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By James Freeman Clarke, D.D.

TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. Part I. An Essay in Comparative Theology. New Popular Edition. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00.

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SELF-CULTURE: Physical, Intellectual, Moral, and Spiritual. Crown 8vo, $1.50.

NINETEENTH CENTURY QUESTIONS. Crown 8vo, $1.50.

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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
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NINETEENTH CENTURY
QUESTIONS

BY
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1897.

COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY ELIOT C. CLARKE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFATORY NOTE

Shortly before his death, Dr. Clarke selected the material for this book, and partly prepared it for publication. He wished thus to preserve some of his papers which had excited interest when printed in periodicals or read as lectures.

With slight exceptions, the book is issued just as prepared by the author.

[CONTENTS]

[LITERARY STUDIES]

[LYRIC AND DRAMATIC ELEMENTS IN LITERATURE AND ART]

The German philosophy has made a distinction between the Subjective and the Objective, which has been found so convenient that it has been already naturalized and is almost acclimated in our literature.

The distinction is this: in all thought there are two factors, the thinker himself, and that about which he thinks. All thought, say our friends the Germans, results from these two factors: the subject, or the man thinking; and the object, what the man thinks about. All that part of thought which comes from the man himself, the Ego, they call subjective; all that part which comes from the outside world, the non-Ego, they call objective.

I am about to apply this distinction to literature and art; but instead of the terms Subjective and Objective, I shall use the words Lyric and Dramatic.

For example, when a writer or an artist puts a great deal of himself into his work, I call him a lyric writer or artist. Lyrical, in poetry, is the term applied to that species of poetry which directly expresses the individual emotions of the poet. On the other hand, I call an artist or poet dramatic when his own personality disappears, and is lost in that which he paints or describes. A lyric or subjective writer gives us more of himself than of the outside world; a dramatic or objective writer gives us more of the outside world than of himself.

Lyric poetry is that which is to be sung; the lyre accompanies song. Now, song is mainly personal or subjective. It expresses the singer's personal emotions, feelings, desires; and for these reasons I select this phrase "lyric" to express all subjective or personal utterances in art.

The drama, on the other hand, is a photograph of life; of live men and women acting themselves out freely and individually. The dramatic writer ought to disappear in his drama; if he does not do so he is not a dramatic writer, but a lyrist in disguise.

The dramatic element is the power of losing one's self—opinions, feeling, character—in that which is outside and foreign, and reproducing it just as it is. In perfect dramatic expression the personal equation is wholly eliminated. The writer disappears in his characters; his own hopes and fears, emotions and convictions, do not color his work.

But the lyric element works in the opposite way. In song, the singer is prominent more than what he sings. He suffuses his subject with his own thoughts and feelings. If he describes nature, he merely gives us the feelings it awakens in his own mind. If he attempts to write a play, we see the same actor thinly disguised reappearing in all the parts.

Now, there is a curious fact connected with this subject. It is that great lyric and dramatic authors or artists are apt to appear in duads or pairs. Whenever we meet with a highly subjective writer, we are apt to find him associated with another as eminently objective. This happens so often that one might imagine that each type of thought attracts its opposite and tends to draw it out and develop it. It may be that genius, when it acts on disciples who are persons of talent, draws out what is like itself, and makes imitators; when it acts on a disciple who himself possesses genius, it draws out what is opposite to itself and develops another original thinker. Genius, like love, is attracted by its opposite, or counterpart. Love and genius seek to form wholes; they look for what will complete and fulfill themselves. When, therefore, a great genius has come, fully developed on one side, he exercises an irresistible attraction on the next great genius, in whom the opposite side is latent, and is an important factor in his development. Thus, perhaps, we obtain the duads, whose curious concurrence I will now illustrate by a few striking instances.

Beginning our survey with English literature, who are the first two great poets whose names occur to us? Naturally, Chaucer and Spenser. Now, Chaucer is eminently dramatic and objective in his genius; while Spenser is distinctly a lyrical and subjective poet.

Chaucer tells stories; and story-telling is objective. One of the most renowned collections of stories is the "Arabian Nights;" but who knows anything about the authors of those entertaining tales? They are merely pictures of Eastern life, reflected in the minds of some impersonal authors, whose names even are unknown.

Homer is another great story-teller; and Homer is so objective, so little of a personality, that some modern critics suppose there may have been several Homers.

Chaucer is a story-teller also; and in his stories everything belonging to his age appears, except Chaucer himself. His writings are full of pictures of life, sketches of character; in one word, he is a dramatic or objective writer. He paints things as they are,—gives us a panorama of his period. Knights, squires, yeomen, priests, friars, pass before us, as in Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott."

The mind of an objective story-teller, like Chaucer, is the faithful mirror, which impartially reflects all that passes before it, but cracks from side to side whenever he lets a personal feeling enter his mind, for then the drama suddenly disappears and a lyric of personal hope or fear, gladness or sadness, takes its place.

Spenser is eminently a lyric poet. His own genius suffuses his stories with a summer glow of warm, tender, generous sentiment. In his descriptions of nature he does not catalogue details, but suggests impressions, which is the only way of truly describing nature. There are some writers who can describe scenery, so that the reader feels as if he had seen it himself. The secret of all such description is that it does not count or measure, but suggests. It is not quantitative but qualitative analysis. It does not apply a foot rule to nature, but gives the impression made on the mind and heart by the scene. I have never been at Frascati nor in Sicily, but I can hardly persuade myself that I have not seen those places. I have distinct impressions of both, simply from reading two of George Sand's stories. I have in my mind a picture of Frascati, with deep ravines, filled with foliage; with climbing, clustering, straggling vines and trees and bushes; with overhanging crags, deep masses of shadow below, bright sunshine on the stone pines above. So I have another picture of Sicilian scenery, wide and open, with immense depths of blue sky, and long reaches of landscape; ever-present Etna, soaring snow-clad into the still air; an atmosphere of purity, filling the heart with calm content. It may be that Catania and Frascati are not like this; but I feel as if I had seen them, not as if I had heard them described.

It is thus that Spenser describes nature; by touching some chord of fancy in the soul. Notice this picture of a boat on the sea:—

"So forth they rowëd; and that Ferryman
With his stiff oars did brush the sea so strong
That the hoar waters from his frigate ran,
And the light bubbles dancëd all along
Whiles the salt brine out of the billows sprang;
At last, far off, they many islands spy,
On every side, floating the floods among."

You notice that you are in the boat yourself, and everything is told as it appears to you there; you see the bending of the "stiff oars" by your side, and the little bubbles dancing on the water, and the islands, not as they are, rock-anchored, but as they seem to you, floating on the water. This is subjective description,—putting the reader in the place, and letting him see it all from that point of view. So Spenser speaks of the "oars sweeping the watery wilderness;" and of the gusty winds "filling the sails with fear."

Perhaps the highest description ought to include both the lyric and dramatic elements. Here is a specimen of sea description, by an almost unknown American poet, Fenner, perfect in its way. The poem is called "Gulf Weed:"—

"A weary weed washed to and fro,
Drearily drenched in the ocean brine;
Soaring high, or sinking low,
Lashed along without will of mine;
Sport of the spoom of the surging sea,
Flung on the foam afar and near;
Mark my manifold mystery,
Growth and grace in their place appear.

"I bear round berries, gray and red,
Rootless and rover though I be;
My spangled leaves, when nicely spread,
Arboresce as a trunkless tree;
Corals curious coat me o'er
White and hard in apt array;
Mid the wild waves' rude uproar
Gracefully grow I, night and day.

"Hearts there are on the sounding shore,
(Something whispers soft to me,)
Restless and roaming for evermore,
Like this weary weed of the sea;
Bear they yet on each beating breast
The eternal Type of the wondrous whole,
Growth unfolding amidst unrest,
Grace informing the silent soul."

All nature becomes alive in the Spenserian description. Take, for example, the wonderful stanza which describes the music of the "Bower of Bliss:"—

"The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade
Their notes unto the voice attemper'd sweet;
Th' angelical, soft, trembling voices made
To the instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the bass murmur of the water's fall;
The water's fall, with difference discreet,
Now loud, now low, unto the winds did call;
The gentle warbling winds low answerëd to all."

Consider the splendid portrait of Belphœbe:—

"In her fair eyes two living lamps did flame,
Kindled above at the Heavenly Maker's light;
And darted fiery beams out of the same,
So passing piercing, and so wondrous bright,
They quite bereaved the rash beholder's sight;
In them the blinded god his lustful fire
To kindle oft essay'd but had no might,
For with dread majesty and awful ire
She broke his wanton darts and quenchëd base desire.

"Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave,
Like a broad tablet did itself dispread,
For love his lofty triumphs to engrave,
And write the battles of his great godhead;
All good and honor might therein be read,
For there their dwelling was; and when she spake,
Sweet words, like dropping honey she did shed;
And, twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake
A silver Sound, that heavenly music seemed to make."

If we examine this picture, we see that it is not a photograph, such as the sun makes, but a lover's description of his mistress. He sees her, not as she is, but as she is to him. He paints her out of his own heart. In her eyes he sees, not only brilliancy and color, but heavenly light; he reads in them an untouched purity of soul. Looking at her forehead, he sees, not whiteness and roundness, but goodness and honor.

Shakespeare's lovers always describe their mistresses in this way, out of their own soul and heart. It is his own feeling that the lover gives, seeing perhaps "Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt."

After Chaucer and Spenser the next great English poets whose names naturally occur to us are Shakespeare and Milton.

Now, Shakespeare was the most objective dramatic writer who ever lived; while Milton was eminently and wholly a subjective and lyrical writer.

It is true that Shakespeare was so great that he is one of the very few men of genius in whom appear both of these elements. In his plays he is so objective that he is wholly lost in his characters, and his personality absolutely disappears; in his sonnets he "unlocks his heart" and is lyrical and subjective; he there gives us his inmost self, and we seem to know him as we know a friend with whom we have lived in intimate relations for years. Still, he will be best remembered by his plays; and into them he put the grandeur and universality of his genius; so we must necessarily consider him as the greatest dramatic genius of all time. But he belonged to a group of dramatic poets of whom he was the greatest: Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, Webster,—any one of whom would make the fortune of the stage to-day. It was a great age of dramatic literature, and it came very naturally to meet a demand. The play then was what the novel is to-day. As people to-day have no sooner read a new novel than they want another, so, in Shakespeare's time, they had no sooner seen a new play than they ran to see another. Hence the amazing fertility of the dramatic writers. Thomas Heywood wrote the whole or a part of two hundred and twenty plays. The manager of one of the theatres bought a hundred and six new plays for his stage in six years; and in the next five years a hundred and sixty. The price paid to an author for a play would now be equal to about two or three hundred dollars. The dramatic element, as is natural, abounds in these writings, though in some of them the author's genius is plainly lyrical. Such, for example, is Massinger's, who always reminds me of Schiller. Both wrote plays, but in both writers the faculty of losing themselves in their characters is wanting. The nobleness of Schiller appears in all his works, and constitutes a large part of their charm. So in Massinger all tends to generosity and elevation. His worst villains are ready to be converted and turn saints at the least provocation. Their wickedness is in a condition of unstable equilibrium; it topples over, and goodness becomes supreme in a single moment. Massinger could not create really wicked people; their wickedness is like a child's moment of passion or willfulness, ending presently in a flood of tears, and a sweet reconciliation with his patient mother. But how different was it with Shakespeare! Consider his Iago. How deeply rooted was his villainy! how it was a part of the very texture of his being! He had conformed to it the whole philosophy of his life. His cynical notions appear in the first scene. Iago believes in meanness, selfishness, everything that is base; to him all that seems good is either a pretense or a weakness. The man who does not seek the gratification of his own desires is a fool. There is to Iago nothing sweet, pure, fair, or true, in this world or the next. He profanes everything he touches. He sneers at the angelic innocence of Desdemona; he sneers at the generous, impulsive soul of Othello. When some one speaks to him of virtue, he says "Virtue? a fig! ’tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners." You can plant nettles or lettuce as you please. That is to say, there is no reality in goodness. The virtue of Desdemona will be gone to-morrow, if she takes the whim. The Moor's faith in goodness is folly; it will cause him to be led by the nose. There is no converting such a man as that; or only when, by means of terrible disappointments and anguish, he is brought to see the reality of human goodness and divine providence. And that can hardly happen to him in this world.

Iago is a murderer of the soul, Macbeth a murderer of the body. The wickedness of Macbeth is different from that of Iago; that of Shylock and of Richard Third different again from either. Macbeth is a half-brute, a man in a low state of development, with little intellect and strong passions. Shylock is a highly intellectual man, not a cynic like Iago, but embittered by ill-treatment, made venomous by cruel wrong and perpetual contempt. Oppression has made this wise man mad. Richard Third, originally bad, has been turned into a cruel monster by the egotism born of power. He has the contempt for his race that belongs to the aristocrat, who looks on men in humbler places as animals of a lower order made for his use or amusement. Now, this wonderful power of differentiating characters belongs to the essence of the dramatic faculty. Each of these is developed from within, from a personal centre, and is true to that. Every manifestation of this central life is correlated to every other. If one of Shakespeare's characters says but ten words in one scene, and then ten words more in another, we recognize him as the same person. His speech bewrayeth him. So it is in human life. Every man is fatally consistent with himself. So, after we have seen a number of pictures by any one of the great masters, we recognize him again, as soon as we enter a gallery. We know him by a certain style. Inferior artists have a manner; great artists have a style; manner is born of imitation; style of originality. So, there is a special quality in every human being, if he will only allow it to unfold. The dramatic faculty recognizes this. Its knowledge of man is not a philosophy, nor a mere knowledge of human nature, but a perception of individual character. It first integrates men as human beings; then differentiates them as individuals. Play-writers, novelists, and artists who do not possess this dramatic genius cannot grow their characters from within, from a personal centre of life; but build them up from without, according to a plan. In description of nature, however, Shakespeare is, as he ought to be, subjective and lyric; he touches nature with human feelings. Take his description of a brook:—

"The current that with gentle murmur glides
Thou know'st, being stopp'd impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage,
And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport to the wild ocean."

The brook is gentle; then it becomes angry; then it is pacified and begins to sing; then it stops to kiss the sedge; then it is a pilgrim; and it walks willingly on to the ocean.

So in his sonnet:—

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain top with sovereign eye;
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face;
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with his disgrace;
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath masked him from me now;
Yet him, for this, my love no whit disdaineth,
Suns of this world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth."

From Shakespeare, the marvel of dramatic genius, turn to Milton, and we find the opposite tendency unfolded.

The "Paradise Lost" is indeed dramatic in form, with different characters and dialogues, in hell, on earth, and in heaven. But in essence it is undramatic. Milton is never for a moment lost in his characters; his grand and noble soul is always appearing. Every one speaks as Milton would have spoken had Milton been in the same place, and looked at things from the same point of view. Sin and Satan, for example, both talk like John Milton. Sin is very conscientious, and before she will unlock the gate of hell she is obliged to argue herself into a conviction that it is right to do so. Satan, she says, is her father, and children ought to obey their parents; so, since he tells her to unlock the gate, she ought to do so. Death reproaches Satan, in good set terms, for his treason against the Almighty; and Satan, as we all know, utters the noblest sentiments, and talks as Milton would have talked, had Milton been in Satan's position.[1]

Coming down nearer to our own time, we find a duad of great English poets, usually associated in our minds,—Byron and Scott.

Scott was almost the last of the dramatic poets of England, using the word dramatic in its large sense. His plays never amounted to much; but his stories in verse and in prose are essentially dramatic. In neither does he reveal himself. In all his poetry you scarcely find a reference to his personal feelings. In the L'Envoi to the "Lady of the Lake" there is a brief allusion of this sort, touching because so unusual, and almost the only one I now recall. Addressing the "Harp of the North" he says:—

"Much have I owed thy strains through life's long way,
Through secret woes the world has never known,
When on the weary night dawned wearier day,
And bitterer was the grief devoured alone;
That I o'erlive such woes, Enchantress! is thine own."

Scott, like Chaucer, brings before us a long succession of characters, from many classes, countries, and times. Scotch barons and freebooters, English kings, soldiers, gentlemen, crusaders, Alpine peasants, mediæval counts, serfs, Jews, Saxons,—brave, cruel, generous,—all sweep past us, in a long succession of pictures; but of Scott himself nothing appears except the nobleness and purity of the tone which pervades all. He is therefore eminently a dramatic or objective writer.

But Byron is the exact opposite. The mighty exuberance of his genius, which captivated his age, and the echoes of which thrill down to ours, in all its vast overflow of passion, imagination, wit,—ever sounded but one strain,—himself. His own woes, his own wrongs are the ever-recurring theme. Though he wrote many dramas, he was more undramatic than Milton. Every character in every play is merely a thinly disguised Byron. It was impossible for him to get away from himself. If Tennyson's lovely line tells the truth when he says,—

"Love took up the harp of life and smote on all its chords with might;
Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight:"

then Byron never really loved; for in his poetry the chord of self never passes out of sight.

In his plays the principal characters are Byron undiluted—as Manfred, Sardanapalus, Cain, Werner, Arnold. All the secondary characters are Byron more or less diluted,—Byron and water, may we say? Never, since the world began, has there been a poet so steeped in egotism, so sick of self-love as he; and the magnificence of his genius appears in the unfailing interest which he can give to this monotonous theme.

But he was the example of a spirit with which the whole age was filled to saturation. Almost all the nineteenth century poets of England are subjective, giving us their own experience, sentiments, reflections, philosophies. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, revolve in this enchanted and enchanting circle. Keats and Coleridge seem capable of something different. So, in the double star, made up of Wordsworth and Coleridge, the first is absolutely personal and lyric, the second sometimes objective and dramatic. And in that other double star of Shelley and Keats the same difference may be noted.

A still more striking instance of the combination of these antagonisms is to be found in our time, in Robert Browning and his wife. Mrs. Browning is wholly lyric, like a bird which sings its own tender song of love and hope and faith till "that wild music burdens every bough;" and those "mournful hymns" hush the night to listening sympathy.

But in her husband we have a genuine renaissance of the old dramatic power of the English bards. Robert Browning is so dramatic that he forgets himself and his readers too, in his characters and their situations. To study the varieties of men and women is his joy; to reproduce them unalloyed, his triumph.

One curious instance of this self-oblivious immersion in the creations of his mind occurs to me. In one of his early poems called "In a Gondola"—as it first appeared—two lovers are happily conversing, until in a moment, we know not why, the tone becomes one of despair, and they bid each other an eternal farewell. Why this change of tone there is no explanation. In a later edition he condescends to inform us, inserting a note to this effect: "He is surprised and stabbed." This is the opposite extreme to Milton's angels carefully explaining to each other that they possess a specific levity which enables them to drop upward.

If we think of our own poets whose names are usually connected,—Longfellow and Lowell, for instance,—we shall easily see which is dramatic and which lyric. But the only man of truly dramatic faculty whom we have possessed was one in whom the quality never fully ripened,—I mean Edgar Allan Poe.

In foreign literature we may trace the same tendency of men of genius to arrange themselves in couplets. Take, for instance, in Italy, Dante and Petrarch; in France, Voltaire and Rousseau; in Germany, Goethe and Schiller. Dante is dramatic, losing himself in his stern subject, his dramatic characters; his awful pictures of gloomy destiny. Petrarch is lyrical, personal, singing forever his own sad and sweet fate. Again, Voltaire is essentially dramatic,—immersed in things, absorbed in life, a man reveling in all human accident and adventure, and aglow with faith in an earthly paradise. The sad Rousseau goes apart, away from men; standing like Byron, among them, but not of them; in a cloud of thoughts that are not their thoughts. And, once more, though Goethe resembles Shakespeare in this, that some of his works are subjective, and others objective,—though, in the greatness of his mind he reconciles all the usual antagonisms of thought,—yet the fully developed Goethe, like the fully developed Shakespeare, disappears in his characters and theme. Life to him, in all its forms, was so intensely interesting that his own individual and subjective sentiments are left out of sight. But Schiller stands opposed to Goethe, as being a dramatist devoid of dramatic genius, but full of personal power; so grand in his nobleness of soul, so majestic in the aspirations of his sentiment, so full of patriotic ardor and devotion to truth and goodness, that he moves all hearts as he walks through his dramas,—the great poet visible in every scene and every line. As his tried and noble friend says of him in an equally undying strain:—

"Burned in his cheek, with ever-deepening fire,
The spirit's youth, which never passes by;
The courage, which though worlds in hate conspire,
Conquers at last their dull hostility;
The lofty faith, which ever, mounting higher,
Now presses on, now waiteth patiently;
By which the good tends ever to its goal—
By which day lights at last the generous soul."

Goethe's characters and stories covered the widest range: Faust, made sick with too much thought, and seeking outward joy as a relief; Werther, a self-absorbed sentimentalist; Tasso, an Italian man of genius, a mixture of imagination, aspiration, sensitive self-distrust; susceptible to opinion, sympathetic; Iphigenia, a picture of antique calm, simplicity, purity, classic repose, like that of a statue; Hermann and Dorothea, a sweet idyl of modern life, in a simple-minded German village with an opinionated, honest landlord, a talkative apothecary, a motherly landlady, a sensible and good pastor, and the two young lovers.

This law of duality, or reaction of genius on genius, will also be found to apply to artists, philosophers, historians, orators. These also come in pairs, manifesting the same antagonistic qualities.

Some artists are lyric; putting their own souls into every face, every figure, making even a landscape alive with their own mood; adding—

"A gleam
Of lustre known to neither sea nor land
But borrowed from the poet-painter's dream."

In every landscape of Claude we find the soul of Claude; in every rugged rock-defile of Salvator we read his mood. These artists are lyric; but there are also great dramatic painters, who give you, not themselves, but men and women; so real, so differentiated, characters so full of the variety and antagonism of nature, that the whole life of a period springs into being at their touch.

Take for instance two names, which always go together, standing side by side at the summit of Italian art,—Michael Angelo and Raphael. Though Raphael was a genius of boundless exuberance, and poured on the wall and canvas a flood of forms, creating as nature creates, without pause or self-repetition, yet there is a tone in all which irresistibly speaks of the artist's own soul. He created a world of Raphaels. Grace, sweetness, and tenderness went into all his work. Every line has the same characteristic qualities.

Turn to the frescoes by Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel. As we look up at those mighty forms—prophets, sibyls, seers, with multitudes of subordinate figures—we gradually trace in each prophet, king, or bard an individual character. Each one is himself. How fully each face and attitude is differentiated by some inward life. How each—David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Persian and the Libyan sibyl—stands out, distinct, filled with a power or a tenderness all his own. Michael Angelo himself is not there, except as a fountain of creative life, from whose genius all these majestic persons come forth as living realities.

Hanging on my walls are the well-known engravings of Guido's Aurora and Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. One of these is purely lyrical; the other as clearly dramatic.

The Aurora is so exquisitely lovely, the forms so full of grace, the movement of all the figures so rapid yet so firm, that I can never pass it without stopping to enjoy its charms. But variety is absent. The hours are lovely sisters, as Ovid describes sisters:—

"Facies non omnibus una,
Nec diversa tamen, qualis decet esse sororum."

But when we turn to the Last Supper, we see the dramatic artist at his best. The subject is such as almost to compel a monotonous treatment, but there is a wonderful variety in the attitudes and grouping. Each apostle shows by his attitude, gesture, expression, that he is affected differently from all the others. Even the feet under the table speak. Stand before the picture; put yourself into the attitude of each apostle, and you will immediately understand his state of mind.[2]

The mediæval religious artists were subjective, sentimental, lyrical. In a scene like the crucifixion, all the characters, whether apostles, Roman soldiers, or Jewish Pharisees, hang their heads like bulrushes.

But see how Rubens, that great dramatic painter, represents the scene. The Magdalen, wild with grief, with disheveled hair, has thrown herself at the foot of the cross, clasping and kissing the feet of Jesus. On the other faces are terror, dismay, doubt, unbelief, mockery, curiosity, triumph, despair,—according to each person's character and attitude toward the event. Meantime the Roman centurion, seated on his splendid horse, is deliberately and carefully striking his spear into the side of the sufferer. His face expresses only that he has a duty to perform and means to fulfill it perfectly.

As Rubens is greatly dramatic, his pupil and follower, Vandyke, is a great lyrical artist, whose noble aspiration and generous sentiment shows itself in all his work.

The school of Venice, with Titian and Tintoretto at its head, is grandly dramatic and objective. The school of Florence, with Guido and Domenichino at its head, eminently lyrical and subjective.

If we had time, we might show that the two masters of Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, are, the one lyrical, and intensely subjective, platonizing the universe; and the other as evidently objective, immersed in the study of things; rejoicing in their variety, their individuality, their persistence of type.

The two masters of Greek history, Herodotus and Thucydides, stand opposed to each other in the same way. Herodotus is the story-teller, the dramatic raconteur, whose charming tales are as entertaining as the "Arabian Nights." Thucydides is the personal historian who puts himself into his story, and determines its meaning and moral according to his own theories and convictions.

We have another example in Livy and Tacitus.

The two great American orators most frequently mentioned together are Webster and Clay. Though you would smile if I were to call either of them a lyric or a dramatic speaker, yet the essential distinction we have been considering may be clearly seen in them. Clay's inspiration was personal, his influence, personal influence. His theme was nothing; his treatment of it everything. But Webster rose or fell with the magnitude and importance of the occasion and argument. When on the wrong side, he failed, for his intellect would not work well except in the service of reality and truth. But Clay was perhaps greatest when arguing against all facts and all reason. Then he summoned all his powers,—wit, illustration, analogy, syllogisms, appeals to feeling, prejudice, and passion; and so swept along his confused and blinded audience to his conclusions.

I think that subjective writers are loved more than dramatic. We admire the one and we love the other. We admire Shakespeare and love Milton; we admire Chaucer and love Spenser; we admire Dante and love Petrarch; we admire Goethe and love Schiller; and if Byron had not been so selfish a man, we should have loved him too. We admire Michael Angelo and love Raphael; we admire Rubens and love Vandyke; we admire Robert Browning and love Mrs. Browning. In short, we care more for the man who gives us himself than for the man who gives us the whole outside world.

I have been able to give you only a few hints of this curious distinction in art and literature. But if we carry it in our mind, we shall find it a key by which many doors may be unlocked. It will enable us to classify authors, and understand them better.

[DUALISM IN NATIONAL LIFE]

The science of comparative ethnology is one which has been greatly developed during the last twenty-five years. The persistence of race tendencies, as in the Semitic tribes, Jews and Arabs, or in the Teutonic and Celtic branches of the great Aryan stock, has been generally admitted. Though few would now say, with the ethnologist Knox, "Race is everything," none would wholly dispense with this factor, as Buckle did, in writing a history of civilization.

Racial varieties have existed from prehistoric times. Their origin is lost in the remote past. As far as history goes back, we find them the same that they are now. When and how the primitive stock differentiated itself into the great varieties which we call Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian, no one can tell. But there are well-established varieties of which we can trace the rise and development; I mean national varieties. The character of an Englishman or a Frenchman is as distinctly marked as that of a Greek or Roman. There is a general resemblance among all Englishmen; and the same kind of resemblance among all Frenchmen, Spaniards, Swedes, Poles. But this crystallization into national types of character has taken place in a comparatively short period. We look back to a time when there were no Englishmen in Great Britain; but only Danes, Saxons, Normans, and Celts; no Frenchmen in France; but Gauls, Franks, and Romans. Gradually a distinct quality emerges, and we have Frenchmen, Italians, Englishmen. The type, once arrived at, persists, and becomes more marked. It is marked by personal looks and manners, by a common temperament, a common style of thinking, feeling, acting; the same kind of morals and manners. This type was formed by the action and reaction of the divers races brought side by side—Normans and Saxons mutually influencing each other in England, and being influenced again by climate, conditions of life, forms of government, national customs. So, at last, we have the well-developed national character,—a mysterious but very certain element, from which no individual can wholly escape. All drink of that one spirit.

Thus far I have been stating what we all know. But now I would call your attention to a curious fact, which, so far as I am aware, has not before been noticed. It is this,—that when two nations, during their forming period, have been in relation to each other, there will be a peculiar character developed in each. That is to say, they will differ from each other according to certain well-defined lines, and these differences will repeat themselves again and again in history, in curious parallelisms, or dualisms.

To take the most familiar illustration of this: consider the national qualities of the French and English. The English and French, during several centuries, have been acting and reacting on each other, both in war and peace. Now, what are the typical characteristics of these two nations? Stated in a broad way they might be described something as follows:—

The English mind is more practical than ideal; its movement is slow but persistent; its progress is by gradual development; it excels in the industrial arts; it reverences power; it loves liberty more than equality, not objecting to an aristocracy. It tends to individualism. Its conquests have been due to the power of order, and adherence to law.

The French mind is more ideal than practical; versatile, rather than persistent; its movements rapid, its progress by crises and revolution, rather than by development; it excels in whatever is tasteful and artistic; it admires glory rather than power; loves equality more than liberty; objects to an aristocracy, but is ready to yield individual rights at the bidding of the community; renouncing individualism for the sake of communism; and its successes have been due to enthusiasm rather than to organization.

Next, look at the Greeks and Romans. These peoples were in intimate relations during the forming period of national life; and we find in them much the same contrasts of character that we do in the English and the French. The Romans were deficient in imagination, rather prosaic, fond of rule and fixed methods, conservative of ancient customs. The Greeks were quick and versatile; artistic to a high degree; producing masterpieces of architecture, painting, statuary, and creating every form of literature; inventing the drama, the epic poem, oratory, odes, history, philosophy. The Romans borrowed from them their art and their literature, but were themselves the creators of law, the organizers of force. The Greeks and Romans were the English and French of antiquity; and you will notice that they occupy geographically the same relative positions,—the Greeks and French on the east; the Romans and English on the west.

But now observe another curious fact. The Roman Empire and the Greek republics came to an end; and in Greece no important nationality took the place of those wonderful commonwealths. But in Italy, by the union of the old inhabitants with the Teutonic northern invaders, modern Italy was slowly formed into a new national life. No longer deriving any important influence from Greece (which had ceased to be a living and independent force), Italy, during the Middle Ages, came into relations with Spain and the Spaniards. In Spain, as in Italy, a new national life was in process of formation by the union of the Gothic tribes, the Mohammedan invaders, and the ancient inhabitants. The Spaniards occupied Sicily in 1282, and Naples fell later into their hands, about 1420, and in 1526 took possession of Milan. Thus Italy and Spain were entangled in complex relations during their forming period. What was the final result? Modern Italians became the very opposite of the ancient Romans. The Spaniards on the west are now the Romans, and the Italians, the Greeks. The Spaniards are slow, strong, conservative; the Italians, quick-witted, full of feeling and sentiment, versatile. The Spaniards trust to organization, the Italians to enthusiasm. The Spaniards are practical, the Italians ideal. In fine, the Spaniards, on the west, are like the English and the ancient Romans; the Italians, on the east, like the French and the Greeks. The English pride, the Roman pride, the Spanish pride, we have all heard of; but the French, the Greeks, and the Italians are not so much inclined to pride and the love of power, as to vanity and the love of fame. England, Rome, and Spain, united by law and the love of organization, gradually became solidified into empires; Greece, Italy, and France were always divided into independent states, provinces, or republics.

Now, let us go east and consider two empires that have grown up, side by side, with constant mutual relations: Japan and China. The people of Japan, on the east, are described by all travelers in language that might be applied to the ancient Greeks or the modern French. They are said to be quick-witted, lively, volatile, ready of apprehension, with a keen sense of honor, which prefers death to disgrace; eminently a social and pleasure-seeking people, fond of feasts, dancing, music, and frolics. Men and women are pleasing, polite, affable. On the other hand, the Chinese are described as more given to reason than to sentiment, prosaic, slow to acquire, but tenacious of all that is gained, very conservative, great lovers of law and order; with little taste for art, but much national pride. They are the English of Asia; the Japanese, the French.

Go back to earlier times, when the two oldest branches of the great Aryan stock diverged on the table-lands of central Asia; the Vedic race descending into India, and the Zend people passing west, into Persia. The same duplex development took place that we have seen in other instances. The people on the Indus became what they still are,—a people of sentiment and feeling. Like the French, they are polite, and cultivate civility and courtesy. The same tendency to local administration which we see in France is found in India; the commune being, in both, the germ-cell of national life. The village communities in India are little republics, almost independent of anything outside. Dynasties change, new rulers and kings arrive; Hindoo, Mohammedan, English; but the village community remains the same. Like the Japanese, the French, the Italians, the inhabitants of India are skillful manufacturers of ornamental articles. Their religion tends to sentiment more than to morality,—to feeling, rather than to action. This is the development which India took when these races inhabited the Punjaub. But the ancient Persians were different. Their religion included a morality which placed its essence in right thinking and right action. A sentimental religion, like that of India and of Italy, tends to the adoration of saints and holy images and to multiplied ceremonies. A moral religion, like that of Persia, of Judea, and of the Teutonic races, tends to the adoration and service of the unseen. The Hindoos had innumerable gods, temples, idols. The Persians worshiped the sacred fire, without temple, priest, altar, sacrifice, or ritual. The ancient Persians, wholly unlike the modern Persians, were a people of action, energy, enterprise. But when the old Persian empire fell, the character of the people changed. Just as in Italy the old Roman type disappeared, and was replaced by the opposite in the modern Italian, so modern Persia has swung round to the opposite pole of national character. The Persians and Turks, both professing the Mohammedan religion, belong to different sects of that faith. The Turks are proud, tenacious of old customs, grave in their demeanor, generally just in their dealings, keeping their word. The Persians, as they appear in the works of Malcolm and Monier, are changeable, kindly, polite, given to ceremonies, fond of poetry, with taste for fine art and decoration,—a mobile people. The Turk is silent, the Persian talkative. The Turk is proud and cold, the Persian affable and full of sentiment. In short, the Persian is the Frenchman, and the Turk the Englishman. And here again, as in the other cases, the French type of nationality unfolds itself on the east, and the English on the west.

These national doubles have not been exhausted. We have other instances of twin nations, born of much the same confluence of race elements, of whom, as of Esau and Jacob, it might be predicted to the mother race, "Two nations shall be born of thee; two kinds of people shall go forth from thee; and the one shall be stronger than the other." Thus there are the twin races which inhabit Sweden and Norway; the Swedes, on the east, are more intelligent, quick-witted, and versatile; the Norwegians, on the west, slow, persistent, and disposed to foreign conquest and adventure, as shown in the sea-kings, who discovered Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland; and the modern emigrants who reap the vast wheatfields of Minnesota. So, too, we might speak of the Poles and Germans. The Polish nation, on the east, resembling the French; the German, on the west, the English.

But time will not allow me to carry out these parallels into details. The question is, are these mere coincidences, or do they belong to the homologons of history, where the same law of progress repeats itself under different conditions, as the skeleton of the mammal is found in the whale. Such curious homologons we find in national events, and they can hardly be explained as accidental coincidences. For instance, the English and French revolutions proceeded by six identical steps. First, an insurrection of the people. Secondly, the dethronement and execution of the king. Thirdly, a military usurper. Fourthly, the old line restored. Fifthly, after the death of the restored king, his brother succeeds to the throne. Sixthly, a second revolution drives the brother into exile, and a constitutional king of a collateral branch takes his place.

But if these doubles which I have described come by some mysterious law of polar force, as in the magnet, where the two kinds of electricity are repelled to opposite poles, and yet attract each other, how account for the regularity of the geographical position? Why is the French, Greek, Hindoo, Persian, Italian, Polish, Swedish type always at the east, and the English, Roman, Iranic, Ottoman, Spanish, German, Norwegian type always at the west? Are nations, like tides, affected by the diurnal revolution of the globe? This, I confess, I am unable to explain; and I leave it to others to consider whether what I have described is pure coincidence, or if it belongs in some way to the philosophy of history and comes under universal law.

[DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE BACON'S WORKS][3]

The greatest of English poets is Shakespeare. The greatest prose writer in English literature is probably Bacon. Each of these writers, alone, is a marvel of intellectual grandeur. It is hard to understand how one man, in a few years, could have written all the masterpieces of Shakespeare,—thirty-six dramas, each a work of genius such as the world will never let die. It is a marvel that from one mind could proceed the tender charm of such poems as "Romeo and Juliet," "As You Like It," or "The Winter's Tale;" the wild romance of "The Tempest," or of "A Midsummer Night's Dream;" the awful tragedies of "Lear," "Macbeth," and "Othello;" the profound philosophy of "Hamlet;" the perfect fun of "Twelfth Night," and "The Merry Wives of Windsor;" and the reproductions of Roman and English history. It is another marvel that a man like Bacon, immersed nearly all his life in business, a successful lawyer, an ambitious statesman, a courtier cultivating the society of the sovereign and the favorites of the sovereign, should also be the founder of a new system of philosophy, which has been the source of many inventions and new sciences down to the present day; should have critically surveyed the whole domain of knowledge, and become a master of English literary style. Each of these phenomena is a marvel; but put them together, and assume that one man did it all, and you have, not a marvel, but a miracle. Yet, this is the result which the monistic tendency of modern thought has reached. Several critics of our time have attempted to show that Bacon, besides writing all the works usually attributed to him, was also the author of all of Shakespeare's plays and poems.

This theory was first publicly maintained by Miss Delia Bacon in 1857. It had been, before, in 1856, asserted by an Englishman, William Henry Smith, but only in a small volume printed for private circulation. This book made a distinguished convert in the person of Lord Palmerston, who openly declared his conviction that Bacon was the author of Shakespeare's plays. Two papers by Appleton Morgan, written in the same sense, appeared last year in "Appletons' Journal." But far the most elaborate and masterly work in support of this attempt to dethrone Shakespeare, and to give his seat on the summit of Parnassus to Lord Bacon, is the book by Judge Holmes, published in 1866. He has shown much ability, and brought forward every argument which has any plausibility connected with it.

Judge Holmes was, of course, obliged to admit the extreme antecedent improbability of his position. Certainly it is very difficult to believe that the author of such immortal works should have been willing, for any reason, permanently to conceal his authorship; or, if he could hide that fact, should have been willing to give the authorship to another; or, if willing, should have been able so effectually to conceal the substitution as to blind the eyes of all mankind down to the days of Miss Delia Bacon and Judge Holmes.

What, then, are the arguments used by Judge Holmes? The proofs he adduces are mainly these: (1st) That there are many coincidences and parallelisms of thought and expression between the works of Bacon and Shakespeare; (2d) that there is an amount of knowledge and learning in the plays, which Lord Bacon possessed, but which Shakespeare could hardly have had. Besides these principal proofs, there are many other reasons given which are of inferior weight,—a phrase in a letter of Sir Tobie Matthew; another sentence of Bacon himself, which might be possibly taken as an admission that he was the author of "Richard II.;" the fact that some plays which Shakespeare certainly did not write were first published with his name or his initials. But his chief argument is that Shakespeare had neither the learning nor the time to write the plays, both of which Lord Bacon possessed; and that there are curious coincidences between the plays and the prose works.

These arguments have all been answered, and the world still believes in Shakespeare as before. But I have thought it might be interesting to show how easily another argument could be made of an exactly opposite kind,—how easily all these proofs might be reversed. I am inclined to think that if we are to believe that one man was the author both of the plays and of the philosophy, it is much more probable that Shakespeare wrote the works of Bacon than that Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare. For there is no evidence that Bacon was a poet as well as a philosopher; but there is ample evidence that Shakespeare was a philosopher as well as a poet. This, no doubt, assumes that Shakespeare actually wrote the plays; but this we have a right to assume, in the outset of the discussion, in order to stand on an equal ground with our opponents.

The Bacon vs. Shakespeare argument runs thus: "Assuming that Lord Bacon wrote the works commonly attributed to him, there is reason to believe that he also wrote the plays and poems commonly attributed to Shakespeare."

The counter argument would then be: "Assuming that Shakespeare wrote the plays, and poems commonly attributed to him, there is reason to believe that he also wrote the works commonly attributed to Bacon."

This is clearly the fair basis of the discussion. What is assumed on the one side on behalf of Bacon we have a right to assume on the other on behalf of Shakespeare. But before proceeding on this basis, I must reply to the only argument of Judge Holmes which has much apparent weight. He contends that it was impossible for Shakespeare, with the opportunities he possessed, to acquire the knowledge which we find in the plays. Genius, however great, cannot give the knowledge of medical and legal terms, nor of the ancient languages. Now, it has been shown that the plays afford evidence of a great knowledge of law and medicine; and of works in Latin and Greek, French and Italian. How could such information have been obtained by a boy who had no advantages of study except at a country grammar school, which he left at the age of fourteen, who went to London at twenty-three and became an actor, and who spent most of his life as actor, theatrical proprietor, and man of business?

This objection presents difficulties to us, and for our time, when boys sometimes spend years in the study of Latin grammar. We cannot understand the rapidity with which all sorts of knowledge were imbibed in the period of the Renaissance. Then every one studied everything. Then Greek and Latin books were read by prince and peasant, by queens and generals. Then all sciences and arts were learned by men and women, by young and old. Thus speaks Robert Burton—who was forty years old when Shakespeare died: "What a world of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts and sciences, to the sweet content and capacity of the reader! In arithmetic, geometry, perspective, opticks, astronomy, architecture, sculptura, pictura, of which so many and elaborate treatises have lately been written; in mechanics and their mysteries, military matters, navigation, riding of horses, fencing, swimming, gardening, planting, great tomes of husbandry, cookery, faulconry, hunting, fishing, fowling; with exquisite pictures of all sports and games.... What vast tomes are extant in law, physic, and divinity, for profit, pleasure, practice.... Some take an infinite delight to study the very languages in which these books were written: Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Chaldee, Arabick, and the like." This was the fashion of that day, to study all languages, all subjects, all authors. A mind like that of Shakespeare could not have failed to share this universal desire for knowledge. After leaving the grammar school, he had nine years for such studies before he went to London. As soon as he began to write plays, he had new motives for study; for the subjects of the drama in vogue were often taken from classic story.

But Shakespeare had access to another source of knowledge besides the study of books. When he reached London, five or six play-houses were in full activity, and new plays were produced every year in vast numbers. New plays were then in constant demand, just as the new novel and new daily or weekly paper are called for now. The drama was the periodical literature of the time. Dramatic authors wrote with wonderful rapidity, borrowing their subjects from plays already on the stage, and from classic or recent history. Marlowe, Greene, Lyly, Peele, Kyd, Lodge, Nash, Chettle, Munday, Wilson, were all dramatic writers before Shakespeare. Philip Henslowe, a manager or proprietor of the theatres, bought two hundred and seventy plays in about ten years. Thomas Heywood wrote a part or the whole of two hundred and twenty plays during his dramatic career. Each acted play furnished material for some other. They were the property of the play-houses, not of the writers. One writer after another has accused Shakespeare of indifference to his reputation, because he did not publish a complete and revised edition of his works during his life. How could he do this, since they did not belong to him, but to the theatre? Yet every writer was at full liberty to make use of all he could remember of other plays, as he saw them acted; and Shakespeare was not slow to use this opportunity. No doubt he gained knowledge in this way, which he afterward employed much better than did the authors from whom he took it.

The first plays printed under Shakespeare's name did not appear till he had been connected with the stage eleven years. This gives time enough for him to have acquired all the knowledge to be found in his books. That he had read Latin and Greek books we are told by Ben Jonson; though that great scholar undervalued, as was natural, Shakespeare's attainments in those languages.

But Ben Jonson himself furnishes the best reply to those who think that Shakespeare could not have gained much knowledge of science or literature because he did not go to Oxford or Cambridge. What opportunities had Ben Jonson? A bricklayer by trade, called back immediately from his studies to use the trowel; then running away and enlisting as a common soldier; fighting in the Low Countries; coming home at nineteen, and going on the stage; sent to prison for fighting a duel—what opportunities for study had he? He was of a strong animal nature, combative, in perpetual quarrels, fond of drink, in pecuniary troubles, married at twenty, with a wife and children to support. Yet Jonson was celebrated for his learning. He was master of Greek and Latin literature. He took his characters from Athenæus, Libanius, Philostratus. Somehow he had found time for all this study. "Greek and Latin thought," says Taine, "were incorporated with his own, and made a part of it. He knew alchemy, and was as familiar with alembics, retorts, crucibles, etc., as if he had passed his life in seeking the philosopher's stone. He seems to have had a specialty in every branch of knowledge. He had all the methods of Latin art,—possessed the brilliant conciseness of Seneca and Lucan." If Ben Jonson—a bricklayer, a soldier, a fighter, a drinker—could yet find time to acquire this vast knowledge, is there any reason why Shakespeare, with much more leisure, might not have done the like? He did not possess as much Greek and Latin lore as Ben Jonson, who, probably, had Shakespeare in his mind when he wrote the following passage in his "Poetaster:"

"His learning savors not the school-like gloss
That most consists in echoing words and terms,
And soonest wins a man an empty name;
Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance
Wrapt in the curious generalties of art—
But a direct and analytic sum
Of all the worth and first effects of art.
And for his poesy, ’tis so rammed with life,
That it shall gather strength of life with being,
And live hereafter more admired than now."

The only other serious proof offered in support of the proposition that Bacon wrote the immortal Shakespearean drama is that certain coincidences of thought and language are found in the works of the two writers. When we examine them, however, they seem very insignificant. Take, as an example, two or three, on which Judge Holmes relies, and which he thinks very striking.

Holmes says (page 48) that Bacon quotes Aristotle, who said that "young men were no fit hearers of moral philosophy," and Shakespeare says ("Troilus and Cressida"):—

"Unlike young men whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy."

But since Bacon's remark was published in 1605, and "Troilus and Cressida" did not appear until 1609, Shakespeare might have seen it there, and introduced it into his play from his recollection of the passage in the "Advancement of Learning."

Another coincidence mentioned by Holmes is that both writers use the word "thrust:" Bacon saying that a ship "thrust into Weymouth;" and Shakespeare, that "Milan was thrust from Milan." He also thinks it cannot be an accident that both frequently use the word "wilderness," though in very different ways. Both also compare Queen Elizabeth to a "star." Bacon makes Atlantis an island in mid-ocean; and the island of Prospero is also in mid-ocean. Both have a good deal to say about "mirrors," and "props," and like phrases.

Such reasoning as this has very little weight. You cannot prove two contemporaneous writings to have proceeded from one author by the same words and phrases being found in both; for these are in the vocabulary of the time, and are the common property of all who read and write.

My position is that if either of these writers wrote the works attributed to the other, it is much more likely that Shakespeare wrote the philosophical works of Bacon than that Bacon wrote the poetical works of Shakespeare. Assuming then, as we have a right to do in this argument, that Shakespeare wrote the plays, what reasons are there for believing that he also wrote the philosophy?

First, this assumption will explain at once that hitherto insoluble problem of the contradiction between Bacon's character and conduct and his works. How could he have been, at the same time, what Pope calls him,—

"The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind"?

He was, in his philosophy, the leader of his age, the reformer of old abuses, the friend of progress. In his conduct, he was, as Macaulay has shown, "far behind his age,—far behind Sir Edward Coke; clinging to exploded abuses, withstanding the progress of improvement, struggling to push back the human mind." In his writings, he was calm, dignified, noble. In his life, he was an office-seeker through long years, seeking place by cringing subservience to men in power, made wretched to the last degree when office was denied him, addressing servile supplications to noblemen and to the sovereign. To gain and keep office he would desert his friends, attack his benefactors, and make abject apologies for any manly word he might have incautiously uttered. His philosophy rose far above earth and time, and sailed supreme in the air of universal reason. But "his desires were set on things below. Wealth, precedence, titles, patronage, the mace, the seals, the coronet, large houses, fair gardens, rich manors, massy services of plate, gay hangings," were "objects for which he stooped to everything and endured everything." These words of Macaulay have been thought too severe. But we defy any admirer of Bacon to read his life, by Spedding, without admitting their essential truth. How was it possible for a man to spend half of his life in the meanest of pursuits, and the other half in the noblest?

This difficulty is removed if we suppose that Bacon, the courtier and lawyer, with his other ambitions, was desirous of the fame of a great philosopher; and that he induced Shakespeare, then in the prime of his powers, to help him write the prose essays and treatises which are his chief works. He has himself admitted that he did actually ask the aid of the dramatists of his time in writing his books. This remarkable fact is stated by Bacon in a letter to Tobie Matthew, written in June, 1623, in which he says that he is devoting himself to making his writings more perfect—instancing the "Essays" and the "Advancement of Learning"—"by the help of some good pens, which forsake me not." One of these pens was that of Ben Jonson, the other might easily have been that of Shakespeare. Certainly there was no better pen in England at that time than his.

When Shakespeare's plays were being produced, Lord Bacon was fully occupied in his law practice, his parliamentary duties, and his office-seeking. The largest part of the Shakespeare drama was put on the stage, as modern research renders probable, in the ten or twelve years beginning with 1590. In 1597 Shakespeare was rich enough to buy the new place at Stratford-on-Avon, and was also lending money. In 1604 he was part owner of the Globe Theatre, so that the majority of the plays which gained for him this fortune must have been produced before that time. Now, these were just the busiest years of Bacon's life. In 1584 he was elected to Parliament. About the same time, he wrote his famous letter to Queen Elizabeth. In 1585 he was already seeking office from Walsingham and Burleigh. In 1586 he sat in Parliament for Taunton, and was active in debate and on committees. He became a bencher in the same year, and began to plead in the courts of Westminster. In 1589 he became queen's counsel, and member of Parliament for Liverpool. After this he continued active, both in Parliament and at the bar. He sought, by the help of Essex, to become Attorney-General. From that period, as crown lawyer, his whole time and thought were required to trace and frustrate the conspiracies with which the kingdom was full. It was evident that during these years he had no time to compose fifteen or twenty of the greatest works in any literature.

But how was Shakespeare occupied when Bacon's philosophy appeared? The "Advancement of Learning" was published in 1605, after most of the plays had been written, as we learn from the fact of Shakespeare's purchase of houses and lands. The "Novum Organum" was published in 1620, after Shakespeare's death. But it had been written years before; revised, altered, and copied again and again—it is said twelve times. Bacon had been engaged upon it during thirty years, and it was at last published incomplete and in fragments. If Shakespeare assisted in the composition of this work, his death in 1616 would account, at once, for its being left unfinished. And Shakespeare would have had ample time to furnish the ideas of the "Organum" in the last years of his life, when he had left the theatre. In 1613 he bought a house in Black Friars, where Ben Jonson also lived. Might not this have been that they might more conveniently coöperate in assisting Bacon to write the "Novum Organum"?

When we ask whether it would have been easier for the author of the philosophy to have composed the drama, or the dramatic poet to have written the philosophy, the answer will depend on which is the greater work of the two. The greater includes the less, but the less cannot include the greater. Now, the universal testimony of modern criticism in England, Germany, and France declares that no larger, deeper, or ampler intellect has ever appeared than that which produced the Shakespeare drama. This "myriad-minded" poet was also philosopher, man of the world, acquainted with practical affairs, one of those who saw the present and foresaw the future. All the ideas of the Baconian philosophy might easily have had their home in this vast intelligence. Great as are the thoughts of the "Novum Organum," they are far inferior to that world of thought which is in the drama. We can easily conceive that Shakespeare, having produced in his prime the wonders and glories of the plays, should in his after leisure have developed the leading ideas of the Baconian philosophy. But it is difficult to imagine that Bacon, while devoting his main strength to politics, to law, and to philosophy, should as a mere pastime for his leisure, have produced in his idle moments the greatest intellectual work ever done on earth.

If the greater includes the less, the mind of Shakespeare includes that of Bacon, and not vice versa. This will appear more plainly if we consider the quality of intellect displayed respectively in the dramas and the philosophy. The one is synthetic, creative; the other analytic, critical. The one puts together, the other takes apart and examines. Now, the genius which can put together can also take apart; but it by no means follows that the power of taking apart implies that of putting together. A watch-maker, who can put a watch together, can easily take it to pieces; but many a child who has taken his watch to pieces has found it impossible to put it together again.

When we compare the Shakespeare plays and the Baconian philosophy, it is curious to see how the one is throughout a display of the synthetic intellect, and the other of the analytic. The plays are pure creation, the production of living wholes. They people our thought with a race of beings who are living persons, and not pale abstractions. These airy nothings take flesh and form, and have a name and local habitation forever on the earth. Hamlet, Desdemona, Othello, Miranda, are as real people as Queen Elizabeth or Mary of Scotland. But when we turn to the Baconian philosophy, this faculty is absent. We have entered the laboratory of a great chemist, and are surrounded by retorts and crucibles, tests and re-agents, where the work done is a careful analysis of all existing things, to find what are their constituents and their qualities. Poetry creates, philosophy takes to pieces and examines.

It is, I think, a historic fact, that while those authors whose primary quality is poetic genius have often been also, on a lower plane, eminent as philosophers, there is, perhaps, not a single instance of one whose primary distinction was philosophic analysis, who has also been, on a lower plane, eminent as a poet. Milton, Petrarch, Goethe, Lucretius, Voltaire, Coleridge, were primarily and eminently poets; but all excelled, too, in a less degree, as logicians, metaphysicians, men of science, and philosophers. But what instance have we of any man like Bacon, chiefly eminent as lawyer, statesman, and philosopher, who was also distinguished, though in a less degree, as a poet? Among great lawyers, is there one eminent also as a dramatic or lyric author? Cicero tried it, but his verses are only doggerel. In Lord Campbell's list of the lord chancellors and chief justices of England no such instance appears. If Bacon wrote the Shakespeare drama, he is the one exception to an otherwise universal rule. But if Shakespeare coöperated in the production of the Baconian philosophy, he belongs to a class of poets who have done the same. Coleridge was one of the most imaginative of poets. His "Christabel" and "Ancient Mariner" are pure creations. But in later life he originated a new system of philosophy in England, the influence of which has not ceased to be felt to our day. The case would be exactly similar if we suppose that Shakespeare, having ranged the realm of imaginative poetry in his youth, had in his later days of leisure coöperated with Bacon and Ben Jonson in producing the "Advancement of Learning" and the "Novum Organum." We can easily think of them as meeting, sometimes at the house of Ben Jonson, sometimes at that of Shakespeare in Black Friars, and sometimes guests at that private house built by Lord Bacon for purposes of study, near his splendid palace of Gorhambury. "A most ingeniously contrived house," says Basil Montagu, "where, in the society of his philosophical friends, he devoted himself to study and meditation." Aubrey tells us that he had the aid of Hobbes in writing down his thoughts. Lord Bacon appears to have possessed the happy gift of using other men's faculties in his service. Ben Jonson, who had been a thorough student of chemistry, alchemy, and science in all the forms then known, aided Bacon in his observations of nature. Hobbes aided him in giving clearness to his thoughts and his language. And from Shakespeare he may have derived the radical and central ideas of his philosophy. He used the help of Dr. Playfer to translate his philosophy into Latin. Tobie Matthew gives him the last argument of Galileo for the Copernican system. He sends his works to others, begging them to correct the thoughts and the style. It is evident, then, that he would have been glad of the concurrence of Shakespeare, and that could easily be had, through their common friend, Ben Jonson.

If Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare, it is difficult to give any satisfactory reason for his concealment of that authorship. He had much pride, not to say vanity, in being known as an author. He had his name attached to all his other works, and sent them as presents to the universities, and to individuals, with letters calling their attention to these books. Would he have been willing permanently to conceal the fact of his being the author of the best poetry of his time? The reasons assigned by Judge Holmes for this are not satisfactory. They are: his desire to rise in the profession of the law, the low reputation of a play-writer, his wish to write more freely under an incognito, and his wish to rest his reputation on his philosophical works. But if he were reluctant to be regarded as the author of "Lear" and "Hamlet," he was willing to be known as the writer of "Masques," and a play about "Arthur," exhibited by the students of Gray's Inn. It is an error to say that the reputation of a play-writer was low. Judge Holmes, himself, tells us that there was nothing remarkable in a barrister of the inns of court writing for the stage. Ford and Beaumont were both lawyers as well as eminent play-writers. Lord Backhurst, Lord Brooke, Sir Henry Wotton, all wrote plays. And we find nothing in the Shakespeare dramas which Bacon need have feared to say under his own name. It would have been ruin to Sir Philip Francis to have avowed himself the author of "Junius." But the Shakespeare plays satirized no one, and made no enemies. If there were any reasons for concealment, they certainly do not apply to the year 1623, when the first folio appeared, which was after the death of Shakespeare and the fall of Bacon. The acknowledgment of their authorship at that time could no longer interfere with Bacon's rise. And it would be very little to the credit of his intelligence to assume that he was not then aware of the value of such works, or that he did not desire the reputation of being their author. It would have been contrary to his very nature not to have wished for the credit of that authorship.

On the other hand, there would be nothing surprising in the fact of Shakespeare's laying no claim to credit for having assisted in the composition of the "Advancement of Learning." Shakespeare was by nature as reticent and modest as Bacon was egotistical and ostentatious. What a veil is drawn over the poet's personality in his sonnets! We read in them his inmost sentiments, but they tell us absolutely nothing of the events of his life, or the facts of his position. And if, as we assume, he was one among several who helped Lord Bacon, though he might have done the most, there was no special reason why he should proclaim that fact.

Gervinus has shown, in three striking pages, the fundamental harmony between the ideas and mental tendencies of Shakespeare and Bacon. Their philosophy of man and of life was the same. If, then, Bacon needed to be helped in thinking out his system, there was no one alive who would have given him such stimulus and encouragement as Shakespeare. This also may explain his not mentioning the name of Shakespeare in his works; for that might have called too much attention to the source from which he received this important aid.

Nevertheless, I regard the monistic theory as in the last degree improbable. We have two great authors, and not one only. But if we are compelled to accept the view which ascribes a common source to the Shakespeare drama and the Baconian philosophy, I think there are good reasons for preferring Shakespeare to Bacon as the author of both. When the plays appeared, Bacon was absorbed in pursuits and ambitions foreign to such work; his accepted writings show no sign of such creative power; he was the last man in the world not to take the credit of such a success, and had no motive to conceal his authorship. On the other hand, there was a period in Shakespeare's life when he had abundant leisure to coöperate in the literary plans of Bacon; his ample intellect was full of the ideas which took form in those works; and he was just the person neither to claim nor to desire any credit for lending such assistance.

There is, certainly, every reason to believe that, among his other ambitions, Bacon desired that of striking out a new path of discovery, and initiating a better method in the study of nature. But we know that, in doing this, he sought aid in all quarters, and especially among Shakespeare's friends and companions. It is highly probable, therefore, that he became acquainted with the great dramatist, and that Shakespeare knew of Bacon's designs and became interested in them. And if so, who could offer better suggestions than he; and who would more willingly accept them than the overworked statesman and lawyer, who wished to be also a philosopher?

Finally, we may refer those who believe that the shape of the brow and head indicates the quality of mental power to the portraits of the two men. The head of Shakespeare, according to all the busts and pictures which remain to us, belongs to the type which antiquity has transmitted to us in the portraits of Homer and Plato. In this vast dome of thought there was room for everything. The head of Bacon is also a grand one, but less ample, less complete—less

"Teres, totus atque rotundus."

These portraits therefore agree with all we know of the writings, in showing us which, and which only, of the two minds was capable of containing the other.

[THE EVOLUTION OF A GREAT POEM][4]

There are at least three existing manuscripts of Grays "Elegy," in the author's autograph. The earliest, containing the largest number of variations and the most curious, is that now in the possession of Sir William Fraser in London, and for which he paid the large sum of £230, in 1875. By the kindness of Sir William Fraser, I examined this manuscript at his rooms in London, in 1882. A facsimile copy of this valuable autograph, photographed from the original in 1862, is now before me. A second copy in the handwriting of Gray, called the Pembroke manuscript, is in the library of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. A facsimile of this autograph appears in Matthias's edition of Mason's "Gray," published in 1814. A third copy, in the poet's handwriting, copied by him for his friend, Dr. Wharton, is in the British Museum. I examined this, also, in 1882, and had an accurate copy made for me by one of the assistants in the museum. This was written after the other two, as is evident from the fact that it approaches most nearly to the form which the "Elegy" finally assumed when printed. There are only nine or ten expressions in this manuscript which differ from the poem as published by Gray. Most of these are unimportant. "Or" he changed, in three places, into "and." "And in our ashes" he changed into "Even in our ashes," which was a clear improvement. It was not until after this third copy was written that the improvement was made which changed

"Forgive, ye Proud, the involuntary Fault,
If Memory to These no Trophies raise,"

into

"Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise."

Another important alteration of a single word was also made after this third manuscript was written. This was the change, in the forty-fifth stanza, of "Reins of Empire" into "Rod of Empire."

"The Elegy in a Country Churchyard" became at once one of the most popular poems in the language, and has remained so to this time. It has been equally a favorite with common readers, with literary men, and with poets. Its place will always be in the highest rank of English poetry. The fact, however, is—and it is a very curious fact—that this first-class poem was the work of a third-class poet. For Thomas Gray certainly does not stand in the first class with Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton. Nor can he fairly be put in the second class with Dryden, Pope, Burns, Wordsworth, and Byron. He belongs to the third, with Cowley, Cowper, Shelley, and Keats. There may be a doubt concerning some of whom I have named, but there can be no doubt that Gray will never stand higher than those who may be placed by critics in the third class. Yet it is equally certain that he has produced a first-class poem. How is this paradox to be explained?

What is the charm of Gray's "Elegy"? The thoughts are sufficiently commonplace. That all men must die, that the most humble may have had in them some power which, under other circumstances, might have made them famous,—these are somewhat trite statements; but the fascination of the verses consists in the tone, solemn but serene, which pervades them; in the pictures of coming night, of breaking day, of cheerful rural life, of happy homes; and lastly, in the perfect finish of the verse and the curious felicity of the diction. In short, the poem is a work of high art. It was not inspired, but it was carefully elaborated. And this appears plainly when we compare it, as it stands in the Fraser manuscript, with its final form.

This poem was a work of eight years. Its heading in the Fraser manuscript is "Stanzas Wrote in a Country Churchyard." It was, however, begun at Stoke in 1742, continued at Cambridge, and had its last touches added at Stoke-Pogis, June 12, 1750. In a letter to Horace Walpole of that date, Gray says, "Having put an end to a thing whose beginning you saw long ago, I immediately send it to you."

The corrections made by Gray during this period were many, and were probably all improvements. Many poets when they try to improve their verses only injure them. But Gray's corrections were invariably for the better. We may even say that, if it had been published as it was first written, and as it now stands in the Fraser manuscript, it would have ranked only with the best poetry of Shenstone or Cowper. Let me indicate some of the most important changes.

In line seventeen, the fine epithet of "incense-breathing" was an addition.

"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,"

for the Fraser manuscript reads—

"Forever sleep. The breezy call of morn."

Nineteenth line, Fraser manuscript has—

"Or chanticleer so shrill, or echoing horn,"

corrected to

"The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn."

Twenty-fourth—"Coming kiss" was corrected to "envied kiss."

Forty-third—"Awake the silent dust" was corrected to "provoke the silent dust."

Forty-seventh—The correction of "Reins of Empire" to "Rod of Empire" first appears in the margin of the Pembroke manuscript.

Fifty-seventh—In the Fraser manuscript it reads—

"Some village Cato, who with dauntless breast,
Some mute, inglorious Tully here may rest;
Some Cæsar," etc.

In the Pembroke manuscript, these classical personages have disappeared, and the great improvement was made of substituting Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, and thus maintaining the English coloring of the poem.

Fifty-first—This verse, beginning, "But Knowledge," etc., was placed, in the Fraser manuscript, after the one beginning, "Some village Cato," but with a note in the margin to transfer it to where it now stands. The third line of the stanza was first written, "Chill Penury had damped." This was first corrected to "depressed," and afterward to "repressed."

Fifty-fifth—"Their fate forbade," changed to "Their lot forbade."

Sixty-sixth—"Their struggling virtues" was improved to "Their growing virtues."

Seventy-first—"Crown the shrine" was altered to "heap the shrine," and in the next line "Incense hallowed by the muse's flame" was wisely changed to "Incense kindled by the muse's flame."

After the seventy-second line stand, in the Fraser manuscript, the following stanzas, which Gray, with admirable taste, afterward omitted. But, before he decided to leave them out altogether, he drew a black line down the margin, indicating that he would transfer them to another place. These stanzas were originally intended to close the poem. Afterward the thought occurred to him of "the hoary-headed swain" and the "Epitaph."

"The thoughtless World to Majesty may bow,
Exalt the Brave and idolize Success,
But more to Innocence their safety owe
Than Power and Genius e'er conspire to bless.

"And thou, who, mindful of the unhonored Dead,
Dost, in these Notes, their artless Tale relate,
By Night and lonely Contemplation led
To linger in the gloomy Walks of Fate;

"Hark, how the sacred Calm that broods around
Bids every fierce, tumultuous Passion cease,
In still, small Accents whispering from the Ground
A grateful Earnest of eternal Peace.

"No more with Reason and thyself at Strife,
Give anxious Cares and useless Wishes room;
But through the cool, sequestered Vale of Life
Pursue the silent Tenor of thy Doom."

After these stanzas, according to the Fraser manuscript, were to follow these lines, which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere:—

"If chance that e'er some pensive Spirit more,
By sympathetic Musings here delayed,
With vain though kind Enquiry shall explore
Thy once-loved Haunt, thy long-neglected Shade,

"Haply," etc.

But Gray soon dispensed with this feeble stanza, and made a new one by changing it into the one beginning:—

"For thee, who mindful."

The ninety-ninth and one hundredth lines stand in the Fraser manuscript—

"With hasty footsteps brush the dews away
On the high brow of yonder hanging lawn."

The following stanza is noticeable for the inversions so frequent in Gray, and which he had, perhaps, unconsciously adopted from his familiarity with the classics. He afterward omitted it:—

"Him have we seen the greenwood side along,
While o'er the heath we hied, our labors done.
Oft as the wood-lark piped her farewell song,
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun."

In the manuscript the word is spelled "whistful." In line 101, "hoary beech" is corrected to "spreading beech," and afterward to "nodding beech."

Line 113—"Dirges meet" was changed to "dirges dire;" and after 116 came the beautiful stanza, afterward omitted by Gray as being de trop in this place:—

"There, scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

Even in this verse there were two corrections. "Robin" was altered in the Fraser manuscript into "redbreast," and "frequent violets" into "showers of violets."

One of the most curious accidents to which this famous poem has been subjected was an erroneous change made in the early editions, which has been propagated almost to our time. In the stanza beginning—

"The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Power,"

Gray wrote

"Awaits alike the inevitable Hour."

And so it stands in all three manuscripts, and in the printed edition which he himself superintended. His meaning was, "The inevitable Hour awaits everything. It stands there, waiting the boast of Heraldry," etc. But his editors, misled by his inverted style, supposed that it was the gifts of Heraldry, Power, Beauty, etc., that were waiting, and therefore corrected what they thought Gray's bad grammar, and printed the word "await." But so they destroyed the meaning. These things were not waiting at all for the dread hour; they were enjoying themselves, careless of its approach. But "the hour" was waiting for them. Gray's original reading has been restored in the last editions.

In tracing the development of this fine poem, we see it gradually improving under his careful touch, till it becomes a work of high art. In some poets—Wordsworth, for example—inspiration is at its maximum, and art at its minimum. In Gray, I think, inspiration was at its minimum, and art at its maximum.

[ RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL]

[AFFINITIES OF BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY][5]

It has long been known that many analogies exist between Buddhism and Christianity. The ceremonies, ritual, and rites of the Buddhists strikingly resemble those of the Roman Catholic Church. The Buddhist priests are monks. They take the same three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience which are binding on those of the Roman Church. They are mendicants, like the mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. They are tonsured; use strings of beads, like the rosary, with which to count their prayers; have incense and candles in their worship; use fasts, processions, litanies, and holy water. They have something akin to the adoration of saints; repeat prayers in an unknown tongue; have a chanted psalmody with a double choir; and suspend the censer from five chains. In China, some Buddhists worship the image of a virgin, called the Queen of Heaven, having an infant in her arms, and holding a cross. In Thibet the Grand Lamas wear a mitre, dalmatica, and cope, and pronounce a benediction on the laity by extending the right hand over their heads. The Dalai-Lama resembles the Pope, and is regarded as the head of the Church. The worship of relics is very ancient among the Buddhists, and so are pilgrimages to sacred places.

Besides these resemblances in outward ceremonies, more important ones appear in the inner life and history of the two religions. Both belong to those systems which derive their character from a human founder, and not from a national tendency; to the class which contains the religions of Moses, Zoroaster, Confucius, and Mohammed, and not to that in which the Brahmanical, Egyptian, Scandinavian, Greek, and Roman religions are found. Both Buddhism and Christianity are catholic, and not ethnic; that is, not confined to a single race or nation, but by their missionary spirit passing beyond these boundaries, and making converts among many races. Christianity began among the Jews as a Semitic religion, but, being rejected by the Jewish nation, established itself among the Aryan races of Europe. In the same way Buddhism, beginning among an Aryan people—the Hindoos—was expelled from Hindostan, and established itself among the Mongol races of Eastern Asia. Besides its resemblances to the Roman Catholic side of Christendom, Buddhism has still closer analogies with the Protestant Church. Like Protestantism, it is a reform, which rejects a hierarchal system and does away with a priestly caste. Like Protestantism, it has emphasized the purely humane side of life, and is a religion of humanity rather than of piety. Both the Christian and Buddhist churches teach a divine incarnation, and both worship a God-man.

Are these remarkable analogies only casual resemblances, or are they real affinities? By affinity we here mean genetic relationship. Are Buddhism and Christianity related as mother and child, one being derived from the other; or are they related by both being derived from some common ancestor? Is either derived from the other, as Christianity from Judaism, or Protestantism from the Papal Church? That there can be no such affinity as this seems evident from history. History shows no trace of the contact which would be required for such influence. If Christianity had taken its customs from Buddhism, or Buddhism from Christianity, there must have been ample historic evidence of the fact. But, instead of this, history shows that each has grown up by its own natural development, and has unfolded its qualities separately and alone. The law of evolution also teaches that such great systems do not come from imitation, but as growths from a primal germ.

Nor does history give the least evidence of a common ancestry from which both took their common traits. We know that Buddhism was derived from Brahmanism, and that Christianity was derived from Judaism. Now, Judaism and Brahmanism have few analogies; they could not, therefore, have transmitted to their offspring what they did not themselves possess. Brahmanism came from an Aryan stock, in Central Asia; Judaism from a Semitic stem, thousands of miles to the west. If Buddhism and Christianity came from a common source, that source must have antedated both the Mosaic and Brahmanical systems. Even then it would be a case of atavism in which the original type disappeared in the children, to reappear in the later descendants.

Are, then, these striking resemblances, and others which are still to be mentioned, only accidental analogies? This does not necessarily follow; for there is a third alternative. They may be what are called in science homologies; that is, the same law working out similar results under the same conditions, though under different circumstances. The whale lives under different circumstances from other mammalia; but being a mammal, he has a like osseous structure. What seems to be a fin, being dissected, turns out to be an arm, with hand and fingers. There are like homologies in history. Take the instance of the English and French revolutions. In each case the legitimate king was tried, condemned, and executed. A republic followed. The republic gave way before a strong-handed usurper. Then the original race of kings was restored; but, having learned nothing and forgotten nothing, they were displaced a second time, and a constitutional monarch placed on the throne, who, though not the legitimate king, still belonged to the same race. Here the same laws of human nature have worked out similar results; for no one would suggest that France had copied its revolutions from England. And, in religion, human nature reproduces similar customs and ceremonies under like conditions. When, for instance, you have a mechanical system of prayer, in which the number of prayers is of chief importance, there must be some way of counting them, and so the rosary has been invented independently in different religions. We have no room to point out how this law has worked in other instances; but it is enough to refer to the principle.

Besides these resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity, there are also some equally remarkable differences, which should be noticed.

The first of these is the striking fact that Buddhism has been unable to recognize the existence of the Infinite Being. It has been called atheism by the majority of the best authorities. Even Arthur Lillie, who defends this system from the charge of agnosticism, says:[6] "An agnostic school of Buddhism without doubt exists. It professes plain atheism, and holds that every mortal, when he escapes from re-births, and the causation of Karma by the awakenment of the Bodhi or gnosis, will be annihilated. This Buddhism, by Eugène Burnouf, Saint-Hilaire, Max Müller, Csoma de Körös, and, I believe, almost every writer of note, is pronounced the original Buddhism,—the Buddhism of the South." Almost every writer of note, therefore, who has studied Buddhism in the Pâli, Singhalese, Chinese, and other languages, and has had direct access to its original sources, has pronounced it a system of atheism. But this opinion is opposed to the fact that Buddhists have everywhere worshiped unseen and superhuman powers, erected magnificent temples, maintained an elaborate ritual, and adored Buddha as the supreme ruler of the worlds. How shall we explain this paradox? All depends on the definition we give to the word "atheism." If a system is atheistic which sees only the temporal, and not the eternal; which knows no God as the author, creator, and ruler of Nature; which ascribes the origin of the universe to natural causes, to which only the finite is knowable, and the infinite unknowable—then Buddhism is atheism. But, in that case, much of the polytheism of the world must be regarded as atheism; for polytheism has largely worshiped finite gods. The whole race of Olympian deities were finite beings. Above them ruled the everlasting necessity of things. But who calls the Greek worshipers atheists? The Buddha, to most Buddhists, is a finite being, one who has passed through numerous births, has reached Nirvana, and will one day be superseded by another Buddha. Yet, for the time, he is the Supreme Being, Ruler of all the Worlds. He is the object of worship, and really divine, if in a subordinate sense.

I would not, therefore, call this religion atheism. No religion which worships superhuman powers can justly be called atheistic on account of its meagre metaphysics. How many Christians there are who do not fully realize the infinite and eternal nature of the Deity! To many He is no more than the Buddha is to his worshipers,—a supreme being, a mighty ruler, governing all things by his will. How few see God everywhere in nature, as Jesus saw Him, letting his sun shine on the evil and good, and sending his rain on the just and unjust. How few see Him in all of life, so that not a sparrow dies, or a single hair of the head falls, without the Father. Most Christians recognize the Deity only as occasionally interfering by special providences, particular judgments, and the like.

But in Christianity this ignorance of the eternal nature of God is the exception, while in Buddhism it is the rule. In the reaction against Brahmanism, the Brahmanic faith in the infinite was lost. In the fully developed system of the ancient Hindoo religion the infinite overpowered the finite, the temporal world was regarded as an illusion, and only the eternal was real. The reaction from this extreme was so complete as to carry the Buddhists to the exact opposite. If to the Brahman all the finite visible world was only maya—illusion, to the Buddhists all the infinite unseen world was unknowable, and practically nothing.

Perhaps the most original feature of Christianity is the fact that it has combined in a living synthesis that which in other systems was divided. Jesus regarded love to God and love to man as identical,—positing a harmonious whole of time and eternity, piety and humanity, faith and works,—and thus laid the foundation of a larger system than either Brahmanism or Buddhism. He did not invent piety, nor discover humanity. Long before he came the Brahmanic literature had sounded the deepest depths of spiritual life, and the Buddhist missionaries had preached universal benevolence to mankind. But the angelic hymn which foretold the new religion as bringing at once "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men" indicated the essence of the faith which was at the same time a heavenly love and an earthly blessing. This difference of result in the two systems came probably from the different methods of their authors. With Jesus life was the source of knowledge; the life was the light of men. With the Buddha, reflection, meditation, thought was the source of knowledge. In this, however, he included intuition no less than reflection. Sakya-muni understood perfectly that a mere intellectual judgment possessed little motive power; therefore he was not satisfied till he had obtained an intuitive perception of truth. That alone gave at once rest and power. But as the pure intellect, even in its highest act, is unable to grasp the infinite, the Buddha was an agnostic on this side of his creed by the very success of his method. Who, by searching, can find out God? The infinite can only be known by the process of living experience. This was the method of Jesus, and has been that of his religion. For what is faith but that receptive state of mind which waits on the Lord to receive the illumination which it cannot create by its own processes? However this may be, it is probable that the fatal defect in Buddhism which has neutralized its generous philanthropy and its noble humanities has been the absence of the inspiration which comes from the belief in an eternal world. Man is too great to be satisfied with time alone, or eternity alone; he needs to live from and for both. Hence, Buddhism is an arrested religion, while Christianity is progressive. Christianity has shown the capacity of outgrowing its own defects and correcting its own mistakes. For example, it has largely outgrown its habit of persecuting infidels and heretics. No one is now put to death for heresy. It has also passed out of the stage in which religion is considered to consist in leaving the world and entering a monastery. The anchorites of the early centuries are no longer to be found in Christendom. Even in Catholic countries the purpose of monastic life is no longer to save the soul by ascetic tortures, but to attain some practical end. The Protestant Reformation, which broke the yoke of priestly power and set free the mind of Europe, was a movement originating in Christianity itself, like other developments of a similar kind. No such signs of progress exist in the system of Buddhism. It has lost the missionary ardor of its early years; it has ceased from creating a vast literature such as grew up in its younger days; it no longer produces any wonders of architecture. It even lags behind the active life of the countries where it has its greatest power.

It is a curious analogy between the two systems that, while neither the Christ nor the Buddha practiced or taught asceticism, their followers soon made the essence of religion to consist in some form of monastic life. Both Jesus and Sakya-muni went about doing good. Both sent their followers into the world to preach a gospel. Jesus, after thirty years of a retired life, came among men "eating and drinking," and associating with "publicans and sinners." Sakya-muni, after spending some years as an anchorite, deliberately renounced that mode of religion as unsatisfactory, and associated with all men, as Jesus afterward did. Within a few centuries after their death, their followers relapsed into ascetic and monastic practices; but with this difference, that while in Christendom there has always been both a regular and a secular clergy, in the Buddhist countries the whole priesthood live in monasteries. They have no parish priests, unless as an exception. While in Christian countries the clergy has become more and more a practical body, in sympathy with the common life, in Buddhist lands they live apart and exercise little influence on the civil condition of the people.

Nor must we pass by the important fact that the word Christendom is synonymous with a progressive civilization, while Buddhism is everywhere connected with one which is arrested and stationary. The boundaries of the Christian religion are exactly coextensive with the advance of science, art, literature; and with the continued accumulation of knowledge, power, wealth, and the comforts of human life. According to Kuenen,[7] one of the most recent students of these questions, this difference is due to the principle of hope which exists in Christianity, but is absent in Buddhism. The one has always believed in a kingdom of God here and a blessed immortality hereafter. Buddhism has not this hope; and this, says Kuenen, "is a blank which nothing can fill." So large a thinker as Albert Réville has expressed his belief that even the intolerance of Christianity indicated a passionate love of truth which has created modern science. He says that "if Europe had not passed through those ages of intolerance, it is doubtful whether the science of our day would ever have arrived."[8] It is only within the boundaries of nations professing the Christian faith that we must go to-day to learn the latest discoveries in science, the best works of art, the most flourishing literature. Only within the same circle of Christian states is there a government by law, and not by will. Only within these boundaries have the rights of the individual been secured, while the power of the state has been increased. Government by law, joined with personal freedom, is only to be found where the faith exists which teaches that God not only supports the universal order of natural things, but is also the friend of the individual soul; and in just that circle of states in which the doctrine is taught that there is no individual soul for God to love and no Divine presence in the order of nature, human life has subsided into apathy, progress has ceased, and it has been found impossible to construct national unity. Saint-Hilaire affirms[9] that "in politics and legislation the dogma of Buddhism has remained inferior even to that of Brahmanism," and "has been able to do nothing to constitute states or to govern them by equitable rules." These Buddhist nations are really six: Siam, Burma, Nepaul, Thibet, Tartary, and Ceylon. The activity and social progress in China and Japan are no exceptions to this rule; for in neither country has Buddhism any appreciable influence on the character of the people.

To those who deny that the theology of a people influences its character, it may be instructive to see how exactly the good and evil influences of Buddhism correspond to the positive and negative traits of its doctrine. Its merits, says Saint-Hilaire, are its practical character, its abnegation of vulgar gratifications, its benevolence, mildness, sentiment of human equality, austerity of manners, dislike of falsehood, and respect for the family. Its defects are want of social power, egotistical aims, ignorance of the ideal good, of the sense of human right and human freedom, skepticism, incurable despair, contempt of life. All its human qualities correspond to its doctrinal teaching from the beginning. It has always taught benevolence, patience, self-denial, charity, and toleration. Its defects arise inevitably from its negative aim,—to get rid of sorrow and evil by sinking into apathy, instead of seeking for the triumph of good and the coming of a reign of God here on the earth.

As regards the Buddha himself, modern students differ widely. Some, of course, deny his very existence, and reduce him to a solar myth. M. Emile Senart, as quoted by Oldenberg,[10] following the Lalita Vistara as his authority, makes of him a solar hero, born of the morning cloud, contending by the power of light with the demons of darkness, rising in triumph to the zenith of heavenly glory, then passing into the night of Nirvana and disappearing from the scene.

The difficulty about this solar myth theory is that it proves too much; it is too powerful a solvent; it would dissolve all history. How easy it would be, in a few centuries, to turn General Washington and the American Revolution into a solar myth! Great Britain, a region of clouds and rain, represents the Kingdom of Darkness; America, with more sunshine, is the Day. Great Britain, as Darkness, wishes to devour the Young Day, or dawn of light, which America is about to diffuse over the earth. But Washington, the solar hero, arrives. He is from Virginia, that is, born of a virgin. He was born in February, in the sign of Aquarius and the Fishes,—plainly referring to the birth of the sun from the ocean. As the sun surveys the earth, so Washington was said to be a surveyor of many regions. The story of the fruitless attempts of the Indians to shoot him at Braddock's defeat is evidently legendary; and, in fact, this battle itself must be a myth, for how can we suppose two English and French armies to have crossed the Atlantic, and then gone into a wilderness west of the mountains, to fight a battle? So easy is it to turn history into a solar myth.

The character of Sakya-muni must be learned from his religion and from authentic tradition. In many respects his character and influence resembled that of Jesus. He opposed priestly assumptions, taught the equality and brotherhood of man, sent out disciples to teach his doctrine, was a reformer who relied on the power of truth and love. Many of his reported sayings resemble those of Jesus. He was opposed by the Brahmans as Jesus by the Pharisees. He compared the Brahmans who followed their traditions to a chain of blind men, who move on, not seeing where they go.[11] Like Jesus, he taught that mercy was better than sacrifices. Like Jesus, he taught orally, and left no writing. Jesus did not teach in Hebrew, but in the Aramaic, which was the popular dialect, and so the Buddha did not speak to the people in Sanskrit, but in their own tongue, which was Pâli. Like Jesus, he seems to have instructed his hearers by parables or stories. He was one of the greatest reformers the world has ever seen; and his influence, after that of the Christ, has probably exceeded that of any one who ever lived.

But, beside such real resemblances between these two masters, we are told of others still more striking, which would certainly be hard to explain unless one of the systems had borrowed from the other. These are said to be the preëxistence of Buddha in heaven; his birth of a virgin; salutation by angels; presentation in the temple; baptism by fire and water; dispute with the doctors; temptation in the wilderness; transfiguration; descent into hell; ascension into heaven.[12] If these legends could be traced back to the time before Christ, then it might be argued that the Gospels have borrowed from Buddhism. Such, however, is not the fact. These stories are taken from the Lalita Vistara, which, according to Rhys Davids,[13] was probably composed between six hundred and a thousand years after the time of Buddha, by some Buddhist poet in Nepaul. Rhys Davids, one of our best authorities, says of this poem: "As evidence of what early Buddhism actually was, it is of about the same value as some mediæval poem would be of the real facts of the gospel history."[13] M. Ernest de Bunsen, in his work on the "Angel Messiah," has given a very exhaustive statement, says Mr. Davids, of all the possible channels through which Christians can be supposed to have borrowed from the Buddhists. But Mr. Davids's conclusion is that he finds no evidence of any such communications of ideas from the East to the West.[14] The difference between the wild stories of the Lalita Vistara and the sober narratives of the Gospels is quite apparent. Another writer, Professor Seydel,[15] thinks, after a full and careful examination, that only five facts in the Gospels may have been borrowed from Buddhism. These are: (1) The fast of Jesus before his work; (2) The question in regard to the blind man—"Who did sin, this man, or his parents"? (3) The preëxistence of Christ; (4) The presentation in the Temple; (5) Nathanael sitting under a fig-tree, compared with Buddha under a Bo-tree. But Kuenen has examined these parallels, and considers them merely accidental coincidences. And, in truth, it is very hard to conceive of one religion borrowing its facts or legends from another, if that other stands in no historic relation to it. That Buddhism should have taken much from Brahmanism is natural; for Brahmanism was its mother. That Christianity should have borrowed many of its methods from Judaism is equally natural; for Judaism was its cradle. Modern travelers in Burma and Tartary have found that the Buddhists hold a kind of camp-meeting in the open air, where they pray and sing. Suppose that some critic, noticing this, should assert that, when Wesley and his followers established similar customs, they must have borrowed them from the Buddhists. The absurdity would be evident. New religions grow, they are not imitations.

It has been thought, however, that Christianity was derived from the Essenes, because of certain resemblances, and it is argued that the Essenes must have obtained their monastic habits from the Therapeutæ in Egypt, and that the Therapeutæ received them from the Buddhists, because they could not have found them elsewhere. This theory, however, has been dismissed from the scene by the young German scholar,[16] who has proved that the essay on the Therapeutæ ascribed to Philo was really written by a Christian anchorite in the third or fourth century.

The result, then, of our investigation, is this: There is no probability that the analogies between Christianity and Buddhism have been derived the one from the other. They have come from the common and universal needs and nature of man, which repeat themselves again and again in like positions and like circumstances. That Jesus and Buddha should both have retired into the wilderness before undertaking their great work is probable, for it has been the habit of other reformers to let a period of meditation precede their coming before the world. That both should have been tempted to renounce their enterprise is also in accordance with human nature. That, in after times, the simple narratives should be overlaid with additions, and a whole mass of supernatural wonders added,—as we find in the Apocryphal Gospels and the Lalita Vistara,—is also in accordance with the working of the human mind.

Laying aside all such unsatisfactory resemblances, we must regard the Buddha as having been one of the noblest of men, and one whom Jesus would have readily welcomed as a fellow worker and a friend. He opposed a dominant priesthood, maintained the equal religious rights of all mankind, overthrew caste, encouraged woman to take her place as man's equal, forbade all bloody sacrifices, and preached a religion of peace and good will, seeking to triumph only in the fair conflict of reason with reason. If he was defective in the loftiest instincts of the soul; if he knew nothing of the infinite and eternal; if he saw nothing permanent in the soul of man; if his highest purpose was negative,—to escape from pain, sorrow, anxiety, toil,—let us still be grateful for the influence which has done so much to tame the savage Mongols, and to introduce hospitality and humanity into the homes of Lassa and Siam. If Edwin Arnold, a poet, idealizes him too highly, it is the better fault, and should be easily forgiven. Hero-worshipers are becoming scarce in our time; let us make the most of those we have.

[WHY I AM NOT A FREE-RELIGIONIST][17]

What is meant by "Free Religion"? I understand by it, individualism in religion. It is the religious belief which has made itself independent of historic and traditional influences, so far as it is in the power of any one to attain such independence. In Christian lands it means a religion which has cut loose from the Bible and the Christian Church, and which is as ready to question the teaching of Jesus as that of Socrates or Buddha. It is, what Emerson called himself, an endless seeker, with no past behind it. It is entire trust in the private reason as the sole authority in matters of religion.

Free Religion may be regarded as Protestantism carried to its ultimate results. A Protestant Christian accepts the leadership of Jesus, and keeps himself in the Christian communion; but he uses his own private judgment to discover what Jesus taught, and what Christianity really is. The Free Religionist goes a step farther, and decides by his own private judgment what is true and what false, no matter whether taught by Jesus or not.

Free Religion, as thus understood, seems to me opposed to the law of evolution, and incompatible with it. Evolution educes the present from the past by a continuous process. Free Religion cuts itself loose from the past, and makes every man the founder of his own religion. According to the law of evolution, confirmed by history, every advance in religion is the development from something going before. Jewish monotheism grew out of polytheism; Christianity and Mohammedanism out of Judaism; Buddhism out of Brahmanism; Protestant Christianity out of the Roman Catholic Church. Jesus himself said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." The higher religions are not made; they grow. Of each it may be said, as of the poet: "Nascitur, non fit." Therefore, if there is to arrive something higher than our existing Christianity, it must not be a system which forsakes the Christian belief, but something developed from it.

According to the principle of evolution, every growing and productive religion obeys the laws of heredity and of variation. It has an inherited common life, and a tendency to modification by individual activity. Omit or depress either factor, and the religion loses its power of growth. Without a common life, the principle of development is arrested. He who leaves the great current which comes from the past loses headway. This current, in the Christian communion, is the inherited spirit of Jesus. It is his life, continued in his Church; his central convictions of love to God and to man; of fatherhood and brotherhood; of the power of truth to conquer error, of good to overcome evil; of a Kingdom of Heaven to come to us here. It is the faith of Jesus in things unseen; his hope of the triumph of right over wrong; his love going down to the lowliest child of God. These vital convictions in the soul of Jesus are communicated by contact from generation to generation. They are propagated, as he suggested, like leaven hidden in the dough. By a different figure, Plato, in his dialogue of Ion, shows that inspiration is transmitted like the magnetic influence, which causes iron rings to adhere and hang together in a chain. Thoughts and opinions are communicated by argument, reasoning, speech, and writing; but faith and inspiration by the influence of life on life. The life of Jesus is thus continued in his Church, and those who stand outside of it lose much of this transmitted and sympathetic influence. Common life in a religious body furnishes the motive force which carries it forward, while individual freedom gives the power of improvement. The two principles of heredity and variation must be united in order to combine union and freedom, and to secure progress. Where freedom of thought ceases, religion becomes rigid. It is incapable of development. Such, for instance, is the condition of Buddhism, which, at first full of intellectual activity, has now hardened into a monkish ritual.

Free Religion sacrifices the motive power derived from association and religious sympathy for the sake of a larger intellectual freedom. The result is individualism. It founds no churches, but spends much force in criticising the Christian community, its belief, and its methods. These are, no doubt, open to criticism, which would do good if administered sympathetically and from within, but produce little result when delivered in the spirit of antagonism. Imperfect as the Christian Church is, it ought to be remembered that in it are to be found the chief strength and help of the charities, philanthropies, and moral reforms of our time. Every one who has at heart a movement for the benefit of humanity appeals instinctively for aid to the Christian churches. It is in these that such movements usually originate, and are carried on. Even when, as in the antislavery movement, a part of the churches refuse to sympathize with a new moral or social movement, the reproaches made against them show that in the mind of the community an interest in all humane endeavor is considered to be a part of their work. The common life and convictions of these bodies enable them to accomplish what individualism does not venture to undertake. Individualism is incapable of organized and sustained work of this sort, though it can, and often does, coöperate earnestly with it.

The teaching of Jesus is founded on the synthesis of Truth and Love. Jesus declares himself to have been born "to bear witness to the truth," and he also makes love, divine and human, the substance of his gospel. The love element produces union, the truth element, freedom. Union without freedom stiffens into a rigid conservatism. Freedom without union breaks up into an intellectual atomism. The Christian churches have gone into both extremes, but never permanently; for Christianity, as long as it adheres to its founder and his ideas, has the power of self-recovery. Its diseases are self-limited.

It has had many such periods, but has recovered from them. It passed through an age in which it ran to ascetic self-denial, and made saints of self-torturing anchorites. It afterward became a speculative system, and tended to metaphysical creeds and doctrinal distinctions. It became a persecuting church, burning heretics and Jews, and torturing infidels as an act of faith. It was tormented by dark superstitions, believing in witchcraft and magic. But it has left all these evils behind. No one is now put to death for heresy or witchcraft. The monastic orders in the Church are preachers and teachers, or given to charity. No one could be burned to-day as a heretic. No one to-day believes in witchcraft. The old creeds which once held the Church in irons are now slowly disintegrating. But reform, as I have said, must come from within, by the gradual elimination of those inherited beliefs which interfere with the unity of the Church and the leadership of Christ himself. The Platonic and Egyptian Trinity remaining as dogma, repeated but not understood,—the Manichæan division of the human race into children of God and children of the Devil,—the scholastic doctrine of the Atonement, by which the blood of Jesus expiates human guilt,—are being gradually explained in accordance with reason and the teaching of Jesus.

Some beliefs, once thought to be of vital importance, are now seen by many to be unessential, or are looked at in a different light. Instead of making Jesus an exceptional person, we are coming to regard him as a representative man, the realized ideal of what man was meant to be, and will one day become. Instead of considering his sinlessness as setting him apart from his race, we look on it as showing that sin is not the natural, but unnatural, condition of mankind. His miracles are regarded not as violations of the laws of nature, but anticipations of laws which one day will be universally known, and which are boundless as the universe. Nor will they in future be regarded as evidence of the mission of Jesus, since he himself was grieved when they were so looked upon, and he made his truth and his character the true evidence that he came from God. The old distinction between "natural" and "supernatural" will disappear when it is seen that Jesus had a supernatural work and character, the same in kind as ours, though higher in degree. The supreme gifts which make him the providential leader of the race do not set him apart from his brethren if we see that it is a law of humanity that gifts differ, and that men endowed with superior powers become leaders in science, art, literature, politics; as Jesus has become the chief great spiritual leader of mankind.

Men are now searching the Scriptures, not under the bondage of an infallible letter, but seeking for the central ideas of Jesus and the spirit of his gospel. They begin to accept the maxim of Goethe: "No matter how much the gospels contradict each other, provided the Gospel does not contradict itself." The profound convictions of Christ, which pervade all his teaching, give the clue by which to explain the divergences in the narrative. We interpret the letter by the light of the spirit. We see how Jesus emphasized the law of human happiness,—that it comes from within, not from without; that the pure in heart see God, and that it is more blessed to give than to receive. We comprehend the stress he lays on the laws of progress,—that he who humbleth himself shall be exalted. We recognize his profound conviction that all God's children are dear to him, that his sun shines on the evil and the good, and that he will seek the one lost sheep till he find it. We see his trust in the coming of the Kingdom of God in this world, the triumph of good over evil, and the approaching time when the knowledge of God shall fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. And we find his profound faith in the immortal life which abides in us, so that whoever shares that faith with him can never die.

The more firmly these central ideas of Jesus are understood and held, the less importance belongs to any criticism of the letter. This or that saying, attributed to Jesus in the record, maybe subjected to attack; but it is the main current of his teaching which has made him the leader of civilized man for eighteen centuries. That majestic stream will sweep on undisturbed, though there may be eddies here or stagnant pools there, which induce hasty observers to suppose that it has ceased to flow.

"Rusticus expectat dum defluit amnis, at ille
Volvitur et volvetur, in omne volubilis ævium."

I sometimes read attacks on special sayings of the record, which argue, to the critic's mind, that Jesus was in error here, or mistaken there. But I would recommend to such writers to ponder the suggestive rule of Coleridge: "Until I can understand the ignorance of Plato, I shall consider myself ignorant of his understanding;" or the remark of Emerson to the youth who brought him a paper in which he thought he had refuted Plato: "If you attack the king, be sure that you kill him."

When the Christian world really takes Jesus himself as its leader, instead of building its faith on opinions about him, we may anticipate the arrival of that union which he foresaw and foretold—"As thou, father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." Then Christians, ceasing from party strife and sectarian dissension, will unite in one mighty effort to cure the evils of humanity and redress its wrongs. Before a united Christendom, what miseries could remain unrelieved? War, that criminal absurdity, that monstrous anachronism, must at last be abolished. Pauperism, vice, and crime, though continuing in sporadic forms, would cease to exist as a part of the permanent institutions of civilization. A truly Catholic Church, united under the Master, would lead all humanity up to a higher plane. The immense forces developed by modern science, and the magnificent discoveries in the realm of nature, helpless now to cure the wrongs of suffering man, would become instruments of potent use under the guidance of moral forces.

According to the law of evolution, this is what we have a right to expect. If we follow the lines of historic development, not being led into extreme individualism; if we maintain the continuity of human progress, this vast result must finally arrive. For such reasons I prefer to remain in the communion of the Christian body, doing what I may to assist its upward movement. For such reasons I am not a Free Religionist.

[HAVE ANIMALS SOULS][18]

To answer this question, we must first inquire what we mean by a soul. If we mean a human soul, it is certain that animals do not possess it,—at least not in a fully developed condition. If we mean, "Do they possess an immortal soul?" that is, perhaps, a question difficult to answer either in the affirmative or the negative. But if we mean by the soul an immaterial principle of life, which coördinates the bodily organization to a unity; which is the ground of growth, activity, perception, volition; which is intelligent, affectionate, and to a certain extent free; then we must admit that animals have souls.

The same arguments which induce us to believe that there is a soul in man apply to animals. The world has generally believed that in man, beside the body, there is also soul. Why have people believed it? The reason probably is, that, beside all that can be accounted for as the result of the juxtaposition of material particles, there remains a very important element unaccounted for. Mechanical and physical agency may explain much, but the most essential characteristic of vital phenomena they do not explain. They do not account for the unity in variety, permanence in change, growth from within by continuous processes, coming from the vital functions in an organized body. Every such body has a unity peculiar to itself, which cannot be considered the result of the collocation of material molecules. It is a unity which controls these molecules, arranges and rearranges them, maintains a steady activity, carries the body through the phenomena of growth, and causes the various organs to coöperate for the purposes of the whole. The vital power is not merely the result of material phenomena, but it reacts on these as a cause. Add to this that strange phenomenon of human consciousness, the sense of personality,—which is the clear perception of selfhood as a distinct unchanging unit, residing in a body all of whose parts are in perpetual flux,—and we see why the opinion of a soul has arisen. It has been assumed by the common sense of mankind that in every living body the cause of the mode of existence of each part is contained in the whole. As soon as death intervenes each part is left free to pass through changes peculiar to itself alone. Life is a power which acts from the whole upon the parts, causing them to resist chemical laws, which begin to act as soon as life departs. The unity of a living body does not result from an ingenious juxtaposition of parts, like that of a watch, for example. For the unity of a living body implies that which is called "the vital vortex," or perpetual exchange of particles.

A watch or clock is the nearest approach which has been made by man to the creation of a living being. A watch, for instance, contains the principle of its action in itself, and is not moved from without; in that it resembles a living creature. We can easily conceive of a watch which might be made to go seventy years, without being wound up. It might need to be oiled occasionally, but not as often as an animal needs to be fed. A watch is also like a living creature in having a unity as a whole not belonging to the separate parts, and to which all parts conspire,—namely, that of marking the progress of time. Why, then, say that a man has a soul, and that a watch has not? The difference is this. The higher principle of unity in the watch, that is, its power of marking time, is wholly an effect, and never a cause. It is purely and only the result of the arrangement of wheels and springs; in other words, of material conditions. But in man, the principle of unity is also a cause. Life reacts upon body. The laws of matter are modified by the power of life, chemical action is suspended, living muscles are able to endure without laceration the application of forces which would destroy the dead fibre. So the thought, the love, the will of a living creature react on the physical frame. A sight, a sound, a few spoken words, a message seen in a letter, cause an immense revulsion in the physical condition. Something is suddenly told us, and we faint away, or even die, from the effect of the message. Here mind acts upon matter, showing that in man mind is not merely a result, but also a cause. Hence men have generally believed in the existence of a soul in man. They have not been taught it by metaphysicians, it is one of the spontaneous inductions of common sense from universal experience.

But this argument applies equally to prove a soul in animals. The same reaction of soul on body is constantly apparent. Every time that you whistle to your dog, and he comes bounding toward you, his mind has acted on his body. His will has obeyed his thought, his muscles have obeyed his will. The cause of his motion was mental, not physical. This is too evident to require any further illustration. Therefore, regarding the soul as a principle of life, connected with the body but not its result, or, in other words, as an immaterial principle of activity, there is the same reason for believing in the soul of animals that there is for believing in the soul of man.

But when we ask as to the nature of the animal soul, and how far it is analogous to that of man, we meet with certain difficulties. Let us see then how many of the human qualities of the soul are to be found in animals, and so discover if there is any remainder not possessed by them, peculiar to ourselves.

That the vital soul, or principle of life, belongs equally to plants, animals, and men, is evident. This is so apparent as to be granted even by Descartes, who regards animals as mere machines, or automata, destitute of a thinking soul, but not of life or feeling. They are automata, but living and feeling automata. Descartes denies them a soul, because he defines the soul as the thinking and knowing power. But Locke (with whom Leibnitz fully agreed on this point) ascribes to animals thought as well as feeling, and makes their difference from man to consist in their not possessing abstract ideas. We shall presently see the truth of this most sagacious remark.

Plants, animals, and men are alike in possessing the vital principle, which produces growth, which causes them to pass through regular phases of development, which enables them to digest and assimilate food taken from without, and which carries on a steady circulation within. To this are added, in the animal, the function of voluntary locomotion, perception through the senses of an outward world, the power of feeling pleasure and pain, some wonderful instincts, and some degree of reflective thought. Animals also possess memory, imagination, playfulness, industry, the sense of shame, and many other very human qualities.

Take, for example, Buffon's fine description of the dog ("Histoire du Chien"):—

"By nature fiery, irritable, ferocious, and sanguinary, the dog in his savage state is a terror to other animals. But domesticated he becomes gentle, attached, and desirous to please. He hastens to lay at the feet of his master his courage, his strength, and all his abilities. He listens for his master's orders, inquires his will, consults his opinion, begs his permission, understands the indications of his wishes. Without possessing the power of human thought, he has all the warmth of human sentiment. He has more than human fidelity, he is constant in his attachments. He is made up of zeal, ardor, and obedience. He remembers kindness longer than wrong. He endures bad treatment and forgets it—disarming it by patience and submission."

No one who has ever had a dog for a friend will think this description exaggerated. If any should so consider it, we will cite for their benefit what Mr. Jesse, one of the latest students of the canine race, asserts concerning it, in his "Researches into the History of the British Dog" (London, 1866). He says that remarkable instances of the following virtues, feelings, and powers of mind are well authenticated:—

"The dog risks his life to give help; goes for assistance; saves life from drowning, fire, other animals, and men; assists distress; guards property; knows boundaries; resents injuries; repays benefits; communicates ideas; combines with other dogs for several purposes; understands language; knows when he is about to die; knows death in a human being; devotes his whole life to the object of his love; dies of grief and of joy; dies in his master's defense; commits suicide; remains by the dead; solicits, and gives alarm; knows the characters of men; recognizes a portrait, and men after long absence; is fond of praise and sensible to ridicule; feels shame, and is sensible of a fault; is playful; is incorruptible; finds his way back from distant countries; is magnanimous to smaller animals; is jealous; has dreams; and takes a last farewell when dying."

Much of this, it may be said, is instinctive. We must therefore distinguish between Instinct and Intelligence; or, rather, between instinctive intelligence and reflective intelligence. Many writers on the subject of animals have not carefully distinguished these very different activities of the soul. Even M. Leroy, one of the first in modern times who brought careful observation to the study of the nature of animals, has not always kept in view this distinction—as has been noticed by a subsequent French writer of very considerable ability, M. Flourens.[19] The following marks, according to M. Flourens, distinguish instinct from intelligence:—

Thus the building faculty of the beaver is an instinct, for it acts spontaneously, and always in the same way. It is not a general faculty of building in all places and ways, but a special power of building houses of sticks, mud, and other materials, with the entrance under water and a dry place within. When beavers build on a running stream, they begin by making a dam across it, which preserves them from losing the water in a drought; but this also is a spontaneous and invariable act. The old stories of their driving piles, using their tails for trowels, and having well-planned houses with many chambers, have been found to be fictitious. That the beaver builds by instinct, though intelligence comes in to modify the instinct, appears from his wishing to build his house or his dam when it is not needed. Mr. Broderip, the English naturalist, had a pet beaver that manifested his building instinct by dragging together warming-pans, sweeping-brushes, boots, and sticks, which he would lay crosswise. He then would fill in his wall with clothes, bits of coal, turf, laying it very even. Finally, he made a nest for himself behind his wall with clothes, hay, and cotton. As this creature had been brought from America very young, all this procedure must have been instinctive. But his intelligence showed itself in his adapting his mode of building to his new circumstances. His instinct led him to build his wall, and to lay his sticks crosswise, and to fill in with what he could find, according to the universal and spontaneous procedure of all beavers. But his making use of a chest of drawers for one side of his wall, and taking brushes and boots instead of cutting down trees, were no doubt acts of intelligence.

A large part of the wonderful procedure of bees is purely instinctive. Bees, from the beginning of the world, and in all countries of the earth, have lived in similar communities; have had their queen, to lay eggs for them: if their queen is lost, have developed a new one in the same way, by altering the conditions of existence in one of their larvæ; have constructed their hexagonal cells by the same mathematical law, so as to secure the most strength with the least outlay of material. All this is instinct—for it is spontaneous and not deliberate; it is universal and constant. But when the bee deflects his comb in order to avoid a stick thrust across the inside of the hive, and begins the variation before he reaches the stick, this can only be regarded as an act of intelligence.

Animals, then, have both instincts and intelligence; and so has man. A large part of human life proceeds from tendencies as purely, if not as vigorously, instinctive as those of animals. Man has social instincts, which create human society. Children play from an instinct. The maternal instinct in a human mother is, till modified by reflection, as spontaneous, universal, and necessary as the same instinct in animals. But in man the instincts are reduced to a minimum, and are soon modified by observation, experience, and reflection. In animals they are at their maximum, and are modified in a much less degree.

It is sometimes said that animals do not reason, but man does. But animals are quite capable of at least two modes of reasoning, that of comparison and that of inference. They compare two modes of action, or two substances, and judge the one to be preferable to the other, and accordingly select it. Sir Emerson Tennent tells us that elephants, employed to build stone walls in Ceylon, will lay each stone in its place, then stand off and look to see if it is plumb, and, if not, will move it with their trunk, till it lies perfectly straight. This is a pure act of reflective judgment. He narrates an adventure which befell himself in Ceylon while riding on a narrow road through the forest. He heard a rumbling sound approaching, and directly there came to meet him an elephant, bearing on his tusks a large log of wood, which he had been directed to carry to the place where it was needed. Sir Emerson Tennent's horse, unused to these monsters, was alarmed, and refused to go forward. The sagacious elephant, perceiving this, evidently decided that he must himself go out of the way. But to do this, he was obliged first to take the log from his tusks with his trunk, and lay it on the ground, which he did, and then backed out of the road between the trees till only his head was visible. But the horse was still too timid to go by, whereupon the judicious pachyderm pushed himself farther back, till all of his body, except the end of his trunk, had disappeared. Then Sir Emerson succeeded in getting his horse by, but stopped to witness the result. The elephant came out, took the log up again, laid it across his tusks, and went on his way. This story, told by an unimpeachable witness, shows several successive acts of reasoning. The log-bearer inferred from the horse's terror that it would not pass; he again inferred that in that case he must himself get out of the way; that, to do this, he must lay down his log; that he must go farther back; and accompanying this was his sense of duty, making him faithful to his task; and, most of all, his consideration of what was due to this human traveler, which kept him from driving the horse and man before him as he went on.

There is another well-authenticated anecdote of an elephant; he was following an ammunition wagon, and saw the man who was seated on it fall off just before the wheel. The man would have been crushed had not the animal instantly run forward, and, without an order, lifted the wheel with his trunk, and held it suspended in the air, till the wagon had passed over the man without hurting him. Here were combined presence of mind, good will, knowledge of the danger to the man, and a rapid calculation of how he could be saved.

Perhaps I may properly introduce here an account of the manifestations of mind in the animals I have had the most opportunity of observing. I have a horse, who was named Rubezahl, after the mountain spirit of the Harz made famous in the stories of Musaeus. We have contracted his name to Ruby for convenience. Now I have reason to believe that Ruby can distinguish Sunday from other days. On Sunday I have been in the habit of driving to Boston to church; but on other days, I drive to the neighboring village, where are the post-office, shops of mechanics, and other stores. To go to Boston, I usually turn to the right when I leave my driveway; to go to the village, I turn to the left. Now, on Sunday, if I leave the reins loose, so that the horse may do as he pleases, he invariably turns to the right, and goes to Boston. On other days, he as invariably turns to the left, and goes to the village. He does this so constantly and regularly, that none of the family have any doubt of the fact that he knows that it is Sunday; how he knows it we are unable to discover. I have left my house at the same hour on Sunday and on Monday, in the same carriage, with the same number of persons in it; and yet on Sunday he always turns to the right, and on Monday to the left. He is fed at the same time on Sunday as on other days, but the man comes back to harness him a little later on Sunday than at other times, and that is possibly his method of knowing that it is the day for going to Boston. But see how much of observation, memory, and thought is implied in all this.

Again, Ruby has shown a very distinct feeling of the supernatural. Driving one day up a hill near my house, we met a horse-car coming down toward us, running without horses, simply by the force of gravity. My horse became so frightened that he ran into the gutter, and nearly overturned me; and I got him past with the greatest difficulty. Now he had met the cars coming down that hill, drawn by horses, a hundred times, and had never been alarmed. Moreover, only a day or two after, in going up the same hill, we saw a car moving uphill, before us, where the horses were entirely invisible, being concealed by the car itself, which was between us and the horses. But this did not frighten Ruby at all. He evidently said to himself, "The horses are there, though I do not see them." But in the other case it seemed to him an effect without a cause—something plainly supernatural. There was nothing in the aspect of the car itself to alarm him; he had seen that often enough. He was simply terrified by seeing it move without any adequate cause—just as we should be, if we saw our chairs begin to walk about the room.

Our Newfoundland dog's name is Donatello; which, again, is shortened to Don in common parlance. He has all the affectionate and excellent qualities of his race. He is the most good-natured creature I ever saw. Nothing provokes him. Little dogs may yelp at him, the cat or kittens may snarl and spit at him: he pays no attention to them. A little dog climbs on his back, and lies down there; one of the cats will lie between his legs. But at night, when he is on guard, no one can approach the house unchallenged.

But his affection for the family is very great. To be allowed to come into the house and lie down near us is his chief happiness. He was very fond of my son E——, who played with him a good deal, and when the young man went away, during the war, with a three months' regiment, Don was much depressed by his absence. He walked down regularly to the station, and stood there till a train of cars came in; and when his friend did not arrive in it, he went back, with a melancholy air, to the house. But at last the young man returned. It was in the evening, and Don was lying on the piazza. As soon as he saw his friend, his exultation knew no bounds. He leaped upon him, and ran round him, barking and showing the wildest signs of delight. All at once he turned and ran up into the garden, and came back bringing an apple, which he laid down at the feet of his young master. It was the only thing he could think of to do for him—and this sign of his affection was quite pathetic.

The reason why Don thought of the apple was probably this: we had taught him to go and get an apple for the horse, when so directed. We would say, "Go, Don, get an apple for poor Ruby;" then he would run up into the garden, and bring an apple, and hold it up to the horse; and perhaps when the horse tried to take it he would pull it away. After doing this a few times, he would finally lie down on his back under the horse's nose, and allow the latter to take the apple from his mouth. He would also kiss the horse, on being told to do so. When we said, "Don, kiss poor Ruby," he leaped up and kissed the horse's nose. But he afterwards hit upon a more convenient method of doing it. He got his paw over the rein and pulled down the horse's head, so that he could continue the osculatory process more at his ease, sitting comfortably on the ground.

Animals know when they have done wrong; so far, at least, as that means disobeying our will or command. The only great fault which Don ever committed was stealing a piece of meat from our neighbor's kitchen. I do not think he was punished or even scolded for it; for we did not find it out till later, when it would have done no good to punish him. But a week or two after that, the gentleman whose kitchen had been robbed was standing on my lawn, talking with me, and he referred, laughingly, to what Don had done. He did not even look at the dog, much less change his tones to those of rebuke. But the moment Don heard his name mentioned, he turned and walked away, and hid himself under the low branches of a Norway spruce near by. He was evidently profoundly ashamed of himself. Was this the result of conscience, or of the love of approbation? In either case, it was very human.

That the love of approbation is common to many animals we all know. Dogs and horses certainly can be influenced by praise and blame, as easily as men. Many years ago we had occasion to draw a load of gravel, and we put Ruby into a tip-cart to do the work. He was profoundly depressed, and evidently felt it as a degradation. He hung his head, and showed such marks of humiliation that we have never done it since. But on the other hand, when he goes out, under the saddle, by the side of a young horse, this veteran animal tries as hard to appear young as any old bachelor of sixty years who is still ambitious of social triumphs. He dances along, and goes sideways, and has all the airs and graces of a young colt. All this, too, is very human.

At one time my dog was fond of going to the railway station to see the people, and I always ordered him to go home, fearing he should be hurt by the cars. He easily understood that if he went there, it was contrary to my wishes. Nevertheless, he often went; and I do not know but this fondness for forbidden fruit was rather human, too. So, whenever he was near the station, if he saw me coming, he would look the other way, and pretend not to know me. If he met me anywhere else, he always bounded to meet me with great delight. But at the station it was quite different. He would pay no attention to my whistle or my call. He even pretended to be another dog, and would look me right in the face without apparently recognizing me. He gave me the cut direct, in the most impertinent manner; the reason evidently being that he knew he was doing what was wrong, and did not like to be found out. Possibly he may have relied a little on my near-sightedness, in this manœuvre.

That animals have acute observation, memory, imagination, the sense of approbation, strong affections, and the power of reasoning is therefore very evident. Lord Bacon also speaks of a dog's reverence for his master as partaking of a religious element. "Mark," says he, "what a generosity and courage a dog will put on, when he finds himself maintained by a man, who to him is instead of a God—which courage he could not attain, without that confidence in a better nature than his own." Who that has seen the mute admiration and trust in a dog's eye, as he looks up at his master, but can see in it something of a religious reverence, the germ and first principle of religion?

What, then, is the difference between the human soul and that of the animal in its highest development?

That there is a very marked difference between man and the highest animal is evident. The human being, weaker in proportion than all other animals, has subjected them all to himself. He has subdued the earth by his inventions. Physically too feeble to dig a hole in the ground like a rabbit, or to fell a tree like a beaver; unable to live in the water like a fish, or to move through the air like a bird; he yet, by his inventive power and his machinery, can compel the forces of nature to work for him. They are the true genii, slaves of his lamp. Air, fire, water, electricity, and magnetism build his cities and his stately ships, run his errands, carry him from land to land, and accept him as their master.

Whence does man obtain this power? Some say it is the human hand which has made man supreme. It is, no doubt, a wonderful machine; a box of tools in itself. The size and strength of the thumb, and the power of opposing it to the extremities of the fingers, distinguishes, according to most anatomists, the human hand from that of the quadrumanous animals. In those monkeys which are nearest to man, the thumb is so short and weak, and the fingers so long and slender, that their tips can scarcely be brought in opposition. Excellent for climbing, they are not good for taking up small objects or supporting large ones. But the hand of man could accomplish little without the mind behind it. It was therefore a good remark of Galen, that "man is not the wisest of animals because he has a hand; but God has given him a hand because he is the wisest of animals."

The size of the human brain, relatively greater than that of almost any other animal; man's structure, adapting him to stand erect; his ability to exist in all climates; his power of subsisting on varied food: all these facts of his physical nature are associated with his superior mental power, but do not produce it. The question recurs, What enables him to stand at the head of the animal creation?

Perhaps the chief apparent distinctions between man and other animals are these:—

1. The lowest races of men use tools; other animals do not.

2. The lowest human beings possess a verbal language; other animals have none.

3. Man has the capacity of self-culture, as an individual; other animals have not.

4. Human beings, associated in society, are capable of progress in civilization, by means of science, art, literature, and religion; other animals are not.

5. Men have a capacity for religion; no animal, except man, has this.

The lowest races of men use tools, but no other animal does this. This is so universally admitted by science that the presence of the rudest tools of stone is considered a sufficient trace of the presence of man. If stone hatchets or hammers or arrowheads are found in any stratum, though no human bones are detected, anthropologists regard this as a sufficient proof of the existence of human beings in the period indicated by such a geologic formation. The only tools used by animals in procuring food, in war, or in building their homes, are their natural organs: their beaks, teeth, claws, etc. It may be added that man alone wears clothes; other animals being sufficiently clothed by nature. No animals make a fire, though they often suffer from cold; but there is no race of men unacquainted with the use of fire.[20]

No animals possess a verbal language. Animals can remember some of the words used by men, and associate with them their meaning. But this is not the use of language. It is merely the memory of two associated facts,—as when the animal recollects where he found food, and goes to the same place to look for it again. Animals have different cries, indicating different wants. They use one cry to call their mate, another to terrify their prey. But this is not the use of verbal language. Human language implies not merely an acquaintance with the meaning of particular words, but the power of putting them together in a sentence. Animals have no such language as this; for, if they had, it would have been learned by men. Man has the power of learning any verbal language. Adelung and Vater reckon over three thousand languages spoken by men, and any man can learn any of them. The negroes speak their own languages in their own countries; they speak Arabic in North Africa; they learn to speak English, French, and Spanish in America, and Oriental languages when they go to the East. If any animals had a verbal language, with its vocabulary and grammar, men would long ago have learned it, and would have been able to converse with them.

Again, no animal except man is capable of self-culture, as an individual. Animals are trained by external influences; they do not teach themselves. An old wolf is much more cunning than a young one, but he has been made so by the force of circumstances. You can teach your dog tricks, but no dog has ever taught himself any. Yet the lowest savages teach themselves to make tools, to ornament their paddles and clubs, and acquire certain arts by diligent effort. Birds will sometimes practice the tunes which they hear played, till they have learned them. They will also sometimes imitate each other's songs. That is, they possess the power of vocal imitation. But to imitate the sounds we hear is not self-culture. It is not developing a new power, but it is exercising in a new way a natural gift. Yet we must admit that in this habit of birds there is the rudiment, at least, of self-education.