§ 211.15. The Taepings in China.—Hung-sen-tsenen, born in 1813 in the province of Shan-Tung, was destined for the learned profession but failed in his examination at Canton. There he first, in 1833, came into contact with Protestant missionaries, whose misunderstood words awakened in him the belief that he was called to perform great things. At the same time he there got possession of some Christian Chinese tracts. Failing in his examination a second time in 1837, he fell into a dangerous illness and had a series of visions in which an old man with a golden beard appeared, handing to him the insignia of imperial rank, and commanding him to root out the demons. After his recovery he became an elementary teacher. A relative called Li visited him in 1843. The Christian tracts were again sought out and carefully studied. Sen now recognised in the old man of his visions the God of the Christians and in himself the younger brother of Jesus. The two baptized one another and won over two young relatives to their views. Expelled from their offices, they went in 1844 to the province of Kiang Se as pencil and ink sellers, preached diligently the new doctrine and founded numerous small congregations of their sect. The American missionaries at Canton heard of the success of their preaching, and Sen accepted an invitation to join them in 1847. The missionary Roberts had a great esteem for him and intended to baptize him, when in consequence of stories spread about him their relations became strained. Sen now returned in 1848 to his companions in Kiang Se, who had diligently and successfully continued their preaching. In 1850 they began to attract attention by the violent destruction of idols. When now all the remnants of a pirate band joined them as converts, they were in common with these persecuted by the government and proclaimed rebels. The expulsion of the hated Mantshu dynasty, which two hundred years before had displaced the Ming dynasty, and the overthrow of idolatry were now their main endeavour, and in 1857 they organized under Sen a regular rebellion for the setting up of a Taeping dynasty, i.e., of universal peace. The Taeping army advanced unhindered, all Mantschu soldiers who fell into its hands were massacred, and of the inhabitants of the provinces conquered, only those were spared who joined their ranks. In March, 1853, they stormed the second capital of the empire, Nankin, the old residence of the Ming dynasty. There Sen fixed his residence and styled himself Tien-Wang, the Divine Prince. He assigned to ten subordinate princes the government of the conquered provinces, almost the half of the immense empire. Thousands of bibles were circulated; the ten commandments proclaimed as the foundation of law, many writings, prayers and poems composed for the instruction of the people, and these with the bible made subjects of examination for entrance to the learned order. An Arian theory of the trinity was set forth; the Father is the one personal God, whose likeness in bodily human form Sen strictly forbade, destroying the Catholic images as well as the Chinese idols. Jesus is the first-born son of God, yet not himself God, sent by the Father into the world in order to enlighten it by his doctrine and to redeem it by his atoning sufferings. Sen, the younger brother of Jesus, was sent into the world to spread the doctrine of Jesus and to expel the demons, the Mantschu dynasty. Reception takes place through baptism. The Lord’s Supper was unknown to them. Bloody and bloodless offerings were still tolerated. The use of wine and tobacco was forbidden; the use of opium and trafficking in it were punished with death. But polygamy was sanctioned. Saturday, according to the Old Testament, was their holy day. Their service consisted only of prayer, singing and religious instruction; but also written prayers were presented to God by burning.
§ 211.16. Sen himself had no more visions after 1837. But other ecstatic prophets arose, the eastern prince Yang and the western prince Siao. The revelations of the latter were comparatively sober, but those of the former were in the highest degree blasphemously fanatical. He declared himself the Paraclete promised by Jesus, and taught that God himself, as well as Jesus, had a wife with sons and daughters. He was at the same time a brave and successful general, and the mass of the Taepings were enthusiastically attached to him. Sen humbly yielded to the extravagances of this fanatic, even when Yang sentenced him to receive forty lashes. Sen’s overthrow was already resolved upon in Yang’s secret council, when Sen took courage and gave the northern prince secret orders to murder Yang and his followers in one night. This was done, and Sen was weak enough to allow the executioner of his secret order to be publicly put to death so as to appease the excited populace. But he thus again in 1856 became master of the situation.—One of the oldest apostles of Sen, his near relative Hung Yin, had been turned off at Hong Kong. He there attached himself to the Basel missionary, Hamberg, who in 1852 baptized him and made him his native helper. In hope of winning his cousin to the true Christian faith, he travelled in 1854 to Nankin, which however he did not reach till January, 1859. Sen received him gladly and made him his war minister. But his efforts to introduce a purer Christianity among the Taepings were unsuccessful, for he tried the slippery way of accommodation, and under pressure from Sen set up for himself a harem. In October, 1860, on Sen’s repeated invitation, his former teacher, the missionary Roberts of Nankin, arrived and was immediately made minister for foreign affairs. The Shanghai missionaries, several of whom visited Nankin, had interesting interviews with Yin in 1860, but not with the emperor, as they refused to go on their knees before him. They were encouraged by Yin to hope for a future much needed purifying of Taeping Christianity. Yang’s revelations, however, held their ground after as well as before, and were increased by further absurdities. To such crass fanaticism was now added the inhuman cruelty with which they massacred the vanquished and wasted the conquered cities and districts. Had the European powers ranged themselves in a friendly and peaceful attitude alongside of the Taepings, China might now have been a Christian empire. Instead of this the English, on account of the extreme opposition of the Taepings to the opium traffic, took up a hostile position toward them, while they were also in disfavour with the French, who had been denounced by them as idolaters on account of their Romish image worship. Down to the beginning of 1862, however, Yin’s influence had prevented any hostile proceedings against the Europeans in spite of many provocations given. But after that the Taepings refused them any quarter. Roberts fled by night to save his life. Against disciplined European troops the rebels could not hold their ground.One city after another was taken from them, and at last, in July 1864, their capital Nankin. Sen was found poisoned in his burning palace.[573]
§ 211.17. The Spiritualists.—The shoemaker’s apprentice, Andrew Jackson Davis of Poughkeepsie on the Hudson, in his nineteenth year fell into a magnetic sleep and composed his first work, “The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind,” in 1845. He declared its utterances to be spiritual revelations from the other world. But his later writings composed in working hours made the same claim, especially the five volume work, “Great Harmonia, being a Philosophical Revelation of the Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial Universe,” 1850 ff. Both went through numerous editions and were translated into German. The great spiritual manifestation promised in the first work was not long delayed. In a house bought by the family of Fox in Hydesville in New York State a spectral knocking was often heard. Through the intercourse which the two youngest daughters, aged nine and twelve years, had with the ghosts, the skeleton of a murdered five years’ old child of a pedlar was discovered buried in the cellar, and when the family soon thereafter left the house, the ghosts went with them and continued their communications by table turning, table rapping, table writing, etc. The thing now became epidemic. Hundreds and thousands of male and female mediums arose and held an extremely lively and varied intercourse with innumerable departed ones of earlier and later times. The believers soon numbered millions, including highly educated persons of all ranks, even such exact chemists as Mapes and Hare. An abundant literature in books and journals, as well as Sunday services, frequent camp-meetings and annual congresses formed a propaganda for the alleged spiritualism, which soon found its way across the ocean and won enthusiastic adherents for all confessions in all European countries, especially in London, Paris, Brussels, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Dresden, Leipzig, etc. They now broke up into two parties called respectively Spiritualists and Spiritists. The former put in the foreground physical experiments with astonishing results and miraculous effects; the latter, with the Frenchman Allan Kardec (Rivail) as their leader, give prominence to the teaching of spirits by direct communication. The former in reference to the origin of the human soul held by the theory of traducianism; the latter to that of pre-existence in connection with a doctrine of re-incarnation of spirits by reason of growing purity and perfection. The latter see in Christ the incarnation of a spirit of the highest order; the former merely the purest and most perfect type of human nature. But neither admit the real central truth of Christianity, the reconciliation of sinful humanity with God in Christ. Both evaporate the resurrection into a mere spectral spirit manifestation; and the disclosures and utterances of the spirits with both are equally trivial, silly, and vain.—In England the famous palæontologist and collaborateur of Darwin, Alfr. Russel Wallace, and the no less celebrated physicist Wm. Crookes, are apologists of spiritualism. The latter declared in 1879 that to the three well-known conditions of matter, solid, fluid and gaseous, should be added a fourth, “radiant,” and that there is the borderland where force and matter meet. And in Germany the acute Leipzig astrophysicist Fr. Zöllner, after a whole series of spiritualistic séances conducted by the American medium Slade in 1877 and 1878 had been carefully scrutinized and tested by himself and several of his most accomplished scientific colleagues, was convinced of the existence and reality of higher “four dimension” space in the spirit world, to which by reason of its fourth dimension the power belonged of passing through earthly bodily matter. The philosophers I. H. Fichte of Stuttgart and Ulrici of Halle have admitted the reality of spiritualistic communications and allege them as proofs of immortality. Among German theologians Luthardt of Leipzig regards it all as the work of demons who take advantage for their own ends of the moral-religious dissolution of the modern world and its consequent nerve shaking that prevails, just as in the ancient world in the beginnings of Christianity. Zöckler of Greifswald finds an analogy between it and the demoniacal possession of New Testament times; so too Martensen in his “Jacob Boehme,” and on the Catholic side W. Schneider; while Splittgerber refers most of the manifestations in question to a merely subjective origin in “the right side of the human soul life,” but puts the materialization of spirits in the category of delusive jugglery.Spiritualism has scarcely rallied from the obloquy cast upon it by the unmasking of the tricks of the famous medium Miss Florence Cook in London in 1880 and of the distinguished spirit materialiser Bastian by the Grand-duke John of Austria in 1884.[574]
§ 211.18. To the domain of unquestionable illusion belongs also the spiritualistic movement of Indian Theosophism or Occultism. The American Col. Olcott of New York had already moved for twenty-two years in spiritualist circles when in 1874 he met with Madame Blavatsky, widow of a Russian general who had been governor of Erivan in Armenia. She professed to have been from her eighth year in communication with spirits, then to have had secret intercourse with the Mahatmas, i.e. spirits of old Indian penitents, during a seven years’ residence on the Himalayas. She now promised to introduce the colonel to them. Olcott and Blavatsky founded at New York in 1875 a society for research in the department of the mystic sciences, travelled in 1878 to Further India and Ceylon, and settled finally in Madras, whence by word and writing they proclaimed through the whole land theosophism or occultism as the religion of the future, which, consisting in a medley of Hinduism and Buddhism, enriched by spiritualistic revelations of Mahatmas, vouched for by spiritualistic signs and miracles and conformed to the most recent philosophical and scientific researches in America and Europe, aimed at heaping contempt upon Christianity and finally driving it from the field. As fanatical opponents of Christian missions in India they were strongly supported by the Brahman and Buddhist hierarchy, and soon obtained for the theosophical society founded by them not only numerous adherents from among the natives, but also many Englishman befooled by their spiritualistic swindle. As apostle and literary pioneer of the new religion appeared an Anglo-Indian called Sinnett. In spring, 1884, Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott went on a propagandist tour to Europe, where, in England, France, Austria, and Hungary, they won many converts, while Col. Olcott at Elberfeld and Madame Blavatsky at Odessa founded branches of their theosophical society.—But meanwhile in India affairs assumed a threatening aspect. Blavatsky on her departure had entrusted the keys of her dwelling and her mysterious cabinet with its various panels, falling doors, etc., to Mr. and Mrs. Coulomb, who had been hitherto her assistants in all her juggleries. Madame Coulomb, however, quarrelled with the board of theosophists at Madras, and revenged herself by placing in the hands of the Scottish mission letters addressed by Blavatsky to herself and her husband which supplied evidence that all her spiritualistic manifestations were only common tricks. In addition she gave public exhibitions in which she demonstrated to the spectators ad oculos the spiritual manifestations of the Mahatmas, and subsequently published an “Account of My Acquaintanceship with Madame Blavatsky, 1872-1884,” with discoveries of her earlier rogueries. Meanwhile the swindler had herself in December, 1884, returned to Madras in company with several believers gathered up in England, among others a young English clergyman, Leadbeater, who some days previously in Ceylon had formally adopted Buddhism. The theosophists now demanded that the reputed cheat and deceiver should be brought before a civil court.The president, however, declared that the investigations and judgment of a profane court of law could not be accepted to the mysteries of occultism, but promised a careful examination by a commission appointed by himself, and Blavatsky thought it advisable “for the restoration of her health in a cooler climate” to make off from the scene of conflict.[575]
§ 212. Antichristian Socialism and Communism.
While the antichristian spirit of the age breaks out in various theoretical forms in our literature, there also abound social and communistic movements of a practical kind. Socialism and communism both aim at a thorough-going reform of the rights of property and possession in strict proportion to the labour spent thereon. They are, however, distinguished in this, that while communism declares war against all private property and demands absolute community of goods, socialism, at least in its older and nobler forms, proceeding from the idea of precise correspondence between capital and labour, seeks to have expression given to this in fact. From the older socialism, which endeavoured to reach its end in a peaceful way within the existing lines of civil order, a later social democracy is to be distinguished by its decidedly politico-revolutionary character and tendency to attach itself more to communism. This modern socialism thinks to open the way to the realization of its hare-brained ideas by the confusion and overthrow of existing law and order.
§ 212.1. The Beginnings of Modern Communism.—As early as 1796 Babeuf published in Paris a communistic manifesto which maintained the thesis that natural law gives all men an equal right to the enjoyment of all goods. His ideas were subsequently systematized and developed by Fourier, Proudhon, Cabet, and Louis Blanc in France, and by Weibling and Stirner in Germany. In a treatise of 1840 Proudhon answered the question, Qu’est-ce que la propriété? in words which afterwards became proverbial, and formed the motto of communism: La propriété c’est le vol. But the mere negation of property affords no permanent standing ground. All altars must be thrown down; all religion rooted out as the plague of humanity; the family and marriage, as the fountain of all selfishness, must be abolished; all existing governments must be overthrown; all Europe must be turned into one great social democracy. A secret communistic propaganda spread over all western Europe, had its head centres in Belgium and Switzerland, crossed the Alps and the Pyrenees, as well as the Channel, and found a congenial soil even in Russia.
§ 212.2. St. Simonism.—The Count St. Simon of Paris, reduced to poverty by speculation, proposed by means of a thorough organization of industry to found a new and happy state of things in which there would be pure enjoyment without poverty and care. An attempted suicide, which led however to his death in 1825, made him in the eyes of his disciples a saviour of the world. The July revolution of 1830 gave to the new universal religion, which reinstated the flesh in its long lost rights and sought to assign to each individual the place in the commonwealth for which he was fitted, some advantage. “Father” Enfantin, whom his followers honoured as the highest revelation of deity, contended with pompous phrases and in fantastic style for the emancipation of woman and against the unnatural institution of marriage. But St. Simonism soon excited public ridicule, was pronounced immoral by the courts of justice, and the remnants of its votaries fled from the scorn of the people and the vengeance of the law to Egypt, where they soon disappeared.
§ 212.3. Owenists and Icarians.—The Scotch mill-owner Rob. Owen went in 1829 to America, in order there, unhindered by religious prejudices, clerical opposition, and police interference, to work out on a large scale his socialistic schemes for improving the world, which in a small way he believed he had proved already among his Scotch mill-operatives. He bought for this purpose from the Württemberger Rapp the colony of Harmony (§ [211, 6]); but wanting the necessary capital for the socialistic commonwealth there established, and failing to realize his expectations, discontent, disorder, and opposition got the upper hand, and in 1826 Owen was obliged to abandon all his property. He now returned to England, and addressed himself in treatises, tracts, and lectures to the working classes of the whole land, in order to win them over to his ideas. A vast brotherhood for mutual benefit and for the enjoyment of their joint earnings was to put an end to earth’s misery, which the positive religions had not lessened but only increased. In 1836, in the great industrial cities socialist unions with nearly half a million members were formed, with their head centre and annual congress at Birmingham. The practical schemes of Owen, however, had no success in England, and his societies no permanency. He died in 1858.—Still more disastrous was the fate of the Icarian Colony, founded in Texas in 1848 by the Frenchman Stephen Cabet, author of “Voyage en Icarie, Roman philos. et social,” 1840, as an attempt to realize his communistic-philanthropic ideas on the other side of the Atlantic. The colonists soon found their sanguine hopes bitterly disappointed, and hurled against their leader reproaches and threats. Some ex-Icarians accused him in 1849 before the Paris police-court as a swindler, and he was condemned to two years’ imprisonment and five years’ loss of civil privileges. Cabet now hastened to France, and on appeal obtained reversion of his sentence in 1851. Returning to America, he founded a new Icarian colony at Nauvoo in Illinois.But there, too, everything went wrong, and a revolt of the colonists obliged him to flee. He died in 1856.[576]
§ 212.4. The International Working-Men’s Association.—Local and national working-men’s unions with a socialistic organization had for a long time existed in England, France, and Germany. The idea of a union embracing the whole world was first broached at the great London Exhibition in 1862, and at a conference in London on September 28th, 1864, at which all industrial countries of Europe were represented, it assumed a practical shape by the founding of a universal international working-men’s association. Its constitution was strictly centralistic. A directing committee in London, Carl Marx of Treves, formerly Privatdocent of philosophy at Bonn, standing at its head as dictator, represented the supreme legislative and governing authority, while alongside of it a general standing council held the administrative and executive power. The latter was divided into eight sections, English, American, French, German, Belgian, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish, and annual international congresses at Geneva, Lausanne, Brussels, Basel, and the Hague gave opportunity for general consultation on matters of common interest. Reception as members was granted by the giving of a diploma after six months’ trial, and involved unconditional obedience to the statutes and ordinances of the central authorities and the payment of an annual fee. The number of members, not, however, exclusively drawn from the working classes, is said to have reached two and a half millions. The society adopted the current socialistic and communistic ideas and tendencies. The religious principle of the association was therefore: atheism and materialism; the political: absolute democracy; the social: equal rights of labour and profit, with abolition of private property, hereditary rights, marriage, and family; and as means for realizing this programme, unaccomplishable by peaceable methods, revolution and rebellion, fire and sword, poison, petroleum and dynamite. Such means have been used already in various ways by the international throughout the Romance countries; but specially in the brief Reign of Terror of the Paris Commune, March and April, 1871, in the relatively no less violent attempted revolt at Alcoy in Southern Spain in July, 1873.But meanwhile differences appeared within the society, which were formulated at the Hague Congress in 1872, and led to splits, which greatly lessened its unity, influence, and power to do mischief, so that this congress may perhaps be regarded as the first beginning of its end.[577]