colonial grievances as the colonists saw
them, and their name is legion. 4
The thirteen revolted colonies could not very well manage their
struggle for independence as a joint enterprise without some form of
central government, and a congress of delegates, sitting at Philadel-
phia, was established to meet this necessity. With no legal basis
during the early years of its existence, this congress eventually
framed and secured the adoption of the Articles of Confederation
which served as a working constitution for the body of States during
the next decade. 5 These articles gave very little power to the central
government and while they served a useful purpose in their time,
facilitating the settlement of matters at the close of the war, it was
realized everywhere that they could not afford a permanently satis-
factory basis of union.
THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION
Two outstanding defects in the Articles of Confederation were
the failure to give the central government an assured annual revenue
and the lack of any provision for securing uniformity in the regula-
tion of commerce. The urgent necessity of strengthening the articles
on these points inspired the calling of a constitutional convention
at Philadelphia in the spring of 1787. Most of the leaders of public
opinion were members of this convention, among them Washington,
Madison, Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin. It was deemed imprac-
ticable to secure the desired ends by merely amending the Articles of
Confederation; so an entirely new constitution was prepared. The
task occupied the entire summer of 1787, and when the document
was finished it went to the thirteen States for their approval. 6 In
4 H. C. t xliii, 150-155. 5 H. C., xliii, 158-168. 6 H. C., xliii, 180-198.
POLITICAL SCIENCE 345
some of them the issue of adoption was doubtful, for many provisions
in the new constitution were bitterly attacked. But its friends were
as active in its defense; Hamilton and Madison wielded their pens
to good purpose in a publicity campaign, and in the course of time
all thirteen States gave the document their indorsement. These letters
of Hamilton and Madison in advocacy of the new constitution,
subsequently published as "The Federalist," form a notable treatise
on the principles of federal government. 7 The new central govern-
ment began its career forthwith; and in his first inaugural Washing-
ton called upon the representatives of the people "to lay the founda-
tions of national policy" in a way that would "command the respect
of the world." 8
STRENGTHENING THE UNION; TERRITORIAL EXPANSION; AND
FOREIGN POLICY
Three outstanding features marked the trend of American political
history during the first thirty years after the nation became welded
into a federal unit. The first of these was the steady extension of
those powers which the Constitution had intrusted to the new central
government. A dozen years after the establishment of the United
States Supreme Court the post of Chief Justice was given to John
Marshall and was occupied by him with firmness and dignity until
1835. Marshall was a believer in an efficient central government; he
was sure that this was what the framers of the Constitution had
meant to establish; and for thirty-four years he devoted his great
powers to the work of assaying from the nation's organic law all the
jurisdiction it could yield to the authorities of the union. It was
under his leadership that the court took the epoch-marking step of
declaring that the Constitution gave to the Federal Government not
only express but implied powers, and that where the Constitu-
tion gave a power to Congress it intrusted to that body a choice of
the means to be used in carrying its authority into practical opera-
tion. "Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the
Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly
adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the
7 H. C., xliii, 199-207. 8 H. C., xliii, 227.
346 POLITICAL SCIENCE
letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional." 9 When
Marshall put aside his robes of office in 1835, the Constitution had
been securely anchored in its station as the supreme law of the land
and the Washington government, chiefly through his masterly legal
skill, had been brought to a dominating place in the national life.
These three decades covered, in the second place, an era of terri-
torial expansion, the successive steps of which have been traced in
another lecture. 10
In the third place the relations between the United States and
European powers were placed on a better footing during the first
quarter of the nineteenth century. The withdrawal of France and
Spain from contiguous territory removed a source of possible danger.
The war with England (1812-1815) cleared the international atmos-
phere of some noxious features, and in the era of better feeling
which followed its conclusion came the virtual neutralization of the
Great Lakes a stroke of great and statesmanlike prudence. 11 Within
a few years came the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine with its
unfaltering enunciation of American diplomatic policy in relation
to the lands of the New Hemisphere. 12 In the twenty years inter-
vening between 1803 and 1823 the Republic has cleared her bounda-
ries to the south, removed a possible menace from her boundaries
to the north, and frankly made known the fundamentals of her
future policy as respects all surrounding lands.
9 Opinion of Chief Justice John Marshall in the case of McCulloch vs. the State
of Maryland, H. C., xliii, 208-224.
10 See Professor F. J. Turner in the lecture on "The Territorial Development of
the United States," History, V.
11 Arrangement as to the Naval Force to be Respectively Maintained on the
American Lakes, H. C., xliii, 265-267.
12 The Monroe Doctrine, H. C., xliii, 277-279.
v. LAW AND LIBERTY;
BY PROFESSOR ROSCOE POUND
FOR what end does the legal order exist? What do we seek
to achieve through the political organization? What is the
ultimate purpose in lawmaking, that is, in the selection and
formulation of the standards for the public administration of jus-
tice which organized society establishes or recognizes ? These are the
first questions in legal and in political philosophy. The history of
juristic thought and of political thought is chiefly a history of the
way in which men have answered them.
THE AIM OF LAW (l) IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES
In primitive societies the answers are that the legal order exists
simply to keep the peace, that men seek through the legal order to
avert individual self-redress and prevent private war, and that the
purpose of lawmaking is to establish rules by which controversies
may be adjusted peaceably. Accordingly, whereas to-day we seek,
as we say, to do justice, seeking to preserve the peace and to adjust
controversies peaceably simply as means thereto and incidents thereof,
primitive legal systems make peace the end. Where to-day we
think of compensation for an injury, primitive law thinks only of
composition for the desire to be avenged. Where to-day we seek
to give to each what he ought to have or the nearest possible equiva-
lent, primitive law seeks only to give him a substitute for vengeance
in case he is wronged.
(2) IN GREECE AND ROME
Greek philosophy and Roman law soon passed beyond the crude
conception of the end of the legal order in primitive society. Instead,
they gave these answers : The legal order exists to preserve the social
status quo; men seek through the legal order to keep each individual
in his appointed groove, and thus to prevent the friction with his
347
348 POLITICAL SCIENCE
fellowmen which primitive law sought only to mitigate. This is
brought out very clearly in Greek political philosophy. Thus, in
Plato's ideal state the state is to assign everyone to the class for which
he is best fitted and the law is to keep him there, in order that a per-
fect harmony and unity may prevail. St. Paul's well-known exhorta-
tion (Ephesians v, 22ff. and vi, 1-5) in which he calls on all the
faithful to exert themselves to do their duty in the class in which
they find themselves, proceeds upon the same conception. The
Roman lawyers turned this idea of political philosophy into law.
In the great institutional book of Roman law, the Institutes of Jus-
tinian, we are told that the precepts of law come to three; to live
honorably, not to injure another, and to give to everyone his due.
The idea here is that the state and the law exist to maintain harmo-
niously the existing social order. What the interests of another
are, which one is not to injure, what makes anything another's due,
so that it is to be given him, are matters which are left wholly to
the traditional social organization.
(3) BEFORE AND AFTER THE REFORMATION
On the downfall of the Roman empire the Germanic invaders
brought back for a season the primitive ideas of buying off vengeance
and keeping the peace through arbitrary peaceful solution of disputes
by mechanical modes of trial and hard and fast rules. But during
the Middle Ages these conceptions gradually yielded to the classical
idea of the legal order as a means of preserving the social status quo,
the more since the latter was fortified by the unassailable authority
of texts of scripture and of the Roman law. Moreover, from the thir-
teenth century on, philosophers more and more sought to sustain
authority by reason, and in this way they prepared the way for a
new conception which developed in the seventeenth century. For
by that time two events of capital importance had compelled a
complete revolution in legal and political philosophy. In the first
place the Reformation had divorced the philosophy of law and of
politics from theology and had set them free from the authority of
the church. This was the work of the Protestant jurist theologians
of the sixteenth century. 1 Secondly, following the nationalist move-
1 See Harvard Classics, xxxvi, 336.
POLITICAL SCIENCE 349
ment which resulted from the breakdown of the unifying and uni-
versal authorities of the Middle Ages, the church and the empire, 2
the Germanists overthrew the idea of the binding authority of the
Roman law in modern Europe. Accordingly it became necessary to
find new bases for legal and political authority, and those bases
were found in reason and in contract, or the consent and agreement
of the individual. 3
REASON AND NATURAL RIGHTS
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reason was made the
measure of all obligation. Seventeenth-century legal and political
philosophers considered that law existed in order to produce con-
formity to the nature of rational creatures. In practice, however,
though they had broken with authority as such, they accepted the
Roman law as embodied reason and essayed very little that did not
have authority behind it. In consequence the Roman maxim not
to injure another and to give to everyone his own was taken to
express the nature of rational creatures, and respect for personality
and respect for acquired rights remained the two cardinal principles
of justice. But these principles raised two obvious questions: (i)
What is there in personality that makes aggression an injury, and
(2) what is it that makes anything one's own? The answer was
sought in a theory of natural rights, or of certain qualities inherent
in individual human beings and demonstrated by reason to which
society, state, and law were bound to give effect. According to this
theory, justice is the maximum of individual self-assertion; it is the
function of the state and of the law to make it possible for the indi-
vidual to act freely. Hence the sphere of law is limited to the mini-
mum of restraint and coercion necessary to allow the maximum
of self-assertion by each, limited by the like self-assertion by all.
This purely individualist theory of justice culminated in the eight-
eenth century in the Declarations of the Rights of Man and Bills of
Rights which are so characteristic of that time. 4
At the close of the eighteenth century the foundations of the
seventeenth and eighteenth century theory were shattered by Im-
2 For this nationalist idea see H. C., xxxvi, 7. 3 H. C. t xxxiv, 309.
4 H. C., xliii, 66, 147, 150.
350 POLITICAL SCIENCE
manuel Kant. 5 But he furnished a new metaphysical foundation
for the conception of justice as the maximum of individual self-
assertion and in consequence it survived for about a hundred years
and was given complete logical development in the political, eco-
nomic, and juristic writing of the nineteenth century, although the
actual law began to break away from this idea in Europe by the mid-
dle of the century and was definitely breaking away in America in
the last decade thereof.
In the nineteenth century, then, legal and political philosophers
were agreed that the end of the legal order, the purpose of political
organization and purpose of lawmaking, were to secure and main-
tain individual liberty. The historian found in history the unfolding
of this idea in human experience. The philosophical jurist postu-
lated free will as the fundamental principle and deduced therefrom
an ideal system of principles of liberty to which law ought to con-
form. The utilitarian legislator took individual liberty for the one
sure means of producing human happiness and so made it the goal
of all lawmaking. Mill's treatise "On Liberty" 6 is the best example
of a thoroughgoing exposition of this nineteenth-century idea of
abstract liberty. Moreover, it is much more tempered and reasonable
in its attitude toward what we now call social legislation, so far as
it restrains an abstract liberty of action whereby under pressure the
weak barter away their actual liberty, than most contemporary or
even subsequent writing from the same standpoint.
THE MODERN SOCIAL POINT OF VIEW
To-day the social-philosophical school has given us a new con-
ception of the end of the legal order. Instead of the maximum
of individual self-assertion consistent with a like self-assertion by all
others, we are now putting as the end the maximum satisfaction of
human wants, of which self-assertion is only one, even if a very im-
portant one. Hence juristic and political theory to-day thinks of inter-
ests, that is of claims which a human being may make, and of secur-
ing or protecting the greatest number of these interests possible with
the least sacrifice of other interests. Moreover there are public inter-
ests, or claims which the organized political society may make, and
5 H. C., xxxii, 305. 6 H. C., xxv, I95ff.
POLITICAL SCIENCE 351
social interests, or claims of society at large. Ultimately all interests,
individual and public, are secured and maintained because of a social
interest in so doing. But this does not mean that individual inter-
ests, the details of which the nineteenth century worked out so well,
are to be ignored. On the contrary, the chiefest of social interests
is the moral and social life of the individual, and thus individual
interests become largely identical with a social interest. In securing
them because of the social interest in the moral and social life of the
individual, however, and in recognizing that individual self-assertion
is only one human want, which must be weighed with others in a
finite world where all wants cannot be satisfied, a governmental
paternalism or even maternalism may become proper, which would
have seemed intolerable to thinkers in the last century. In this con-
nection, Mill on Liberty has a permanent value, despite the entire
change in our views as to the end of law and of the state. Just as in
the seventeenth century an undue insistence upon public interests,
thought of as the interests of the sovereign, defeated the moral and
social life of the individual and required the assertion of individual
interests in Bills of Rights and Declarations of Rights, there is a
like danger that certain social interests will be unduly emphasized
and that governmental maternalism will become an end rather than
a means and will defeat the real purposes of the legal order. Hence,
although we think socially, we must still think of individual inter-
ests, and of that greatest of all claims which a human being may
make, the claim to assert his individuality, to exercise freely the will
and the reason which God has given him. We must emphasize
the social interest in the moral and social life of the individual, but
we must remember that it is the life of a free-willing being.
DRAMA
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR GEORGE PIERCE BAKER
R.RE is the human being, immature or mature, who has never
felt an impulse to pretend he is some one or something else,
The human being who has never felt pleasure in seeing
such a pretending is rarer still. Back through the ages of barbarism
and civilization, in all tongues, we find this instinctive pleasure
in the imitative action that is the very essence of all drama. The
instinct to impersonate produces the actor; the desire to provide
pleasure by impersonations produces the playwright; the desire to
provide this pleasure with adequate characterization and dialogue
memorable in itself produces dramatic literature. Though dramatic
literature has been sporadic, dramatic entertainment by imitative
action has been going steadily on since we first hear of it in connec-
tion with the Bacchic festivals of early Greece; and the dramatic
instinct has been uninterruptedly alive since man's creation. We
do not kill the drama, we do not really limit its appeal by failing
to encourage the best in it; but we do thereby foster the weakest and
poorest elements. In 1642 the English Parliament, facing war, closed
the theatres and forbade all plays. Yet, though the years following
were so troublous as not to favor drama, it was necessary in 1647
to repeal the edict, because surreptitious and garbled performances
of plays formerly popular had been given, and because vulgarized
excerpts from comic portions of past plays had been given at fairs
and other public gatherings. Clearly, so strong was the instinct, the
craving for drama, that if the public could not get new plays, or even
its old plays as wholes, it would accept far less worthy entertainment
rather than go without. Even in this country, far more recently, in
many communities where theatres were regarded at least with hesi-
tation, the panorama was popular, and local branches of the G. A. R.
352
DRAMA 353
gave to enthusiastic audiences "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh." To-
day, many who will not attend the theatre do attend the moving-
picture show. One cannot annihilate an instinct of the races old
as time: to legislate against it is to risk repressing only the better part;
what is necessary is to make the undesirable unattractive.
THE DRAMA AND PUBLIC TASTE
The only sound basis for this result is a widespread taste in the
public for good drama. While it is not true, as George Farquhar
wrote, that "Plays are like suppers, poets are the cooks," there is
yet truth in Samuel Johnson's saying that "The drama's laws the
drama's patrons give." He who serves his dramatic meal, cooked and
seasoned exactly for what he takes to be the tastes of his public,
merely writes plays: he does not create drama. To try to hit public
taste in the drama is like trying to hit the bull's-eye of a rapidly
shifting target on a very foggy day. On the other hand, the public
speaker who should try to present his subject to a public knowing
nothing of it, and to a public of which he knows nothing, must
skillfully interest them by finding in his subject some appeal of a
general nature. In similar fashion works the dramatist. He cannot
write comedies and farces for a community lacking in humor. He
can do little in grim story play or tragedy with a laughter-loving
public. Granted a public fond of the theatre, he is sure of a hearing
and probably an appreciative one; but the fuller and the more ac-
curate his public's knowledge of good drama in the past, the greater
his chance for an attentive and comprehending hearing when he
writes what should be good drama to-day.
HOW TO READ A PLAY
In reading plays, however, it should always be remembered that
any play, however great, loses much when not seen in action. As
John Marston wrote in 1606: "Comedies are writ to be spoken,
not read; remember the life of these things consists in action"; or,
as Moliere put it: "Comedies are made to be played, not to be read."
Any play is so planned that it can produce its exact effect only with
its required scenery, lighting, and acting. And that acting means the
gesture, movement, and voice of the actor. Above all, it means the
354 DRAMA
voice, the instrument which conveys to the audience the exact
shade of meaning of the author and, like music, opens up the
emotions. Drama read to oneself is never drama at its best, and
is not even drama as it should be. Usually, too, just because readers
do not recognize the difference between drama and other forms
of fiction, they lose the effects they might gain even in reading.
Closer attention than with a novel or short story is required. The
dramatist does not guide us by explanations, analysis, and comment
in our visualizing of his figures. Instead, he depends on a few
stage directions as to their movements, and on the Tightness of his
chosen words in the dialogue. Unfortunately, many a reader, ac-
customed to hasty reading of the sketchy stories so common in the
magazines, does not piece out what is given him but sees only just
what the words of the text force him to see with no effort on his
part. He is not active and cooperative. No play read in this way
yields its real value. First, see in your mind the setting as described.
Then, reading sympathetically, thoughtfully, and slowly if need be,
visualize the figures as they come and go. The lines of any good
play mean more than appears at a hasty glance. They have been
chosen not simply because they say what the character might have
said, but because what is said will advance the plot, and, because
better than some half dozen other phrases considered by the author,
they will rouse the emotions of the audience. Keep the sympathetic,
not the critical mood, to the fore. Reading to visualize, feel because
you visualize, and feel as fully as you can. Then when you close the
book, moved and admiring, and then only, let your critical training
tell you whether you have done well to admire. Don't let prejudices,
moral or artistic, cause prejudgments: keep an open mind as you
read. A writer may so treat a subject for which you have never
cared as to make you care for it. He may so treat a subject you have
regarded as taboo as to make it acceptable and helpful. Don't assume
because a play is different from the plays you have known that it
is bad. As the general editor has said: "It is precisely this encounter
with the mental states of other generations which enlarges the out-
look and sympathies of the cultivated man." When a play of a
different nation or period at first proves unattractive, don't assume
that it will remain so. Rather, study the conditions of stage and
DRAMA 355
audience which gave it being. Usually this will transmute a seem-
ingly dull play into a living, appealing work of art. In any case,
when you have finished reading, judge with discretion. Say, if you
like, "This play is not for me for a person of my tastes," but not,
"This is a bad play for all," unless you are able to explain why
what is poison for you should be poison for the general public. In
all the great periods of the drama perfect freedom of choice and
subject, perfect freedom of individual treatment, and an audience
eager to give itself to sympathetic listening, even if instruction be
involved, have brought the great results. If a public widely read in
the drama of the past and judging it as suggested would come to
the acting drama of to-day in exactly that spirit, almost anything
would become possible for our dramatists.
THE ESSENTIALS OF DRAMA
But what is drama ? Broadly speaking, it is whatever by imitative
action rouses interest or gives pleasure. The earliest of the mediaeval
plays, the trope of the church in which the three Marys go to the
tomb to find that Christ has risen, and make their way thence
rejoicing, does not differentiate one Mary from another. The words,
which were given to music, have only an expository value. Here, as
through the ages succeeding, it is action, not characterization, how-
ever good, not dialogue for the sake of characterization or for its
own sake, which counts. Of course, this very early drama is too
bald and too simple to have value as literature. As the trope in the
tenth to the thirteenth centuries adds to the episode of the Resurrec-
tion or the Nativity preliminary or continuing Biblical material, so
story develops around the original episode. Almost inevitably, in
order to make these differing episodes convincing, characterization
appears, for, unless the people are unlike, some of the episodes could
not occur. The dialogue ceases to be merely expository and begins
to characterize each speaker. Later it comes to have charm, amusing-
ness, wit, that is, quality of its own. When the drama attains a
characterization which makes the play a revelation of human con-
duct and a dialogue which characterizes yet pleases for itself, we
reach dramatic literature.
So, too, as time goes on, there develop the play of story, the play
356 DRAMA
mainly of characterization, the play in which dialogue counts almost
as much as plot or character, and the great masterpieces in which
all these interests, plot, character, and dialogue are blended into a
perfect whole. "The Duchess of Malfi" 1 of Webster is a story play
which illustrates a change in public taste. For a modern reader,
probably more interested in the character of the Duchess than in
the story itself, the last act doubtless lacks the interest it had for its
own public. In Jonson's "Alchemist" 2 it is character mainly which
interests us. In Sheridan's "School for Scandal," 3 as in Congreve's
"Way of the World," dialogue counts as much as character. In
"Hamlet," "Lear," and "Macbeth" 4 there is a perfect union of story,
characterization, and dialogue.
THE NATURE OF TRAGEDY
Once the idea was widespread that tragedy and comedy differ
essentially in material. Dryden maintained that tragedy must deal
with people of exalted rank in extraordinary situations, expressing
themselves in speech befitting their extraordinary circumstances.
This idea, first stated by Aristotle in his "Poetics" as a result of his
observation of the Greek Tragedy which the definition perfectly
fits was fostered and expanded by critical students of dramatic
theory till it found expression in the exaggeration of the Heroic
Drama in England and the dignified if somewhat cold tragedies of
Corneille and Racine. 5 The coming of the Sentimental Comedy in
England in the first thirty years of the eighteenth century, the related
"Drame Larmoyante" of France, and the "Biirgerliche Drama" in
Germany, showed that tragedy may exist in all ranks from high
to low, from educated to uneducated.
What then is tragedy? In the Elizabethan period it was assumed
that a play ending in death was a tragedy, but in recent years we have
come to understand that to live on is sometimes far more tragic
than death. Nor is the presence of tragic incidents in a play suffi-
cient reason for calling it a tragedy, for many plays that end happily
have in them profoundly moving episodes. Why, then, is it that
we are so agreed in calling "Hamlet," "The Duchess of Malfi" and
1 Harvard Classics, xlvii, 755*?. 2 H. C., xlvii, 543!?.
3 H. C., xviii, lOQff. 4 H. C., xlvi, 93, 215, 321. 5 H. C., xxvi, 77, 133.
DRAMA 357
"The Cenci" 6 tragedies? Because in them character clashing with
itself, with environment, or with other temperaments, moves through
tragic episodes to a final catastrophe that is the logical outcome of
what we have observed. By "logical" I mean that the ending is seen
to grow from the preceding events in accordance with the characters.
That is, it conforms with human experience as known to us or as
revealed to us by the dramatist in question.
MELODRAMA
Suppose, however, that we have tragic circumstance not justified
by the characterization of the figures concerned. For instance, in
some play on Cleopatra the special scenes may move us even if they
do not put before us a character whose willfulness and exacting
love seem great enough to bring about the final catastrophe. Then
what have we ? Melodrama in the broadest sense of the word. Melo-
drama in this sense of plays insufficiently motivated in characteriza-
tion has existed from the beginning of drama. Technically, the word
came into England early in the nineteenth century to designate an
importation from France of sensational scenes with frequent musical
accompaniment. As this particular combination disappeared, the
name remained for plays of sensational incident and inadequate
characterization.
THE STORY PLAY
Between the two melodrama and tragedy both perhaps sensa-
tional in episode, but only the second justifying its episodes by
perfectly motivated character, lies the story play. In this the light
and the serious, the comic and the tragic, mingle, though the ending
is cheerful. "The Merchant of Venice," regarded as Shakespeare
regarded it as the story of Portia and Bassanio, is clearly not a trag-
edy but a story play. If, however, we sympathize with Shylock as
modern actors, especially by their rearrangement of the scenes, often
make us, is it not a tragedy? There lies the important distinction.
There is no essential difference between the material of comedy and
tragedy. All depends on the point of view of the dramatist, which,
by clever emphasis, he tries to make the point of view of his au-
*H. c., xviii, 28iff.
358 DRAMA
dience. The trial scene of Shylock perfectly illustrates the idea: to
the friends of Bassanio, as to most of the Elizabethan audience, this
Jew-baiting was highly delightful; to Shylock it was torture and
heartbreak. The dramatist who presents such material so as to em-
phasize in it what would appeal to the friends of Bassanio, writes
comedy. He who presents it to an audience likely to feel as Shylock
felt, writes tragedy.
HIGH COMEDY, LOW COMEDY, AND FARCE
Comedy divides into higher and lower. Low comedy concerns
itself directly or indirectly with manners. "The Alchemist" of Jon-
son busies itself directly with manners by means of characters vary-
ing from types of a single aspect to well-individualized figures. Com-
edy of intrigue, centering about a love story, deals in complicated
situations arising therefrom, but indirectly paints manners as it char-
acterizes. "The Shoemaker's Holiday" 7 may perhaps stand as a speci-
men of this type, though Fletcher's "The Wild-Goose Chase" is a
better example. High comedy, as George Meredith pointed out in
his masterly "Essay on Comedy," deals in thoughtful laughter. This
laughter comes from the recognition, made instantaneously by the
author, of the comic value of a comparison or contrast. For instance,
in "Much Ado About Nothing" it is high comedy at which we
laugh when from moment to moment we contrast Benedick and Bea-
trice as they see themselves and as we see them in the revelatory
touches of the dramatist.
Farce treats the improbable as probable, the impossible as possible.
In the second case it often passes into extravaganza or burlesque.
"The Frogs" 8 of Aristophanes illustrates farcical burlesque. In the
best farce to-day we start with some absurd premise as to character
or situation, but if the premises be once granted we move logically
enough to the ending.
SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF DRAMA
Yet, even if one understands these differences, one may find it
difficult at first to appreciate the drama of a past time. Modern drama
from 980 A. D. onward passes from the simple Latin trope, already
7 H . C., xlvii, 469ff. 8 H. C., viii, 4398.
DRAMA 359
described, by accumulation of incident, developing characterization,
and a feeling for expression for its own sake, to similar work in the
vernacular, be it English, French, or German. Then slowly it gains
enormously in characterization till some of the miracle and morality
plays of the late fifteenth century equal or surpass any English
drama up to Marlowe. But what lay behind all this drama of miracle
play and morality was an undivided church. With the coming of
the Reformation and its insistence on the value and finality of indi-
vidual judgment, the didactic drama gave way to the drama of
entertainment the interludes and the beginnings of the five-act
plays. Yet, fine as are some of the plays of the days of Elizabeth and
James I, we find in them a brutality of mood, a childish sense of the
comic, a love of story for mere story's sake that make them oftentimes
a little hard reading. Moreover, their technique their frequent
disregard of our ideas of unity, their methods of exposition by chorus,
soliloquy, and aside frequently appears to us antiquated. Except
for the greatest of these plays mainly by Shakespeare the Eliza-
bethan drama seems strange to us at a first reading. Only coming
to know the conditions from which it sprang can give us its real
values.
Even the great dramas of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and to a less ex-
tent of Euripides, because he is more modern, are best read when we
know something of the Greek life around these dramas and of the
stage for which they were written. To these plays a great audience
of perhaps 10,000 brought a common knowledge of the myths and
stories represented, akin to our universal knowledge a generation
ago of Biblical story. The audience brought also memories of suc-
cessive and even recent treatments of the same myth by other drama-
tists, taking delight, not as we do in something because it seems
new, but in the individual treatment of the old story by the new
dramatist. The same attitude held for the Elizabethan public which
delighted in successive versions of "Romeo and Juliet," "Julius
Caesar," and "Hamlet." In judging the drama of Greece or Eliza-
bethan England this fact must be kept constantly in mind.
As one turns from Greek and Elizabethan drama, written for the
delight and edification of the masses, to the work of Corneille and
Racine, one faces plays written primarily for the cultivated, and
360 DRAMA
worked out, not spontaneously by individual genius, but carefully
according to critical theory derived not so much from study of
classic drama as from commentators on a commentator on the Greek
drama Aristotle. From him, for instance, came the idea as to the
essentiality of the unities of time, action, and place, themselves the
result of physical conditions of the Greek stage. By contrast, then,
this French tragedy of the seventeenth century is a drama of intellec-
tuals.
Then as the spirit of humanitarianism spread and men shared
more and more in Samuel Johnson's desire "with extensive view" to
"survey mankind from China to Peru," the drama reflected all this.
No longer did the world laugh at the selfish complacency and in-
dulgence of the rake and fop, but it began to sympathize with his
wife, fiancee, or friend who suffered from this selfishness and com-
placency. Illustrating that the difference between tragedy and com-
edy lies only in emphasis, Restoration comedy turned from thought-
less laughter to sympathetic tears. But such psychology as the
sentimental comedy shows is conventional and superficial. It is in
the nineteenth century that the drama, ever sensitive to public moods
and sentiment, undergoes great changes. In France and Germany it
breaks the shackles of the pseudo classicism which had for centuries
held the drama to empty speech and a dead level of characterization.
Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, Dumas pere, and Alfred de Vigny reveal
a new world of dramatic romance and history. In turn this romance
leads to realism with an underlying scientific spirit which takes noth-
ing at its old values.
MODERN PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY IN THE DRAMA
This searching scrutiny of accepted ideas of personality, conduct,
right, wrong, and even causation in general, is seen in Ibsen and
all his followers. Planting themselves firmly on the new and develop-
ing science of psychology, guided by the most intense belief in indi-
vidualism, demanding its passports from every accepted idea, the
dramatists of the last half century have steadily enlarged the scope
of their art. From mere story-telling they passed to ethical drama.
Convinced by practice that it is difficult for a play in its limited time
two and a half hours at the most to do more than state a prob-
DRAMA 361
lem or paint a set of social conditions, they have taken to merely
drawing pictures or raising questions rather than attempting even
to suggest an answer. As we have seen, in the eighteenth century
the writer of sentimental comedy painted social conditions, but with
a psychology purely intuitional. To-day we have swung to the other
extreme. Recognizing the limited space of the dramatist, confused
by contrasting psychological theories, puzzled by the baffling intri-
cacies of the human soul, convinced that the great questions raised
cannot be settled in a breath, or with any ready-made panacea,
many a dramatist to-day merely pictures an evil condition, waiting
for others to find its exact significance or, better still, a solution.
"Justice" of Mr. Galsworthy, like "La Robe Rouge" of M. Brieux,
offers no solution, yet both led to changes in the conditions portrayed
in the former, conditions of prison life; in the latter, evils attend-
ing the life of the petty judiciary of France.
THE MENACE OF VAUDEVILLE AND MOVING PICTURES
A veritable passion for the theatre is shown by the younger gen-
eration to-day in the United States. It crowds the theatres if we use
the word to include not only places giving performances of legiti-
mate drama but also vaudeville houses and picture shows as in this
country it never has crowded them before. To go to a theatre of the
older type one must usually travel some distance and often one must
save beforehand. Vaudeville and picture shows cheap enough for
almost any purse are provided at our very doors. The difficulty is
that what they offer is sometimes as low in art as in price. Yet
surely, it may be said, there is good vaudeville, and surely proper
legislation ought to dispose of what is poor or dangerous in it or the
picture show. Granted, but there are inherent dangers which legis-
lation cannot reach. In the first place, the balcony and galleries
of our theatres are far less filled than they used to be before vaude-
ville and the picture show provided at much less expense and with
greater comfort entertainment to many as satisfactory as the theatre
itself. This decrease in attendance at the theatres naturally jeopard-
izes the chances of many a play which can be produced only if the
manager feels reasonably sure of large houses or a public more
general than usually frequents the orchestra. Vaudeville, too, like
362 DRAMA
the collections of short stories we read in the train, is usually a mere
time killer, making the least possible demand on our application and
attention. In vaudeville, if something grips our interest we pay at-
tention; if one "turn" does not interest us we simply wait for the
next. Sooner or later, without any effort on our part, something will
win our absorbed attention. Now drama that has literary value
demands, when read, as I have pointed out, concentration, an effort
to visualize. Acted drama requires surrender of one's self, sympa-
thetic absorption in the play as it develops. These absolutely essen-
tial conditions grow less possible for the person trained by vaudeville.
The moving picture show, too, is at best drama stripped of everything
but motion. The greatest appeal of all, the voice, except in so far
as the phonograph can reproduce it, is wanting. But can any com-
bination of mechanical devices such as the cinematograph and the
graphophone ever equal in human significance, in reality of effect,
in persuasive power, the human being most vividly seen and felt
in drama at its best? A combination of the cinematograph and the
phonograph can be at best only a dramatic Frankenstein's automaton.
Dramatic literature is really threatened by the picture show and
vaudeville.
THE DRAMA IN MODERN EDUCATION
All this would be discouraging were not these conditions some-
what counteracted by drama as we find it in our schools, colleges,
and social settlements. As far back as the sixteenth century in
England and on the Continent the value for pronunciation, enuncia-
tion, and deportment of acting by school children was recognized.
Ralph Radcliffe, a schoolmaster of Hitchen in Hertfordshire, wrote
many plays for his scholars. Nicholas Udall, successively a master
of Eton and Westminster schools, left us one of the early landmarks
of English drama, "Ralph Roister Doister," a mixture of early Eng-
lish dramatic practice and borrowings from the Latin comedy. On
the Continent, fathers and mothers gathered often, fondly to watch
their boys in similar Latin or vernacular plays. In like manner
to-day, all over this country, in grammar and high schools, wise
teachers are guiding their pupils in varied expression of their dra-
matic instinct. Many a high school to-day has, as part of its equip-
DRAMA 363
ment, a small stage on which standard plays of the past, plays
selected from the best written to-day, and, occasionally, even plays
written by the students themselves are given. From participation
in such performances more results than a mere gain in enunciation,
pronunciation, and deportment. The standards of a youth who as-
sociates often with the best in dramatic literature must improve.
Inculcate thus pleasantly right standards of drama, and the lure of
vaudeville and picture show is weakened. But the training must
be broad: our youth must know the best comedy, tragedy, farce,
burlesque in the drama of to-day and yesterday.
No such training of our youth can ever be complete if in the home
there is no real understanding, at least from reading, of what the
best in drama has been. Otherwise how can the elders sympathize
with this natural demand of the young, for probably they will not
recognize either the worthiness or the permanence of the appeal
which the drama properly makes. While youth inevitably seek
entertainment in the theatre, their elders must see to the kind of
entertainment provided. That is a fair and natural division.
Year by year we receive at Ellis Island people from all over the
world, people little fitted for the responsibilities of a citizenship
that was planned for a people relatively homogeneous and trained
for centuries in a growing political power which rested on the re-
sponsibility of the individual. How shall we reveal to this immigrant
what this great varied American life means and thus assimilate him
into the body politic ? Seeking an answer to this problem, the settle-
ment houses have found one of their most effective means in the
drama. The southern or southeastern European, filled with emotion,
loves to act. In the settlement house, through carefully selected plays,
he learns our language and gains the ideals of the land in which he
is to live.
HOW THE LEVEL OF DRAMATIC ART IS DETERMINED
Responsive to all this widespread interest of the people at large,
men and women all over the country are busied with the difficult
art of the dramatist. In turn responsive to their needs, our colleges
are developing courses in dramatic composition, though ten years
ago not one existed. But to these playwrights comes sooner or later
364 DRAMA
the question : "Shall I write so as surely to make money, but pander-
ing to the lower artistic and moral taste of my public; or shall I
keep to my inculcated and self-discovered standards of dramatic art
till I win my public to them?" For the latter result there must be
a considerable part of the public which so understands and loves
the best of the drama of the past that it can quickly discover promise
in the drama to-day. Out of the past come the standards for judging
the present; standards in turn to be shaped by the practice of present-
day dramatists into broader standards for the next generation. The
drama possesses a great literature growing out of an eternal desire
of the races. The drama is a great revealer of life. Potentially, it is
a social educative force of the greatest possibilities, provided it be
properly handled. You cannot annihilate it. Repressing it you bring
its poorer qualities to the front. How, then, can any so-called edu-
cated man fail to try to understand it? But to understand it one
must read closely, sympathetically, and above all widely.
For such results a collection like this must be but the fillip that
creates a craving for more. Here is only a little of all the Elizabethan
and Jacobean drama. Here it is possible to represent only by a few
masterpieces the vast stores of the drama in France, Germany, Eng-
land, Scandinavia, Italy, Spain, and Russia in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. To-day, English drama, with only a few ex-
ceptions better than any written since the seventeenth century, comes
often to the stage. From month to month the drama is making
history. In England and the United States to-day it is wonderfully
alive, independent, ambitious, seeking new ways of expression on
an infinite variety of subjects. Yet it is often crude, especially in
this country. It will never know how crude till its public forces it
to closer, finer thinking, more logical characterization, and stern
avoidance of mere theatricality. Back of any such gains must stand
a public with a love for the drama, gained not merely from seeing
plays of to-day but from wide reading in the drama of different
periods and different nations in the past.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE STAGE ON THE DRAMA
No drama, however great, is entirely independent of the stage on
which it is given. In a great period the drama forces its stage to
DRAMA 365
yield to its demands, however exacting, till that stage becomes plastic.
At a time of secondary drama, plays yield to the rigidities of their
stage, making life conform to the stage, not the stage to life. Con-
sequently, just as different periods have seen different kinds of
drama, they have seen different kinds of stage. In the trope the
monks acted in the chancel near the high altar, to come out, as the
form developed, to the space before the choir screen under the
great dome of the cathedral where nave and transepts met. In that
nave and in the adjoining aisles knelt or stood the rapt throng of
worshipers. Forced by numbers who could not be accommodated
in the cathedral and by other causes, the monks, after some gen-
erations, brought their plays out into the square in front of the
cathedral. That all might see them to the best advantage they were
ultimately given on raised platforms. Certainly by the time these
plays passed from the hands of the churchmen to the control of the
trade guilds, they were on pageant cars, a construction not unlike
our floats for trade processions except that they contained two stories,
the lower high enough to use for a dressing room. These pageant
cars the journeymen drew, between daylight and dark, from station
to station across a city like York or Chester. At each station people
filled the windows of the houses, the seats built up around the sides
of the square, and even the roofs. The very nature of this platform
stage forbade scenery, though elaborate properties seem to have
been used. By contrast, on the Continent, especially in France, con-
structions resembling house fronts, city gates, or walls could be freely
set up on the large, fixed stage for miracle plays which was built in
some great square of the city. To this one place flocked all the
would-be auditors. The point to remember is that down to the
building of theatres the stage meant a platform, large or small,
movable or stationary, in some public place. Simply treated, as
was the case when it was movable, it would have a curtain at the
back, shutting off a space where costumes could be changed and
where the prompter could stand: scenery was out of the question.
Elaborately treated, when it was stationary, constructions suggesting
houses, ships, town walls, etc., might be shown at the back or side
of the stage, but they seem never to have been shifted from the
beginning to the end of the performance. Such houses, walls, etc.,
366 DRAMA
were used when needed, but when not in use were treated as non-
existent.
In the sixteenth century when playing passed from the hands of
the guilds to groups of actors, the latter sought refuge from the noise
and discomforts of the public square in the yards of inns. In those
days galleries like the balconies of our theatres were on all four sides
of such an inn yard, sometimes two and sometimes three. The
players, erecting a rough platform opposite the entrance from the
street, hung a curtain from the edge of the first gallery to their
stage. In the room or rooms behind this they dressed. Thus they
gained a front stage; a rear stage under the first gallery to be re-
vealed when the curtain was drawn; an upper stage in the first
balcony representing at will city walls, a balcony for Romeo and
Juliet, or an upper room. High above all this one or more galleries
rose which could be used for heavens in which gods and goddesses
appeared. In the yard stood the pittites; in the side and end galleries
sat the people who paid the higher prices.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STAGE
When, in 1576, London saw its first theatre just outside Bishops-
gate, it was circular, in imitation of existing bull-baiting arenas.
So far as a stage projecting into the pit, the rear stage underneath
the balcony, and the use of the first balcony itself were concerned,
the actors merely duplicated conditions to which they had grown
attached in the old inn yards. As under the older conditions, scenery
was impossible except as painted cloths might be hung at the back
of the balcony or under it. Hence the care of the Elizabethan
dramatists to place their scene by some hint or description in the
text. Moreover, a play lacking the stage settings of a century later
must be given atmosphere, reality, and even charm from within.
More and more, however, influenced by increasingly elaborate per-
formances at court of the masks, the public pressed the theatre
manager as far as possible to duplicate their gorgeous and illusory
settings. But such settings at the court were on stages behind an
arch like our modern proscenium. Consequently by 1660 the stage
of 1590 to 1642 had shrunk behind a proscenium arch. Then follow
two centuries of very elaborate staging by painted drops at the back,
DRAMA 367
side flats set in grooves, and painted borders. It should be remem-
bered that till the second half of the sixteenth century public per-
formances were given by daylight, largely because of the difficulty
in using flaring and unsteady links or cressets for artificial light.
When evening performances became the vogue, candles gave the
light till the discovery of illuminating gas made a revolution in
theatrical lighting. About 1860, the so-called box set, a means of
shutting in the whole stage, replaced for interiors a back drop and
painted side flats. Undoubtedly, some of the splendid and imag-
inative settings of Macready, Charles Kean, and Sir Henry Irving,
seemed the last word on the subject. Steadily, however, producer
and dramatist have worked together to make the stage as illusive as
possible. On the one hand, realism has strained it to the utmost; on
the other, poetic and fantastic drama have forced it to visualize for
us the realms of imagination. Responding to all this, modern science
and invention have come to the aid of drama. Electricity has opened
up ways of lighting not even yet fully explored. At present, par-
ticularly in Germany, most ingenious devices have been invented
for shifting scenery as quickly as possible. There and elsewhere,
especially in Russia and England, skill and much artistry have been
shown in quickening the imagination of the audience to the utmost
by suggestion rather than by representation of minute and confusing
detail. Frequently to-day the elaborate scenery of the past is im-
proved upon by a stage hung about with curtains, with some prop-
erties here and there or a painted drop at the back to give all the
suggestion needed. Alert and responsive, the stage of to-day at its
best, in sharpest contrast with the bare stage of the sixteenth century,
is calling on architects to make it flexible, on physicists and artists
to light it elusively, on great designers to arrange its decorations.
In brief, the stage throughout its history, longing always and trying
always to adapt itself to the demands of the dramatist, is to-day, as
never before, plastic.
THE COSMOPOLITANISM OF MODERN DRAMA
Nor has the drama changed merely in these respects. Once the
drama was almost wholly national. Then just because a play
smacked so of its soil, it could not be intelligently heard elsewhere.
368 DRAMA
In the seventies, as far as the American public was concerned, this
was true of the plays of Dumas fils and Augier. Now, increased
travel and all the varied means of intercommunication between
nations make for such swift interchange of ideas that the dramatic
success of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Paris, London, or
Madrid is known quickly the world over. With the drawing together
of the nations more common interests have developed, so that in-
tellectual and moral movements are not merely national but world-
wide. All this makes any national treatment of a world question
widely interesting: it even makes the world interested in local prob-
lems. Most marked change of all, this free intercommunication of
ideas tends to make even the humor of one nation comprehensible
by another.
To-day, then, the drama has become cosmopolitan. Broadway
sees Reinhardt's Berlin productions: Paris and Berlin see "Kismet."
Broadway knows Gorki, Brieux, and Schnitzler; English and Ameri-
can plays have a hearing on the Continent. For two generations
the drama has been fighting to take for its motto "Nihil mihi
alienum." It has won that right. Sensitive, responsive, eagerly wel-
comed everywhere, the drama, holding the mirror up to nature,
by laughter and by tears reveals to mankind the world of men.
II. GREEK TRAGEDY
BY PROFESSOR CHARLES BURTON GULICK
^ | AHE word "drama" is Greek, and means action or, as the
Greeks limited its use, action that goes on before our eyes.
JL In this way they distinguished the product of the theater
from the action of epic poetry and the action of history, both of
which, as understood and written by the Greeks, had highly dramatic
qualities.
Three centuries roughly coincide with the three periods of de-
velopment into which the history of the Greek theater naturally
falls. The sixth century B. C. is the time of preparation. The fifth
witnessed the full flowering of Athenian genius. In the fourth the
so-called New Comedy, largely inspired by the realism of Euripides,
took shape in the comedy of manners, the portrayal of domestic
life, and the foibles of society.
THE ORIGIN OF DRAMA IN GREECE
A superficial glance at any play contained in The Harvard Classics
will at once reveal the prominence of the chorus. To understand this,
as well as other features in the structure of a play, we must inquire
into the origin of tragedy and comedy.
This inquiry, slight though it must be, is the more essential be-
cause it was the constructive genius of the Greeks that discovered
and developed the drama as all countries and ages have since
known it.
The drama is founded in religion. In the Greek consciousness it
had its spring in the worship of Dionysus, who in one of his aspects
was a god of the underworld, latest comer into the Greek Pantheon,
whose religion had evoked much opposition, and whose story was
full of suffering as well as triumph and joy. He represented the life-
giving forces of nature; he was god of the vine and of wine, and at
the vintage festival the country folk celebrated him in dance and
369
370 DRAMA
song. They smeared their faces with wine lees and covered their
bodies with goatskins, to imitate the goatlike attendants of the god,
who were called satyrs. Thus their song, tragoedia, was the "song
of the goats," tragoi, and many years elapsed before it became
dignified. Toward the end of the seventh century B. C. the poet
Arion of Corinth adapted this folksong to his own purposes and
gave it, under the name of dithyramb, something like literary dis-
tinction. It was capable of great variety in form and matter, but
maintained its characteristic pathos throughout. The chorus gave
expression to cries of joy or ejaculations of pity and terror as the
story of the god unfolded itself. A refrain, in which the same words
were repeated, was a constant element.
The dithyramb remained purely lyric; but during the sixth cen-
tury, we know not how or through what personality, it underwent
a modification of profound importance. Some genius, perhaps
Thespis, conceived the idea of impersonating the god or some hero
connected with his myth, in the presence of his chorus of worshipers.
He wore a mask and carried other properties appropriate to his
nature, and with the leader of the chorus interchanged a dialogue
which was interrupted from time to time by the comments of the
chorus, accompanied by dancing and gestures.
Thespis, whose name has become familiar in all the literatures
of Europe, was a native of Icaria, a village in Attica, at the foot of
Mt. Pentelicus. The region, excavated by American explorers some
years ago, is still known as Dionysos. It lies in a valley which leads
to Marathon, and the scanty ruins, hidden among olive groves and
vineyards, betray no sign that it is the birthplace of European drama.
Thespis exhibited here during the latter half of the sixth century.
None of his works have survived. They were probably merely
sketched, not written out, and still followed the method of im-
provisation which, Aristotle says, was in vogue in the early steps
of the drama.
THE FIRST THEATER
The fifth century begins with authentic names and shows more
positive progress toward an imposing achievement. By this time
the country festivals of Dionysus had been taken up by the city.
DRAMA 371
As early as the middle of the sixth century the god had been brought
in pomp to Athens, and a precinct was consecrated to him at the
southeast slope of the Acropolis. Beside his temple the ground was
smoothed and laid out in a great dancing circle orchestra with an
altar in the center. The spectators, or theatron, were ranged on the
slope of the Acropolis. Opposite at some distance from the circle,
was the temple, and beyond that Mt. Hymettus made a distant back-
ground. There was no scenery except what nature had thus pro-
vided, but a convention soon arose whereby it was understood that
an actor entering from the right of the spectators came from the
city or the immediate vicinity, whereas one coming from the left
came from some distant country.
The early composers of tragedy for the author composed music,
invented dance steps, and trained the chorus to sing were content
with one actor who by changing mask and costume in a neighbor-
ing booth (s^ene) could take different roles. The chorus leader
was his interlocutor and bore the most difficult part, if we may
judge from the plays of ^Eschylus. Among the earliest poets was
Phrynichus, noted for his lofty patriotism, for the sweetness of his
lyrics, for vigorous inventiveness which dared on one occasion to
employ a historical theme, "The Fall of Miletus" and for the intro-
duction of female roles among those assigned to the actor. The
progress, as Aristotle emphasizes, was slow and tentative, and it is
clear that the audience did not willingly allow any wide departure
from the limits imposed by the religious origin and occasion of the
performance. More than once the conservative complaint, "This
has nothing to do with Dionysus," would restrain an author from
breaking too hurriedly with tradition, and the high purpose and
seriousness of tragedy was due not so much to any latent germ at its
beginning for comedy had the same popular origin in the vintage
festival as to the serious intent and deep religious conviction of the
poets of the time, whose minds were also impressed by the gravity
of the coming conflict with Persia.
AESCHYLUS, THE FATHER OF TRAGEDY
-Eschylus was thirty-five years old when he fought at Marathon.
Born at Eleusis, near the Greek sanctuary where the Mysteries of
372 DRAMA
Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus (here worshiped as Bacchus)
were celebrated, his soul was charged with influences which affected
his plays and explain why religious problems, like that of sin and
the justice of God, are so prominent in his thought. Externally, the
gorgeous vestments of the Eleusinian priests inspired him with the
idea of perfecting the costume of his players; but it was his own
genius which led him to take the step that entitles him to be called
the Father of Tragedy. This was the introduction of a second actor,
which made it possible to portray two contrasted characters, two
sets of emotions or purposes, and to bring before the sympathizing
chorus and spectators a conflict of ideals which, according to Hegel,
is the essence of tragedy.
The dithyramb was a comparatively short piece; hence an early
tragedy was short. When, as the constructive faculty increased, it
became evident that a theme could not be worked out within the
limits of a single play, the custom arose of treating it in a group of
three plays, to which was added, in deference to the festival, a
satyr play, wherein the chorus took the part of satyrs, as in the
ancient time. Thus the great theme of the commission, transmission,
and remission of sin has its beginning, middle, and end in the
"Agamemnon," "The Libation-Bearers," and "The Furies," 1 the
only trilogy that is extant. Even this lacks the satyr play which once
made the group a normal tetralogy. The "Prometheus Bound" z is
obviously incomplete. We have lost the part of the trilogy in which
the reconciliation between the rebellious Titan and his enemy, Zeus,
was effected, and the justice of Zeus vindicated.
All the Greek plays contained in The Harvard Classics belong to
the period of Athenian expansion following the successful fight
against Persia. Poets, painters, sculptors, joined in celebrating the
achievement of Greece, due mostly to Athens, in ridding Europe
for centuries from the fear of Oriental despotism. Exploration and
commerce brought new wealth into Attica, which now controlled
the sea, and the outburst of lyric and dramatic genius has had no
parallel except in England after the destruction of the Spanish
Armada.
1 For the complete trilogy see Harvard Classics, viii, yff.
2 H. C., viii, i66ff.
DRAMA 373
SOPHOCLES
Sophocles, 3 the tragedian who represents the purest type of the
classical Greek, was in his teens when the Battle of Salamis was
won. Beautiful in person and clear sighted in intellect, he was the
first to use the new Greek art in the theater. For he introduced
scene painting. Heretofore even ^Eschylus had been content with
only the altar in the orchestra and a few statues of gods on the outer
edge away from the audience. Sophocles now erected a scene build-
ing, the front of which showed to the audience the facade of a temple
or palace, pierced by a single door. The two side entrances were
retained. ^Eschylus adopted the innovation readily, and thus we
find the scenery of the "Agamemnon," simple as it is, far advanced
from the earlier conditions. Sophocles also enlarged the chorus from
twelve to fifteen singers, securing greater volume of tone and variety
of motion and gesture. But from this time onward we note a steady
diminution of the choral parts and the greater prominence of the
actors, whose number Sophocles increased to three.
EURIPIDES
In Euripides we have the boldest innovator, both in the resources
of dramaturgy and in the moral problems which he treats. Even he
cannot break entirely with tradition, and it is a curious chance that
the latest play of this great period, "The Bacchae," 4 harks back to
the theme of the earliest tragedies, the savage triumph of Dionysus
over his persecutors. But the method of Euripides leads him to
devices for which he was bitterly criticized. His characters are no
longer gods, the motive power in his plots no longer divine. They
are men and women, often moved by sordid and trivial causes, yet
none the less pathetic. To Aristotle he is the most tragic of the three,
and his appeal to sympathy is strong because his personages are
human. The effects of tragedy, pity and terror, become more vivid
because the sufferers are made of the same stufT as the audience. In
plot he is less skillful than Sophocles at his best, and he sometimes
has recourse to the deus ex machina to cut the complicated knot of
his own tying. Yet even here the appearance of the god, as at the
end of the "Hippolytus," 5 is justified by its spectacular effect.
3 H. C., viii, 209. 4 H. C., viii, 368. 5 H. C., viii, 303.
III. THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA
BY PROFESSOR W. A. NEILSON
WHEN the great European movement known as the Renais-
sance reached England, it found its fullest and most lasting
expression in the drama. By a fortunate group of coin-
cidences this intellectual and artistic impulse affected the people of
England at a moment when the country was undergoing a rapid
and, on the whole, a peaceful expansion when the national spirit
soared high, and when the development of the language and the
forms of versification had reached a point which made possible the
most triumphant literary achievement which that country has seen.
THE DRAMA BEFORE SHAKESPEARE
Throughout the Middle Ages the English drama, like that of
other European countries, was mainly religious and didactic, its
chief forms being the Miracle Plays, which presented in crude
dialogue stories from the Bible and the lives of the saints, and the
Moralities, which taught lessons for the guidance of life through
the means of allegorical action and the personification of abstract
qualities. Both forms were severely limited in their opportunities
for picturing human nature and human life with breadth and
variety. With the revival of learning came naturally the study and
imitation of the ancient classical drama, and in some countries this
proved the chief influence in determining the prevalent type of
drama for generations to come. But in England, though we can
trace important results of the models given by Seneca in tragedy
and Plautus in comedy, the main characteristics of the drama of the
Elizabethan age were of native origin, and reflected the spirit and
the interests of the Englishmen of that day.
THE CHRONICLE HISTORY
Of the various forms which this drama took, the first to reach a
culmination was the so-called Chronicle History. This is represented
374
DRAMA 375
in The Harvard Classics by the "Edward II" 1 of Marlowe, the
greatest of the predecessors of Shakespeare; and Shakespeare him-
self produced some ten plays belonging to the type. These dramas
reflect the interest the Elizabethans took in the heroic past of their
country, and before the vogue of this kind of play passed nearly the
whole of English history for the previous three hundred years had
been presented on the stage. As a form of dramatic art the Chronicle
History had many defects and limitations. The facts of history do
not always lend themselves to effective theatrical representation, and
in the attempt to combine history and drama both frequently
suffered. But surprisingly often the playwrights found opportunity
for such studies of character as that of the King in Marlowe's
tragedy, for real dramatic structure as in Shakespeare's "Richard III,"
or for the display of gorgeous rhetoric and national exultation as in
"Henry V." These plays should not be judged by comparison with
the realism of the modern drama. The authors sought to give the
actors fine lines to deliver, without seeking to imitate the manner
of actual conversation; and if the story was conveyed interestingly
and absorbingly, no further illusion was sought. If this implied some
loss, it also made possible much splendid poetry.
ELIZABETHAN TRAGEDY
Closely connected with the historical plays was the early develop-
ment of Tragedy. But in the search for themes, the dramatists soon
broke away from fact, and the whole range of imaginative narrative
also was searched for tragic subjects. While the work of Seneca
accounts to some extent for the prevalence of such features as ghosts
and the motive of revenge, the form of Tragedy that Shakespeare
developed from the experiments of men like Marlowe and Kyd
was really a new and distinct type. Such classical restrictions as
the unities of place and time, and the complete separation of comedy
and tragedy, were discarded, and there resulted a series of plays
which, while often marked by lack of restraint, of regular form,
of unity of tone, yet gave a picture of human life as affected by sin
and suffering which in its richness, its variety, and its imaginative
exuberance has never been equaled.
1 Harvard Classics, xlvi, jft. For "Doctor Faustus" see Professor Francke's article
below.
376 DRAMA
The greatest master of Tragedy was Shakespeare, and in Tragedy
he reached his greatest height. "Hamlet," 2 "King Lear," 3 and
"Macbeth" 4 are among his finest productions, and they represent
the noblest pitch of English genius. Of these, "Hamlet" was perhaps
most popular at the time of its production, and it has held its interest
and provoked discussion as perhaps no other play of any time or
country has done.
This is in part due to the splendor of its poetry, the absorbing
nature of the plot, and the vividness of the drawing of characters
who marvelously combine individuality with a universal and typical
quality that makes them appeal to people of all kinds and races.
But much also is due to the delineation of the hero, the subtlety of
whose character and the complexity of whose motives constitute a
perpetual challenge to our capacity for solving mysteries. "King
Lear" owes its appeal less to its tendency to rouse curiosity than to
its power to awe us with an overwhelming spectacle of the suffering
which folly and evil can cause and which human nature can sustain.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, its intricacy of motive and super-
abundance of incident, it is the most overwhelming of all in its
effect on our emotions. Compared with it, "Macbeth" is a simple
play, but nowhere does one find a more masterly portrayal of the
moral disaster that falls upon the man who, seeing the light, chooses
the darkness.
Though first, Shakespeare was by no means alone in the produc-
tion of great tragedy. Contemporary with him or immediately fol-
lowing came Jonson, Marston, Middleton, Massinger, Ford, Shirley,
and others, all producing brilliant work; but the man who most
nearly approached him in tragic intensity was John Webster. "The
Duchess of Malfi" 5 is a favorable example of his ability to inspire
terror and pity; and though his range is not comparable to that of
Shakespeare, he is unsurpassed in his power of coining a phrase
which casts a lurid light into the recesses of the human heart in
moments of supreme passion.
2 H. C., xlvi, 93 fi. 3 H. C., xlvi, 2isff. 4 #. C., xlvi, 32 iff.
5 H. C., xlvii,
DRAMA 377
ELIZABETHAN COMEDY
In the field of comedy, Shakespeare's supremacy is hardly less
assured. From the nature of this kind of drama, we do not expect
in it the depth of penetration into human motive or the call upon
our profounder sympathies that we find in Tragedy; and the con-
ventional happy ending of Comedy makes difficult the degree of
truth to life that one expects in serious plays. Yet the comedies of
Shakespeare are far from superficial. Those written in the middle of
his career, such as "As You Like It" and "Twelfth Night," not only
display with great skill many sides of human nature, but with in-
describable lightness and grace introduce us to charming creations,
speaking lines rich in poetry and sparkling with wit, and bring
before our imaginations whole series of delightful scenes. "The
Tempest" 6 does more than this. While it gives us again much of
the charm of the earlier comedies, it is laden with the mellow wisdom
of its author's riper years.
"The Alchemist," 7 representing the work of Ben Jonson, be-
longs to a type which Shakespeare hardly touched the Realistic
Comedy. It is a vivid satire on the forms of trickery prevailing in
London about 1600 alchemy, astrology, and the like. The plot is
constructed with the care and skill for which its author is famous;
and though its main purpose is the exposure of fraud, and much of
its interest lies in its picture of the time, yet, in the speeches of Sir
Epicure Mammon, for instance, it contains some splendid poetry.
Dekker's "The Shoemaker's Holiday" 8 in a much gayer mood,
shows us another side of London life, that of the respectable trades-
folk. Something of what Jonson and Dekker do for the city,
Massinger does for country life in his best known play, "A New
Way to Pay Old Debts," 9 one of the few Elizabethan dramas outside
of Shakespeare which have held the stage down to our own time.
Massinger's characters, like Jonson's, are apt to be more typical
embodiments of tendencies, less individuals whom one comes to
know, than Shakespeare's; yet this play retains its interest and power
of rousing emotion as well as its moral significance. The "Philas-
6 H. C., xlvi, 397ff. 7 H. C., xlvii, 543*?.
8 H. C., xlvii, 4 6 9 ff. *H. C., xlvii,
378 DRAMA
ter" 10 of Beaumont and Fletcher belongs to the same type of romantic
drama as "The Tempest" the type of play which belongs to Comedy
by virtue of its happy ending, but contains incidents and passages in
an all but tragic tone. Less convincing in characterization than
Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher yet amaze us by the brilliant
effectiveness of individual scenes, and sprinkle their pages with
speeches of poetry of great charm.
The dramas of the Elizabethan period printed in The Harvard
Classics serve to give a taste of the quality of this literature at its
highest, but cannot, of course, show the surprising amount of it,
or indicate the extreme literary-historical interest of its rise and de-
velopment. Seldom in the history of the world has the spirit of a
period found so adequate an expression in literature as the Eliza-
bethan spirit did in the drama; seldom can we see so completely
manifested the growth, maturity, and decline of a literary form.
But beyond these historical considerations, we are drawn to the
reading of Shakespeare and his contemporaries by the attraction of
their profound and sympathetic knowledge of mankind and its
possibilities for suffering and joy, for sin and nobility, by the enter-
tainment afforded by their dramatic skill in the presentation of their
stories, and by the superb poetry that they lavished so profusely on
their lines.
10 H. C., xlvii, 667fi.
IV. THE FAUST LEGEND
BY PROFESSOR KUNO FRANCKE
/^ AHE Faust legend is a conglomerate o anonymous popular
traditions, largely of mediaeval origin, which in the latter
JL part of the sixteenth century came to be associated with an
actual individual of the name of Faustus whose notorious career
during the first four decades of the century, as a pseudoscientific
mountebank, juggler, and magician, can be traced through various
parts of Germany. The "Faust Book" of 1587, the earliest collection
of these tales, is of prevailingly theological character. It represents
Faust as a sinner and reprobate, and it holds up his compact with
Mephistopheles and his subsequent damnation as an example of
human recklessness and as a warning to the faithful to cling to the
orthodox means of Christian salvation.
THE ELIZABETHAN "DOCTOR FAUSTUs"
From this "Faust Book," that is, from its English translation,
which appeared in 1588, Marlowe took his tragedy of "Dr. Faustus" 1
(1589; published 1604). In Marlowe's drama Faust appears as a
typical man of the Renaissance, as an explorer and adventurer, as a
superman craving for extraordinary power, wealth, enjoyment, and
worldly eminence. The finer emotions are hardly touched upon.
Mephistopheles is the mediaeval devil, harsh and grim and fierce,
bent on seduction, without any comprehension of human aspirations.
Helen of Troy is a she-devil, and becomes the final means of Faust's
destruction. Faust's career has hardly an element of true greatness.
None of the many tricks, conjurings, and miracles, which Faust
performs with Mephistopheles's help, has any relation to the deeper
meaning of life. They are mostly mere pastimes and vanity. From
the compact on to the end hardly anything happens which brings
Faust inwardly nearer either to heaven or hell. But there is a sturdi-
1 Harvard Classics, xix, 205.
379
380 DRAMA
ness of character and stirring intensity of action, with a happy ad-
mixture of buffoonery, through it all. And we feel something of the
pathos and paradox of human passions in the fearful agony of
Faust's final doom.
THE LEGEND IN GERMAN POPULAR DRAMA
The German popular Faust drama of the seventeenth century,
and its outgrowth, the puppet plays, are a reflex both of Marlowe's
tragedy and the "Faust Book" of 1587, although they contain a
number of original scenes, notably the Council of the Devils at the
beginning. Here again, the underlying sentiment is the abhorrence
of human recklessness and extravagance. In some of these plays the
vanity of bold ambition is brought out with particular emphasis
through the contrast between the daring and dissatisfied Faust and
his farcical counterpart, the jolly and contented Casperle.
In the last scene, while Faust in despair and contrition is waiting
for the sound of the midnight bell which is to be the signal of his
destruction, Casperle, as night watchman, patrols the streets of the
town calling out the hours and singing the traditional verses of
admonition to quiet and orderly conduct.
To the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then, Faust appeared
as a criminal who sins against the eternal laws of life, as a rebel
against holiness who ruins his better self and finally receives the
merited reward of his misdeeds. He could not appear thus to the
eighteenth century. The eighteenth century is the age of Rationalism
and of Romanticism. The eighteenth century glorifies human reason
and human feeling. The rights of man and the dignity of man are
its principal watchwords. Such an age was bound to see in Faust a
representative of true humanity, a champion of freedom, nature,
truth. Such an age was bound to see in Faust a symbol of human
striving for completeness of life.
THE VERSION OF LESSING
It is Lessing who has given to the Faust Legend this turn. His
"Faust," unfortunately consisting only of a few fragmentary sketches,
is a defense of Rationalism. The most important of these fragments,
preserved to us in copies by some friends of Lessing's, is the prelude,
DRAMA 381
a council of devils. Satan is receiving reports from his subordinates
as to what they have done to bring harm to the realm of God. The
first devil who speaks has set the hut of some pious poor on fire;
the second has buried a fleet of usurers in the waves. Both excite
Satan's disgust. "For," he says, "to make the pious poor still poorer
means only to chain him all the more firmly to God"; and the
usurers, if, instead of being buried in the waves, they had been
allowed to reach the goal of their voyage, would have wrought new
evil on distant shores.
Much more satisfied is Satan with the report of a third devil, who
has stolen the first kiss from a young, innocent girl and thereby
breathed the flame of desire into her veins; for he has worked evil
in the world of spirit, and that means much more and is a much
greater triumph for hell than to work evil in the world of bodies.
But it is the fourth devil to whom Satan gives the prize. He has
not done anything as yet. He has only a plan, but a plan which,
if carried out, would put the deeds of all the other devils into the
shade the plan "to snatch from God his favorite." This favorite
of God is Faust, "a solitary, brooding youth, renouncing all passion
except the passion for truth, entirely living in truth, entirely absorbed
in it." To snatch him from God that would be a victory over
which the whole realm of night would rejoice. Satan is enchanted;
the war against truth is his element. Yes, Faust must be seduced,
he must be destroyed. And he shall be destroyed through his very
aspiration. "Didst thou not say he has desire for knowledge? That
is enough for perdition!" His striving for truth is to lead him into
darkness. With such exclamations the devils break up, to set about
their work of seduction; but, as they are breaking up, there is heard
from above a divine voice : "Ye shall not conquer."
GOETHE'S EARLIER AND LATER TREATMENTS
It cannot be denied that Goethe's earliest Faust conception, the
so-called "Urfaust" of 1773 and 1774, lacks the wide sweep of thought
that characterizes these fragments of Lessing's drama. His Faust of
the Storm and Stress period is essentially a Romanticist. He is a
dreamer, craving for a sight of the divine, longing to fathom the
inner working of nature, drunk with the mysteries of the universe.
382 DRAMA
But he is also an unruly individualist, a reckless despiser of accepted
morality; and it is hard to see how his relation with Gretchen, which
forms by far the largest part of the "Urfaust," can lead to anything
but a tragic catastrophe. Only Goethe's second Faust 2 conception,
which sets in with the end of the nineties of the eighteenth century,
opens up a clear view of the heights of life.
Goethe was now in the full maturity of his powers, a man widely
separated from the impetuous youth of the seventies whose Prome-
thean emotions had burst forth with volcanic passion. He had mean-
while become a statesman and philosopher. He had come to know
in the court of Weimar a model of paternal government, conservative
yet liberally inclined, and friendly to all higher culture. He had found
in his truly spiritual relation to Frau von Stein a safe harbor for his
tempestuous feelings. He had been brought face to face, during his
sojourn in Italy, with the wonders of classic art. The study of Spinoza
and his own scientific investigations had confirmed him in a thor-
oughly monistic view of the world and strengthened his belief in a
universal law which makes evil itself an integral part of the good.
The example of Schiller as well as his own practical experience had
taught him that the untrammeled living out of personality must go
hand in hand with incessant work for the common welfare of man-
kind. All this is reflected in the completed Part First of 1808; it
finds its most comprehensive expression in Part Second, the bequest
of the dying poet to posterity.
Restless endeavor, incessant striving from lower spheres of life
to higher ones, from the sensuous to the spiritual, from enjoyment
to work, from creed to deed, from self to humanity this is the
moving thought of Goethe's completed "Faust." The keynote is
struck in the "Prologue in Heaven." Faust, so we hear, the daring
idealist, the servant of God, is to be tempted by Mephisto, the
despiser of reason, the materialistic scoffer. But we also hear, and
we hear it from God's own lips, that the tempter will not succeed.
God allows the devil free play, because he knows that he will
frustrate his own ends. Faust will be led astray "man errs while
he strives"; but he will not abandon his higher aspirations; through
aberration and sin he will find the true way toward which his inner
2 H. c., xix, 9 ff.
DRAMA 383
nature instinctively guides him. He will not eat dust. Even in the
compact with Mephisto the same ineradicable optimism asserts itself.
Faust's wager with the devil is nothing but an act of temporary
despair, and the very fact that he does not hope anything from it
shows that he will win it. He knows that sensual enjoyment will
never give him satisfaction; he knows that, as long as he gives him-
self up to self-gratification, there will never be a moment to which
he would say: "Abide, thou art so fair!" From the outset we feel that
by living up to the very terms of the compact, Faust will rise superior
to it; that by rushing into the whirlpool of earthly experience and
passion nis being will be heightened and expanded.
And thus everything in the whole drama, all its incidents and all
its characters, become episodes in the rounding out of this grand,
all-comprehensive personality. Gretchen and Helena, Wagner and
Mephisto, Homunculus and Euphorion, the Emperor's court and
the shades of the Greek past, the breedings of mediaeval mysticism
and the practical tasks of modern industrialism, the enlightened
despotism of the eighteenth century and the ideal democracy of the
future all this and a great deal more enters into Faust's being and is
absorbed by him. He strides on from experience to experience, from
task to task, expiating guilt by doing, losing himself, and finding
himself again. Blinded in old age by Dame Care, he feels a new
light kindled within. Dying, he gazes into a far future. And even
in the heavenly regions he goes on ever changing into new and
higher and finer forms. It is this irrepressible spirit of striving
which makes Goethe's "Faust" the Bible of modern humanity. 3
3 For further critical comments on Goethe, see General Index, H. C., \.
y. MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA
BY DR. ERNEST BERNBAUM
^ I AHE modern English drama is represented in The Harvard
Classics by two comedies of the eighteenth century and by
JL four tragedies of the seventeenth and the nineteenth. Since
literary fashions change from age to age, and since the authors of
these plays were, even when contemporaries, men of markedly differ-
ent tastes, it is natural that the six dramas should be more or less
conspicuously dissimilar. Each is great because it follows an ideal;
each is great in a different way because its ideal is not that of the
others. Which of these ideals is absolutely the best, is a question
that critics have much debated, sometimes acrimoniously: Dryden
has been pitted against Shakespeare, Goldsmith against Sheridan,
Shelley against Browning, and so on. Interesting as such contentions
may be, they tend to obscure rather than enlighten the mind of him
who approaches these plays simply with the desire to enjoy each to
the full. To him comparisons are odious because, instead of leading
him to appreciate many plays of many kinds, they may confine his
enjoyment to those of one school. Yet, though he may set aside the
vexatious question of the relative worth of the purposes that inspired
these dramatists, he will not gain the greatest possible delight from
them until he understands what each of them was trying to do.
GOLDSMITH AND "SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER*'
Genial Goldsmith 1 delighted in the kind of humo/ that is char-
acteristic of "the plain people" and that is spontaneously enjoyed by
them. The accidental predicaments into which all of us stumble,
to our embarrassment and the amusement of bystanders; the blunders
of well-meaning but untrained servants; the practical jokes, without
malice, that ever delight youth; the shy awkwardness of lovers; even
the clownish tavern jest and joviality; these are in Goldsmith's
1 Harvard Classics, xviii, 205.
384
DRAMA 385
merry eyes sources of wholesome laughter. It troubles him not that
Young Marlow continues to believe a country house an inn, and
the host's daughter a maidservant, nor that Mrs. Hardcastle mis-
takes her own garden for a distant heath; he ignores the improb-
ability of such situations as arouse instinctive laughter. It is the un-
sophisticated human beings who blunder in and out of these straits
that he wishes to depict; and he draws simple folk like Mr. and
Mrs. Hardcastle, Tony Lumpkin, and Diggory, with extraordinary
zest, fidelity, and kindly yet shrewd humor.
SHERIDAN AND "THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL"
Sheridan, the statesman, orator, and wit, wrote of the fashionable
world, and for it. In conformity with its conventional existence,
and its taste for regularity, he admitted no improbabilities into the
plot of "The School for Scandal." 2 As men and women of fashion
tried to be elegant, witty, or epigrammatic in speech, he aimed to
bestow like graces upon the dialogue of his personages to make
Joseph Surface sententious, Charles sprightly, Lady Teazle invincible
in repartee. To a society that was too fastidious to be entertained
by naive simplicity, rude manners, and boisterous merriment,
Sheridan wanted to reveal the comic aspects of its usual life. He
laughed at the scandal mongers who, after tearing others' reputa-
tions to tatters, departed without a shred of their own, at the foolish
though innocent young wife who was fascinated by the perilous
pleasures of a fast set, and at the affected young hypocrite whose
devious schemes undid him. He was not without kindliness of
heart, as the humor of the final scene between Sir Peter and Lady
Teazle shows; but satire was his aim.
DRYDEN AND "ALL FOR LOVE"
Like most tragedies, Dryden's "All for Love," 3 shows the pitiable
outcome of a struggle between good and evil. Among the innumer-
able manifestations of this eternal strife there are some which attract
by their singularity, but these were not of interest to Dryden. To
him the really important tragic conflicts were those which are
frequent in human life, such as that between duty and passion. He
2 H. C. t xviii, 109. 3 H. C., xviii, 23.
386 DRAMA
chose the theme of Antony and Cleopatra, not because it was new
or extraordinary, but because it was a noble illustration of a normal
dilemma of human existence. He knew of course that the defeat in
the decisive battle of Actium of the last kingdom of the Grecian
empire by triumphant Rome was epoch making, 4 and offered superb
opportunities for historical and scenic contrasts; but he did not
wish to write a "world drama." When he raises the curtain, Actium
has already been fought and the destiny of nations decided; what
remains is the personal fate of Antony and of Cleopatra, the former
vainly though nobly endeavoring to reanimate his former manhood
and loyalty, the latter trying amid the wreck to save her domination
over him, and each tortured by lack of true faith in the other. Their
emotions in the brief final crisis of their lives Dryden sought to trace
with clearness and truth to nature, and to express with majestic
simplicity.
SHELLEY AND "THE CENCl"
When Shelley in his preface to "The Cenci" 5 speaks of "teaching
the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowl-
edge of itself," he expresses intentions not widely different from
those of all dramatists, including Dryden; but when he mentions
his desire to "make apparent some of the most dark and secret
caverns of the human heart," he indicates his own predilection.
This he followed in choosing as his subject a "dark and secret"
crime, the situation into which the monstrous Cenci forces Beatrice
being unspeakable and abnormal. As suitable backgrounds, Shelley
selects a sinister banquet, a gloomy castle at night, and a prison with
instruments of torture. Yet he wishes not to fix attention upon
physical horrors, but to use them to call forth in his characters
extreme revelations of vice and virtue. He feels that only under
such dread circumstances can the deepest potentialities of human
nature be displayed. The very extremity of Beatrice's plight lays bare
the core of her womanhood, revealing to the full the sensitiveness of
chastity and the courage of innocence.
* "Lectures on Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books," History, p. 7.
5 H. C. t xviii, 281.
DRAMA 387
BYRON AND "MANFRED"
Byron, like Shelley, sought what lay beyond the commonplace,
but found it in another aspect of life. His "Manfred" 6 succumbs not
to man or society, but in a solitary struggle with the mysteries of
Nature. From her he has wrested secrets, her forces he has learned
to command; but his proud knowledge and power have been gained
by stifling the social feelings of humanity, and his life is now a
penitent search for oblivion, in which science, philosophy, and
religion can give him no consolation. "I was," he laments, "my
own destroyer, and will be my own Hereafter!" Byron's tempera-
ment enabled him to fathom a lonely soul like Manfred's, and urged
him to express its passions with fiery vigor. The subject offered
almost insuperable obstacles to dramatic treatment, since most of
the forces that acted upon Manfred were either abstractions or
inanimate objects. Byron, however, felt, and used all the energy of
his imagination to make us feel, that these physical phenomena and
laws were not vague or dead things, but that earth and air, moun-
tains and cataracts, were to the distracted wanderer real personalities,
and exercised upon him an influence more intimate than that of
any fellow man.
BROWNING AND "A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON"
With Browning's "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" 7 we return to the
kind of tragedy that arises amid normal conditions of life. Yet
here again a peculiar aspect of the tragic is emphasized. Both
Dryden's Antony and Shelley's Cenci know clearly that they are
committing wrong. Browning perceived that there are tragic cases
in which a character acts in accordance with his highest moral
standard, and comes too late to realize that his standard is false or
inapplicable. The personages in "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" are of
admirable nobility, and among them Thorold is not the least
scrupulously conscientious, but the code of honor which he loyally
obeys becomes an instrument of fatal cruelty. The very intensity
with which he looks up to a splendid ideal blinds his judgment
regarding the apparent dishonor of his beloved sister, so that he
B H. C., xviii, 407. 7 H. C., xviii, 359.
388 DRAMA
fails to see "through the surface of crime a depth of purity unmov-
able." It is thus a subtle as well as a natural course of events that
Browning aims to trace, and only a rich and pregnant style could
express the complex thoughts and feelings of so highly cultivated
and exquisitely sensitive beings as his Thorold, Mildred, and Guen-
dolen.
The reader of these six dramas who understands their main pur-
poses will surely admire the conscientious manner in which those
aims are carried out. He will perceive that the plot, characterization,
and dialogue of each are designed with remarkable skill to conform
to its dominant ideal. In fact, the chief reason why these plays are
among the very, very few dramatic masterpieces of their time is
that their authors clearly knew what they wanted to do, and came
about as near to doing it as human limitations permit. The different
means they had to employ interestingly exhibit the varieties of
dramatic technique; and the diverse views of human life that they
held serve to enlarge the bounds of our sympathy with many sorts
and conditions of men.
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR R. B. DIXON
For to admire and for to see,
For to behold this world so wide.
IT IS probable that from the very earliest times the spirit of these
familiar lines has been a potent factor in human history. One
might be led, because of the marked development of curiosity
in monkeys and apes, to suppose that, even before the complete de-
velopment of the human type had been attained, our precursors were
tempted to explore beyond their customary haunts. Be that as it
may, it seems certain that the first spread of the human race over
the face of the globe must have been preceded by more or less con-
scious exploration and travel. As population grew and began to
press upon the food supply and available hunting grounds, and the
need for expansion and emigration was recognized, the relative
availability and attractiveness of the country in different directions
must have been investigated, and movement have taken place toward
the most favorable. This would, of course, not hold true where
movement was due to war or the pressure of conquest, but much of
this earliest movement of peoples must have been largely voluntary.
Travel has thus in these primitive scouts and explorers its earliest
exponents, and the history of travel is seen to be as old as the race.
PREHISTORIC TRAVEL
This primitive travel was moreover in the truest sense exploration,
for these travelers were the first to penetrate into lands wholly un-
known and previously untrodden by the feet of man. Once the
greater part of the world was overrun, however, the need for travel
was by no means at an end. Intensive exploration in the search for
the best hunting grounds and fishing places, or, with the advent of
389
39O VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
agriculture, for suitable and fertile soils, must have continued for
generations. During the long period in which human civilization
has been developing it is clear, moreover, that in the shifting of
populations, which has constantly been going on, the same areas
have thus been explored again and again, now by this people, now
by that. Of these countless travels and travelers, little definite trace
of course remains, and it is only with the beginning of the historic
period that records of travel become available.
Although of this prehistoric travel we can find no accounts, yet
we can gain some idea of its character from observation of the
savage and barbarous peoples of the world to-day. Now, as then
probably, there are sedentary, stay-at-home peoples, contented to
live and die within a narrow horizon, people whose individual radius
of travel may in a whole lifetime not exceed a score of miles, and
whom neither commerce nor conquest can tempt beyond their own
small sphere. Now, as then, there are other peoples in whom the
spirit of travel is strong, in whom is a great restlessness, an inborn
tendency to wander in quest of food or trade or conquest. The
radius of travel of a single individual in such a tribe may, as for
example in the case of certain Eskimos, reach as much as a thousand
miles. But such extensive wanderings are, on the whole, rare among
savage peoples, and we may well admire the courage and skill of
those old Polynesian travelers who, according to tradition, dared in
their small canoes to push their search for new lands far to the
south beyond their sunny seas, until they reached the fogs and
drift ice of the Antarctic.
THE MOTIVE OF THE TRUE EXPLORER
Leaving this period of early and unrecorded travel, however, and
turning to historic times, two facts force themselves upon our
attention, first, that the volume of travel has apparently been con-
stantly increasing, and, second, that the motives which induce men
to travel are of many kinds; that there are indeed many sorts of
travelers.
First by right comes the true explorer, for whom travel is not a
means, but an end in itself. For others religion, commerce, science,
may be the goal, the "long trail," with all its beauties, its hardships,
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 39!
and its dangers, mere incidents along the way. Not so for the true
explorer. Impelled by an inborn curiosity, an intense craving to
see new lands, new peoples, and driven by an incurable restlessness
of spirit, he penetrates to the remotest corners of the earth, braving
every danger, surmounting every difficulty, and asks but little of
the world in the way of tangible returns. For him the life of the
trail, the triumph over obstacles, the thrill of danger, are things in
themselves desirable and beyond price; his reward lies not in the
attainment, but in the quest. There may be few indeed for whom
no other motives enter, but it is nevertheless true that for most
great travelers, however much they may deceive themselves into
thinking that they follow other and, as they believe, higher calls, it
is the master motive.
THE MOTIVE OF CONQUEST
A different force, but one which has at all times been effective,
is that of war or conquest. To the explorer enrichment of ex-
perience, not increase of possessions, is the aim; he does not care
to whom the world belongs if only he may be free to travel therein.
The conqueror, however, demands possession, and the lust for it
and for revenge has, in the case of savage and civilized alike, led
men into distant lands and among strange people. From the Iroquois
who, sometimes alone, sometimes in company with a handful of
others, went from the Hudson a thousand miles westward to the
Mississippi to strike a blow at the hated Sioux, to Attila and the
other leaders of those hordes which poured their thousands into
mediaeval Europe from the farthest East; from Alexander and his
conquest of most of the old world to Cortez and Pizarro and their
conquest of much of the new, in varying degree and at different
times war has made of the conqueror a traveler. To such as these
it is not the beauty but the wealth of a country that makes it desirable,
and interest in its people lies more in their exploitation than in any
other field.
THE MOTIVE OF RELIGION
Another very potent incentive to travel has been religion. From
its influence have developed the pilgrim and the missionary, types
392 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
which have furnished some of the greatest travelers of historic times.
Pilgrims, led by the desire to visit the holy places of their faith, often
undertake journeys of great length and difficulty. Singly or in com-
panies they traverse their hundreds or thousands of miles, their eyes
fixed always on the distant goal, and too absorbed in anticipation
of the things to be to take notice of the things about them as they
go. Treading the same paths which generations before them have
trod, whose ups and downs, whose hardships and dangers have
become a matter of tradition, they follow like sheep in each other's
footsteps. So they have journeyed and still journey in their thousands,
century after century; in early times from China and other parts
of Asia to the sacred places of India; from the uttermost parts of
Europe to Jerusalem in the Middle Ages; from every corner of the
Mohammedan world to Mecca to-day. Each and all are seeking
for salvation, for all the reward is of the spirit; we may not blame
them, therefore, that they do not heed the world through which
they pass.
In one sense pilgrim travel may be said to be centripetal, in that
it draws the traveler by known roads to some great center of his
faith; missionary travel on the other hand may be said to be cen-
trifugal, in that it leads away from these centers, by untraveled paths
into the unknown. Thus the missionary, far more than the pilgrim,
has been an explorer; and whether it be the early Buddhist monks
who brought their faith from India to much of eastern and south-
eastern Asia; or Christians who have preached their doctrines in
every clime; or fierce followers of the Prophet, who with the sword
in one hand and the Koran in the other carried Islam alike to Spain
and the Spice Islands of the East all alike have journeyed far and
faithfully, led always by the fire of their zeal. They had no fore-
knowledge of what they might expect, for them new vistas opened
as they went; Mohammedans excepted, their lives were spent, their
journeys were made, not for their own but for others' sake; and
their interest or pity was aroused in no small degree in the strange
peoples whose souls they went to save. It is not surprising, therefore,
that they should show a keener interest in what they saw, or that
they should have left far more of record than the pilgrim has.
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 393
THE COMMERCIAL MOTIVE
Great as has been the influence of conquest and religion upon
travel, a greater impulse and one leading to even wider results has
been that of trade and commerce. In earlier times in search of foreign
commodities and products, in modern days of new markets to which
to export the products of home manufacture, men have penetrated
to the ends of the earth, and to this commercial impulse is attributable
most of the great travels and explorations from the thirteenth century
to the beginning of modern scientific exploration at the end of the
eighteenth. To the merchant traveler, even more than to the mis-
sionary, observation of the country and its products, its peoples and
their needs, is important. The easiest and safest roads by which
his merchandise may be transported, new materials, new sources,
new markets, are the basis of his success; and the character and
customs of the people are of vital import in the prosecution of his
work. A new and shorter road gives him an advantage over his com-
petitors, and it was this search for new ways to reach the Indies which
led to the greatest fifty years in the whole history of travel a period
in which the area of the world as known to civilized Europe was far
more than doubled. 1
THE SCIENTIFIC MOTIVE
Although purely scientific curiosity became an important element
of travel only toward the end of the eighteenth century, there were
in earlier times a few for whom this was a great incentive. To seek
for knowledge for its own sake, to be fired with the desire to extend,
if only by a little, the limits of the known, is not wholly a modern
trait; but before this could be in large measure an important factor,
the extraordinary widening and development of scientific interest
characteristic of the last century and a half was necessary. Each has,
however, contributed to the advance of the other, and the vast
additions to knowledge gained by scientific exploration have in large
degree provided the materials from which the present structure of
1 See Harvard Classics, xliii, 21, 28, 45; xxxiii, 129, 199, 229, 263, 311; and the
lecture below on "The Elizabethan Adventurers."
394 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
science has been built. As once for religion, so now for science men
plunge into the unknown; now as then they strive, not for them-
selves, but for an ideal.
Travel is then, as we have seen, as old as the human race, and of
travelers there are and have been many kinds, according to the
motives which induced them to fare forth. The records of these
many travelers form a body of literature whose interest is undying,
for besides the facts which they have gathered, and the additions to
our knowledge which they have made, they give us often a clear
and vivid picture of the character of the travelers themselves, their
courage in the face of danger, their patience in overcoming every
kind of obstacle; and heroism and self-sacrifice of the truest and
highest types have been exemplified again and again in their lives.
Of all these many travelers but a part have left a record, and, as
might be expected, the earlier have left far less than those of later
times. From the historical point of view, the records fall into several
fairly definite groups or periods, each differing from the other not
only in time, but also to a considerable extent in the character of the
motive which was dominant.
THE FIRST PERIOD OF RECORDED TRAVEL
The first or early period may be said to begin about the fifth cen-
tury B. C. with Herodotus, 2 who in his travels in Egypt, Babylonia,
and Persia gives us our first accurate accounts of those countries,
and seems to be one of the earliest of scientific travelers. He traveled
widely, gathered information assiduously both as to the actual con-
dition and the history of the countries he visited, and seems to have
been an accurate and painstaking observer. The bold explorations
of the Carthaginian Hanno, at about this same time, along the west
coast of Africa possibly as far as the Gulf of Guinea, were designed
to extend the growing commerce of this great mercantile people,
and show how, even at this early date, trade was one of the most
potent incentives to travel. It is perhaps of interest to note that on
this expedition gorillas were seen apparently for the first time, being
described as hairy men of great ferocity and strength. Several of
them were captured, and Hanno attempted to carry them back to
2 H. C., xxxiii, jfi ; and lecture on "Herodotus on Egypt," below.
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 395
Carthage alive, but was forced to kill them because of their violence,
and so brought back only their skins. A century or so later, the
expedition of Alexander, while primarily actuated by the desire for
conquest, was also in part exploratory, and resulted not only in
bringing back the earliest authentic accounts of India, but demon-
strated the feasibility of reaching that country by sea. With the rise
of the Roman Empire, this early period came to an end, and from
then on until the fourth or fifth century is a time of relative
quiescence, during which the attention of the Mediterranean world
was devoted to the intensive occupation of the world as already-
known, rather than to exploration beyond those limits.
THE SECOND PERIOD PILGRIMS AND MISSIONARIES
With the fourth century, however, the second period begins and
lasts for some seven or eight hundred years. Perhaps the most char-
acteristic feature of travel during this time was the prominence of
the religious motive, for the travelers were largely pilgrims and
missionaries, or, toward the latter end, those who, making religion
their war cry, journeyed as Crusaders to wrest Jerusalem from the
Saracen. The pilgrim, as already pointed out, was, although a
traveler, usually an unobservant one; his interest was centered in
his goal and in the spiritual benefits which were to accrue from his
long and perilous journey, so that for the incidents of the day he
had little care. To a large extent, also, the pilgrims were humble
folk, illiterate, unlearned, and so left as a rule no records of what
they saw. There were, of course, exceptions, and many persons of
high rank as well as some scholarly attainment were to be found
among the throngs who from all parts of Europe made the
journey to Palestine. Not all the pilgrims, it should be noted, were
men, for both during the early as well as the later portions of the
period many women performed the arduous trip. 3 Such, for example,
was Sylvia of Aquitaine, apparently a woman of rank, who about
380 not only visited Jerusalem and the usual sacred places, but went
on into parts of Arabia and Mesopotamia, and has left brief but
interesting accounts of her years of travel. She may thus be con-
3 Cf. The Wife of Bath in Chaucer's Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales," H. C.,
xl, 24.
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
sidered one of the first great woman travelers. In the seventh and
eighth centuries the volume of pilgrim travel seems to have increased,
or at least we have more abundant records of it; and in the accounts
left by Willibald, a man of rank apparently from Kent, we have one
of the earliest stories of English travel. This pilgrim gives us an
interesting incident of his return journey from Palestine. It seems
that he wished to bring back with him to England a supply of a
certain balsam, but feared that this would be taken from him by
the customs officials whose duty it was to see that none of this
precious substance left the country. Accordingly he devised an
ingenious smuggling scheme. Taking a reed which was of a size
such that it exactly fitted the mouth of the calabash in which the
balsam was contained, he plugged up one end and filled the tube
thus formed with petroleum. This he carefully inserted into the
opening, cutting off the end flush with the mouth of the calabash
and inserting a stopper. On arriving at Acre the customs officials
searched his luggage, found the calabash and opened it, but seeing
and smelling only the petroleum, suspected nothing and allowed
him to pass. From this it is clear that travelers of old as well as
modern times were more or less at the mercy of customs regulations,
and that then as now they took such means as they could to evade
the laws.
Although in Europe the records of pilgrim travel are not only
meager but generally disappointing in their brevity and lack of de-
tail, conditions were somewhat different in far-away China. There,
although the number of pilgrims was much smaller, the records
which they left were of much greater value. The names of two of
the Chinese pilgrims stand out as of particular importance, those
namely of Fa Hian and of Hiuen Thsang. Journeying to India
from northern China to visit the places made holy by the life and
death of Gautama, the Buddha, and to consult and copy some of
the sacred writings, they have left us records which are not only
of the greatest interest as stories of travel, but which are of quite
inestimable value as giving practically the only information to be had
in regard to the condition of India and the life of its people at this
time. Both pilgrims journeyed to India by way of Turkestan and
across the Pamirs, and the former returned, after nearly fifteen years
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 397
of travel, from Ceylon by sea to his home. Both give very full and
detailed accounts of all that they saw and heard, and both show far
more than the European travelers of the time an appreciation of the
beauties of the scenery through which they passed. That travelers
then as now, and of other races as well as our own, felt at times their
loneliness and yearned to return, is shown by an incident related
by Fa Hian. He had then been absent from his home living among
strange people in strange lands for nearly fifteen years, when one
day in Ceylon he saw in the hands of a merchant a small Chinese
fan of white silk which had found its way thither. The sight of this,
he says, brought back to him so keenly thoughts of his home that he
was able to endure his exile no longer, so soon after set out on his
return journey, and after many perils by the way ultimately reached
his native place.
The poverty of record which characterizes the pilgrim travel of
Europe at this time is even more marked in the case of those who
were led by missionary zeal. The two directions in which mis-
sionary enterprise seems to have been most marked at this period
were south to Abyssinia, and east to China and India. Of the former
we have but the slightest record, of the latter practically none at all.
That missionary activity was great throughout India, Central Asia,
and China, however, we know from various sources. The Nestorian
missions which were thus founded between the seventh and the
ninth centuries are known to have been abundant, and the mis-
sionaries must have been great travelers for they seem to have
penetrated throughout much of China and widely along the Indian
coasts, but of records they left nothing. Indeed their names are
not even known for the most part, although two, Olopan and Kiho,
are given in the Chinese annals. Curiously enough, it is at the
opposite end of the world that the other missionary travelers of the
time are found, namely in Ireland. Here there are a few accounts of
explorations northward to the Faroes and Iceland during the eighth
century, but little information of value was recorded.
MOHAMMEDAN PROPAGANDA
Another and very important group of travelers during this period
were the Arabs. With the rise of Mohammedanism in the seventh
39^ VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
century a strong impulse, in part due to missionary fervor, in part
to a desire for conquest, was given to Arab travel. For some time
previous to the Hegira, merchants and others from Arabia had
visited Ceylon, India, and the African coast, but with the rapid
spread of Islam this trade was greatly stimulated, as the militant
forces of the faith carried the banner of the Prophet with un-
exampled rapidity not only to Central Asia, China, and the east
African shores, but into western Europe as well. The missionary
conquerors themselves have left little in the way of record of their
journeys, but the traders and travelers who followed in their wake
have. We have thus a case in which the religious impulse, combined
with that of conquest, impelled many to travel, and also prepared
the way for a host of others whose journeyings would not have been
made had not the former paved the way. Perhaps the best known
of these early Arab travelers are Soleyman and Masoudi; the first
a merchant who in the course of his business journeyed as far as the
Chinese coast; the second more a geographer-traveler, who not
only visited and described the Far East, but also the African coasts
as well. Both, and particularly the latter, have left voluminous
records of their travels, and give us many interesting glimpses into
the life and conditions of their day. In many ways of greater
interest were the numerous less known travelers, for on some of
their accounts, now in part lost, the familiar voyages of Sindbad the
Sailor 4 in the collection known to us as the Arabian Nights were
based. It is possible to identify with a fair degree of accuracy
many of the places referred to in those well-known exploits; India,
Ceylon, Madagascar, and China are all among the localities visited
by that redoubtable sailor; his accounts of the gathering of camphor
represent the actual process as employed in the Indian Archipelago;
and without much doubt the famous Old Man of the Sea refers to
the orang-utan of Sumatra and the adjacent regions. Not only did
the Arabs themselves thus become great travelers, but they also
supplied the means by which in large measure the great development
of travel in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was made possible.
From their contact with the Chinese the Arabs learned the use of
the compass, and from them it passed to the sailors of the Medi-
4 H. C., xvi, 231-294.
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 399
terranean, thus bringing to European navigators one of the means
which enabled them to prosecute those long sea voyages, resulting
among other things in the discovery of the New World.
THE VIKINGS AND THE CRUSADERS
Although religion and religious motives were thus directly or
indirectly the dominant features of the travel of this period, they
were not the only ones, and if the spirit of exploration was almost
dormant in the lands about the Mediterranean, it was very much
alive in northern Europe. Beginning at first in piratical raids to the
southward along the rich coasts of France and Spain, the Vikings,
the "men of the fiords," after a time turned their attention westward,
and in the spirit of true discovery pushed out into the unknown
Atlantic. Here they first reached Iceland, then Greenland, and at
last in the eleventh century the northern shores of America. In the
sagas the records of many of these voyages are preserved, and in the
Saga of Eric the Red 5 we have the first account, albeit a meager
one, of the New World.
Following close upon this activity of the Norsemen in the north
of Europe there begins a new period, in which there is a great revival
of interest in travel among the nations farther south. This was in
part a continuation of the religious travel of the previous period,
now transformed into the militancy of the Crusaders; in part due
to political events occurring far away in China; and in part to a
great and rapid development of trade. So far as the Crusaders are
concerned they may be considered largely as military pilgrims who
sought to drive the Moslem conqueror from the holy places of
their faith. Like the peaceful pilgrims of an earlier age, they were
inflamed by a great purpose which kept their eyes and thoughts
upon their goal. They have left, it is true, considerable in the way
of record, but as travelers their importance falls far behind others
of a different type.
THE EXTENSION OF THE MONGOL EMPIRE
One of the most important, perhaps the most important, event of
the thirteenth century was the sudden rise of the great Mongol
5 H. c., xliii, 5.
400 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
power in eastern Asia under Genghiz Khan. Once secure in the
East, the Mongols turned their attention toward the West, swept
through all Central Asia, and invaded Europe. Although they were
repulsed at the battle of Liegnitz in 1241, Europe feared for the
future, and accordingly a diplomatic mission was sent by the Pope
to the capital of the Great Khan. Of these ambassadors the most
important was the Franciscan, John of Piano Carpini. Two years
were occupied by him on his mission, and he returned with a glow-
ing account of the countries and peoples he had seen. Others fol-
lowed, part diplomat, part missionary, such as Rubruquis, and as a
result Europe for the first time began to realize the greatness and
the wealth of this kingdom of Cathay. Merchants and traders were
not slow to respond, and as Venice was then the leader in the
eastern trade, it was not unnatural that her merchants should attempt
to make use of the route to this rich market made known by the
papal envoys. It was under these circumstances, then, that Marco
Polo began his famous travels toward the end of the century.
For twenty years he was absent from his home, traveling during
this time through most of Central Asia, China, and Tibet, and
voyaging to Java and India from the China coasts, in large part as
an appointed official of the Mongol Empire, which at this time
under Kublai Khan was the greatest the world had ever seen. Re-
turning at last to Europe, he fell into prison, and his wonderful story
was only saved to the world by the interest of one of his fellow
prisoners, who wrote it down from his lips. Polo's account is on the
whole remarkably accurate, but as much cannot be said for some of
the other travelers, merchants, or others of the time. Many showed
great credulity in reporting all sorts of marvelous things, and on
some of these accounts the famous but wholly mythical travels of
Sir John Mandeville were based. This, in its day, most popular
book seems to have been written by an obscure physician of Liege
who, so far as is known, never left his native town. Thus the
fabrication of travels is not by any means a wholly modern accom-
plishment. Great as were the achievements as travelers of Polo
and other Europeans, their records are equaled or even surpassed by
some of the Arabs who still showed until the fifteenth century great
activity in this field. The greatest of these and of all Arab travelers
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 401
was Ibn Batuta, a physician of Tangier. For twenty-five years he
traveled uninterruptedly, visiting not only every part of the East
and the Indian Archipelago, but the steppes of southern Russia, the
east African coast as far as the equator, and crossed the Sahara to
Timbuktu and the valley of the Niger on the west.
THE ROUTE TO THE INDIES
With the fifteenth century a sudden impetus was given to travel
by the recently greatly developed trade with the Indies. The intro-
duction of the compass had greatly stimulated sea travel, and the
closing of the overland routes to the East, due to political conditions
of the time, forced Europe to seek for new routes by sea. From
Portugal first, under the influence of Prince Henry the Navigator,
there sailed a long series of travelers and explorers who sought a
way around Africa to the Indies. Little by little they edged their
way south along the western coast, until, six years before Columbus 6
started on his great voyage, Diaz discovered and rounded the Cape
of Good Hope, and eleven years later was followed by Vasco de
Gama who, passing around the Cape, continued on to India. Three
years later, Cabral, bound for the same goal but steering too far to
the west, reached the Brazilian coast and established the claim of
Portugal to a great section of the southern New World.
While Portugal thus can claim for her travelers the discovery of
most of southern Africa, to Spain falls the greater honor of the
unveiling of the New World. The discoveries of the great Genoese
were the signal for a host of other explorers to follow, such as
Vespucci, 7 who, sailing first for Spain, discovered Venezuela, and
later for Portugal, explored the South American coast as far as the
La Plata. The goal of all these travelers was the Indies and the
discovery of a trade route thither, but it was not until the second
decade of the sixteenth century that Magellan, another Portuguese,
although sailing in the service of the Spanish king, at last succeeded
in the quest. Far to the south he found a passage through the wall
that had stood between Europe and the tempting markets of the
East, and, first to cross the great Pacific, reached the Philippines in
1521, only to be killed there in a skirmish with the natives. Although
6 H. C., xliii, 2 iff. 7 H. C., xliii, 2 8ff.
402 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
he himself did not live to complete the remainder of the voyage,
one of his ships with a part of the original crew returned to Spain
by way of the Cape of Good Hope, these men being thus the first
to travel around the world.
THE EPOCH OF AMERICAN EXPLORATION
The first fifty years of the sixteenth century were so crowded with
explorations and conquests of new lands that they may well be re-
garded as the most wonderful years in the whole history of travel.
Not only were further great discoveries made by sea of new lands,
but travelers such as Coronado in North and Orellana in South
America, explored great areas and journeyed thousands of miles in
the interior of the new continents the latter traveler being the first
to cross South America and to descend the Amazon. Cortez in
Mexico and Pizarro in Peru, although led by somewhat different
motives, traveled far and wide in their conquests of these, the two
greatest and most cultured of the countries of the New World.
Although so great a mark was made during this period by Italian,
Portuguese, and Spanish travelers, the nations of northern Europe
soon entered the lists. England, France, and Holland began to take
their part, and such names as Cabot, Cartier, and Hudson attest
their prowess in the field. Raleigh's ill-fated expedition to Guiana, 8
and Drake's great achievement in circumnavigating the globe, 9
supply records of great interest, and bear witness to the part played
by Englishmen in these stirring times. Drake and the sea rovers
of the Elizabethan period 10 were largely actuated by the desire to
attack and pillage the rich commerce of Spain in the New World;
Raleigh, Gilbert, 11 and others, on the contrary, sought more the
settlement and colonization of the new-found lands; yet the older
impulse of the search for a shorter trade route to the East was still
a factor, as one can see from the attempts by Frobisher, Davis, and
others, to find the ever-elusive Northwest Passage.
With the beginning of the seventeenth century France supplies
the names of many who deserve to rank among the great travelers
of all time. Champlain, La Salle, Marquette, Verendrye, and many
*H. C., xxxiii, 3 1 iff. 9 W. C., xxxiii, iggff.
10 See Lecture III, below. n H. C., xxxiii, 2638.
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 403
others both lay and cleric, were the pioneers in the exploration of
New France, and the story of their journeys and lives forms a record
of which any traveler might well be proud.
While France was thus engaged in America, the Dutch were no
less bold explorers at the Antipodes. Although Australia had first
been seen by the Spaniards in the middle of the previous century, the
Dutch now, as the Portuguese before them had done in the case
of Africa, began to push south along the western coast, their travels
culminating in the expedition of Tasman, who not only showed that
Australia was an island, but also was the first to see New Zealand.
THE PERIOD OF SCIENTIFIC TRAVEL
The last great period in the history of travel may be said to begin
with the voyage of Captain Cook, who in 1768 sailed from England
on what was virtually the first purely scientific expedition. The
primary object was for the observation at the newly discovered Society
Islands in the southern Pacific of the transit of Venus, an astronom-
ical phenomenon in which the men of science of the time were
much interested. Several scientists were among the members of
the expedition, which was further charged with the duty of making
collections and surveys. From this time on, in ever-increasing num-
bers, individual travelers and great expeditions have scoured the
world in order to observe and collect for scientific purposes. One
after another the great nations of the world have taken up the task,
until to-day the volume of scientific travel is immense. Darwin's
famous voyage in the Beagle, 12 and Wallace's years of travel in the
East Indies have revolutionized much of the science of our times,
and show how great may be the outcome of travel when directed
toward a purely ideal end. As part and parcel of this growth of
science as an inspiration to travel, we have the splendid records of
the search for the Poles. Here the goal was also an ideal, the price
was shorn of any practical value, and trade and commercial motives
were wholly barred; yet generation after generation men strove
against tremendous odds, and faced suffering and death a thousand
times in their attempts to reach these, the last strongholds of the
unknown. The light that led them was, however, not alone the cold
12 H. C., xxix, i iff.
404 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
flame of ideal science, although for many this may indeed have
burned with pale but steady glow; for them, perhaps as much as
for any men, it was the fiercer flame which burns in the hearts of
all true explorers, for whom the doing is more than the deed, who
go because in very truth they must.
Such a hasty glance at the history of travel from earliest times
can do little more than suggest the vastness and the interest of the
field. In so wide a prospect only the larger features of the landscape
can be seen, and if we have, so to speak, had only glimpses of the
higher mountain peaks, it does not follow that there is less of interest
in the valleys that nestle at their feet. We have of necessity con-
sidered only the great travelers, the great journeys, but those more
humble and of lesser compass are not therefore to be despised. Of
such more modest travelers, whose little journeys lay in narrower
fields, there are a host; and from the best, with their intimate local
knowledge, their keen and critical observations, their sympathetic
descriptions, we may gain great pleasure and be stimulated perhaps
to make all the use possible of the opportunities which come to us
to see more thoroughly and with a more observing eye the country
and the people round about.
METHODS OF TRAVEL
No one can read the records of the travelers of different periods
without being struck by the differences in the character and method
of travel which they reveal. Although reference to the comfort,
the rapidity, and the safety of modern travel, at least along the
great highways of the civilized world, is a commonplace, yet the
contrast of the present conditions with those that formerly obtained
is none the less noteworthy. The earlier travelers had frequently
to go alone, sometimes disguise was their only hope, and they were,
far more than at present, subject to hardship, suffering, and danger.
They made, indeed were able to make, little in the way of special
preparation for the journey; they carried with them little in the
way of special outfit; and they traveled as a rule very slowly, often
halting or being obliged to halt long on the way. Dependent for
guidance frequently on the information of suspicious or unfriendly
folk, they often went astray, and lacking regular or direct means of
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 405
communication, they had often to journey by very roundabout
routes to reach their goal. To-day the conditions have vastly
changed. The lonely traveler or the elaborately organized expedi-
tion alike are spared much of the hardship and danger, and both
may secure all sorts of cunningly devised special equipment and
supplies, which not only add enormously to comfort and safety,
but to the certainty of success. Travel away from the beaten track
or exploration in untraveled regions is still and of necessity slow
compared with what it is in civilized lands, but the traveler and
explorer in remote places to-day has at least this inestimable ad-
vantage, that he is able to reach quickly and easily the actual point
of departure into the unknown.
THE PLEASURES AND PROFITS OF TRAVEL
Of the advantages and of the pleasures of travel there is little
need to speak they are too obvious. New lands, new peoples, new
experiences, all alike offer to the traveler the opportunity of a wider
knowledge. He may add almost without limit thus to his stores,
although in this field as in most others it must be remembered
that "he who would bring back the wealth of the Indies must take
with him the wealth of the Indies" in other words he will gain
just in proportion to the knowledge and appreciation which he
brings. But greater than any knowledge gained is the influence
which travel exerts or should exert on habits of thought, and on
one's attitude to one's fellow man. A wider tolerance, a juster appre-
ciation of the real values in life, a deeper realization of the oneness of
mankind, and a growing wonder at the magnitude of the achieve-
ments of the race these are some of the results which travel rightly
pursued cannot fail to produce. Quite apart, moreover, from any or
all of these things, desirable as they are, is the pleasure of travel
in and for itself. It has been already pointed out that this is for
some the main, and for many at least an important if unadmitted,
motive. To the real traveler there is no joy which is keener, no
pleasure more lasting, no call more imperious, than that of travel.
There is fatigue, hardship, perhaps suffering, to be endured for
him this is of small moment, for they will soon pass; the recollection
even of them will fade away all these will be forgotten, while the
406 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
memory holds with almost undiminished clearness the wonder and
the beauty of the past. For him the colors of old sunsets glow with
undimmed splendor, in his ears the winds of other days still make
their music, and in his nostrils is still the perfume of flowers that
long passed away.
We cannot all be travelers; there are many who must be content
to do their traveling in an arm chair. Rightly read, however, the
records of others' journeys may bring to the reader much not only
of value but of pleasure. He may play consciously the part which
for the traveler memory plays unconsciously, and from the mass of
experience select and hold only the best. For him thus the patience,
the heroism, and the indomitable perseverance revealed in the lives
and deeds of great travelers may serve as an inspiration; and from
their description of the wonder and the beauty of the world he may
gain some understanding of and sympathy with those who have in
all ages set their faces toward the unseen; whose spirit has been
that put into the mouth of Ulysses:
my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die. 13
13 Tennyson's "Ulysses," H. C., xlii, 977.
II. HERODOTUS ON EGYPT
BY PROFESSOR GEORGE H. CHASE
HERODOTUS is called "the father of history." The phrase
goes back to Cicero, and its justice has been universally
recognized, for Herodotus was the first writer in the
course of European literature to use the word "history" with the
meaning in which it has since been used, and to exemplify this mean-
ing by the composition of a history in the modern sense of the word.
Before his time there was a literature which in certain ways resembled
history, the writings of the so-called logographers, consisting of
"logoi" or "tales" which treated, in a manner closely resembling the
epic, the stories connected with the foundation of the Greek cities,
or the genealogy of single families, or the marvels of remote regions.
Herodotus himself shows the influence of this earlier sort of writing;
his history is full of "logoi," and he shows great interest in the
geography of distant lands and the manners and customs of foreign
peoples. But what distinguishes him from his predecessors and gives
him a unique place in the history of literature is the fact that he was
the first writer to undertake the narration of a series of events of
world-wide importance upon a comprehensive plan and to trace in
those events the relations of cause and effect.
THE SUBJECT OF THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS
The theme of the History of Herodotus is the struggle between the
Persians and the Greeks, which, more than any other single event,
determined the later history of Europe. There are many digressions,
but the main subject is never lost sight of through all the nine books
into which the work was divided by later grammarians. The earlier
books trace the gradual growth of Persian power, the conquest of
the Lydian Empire, of Babylon, and of Egypt, 1 and the Persian
expeditions to Scythia and Libya; with Book V we come to the
1 Harvard Classics, xxxiii, 7ff.
407
408 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
Ionian revolt and the burning of Sardis events which led up to
the Persian attacks on Greece; Book VI describes the punishment
of the Ionian cities and the first invasion, ending with the glorious
victory of Marathon; and the remaining books record the great
invasion of Xerxes.
Herodotus's inspiration came largely, no doubt, from the time
in which he lived. He was born early in the fifth century, and so
was of the next generation to those who took part in the Persian
struggle. He must have known and talked with many men who had
fought at Marathon and Salamis. His own native city, Halicarnassus
in Caria, was subject to Persia, so that he must early have learned to
know and to fear the Persian power. Fate and inclination seem to
have combined to make him a traveler. He was twice exiled from
his native city, and was for many years "a man without a country,"
until at last he obtained citizenship in the town of Thurii in south-
ern Italy, a sort of international colony which had been established
by the Athenians in 443 B. C. on the site of the old city of Sybaris.
He certainly spent some time in Athens, where he enjoyed the friend-
ship of Sophocles, and doubtless of others of that brilliant group of
writers and artists whose works have made the "Age of Pericles" 2
a synonym for the "great age" in Greek literature and art. There are
traditions that he gave public readings at Athens, Olympia, Corinth,
and Thebes; and he speaks with first-hand knowledge of many
other places in Greece.
THE RANGE AND PURPOSE OF HIS TRAVELS
But the journey ings of Herodotus were not confined to Greece and
its immediate neighborhood. From his own statements we learn
that he had traveled through the Persian Empire to Babylon, and
even to distant Susa and Ecbatana; had visited Egypt and gone
up the Nile as far as Elephantine; had gone by sea to Tyre and to
Libya; and had made a journey to the Black Sea, visiting the Crimea
and the land of the Colchians.
He seems also to have traveled through the interior of Asia
Minor and down the Syrian coast to the borders of Egypt.
2 H. C., xii, 35ff.
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 409
The purpose of these travels presents an interesting problem. The
simplest and most natural supposition would be that they were
undertaken simply as a means of preparation for writing the History.
But many other theories are possible. It has been thought that
Herodotus was a merchant and that his journeys were primarily
business undertakings. Against this it may be urged that the
History shows no evidence of a commercial point of view, and that
Herodotus speaks of merchants as he speaks of many other classes,
with no suggestion of special interest. Again, it has been maintained
that the journeys were made simply to collect evidence about foreign
lands, with no direct reference to the History. Those who hold this
theory believe that Herodotus was a professional reciter, like the
rhapsodes who recited the Homeric poems, only that he took as his
subject, not the great events of the heroic age, but the description of
distant countries and their inhabitants that he was, in short, a sort
of ancient Stoddard or Burton Holmes. To such a belief the tra-
dition that he read parts of his work at different places in Greece
and the amount of space devoted to the aspect of foreign countries
and the ways of foreign peoples in the History itself lend a certain
amount of color. Finally, it is possible that some of the journeys had
a political significance. Most of the countries which Herodotus
visited were regions of which a knowledge was of great importance
to the Greek statesmen of the fifth century, especially to Pericles, with
his well-known scheme for founding an Athenian Empire, and it is
pointed out that the large sum of ten talents (over f 10,000) which
Herodotus is said to have received from the Athenian Assembly
can hardly have been paid simply for a series of readings, but must
have been a reward for political services. All these theories suggest
interesting possibilities, but none of them can be proved. Herodotus
himself merely states that his History was written "that the deeds of
men may not be forgotten, and that the great and wondrous works
of Greek and barbarian may not lose their name." In any case, the
fact remains that he did at last put his materials into the form in
which we have them and thus established his fame as the first writer
of history.
4IO VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
THE VERACITY OF HERODOTUS
The fitness of Herodotus for the task that he undertook is another
question which has been vigorously debated. Even in antiquity the
History was violently assailed. Plutarch wrote an essay "On the
Malignity of Herodotus," and a late grammarian, Aelius Harpocra-
tion, is said to have written a book entitled "The Lies in the History
of Herodotus." In modern times, the judgments passed upon the
work have often been severe, and even the greatest admirers of the
historian are forced to admit that it shows many serious defects.
Like most of his contemporaries, Herodotus knew no language but
his own, and he was therefore forced to rely on interpreters or on
natives who spoke Greek. He himself is perfectly frank about the
matter, and usually tells the source of his information. "This is what
the Persians say," "Thus the priests of the Egyptians told me," are
types of expressions which recur again and again. Even when Greek
matters are involved, he seems usually to have relied on oral tradi-
tion, rather than on documentary evidence; he rarely mentions an
inscription as the source of his information. It is not quite fair to
call him entirely credulous and uncritical, for he often questions the
truth of the statements he records and tries to weigh one theory
against another, as when he discusses the inundation of the Nile.
But in him, as in the majority of his contemporaries, the critical
faculty was not developed, and his work suffers in consequence. He
was, moreover, an inveterate story-teller, and it often seems as if he
recorded stories for the mere love of telling them. Not a few of
the tales he tells, like the story of the treasure chamber of Rhampsi-
nitos, belong rather to the realm of folklore than to that of history.
THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HERODOTUS
Another quality in Herodotus which resulted disadvantageously
for his History was his strong religious bent. His was still the age of
faith, when men saw the hand of the gods revealed in all human
affairs, and Herodotus was deeply imbued with this belief. In the
History, therefore, much attention is paid to oracles and signs,
and the chapters that treat of foreign lands are filled with attempts
to correlate the gods of the barbarians with the gods of Greece. The
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 4! I
Second Book, with its constant striving to prove an Egyptian origin
for many of the Greek divinities, is only the most striking example
of a general tendency.
Regarded as history, therefore, the work of Herodotus suffers
from grave defects, and it is not to be wondered at that ancient and
modern critics have vied with one another in pointing them out.
The attitude of many of these critics is well expressed by an Oxford
rhyme:
The priests of Egypt humbugged you,
A thing not very hard to do.
But we won't let you humbug us,
Herodotus! Herodotus!
Yet it must be said that in spite of much adverse criticism, few
people have been led to believe in any bad faith on Herodotus's part.
The defects which his work betrays are defects of his race and his
time; and to offset them he has many merits. Few Greeks of any
age showed themselves so fair-minded in dealing with barabarian
nations. He is as ready to praise what seems good in the customs
of foreign races as he is to praise the customs of the Greeks. If he
is too fond of stories to be a good historian, at least he is a prince
of story-tellers. His style is lucid, simple, and straightforward,
showing everywhere the "art which conceals art" a wonderful
achievement, when one considers that this is the first literary prose
that was written in Europe. Finally, few writers of any age have
succeeded so well in impressing on their work the stamp of person-
ality. As we read the pages of the History, the picture of the author
rises vividly before us. We can almost see him as, tablet and stylus
in hand, he follows the interpreter or the priest through the great
cities of the Persian Empire or the temples of Egypt, eagerly listen-
ing and questioning, quick to notice differences from his own Greek
way of doing things, courteous, sympathetic, always on the watch
for the story that will adorn his narrative. Quite apart from its value
as a record of facts, the History of Herodotus is intensely interesting
as a human document, as a record of the beliefs and the impressions
of a remarkable member of a remarkable race at the period of its
highest development.
III. THE ELIZABETHAN
ADVENTURERS
BY PROFESSOR W. A. NEILSON
AONG the many manifestations of the spirit of intellectual
inquiry which marked the Renaissance in Europe, the new
impetus toward geographical exploration is one of the
most notable. The discovery of the New World by Columbus in
1492 had given this a fresh start, and not many years had passed
before Spain had followed it up by large settlements and annexations
of territory, chiefly in Central and South America. Spain was in the
sixteenth century the leading Catholic power in Europe, and after
England under Elizabeth had definitely and finally broken with
Rome, her position as leading Protestant power added a religious
motive to that of political ambition to lead her to seek to share with
her rival the wealth and dominion of the Americas. Further, there
was a powerful commercial interest in this rivalry. The peaceful
development of England under the great Queen led to a need for
wider markets, and besides the hope of plunder and the settlement
of colonies, the Elizabethan merchant adventurers were seeking to
build up a large commerce overseas. Curiosity, piety, patriotism,
and trade were, then, the leading motives that led these daring "sea
dogs" on their perilous voyages to the ends of the earth.
THE EXPANSION OF ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND
The diversity of routes traversed in these quests is not always
realized. It was not merely the Spanish Main to which these men
looked for profit and adventure. Seeking a northeastern route to
China in 1553, English sailors found themselves in the White Sea and
made their way to the Court of the Czar, thus establishing a trade
route to Russia which rendered them independent of the Baltic
route previously blocked by the jealousy of the Hansa league. They
412
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 413
pushed into the Mediterranean, sending expeditions to Tripoli and
Morocco, and trading with the Greek Archipelago. Others cultivated
intercourse with Egypt and the Levant, and, penetrating Arabia and
Persia, carried their samples overland to India, while still others
reached the same goal by way of the Persian Gulf or round the Cape
of Good Hope. Here they came into competition with the Portu-
guese; and in 1600 was founded the East India Company, and with
it the beginning of the British Empire in India.
THE SPANISH MAIN
But it was in the regions where they came into conflict with the
Spaniards that those exploits occurred which most touched the
imaginations of their contemporaries, and of which we have pre-
served the most picturesque accounts. The three voyages of Sir Fran-
cis Drake, 1 Sir Humphrey Gilbert's "Voyage to Newfoundland," 2
and Sir Walter Raleigh's "Discovery of Guiana," 3 all printed in
The Harvard Classics, are good representative records of the manner
and results of these expeditions, partly scientific and religious, but
more patriotic and piratical. Few narratives are more absorbing than
these, with their pictures of courage against terrible odds, of en-
durance of the most frightful hardships on sea and land, of gener-
osity and treachery, of kindliness and cruelty. Drake was still young
when he first voyaged to the west, and in 1572 he made the expedi-
tion against Nombre de Dios in which they all but secured the
contents of the great King's Treasure House. "By means of this
light," says the narrator, "we saw a huge heap of silver in that nether
room; being a pile of bars of silver of, as near as we could guess,
seventy feet in length, of ten feet in breadth, and twelve feet in
height; piled up against the wall, each bar was between thirty-five
and forty pounds in weight" altogether over 360 tons, as it turned
out. This vast treasure, with as much more in gold, they left un-
touched, however, preferring to save the life of their wounded
captain. 4 How they plagued the Spaniards in spite of this abstinence
may be judged from the summary statement at the close of the
narrative: "There were, at this time, belonging to Cartagena, Nom-
1 Harvard Classics, xxxiii, 129, 199, 229. 2 H. C., xxxiii, 263.
3 H. C., xxxiii, 311. *H. C., xxxiii, 138, 140-141.
414 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
bre de Dios, etc., above 200 frigates . . . the most of which, during
our abode in those parts, we took; and some of them twice or thrice
each; yet never burned nor sunk any unless they were made out
men-of-war against us, or laid as stales to entrap us." 5
CONTRIBUTIONS TO GEOGRAPHY
To the narratives of these adventurers we owe much of our early
knowledge of America and its aborigines. The information they
give, it is true, is not always to be taken at its face value, and often
is more of the nature of travelers' tales than scientific geography.
But it has value, and, reflecting as it does the inflamed imagination
of the time, vast entertainment. Thus in an account of one of
Hawkins's voyages we read of the crocodile: "His nature is ever,
when he would have his prey, to cry and sob like a Christian body,
to provoke them to come to him; and then he snatched at them!
And thereupon came this proverb, that is applied unto women,
when they weep, 'Lachrymae Crocodili': the meaning whereof is,
that as the crocodile when he crieth goeth then about most to de-
ceive; so doth a woman, most commonly, when she weepeth." The
wondrous properties of tobacco are thus described in the same narra-
tive: "The Floridans, when they travel, have a kind of herb dried,
who with a cane and a earthen cup in the end, with fire and the
dried herbs put together, do suck through the cane the smoke
thereof; which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they
live four or five days without meat or drink. And this all the
Frenchmen used for this purpose; yet do they hold opinion withal,
that it causeth water and phlegm to void from their stomachs."
The potato is hardly less glorified: "These potatoes be the most
delicate roots that may be eaten; and do far exceed our parsnips or
carrots. Their pines be of the bigness of two fists, the outside whereof
is of the making of a pine apple, but it is soft like the rind of a cu-
cumber; and the inside eateth like an apple, but it is more delicious
than any sweet apple sugared."
Besides descriptions of plants and animals, these stories of travel
and conquest contain much interesting information, though colored
by fancy, of the native tribes encountered and of their habits of
5 H. C., xxxiii, 195-196.
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 415
life. Especially is the reader struck by the vast riches in gold and
pearls ascribed to the Indians, such description as that of El Dorado,
quoted by Raleigh in his account of the Emperor of Guiana, 6 sound-
ing like a fairy tale. Not content with kitchen utensils of gold and
silver, the Emperor was believed to have adorned his pleasure
gardens with flowers and trees of the same precious metals.
BEHAVIOR OF THE EXPLORERS
These stories, as the reader is not likely to forget, are all told
from the English point of view. Religious animosity and political
and commercial rivalry whetted the English hatred of Spain, and
produced accounts of Spanish cruelty to the natives and to English
prisoners which must be taken with much modification. For the
English adventurers themselves were no saints. Many of them were
nothing more than pirates, and many were engaged in the slave
trade between Africa and the Indies. At times our admiration for
their intrepid courage and persistence, and for their loyalty to one
another and to the Queen, is overcome by the evidence of their
inhumanity in the treatment of their human cargoes, and their lack
of all consideration of the rights of negroes as men. They con-
tracted for the delivery of African slaves to the West Indies precisely
as if they were cattle or hides, and in case of danger at sea they
lightened their ships of these miserable wretches with apparently
little less compunction than if they had been mere bales of mer-
chandise.
Yet, amid all the horrors induced by lust of gold and conquest,
one finds often enough incidents of striking generosity to enemies,
of tender affection to their own people, and of a code of honor and
an adherence to the rules of the game as they understood it, which
go far to brighten the picture.
THE STYLE OF THE NARRATIVES
Nothing was farther from the minds of the writers of these voy-
ages than the production of literature. The glorification of their cap-
tains and their country, the inciting of their fellow citizens against
the enemy, and the fondness of the returned traveler for narrating
6 H. C., xxxiii, 318-319.
416 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
his adventures, these were the main motives which induced them to
write; and they told their stories with no thought of style or orna-
ment. They have thus almost the flavor of actual conversation, and
reveal, none the less truly because unconsciously, the temper of the
writers and the spirit of the time. It was a time of great enthusiasms
and boundless ambitions, of undertakings conceived under the in-
fluence of an almost fantastic imagination, and carried out with
absolute unscrupulousness, but with complete devotion and invincible
courage. The modern world has largely outgrown the temptation
to many of the vices which beset these buccaneers, but our blood is
still stirred by the spectacle of their magnificent energy, and our
imaginations are roused by those
heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
IV. THE ERA OF DISCOVERY
BY PROFESSOR W. B. MUNRO
WTH the close of the fifteenth century the Dark Ages
:ame to an end. The great mediaeval institution of feu-
dalism was everywhere losing its hold, for the growth of
monarchical power and the rise of standing armies made the
feudal system no longer necessary. Small states were being consoli-
dated into nations Castile and Aragon had become the kingdom
of Spain; the various provinces of France were now welded together
under the House of Bourbon; while England had settled her internal
quarrels and was now safely unified under the dominant Tudor
dynasty. With this consolidation and unity came national conscious-
ness and a desire for territorial expansion. The revived study of
geography, moreover, and the adaptation of the compass to marine
use were features which led mariners to proceed more boldly away
from the shores, so that when the Turkish conquests shut off the
old trade routes between the Mediterranean ports and the Orient,
the time was ripe for venturesome voyages out into the western
ocean.
THE VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS
It was altogether appropriate that the first successful expedition
of discovery into the New Hemisphere should have been under
the guidance of a Genoese navigator in the service of the Spanish
crown. Genoa was one of the first commercial cities of the Mediter-
ranean; Spain was one of the most powerful and progressive among
European monarchies. Columbus had the maritime skill and daring
of his own race together with the financial backing of a nation which
from its location had much to gain from western discoveries. The
story of his thirty-three-day voyage to the new Indies, his reception
by the natives, and his glowing accounts of the new lands are known
to every American schoolboy; but never can it be better recounted
417
41 8 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
than in the discoverer's own words. 1 It is true that the honor of
having been the first to touch upon the shores of the New World
has been claimed by others. Nearly four centuries before Columbus
set sail from Palos, some Norse navigators under the leadership
of Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red, are said to have sailed from
the Norse colony in Greenland and to have reached the coasts of
Wineland the Good. Whether this Wineland was Labrador or
Nova Scotia or New England is something upon which historians
have never agreed; but the general drift of opinion at present is that
Leif and his followers in all probability never came south of Labra-
dor, if, indeed, they proceeded so far. 2 But in any event these Norse
forays never led to any permanent colonization; the planting of a
new nation was reserved to those who followed where Columbus
led the way.
The return of Columbus with his news concerning the wealth
and resources of Hispaniola made a profound impression upon the
imagination of all Europe. The Spanish Court hastened to follow
up its advantage by sending Columbus on further voyages in order
that the entire fruits of the discovery might be monopolized. The
navigators of other nations also bestirred themselves to get some
share of the New World's spoil. Among these was the Florentine
sea captain Amerigo Vespucci, who made his way across the Atlantic
in 1497, and on his return presented the geographical information
which led the map makers of Europe to name the new continent
after him. 3 Likewise the Cabots, father and son, sailed from Bristol
in the same year under the auspices of King Henry VIII, and by their
explorations along the Labrador coast laid the basis of later English
claims to great regions of North America. 4 France, for her part,
sent Jacques Cartier on his errands of discovery and in due course
established French claims to the valley of the St. Lawrence in this
way.
1 The letter of Columbus to Luis de Sant Angel announcing his discovery, in
Harvard Classics, xliii, 21-44.
2 The Voyages to Vinland, H. C., xliii, 5-20.
3 Amerigo Vespucci's Account of his First Voyage, H. C., xliii, 28-44.
4 John Cabot's Discovery of North America, H. C., xliii, 45-48.
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 419
PLANTING NEW NATIONS IN AMERICA
But to get secure possession of the new territories it was necessary
that European nations should do more than discover. They must
make settlements and colonize. Spain, being first in the field, di-
rected her energies to those regions which seemed to constitute the
largest prize, that is to say, the West Indies, Central America, and the
western slopes of the South American continent. In the Indies there
was a fertile soil which could be made to yield its increase without
much labor; on the mainland there were great areas of gold and silver
ore. Portugal, coming hard on the heels of her peninsular neighbor,
went still further to the south and took as her patrimony the sea
coast of Brazil, a region which also promised a rich tribute in pre-
cious metals. England, being rather slow to follow up the beginnings
made in her behalf by John and Sebastian Cabot, was forced to be
content with territories north of the Spanish claims the coast from
Florida to the Bay of Fundy where there were no great stores of
mineral wealth to attract the adventuresome. In the long run, how-
ever, this selection proved to be the most prudent of them all. France,
coming last into the field, found herself pushed still farther north-
ward to the regions of Acadia, the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes.
Other countries of Europe, Sweden, and the Netherlands, were
also in the race and both managed to get a precarious foothold in the
new territories, the former on the Delaware and the latter on the
Hudson. But both were in due course dislodged and these colonies
passed into English hands. So did the territories of France after a
century of conflict.
VIRGINIA AND NEW ENGLAND
In the region along the Atlantic seaboard which England claimed
for her own, two settlements were made at dates not far apart. Early
in 1607 a group of about one hundred settlers established at James-
town in Virginia the first permanent Anglo-American colony, and
through the inevitable hardships of a pioneer community managed to
hold the settlement on its feet. With them they had brought a royal
charter couched in the legal diction of the time, and in due course
established their own system of local self-government with its
420 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
boroughs and its House of Burgesses reproducing in miniature the
old English administrative system. 5 Farther to the north unsuccess-
ful attempts to found settlements had been made near the mouth
of the Kennebec as early as 1607; but it was not until 1620 that the
Mayflower Pilgrims made their landing at Plymouth and laid the
foundations of New England. The Pilgrims had gone first from
England to Holland, but finding that they were being drawn into
the vortex of an alien environment, reached a decision to set forth
for a new land where they could create their own surroundings.
Before they went ashore the Pilgrims made a political compact
among themselves whereby they created a "civill body politick"
and covenanted each with each to enact just laws for the welfare
of the new community. 6 The early years of this settlement were
passed in great hardship and the population grew very slowly. Ten
years after the disembarkation at Plymouth Rock it numbered but
three hundred in all. The first economic and social system was
communistic, but in due course this was abandoned and by dint of
persistent effort the colony rounded the corner on the road to
prosperity.
A more important settlement in New England, however, was that
made by John Winthrop and his followers on the shores of Massa-
chusetts Bay. In 1630 Winthrop brought to Salem a body of nearly
a thousand settlers, and these, during the ensuing two years, founded
a half-dozen towns, including Boston. The colonies of Plymouth and
Massachusetts Bay continued a separate existence for more than a
half-century after their foundation; in 1690 they were amalgamated
into the province of Massachusetts.
By 1630, therefore, Englishmen had firmly established their out-
posts on the Atlantic seaboard both to the north and to the south;
their next enterprise was to dominate the interval between. From
Massachusetts the settlers, driven forth in some cases because of
their refusal to observe stringent religious requirements, moved
southward into the Rhode Island and Connecticut territories.
William Penn, Lord Baltimore, and others proved ready to under-
take colonization as a private enterprise and, being favored by the
5 First Charter of Virginia, H. C., xliii, 49-58.
6 The Mayflower Compact, H. C., xliii, 59.
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 421
Crown in their ambitions, laid the foundations of Pennsylvania and
Maryland. The Swedes on the Delaware and the Dutch on the Hud-
son were overpowered and their lands brought under English control.
Then having possessed herself of the whole region from Virginia
to Massachusetts it was England's next task to expel France from
her menacing position still farther above.
INTERIOR EXPLORATION AND TRADE
This colonizing movement went hand in hand with the explora-
tion of the interior. During the seventeenth century the Great
Lakes and the Mississippi were traversed by the French voyageurs,
while the hinterlands of the New England colonies were penetrated
by the English fur traders. Missionaries followed in the footsteps
of the traders and in due course the two chief colonizing powers
of North America were using both as agents for enlarging their
respective spheres of influence. Even before the earliest settlements
were made to the westward of the Alleghenies, the initial skirmishes
of a long struggle for the possession of these territories were taking
place. The French colonists, though inferior in numbers and in
material resources, were far more daring, more enterprising as ex-
plorers and as coureurs-des-bois, and more persevering than their
southern neighbors that is why the task of securing and enlarging
the English frontiers proved so difficult. But in the end sheer numer-
ical superiority determined the issue, and England, for the time
being, became master of the whole area from the Atlantic to the
Mississippi. 7
7 For a sketch of the subsequent movements, see section on History: V. "Territorial
Development of the United States," by Professor F. J. Turner, in this course.
V. DARWIN'S VOYAGE OF THE
BEAGLE
BY PROFESSOR GEORGE HOWARD PARKER
HAD Charles Darwin never published more than "The Voy-
age of the Beagle," 1 his reputation as a naturalist of the
first rank would have been fully assured. Even before the
close of that eventful circumnavigation of the globe, the English
geologist Sedgwick, who had probably seen some of the letters sent
by the young naturalist to friends in England, predicted to Dr. Dar-
win, Charles Darwin's father, that his son would take a place among
the leading scientific men of the day. As it afterward proved, the
voyage of the Beagle was the foundation stone on which rested that
monument of work and industry which, as a matter of fact, made
Charles Darwin one of the distinguished scientists not only of his
generation but of all time.
The conventional school and university training had very little
attraction for Darwin. From boyhood his real interests were to be
found in collecting natural objects; minerals, plants, insects, and
birds were the materials that excited his mind to full activity. But
it was not till his Cambridge days, when he was supposedly studying
for the clergy, that the encouragement of Henslow changed this
pastime into a serious occupation.
THE OCCASION OF THE VOYAGE
About 1831 the British Admiralty decided to fit out the Beagle,
a ten-gun brig, to complete the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del
Fuego begun some years before, to survey the shores of Chili, Peru,
and some of the islands of the Pacific, and to carry a chain of chron-
ometrical measurements round the world. It seemed important to
all concerned that a naturalist should accompany this expedition;
and Captain Fitz-Roy, through the mediation of Professor Henslow,
1 Harvard Classics, xxix.
422
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 423
eventually induced Charles Darwin to become his cabin companion
and naturalist for the voyage. Henslow recommended Darwin not
as a finished naturalist but as one amply qualified for collecting,
observing, and noting anything worthy to be noted in natural his-
tory.
The Beagle, after two unsuccessful attempts to get away, finally
set sail from Devonport, England, December 27, 1831; and, after
a cruise of almost five years, she returned to Falmouth, England,
October 2, 1836. Her course had lain across the Atlantic to the Bra-
zilian coast, thence southward along the east coast of South America
to Tierra del Fuego, whence she turned northward skirting the sea-
board of Chili and Peru. Near the equator a westerly course was
taken and she then crossed the Pacific to Australia whence she tra-
versed the Indian Ocean, and, rounding the Cape of Good Hope,
headed across the South Atlantic for Brazil. Here she completed
the circumnavigation of the globe and, picking up her former course,
she retraced her way to England.
When Darwin left England on the Beagle, he was twenty-two
years old. The five-year voyage, therefore, occupied in his life the
period of maturing manhood. What it was to mean to him he only
partly saw. Before leaving England he declared that the day of sail-
ing would mark the beginning of his second life, a new birthday to
him. All through his boyhood he had dreamed of seeing the tropics;
and now his dream was to be realized. His letters and his account of
the voyage are full of the exuberance of youth. To his friend Fox he
wrote from Brazil: "My mind has been, since leaving England, in
a perfect hurricane of delight and astonishment." To Henslow he
sent word from Rio as follows: "Here I first saw a tropical forest
in all its sublime grandeur nothing but the reality can give you any
idea how wonderful, how magnificent the scene is." And to another
correspondent he wrote: "When I first entered on and beheld the
luxuriant vegetation of Brazil, it was realizing the visions in the
'Arabian Nights.' The brilliancy of the scenery throws one into a
delirium of delight, and a beetle hunter is not likely soon to awaken
from it when, whichever way he turns, fresh treasures meet his
eye." Such expressions could spring only from the enthusiasm of
the born naturalist.
424 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
THE TRAINING OF A NATURALIST
But the voyage of the Beagle meant more to Darwin than the
mere opportunity to see the world; it trained him to be a naturalist.
During his five years at sea he learned to work, and to work under
conditions that were often almost intolerable. The Beagle was small
and cramped, and the collections of a naturalist were not always
easily cared for. The first lieutenant, who is described by Darwin in
terms of the highest admiration, was responsible for the appearance
of the ship, and strongly objected to having such a litter on deck as
Darwin often made. To this man specimens were "d d beastly
devilment," and he is said to have added, "If I were skipper, I would
soon have you and all your d d mess out of the place." Darwin
is quoted as saying that the absolute necessity of tidiness in the
cramped space of the Beagle gave him his methodical habits of
work. On the Beagle, too, he learned what he considered the golden
rule for saving time, i. e., take care of the minutes, a rule that gives
significance to an expression he has somewhere used, that all life is
made of a succession of five-minute periods.
Darwin, however, not only learned on the Beagle how to work
against time and under conditions of material inconvenience, but
he also acquired the habit of carrying on his occupations under con-
siderable physical discomfort. Although he was probably not seri-
ously ill after the first three weeks of the voyage, he was constantly
uncomfortable when the vessel pitched at all heavily, and his sensi-
tiveness to this trouble is well shown in a letter dated June 3, 1836,
from the Cape of Good Hope, in which he said : "It is lucky for me
that the voyage is drawing to a close, for I positively suffer more
from seasickness now than three years ago." Yet he always kept
busily at work, and notwithstanding the more or less continuous
nature of this discomfort, he was not inclined to attribute the diges-
tive disturbances of his later life to these early experiences.
The return voyage found his spirits somewhat subdued. Writing
to his sister from Bahia in Brazil where the Beagle crossed her out-
ward course, he said : "It has been almost painful to find how much
good enthusiasm has been evaporated in the last four years. I can
now walk soberly through a Brazilian forest." Yet years after in
VOYAGES AND TRAVEL 425
rehearsing the voyage in his autobiography he declared: "The
glories of the vegetation of the Tropics rise before my mind at the
present time more vividly than anything else."
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF THE VOYAGE
Darwin's opinion of the value of the voyage to him can scarcely
be expressed better than in his own words. In his later years he
wrote: "The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important
event of my life," and again: "I have always felt that I owe to the
voyage the first real training or education of my mind; I was led
to attend closely to several branches of natural history, and thus my
powers of observation were improved, though they were always
fairly developed." And finally in a letter to Captain Fitz-Roy he
said: "However others may look back on the Beagles voyage, now
that the small disagreeable parts are well nigh forgotten, I think it
far the most fortunate circumstance in my life that the chance af-
forded by your offer of taking a naturalist fell on me. I often have
the most vivid and delightful pictures of what I saw on board the
Beagle pass before my eyes. These recollections, and what I learned
on natural history, I would not exchange for twice ten thousand
a year."
But the voyage of the Beagle was not only training for Darwin,
it was the means of gathering together a large and valuable collec-
tion of specimens that kept naturalists busy for some years to come,
and added greatly to our knowledge of these distant lands and seas.
In the work of arranging and describing these collections, Darwin
was finally obliged to take an active part himself, for, to quote from
his "Life and Letters," it seemed "only gradually to have occurred to
him that he would ever be more than a collector of specimens and
facts, of which the great men were to make use. And even of the
value of his collections he seems to have had much doubt, for he
wrote to Henslow in 1834: 'I really began to think that my collec-
tions were so poor that you were puzzled what to say; the case is
now quite on the opposite tack, for you are guilty of exciting all my
vain feelings to a most comfortable pitch; if hard work will atone for
these thoughts I vow it shall not be spared.' " Thus the collections
made on the Beagle served to confirm Darwin in the occupation of a
426 VOYAGES AND TRAVEL
naturalist and brought him into contact with man) of the working
scientists of his day.
SPECULATIVE RESULTS OF THE VOYAGE
Darwin, however, not only brought back, as a result of his work
on the Beagle, large collections of interesting specimens, but he came
home with a mind richly stored with new ideas, and one of these
he put into shape so rapidly that it forms no small part of "The
Voyage of the Beagle." During much of the latter part of the journey
he was occupied with a study of coral islands and his theory of the
method of formation of these remarkable deposits was the first to
gain general acceptance in the scientific world. In fact, his views
gained so firm a foothold that they are to-day more generally ac-
cepted than those of any other naturalist. But coral islands were
not the only objects of his speculations. Without doubt he spent
much time reflecting on that problem of problems, the origin of
species, for, though there is not much reference to this subject
either in the "Voyage" itself or in his letters of that period, he states
in his autobiography that in July, 1837, less than a year after his
return, he opened his first notebook for facts in relation to the
origin of species about which, as he remarks, he had long reflected. 2
Thus the years spent on the Beagle were years rich in speculation as
well as in observation and field work.
Doubtless the direct results of the voyage of the Beagle were ac-
ceptable to the British Admiralty and justified in their eyes the
necessary expenditure of money and energy. But the great accom-
plishment of that voyage was not the charting of distant shore lines
nor the carrying of a chain of chronometrical measurements round
the world; it was the training and education of Charles Darwin
as a naturalist, and no greater tribute can be paid to the voyage
than what Darwin himself has said: "I feel sure that it was this
training which has enabled me to do whatever I have done in
science."
2 For Darwin's conclusions on this subject see "The Origin of Species" in H. C., xi.
RELIGION
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR R. B. PERRY
/" AHERE are two ways of reading the documents of religion.
In the first place one may read the book of one's own faith,
JL as the Christian reads his Bible. In this case one reads for
instruction or education in some source to which one attributes
authority, and finds there the familiar and well-loved symbols of
one's own belief and hope. Such a relation between a man and a
book is only possible under peculiar conditions. It is the work of
time and tradition and social experience. A book does not become
a man's "bible" unless it has been the principal quickening influence
in his spiritual life and the source of his illumination, so that he
returns to it when he needs to reanimate his purposes or confirm
his belief. A "bible" is the proved remedy to which a man con-
fidently resorts for the health of his own soul. It becomes associated
in his mind with all that he owes to it, and all that he hopes from
it; so that it is not only an instrument, but a symbol. The sacred
book of any racial or historical religion is, of course, more than
such a personal bible, by as much as a race is more than an individual
or history than a lifetime. But it is the personal relation, that be-
tween a man and the book that has become his sacred book, that I
want here to emphasize. It is evident that in such a relation the
reader's attitude will be unique; it will differ from his attitude to
any other book. Religious documents are usually and normally
read in this way. Each man reads his own bible. And it is only
when a document is somebody's bible in this sense that it is a
religious document at all.
OTHER MEN'S BIBLES
But there is a second way in which such documents may be read,
and it is this second way that must be adopted by those who wish to
427
428 RELIGION
read religious literature with any comprehensiveness. One may
read another man's bible. Now this requires a quite different atti-
tude, and one that may need to be cultivated. It will not do to look
for the same value which one finds in the book of one's own religion;
or to judge by one's own peculiar spiritual standards. For then the
other man's bible will seem cold, repugnant, superstitious, or
heretical. Nor will it do to read another man's bible as so much
secular literature, for then it will appear curious, fantastic, or at
best poetical. It is necessary to bring one's self by imagination and
sympathy to an understanding of the other man's outlook and needs.
The outward aspect of Mohammedanism is to the Christian traveler
only a curious local custom. But, "I would have you," says H. Field-
ing in his "Hearts of Men," "go and kneel beside the Mohammedan
as he prays at the sunset hour, and put your heart to his and wait
for the echo that will surely come." It is in the inward value of this
outward posture that its religion lies. And the same is true of any
sacred writings. Their religious meaning is relative to the believer
whom they exalt, stir, comfort, enlighten, or strike with awe. And
no one can apprehend that meaning who cannot bring himself at
least for the moment into the believer's attitude.
Perhaps this seems to ask too much. How can one convert oneself
in turn into a Buddhist, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a Brahman,
and a Confucian ? There is, however, a saving possibility. May there
not be some attitude common to all believers ? May one not divest
oneself of what is peculiar to one's own religion and yet retain a
something which is in all religion, and by this come to a better
understanding of each religion? An Englishman may understand
a Frenchman by becoming less English and more human. Similarly
it is possible that a Christian may understand Mohammedanism by
becoming less Christian and more religious. "No matter where you
go," says Fielding, "no matter what the faith is called, if you have
the hearing ear, if your heart is in unison with the hezrt of the
world, you will hear always the same song." There is, in other
words, a sameness in all religion, which is the link between one
special cult and another; and by coming to know and feel this
common religion one may pass beyond the limits of one's native
religious province.
RELIGION 429
There is a danger that this important truth should be misunder-
stood. Some years ago a Parliament of Religions was held in con-
nection with the World's Fair at Chicago. It was a spectacular and
impressive event which no doubt did much to liberalize and broaden
religious opinion in America. But it encouraged the mistaken
opinion that because all religions are equally religious they must be
equally good or true. It would be equally reasonable to argue that
because all forms of political organization are equally political, one
must be as sound or equitable as another. All polities arise in re-
sponse to the same fundamental need for order and justice, and in
so far as they are accepted and persist, they must to some extent
satisfy that need. And to understand a foreign polity I must see
how it accomplishes in its way and for its place and time what my
polity accomplishes in another way for me. But it does not follow
that the two are equally sound in principle, or that the one might
not be corrected in the light of the other. Similarly religion arises
in response to the same fundamental need, a need that is world- wide
and for all time. But one religion may meet that need more
genuinely and permanently than another; it may be based on a
truer notion of man or God, and so deserve preference in a com-
parative and critical study.
It is also important to avoid the error of supposing that religions
should lose their individuality and retain only what they have in
common. A religion which consisted only of what it had in common
with all other religions would probably be no religion at all. There
are peculiar needs as well as common needs. A religion must satisfy
the concrete community or individual, and not the abstract man.
Perhaps, in all strictness, there must be as many religions as there
are believers or worshipers. But this is quite consistent with the im-
portant truth that there is one constant factor in life from which
all religions spring, and which makes of religion a common necessity.
And if one is to study the forms or read the literature of a religion
that is not one's own, one must see them in this light. One must
become for the purpose simply religious; one must become alive
not only to one's peculiar needs, but to that deeper and identical
need from which all religions have sprung.
I have suggested that this attitude requires cultivation. This is
43 RELIGION
doubtless the case with the great majority even of enlightened readers
of the present day, and is very apparent in the history of European
thought. By a curious working of the laws of habit and imitation
we are for the most part blind to the meaning of our commonest
social practices. How many men who obey law and authority, or
who are loyal to the peculiar political institution under which they
live, reflect upon the utility of government ? Most men take govern-
ment for granted, or fail to think of it at all; and merely assert their
factional differences or personal grievances. Similarly for most men
religion as a general fact, as a human institution, does not exist.
They are conscious only of their particular religious differences; or
they identify religion so thoroughly with a special religion that they
can think of alien religions only as irreligion. For the vast majority
of Christians to be religious means the same thing as to be Christian;
not to believe as they believe means the same thing as to be an
"unbeliever." Nevertheless a great change has taken place in the
course of the last three centuries, and it will be worth our while
briefly to trace it.
NATURAL VerSUS POSITIVE RELIGION
As everyone knows, modern thought arose as a protest against a
tendency in the Middle Ages to take too many things for granted.
Reason was to be freed from authority, tradition, and pedantry. But
this meant, at first, only that man was to exercise his reason in the
fields of physics and metaphysics. It was supposed in the seventeenth
century that he could do this and yet not question the authority of
the state, the church, and the established ethical code. The man of
reason was to be internally free, but externally obedient. Institutions,
in short, were still to be taken for granted. But in the eighteenth
century the liberated reason was directed to institutions themselves,
and there arose a rational ethics, a new political science, and a theory
of "natural religion." Hobbes, a century earlier, was the forerunner
of this movement, and so the original author of all modern social
revolutions in so far as these arose from ideas and not from im-
mediate practical exigencies. Of religion Hobbes wrote as follows:
"In these four things, opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes,
devotion toward what men call fear, and taking of things casual for
RELIGION 431
prognostics, consisteth the natural seed of 'religion'; which by reason
of the different fancies, judgments, and passions of several men,
hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are
used by one man are for the most part ridiculous to another." This
passage appears in the "Leviathan," 1 published in 1651. In 1755
Hume wrote a treatise bearing the title "The Natural History of
Religion," in which he contended that polytheism is the original
form of religion, and that "the first ideas of religion arose not from
a contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with
regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears
which actuate the human mind." Agitated by "the anxious concern
for happiness, the dread of future misery, the terror of death, the
thirst of revenge, the appetite for food, and other necessaries . . .
men scrutinize, with a trembling curiosity, the course of future
causes, and examine the various and contrary events of human life.
And in this disordered scene, with eyes still more disordered and
astonished, they see the first obscure traces of divinity." Both of
these passages represented a manner of regarding religion which
was revolutionary and offensive to the conservative opinion of the
time. They meant that in a certain sense Christianity must be re-
garded as on a par with the most despised superstitions, since all
spring from the same seed in human nature, or from the same
general situation in which all men find themselves. It is man's fear
of fortune, his hope of controlling the deeper forces of nature for his
own good, from which his religion has sprung, and all religions
alike may be judged by their power to dispel this fear and fulfill this
hope. So there arose the difference between "natural religion,"
religion conceived as springing from the constitution of man and
the common facts of life, and "positive religion," which consists in
some specific institution, tradition, and dogma. One now has a new
standard by which to judge of religion. Just as one may compare
monarchy and democracy with reference to their utility as instru-
ments of government, so one may compare Christianity and
Buddhism with reference to their fulfillment of the general religious
need. Which is the better religion, in the sense of doing better what
a religion is intended to do? And quite apart from the question
1 See Harvard Classics, xxxiv, 31 iff.
432 RELIGION
of comparative merits there is a new field of study opened to the
human mind, the study of religion as a natural historical fact.
COMPARATIVE RELIGION
Hume's "Natural History of Religion" has developed in two
directions. First, the emphasis in the nineteenth century on history
and evolution, the interest in the sources and manifold varieties of
all growing things, promoted the development of what is now called
"Comparative Religion." Missionaries, travelers, and in recent years
students of anthropology and ethnography have collected the
religious literature and described the religious customs of India,
China, and Japan, as well as of primitive and savage peoples in all
parts of the globe. Ancient religions have been made known through
the development of archaeology. Most important of all for the re-
covery of the past has been the increased knowledge of languages.
The knowledge of Sanskrit opened the way to an understanding of
the sources of the ancient Indian religions; the translation of hiero-
glyphics and cuneiform characters has brought to light the ancient
religions of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria. More refined methods
have shed a wholly new light upon Greek and early Semitic religions.
The possession of this wealth of material has made possible new
generalizations concerning the generic character of religion, or con-
cerning its origin and evolution.
The work of Tylor, Spencer, Max Miiller, Andrew Lang, and
Frazer may be said to signalize a genuinely new branch of human
knowledge in which religion as a universal human interest or aspect
of life is made an object of dispassionate and empirical study.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
Second, toward the close of the nineteenth century a great impetus
was given to the science of psychology, and this is reflected in an-
other extension of Hume's "Natural History of Religion," in what
is called "Psychology of Religion." There is the question of the
genesis of the religious consciousness from instincts and sentiments
such as fear and reverence. There are psychological types of religion
such as James's "sick soul" and "religion of healthy mindedness."
There is the elaborate analysis of the mystical experience, with its
RELIGION 433
"rhythm," its "disconnection," and its characteristic stages. Special
psychological importance attaches to religious crises, such as "con-
version," and their relation to physiological conditions such as
adolescence. Certain religious states border upon hysteria and be-
long to the domain of abnormal psychology, others illustrate the
play of the great social forces of imitation and suggestion. Professor
James's great book has given currency to its title "Varieties of Re-
ligious Experience," and these varieties are being collected, described,
and catalogued by an ever-increasing body of observers.
But both Hobbes and Hume, as we have seen, attempted to name
the generic essence of religion. What amid all its varieties external
and internal, amid its bewildering manifoldness of ritual, dogma,
and mental state, is its common character? Were these authors cor-
rect in tracing all religion to man's fear of the influence of the
deeper causes of nature on his fortunes? This question is still the
interesting question which vitalizes the patient empirical studies in
comparative religion and the psychology of religion, and constitutes
the problem of philosophy of religion.
THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION
To what universal fact does religion owe its existence? Is it per-
chance a fact concerning human nature? It has often been taught
that man possesses a distinct and original faculty called "the religious
consciousness" by which he forms the idea of God. All men, pos-
sessing the same mental constitution, will thus agree in conceiving
of a God. But this view is based upon an obsolete psychology. It is
now generally believed that a man is born with instincts and
capacities which enable him to cope with his world, but which do
not predetermine his ideas. These result from experience, from the
interaction between his instincts and capacities and the environment
in which he is called upon to exercise them. As respects religion in
particular it has become fairly evident that it calls into play various
factors of human nature, such as the instincts of fear or of curiosity,
no one of which is in itself peculiarly religious. The religious con-
sciousness, in other words, is complex and derived rather than
original; a product of experience rather than an innate possession
of the mind. How then is the universality of religion to be accounted
434 RELIGION
for? There is a second possibility. Perhaps God, the object of
religion, is a common and familiar object, like the sun so palpable,
so ubiquitous that no man can fail to acquire a notion of it. But if
one sets aside all preconceived ideas and looks out upon one's world
with the eye of a first discoverer, or of a Martian just arrived upon
earth, one does not find God. God is not an evident fact in any
ordinary sense. Herbert Spencer attempted to trace religion to a
belief in ghosts founded upon the experience of dreams. To one
who interprets dreams naively it is doubtless a fact that persons
"appear" after death and seem to speak and act where their bodies
are not. But in so far as a ghost is such a commonplace and evident
fact it is not a God. It is merely one sort of curious creature that
inhabits this teeming world. And the religious man finds objects
of worship in what is most substantial and least ghostlike. It is a
forced and far-fetched hypothesis that would have us explain the
worship of the sun, or the sea, or the Creator, by supposing that man
has projected into nature the substances of his dreams. God is not a
substance. He is not more vaporous or incorporeal than he is
liquid or solid, except in sophisticated theologies. And it is certainly
only in a careless or figurative sense that God can be said to be
manifest in his works, in the splendor or terrors of nature. He may
be inferred or interpreted from these, but he is not perceived as
literally present in their midst. "The heavens declare the glory of
God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork," but not to the
eye of the mere observer of fact even though it be placed at the end
of a telescope.
There seems to me to be only one alternative left. We must, I
think, conclude that in so far as religion is universal it arises from
the conjunction of man and his environment. Its seed is the situation
in which man finds himself, a situation made up of two interacting
parts, man and his world. Let us see if we can describe this situation
so as to see the inevitableness of religion.
Life may be broadly described as seeding something under given
circumstances. Man is impelled toward ends, and limited by an
existing situation. If we view our world dramatically, and assign
to man the role of hero, the fundamental fact is his dependence on
environment. He exists, as it were, despite the environment, which,
RELIGION 435
though it has given birth to him, is ever threatening to devour him;
and whatever he gains must be wrung from that environment. Life
must be conducted, in short, on terms dictated by its environment.
But before religion we must suppose life to have already conquered
something of nature and made it its own. When man finds himself,
there is already much that he can control. He can move about freely
on the surface of the earth; he can manipulate physical objects and
so procure himself food and shelter; and through individual prowess
or through combination he can control other men. Within certain
limits, then, man has the upper hand, and may make his fortune as
he wills. But these limits are narrow. They are, of course, most
narrow in the early stages of human development. But there has
been no time in which they have not been pitifully narrow. Man
may deceive himself. He may so magnify his achievements or be so
preoccupied with his affairs as to enjoy illusions of grandeur and
self-sufficiency. But it is a question if our Western, modern, and
"civilized" boastfulness does not betoken a more imperfect sense of
proportion than that consciousness of dependence which was once
felt more keenly and is still felt wherever man finds himself in the
immediate presence of the unharnessed energies of nature. In any
case man is periodically reminded, if he is not perpetually mindful,
of the great residual environment that is beyond his control. Man
proposes, but after all something beyond him disposes. Floods,
droughts, pestilence, rigors of climate, subjection, error, failure
these are the facts that teach and drive home the lesson of depend-
ence. The most impressive and unanswerable fact is death. The
whole fabric of personal achievement, woven by innumerable pains-
taking acts, all the fruits of struggle and of growth possessions,
power, friendship are apparently annihilated in an instant, and
with an ease that would be ridiculous if it were not so deeply tragic.
Now how shall man profit by this bitter lesson? He must not
despair if he is to live; for to live is to hope for and to seek a way
out of every predicament. To live in the consciousness of finitude
and dependence means to look for help. If the forces that man
cannot control do actually determine his destiny, then he must seek
to win them over, or to ally himself with them. Here, I believe, is
the root of religion : the attempt of man, conscious of his helplessness,
436 RELIGION
to unite himself with the powers which do actually dominate. Re-
ligion is a sense of need, a conviction of the insecurity of any merely
worldly advantage that he may gain for himself, and a way of salva-
tion through coming to terms with that which controls his destiny.
Religion is both founded on fear and consummated in hope.
It will perhaps seem strange that one should thus have attempted
to describe religion without referring to deity. But the reason for
the attempt lies in the fact that deity is not the cause of religion, but
the product of religion. God is not, as we have seen, a manifest fact
among facts; but is an object invoked to meet the religious need.
Let us consider briefly the various types of deity to which religion
has given rise.
TYPES OF DEITY
The commonest of all objects of worship is some prominent aspect
of nature, such as the sky, sun, moon, and stars, the earth, the sea,
rivers, winds, the seasons, day, and night. Before the development
of science man cannot control the operations of these phenomena.
Whether they shall favor him with moderate rains, fertility, a calm
passage and temperate weather, or torture and destroy him with
drought, flood, storm, and the extremes of heat and cold, he can
neither foretell nor predetermine. He can only wait and tremble,
hope and pray. That he should hope and pray is inevitable. It is the
instinct of any living thing toward that which is to decide its fate
and which it is impotent otherwise to control. The sun thus re-
garded as able either to bless or to destroy, and therefore an object
of importunity, already begins to be a god. But there is lacking a
factor which if it be not absolutely indispensable to deity, is almost
invariably present. I refer to what is commonly called "personifica-
tion." What is worshiped is the "spirit" in the sun, or the sun con-
strued as spirit. But this factor, too, arises, I believe, directly from
the practical situation and not from any metaphysics on the part
of the worshiper. It is the sequel to the familiar fact that we impute
interest or will to any agency that helps or hurts. I do not mean that
there is any express judgment to that effect, but that our emotional
and practical response is similar to that which we accord to other
living individuals. The animal will exhibit rage toward the rod
RELIGION 437
with which he is prodded, the child will chastise the blocks which
"refuse" to stand up, as his father will revenge himself upon the
perverse golf stick by breaking it across his knee. Similarly it is
natural to love, eulogize, caress, or adorn any object to which one
owes pleasure or any other benefit. These responses are equivalent
to imputing an attitude to their objects, an attitude of malice or
hostility when the effect is hurtful, and one of benevolence when the
effect is helpful. This, I believe, is the root of religious personifica-
tion. The sun, in so far as its effects are good, is an object of gratitude
for favor shown; in so far as its effects are bad, it is an object of
solicitous regard in the hope that its hostility may be averted and
its favor won. The sun so regarded or worshiped is the sun god.
The extent to which the will or intent, and the power over man, are
divorced from the visible and bodily sun and regarded as a "spirit"
is of secondary importance; as is also the extent to which such a god
has a history of his own apart from his treatment of man. For the
exuberant imagination of the Greeks the sun god becomes an in-
dividuality vividly realized in art, poetry, and legend. But for prac-
tical people like the Chinese, "it is enough," as Professor Moore
points out, "to know what the Gods do, and what their worshipers
have to do to secure their favor, without trying to imagine what
they are like." 2
A second type of deity is the ancestor; the actual human ancestor,
as worshiped by the Chinese, the mystical animal ancestor of totem-
ism, or any deity adopted as ancestor, as the Christian God is claimed
as Father by his believers. The idea of kinship with the object of
worship is very widespread, and its motive is clearly intelligible in
the light of what has been said above. Kinship implies alliance, the
existence of friendly support and the right to claim it. One's de-
parted ancestors belong to that world beyond from which emanate
the dread forces that one cannot control. Their presence there means
that there are friends at court. Man is not surrounded by indifferent
strangers, but by beings bound to him by nature and inseparable
ties, partisans who are favorably inclined.
A third type of deity is the tutelary god, conceived ad hoc to render
some special service. He may be the personal, tribal, or national
2 G. F. Moore: "History of Religions," p. 22.
438 RELIGION
protector; or the good genius of some human or social activity, such
as is the god who presides over husbandry, war, or navigation, or
the homely household god of the hearth and the "cooking furnace."
Here the insistent need invents and objectifies its own fulfillment.
All three notions of deity may be united in a local tribal deity,
"who on the one hand has fixed relations to a race of men, and on
the other hand has fixed relations to a definite sphere of nature," so
that "the worshiper is brought into stated and permanent alliance
with certain parts of his material environment which are not subject
to his will and control." 3
THE IDEA OF A SUPREME DEITY
There is one further notion of deity that demands recognition in
this brief summary, the notion, namely, of the supreme deity. As
men develop in intelligence, imagination, and in range of social
intercourse, it is inevitable that one god should be exalted above all
others, or worshiped to the exclusion of all others. Such a religious
conception arises from the experience of the unity of nature or of the
unity of man. There is an evident hierarchy among the powers of
nature; some are subordinated to others, and it is natural to con-
ceive of one as supreme. Most evident to sense is the exultation of
the heavens above the earth and the intermediate spaces. So we
find Heaven to be supreme God among the Chinese, and Zeus
among the Greeks. On the other hand, there is a hierarchy among
tutelary and ancestral gods. As the patron gods of individuals, of
special arts, or of tribes and provinces are subordinated to the
national god, so the national god in turn is subjected to the god of a
conquering nation. Allied with the idea of universal conquest is
the idea of an all-dominant god, the god of the ruling class. Or a
tutelary god may be universal in proportion to the universality of
the activity over which he presides. The gods of the same activity
though belonging originally to different cults may come to be
identified; so that there arises the conception of a god that shall be
universal in the sense of presiding over the common undertaking in
which all men are engaged. And similarly the god from whom all
men are descended will take precedence of the gods of families,
3 W. Robertson Smith: "Religion of the Semites," p. 124.
RELIGION 439
tribes, and nations. Thus there are several more or less independent
motives which may lead to a universal religion, such as Christianity,
whose god is a god of all men, regardless of time, place, race, or
station.
Deity, then, in the generic sense common to all religions, high and
low, is some force beyond the range of man's control, potent over
his fortunes, construed as friendly or hostile, and so treated as to
secure, if possible, its favor and support. It is important in the next
place to point out two different motives in worship, connected with
two different ways in which the worshiper and his god may be
brought into unison. To put it briefly, one may propose to have
one's own way, or surrender to the god's way. This is the religious
application of the fact that there are two ways to obtain satisfaction
and peace of mind; to get what one wants, or to want what one
gets. Religion may be said always to lie somewhere between these
two extremes. It is natural and reasonable to try the former method
first. And this is undoubtedly the earlier motive in worship. Man
wants food, and long life, and victory over his enemies, and he seeks
to gain the deity's support in these undertakings. But there is never
a time when he does not recognize the necessity of making con-
cessions. He pays sacrifices, or observes taboo, or adopts the code
of conduct which his god prescribes. And it is the common religious
experience that the conditions of divine favor become more exacting,
while the benefit is less evident. Thus there arises what philosophers
call the problem of evil, of which the classic Christian expression is
to be found in the Book of Job, 4 who "was perfect and upright, and
one that feared God, and eschewed evil," and nevertheless was
visited with every misery and disaster. In so far as Job solved this
problem he found the solution in entire surrender to the will of
God. "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall
I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away;
blessed be the name of the Lord." Nevertheless in the end "the
Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." Certainly a religion
of utter renunciation would be no religion at all. There would be
no motive in worship unless one were in some sense blessed thereby.
The tendency in the evolution of religion is to substitute for the
4 tf. c., xliv, 7 iff.
440 RELIGION
carnal or worldly blessing for which one had at first invoked divine
aid a new and higher good which one learns to find in the mode
of life which religion prescribes. Religion becomes thus not merely
instrumental, but educative. From it one learns not so much the
way to satisfy one's natural and secular wants, as the way to despise
those wants and set one's heart on other things. It is this mingled
self-assertion and self-surrender in religion that makes reverence its
characteristic emotion. God is both the means by which one realizes
one's end, and also a higher law by which one's end is reconstructed.
THE RELIGION OF RENUNCIATION
The religion in which entire renunciation is most closely approxi-
mated is the philosophical or esoteric religion of India. All the
varieties of this religion reflect one fundamental attitude to life, the
feeling that no good can come of persistent endeavor. The attempt
to fulfill desire is hopeless. The Indian does not abandon himself
to despair; but he differs from his occidental brother in this, that
whereas the latter hopes by divine aid, or in the distant future, to
achieve either personal happiness or the perfection of what he calls
"civilization," the former regards the whole attempt as founded on
error. Its inevitable failure does not signify real failure, but the
adoption of a wrong standard of success. According to the teaching
of the "Upanishads" even separate individuality is an illusion per-
petuated by desire.
When all the passion is at rest
That lurks within the heart of man
Then is the mortal no more mortal,
But here and now attaineth Brahman. 5
In Brahman, the deeper unity of the world, the individual has his
true being and is saved.
The importance of regarding the conception of God, not as the
root of religion, but as the product of religion, appears when we
come to the consideration of Buddhism. 6 For Buddhism is, in fact,
a godless religion, paradoxical as that may seem. It is true that
5 Quoted by G. F. Moore, op. clt., p. 270.
6 See lecture by Professor Lanman, below.
RELIGION 441
Buddha himself has come like Confucius to be an object of religion.
Every founder of a religion is almost inevitably deified by his fol-
lowers. But Buddha did not deify himself. He taught men to regard
even the soul itself as a transient and illusory experience. Suffering
is the universal law of existence. Existence is the penalty of desire,
a rebirth owing to Karma, the dispositions and desert which are the
precipitate of a previous existence. There is a fatal recurrence of
existence, for life tends ever to create the conditions of its own re-
incarnation and continuance. Salvation means not successful exist-
ence, the realization of actual desires, but escape from existence,
through the conquering of desire. In such a religion there is no god,
for there is no ulterior power in or through which man is to fulfill
his positive longings. But it is nevertheless religion, in that it is a
release of man from his predicament. Nirvana is perhaps from all
other points of view equivalent to annihilation; but from the point
of view of man, conscious of his helplessness and failure, it means
salvation. It is a philosophy of life, an accord between man and his
world by which he wins the greatest good that he can conceive.
In order to understand the general scope of religious literature it
is not sufficient that one should grasp the general principle of
religion. One must know something of the forms which religion
assumes in human life; and especially important is it to know some-
thing of its relations to science on the one hand, and to art and
poetry on the other hand.
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
By science let us understand knowledge founded on fact or
rigorous reasoning. How far is one to construe religious literature
as science, that is, as the work of man's theorizing and cognizing
faculties? There is probably more confusion in this matter at the
present time than there has ever been in the past. The increase of
doubt, the scientific refutation of beliefs once authorized by religion,
have led to various attempts to retain these beliefs by a sheer act of
"faith," or on account of their subjective and imaginative values.
Since the ascendancy of Catholic orthodoxy in the fourteenth cen-
tury there has been a steady tendency to regard one Christian teach-
ing after another, the story of Jonah and the whale, the account of
44 2 RELIGION
creation in Genesis, and now even the miracles of the New Testa-
ment, as fictions which are to be valued as symbols, tradition, poetry,
or as parts of a system of faith which as a whole is to be judged not
by reference to historic fact but by its comforting or regenerating
effect upon the believer. But if we recall to our minds that original
human need in response to which religion arises, it is unmistakably
evident that there must be a nucleus of truth in a religion if it is to
meet that need at all. In religion man seeks to relate himself profit-
ably to things as they are. He seeks to save his soul by adopting the
course that is consistent with the deeper reality. If he is misled as to
the nature of reality, then his whole plan is founded on error and is
foredoomed to failure. If the forces of nature have no power, or
are not to be influenced by human importunity, then it is folly to
worship them. If there be no deeper cause that guarantees the
triumph of righteousness, then the Christian's hope is illusory, and
his prayer and worship idle. In short, every religion is at heart a
belief in something as true, and if that something be not true, then
the religion is discredited.
Nevertheless, although there is a scientific nucleus in every re-
ligion, that nucleus is but a small fraction of it. In the first place
religion differs from science proper in that it deliberately adopts a
view of things according to which man is the central fact of the
universe. Religion is interested in cosmic affairs only in so far as
they bear upon human fortunes. Hence it finally expresses itself not
in judgments of fact, but in emotion, such as hope, fear, confidence,
despair, reverence, love, gratitude, or self-subjection. Its object is
the cosmos or some ulterior cosmic agency, construed as helpful or
hurtful, colored by the worshiper's solicitude. Hence much religious
literature, such, for example, as the Psalms, 7 or St. Augustine's Con-
fessions, 8 are essentially expressions of the religious emotions, char-
acterizations of deity not by the use of cold scientific formulas, but
by the use of epithets that signify the feelings and attitude of the
worshiper himself.
A second non-scientific factor in religion is that contributed by
the imagination and by social tradition. Religion differs from theory
in that it comes after and not before belief. Religion is not effective,
7 H. C., xliv, i 4 sff. 8 H. C., vii, sff.
RELIGION 443
does not do its work, until after some interpretation of cosmic forces
has been adopted by an individual and has become the accepted
basis of his life. Buddhism begins as a religion when the individual
enters upon that course of discipline by which he hopes to attain
Nirvana; and Christianity begins when the believer actually follows
the way of salvation by prayer, obedience, and good works. And in
all important historical religions the underlying dogmas are assimi-
lated not only to personal but also to social life. They are com-
monly and collectively believed, and have become the unconscious
presuppositions of a community worship. The office of the religious
imagination is in making these scientific presuppositions vital and
effective. A religion of hope is not a series of propositions concern-
ing the favorable bearing of cosmic forces, but a vivid realization
of the purport of such propositions, a hopefulness translated into
emotional buoyance or confident action. By the imagination religious
truth is made impressive, so that it evokes the affections and moti-
vates action. The social counterpart is found in tradition and sym-
bolism, which secures the continuity and solidarity of religious feel-
ings and practices. In brief, then, we may expect to find in all ex-
pressions of religion, such as religious literature, certain underlying
assumptions which are capable of being converted into scientific
propositions; but these will be overlaid and obscured by an imag-
inative and symbolic representation in which their meaning is
emotionally and practically realized.
There is another important respect in which religion differs from
science, namely, in its proceeding beyond the limits of evidence.
There never was and never will be a religion which possesses the
same verification that is demanded in the case of a scientific theory.
Religion is a leap in the dark. The reason for this is evident. For
practical purposes it is necessary to conclude matters that for strictly
theoretical purposes one would postpone in the hope of further light.
Life is an emergency, a crisis, or as William James has said, a
"forced option." 9 One must make up one's mind quickly, or live
altogether at random. What shall one make of this world, and what
shall one do to be saved? The decision cannot be postponed; and
yet the evidence is, strictly considered, inconclusive. Faith means
9 "The Will to Believe," p. 3.
444 RELIGION
to believe what seems probable, and to believe it not half-heartedly,
but with conviction. For if one believes half-heartedly, one cannot
proceed according to one's belief, or attain salvation by it. The ele-
ment of sheer faith may be more or less, according to the degree of
critical and philosophical power which the worshiper possesses.
But in every case there will be some basis in experienced fact and
in inference, and also some "will to believe" or reliance on authority.
And we shall consequently find in religious literature a note of
dogmatic certainty and of willfulness, which is as inevitable in such
a context as it would be intolerable in science.
RELIGION AND MORALITY
There is one further topic to which even so brief an introduction
as this must allude. What is the relation between religion and
morality? Are we to regard ethical teachings such as those of the
Book of Proverbs or the Sayings of Confucius 10 as religious ? To
answer this question, we have only, I think, to bear clearly in mind
the generic meaning of religion. A mode of life becomes religious
only when it is pursued under certain auspices; only when it is
conceived as sanctioned by the general nature of the cosmos, and
as constituting a way of salvation. If justice be prized as a means
of social welfare, it is ethical; if it be adopted as a means of winning
the favor of God, or as a means of achieving Nirvana, it is religious.
The moral life takes on a religious character when it is in some way
connected with the cosmic life. In the so-called "ethical religions"
the mode of life prescribed by religion tends to coincide with that
prescribed by the moral consciousness, and righteousness is con-
ceived as the way of salvation. Needless to say, such a contraction
of morality greatly enhances its impressiveness and appeal. In all
ethical religions that are inspired with hope, religion adds to a good
conscience the sense of ascendency or victory over nature. Right
living takes on the aspect of ultimate reality. To sheer duty is added
confidence, inspiration, the expectation of limitless and durable
achievement. Even in pessimistic religions of the ethical type,
morality acquires prestige as having supreme importance for escape
from the misery of existence. And from the religious consciousness
10 H. C., xliv, 5ff., and lecture by A. D. Sheffield, below.
RELIGION 445
as such, irrespective of its special claims and beliefs, morality acquires
a certain dignity and reinforcement. For religion encourages man
to look at life roundly and seriously. It frees him from the obsession
of passion and the circumscription of immediate interests. It keeps
alive the cosmic imagination, and invites attention to the problem
of life as a whole in all its bearings, internal and external.
Thus it is fair to conclude that religion is universal in two senses.
On the one hand it springs from a universal need. On the other
hand, it possesses a universal value, and cannot fail, however much
of error or blindness there may be in it, to elevate and dignify life.
True religion is better than false, but it is not less certain that religion
is better than irreligion.
II. BUDDHISM
BY PROFESSOR C. R. LANMAN
THE life of Gotama, the Enlightened One, or Buddha, a life
of eighty years, is divided into two parts, one of thirty-five
years and one of forty-five, by the event of his Enlightenment
or Bodhi. This seeing of a new light is to a Buddhist the one supreme
event of the incalculably long aeon now current, just as is the birth
of Jesus in Occidental chronology. Those first thirty-five years are
again divided into two parts, the period of his life as a prince or
the time from his birth until (at the age of twenty-nine 1 ) he forsook
the world to struggle for the Supreme Enlightenment, and the period
of the six years of that struggle. Of these thirty-five years we have
elaborate accounts. 2 Of the last forty-five, tradition has little to say
in the way of entertaining story, but very much by way of reporting
"the Teacher's" teachings. These teachings as laid down in the
canonical scriptures of Buddhism are in very deed his life in the
truest sense.
THE BIRTHS OF BUDDHA
The belief that a man must be born and live and die, only to be
born and die again and again through a weary round of existences,
was widespread in India long before Buddha's day. And accordingly
the "biography" of a Buddha must include an account of some of
those former "births" or existences. The story of Sumedha 3 is one
of these. The "Jataka," the most charming of all Buddhist story
books, 4 contains the narrative of not less than 547 former existences
of Gotama. Next after all this prenatal biography comes the account
of Buddha's birth into the existence which concerns us most nearly,
1 Harvard Classics, xlv, 643. 2 H. C., xlv, 603-646.
3 H. C., xlv, 577-602. The story of the "Wise Hare," pages 697-701, is a Jataka
or Birth story.
4 Translated by various hands under the editorship of E. B. Cowell, 6 vols.,
Cambridge, 1895-1907.
446
RELIGION 447
the actual one of the sixth century before Christ, and this forms the
subject of the second of Warren's translations, "The Birth of the
Buddha." 5 That translation is from a later work. It is most in-
structive for the student of religious tradition to compare the meager
statements of the oldest canonical account with such an account as
this, in order to see how the loving imagination of devout disciples
may embellish a simple and prosaic fact with a multitude of pic-
turesque details. Thus the presages of Buddha's birth 6 are quite
comparable, except for beauty of poetic diction, with those of the
birth of Jesus in Milton's hymn "On the Morning of Christ's
Nativity." 7 As an example of new accretions to the older story
may be cited the later tradition that Buddha was born from his
mother's right side, a trait that appears not only in the Lalita-vistara
and in St. Jerome, but also in many of the sculptured representations
of the scene.
THE TEACHINGS OF BUDDHA
The teachings of Buddha are indeed his life, his very self. In
the house of a potter the venerable Vakkali lay nigh unto death. 8
The Exalted One (Buddha) came to his pillow and made kindest
inquiries. "Long have I wished to go to the Exalted One to see him,
but there was not enough strength in my body to go." "Peace,
Vakkali! what should it profit thee to see this my corrupt body?
Whoso, O Vakkali, seeth my teachings, he seeth me." Here the
Teacher identifies himself with his teachings no less completely than
does Jesus when he declares unto Thomas, "I am the way." And
yet, despite Buddha's merging of his personality in his doctrine, it
is of utmost importance to remember two things : First that Buddha
most explicitly disclaims acceptance of his teachings on the score of
authority; and secondly that it was, after all, their intrinsic excellence
which (whether we take it as the fruit of a transcendental illumina-
tion or as the outcome of his personality) has maintained them as a
mighty world power for five and twenty centuries.
First then his position as to authority. The Exalted One, when
making a tour through Kosala, once stopped at Kesaputta, a town
5 H. C., xlv, 603-12. 6 H. C., xlv, 607-608. 1 H.C.,\\,j.
8 Samyutta-Nikaya, xxii, 87 (3.119).
448 RELIGION
of the Kalamans. They asked him : "Master, so many teachers come
to us with their doctrines. Who of them is right and who is wrong?"
"Not because it is tradition," he answers, "not because it has been
handed down from one to another, not because ye think 'Our teacher
is one to whom great deference is due,' should ye accept a doctrine.
When, O Kalamans, when ye of yourselves recognize that such and
such things are bad and conduce to evil and sorrow, then do ye
reject them." 9 And again, "When a man's conviction of a truth is
dependent on no one but himself, this, O Kaccana, is what con-
stitutes Right Belief." 10 It is hard for us of the twentieth century
to estimate aright the significance of Buddha's attitude. He lived
in a land and age when deference to authority was well-nigh uni-
versal. To break with it as he did, implies an intelligence far beyond
the common and a lofty courage.
Secondly as to the intrinsic excellence of Buddha's teaching. That
teaching is well characterized by a few brief phrases which occur
as a commonplace in the canonical texts and are used as one of the
forty subjects of meditation or "businesses" by devout Buddhists:
"Well taught by the Exalted One is the doctrine. It avails even in
the present life, is immediate in its blessed results, is inviting, is
conducive to salvation, and may be mastered by any intelligent man
for himself." 11 Frankly disclaiming knowledge of what happens
after death, Buddha addressed himself to the problem of sorrow as
we have it here and now, and sought to relieve it by leading men
into the path of righteousness and good-will and freedom from lust.
A would-be disciple once asked him to answer certain dogmatic
questions about life after death. Buddha parried them all as irrele-
vances in the dialogue which Warren gives 12 and which is one of
the finest presentations of Religion versus Dogma to be found in
antiquity. The holy life, he says, does not depend upon the answers
to any of these questions.
If a physician of forty years ago had been asked to foretell the
then presumable advances of medical science, his guesses might
well have included the discovery of new specifics, such as quinine
for malaria; for medicine was then the healing art, its aim was to
9 Anguttara-Nikaya, iii, 65 (1.189). 10 W- C., xlv, 661.
11 H. C., x!v, 749. 12 H. C., xlv, 647-652.
RELIGION 449
cure. True, we had heard from our childhood that an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure. But how was the ounce of
prevention to be had ? Doubtless by finding out the cause of disease.
And this is on the whole the most significant achievement of modern
medicine. Now it was precisely this problem in the world of the
spirit that Buddha claimed to solve, the aetiology of man's misery.
His solution he publicly announced in his first sermon, the gist of
which was destined to become known to untold millions, the sermon
of the Deerpark of Benares.
His most important point is the cause of human suffering, 13 and
that he finds in the craving for existence (no matter how noble that
existence) and for pleasure. If you can only master these cravings,
you are on the road to salvation, to Nirvana. This, so far as the
present life is concerned, means the going out of the fires of lust
and ill will and delusion, and further a getting rid thereby of the
round of rebirth.
BUDDHISM AND OTHER RELIGIONS
Without attempting to discuss so many-sided a subject as Nirvana,
or rightly to evaluate Buddha's prescription of the abandonment of
all craving, it is clear that his ethical teachings, like his spotless life,
have stood and will stand the test of centuries. The Deerpark ser-
mon urges the excellence of the golden mean between the life of
self-castigation and the life of ease and luxury, and propounds the
Noble Eightfold Path, which is, after all, in brief, the life of
righteousness in thought and word and deed. Many notable sim-
ilarities between the teachings of Buddha and those of Jesus have
been pointed out. 14 These need not surprise us. Nor is there any
a priori reason for assuming a borrowing in either direction. If I
make an entirely original demonstration of the fact that the inner
angles of a triangle amount to two right angles, my demonstration
will agree in essence with that of Pythagoras because mathematical
truth does not differ from land to land nor from age to age. Nor
"Buddha's Four Eminent Truths concern suffering, its cause, its surcease, and
the way thereto. They coincide with those of the Yoga system and are indeed the
four cardinal subjects of Hindu medical science applied to spiritual healing a fact
which famous ancient Hindu writers have themselves not failed to observe.
14 So by Albert J. Edmunds in his "Buddhist and Christian Gospels," 4th ed., 2
vols., Philadelphia, 1908-9.
45O RELIGION
yet does goodness. And accordingly many of the teachings of the
great teachers of righteousness must coincide.
On the other hand it is interesting to note that Buddha's teachings
lay great emphasis, and lay it often, upon things about which in
the Gospels comparatively little or nothing is expressly said. Don't
hurry, don't worry, the simple life; don't accept a belief upon the
authority of me or of anyone else; don't let your outgo exceed your
income; the relation of master and servant; the duty not only of
kindness but even of courtesy to animals: these are some of the
themes upon which Buddha discourses, now with a touch of humor,
now with pathos, and always with gentleness and wisdom and
cogency.
To the readers of Warren's faithful translations a word is due
as to the extreme repetitiousness of much of the Buddhist writings.
The charming stories are free from it. Not so the doctrinal dis-
courses. Scientific opinion upon this strange and tedious fault is
rapidly clearing. 15 These texts that claim to be the actual "Buddha-
word" are in reality the product of conscious scholastic literary
activity, and of a time considerably subsequent to that of Buddha.
This is quite certain. But no less so is it that they do in fact contain
the real sayings of Buddha. "Be ye heirs of things spiritual, not heirs
of things carnal." : This, we may confidently assert, is in its
simplicity and pregnant brevity, an absolutely authentic utterance
of Gotama Buddha. At the same time it is the substance, and in-
deed we may say the entire substance, of a discourse of about four
hundred Pali words attributed to Buddha. 17 Of the lengths to which
perverse scholasticism may go, the case is a luculent illustration. 18
15 See R. Otto Franke, Digha-Nikaya, Gottingen, 1913, p. x.
16 The antithesis of this saying of Buddha, we may note in passing, is familiar
to readers of the New Testament.
17 Majjhima-Nikaya, vol. i, p. 12-13.
18 The method of the expansion one may easily guess after reading Warren's
"Questions," H. C., xlv, 647-652. Its motive is probably pedagogical.
III. CONFUCIANISM
BY ALFRED DWIGHT SHEFFIELD
CONFUCIANISM, although spoken of with Buddhism and
Taoism as one of the "Three Teachings," or three major
religions of China, can hardly be defined as a religion in the
precise way in which we can define Mahayana Buddhism or Roman
Catholic Christianity. It has neither creed nor priesthood, nor any
worship beyond what Confucius found already established in his
day. The commemorative service, performed by local officials
throughout China in spring and autumn in the red-walled shrines
known as "Confucian temples" is not worship of the sage, but a
civil rite in his honor, quite compatible with the profession of an-
other religion. Indeed, when a few centuries after his death venera-
tion approached to worship, and women began offering prayers
to Confucius for children, the practice was stopped (A. D. 472) by
imperial edict, as something superstitious and unbecoming. Con-
fucianism may be said to have a bible in the nine canonical books
associated with the sage's name; but it claims for them no divine
revelation, nor other inspiration than such as speaks for itself from
their pages. What these books yield to one who would define Con-
fucianism is a conception of enlightened living, a social ideal which
entails some allegiance to an old national religion blending nature
worship and ancestor worship. One might say that the essence of
Confucianism is a type of "eligible" life, the regimen of which in-
cludes a worship only indirectly Confucian, much as Stoicism among
the Romans included as a matter of principle some adherence to the
established worship.
THE TEACHING OF CONFUCIUS
Confucius can be appreciated only in his historical setting. It has
been made a reproach to the sage that his vision was retrospective
and conservative; but he cannot be charged with a mere desire to
451
452 RELIGION
bring back "the good old days." When, at the court of Chou, he
first inspected the ancestral shrines and the arrangements for the
great annual sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, he exclaimed: "As we
use a glass to examine the forms of things, so must we study the
past to understand the present." The past, moreover, really held
models of statecraft from which his own times had fallen away. The
great Chou dynasty, which through a succession of able princes
had ruled the whole valley of the Hoang Ho, had in the sixth cen-
tury B. C. dwindled to a shadow of its early power. The emperor
(or rather king for the title Huang-ti was then applied only to de-
ceased monarchs) was reduced to a headship merely nominal, and
the old imperial domain was broken up among turbulent vassals,
each fighting for his own hand. The China of Confucius was pretty
much in the condition of France before Louis XI broke the power of
the feudal dukes and counts. With the tradition behind him of a
nation united by wise leadership, Confucius is no more to be blamed
for looking back than is Aristotle, whose Ethics and Politics show
plainly that his sympathies were not with the advancing career of
Macedon but with the old polity of Athens.
The first group of the Confucian books, the Five Classics, are fruits
of this regard for the past, the sage being the reputed compiler of
four of them, and author of the faith. These classics are the "Shu
Ching" or "Book of History," made up of documents covering a
period from the twenty-fourth to the eighth century B. C.; the
"Shih Ching" or "Book of Odes," 305 lyrics dating from the eight-
eenth to the sixth century; the "Yi Ching" or "Book of Permuta-
tions," an ancient manual of divination; the "Li Chi," a compilation
of ceremonial usages; and the "Ch'un Ch'iu," annals (722-484) of
Confucius's native state of Lu. The second group in the canon, the
Four Books, convey his actual teachings. They are the "Lun Yii"
or "Sayings of Confucius" *; the "Ta Hsueh" or "Great Learning,"
a treatise by his disciple Tsang Sin on the ordering of the individual
life, the family, and the state; the "Chung Yung" or "Doctrine of the
Mean," a treatise on conduct by his grandson K'ung Chi; and the
"Book of Mencius," his great apostle.
1 Harvard Classics, xliv, 5ff.
RELIGION 453
The distinctive features of Confucian doctrine may be summarized
as follows:
(1) Filial piety is the cardinal social virtue. A dutiful son will
prove dutiful in all the five relationships: those of father and son,
ruler and subject, husband and wife, elder brother and younger,
and that of friend. Such a tenet was naturally acceptable to a social
system like the Chinese, with its patriarchalism and insistence on the
family rather than the individual as the unit of society. Loyalty to
family it raises to a religious duty in the rite of ancestor worship.
Here Confucius did no more than emphasize with his approval a
national custom mentioned in the earliest odes of offering food
and wine to departed spirits. How far this family cult is to be con-
strued as actual worship is disputable : some would compare it merely
with the French custom of adorning graves on All Souls' Day. But
it effectively strengthens the family bond, impressing as it does the
sense of family unity and perpetuity through the passing generations.
(2) Between man and man the rule of practice is "reciprocity."
"What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."
Benevolence an extension of the love of son and brother is the
worthy attitude toward one's fellows, but it should not be pressed
to fatuous lengths. When asked his opinion of Lao-tse's teaching
that one should requite injury with good, Confucius replied: "With
what, then, will you requite kindness? Return good for good; for
injury return justice."
(3) The chief moral force in society is the example of the "superior
man." 2 By nature man is good, and the unrighteousness of society
is due to faulty education and bad example. Virtue in superiors
will call out virtue in common folk. The burden of Confucius's
teaching is therefore "superior" character character so disciplined
to a moral tact and responsive propriety that in every situation it
knows the right thing and does it, and so poised in its own integrity
as to practice virtue for virtue's sake. "What the small man seeks
is in others; what the superior man seeks is in himself."
(4) Toward the world of spiritual beings the Confucian attitude
is one of reverent agnosticism. The sage would have nothing to
2 In the version printed in H. C., this term is translated "gentleman."
454 RELIGION
say of death and the future state. "We know little enough of
ourselves as men; what, then, can we know of ourselves as spirits?"
In his habit of referring to "T'ien" or "Heaven," Confucius may not
have deliberately avoided the more personal term "Shang-ti" (Su-
preme Lord), and expressions of his are not lacking which suggest
a personal faith: but speculation on the nature of being and the
destiny of the world he treated simply as a waste of time. On a
report that two bereaved friends were comforting themselves with
the doctrine that life is but dream and death the awakening, he
remarked: "These men travel beyond the rule of life; I travel within
it."
In summary one might say that Confucius did not found any
religious system, but transmitted one with a renewed stress on its
ethical bearings. His interest was in man as made for society.
Religious rites he performed to the letter, but more from a sense of
their efficacy for "social-mindedness" than from any glow of piety.
His faith was a faith in right thinking. The "four things he seldom
spoke of wonders, feats of strength, rebellious disorder, spirits"
were simply the things not tractable to reason.
THE GROWTH OF CONFUCIAN INFLUENCE
Confucianism has so long dominated the intellectual life of China
that western scholars have fallen into the habit of speaking as if
there were a sort of preestablished harmony between it and the
national mind. As a matter of fact it has had to win its way against
vigorous criticism and formidable rivals. The two centuries follow-
ing Confucius's death were rife with conflicting theories of ethics.
Yan Chu presented a cynical egoism: death ends all; so make the
most of life, every man for himself. To this doctrine Mo Ti opposed
a radical altruism, with universal love as the cure of misgovernment
and social disorders. Lao-tse impugned the Confucian idea of man's
inborn goodness. Man's nature no more tends to goodness than
water tends to run east, or willow wood to take shape in cups and
bowls. Against all these contentions the teaching of Confucius was
defended and elucidated by the greatest of his followers, Meng-tse
(372-289), whose name has been Latinized as Mencius. But Con-
fucianism had to meet systems of thought that carried a more posi-
RELIGION 455
tive religious appeal than it admitted of. Taoism was already in
the field, preaching a wise passiveness toward the Way of Heaven,
and enlisting in Chuang-tse one of the most brilliant writers that
China has produced. His teaching was mystical: "The universe and
I came into being together; and I, with all things therein, are One."
The repulse of this doctrine by that of Confucius is perhaps correctly
explained by the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien: "Like a flood its mysteries
spread at will: hence no one, from rulers downward, could apply
them to any definite use." But the reticence of Confucius as to the
state of departed spirits left an opening for Buddhism, which de-
scribes that state with the full detail craved by popular imagination.
The pessimistic philosophy of Buddhism was indeed alien to the
Chinese temperament, but its missionaries won a ready response
to its doctrine of retribution and its offer of salvation. From the
fifth century on it was increasingly in conflict with Confucianism,
and succumbed only after sharp persecution. Even in its decline
it has contributed many ideas and practices to the old animistic
religion of the masses. The triumph of Confucianism in its fall,
moreover, was not a mere reassertion of the teaching of Confucius
and Mencius. Taoism and Buddhism had raised questions of cos-
mology which could no longer be ignored. The Neo-Confucianism,
therefore, that began with Chou Tun-i (1017-1073) built upon the
Yi Ching a cosmic philosophy, describing the world in terms of two
principles: a primal matter and an immanent intelligence, which
give rise on the one hand to the five elements and all sense data,
and on the other to all wisdom and moral ideals. The greatest name
in Neo-Confucianism is Chu Hsi (1130-1200), whose commentaries
on the canonical books are now authoritative, and whose manuals
of domestic rites and manners have brought the Confucian code into
the homes of the people.
In 1906 Confucius was "deified" by imperial decree. With the rise
of republicanism, however, there has appeared a disposition to reject
not only such a canonization of the sage, but the whole conservative
tradition for which he has stood. The movement has at the present
writing called out a reaction, but the future of Confucianism amid
the intellectual currents now flooding in from the West, can be only
matter of conjecture. One may hope that the ethical code that has
RELIGION
made so much of what is best in the national culture both of China
and of Japan will keep its vitality under change of forms and
formulas. Western critics sometimes talk as if Confucius had held
his countrymen's regard by a sort of infatuation. If so, it has been
given to no other man to captivate the imagination of his kind with
sheer reasonableness.
IV. GREEK RELIGION
BY PROFESSOR CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOORE
GEEK religion includes all the varied religious beliefs and
practices of the peoples living in Greek lands from the be-
ginning of history to the end of paganism. In contrast to
Christianity it had no body of revealed teachings, no common
dogma or fixed ritual binding at all shrines and on every worshiper,
but each locality might have its own distinctive myths and practices,
and the individual might believe what he pleased so long as he did
not openly do violence to tradition. No priestly orders attempted
to interpose their decrees upon society; local habit alone determined
both ritual and belief.
The religion of the Greeks exhibited at every stage its composite
character. As early as the second millennium B. C., so far as we can
judge from the results of excavations in Greece proper and in Crete,
the inhabitants of these lands had anthropomorphic ideas about
some of their deities, that is, they thought of them and represented
them in their art essentially as human beings; on the other hand,
we find in the later centuries such primitive elements as the worship
of sacred stones, trees, and symbols still existing. Yet it is a mistake
to suppose that Greek religion had its origin in a worship of natural
objects and forces; undoubtedly the worship of natural phenomena
and of inanimate objects, of ancestors, and possibly of animals, all
contributed to the religious sum total, but it is impossible to trace
to-day all the factors which made up religion in historical times.
We can only say that the Greeks worshiped a multitude of spiritual
beings who filled all nature and were to be found in every field of
activity. Man, therefore, was always in social relation to the gods.
The ordinary Greek felt that the world was filled with divine
beings of varying ranks whose favor he must seek or whose ill nature
he must propitiate by offerings and prayer. Only the most enlight-
ened ever attained to anything like monotheism.
457
458 RELIGION
RELIGION IN HOMER AND HESIOD
The earliest Greek literature, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," * shows
a circle of gods bound together in a social organization similar to
that of the Homeric state. At the head is Zeus, father of gods and
of men, possessing a power on Olympus like that of Agamemnon
among the Greeks before Troy. With Zeus, Apollo and Athena hold
the first rank; Hera, although the wife of Zeus, is in the second rank
with Poseidon; Ares and Aphrodite represent little more than the
passions of rage for slaughter and love; the god of fire, Hephaestus,
Artemis, the sister of Apollo, Hermes, the higher servant of the
greater gods and the companion of men, and others are of still lower
rank; while Demeter and Dionysus, although known, have no place
on Olympus. All these divine beings are represented as larger,
stronger, wiser than mortals, but they are no whit less subject to the
passions of body and mind; their superiority over men lies chiefly
in the possession of immortality. Now no such system of gods was
ever worshiped anywhere in the Greek world. It was created by a
process of selection and elimination from local cults, and adapted
to please the Ionic courts at which the epics were intended to be
recited. These epic gods did not drive out local divinities; but the
Homeric poems acquired such universal influence in Greece that
wherever possible the local divinity was assimilated to the Homeric
type, so that Athena, for example, the patroness of Athens, was en-
dowed with the characteristics given her in the epics. There was a
constant tendency in literature and art to represent the greater gods
in the Homeric way.
Hesiod (about 700 B. C.) also had a great influence on later times
through his "Theogony," which was the first attempt to criticize
myths and to bring the various accounts into a consistent and har-
monious whole. Moreover, the Hesiodic poetry displays certain relig-
ious elements which have little or no place in the Homeric epics.
Of these the most significant is the worship of the dead and of
heroes. On the side of ethics also we find higher concepts of justice
and of the moral order; and in general there is much more reflection
on man's relation to the gods and to society than we see in Homer.
1 See Harvard Classics, xxii, gfi.
RELIGION 459
In spite of the influence of Homer and Hesiod, no single god or
system of gods ever became wholly universal, but each divinity was
connected with some locality. The simple Greek conceived of his
local god as individual, largely distinct from any other god of the
same name, very much as the Greek peasant to-day thinks of his
local saint. Yet with the growth of cities, when it became incon-
venient to resort often to the ancient localities which might be
remote, new shrines, oflshoots of the old, were established in towns,
so that there was, for example, at Athens, a certain concentration of
cults. Furthermore, the chief divinity of a city acquired a position
as patroness of a considerable area, as Athena of all Attica, but
without completely overshadowing or expelling other gods. Likewise
certain religious centers developed which served more than one
state, such as the shrine of Apollo at Delos, which became a center
for all lonians, or that of Zeus at Olympia, where representatives
of all the Greek world assembled every four years.
GROWTH OF PERSONAL RELIGION
It will thus be seen that Greek religion was largely social and local.
The members of the family, the clan, the tribe, and the state were
bound together by worship in which the individual shared by virtue
of his membership in the social body. These conditions gave solidar-
ity to society and made religion the common and permanent concern
of all citizens; yet this common worship tended to check all ten-
dencies to personal religion. But from the eighth century B. C. on,
many influences operated to bring the individual to self-conscious-
ness. Men began to be dissatisfied with the sacred tradition of the
state and to seek to establish such personal relations with the gods
as should give them as individuals religious satisfaction. This de-
sire found outlet from the sixth century B. C. in the Orphic Sect,
whose members tried to secure satisfaction for religious emotion and
to gain the warrant of a happy life hereafter through the mystic wor-
ship of Dionysus and a fixed method of life. At about the same time
the Mysteries began to be prominent. Of these the most important
were at Eleusis in Attica, where a festival in honor of Demeter and
certain associated gods had existed from a remote period. This festi-
val was originally agricultural, intended to secure fertility and pros-
460 RELIGION
parity for all admitted to it; but before 600 B. C. it had been trans-
formed into an eschatological mystery, by initiation into which the
individual was assured of a blessed future life. The movements thus
started in Greek religion tended to break down men's real depend-
ence on social worship, although the old cults continued to the end of
paganism. Yet, in Athens especially, political events during the fifth
century checked the individualistic movements in religion tempo-
rarily. From the conflict with Persia (490-479 B. C.) Athens emerged
as the chief state in Greece; during the fifty years which followed she
enjoyed an unprecedented prosperity and an imperial position which
bound all citizens closely together, in spite of the strife of political
parties. Now in the preceding century Peisistratus had done much
to exalt and establish the Olympian type of religion at Athens; and
it was natural that in the time of the power of Athens the ideal
of the state religion should predominate. All citizens united in
dedicating to the gods their material wealth and their noblest art.
RELIGION IN GREEK TRAGEDY
In this same time lived the great tragedians ^Eschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides, who were also great religious teachers. ^Eschylus
endeavored to interpret the higher truths of religion as he saw them,
and to bring these truths into relation with morals. He dwelt on
the nature of sin, the stain it brings to each succeeding generation,
the punishment of wrongdoing which the divine justice must inflict,
and on the disciplinary value of suffering. These characteristics of
his tragedies are well illustrated by the "Prometheus" 2 and by the
Trilogy. 3 Sophocles emphasized the divine source of the higher
moral obligations which transcend all human laws. He further
taught that pain may have its place even when the sufferer is inno-
cent; and that purity of heart, faith in Zeus, and acquiescence in the
divine will are fundamental principles of righteous life. These doc-
trines underlie the "Antigone" 4 and "CEdipus the King." 5 Euripides
belongs in temper to the rational age which followed him. He had
no consistent message to his time. On the whole he contributed to the
rejection of the old Olympic religion, but at the same time he con-
2 H. c., viii, i66ff.
3 "Agamemnon," "The Libation-Bearers," and "The Furies," H. C., viii, 7ff.
4 H. C., viii, 255ff. 5 H. C., viii, igyfi.
RELIGION 461
stantly stirred men to ask fundamental questions about life. In his
"Hippolytus" 6 he shows his chaste hero brought to death because he
will not yield to the goddess of love, and thus the poet belittles the
sacred tradition; in "The Bacchae" 7 he exalts enthusiasm and in-
spiration above reason, not, however, without a certain cynicism at
the end.
From the close of the fifth century philosophy began to take the
place of the traditional religion for thinking men; yet philosophy
did not break with the religious sentiment of the time. Eventually
the spirit of individualism and cosmopolitanism destroyed men's
faith in the state religions, and although the ancient rituals continued
to the end of antiquity, they never regained the position which they
had in the sixth and fifth centuries B. C.
6 H. C., viii, 3o 3 ff. 7 H. C., viii, 368ff.
V. PASCAL
BY PROFESSOR C. H. C. WRIGHT
^ I AHE name of Blaise Pascal not only belongs to the list of
great French seventeenth-century writers, he is also to be
JL included among the greatest authors of modern literature.
He affected radically the thought of countless religious men of his
own and later times; he was, even though in part unconsciously,
one of the masters of style in the chief age of French literature. Men
of science, also, consider him one of the most important of their
number as a mathematician and a physicist.
PASCAL AND JANSENISM
Pascal's name is inseparably connected with the history of Jansen-
ism, and though varying phases of his intellectual development have
caused him to receive all kinds of descriptive epithets ranging from
skeptic to fideist, yet his temperament and his bodily condition re-
flect the austere and gloomy theories of the Jansenist Augustinians.
Born of a high-strung stock in a bleak part of the volcanic region
of Auvergne, under the very shadow of the gloomy cathedral, built
of Volvic lava, at Clermont-Ferrand, the child Pascal was from the
beginning over-intellectualized. If we are to believe the accounts
of a perhaps partial sister, this "terrifying genius" as Chateaubriand
calls him, taught himself geometry and worked out problems in
Euclid, while he still called lines and circles "bars" and "rounds."
His intellect developed by leaps and bounds, and by the end of a
life of recurring illnesses and of suffering, cut short at less than two
score years, he had encompassed the field of knowledge, verified
hypotheses of physics, descried unexplored realms of mathematics,
and projected his thought into the vast chaos of conjecture concern-
ing the relations of God and the world, of God and of created man.
Pascal's adherence to religion was not immediate, and he went
through successive stages of hesitation and of partial retrogression.
462
RELIGION 463
A man of the world, he consorted with brilliant talkers, entered into
scientific discussions against the Jesuits, or argued on philosophy
with other thinkers. But the real interest of his life for our purpose
begins with his conversion to the doctrines of Jansenius.
Bishop Jansen of Ypres in Belgium had devoted his life to the
study of Saint Augustine and to the elucidation of the doctrines of
that great father of the church. Saint Augustine is the spiritual
forefather of those who in religious thought are believers in deter-
minism, in religious fatalism, with all the consequences which it
involves, such as predestination and the doctrine of primitive sin
which man is apparently endeavoring in vain to expiate. The theories
of Jansen were propagated in France through the teachings of his
friend the Abbe de Saint Cyran, a man of rigid and unbending
principles, and the spiritual director of the convent of Port Royal.
Port Royal was at the time dominated by members of the great
Arnauld family, one of whom had in earlier days offended the
strong and ambitious order of Jesuits. The Jesuits were by principle
and temperament unfavorable to the theories of Jansen. A doctrine
of self-concentration and of introspection, akin in almost every re-
spect to Calvinism, which awoke in a human being a thousand cares
and anxious doubts as to the why and wherefore of man's existence
on earth such a doctrine was diametrically opposed to the urbane
teachings of the Jesuits, eager rather to acquire new converts by
methods of amenity than to frighten them away by visions of dread.
Therefore, with the Arnaulds and Jansenists all linked together at
Port Royal, the convent became the storm center of religious dis-
cussion.
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS
In the course of the controversy, Pascal was invited by one of
the Arnaulds to help the cause of Jansenism. This he did by his
"Provincial Letters," most of them purporting to be a narrative of
the condition of religious affairs at Paris by a certain Louis de Mont-
alte to a friend in the provinces. In these letters, which are con-
sidered masterpieces of sarcastic polemic, Pascal did the Jesuits
untold harm. By methods which may seem sometimes technically
unfair, but which are after all employed by every controversial writer,
464 RELIGION
he attacked the doctrines of certain Jesuit writers upon religious
dogma, such as questions of Grace, and upon moral theories of
casuistry, the science dealing with the solution of dilemmas of
conscience and the exculpation of apparent offenses against righteous-
ness. In the long and violent contest which raged in the seventeenth
century, and of which the publication of the "Provincial Letters"
was an incident, the Jesuits succeeded in having the Jansenists con-
sidered heretics, and they managed to encompass the destruction of
Port Royal. But, whether rightly or wrongly (and here antagonists
will remain unreconciled), Pascal dealt them severe blows from
which, in France at least, they have never fully recovered.
THE "THOUGHTS"
The "Lettres Provinciales" are, however, in some respects, ephem-
eral literature as compared with the "Pensees" or "Thoughts." 1
In the "Thoughts" we have the sum and substance of Pascal's
religious views as well as one of the masterpieces of French literary
style. Pascal had long planned a work on religion in which he
intended to set forth the defense of Christianity. This work never
got beyond the stage of disconnected and fragmentary notes and
''Thoughts," from which it is difficult, if not impossible, to extract
the definite plan of the whole work. But, none the less, what we have
deserves the deepest consideration.
Pascal was by temperament a pessimist, and therefore he agreed
the more easily with the gloomy Augustinian determinism of the
Jansenists and their ideas of the sinfulness of man and of the neces-
sity of grace. He was no less convinced of the impotence of man's
reason to deal with the problems of the unknowable and of the
hereafter. Pascal had fed on the jesting skepticism of Montaigne
and realized how logically unanswerable it was in spite of its incon-
clusiveness. This realization made him feel that there was only one
egress from the impasse, it was to reject all the help and conclusions
of reason for or against, and to throw himself blindly into the arms
of God, an act symbolized by his acceptance of faith and the in-
fluence of grace upon him. It is for these reasons that Pascal is
1 Harvard Classics, vol. xlviii.
RELIGION 465
sometimes given such varying designations as "skeptic," "mystic,"
or "fideist"; that, moreover, his religious feeling is called by some the
expression of diseased hallucinations, by others visions of a seer into
the other world.
The underlying idea of the fragmentary "Thoughts" is the despair
of man, his weakness and powerlessness. But there remains some-
thing in man's own nature which protests against this despair. We
have a certainty that all is not as bad as it seems. Let us accept
the truths of the Christian religion and we then have the consola-
tion that our suffering is not without cause, that we are expiating
the original and primitive sin of mankind. This will at least make
us understand our condition. Thus we shall, in a way, be proving
Christianity and even God himself, beginning with man.
The fragmentary state of the "Thoughts" makes it impossible,
however, for the reader to work out the stages of this argument.
He will find it more profitable to take them as they stand, and he
will then be fully satisfied by words of imagination and of true
poetry. The language is permeated with lyrical inspiration: the
poet is a thinker who sees the abysses of immensity, spatial and tem-
poral, the infinitely vast and the infinitely small. He brings back
from the contemplation of them a feeling of terror and yet of self-
confidence. For though man be a prey to brutal outer nature, though
he may be but a frail reed beaten before the blast, yet he feels that
one thing lifts him above it all, the consciousness that he is a thinking
reed. The work is full of the vagueness of love for the divine; conse-
quently, in spite of Pascal's mathematical brain, it is no geometrical
proof for the persuasion of reason, but rather a way to take hold of
the feeling. Pascal is the intuitionalist of French classicism as Des-
cartes, 2 his philosophical rival, is its great rationalist.
The influence of Pascal upon French thought has been tremendous.
In his own day he helped to free French prose and its content from
the stilted rhetoric of certain self-conscious Latinists like Guez de-
Balzac. He helped some of the men of letters of his age to acquire
a new gentleness of feeling without the sacrifice of stoical self-control.
He familiarized writers who were taken up by considerations of a
2 See pamphlet on Philosophy in this series, Lecture III.
466 RELIGION
petty nationalism with visions of the boundless immensity which en-
wraps this little earth. He helped to make the French prose of his
day more clear and a mirror of the soul. And all this he accomplished
by a work of which we have only disconnected fragments, and by a
life tragic in its brevity, in its physical suffering, extraordinary by
its mental torture and intellectual vigor, the life of an all-embracing
genius such as the world produces scarcely once in many centuries.
