Section 8.—The Oriental Civilizations
We have already seen, in discussing the culture histories of India, China, and Moslem Persia, how ancient elements of rationalism continue to germinate more or less obscurely in the unpropitious soils of Asiatic life. Ignorance is in most oriental countries too immensely preponderant to permit of any other species of survival. But sociology, while recognizing the vast obstacles to the higher life presented by conditions which with a fatal facility multiply the lower, can set no limit to the possibilities of upward evolution. The case of Japan is a sufficient rebuke to the thoughtless iterators of the formula of the “unprogressiveness of the East.” While a cheerfully superstitious religion is there still normal among the mass, the transformation of the political ideals and practice of the nation under the influence of European example is so great as to be unparalleled in human history; and it has inevitably involved the substitution of rationalism for supernaturalism among the great majority of the educated younger generation. The late Yukichi Fukuzawa, who did more than any other man to prepare the Japanese mind for the great transformation effected in his time, was spontaneously a freethinker from his childhood;[340] and through a long life of devoted teaching he trained thousands to a naturalist way of thought. That they should revert to Christian or native orthodoxy seems as impossible as such an evolution is seen to be in educated Hindostan, where the higher orders of intelligence are probably not relatively more common than among the Japanese. The final question, there as everywhere, is one of social reconstruction and organization; and in the enormous population of China the problem, though very different in degree of imminence, is the same in kind. Perhaps the most hopeful consideration of all is that of the ever-increasing inter-communication which makes European and American progress tend in every succeeding generation to tell more and more on Asiatic life.
As to Japan, Professor B. H. Chamberlain pronounced twenty years ago that the Japanese “now bow down before the shrine of Herbert Spencer” (Things Japanese, 3rd ed. 1898, p. 321. Cp. Religious Systems of the World, 3rd ed. p. 103), proceeding in another connection (p. 352) to describe them as essentially an undevotional people. Such a judgment would be hard to sustain. The Japanese people in the past have exhibited the amount of superstition normal in their culture stage (cp. the Voyages de C. P. Thunberg au Japon, French tr. 1796, iii, 206); and in our own day they differ from Western peoples on this side merely in respect of their greater general serenity of temperament. There were in Japan in 1894 no fewer than 71,831 Buddhist temples, and 190,803 Shinto temples and shrines; and the largest temple of all, costing “several million dollars,” was built in the last dozen years of the nineteenth century. To the larger shrines there are habitual pilgrimages, the numbers annually visiting one leading Buddhist shrine reaching from 200,000 to 250,000, while at the Shintô shrine of Kompira the pilgrims are said to number about 900,000 each year. (See The Evolution of the Japanese, 1903, by L. Gulick, an American missionary organizer.)
Professor Chamberlain appears to have construed “devotional” in the light of a special conception of true devotion. Yet a Christian observer testifies, of the revivalist sect of Nichirenites, “the Ranters of Buddhism,” that “the wildest excesses that seek the mantle of religion in other lands are by them equalled if not excelled” (Griffis, The Mikado’s Empire, 1876, p. 163); and Professor Chamberlain admits that “the religion of the family binds them [the Japanese in general, including the ‘most materialistic’] down in truly sacred bonds”; while another writer, who thinks Christianity desirable for Japan, though he apparently ranks Japanese morals above Christian, declares that in his travels he was much reassured by the superstition of the innkeepers, feeling thankful that his hosts were “not Agnostics or Secularists,” but devout believers in future punishments (Tracy, Rambles through Japan without a Guide, 1892, pp. 131, 276, etc.).
A third authority with Japanese experience, Professor W. G. Dixon, while noting a generation ago that “among certain classes in Japan not only religious earnestness but fanaticism and superstition still prevail,” decides that “at the same time it remains true that the Japanese are not in the main a very religious people, and that at the present day religion is in lower repute than probably it has ever been in the country’s history. Religious indifference is one of the prominent features of new Japan” (The Land of the Morning, 1882, p. 517). The reconciliation of these estimates lies in the recognition of the fact that the Japanese populace is religious in very much the same way as those of Italy and England, while the more educated classes are rationalistic, not because of any “essential” incapacity for “devotion,” but because of enlightenment and lack of countervailing social pressure. To the eye of the devotional Protestant the Catholics of Italy, with their regard to externals, seem “essentially” irreligious; and vice versâ. Such formulas miss science. Two hundred years ago Charron, following previous schematists, made a classification in which northerners figured as strong, active, stupid, warlike, and little given to religion; the southerners as slight, abstinent, obstinate, unwarlike, and superstitious; and the “middle” peoples as between the two. La Sagesse, liv. i, ch. 42. The cognate formulas of to-day are hardly more trustworthy. Buddhism triumphed over Shintôism in Japan both in ancient and modern times precisely because its lore and ritual make so much more appeal to the devotional sense. (Cp. Chamberlain, pp. 358–62; Dixon, ch. x; Religious Systems of the World, pp. 103, 111; Griffis, p. 166.) But the æsthetically charming cult of the family, with its poetic recognition of ancestral spirits (as to which see Lafcadio Hearn, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, 1904), seems to hold its ground as well as any.
So universal is sociological like other law that we find in Japan, among some freethinkers, the same disposition as among some in Europe to decide that religion is necessary for the people. Professor Chamberlain (p. 352) cites Fukuzawa, “Japan’s most representative thinker and educationist,” as openly declaring that “It goes without saying that the maintenance of peace and security in society requires a religion. For this purpose any religion will do. I lack a religious nature, and have never believed in any religion. I am thus open to the charge that I am advising others to be religious while I am not so. Yet my conscience does not permit me to clothe myself with religion when I have it not at heart.... Of religions there are several kinds—Buddhism, Christianity, and what not. From my standpoint there is no more difference between those than between green tea and black.... See that the stock is well selected and the prices cheap....” (Japan Herald, September 9, 1897). To this view, however, Fukuzawa did not finally adhere. The Rev. Isaac Dooman, a missionary in Japan who knew him well, testifies to a change that was taking place in his views in later life regarding the value of religion. In an unpublished letter to Mr. Robert Young, of Kobe, Mr. Dooman says that on one occasion, when conversing on the subject of Christianity, Fukuzawa remarked: “There was a time when I advocated its adoption as a means to elevate our lower classes; but, after finding out that all Christian countries have their own lower classes just as bad, if not worse than ours, I changed my mind.” Further reflection, marked by equal candour, may lead the pupils of Fukuzawa to see that nations cannot be led to adore any form of “tea” by the mere assurance of its indispensableness from leaders who confess they never take any. His view is doubtless shared by those priests concerning whom “it may be questioned whether in their fundamental beliefs the more scholarly of the Shinshiû priests differ very widely from the materialistic agnostics of Europe” (Dixon, p. 516). In this state of things the Christian thinks he sees his special opportunity. Professor Dixon writes (p. 518), in the manner of the missionary, that “decaying shrines and broken gods are to be seen everywhere. Not only is there indifference, but there is a rapidly-growing skepticism.... The masses too are becoming affected by it.... Shintôism and ... Buddhism are doomed. What is to take their place?... It must be either Christianity or Atheism. We have the brightest hopes that the former will triumph in the near future....”
The American missionary before cited, Mr. Gulick, argues alternately that the educated Japanese are religious and that they are not, meaning that they have “religious instincts,” while rejecting current creeds. The so-called religious instinct is in fact simply the spirit of moral and intellectual seriousness. Mr. Gulick’s summing-up, as distinct from his theory and forecast, is as follows: “For about three hundred years the intelligence of the nation has been dominated by Confucian thought, which rejects active belief in supra-human beings.... The tendency of all persons trained in Confucian classics was towards thoroughgoing skepticism as to divine beings and their relation to this world. For this reason, beyond doubt, has Western agnosticism found so easy an entrance into Japan.... Complete indifference to religion is characteristic of the educated classes of to-day. Japanese and foreigners, Christians and non-Christians alike, unite in this opinion. The impression usually conveyed by this statement, however, is that agnosticism is a new thing in Japan. In point of fact, the old agnosticism is merely reinforced by ... the agnosticism of the West” (The Evolution of the Japanese, pp. 286–87). This may be taken as broadly accurate. Cp. the author’s paper on “Freethought in Japan” in the Agnostic Annual for 1906. Professor E. H. Parker notes (China and Religion, 1905, p. 263) that “the Japanese in translating Western books are beginning, to the dismay of our missionaries, to leave out all the Christianity that is in them.”
But a very grave danger to the intellectual and moral life of Japan has been of late set up by a new application of Shintôism, on the lines of the emperor-worship of ancient Rome. A recent pamphlet by Professor Chamberlain, entitled The Invention of a New Religion (R. P. A.; 1912), incidentally shows that the Japanese temperament is so far from being “essentially” devoid of devotion as to be capable of building up a fresh cultus to order. It appears that since the so-called Restoration of 1868, when the Imperial House, after more than two centuries of seclusion in Kyoto, was brought from its retirement and the Emperor publicly installed as ruler by right of his divine origin, the sentiment of religious devotion to the Imperial House has been steadily inculcated, reaching its height during the Russo-Japanese War, when the messages of victorious generals and admirals piously ascribed their successes over the enemy to the “virtues of the Imperial Ancestors.” In every school throughout the Empire there hangs a portrait of the emperor, which is regarded and treated as is a sacred image in Russia and in Catholic countries. The curators of schools have been known on occasion of fire and earthquake to save the imperial portrait before wife or child; and their action has elicited popular acclamation. On the imperial birthday teachers and pupils assemble, and passing singly before the portrait, bow in solemn adoration. The divine origin of the Imperial House and the grossly mythical history of the early emperors are taught as articles of faith in Japanese schools precisely as the cosmogony of Genesis has been taught for ages in the schools of Christendom. Some years ago a professor who exposed the absurdity of the chronology upon which the religion is based was removed from his post, and a teacher who declined to bow before a casket containing an imperial rescript was dismissed. His life was, in fact, for some time in danger from the fury of the populace. So dominant has Mikado-worship become that some Japanese Christian pastors have endeavoured to reconcile it with Christianity, and to be Mikado-worshippers and Christ-worshippers at the same time.[341] All creeds are nominally tolerated in Japan, but avowed heresy as to the divine origin of the Imperial House is a bar to public employment, and exposes the heretic to suspicion of treason. The new religion, which is merely old Shintôism revised, has been invented as a political expedient, and may possibly not long survive the decease of Mutsu Hito, the late emperor, who continued throughout his reign to live in comparative seclusion, and has been succeeded by a young prince educated on European lines. But the cult has obtained a strong hold upon the people; and by reason of social pressure receives the conventional support of educated men exactly as Christianity does in England, America, Germany, and Russia.
Thus there is not “plain sailing” for freethought in Japan. In such a political atmosphere neither moral nor scientific thought has a good prognosis; and if it be not changed for the better much of the Japanese advance may be lost. Rationalism on any large scale is always a product of culture; and culture for the mass of the people of Japan has only recently begun. Down till the middle of the nineteenth century nothing more than sporadic freethought existed.[342] Some famous captains were irreverent as to the omens; and in a seventeenth-century manual of the principles of government, ascribed to the great founder of modern feudalism, Iyéyasu, the sacrifices of vassals at the graves of their lords are denounced, and Confucius is even cited as ridiculing the burial of effigies in substitution.[343] But, as elsewhere under similar conditions, such displays of originality were confined to the ruling caste.[344] I have seen, indeed, a delightful popular satire, apparently a product of mother-wit, on the methods of popular Buddhist shrine-making; but, supposing it to be genuine and vernacular, it can stand only for that measure of freethought which is never absent from any society not pithed by a long process of religious tyranny. Old Japan, with its intense feudal discipline and its indurated etiquette, exhibited the social order, the grace, the moral charm, and the intellectual vacuity of a hive of bees. The higher mental life was hardly in evidence; and the ethical literature of native inspiration is of no importance.[345] To this day the educated Chinese, though lacking in Japanese “efficiency” and devotion to drill of all kinds, are the more freely intellectual in their habits of mind. The Japanese feudal system, indeed, was so immitigably ironbound, so incomparably destructive of individuality in word, thought, and deed, that only in the uncodified life of art and handicraft was any free play of faculty possible. What has happened of late is the rapid and docile assimilation of western science. Another and a necessarily longer step is the independent development of the speculative and critical intelligence; and in the East, as in the West, this is subject to economic conditions.
A similar generalization holds good as to the other Oriental civilizations. Analogous developments to those seen in the latter-day Mohammedan world, and equally marked by fluctuation, have been noted in the mental life alike of the non-Mohammedan and the Mohammedan peoples of India; and at the present day the thought of the relatively small educated class is undoubtedly much affected by the changes going on in that of Europe, and especially of England. The vast Indian masses, however, are far from anything in the nature of critical culture; and though some system of education for them is probably on the way to establishment,[346] their life must long remain quasi-primitive, mentally as well as physically. Buddhism is theoretically more capable of adaptation to a rationalist view of life than is Christianity; but its intellectual activities at present seem to tend more towards an “esoteric” credulity than towards a rational or scientific adjustment to life.
Of the nature of the influence of Buddhism in Burmah, where it has prospered, a vivid and thoughtful account is given in the work of H. Fielding, The Soul of a People, 1898. At its best the cult there deifies the Buddha; elsewhere, it is interwoven with aboriginal polytheism and superstition (Davids, Buddhism, pp. 207–211; Max Müller, Anthro. Rel., P. 132).
Within Brahmanism, again, there have been at different times attempts to set up partly naturalistic reforms in religious thought—e.g. that of Chaitanya in the sixteenth century; but these have never been pronouncedly freethinking, and Chaitanya preached a “surrender of all to Krishna,” very much in the manner of evangelical Christianity. Finally he has been deified by his followers. (Müller, Nat. Rel. p. 100; Phys. Rel. p. 356.)
More definitely freethinking was the monotheistic cult set up among the Sikhs in the fifteenth century, as the history runs, by Nanak, who had been influenced both by Parsees and by Mohammedans, and whose ethical system repudiated caste. But though Nanak objected to any adoration of himself, he and all his descendants have been virtually deified by his devotees, despite their profession of a theoretically pantheistic creed. (Cp. De la Saussaye, Manual of the Science of Religion, Eng. tr. pp. 659–62; Müller, Phys. Rel. p. 355.) Trumpp (Die Religion der Sikhs, 1881, p. 123) tells of other Sikh sects, including one of a markedly atheistic character belonging to the nineteenth century; but all alike seem to gravitate towards Hinduism.
Similarly among the Jainas, who compare with the Buddhists in their nominal atheism as in their tenderness to animals and in some other respects, there has been decline and compromise; and their numbers appear steadily to dwindle, though in India they survived while Buddhism disappeared. Cp. De la Saussaye, Manual, pp. 557–63; Rev. J. Robson, Hinduism, 1874, pp. 80–86; Tiele, Outlines, p. 141. Finally, the Brahmo-Somaj movement of the nineteenth century appears to have come to little in the way of rationalism (Mitchell, Hinduism, pp. 224–46; De la Saussaye, pp. 669–71; Tiele, p. 160).
The principle of the interdependence of the external and the internal life, finally, applies even in the case of Turkey. The notion that Turkish civilization in Europe is unimprovable, though partly countenanced by despondent thinkers even among the enlightened Turks,[347] had no justification in social science, though bad politics may ruin the Turkish, like other Moslem States; and although Turkish freethinking has not in general passed the theistic stage,[348] and its spread is grievously hindered by the national religiosity,[349] which the age-long hostility of the Christian States so much tends to intensify, a gradual improvement in the educational and political conditions would suffice to evolve it, according to the observed laws of all civilization. It may be that a result of the rationalistic evolution in the other European States will be to make them intelligently friendly to such a process, where at present they are either piously malevolent towards the rival creed or merely self-seeking as against each other’s influence on Turkish destinies.
In any case, it cannot seriously be pretended that the mental life of Christian Greece in modern times has yielded, apart from services to simple scholarship, a much better result to the world at large than has that of Turkey. The usual reactions in individual cases of course take place. An American traveller writing in 1856 notes how illiterate Greek priests glory in their ignorance, “asserting that a more liberal education has the effect of making atheists of the youth.” He adds that he has “known several deacons and others in the University [of Athens] that were skeptics even as to the truth of religion,” and would gladly have become laymen if they could have secured a livelihood.[350] But there was then and later in the century no measurable movement of a rationalistic kind. At the time of the emancipation the Greek priesthood was “in general at once the most ignorant and the most vicious portion of the community”;[351] and it remained socially predominant and reactionary. “Whatever progress has been made in Greece has received but little assistance from them.”[352] Liberal-minded professors in the theological school were mutinied against by bigoted students,[353] a type still much in evidence at Athens; and the liberal thinker Theophilus Kaïres, charged with teaching “atheistic doctrines,” and found guilty with three of his followers, died of jail fever while his appeal to the Areopagus was pending.[354]
Thus far Christian bigotry seems to have held its own in what once was Hellas. On the surface, Greece shows little trace of instructed freethought; while in Bulgaria, by Greek testimony, school teachers openly proclaim their rationalism, and call for the exclusion of religious teaching from the schools.[355] Despite the political freedom of the Christian State, there has thus far occurred there no such general fertilization by the culture of the rest of Europe as is needed to produce a new intellectual evolution of any importance. The mere geographical isolation of modern Greece from the main currents of European thought and commerce is probably the most retardative of her conditions; and it is hard to see how it can be countervailed. Italy, in comparison, is pulsating with original life, industrial and intellectual. But, given either a renascence of Mohammedan civilization or a great political reconstruction such as is latterly on foot, the whole life of the nearer East may take a new departure; and in such an evolution Greece would be likely to share.
[1] Memoir of Sydney Smith, by his daughter, Lady Holland, ed. 1869, p. 49. Lady Holland remarks on the same page that her father’s religion had in it “nothing intolerant.” [↑]
[2] Memoir of Sydney Smith, p. 142. [↑]
[3] Julien Luchaire, Essai sur l’évolution intellectuelle de l’Italie, 1906, pp. 5–7. [↑]
[4] Dr. Ramage, Nooks and Byeways of Italy, 1868, pp. 76, 105–13. Ramage describes the helplessness of the better minds before 1830. [↑]
[7] Doblado (Blanco White), Letters from Spain, 1822. p. 358. [↑]
[8] Thus the traveller and belletrist J. G. Seume, a zealous deist and opponent of atheism, and a no less zealous patriot, penned many fiercely freethinking maxims, as: “Where were the most so-called positive religions, there was always the least morality”; “Grotius and the Bible are the best supports of despotism”; “Heaven has lost us the earth”; “The best apostles of despotism and slavery are the mystics.” Apokryphen, 1806–1807, in Sämmtliche Werke, 1839, iv, 157, 173, 177, 219. [↑]
[9] C. H. Cottrell, Religious Movements of Germany, 1849, p. 12 sq. [↑]
[10] Cp. the author’s Evolution of States, pp. 138–39. [↑]
[11] When I thus planned the treatment of the nineteenth century in the first edition of this book, it was known to me that Mr. Alfred W. Benn had in hand a work on The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century; and the knowledge made me the more resolved to keep my own record condensed. Duly published in 1906 (Longmans, 2 vols.), Mr. Benn’s book amply fulfilled expectations; and to it I would refer every reader who seeks a fuller survey than the present. Its freshness of thought and vigour of execution will more than repay him. Even Mr. Benn’s copious work, however—devoting as it does a large amount of space to a preliminary survey of the eighteenth century—leaves room for various English monographs on the nineteenth, to say nothing of the culture history of a dozen other countries. [↑]
[12] Lecky, Hist. of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. 1892, iii, 382. [↑]
[13] Cp. Conway’s Life of Paine, ii, 252–53. [↑]
[14] This translation, issued by “Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, Paternoster Row, and all booksellers,” purports to be “with additions.” The translation, however, has altered d’Holbach’s atheism to deism. [↑]
[15] By W. Huttman. The book is “embellished with a head of Jesus”—a conventional religious picture. Huttman’s opinions may be divined from the last sentence of his preface, alluding to “the high pretentions and inflated stile of the lives of Christ which issue periodically from the English press.” [↑]
[16] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 208–209. [↑]
[17] See Harriet Martineau’s History of the Peace, ed. 1877, ii, 87, and Mrs. Carlile Campbell’s The Battle of the Press (Bonner, 1899), passim, as to the treatment of those who acted as Carlile’s shopmen. Women were imprisoned as well as men—e.g. Susanna Wright, as to whom see Wheeler’s Dictionary, and last ref. Carlile’s wife and sister were likewise imprisoned with him; and over twenty volunteer shopmen in all went to jail. [↑]
[18] Hone’s most important service to popular culture was his issue of the Apocryphal New Testament, which, by co-ordinating work of the same kind, gave a fresh scientific basis to the popular criticism of the gospel history. As to his famous trial for blasphemy on the score of his having published certain parodies, political in intention, see bk. i, ch. x (by Knight) of Harriet Martineau’s History of the Peace. [↑]
[19] Holyoake, Sixty Years of an Agitator’s Life, i, 109–10. See p. 111 as to other cases. [↑]
[20] Art. by Holyoake in Dict. of Nat. Biog. Cp. Sixty Years, per index. [↑]
[21] Articles in Dict. of Nat. Biog. [↑]
[22] Holyoake, Sixty Years, i, 47. [↑]
[23] Kirkup, History of Socialism, 1892, p. 64. [↑]
[24] “From an early age he had lost all belief in the prevailing forms of religion” (Kirkup, p. 59). [↑]
[25] Reformers of almost all schools, indeed, from the first regarded Owen with more or less genial incredulity, some criticizing him acutely without any ill-will. See Podmore’s Robert Owen, 1906, i, 238–42. Southey was one of the first to detect his lack of religious belief. Id. p. 222, n. [↑]
[27] Kirkup, as cited, p. 64. [↑]
[29] “Extraordinary self-complacency,” “autocratic action,” “arrogance,” are among the expressions used of him by his ablest biographer. (Podmore, ii, 641.) Of him might be said, as of Emerson by himself, “the children of the Gods do not argue”—the faculty being absent. [↑]
[30] Pamphlet sold at 1½d., and “to be had of all the Booksellers.” [↑]
[31] Of George Combe’s Constitution of Man (1828), a deistic work, over 50,000 copies were sold in Britain within twelve years, and 10,000 in America. Advt. to 4th ed. 1839. Combe avows that his impulse came from the phrenologist Spurzheim. [↑]
[32] See the details in his Last Trial by Jury for Atheism in England. [↑]
[33] The Gospel its Own Witness, 1799. rep. in Bohn’s ed. of The Principal Works and Remains of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 1852, pp. 136–37. [↑]
[34] See Prof. Flint’s tribute to the reasoning power of Bradlaugh and Holyoake in his Anti-Theistic Theories, 4th ed. pp. 518–19. [↑]
[35] See Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner’s Charles Bradlaugh, i, 149, 288–89. [↑]
[36] For a full record see Part II of Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner’s Charles Bradlaugh. [↑]
[37] After Bradlaugh had secured his seat, the noble lord even sought his acquaintance. [↑]
[38] Though young Conservative members, after 1886, privately professed sympathy. [↑]
[40] Coquerel, Essai sur l’histoire générale du christianisme, 1828, préf. [↑]
[41] Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Diary in France, 1845, pp. 75–77. [↑]
[42] “The miserable and deistical principle of the equality of all religions” (id. p. 188). Cp. pp. 151, 153. [↑]
[43] Id. pp. 15, 37, 45, 181, 185, 190. [↑]
[44] Id. pp. 157–61. As to the general vogue of rationalism in France at that period, see pp. 35, 204: and compare Saisset, Essais sur la philosophie et la religion, 1845; The Progress of Religious Thought as illustrated in the Protestant Church of France, by Dr. J. R. Beard, 1861; and Wilson’s article in Essays and Reviews. As to Switzerland and Holland, see Pearson, Infidelity, its Aspects, etc., 1853, pp. 560–64, 575–84. [↑]
[45] Louis Philippe sought to suppress this book, of which many editions had appeared before 1830. See Blanco White’s Life, 1845, ii. 168. [↑]
[46] Prof. E. Lavisse, Un Ministre: Victor Duruy, 1895 (rep. of art. in Revue de Paris, Janv. 15 and Mars 1, 1895), p. 117. [↑]
[50] Llorente, Hist. crit. de l’Inquisition de l’Espagne, 2e édit, iv, 153. [↑]
[51] Rapport of Ch. Fulpius in the Almanach de Libre Pensée, 1906. [↑]
[52] Squier, Notes on Central America, 1856, p. 227. [↑]
[53] Before 1840 the popular freethought propaganda had been partly carried on under cover of Radicalism, as in Carlile’s Republican, and Lion, and in various publications of William Hone. Cp. H. B. Wilson’s article “The National Church,” in Essays and Reviews, 9th ed. p. 152. [↑]
[54] Described as “our chief atheistic organ” by the late F. W. Newman “because Dr. James Martineau declined to continue writing for it, because it interpolated atheistical articles between his theistic articles” (Contributions ... to the early history of the late Cardinal Newman, 1891, p. 103). The review was for a time edited by J. S. Mill, and for long after him by Dr. John Chapman. It lasted into the twentieth century, under the editorship of Dr. Chapman’s widow, and kept a free platform to the end. [↑]
[55] Pastor W. Baur, Hamburg, Religious Life in Germany during the Wars of Independence, Eng. tr. 1872, p. 41. H. J. Rose and Pusey, in their controversy as to the causes of German rationalism, were substantially at one on this point of fact. Rose, Letter to the Bishop of London, 1829, pp. 19, 150, 161. [↑]
[57] Ueber die Religion: Reden an die gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern. These are discussed hereinafter. [↑]
[58] Lichtenberger, Hist. of Ger. Theol. in the Nineteenth Cent. Eng. tr. 1889, pp. 122–23. [↑]
[59] See the same volume, passim. [↑]
[60] Karl von Raumer, Contrib. to the Hist. of the German Universities, Eng. tr. 1859, p. 79. The intellectual tone of W. Baur and K. von Raumer certainly protects them from any charge of “enlightenment.” [↑]
[61] Laing, Notes of a Traveller, 1842, p. 181. [↑]
[62] C. H. Cotterill, Relig. Movements of Germany in the Nineteenth Century, 1849, pp. 39–40. [↑]
[63] Id. pp. 27–28, 41–42. [↑]
[64] Cp. Laing, as cited, pp. 206–207, 211. [↑]
[65] Cotterill, as cited, p. 84. [↑]
[66] Cotterill. as cited, pp. 43–47. [↑]
[67] Rapport de Ida Altmann, in Almanach de Libre Pensée, 1906, p. 20. [↑]
[68] The principal have been: Das freie Wort and Frankfurter Zeitung, Frankfort-on-Main; Der Freidenker, Friedrichshagen, near Berlin; Das freireligiöse Sonntagsblatt, Breslau; Die freie Gemeinde, Magdeburg; Der Atheist, Nuremberg; Menschentum, Gotha; Vossische Zeitung, Berlin; Berliner Volkszeitung, Berlin; Vorwärts (Socialist), Berlin; Weser Zeitung, Bremen; Hartungsche Zeitung, Königsberg; Kölnische Zeitung, Cologne. [↑]
[69] Studemund, Der moderne Unglaube in den unteren Ständen, 1901, p. 14. [↑]
[71] A. D. McLaren, An Australian in Germany, 1911, pp. 181, 184. [↑]
[72] Studemund, Der moderne Unglaube in den unteren Ständen, 1901, pp. 17, 21. [↑]
[73] Glossen zu Yves Guyot’s und Sigismund Lacroix’s “Die wahre Gestalt des Christentums.” [↑]
[78] Id. pp. 40–42. Cp. p. 43. Pastor Studemund cites other inquirers, notably Rade, Gebhardt, Lorenz, and Dietzgen, all to the same effect. [↑]
[79] E.g. Pastor A. Kalthoff’s Was wissen wir von Jesus? 1901. Since that date the opinion has found new and powerful supporters in Germany. [↑]
[80] “The people in the country do not read; in the towns they read little. The journals are little circulated. In Russia one never sees a cabman, an artisan, a labourer reading a newspaper” (Ivan Strannik, La pensée russe contemporaine, 1903, p. 5). [↑]
[81] Cp. E. Lavigne, Introduction à l’histoire du nihilisme russe, 1880, pp. 149, 161, 224; Arnaudo, Le Nihilisme, French trans. pp. 37, 58, 61, 63, 77, 86, etc.; Tikhomirov, La Russie, p. 290. [↑]
[82] Tikhomirov, La Russie, pp. 325–26, 338–39. [↑]
[83] Cp. Priestley, Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd ed. 1771, pp. 257–61, and Conway’s Centenary History of South Place, pp. 63, 77, 80. [↑]
[84] See Rev. Joseph Hunter, An Historical Defence of the Trustees of Lady Henley’s Foundations, 1834; The History, Opinions, and Present Legal Position of the English Presbyterians (official), 1834; An Examination and Defence of the Principles of Protestant Dissent, by the Rev. W. Hamilton Drummond, of Dublin, 1842. [↑]
[85] Conway, Autobiography, 1905, i, 123. [↑]
[86] So Prof. William James, The Will to Believe, etc., 1897, p. 133. [↑]
[87] Conway, Emerson at Home and Abroad, 1883, ch. vii. [↑]
[88] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, 1848, ii, 422. Rationalism seems to have spread soonest in the canton of Zürich. Id. ii, 427. [↑]
[89] Grote, Seven Letters concerning the Politics of Switzerland, pp. 34–35. Hagenbach (Kirchengeschichte, ii, 427–28) shows no shame over the insurrection at Zürich. But cp. Beard, in Voices of the Church in Reply to Dr. Strauss, 1845, pp. 17–18. [↑]
[90] Cp. the rapport of Ch. Fulpius in the Almanach de Libre Pensée, 1906. [↑]
[91] G. M. Theal, South Africa (“Story of the Nations” series), pp. 340, 345. Mr. Theal’s view of the mental processes of the Boers is somewhat à priori, and his explanation seems in part inconsistent with his own narrative. [↑]
[92] An English acquaintance of my own at Cape Town, who before the war not only was an orthodox believer, but found his chief weekly pleasure in attending church, was so astounded by the general attitude of the clergy on the war that he severed his connection, once for all. Thousands did the same in England. [↑]
[93] I write on the strength of personal testimonies spontaneously given to me in South Africa, some of them by clergymen of the Dutch Reformed Church. [↑]
[94] See the evidence collected in the pamphlet The Churches and the War, by Alfred Marks. New Age Office, 1905. [↑]
[95] For the survey here reduced to outline I am indebted to two Swedish friends. [↑]
[96] Cp. Lamon’s Life of Lincoln, and J. B. Remsburg’s Abraham Lincoln: Was he a Christian? (New York, 1893.) [↑]
[97] Remsburg, pp. 318–19. [↑]
[98] Personal information. [↑]
[100] Of these the New York Truthseeker has been the most energetic and successful. [↑]
[101] White, Warfare, i, 81. [↑]
[102] White, Warfare, i, 84, 86, 314, 317, 318. [↑]
[103] This view is not inconsistent with the fact that popular forms of credulity are also found specially flourishing in the West. Cp. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 3rd ed. ii, 832–33. [↑]
[104] As to the absolute predominance of rationalistic unbelief (in the orthodox sense of the word) in educated Germany in the first third of the century, see the Memoirs of F. Perthes, Eng. tr. 2nd ed. ii, 240–45, 255, 266–75. Despite the various reactions claimed by Perthes and others, it is clear that the tables have never since been turned. Cp. Pearson, Infidelity, pp. 554–59, 569–74. Schleiermacher was charged on his own side with making fatal concessions. Kahnis, Internal Hist. of German Protestantism, Eng. tr. 1856, pp. 210–11; Robins, A Defence of the Faith, 1862, i, 181; and Quinet as there cited. [↑]
[105] Aus Schleiermachers Leben: In Briefen, 1860, i, 42, 84. The father’s letters, with their unctuous rhetoric, are a revelation of the power of declamatory habit to eliminate sincere thought. [↑]
[106] Werke, 1843, i, 140. [↑]
[107] See Kabnis, p. 214, and refs. as to his relations with Frau Grunow. “He belonged to the circle of Prince Louis, in which intellect and art, but not morality,” reigned. Ib. Compare the sympathetic Lichtenberger, Hist. of Ger. Theol. in the Nineteenth Cent. Eng. tr. 1889, pp. 103–104. It was of course his clerical character that disadvantaged Schleiermacher in such matters. [↑]
[108] Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 87. [↑]
[109] Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 89. [↑]
[114] Strauss, Die Halben und die Ganzen, 1865, p. 18. [↑]
[115] For estimates of his work cp. Baur, Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrh., p. 45; Kahnis, as last cited; Pfleiderer, Development of Theology in Germany, 1893, bk. i, ch. iii; bk. ii, ch. ii; Lichtenberger, as cited; and art. by Rev. F. J. Smith in Theol. Review, July, 1869. [↑]
[116] Reuss, History of the Canon, Eng. tr. 1890, p. 387. Cp. Strauss, Einleitung in Das Leben Jesu, § 10. [↑]
[117] See a good account of the development in Strauss’s Introductions to his two Lives of Jesus. [↑]
[118] In a volume entitled Offenbarung und Mythologie. [↑]
[119] Hebräische Mythologie des alten und neuen Testaments. [↑]
[120] Evangeliencommentar, 1800–1804; Leben Jesu, 1828. [↑]
[121] Probabilia de Evangelii et Epistolarum Joannis Apostoli indole et origine. [↑]
[122] It is thus inaccurate—Strauss himself being the witness—to say, as does Dr. Conybeare (Hist. of N. T. Crit. p. 107), that Strauss was the first German writer to discern the unhistoricity of the Fourth Gospel. [↑]
[123] Das Leben Jesu, pref. to first ed. end. [↑]
[124] Hausrath, David Friedrich Strauss und die Theologie seiner Zeit, 1878, ii, 233–34. [↑]
[125] Pref. to work cited. Eng. tr. 1875, i, 86, 89. [↑]
[126] Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 391. [↑]
[127] Kritik der evang. Gesch. der Synoptiker, ed. 1846, Vorrede, pp. v–xiii. [↑]
[128] Baur, Kirchengesch. des 19ten Jahrh., pp. 388–89. [↑]
[129] Gesch. der Politik, Kultur, und Aufklärung des 18ten Jahrh. 4 Bde. 1843–45; Gesch. der französ. Revolution, 3 Bde. 1847. [↑]
[130] Russland und das Germanenthum, 1847. [↑]
[131] Lichtenberger, p. 378. [↑]
[132] Philo, Strauss, Renan, und das Urchristenthum, 1874; Christus und die Cäsaren, 1877. [↑]
[133] Das Christenthum und die chr. Kirche, 1854, p. 34. [↑]
[134] Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet, § 41, 3te Aufl. p. 254, 1st par. [↑]
[136] Cp. Christianity and Mythology, pt. iii, div. ii, § 6. [↑]
[137] Pref. to second Leben Jesu, ed. cited, p. xv. [↑]
[138] Zeller, David Friedrich Strauss, 2te Aufl. p. 113. [↑]
[139] Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, 1893, p. 16. Eichhorn seems to have known Astruc’s work only at second-hand, yet, without him, it might be contended, Astruc’s work would have been completely lost to science. (Id. p. 23.) [↑]
[140] See Dr. Cheyne’s surveys, which are those of a liberal ecclesiastic—a point of view on which he has since notably advanced. [↑]
[142] Kuenen, The Hexateuch, Eng. tr. introd. pp. xiv–xvii. [↑]
[143] Dr. Beard, in Voices of the Church in Reply to Strauss, 1845, pp. 16–17. [↑]
[144] Zeller, D. F. Strauss, Eng. tr. 1879, p. 56. [↑]
[145] See Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments, 1903, pp. 1–2, note. [↑]
[146] Mythen der alten Perser als Quellen christlicher Glaubenslehren, 1835; Der Mystagog, oder Deutung der Geheimenlehren, Symbole und Feste der christlichen Kirche, 1838; Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen zu neutestamentlichen Schriftstellen, 1839; Biblische Mythologie des alten und neuen Testaments, 1842; Der Festkalender, 1847, etc. [↑]
[147] Der Mystagog, 1838, p. vii, note, and p. 241. [↑]
[148] See Nork’s preamble on Hr. Fr. Daumer, ein kurzweiliger Molochsfänger, in his Biblische Mythologie, Bd. i. [↑]
[149] After being acquitted in 1880. The first charge was founded on his Britannica article “Bible”; the second on the article “Hebrew Language and Literature,” which appeared after the acquittal. [↑]
[150] These utterances were noted for their “vigour and independence” by Kuenen, and also by Dr. Cheyne, who remarks that the earlier work of Kalisch on Exodus (1855) was somewhat behind the critical standpoint of contemporary investigators on the Continent. (Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 207.) [↑]
[151] See his Introduction to the Study of the Old Testament, pref. “It is the spirit of compromise that I chiefly dread for our younger students,” wrote Dr. Cheyne in 1893 (Founders, p. 247). His courteous criticism of Dr. Driver does not fail to point the moral in that writer’s direction. [↑]
[152] Conrad, The German Universities for the Last Fifty Years, Eng. tr. 1885, p. 74. See p. 100 as to the financial measures taken; and p. 105 as to the essentially financial nature of the “reaction.” [↑]
[155] Id. p. 112. See pp. 118–19 as to Austria. [↑]
[157] White, Warfare, i, 239. In February, 1914, on a given Sunday, out of a Protestant population of over two millions, only 35,000 persons attended church in Berlin. Art. on “Creeds, Heresy-Hunting, and Secession in German Protestantism To-day,” in Hibbert Journal for July, 1914, p. 722. [↑]
[158] See Haeckel’s Freedom in Science and Teaching, Eng. tr. with pref. by Huxley, 1879, pp. xix, xxv, xxvii, 89–90; and Clifford. [↑]
[159] Büchner, for straightforwardly renouncing his connection with the State Church a generation ago, was blamed by many who held his philosophic opinions. In our own day, there has arisen a considerable Austrittsbewegung, or “Withdrawal Movement”; while creedless clerics strive to remain inside a Church bent on ejecting them. A. D. McLaren, in Hibbert Journal for July, 1914, art. cited. [↑]
[160] Tracts for the Times, vol. ii, ed. 1839; Records of the Church, No. xxiv. [↑]
[161] Tracts for the Times, No. 3. [↑]
[163] Cross’s Life, 1-vol. ed. p. 79. [↑]
[164] Account of the Printed Text of the Greek N. T., 1854, pref. and pp. 47, 112–13, 266. [↑]
[165] A third brother, Charles Robert, became an atheist. This, as well as his psychic infirmity, insures him sufficiently severe treatment at the hands of his theistic brother in the introduction to the latter’s Contributions Chiefly to the Early History of the late Cardinal Newman, 1891. [↑]
[166] Latterly abandoned by the learned author, who before his death disclosed his name—W. R. Cassels. [↑]
[167] See the testimonies of Pfleiderer, The Development of Theology since Kant, Eng. tr. 1890, p. 397, and Dr. Samuel Davidson, Introd. to the Study of the New Testament, pref. to 2nd ed. [↑]
[168] Ptie. i, liv. i, ch. v. [↑]
[169] Id. i, liv. iii, ch. ii. [↑]
[170] It is further to be remembered, however, that Mr. Matthew Arnold saw fit to defend Chateaubriand, calling him “great,” when his fame was being undone by common sense. [↑]
[171] C. Wordsworth, Diary in France, 1845, pp. 55–56, 124, 204. [↑]
[172] Essais sur la philosophie et la religion, 1845, p. 193. [↑]
[173] Histoire, tom. vii, Renaissance, introd. § 6. [↑]
[174] M. Faguet writes (Études sur le XIXe Siècle, p. 352) that “Michelet croit à l’âme plus qu’à Dieu, encore que profondément déiste. Les théories philosophiques modernes lui étaient pénibles.” This may be true, though, hardly any evidence is offered on the latter head; but when M. Faguet writes, “Est-il chrétien? Je n’en sais rien ... mais il sympathise avec la pensée chrétienne,” he seems to ignore the preface to the later editions of the Histoire de la révolution française. To pronounce Christianity, as Michelet there does, essentially anti-democratic, and therefore hostile to the Revolution, was, for him, to condemn it. [↑]
[175] Letter to Sainte-Beuve, cited by Levallois, Sainte-Beuve, 1872, p. 14. [↑]
[176] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, p. 951. [↑]
[177] “L’incrédulité de Sainte-Beuve était sincère, radicale, et absolue. Elle a été invariable et invincible pendant trente ans. Voilà la vérité” (Jules Levallois, Sainte-Beuve, 1872, préf. p. xxxiii). M. Levallois, who writes as a theist, was one of Sainte-Beuve’s secretaries. M. Zola, who spoke of the famous critic’s rationalism as “une négation n’osant conclure,” admitted later that it was hardly possible for him to speak more boldly than he did (Documents Littéraires, 1881, pp. 314, 325–28). And M. Lavisse has shown (as cited above, p. 406) with what courage he supported Duruy in the Senate against the attacks of the exasperated clerical party. See also his letter of 1867 to Louis Viardot in the avant-propos to that writer’s Libre Examen: Apologie d’un Incrédule, 6e édit. 1881, p. 3. [↑]
[178] That Wordsworth was not an orthodox Christian is fairly certain. Both in talk and in poetry he put forth a pantheistic doctrine. Cp. Benn, Hist. of Eng. Rationalism, i, 227–29; and Coleridge’s letter of Aug. 8, 1820, in Allsopp’s Letters, etc., of S. T. Coleridge, 3rd ed. 1864, pp. 56–57. [↑]
[179] Leslie Stephen, George Eliot, p. 27. [↑]
[180] Mr. Benn (Hist. of Eng. Rationalism, i, 226, 309 sq.) has some interesting discussions on Scott’s relation to religion, but does not take full account of biographical data and of Scott’s utterances outside of his novels. The truth probably is that Scott’s brain was one with “watertight compartments.” [↑]
[181] At the age of twenty-five we find him writing to Gifford: “I am no bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that because I doubted the immortality of man I should be charged with denying the existence of God” (letter of June 18, 1813). [↑]
[182] By the Court of Chancery, in 1822, the year in which copyright was refused to the Lectures of Dr. Lawrence. Harriet Martineau, History of the Peace, ii, 87. [↑]
[183] W. Sharp, Life of Severn, 1892, pp. 86–87, 90, 117–18. [↑]
[184] On reading Lamb’s severe rejoinder, Southey, in distress, apologized, and Lamb at once relented (Life and Letters of John Rickman, by Orlo Williams, 1912, p. 225). Hence the curtailment of Lamb’s letter in the ordinary editions of his works. [↑]
[185] William Allingham: A Diary, 1907, p. 253. Cp. p. 268. [↑]
[187] Allingham, as cited, p. 254. [↑]
[188] Id. p. 211. Carlyle said the same thing to Moncure Conway. [↑]
[189] Cp. Prof. Bain’s J. S. Mill, pp. 157, 191; Froude’s London Life of Carlyle, i, 458. [↑]
[191] See Brougham’s letters in the Correspondence of Macvey Napier, 1879, pp. 333–37. Brougham is deeply indignant, not at the fact, but at the indiscreet revelation of it—as also at the similar revelation concerning Pitt (p. 334). [↑]
[192] My Relations with Carlyle, 1903, p. 2. [↑]
[193] Morning Post, March 9, 1849. [↑]
[194] Germany, by Bisset Hawkins, M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P., Inspector of Prisons, late Professor at King’s College, etc., 1838, p. 171. [↑]
[195] History, ch. xix. Student’s ed. ii, 411. [↑]
[196] Sometimes he gives a clue; and we find Brougham privately denouncing him for his remark (Essay on Ranke’s History of the Popes, 6th par.) that to try “without the help of revelation to prove the immortality of man” is vain. “It is next thing to preaching atheism,” shouts Brougham (Letter of October 20, 1840, in Correspondence of Macvey Napier, p. 333), who at the same time hotly insisted that Cuvier had made an advance in Natural Theology by proving that there must have been one divine interposition after the creation of the world—to create species. (Id. p. 337.) [↑]
[197] In 1830, for instance, we find a Scottish episcopal D.D. writing that “Infidelity has had its day; it, depend upon it, will never be revived—NO MAN OF GENIUS WILL EVER WRITE ANOTHER WORD IN ITS SUPPORT.” Morehead, Dialogues on Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 266. [↑]
[198] Cp. the author’s Modern Humanists, pp. 189–94. [↑]
[199] Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System (1797), 8th ed. p. 368. Wilberforce points with chagrin to the superiority of Mohammedan writers in these matters. [↑]
[200] “In point of tendency I should class her books among the most irreligious I ever read,” delineating good characters in every aspect, “and all this without the remotest allusion to Christianity, the only true religion.” Cited in O. Gregory’s Brief Memoir of Robert Hall, 1833, p. 242. The context tells how Miss Edgeworth avowed that she had not thought religion necessary in books meant for the upper classes. [↑]
[201] Art. “The Faith of Richard Jefferies,” by H. S. Salt, in Westminster Review, August, 1905, rep. as pamphlet by the R. P. A., 1906. [↑]
[202] The writer of these scurrilities is Mr. Bramwell Booth, War Cry, May 27, 1905. [↑]
[203] Cp. Mrs. Sutherland Orr’s article on “The Religious Opinions of Robert Browning” in the Contemporary Review, December, 1891, p. 878; and the present writer’s Tennyson and Browning as Teachers, 1903. [↑]
[204] Apropos of his Theatrocrat, which he pronounced “the most profound and original of English books.” Mr. Davidson in a newspaper article proclaimed himself on socio-political grounds an anti-Christian. “I take the first resolute step out of Christendom,” was his claim (Daily Chronicle, December 20, 1905). [↑]
[205] See Talks with Emerson, by C. J. Woodbury, 1890, pp. 93–94. [↑]
[206] It was in his old age that Whitman tended most to “theize” Nature. In conversation with Dr. Moncure Conway, he once used the expression that “the spectacle of a mouse is enough to stagger a sextillion of infidels.” Dr. Conway replied: “And the sight of the cat playing with the mouse is enough to set them on their feet again”; whereat Whitman tolerantly smiled. [↑]
[207] Kahnis, Internal Hist. of Ger. Protestantism, Eng. tr. 1856, p. 78. [↑]
[208] Geständnisse, end (Werke, ed. 1876, iv, 59). [↑]
[209] Zur Gesch. der Relig. und Philos. in Werke, ed. cited, iii, 80. [↑]
[210] See Ernest Newman’s Study of Wagner, 1899, p. 390, note, as to the vagueness of Wagnerians on the subject. [↑]
[211] Tikhomirov, La Russie, 2e édit. p. 343. [↑]
[212] See Comte de Voguë’s Le roman russe, p. 218, as to his propaganda of atheism. [↑]
[213] Arnaudo, Le Nihilisme et les Nihilistes, French tr. 50. [↑]
[215] “Il [Tourguénief] était libre-penseur, et détestât l’apparat religieux d’une manière toute particulière.” I. Pavlovsky, Souvenirs sur Tourguénief, 1887, p. 242. [↑]
[216] See the article “Un Précurseur d’Henrik Ibsen, Soeren Kierkegaard,” in the Revue de Paris, July 1, 1901. [↑]
[217] Prof. A. D. White, Hist. of the Warfare of Science with Theology, 1896, i, 17, 22. [↑]
[218] The phrase is used by a French Protestant pastor. La vérité chrétienne et la doute moderne (Conférences), 1879, pp. 24–25. [↑]
[219] Antiquities of the Jews, by William Brown, D.D., Edinburgh, 1826, i, 121–22. Brown quotes “from a friend” a demonstration of the monstrous consequences of a stoppage of the earth’s rotation. [↑]
[220] Theopneustia: The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, Eng. trans. Edinburgh, 1850, pp. 246–49. Gaussen elaborately argues that if eighteen minutes were allowed for the stoppage of the earth’s rotation, no shock would occur. Finally, however, he argues that there may have been a mere refraction of the sun’s rays—an old theory, already set forth by Brown. [↑]
[221] Dr. C. R. Edmonds, Introd. to rep. of Leland’s View of the Deistical Writers, Tegg’s ed. 1837, p. xxiii. [↑]
[222] The work consists of twelve “Mémoires” or treatises, six of which were read in 1796–1797 at the Institute. They appeared in book form in 1802. [↑]
[223] Rapports, Ier Mémoire, § ii, near end. (Éd. 1843, p. 73.) Cp. Préf. (pp. 46–47). [↑]
[224] Ed. cited, p. 54. Cp. p. 207, note. [↑]
[225] Not published till 1824. [↑]
[227] Cp. Luchaire, as cited, p. 36. [↑]
[228] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, ii, 134. [↑]
[229] “Since Cabanis, the referring back of mental functions to the nervous system has remained dominant in physiology, whatever individual physiologists may have thought about final causes” (Lange, ii, 70). Compare the tribute of Cabanis’s orthodox editor Cerise (ed. 1843, Introd. pp. xlii-iii). [↑]
[230] Rapports, IIe Mémoire, near end. (Ed. cited, p. 122.) [↑]
[231] See the already cited introduction of Cerise, who solved the problem religiously by positing “a force which executes the plans of God without our knowledge or intervention” (p. xix). He goes on to lament the pantheism of Dr. Dubois (whose Examen des doctrines de Cabanis, Gall, et Broussais (1842) was put forward as a vindication of the “spiritual” principle), and of the German school of physiology represented by Oken and Burdach. [↑]
[232] Lawrence’s Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man, 8th ed. 1840, pp. 1–3. The aspersion of Abernethy is typical of the orthodox malignity of the time. Cabanis in his preface had expressly contended for the all-importance of morals. The orthodox Dr. Cerise, who edited his book in 1843, while acknowledging the high character of Cabanis, thought fit to speak of “the materialists” as “interested in abasing man” (introd. p. xxi). On the score of fear of demoralization, the champions of “spirit” themselves exhibited the maximum of baseness. [↑]
[233] Lawrence’s Lectures, p. 9, note. [↑]
[235] Yet Lawrence was created a baronet two months before his death. So much progress had been made in half a century. [↑]
[236] Work cited, pp. 355 sq., 375 sq. The tone is at times expressive of a similar attitude towards historical religion—e.g.: “Human testimony is of so little value ... that it cannot be received with sufficient caution. To doubt is the beginning of wisdom.” Id. p. 269. [↑]
[237] Cp. Whewell, Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed. iii, 505. [↑]
[238] White, as cited, i, 222–23, gives a selection of the language in general use among theologians on the subject. [↑]
[239] The early policy of the Geological Society of London (1807), which professed to seek for facts and to disclaim theories as premature (cp. Whewell, iii, 428; Buckle, iii, 392), was at least as much socially as scientifically prudential. [↑]
[240] See the excellent monograph of W. M. Mackenzie, Hugh Miller: A Critical Study, 1905, ch. vi; and cp. Spencer’s essay on Illogical Geology—Essays, vol. i; and Baden Powell’s Christianity without Judaism, 1857, p. 254 sq. Miller’s friend Dick, the Thurso naturalist, being a freethinker, escaped such error. (Mackenzie, pp. 161–64.) [↑]
[241] Cp. the details given by Whewell, iii, 406–408, 411–13, 506–507, as to early theories of a sound order, all of which came to nothing. Steno, a Dane resident in Italy in the seventeenth century, had reached non-Scriptural and just views on several points. Cp. White, Hist. of the Warfare of Science with Theology, i, 215. Leonardo da Vinci and Frascatorio had reached them still earlier. Above, vol. i, p. 371. [↑]
[242] Metamorphoses, lib. xv. [↑]
[243] He had just completed a work on the subject at his death. Cp. Mackenzie, Hugh Miller, as cited, pp. 134–35, 146–47. [↑]
[244] Christianity and Judaism, pp. 256–57. [↑]
[245] See Charles Darwin’s Historical Sketch prefixed to the Origin of Species. [↑]
[246] Meding, as cited by Darwin, 6th ed. i, p. xv. Goethe seems to have had his general impulse from Kielmeyer, who also taught Cuvier. Virchow, Göthe als Naturforscher, 1861, Beilage x. [↑]
[247] Memoirs of Newton, i, 131. Cp. More Worlds than One, 1854, pp. vi, 226. [↑]
[248] See Darwin’s Sketch, as cited. [↑]
[249] Letter of March 16, 1845, in Life of Whewell, by Mrs. Stair Douglas, 2nd ed. 1882, pp. 318–19. If this statement be true as to Owen, he shuffled badly in his correspondence with the author of the Vestiges. See the Life of Sir Richard Owen, 1894, i, 251. [↑]
[250] Mackenzie, Hugh Miller, p. 185. [↑]
[251] Foot-Prints of the Creator, end. [↑]
[252] Oxford Essays, 1856, p. 5. [↑]
[253] Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed. iii, 479–83; Life, as above cited. Whewell is said to have refused to allow a copy of the Origin of Species to be placed in the Trinity College Library. White, i, 84. [↑]
[255] Edward Clodd, Thomas Henry Huxley, 1902, pp. 19–20. [↑]
[256] Luthardt, Fundamental Truths of Christianity, Eng. tr. 1865, p. 74. [↑]
[257] See the many examples cited by White. As late as 1885 the Scottish clergyman Dr. Lee is quoted as calling the Darwinians “gospellers of the gutter,” and charging on their doctrine “utter blasphemy against the divine and human character of our incarnate Lord” (White, i, 83). Carlyle is quoted as calling Darwin “an apostle of dirt-worship.” His admirers appear to regard him as having made amends by admitting that Darwin was personally charming. [↑]
[258] E.g. the Education, small ed. pp. 41, 155. [↑]
[259] I am informed on good authority that in later life Huxley changed his views on the subject. He had abundant cause. As early as 1879 he is found complaining (pref. to Eng. tr. of Haeckel’s Freedom in Science and Teaching, p. xvii) of the mass of “falsities at present foisted upon the young in the name of the Church.” [↑]
[260] See a choice collection in the pamphlet What Men of Science say about God and Religion, by A. E. Proctor; Catholic Truth Society. [↑]
[261] Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. 1888, iii, 179. [↑]
[262] It is doubtful whether C. A. Walckenaer should be so described. His Essai sur l’histoire de l’espèce humaine (1798) has real scientific value. [↑]
[263] See the author’s Buckle and his Critics, 1895. [↑]
[264] Europe during the Middle Ages, 11th ed. i, 377. [↑]
[265] Cp. his Decline of the Roman Republic, 1864, i, 345–47; and note on p. 447 of his translation of Plutarch’s Brutus, Bohn ed. of Lives, vol. iv. [↑]
[266] See The Dynamics of Religion, pp. 227–33. [↑]
[267] It is difficult to understand the claim made for Hegel by his translator, the Rev. E. B. Speirs, that any student of his lectures on the Philosophy of Religion “will be constrained to admit that in them we have the true ‘sources’ of the evolution principle as applied to the study of religion” (edit. pref. to trans. of work cited, i, p. viii). To say nothing of Fontenelle and De Brosses, Constant had laid out the whole subject before Hegel. [↑]
[268] Primitive Culture, i. 2. [↑]
[269] Life and Letters, i, 151. [↑]
[270] Principles of Sociology, 3 vols. 1876–96. [↑]
[271] Cp. Saintes, Hist. crit. du rationalisme en Allemagne, p. 323. [↑]
[273] As to Hegel’s mental development cp. Dr. Beard on “Strauss, Hegel, and their Opinions,” in Voices of the Church in Reply to Strauss, 1845, pp. 3–4. [↑]
[274] E. Caird, Hegel, 1883, p. 94. [↑]
[275] E.g. Philos. of Religion, introd. Eng. tr. i, 38–40. [↑]
[276] Id. p. 41. Cp. pp. 216–17. [↑]
[278] Cp. Morell, as cited, and pp. 195–96; and Feuerbach, as summarized by Baur, Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrh. p. 390. [↑]
[279] Cp. Michelet as cited by Morell, ii, 192–93. [↑]
[280] As to Strauss cp. Beard, as above cited, pp. 21–22, 30; and Zeller, David Friedrich Strauss, Eng. tr. pp. 35, 47–48, 71–72, etc. [↑]
[281] As to Vatke see Pfleiderer, as cited, p. 252 sq.; Cheyne, Founders of O. T. Criticism, 1893, p. 135. [↑]
[282] E.g. Dr. Hutchison Stirling. See his trans. of Schwegler’s Handbook of the History of Philosophy, 6th ed. p. 438 sq. [↑]
[283] Baur, last cit. p. 389. [↑]
[284] Geständnisse, Werke, iv, 33. Cp. iii, 110. [↑]
[285] Cp. Hagenbach, pp. 369–72; Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, pp. 387–88. On Bauer’s critical development and academic career see Baur, Kirchengesch. des 19ten Jahrh. pp. 386–89. [↑]
[286] Die Selbstzersetzung des Christenthums und die Religion der Zukunft, 2te Aufl. 1874 trans. in Eng. as The Religion of the Future, 1886. [↑]
[287] See Schopenhauer’s dialogues on Religion and Immortality, and his essay on The Christian System (Eng. tr. by T. B. Samplers), and Nietzsche’s Antichrist. The latter work is discussed by the writer in Essays in Sociology, vol. ii. [↑]
[288] Prof. Seth Pringle-Pattison, who passes many just criticisms on their work (Philos. of Relig. in Kant and Hegel, rep. with The Philosophical Radicals), does not seem to suspect this determination. [↑]
[289] Baur gives a good summary, Kirchengeschichte, pp. 390–94. [↑]
[290] “M. Feuerbach et la nouvelle école hégélienne,” in Études d’histoire religieuse. [↑]
[291] A. Kohut, Ludwig Feuerbach, sein Leben und seine Werke, 1909, p. 48. [↑]
[292] Die Halben und die Ganzen, p. 50. “Feuerbach a ruiné le système de Hegel et fondé la positivisme.” A. Lévy, La philosophie de Feuerbach et son influence sur la litt. allemande, 1904, introd. p. xxii. [↑]
[293] E.g. “All knowledge, all conviction, all piety ... is based on the principle that in the spirit, as such, the consciousness of God exists immediately with the consciousness of itself.” Philos. of Relig. Eng. tr. introd. i. 42–43. [↑]
[294] Essence of Christianity, Eng. tr. 1854, p. 12. [↑]
[295] Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrhunderts, pp. 393–94. [↑]
[296] Cp. A. Lévy, as cited, ch. iv. [↑]
[298] Reden über Religion, ihr Entstehen und Vergehen, an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verehrern—a parody of the title of the famous work of Schleiermacher. [↑]
[300] Büchner expressly rejected the term “materialism” because of its misleading implications or connotations. Cp. in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner’s Charles Bradlaugh the discussion in Pt. ii, ch. i, § 3 (by J. M. R.). [↑]
[301] While the cognate works of Carl Vogt and Moleschott have gone out of print, Büchner’s, recast again and again, continues to be republished. [↑]
[302] Cp. Paul Deschanel, Figures Littéraires, 1889, pp. 130–32, 171–73; Lévy-Bruhl, The Philosophy of Auguste Comte, Eng. tr. 1903, p. 190; and Ch. Adam, La Philosophie en France, 1894. p. 228. [↑]
[303] Adam, as cited, pp. 227–30. [↑]
[304] In his Mélanges philosophiques (1833), Eng. trans. (incomplete) by George Ripley, Philos. Essays of Th. Jouffroy, Edinburgh, 1839, ii, 32. Ripley, who was one of the American transcendentalist group and a member of the Brook Farm Colony, indicates his own semi-rationalism in his Introductory Note, p. xxv. [↑]
[305] Mélanges philosophiques, trans. as cited, ii, 95. [↑]
[306] Essai, cited, i, 232, 237. [↑]
[309] Correspondance, 1858–86, letter of May 26, 1833. [↑]
[310] Letters of August 1 and November 25. [↑]
[311] Cp. Ch. Adam, La Philosophie en France, 1894, p. 105. [↑]
[313] Littré, Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, pp. 123, 125–26. [↑]
[314] Article in 1844, rep. in Essais sur la philosophie et la religion, 1845, p. 1. [↑]
[315] See M. Lévy-Bruhl’s Philosophy of Auguste Comte, Eng. tr. pp. 10–15. M. Lévy-Bruhl really does not attempt to meet Littre’s argument, which he puts aside. [↑]
[316] Cp. Prof. Botta’s chapter in Ueberweg’s Hist. of Philos. ii, 513–16. [↑]
[317] Veitch’s Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, 1869, p. 54. Cp. Hamilton’s own Discussions, 1852, p. 187 (rep. of article of 1839). [↑]
[319] In his Church of Englandism and its Catechism Examined (1818), and Not Paul but Jesus (1823), by “Gamaliel Smith.” [↑]
[320] Under the pseudonym of Philip Beauchamp. See The Minor Works of George Grote, edited by Professor Bain, 1873, p. 18; Athenæum, May 31, 1873; J. S. Mill’s Autobiography, p. 69; and Three Essays on Religion, p. 76. [↑]
[321] Cp. Morell, Spec. Philos. of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, ii, 620; and Life and Corr. of Whately, by E. Jane Whately, abridged ed. p. 159. [↑]
[322] Articles in the Edinburgh Review (1829–30); and professorial lectures at Edinburgh (1839–56). [↑]
[323] Cp. Veitch’s Memoir, pp. 195–97. [↑]
[324] Bampton Lectures on The Limits of Religious Thought, 4th ed. pref. p. xxxvi, note. After thus declaring all metaphysics to be profoundly delusive, Mansel shows at his worst (Philosophy of the Conditioned, 1866, p. 188) by disparaging Mill as an incompetent metaphysician. [↑]
[326] Spencer has avowed in his Autobiography (ii, 75) what might be surmized by critical readers, that he wrote the First Part of First Principles in order to guard against the charge of “materialism.” This motive led him to misrepresent “atheism,” and there was a touch of retribution in the general disregard of his disavowal of materialism, at which he expresses surprise. The broad fact remains that for prudential reasons he set forth at the very outset of his system a set of conclusions which could properly be reached only at the end, if at all. [↑]
[327] As to his fluctuations, which lasted till his death, cp. the author’s New Essays towards a Critical Method, 1897, pp. 144–47, 149–54, 168–69. [↑]
[328] Baur, Die christliche Lehre der Versöhnung, 1838, pp. 54–63, 124–31. [↑]
[329] Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, Eng. tr. pp. 248–87. [↑]
[330] Field’s Memoirs of Parr, 1828, ii, 363, 374–79. [↑]
[331] See Pearson’s Infidelity, its Aspects, Causes, and Agencies, 1853, p. 215 sq. The position of Maurice and Parr (associated with other and later names) is there treated as one of the prevailing forms of “infidelity,” and called spiritualism. In Germany the orthodox made the same dangerous answer to the theistic criticism. See the Memoirs of F. Perthes, Eng. tr. 2nd. ed. ii, 242–43. [↑]
[332] Ed. cited, pp. 158–59. [↑]
[333] Pearson, as cited, pp. 560–62, 568–79, 584–84. [↑]
[334] Letter in W. L. Courtney’s J. S. Mill, 1889, p. 142. [↑]
[335] Cp. Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896, pp. 59, 71. Schechter writes with a marked Judaic prejudice. [↑]
[337] This title imitates that of the famous More Nebuchim of Maimonides. [↑]
[338] Zunz, cited by Schechter, p. 79. [↑]
[339] Whence Krochmal is termed the Father of Jewish Science. Id. p. 81. [↑]
[340] A Life of Mr. Yukichi Fukuzawa, by Asatarô Miyamori, revised by Prof. E. H. Vickers, Tokyo, 1902, pp. 9–10. [↑]
[341] Pamphlet cited, p. 16. [↑]
[342] A curious example of sporadic freethought occurs in a pamphlet published towards the end of the eighteenth century. In 1771 a writer named Motoōri began a propaganda in favour of Shintôism with the publication of a tract entitled Spirit of Straightening. This tract emphatically asserted the divinity of the Mikado, and elicited a reply from another writer named Ichikawa, who wrote: “The Japanese word kami (God) was simply a title of honour; but in consequence of its having been used to translate the Chinese character shin (shên) a meaning has come to be attached to it which it did not originally possess. The ancestors of the Mikados were not Gods, but men, and were no doubt worthy to be reverenced for their virtues; but their acts were not miraculous nor supernatural. If the ancestors of living men were not human beings, they are more likely to have been birds or beasts than Gods.” Art.: “The Revival of Pure Shinto,” by Sir E. N. Satow, in Trans. Asiatic Society of Japan. [↑]
[343] Lafcadio Hearn, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, 1904, p. 313; cp. p. 46. [↑]
[344] Thus the third emperor of the Ming dynasty in China (1425–1435), referring to the belief in a future life, makes the avowal: “I am fain to sigh with despair when I see that in our own day men are just as superstitious as ever” (Prof. E. H. Parker, China and Religion, 1905, p. 99). [↑]
[345] See Hearn, as cited, passim. [↑]
[346] Cp. Sir F. S. P. Lely, Suggestions for the Better Governing of India, 1906, p. 59. [↑]
[347] See article on “The Future of Turkey” in the Contemporary Review, April, 1899, by “A Turkish Official.” [↑]
[348] Yet, as early as the date of the Crimean War, it was noted by an observer that “young Turkey makes profession of atheism.” Ubicini, La Turquie actuelle, 1855, p. 361. Cp. Sir G. Campbell, A Very Recent View of Turkey, 2nd ed. 1878, p. 65. Vambéry makes somewhat light of such tendencies (Der Islam im 19ten Jahrhundert, 1875, pp. 185,187); but admits cases of atheism even among mollahs, as a result of European culture (p. 101). [↑]
[349] Ubicini (p. 344), with Vambéry and most other observers, pronounces the Turks the most religious people in Europe. [↑]
[350] H. M. Baird, Modern Greece, New York, 1856, pp. 123–24. [↑]
[355] Prof. Neocles Karasis, Greeks and Bulgarians in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, London, 1907, pp. 15–17, citing a Bulgarian journal. [↑]