"the world's unwithered countenanceWas fresh as on creation's day."
"the world's unwithered countenanceWas fresh as on creation's day."
Consider the immense charm of such hopes as these! No wonder that the critics complained that the disciples of Carlyle were "insensible to ridicule." What did they care for the laughter, which seemed to them, in their enthusiasm, like "the crackling of thorns under the pot." Ridicule, in fact, never touches the sincere enthusiast. It is a good and useful weapon against affectation, but it falls, shivered to pieces, from the magicbreastplate of truth. No sincere person, at work in a cause which he knows to be important, ever minds being laughed at.
But besides his admirable discussions of Goethe, Carlyle's "Life of Schiller" opened the portals of German literature, and made an epoch in biography and criticism. It was a new thing to read a biography written with such enthusiasm,—to find a critic who could really write with reverence and tender love of the poet whom he criticised. Instead of taking his seat on the judicial bench, and calling his author up before him to be judged as a culprit, Carlyle walks with Schiller through the circles of his poems and plays, as Dante goes with Virgil through the Inferno and Paradiso. He accepts the great poet as his teacher andmaster,26a thing unknown before in all criticism. It was supposed that a biographer would become a mere Boswell if he looked up to his hero, instead of looking down on him. It was not understood that it was that "angel of the world," Reverence, which had exalted even a poor, mean, vain fool, like Boswell, and enabled him to write one of the best books ever written. It was not his reverence for Johnson which made Boswell a fool,—his reverence for Johnson made him, a fool, capable of writing one of the best books of modern times.
This capacity of reverence in Carlyle—thispower of perceiving a divine, infinite quality in human souls—tinges all his biographical writing with a deep religious tone. He wrote of Goethe, Schiller, Richter, Burns, Novalis, even Voltaire, with reverence. He could see their defects easily enough, he could playfully expose their weaknesses; but beneath all was the sacred undertone of reverence for the divine element in each,—for that which God had made and meant them to be, and which they had realized more or less imperfectly in the struggle of life. The difference between the reverence of a Carlyle and that of a Boswell is, that one is blind and the other intelligent. The one worships his hero down to his shoes and stockings, the other distinguishes the divine idea from its weak embodiment.
Two articles from this happy period—that on the "Signs of the Times" and that called "Characteristics"—indicate some of Carlyle's leading ideas concerning right thinking and right living. In the first, he declares the present to be an age of mechanism,—not heroic, devout, or philosophic. All things are done by machinery. "Men have no faith in individual endeavor or natural force." "Metaphysics has become material." Government is a machine. All this he thinks evil. The living force is in the individual soul,—not mechanic, but dynamic. Religion is a calculation of expediency, not an impulse of worship; no thousand-voiced psalm from the heart of man to hisinvisible Father, the Fountain of all goodness, beauty, and truth, but a contrivance by which a small quantum of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged for a much larger quantum of celestial enjoyment. "Virtue is pleasure, is profit." "In all senses we worship and follow after power, which may be called a physical pursuit." (Ah, Carlyle of the Present! does not that wand of thine old true self touch thee?) "No man now loves truth, as truth must be loved, with an infinite love; but only with a finite love, and, as it were,par amours."
In the other article, "Characteristics," printed two years later, in 1831, he unfolds the doctrine of "Unconsciousness" as the sign of health in soul as well as body. He finds society sick everywhere; he finds its religion, literature, science, all diseased, yet he ends the article, as the other was ended, in hope of a change to something better.
These two articles may be considered as an introduction to his next great work, "Sartor Resartus," or the "Clothes-Philosophy." Here, in a vein of irony and genial humor, he unfolds his doctrine of substance and form. The object of all thought and all experience is to look through the clothes to the living beneath them. According to his book, all human institutions are the clothing of society; language is the garment of thought, the heavens and earth the time-vesture of the Eternal. So, too, are religious creeds and ceremonies the clothing of religion; so are all symbolsthe vesture of some idea; so are the crown and sceptre the vesture of government. This book is the autobiography of a seeker for truth. In it he is led from the shows of things to their innermost substance, and as in all his other writings, he teaches here also that sincerity, truthfulness, is the organ by which we are led to the solid rock of reality, which underlies all shows and shams.
II. We now come to treat of Carlyle in his present aspect,—a much less agreeable task. We leave Carlyle the generous and gentle, for Carlyle the hard cynic. We leave him, the friend of man, lover of his race, for another Carlyle, advocate of negro slavery, worshiper of mere force, sneering at philanthropy, and admiring only tyrants, despots, and slaveholders. The change, and the steps which led to it, chronologically and logically, it is our business to scrutinize,—not a grateful occupation indeed, but possibly instructive and useful.
Thomas Carlyle, after spending his previous life in Scotland, and from 1827 to 1834 in his solitude at Craigenputtoch, removed to London in the latter year, when thirty-eight years old. Since then he has permanently resided in London, in a house situated on one of the quiet streets running at right angles with the Thames. He came to London almost an unknown man; he has there become a great name and power in literature. He has had for friends such men as John Stuart Mill, Sterling, Maurice, Leigh Hunt, Browning, Thackeray, andEmerson. His "French Revolution" was published in 1837; "Sartor Resartus" (published in Frazer in 1833, and in Boston in a volume in 1836) was put forth collectively in 1838; and in the same year his "Miscellanies" (also collected and issued in Boston in 1838) were published in London, in four volumes. "Chartism" was issued in 1839. He gave four courses of Lectures in Willis's rooms "to a select but crowded audience," in 1837, 1838, 1839, and 1840. Only the last of these—"Heroes and Hero-Worship"—was published. "Past and Present" followed in 1843, "Oliver Cromwell" in 1845. In 1850 he printed "Latter-Day Pamphlets," and subsequently his "Life of Sterling" (1851), and the four volumes, now issued, of "Frederick the Great."
The first evidence of an altered tendency is perhaps to be traced in the "French Revolution." It is a noble and glorious book; but, as one of his friendly critics has said, "its philosophy is contemptuous and mocking, and it depicts the varied and gigantic characters which stalk across the scene, not so much as responsible and living mortals, as the mere mechanical implements of some tremendous and irresistible destiny." In "Heroes and Hero-Worship" the habit has grown of revering mere will, rather than calm intellectual and moral power. The same thing is shown in "Past and Present," in "Cromwell," and in "Latter-Day Pamphlets," which the critic quoted abovesays is "only remarkable as a violent imitation of himself, and not of his better self." For the works of this later period, indeed, the best motto would be that verse from Daniel: "He shall exalt himself, and magnify himself, and speak marvelous things; neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, but in his stead shall he honor the God of Forces, a god whom his fathers knew not."
Probably this apostasy from his better faith had begun, before this, to show itself in conversation. At least Margaret Fuller, in a letter dated 1846, finds herself in his presence admiring his brilliancy, but "disclaiming and rejecting almost everything he said." "For a couple of hours," says she, "he was talking about poetry, and the whole harangue was one eloquent proclamation of the defects in his own mind." "All Carlyle's talk, another evening," says she, "was a defence of mere force,—success the test of right; if people would not behave well, put collars round their necks; find a hero, and let them be his slaves." "Mazzini was there, and, after some vain attempts to remonstrate, became very sad. Mrs. Carlyle said to me, 'These are but opinions to Carlyle; but to Mazzini, who has given his all, and helped bring his friends to the scaffold, in pursuit of such subjects, it is a matter of life and death.'"
As this mood of Mr. Carlyle comes out so strongly in the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," it is perhaps best to dwell on them at greater leisure.
The first is "The Present Time." In this he describes Democracy as inevitable, but as utterly evil; calls for a government; finds most European governments, that of England included, to be shams and falsities,—no-government, or drifting, to be a yet greater evil. The object, he states, is to find the noblest and best men to govern. Democracy fails to do this; for universal balloting is not adequate to the task. Democracy answered in the old republics, when the mass were slaves, but will not answer now. The United States are no proof of its success, for (1st) anarchy is avoided merely by the quantity of cheap land, and (2d) the United States have produced no spiritual results, but only material. Democracy in America is no-government, and "its only feat is to have produced eighteen millions of the greatestboresever seen in the world." Mr. Carlyle's plan, therefore, is to find, somehow, thebest manfor a ruler, to make him a despot, to make the mass of the English and Irish slaves, to beat them if they will not work, to shoot them if they still refuse. The only method of finding this best man, which he suggests, is tocall for him. Accordingly, Mr. Thomas Carlylecalls, saying, "Best man, come forward, and govern."
The sum, therefore, of his recipe for the diseases of the times isSlavery.
The second pamphlet is called "Model Prisons," and the main object of this is to ridicule all attempts at helping men by philanthropy or humanity.The talk of "Fraternity" is nonsense, and must be drummed out of the world. Beginning with model prisons, he finds them much too good for the "scoundrels" who are shut up there. He would have them whipped and hung (seventy thousand in a year, we suppose, as in bluff King Harry's time, with no great benefit therefrom). "Revenge," he says, "is a right feeling against bad men,—only the excess of it wrong." The proper thing to say to a bad man is, "Caitiff, I hate thee." "A collar round the neck, and a cart-whip over the back," is what he thinks would be more just to criminals than a model prison. The whole effort of humanity should be to help the industrious and virtuous poor; the criminals should be swept out of the way, whipt, enslaved, or hung. As for human brotherhood, he does not admit brotherhood with "scoundrels." Particularly disgusting to him is it to hear this philanthropy to bad men called Christianity. Christianity, he thinks, does not tell us to love the bad, but to hate them as God hates them. According, probably, to his private expurgated version of the Gospel, "that ye may be the children of your Father in heaven, whose sun rises only on the good, and whose rain falls only on the just."
"Downing Street" and "New Downing Street" are fiery tirades against the governing classes in England. Mr. Carlyle says (according to his inevitable refrain), that England does not want areformed Parliament, a body of talkers, but a reformed Downing Street, a body of workers. He describes the utter imbecility of the English government, and calls loudly for some able man to take its place. Two passages are worth quoting; the first as to England's aspect in her foreign relations, which is quite as true for 1864 as for 1854.
"How it stands with the Foreign Office, again, one still less knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in the character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her sword of sharpness over field-mice, and in the air making horrid circles (horrid Catherine-wheels and death-disks of metallic terror from said huge sword) to see how they will like it. Hercules-Harlequin, the Attorney Triumphant, the World's Busybody!"
Or see the following description of the sort of rulers who prevail in England, no less than inAmerica:—
"If our government is to be a No-Government, what is the matter who administers it? Fling an orange-skin into St. James Street, let the man it hits be your man. He, if you bend him a little to it, and tie the due official bladders to his ankles, will do as well as another this sublime problem of balancing himself upon the vortexes, with the long loaded pole in his hand, and will, with straddling, painful gestures, float hither and thither, walking the waters in that singular manner for a littlewhile, till he also capsize, and be left floating feet uppermost,—after which you choose another."
Concerning which we may say, that if this is the result of monarchy and aristocracy in England, we can stick a little longer to our democracy in America. Mr. Carlyle says that the object of all these methods is to find the ablest man for a ruler. He thinks our republican method very insufficient and absurd,—much preferring the English system,—and then tells us that this is the outcome of the latter; that you might as well select your ruler by throwing an orange-skin into the street as by the method followed in England.
Despotism, tempered by assassination, seems to be Carlyle's notion of a good government.
The pamphlet "Stump-Orator" is simply a bitter denunciation of all talking, speech-making, and writing, as the curse of the time, and ends with the proposition to cut out the tongues of one whole generation, as an act of mercy to them and a blessing to the human race.
Thus this collection of "Latter-Day Pamphlets" consists of the bitterest cynicism. Carlyle sits in it, as in a tub, snarling at freedom, yelping at philanthropy, growling at the English government, snapping at all men who speak or write, and ending with one long howl over the universal falsity and hollowness of mankind in general.
After which he proceeds to his final apotheosis of despotism pure and simple, in this "Life ofFrederick the Great." Of this it is not necessary to say more than that Frederick, being an absolute despot, but a very able one, having plunged Europe into war in order to steal Silesia, is everywhere admired, justified, or excused by Carlyle, who reserves his rebukes and contempt for those who find fault with all this.
That, with these opinions, Carlyle should have taken sides with the slaveholders' conspiracy against the Union is not surprising. His sympathies were with them; first, as slaveholders, secondly, as aristocrats. He hates us because we are democrats, and he loves them because they are despots and tyrants. Long before the outbreak of the rebellion, he had ridiculed emancipation, and denounced as folly and evil the noblest deed of England,—the emancipation of her West India slaves. In scornful, bitter satire, he denounced England for keeping the fast which God had chosen, in undoing the heavy burdens, letting the oppressed go free, and breaking every yoke. He ridiculed the black man, and described the poor patient African as "Quashee, steeped to the eyes in pumpkin." In the hateful service of oppression he had already done his best to uphold slavery and discourage freedom. And while he fully believed in enslaving the laboring population, black or white, and driving it to work by the cart-whip, he as fully abhorred republicanism everywhere, and most of all in the United States. He had exhausted theresources of language in vilifying American institutions. It was a matter of course, therefore, that at the outbreak of this civil war all his sympathies should be with those who whip women and sell babies.
How is it that this great change should have taken place? Men change,—but not often in this way. The ardent reformer often hardens into the stiff conservative. The radical in religion is very likely to join the Catholic Church. If a Catholic changes his religion, he goes over to atheism. To swing from one extreme to another, is a common experience. But it is a new thing to see calmness in youth, violence in age,—to find the young man wise and all-sided, the old man bigoted and narrow.
We think the explanation to be this.
Thomas Carlyle from the beginning has not shown the least appreciation of the essential thing in Christianity. Brought up in Scotland, inheriting from Calvinism a sense of truth, a love of justice, and a reverence for the Jewish Bible, he has never passed out of Judaism into Christianity. To him, Oliver Cromwell is the best type of true religion; inflexible justice the best attribute of God or man. He is a worshiper of Jehovah, not of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He sees in God truth and justice; he does not see in him love. He is himself a prophet after the type of Elijah and John the Baptist. He is thevoice crying in the wilderness; and we may say of him, therefore, as was said of his prototype, "He was a burning and a shining light, and ye were willing, for a season, to rejoice in his light,"—but not always,—not now.
Carlyle does not, indeed, claim to be a Jew, or to reject Christ. On the contrary, he speaks of him with very sincere respect. He seems, however, to know nothing of him but what he has read in Goethe about the "worship of sorrow." The Gospel appears to him to be, essentially, a worship of sorrow. That Christ "came to save sinners,"—of that Carlyle has not the faintest idea. To him the notion of "saving sinners" is only "rose-water philanthropy." He does not wish them saved, he wishes them damned,—swept into hell as soon as convenient.
But, as everything which is real has two sides, that oftruthand that oflove,—it usually happens that he who only seesoneside at last ceases even to see that. All goodness, to Carlyle, is truth,—in man it is sincerity, or love of reality, sight of the actual facts,—in God it is justice, divine adherence to law, infinite guidance of the world and of every human soul according to a strict and inevitable rule of righteousness. At first this seems to be a providence,—and Carlyle has everywhere, in the earlier epoch, shown full confidence in Providence. But believe only in justice and truth,—omit the doctrine of forgiveness,redemption, salvation,—and faith in Providence becomes sooner or later a despairing fatalism. The dark problem of evil remains insoluble without the doctrine of redemption.
So it was that Carlyle, seeing at first the chief duty of man to be the worship of reality, the love of truth, next made that virtue to consist in sincerity, or being in earnest. Truth was being true to one's self. In this lay the essence of heroism. So that Burns, being sincere and earnest, was a hero,—Odin was a hero,—Mohammed was a hero,—Cromwell was a hero,—Mirabeau and Danton were heroes,—and Frederick the Great was a hero. That which was first the love of truth, and caused him to reverence the calm intellectual force of Schiller and Goethe, soon became earnestness and sincerity, and then became power. For the proof of earnestness is power. So from power, by eliminating all love, all tenderness, as being only rose-water philanthropy, he at last became a worshiper of mere will, of force in its grossest form. So he illustrates those lines of Shakespeare in which this process is so well described. In "Troilus and Cressida" Ulysses is insisting on the importance of keeping everything in its place, and giving to the best things and persons their due priority. Otherwise, mere force will govern all things.
"Strength would be lord of imbecility,"—
"Strength would be lord of imbecility,"—
as Carlyle indeed openly declares that it ought tobe,—
"And the rude son should strike his father dead,"
"And the rude son should strike his father dead,"
which Carlyle does not quite approve of in the case of Dr. Francia. But why not, if he maintains that strength is the measure of justice?
"Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong(Between whose endless jar justice resides)Should lose their names and so should justice, too.Then everything includes itself in power,Power into will, will into appetite;And appetite, an universal wolf,So doubly seconded with will and power,Must make perforce an universal prey,And, last, eat up himself."
"Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong(Between whose endless jar justice resides)Should lose their names and so should justice, too.Then everything includes itself in power,Power into will, will into appetite;And appetite, an universal wolf,So doubly seconded with will and power,Must make perforce an universal prey,And, last, eat up himself."
Just so, in the progress of Carlyle's literary career, first, force became right,—then, everything included itself in power,—next, power was lost in will, and will in mere caprice or appetite. From his admiration for Goethe, as the type of intellectual power, he passed to the praise of Cromwell as the exponent of will, and then to that of Frederick, whose appetite for plunder and territory was seconded by an iron will and the highest power of intellect; but whose ambition devoured himself, his country, and its prosperity, in the mad pursuit of victory and conquest.
The explanation, therefore, of our author's lapse, is simply this, that he worshiped truth divorced from love, and so ceased to worship truth, and fell into the idolatry of mere will. Truth withoutlove is not truth, but hard, willful opinion, just as love without truth is not love, but weak good-nature and soft concession.
Carlyle has no idea of that sublime feature of Christianity, which shows to us God caring more for the one sinner who repents than the ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance. To him one just person deserves more care than ninety-nine sinners. Yet it is strange that he did not learn from his master, Goethe, this essential trait of the Gospel. For Goethe, in a work translated by Carlyle himself, distinguishes between the three religions thus. The ethnic or Gentile religions, he says, reverencewhat is above us,—the religion of the philosopher reverenceswhat is on our own level,—but Christianity reverenceswhat is beneath us. "This is the last step," says Goethe, "which mankind were destined to attain,—to recognize humility and poverty, mockery and despite, disgrace and wretchedness, as divine,—nay,even on sin and crime to look not as hindrances, but to honor and love them as furtherances of what is holy."
On sin and crime, as we have seen, Carlyle looks with no such tenderness. But if he does not care for the words of Christ, teaching us that we must forgive if we hope to be forgiven, if he does not care for the words of his master, Goethe, he might at least remember his own exposition of this doctrine in an early work, where he shows that thepoor left to perish by disease infect a whole community, and declares that the safety of all is involved in the safety of the humblest.
In 1840, when he wrote "Chartism," Carlyle seems to have known better than he did in 1855, when he wrote these "Latter-Day Pamphlets."Thenhesaid:—
"To believe practically that the poor and luckless are here only as a nuisance to be abraded and abated, and in some permissible manner made away, and swept out of sight, is not an amiable faith."
Of Ireland, too, hesaid:—
"We English pay, even now, the bitter smart of long centuries of injustice to Ireland." "It is the feeling ofinjusticethat is insupportable to all men. The brutalest black African feels it, and cannot bear that he should be used unjustly. No man can bear it, or ought to bear it."
This seems like the "rose-water philanthropy" which he subsequently so much disliked. In this book also he speaks of a "seven years' Silesian robber-war,"—we trust not intending to call his beloved Frederick a robber! And again he proposes, as one of the best things to be done in England, to have all the people taught by government to read and write,—the same thing which this American democracy, in which he could see not one good thing, has so long been doing. That was the plan by which England was to besaved,—a plan first suggested in England in 1840,—adopted and acted on in America for two hundred years.
But just as love separated from truth becomes cruelty, sotruthby itself—truthnottempered and fulfilled by love—runs sooner or later into falsehood.Truth, after a while, becomes dogmatism, overbearing assertion, willful refusal to see and hear other than one's own belief; that is to say, it becomes falsehood. Such has been the case with our author. On all the subjects to which he has committed himself he closes his eyes, and refuses to see the other side. Like his own symbol, the mighty Bull, he makes his chargewith his eyes shut.
Determined, for example, to rehabilitate such men as Mirabeau, Cromwell, Frederick, and Frederick's father, he does thorough work, and defends or excuses all their enormities, palliating whenever he cannot justify.
What can we call this which hesays27concerning the execution of Lieutenant Katte, by order of old King Friedrich Wilhelm? Tired of the tyranny of his father, tired of being kicked and caned, the young prince tried to escape. He was caught and held as a deserter from the army, and his father tried to run him through the body. Lieutenant Katte, who had aided him in getting away, having been kicked and caned, was sent to a court-martialto be tried. The court-martial found him guilty not of deserting, but of intending to desert, and sentenced him to two years' imprisonment. Whereupon the king went into a rage, declared that Katte had committed high treason, and ordered him to be executed. Whereupon Carlyle thuswrites:—
"'Never was such a transaction before or since in modern history,' cries the angry reader; 'cruel, like the grinding of human hearts under millstones; like——' Or, indeed, like the doings of the gods, which are cruel, but not that alone."
In other words, Carlyle cannot make up his mind frankly to condemn this atrocious murder, and call it by its right name. He must needs try to sophisticate us by talking about "the doings of the gods." Because Divine Providence takes men out of the world in various ways, it is therefore allowable to a king, provided he be a hero grim enough and "earnest" enough, to kick men, cane them, and run them through the body when he pleases; and, after having sent a man to be tried by court-martial, if the court acquits him, to order him to be executed by his own despotic will. A truth-telling Carlyle ought to have said, "I admit this is murder; but I like the old fellow, and so I will call it right." A Carlyle grown sophistical mumbles something about its being like "the doings of the gods," and leaves off with that small attempt at humbug. Be brave, my men, and defend my Lord Jeffreys next for bullying juries into hangingprisoners. Was not Jeffreys "grim" too? In fact, are not most murderers "grim"?
We have had occasion formerly, in this journal, to examine the writings of another very positive and clear-headed thinker,—Mr. Henry James. Mr. James is, in his philosophy, the very antithesis of Carlyle. With equal fervor of thought, with a like vehemence of style, with a somewhat similar contempt for his opponents, Mr. James takes exactly the opposite view of religion and duty. As Carlyle preaches the law, and the law alone, maintaining justice as the sole Divine attribute, so Mr. James preaches the Gospel only, denying totally that to the Divine Mind any distinction exists between saint and sinner, unless that the sinner is somewhat more of a favorite than the saint. We did not, do not, agree with Mr. James in his anti-nomianism; as between him and Carlyle, we think his doctrine far the truer and nobler. He stands on a higher plane, and sees much the farther. A course of reading in Mr. James's books might, we think, help our English cynic not a little.
God is the perfect harmony of justice and love. His justice is warmed through and through with love, his love is sanctified and made strong by justice. And so, in Christ, perfect justice was fulfilled in perfect love. But in him first was fully revealed, in this world, the Divine fatherly tenderness to the lost, to the sinner, to those lowest down and farthest away. In him was taught that ourown redemption from evil does not lie in despising and hating men worse than ourselves, but in saving them. The hard Pharisaic justice of Carlyle may call this "rose-water philanthropy," but till he accepts it from his heart, and repents of his contempt for his fallen fellowmen, till he learns to love "scoundrels," there is no hope for him. He lived once in the heaven of reverence, faith, and love; he has gone from it into the hell of Pharisaic scorn and contempt. Till he comes back out of that, there is no hope for him.
But such a noble nature cannot be thus lost. He will one day, let us trust, worship the divine love which he now abhors. Cromwell asked, on his death-bed, "if those once in a state of grace could fall," and, being assured not, said, "I am safe then, for I am sure I was once in a state of grace." There is a truth in this doctrine of the perseverance of saints. Some truths once fully seen, even though afterward rejected by the mind and will, stick like a barbed arrow in the conscience, tormenting the soul till they are again accepted and obeyed. Such a truth Carlyle once saw, in the great doctrine of reverence for the fallen and the sinful. He will see it again, if not in this world, then in some other world.
The first Carlyle was an enthusiast, the last Carlyle is a cynic. From enthusiasm to cynicism, from the spirit of reverence to the spirit of contempt, the way seems long, but the condition ofarriving is simple. DiscardLove, and the whole road is passed over. Divorce love from truth, and truth ceases to be open and receptive,—ceases to be a positive function, turns into acrid criticism, bitter disdain, cruel and hollow laughter, empty of all inward peace. Such is the road which Carlyle has passed over, from his earnest, hopeful youth to his bitter old age.
Carlyle fulfilled for many, during these years, the noble work of a mediator. By reverence and love he saw what was divine in nature, in man, and in life. By the profound sincerity of his heart, his worship of reality, his hatred of falsehood, he escaped from the commonplaces of literature to a better land of insight and knowledge. So he was enabled to lead many others out of their entanglements, into his own luminous insight. It was a great and blessed work. Would that it had been sufficient for him!
We welcomed kindly the first installment of Mr. Buckle'swork,29giving a cursory account of it, and hinting, rather than urging, the objections which readily suggested themselves against theories concerning Man, History, Civilization, and Human Progress. But now it seems a proper time to discuss with a little more deliberation the themes opened before us by this intrepid writer,—this latest champion of that theory of the mind which in the last century was called Materialism and Necessity, and which in the present has been re-baptized as Positivism.
The doctrines of which Mr. Buckle is the ardent advocate seem to us, the more thoroughly we consider them, to be essentially theoretical, superficial, and narrow. They are destitute of any broad basis of reality. In their application by Mr. Buckle, they fail to solve the historic problems upon which he tries their power. With a show of science, they are unscientific, being a mere collectionof unverified hypotheses. And if Mr. Buckle should succeed in introducing his principles and methods into the study of history, it would be equivalent to putting backward for about a century this whole department of thought.
Yet, while we state this as our opinion, and one which we shall presently endeavor to substantiate by ample proof, we do not deny to Mr. Buckle's volumes the interest arising from vigorous and independent thinking, faithful study of details, and a strong, believing purpose. They are interesting and valuable contributions to our literature. But this is not on account of their purpose, but in spite of it; notwithstanding their doctrines, not because of them. The interest of these books, as of all good history, derives itself from their picturesque reproduction of life. Whatever of value belongs to Mr. Buckle's work is the same as that of the writings of Macaulay, Motley, and Carlyle. Whoever has the power of plunging like a diver into the spirit of another period, sympathizing with its tone, imbuing himself with its instincts, sharing its loves and hates, its faith and its skepticism, will write its history so as to interest us. For whoever will really show to us the breathing essence of any age, any state of society, or any course of human events, cannot fail of exciting that element of the soul which causes man everywhere to rejoice in meeting with man. He who will write the history of Arabians, Kelts, or Chinese, of the MiddleAges, the Norman Sea-kings, or the Roman Plebs, so that we can see ourselves beneath these diverse surroundings of race, country, and period, and see that these also are reallyMEN,—this writer instantly awakens our interest, whether he call himself poet, novelist, or historian. In all cases, the secret of success is to write so as to enable the reader to identify himself with the characters of another age. Great authors enable us to look at actions, not from without, but from within. When we read the historic plays of Shakespeare, or the historic novels of Scott, we are charmed by finding that kings and queens are, after all, our poor human fellow-creatures, sharing all our old, familiar struggles, pains, and joys. When we read that great historic masterpiece, the "French Revolution" of Carlyle, the magic touch of the artist introduces us into the heart of every character in the motley, shifting scene. We are the poor king escaping to Varennes under the dewy night and solemn stars. We are tumultuous Mirabeau, with his demonic but generous soul. We are devoted Charlotte Corday; we are the Gironde; we the poor prisoners of Terror, waiting in our prison for the slow morning to bring the inevitable doom. This is the one indispensable faculty for the historian; and this faculty Mr. Buckle so far possesses as to make his page a living one. It is true that his sympathy is intellectual rather than imaginative. It is not of the high order of Shakespeare,nor even of that of Carlyle. But, so far as it goes, it is a true faculty, and makes a true historian.
Yet we cannot but notice how the effectual working of this historic organ is interfered with by the dogmatic purpose of Mr. Buckle; and, on the other hand, how his theoretic aim is disturbed by the interest of his narrative. His history is always meant to be an argument. His narrations of events are never for their own sake, but always to prove some thesis. There is, therefore, no consecutive narrative, no progress of events, no sustained interest. These volumes are episodes, put together we cannot well say how, or why. In the seventh chapter of the first volume we have a graphic description of the Court life in England in the days of Charles II., James II., William, and the Georges, in connection with the condition of the Church and clergy. From this we are taken, in the next chapter, to France, and to similar relations between Henry IV., Louis XIII., Richelieu, and the French Catholics and Protestants. We then are brought back to England, to consider the protective system there; and once more we return to France, to investigate its operation in that country. Afterward we have an essay on "The State of Historical Literature in France from the End of the Sixteenth to the End of the Eighteenth Century," followed by another essay on the "Proximate Causes of the French Revolution." Many very well finished biographic portraits are givenus in these chapters. There are excellent sketches of Burke, Voltaire, Richelieu, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Bichat, in the first volume; and of Adam Smith, Reid, Black, Leslie, Hutton, Cullen, Hunter, in the second. These numerous biographic sketches, which are often accompanied with good literary notices of the writings of these authors, are very ably written; but it is curious to remember, while reading them, that Mr. Buckle thinks that, as history advances, it has less and less to do with biography.
There is an incurable defect in the method of this work. On the one hand, the dogmatic purpose is constantly breaking into the interest of the narration; on the other, the interest of the narration is continually enticing the writer from his argument into endless episodes and details of biography. The argument is deprived of its force by the story; the story is interrupted continually on account of the argument. Mr. Buckle has mistaken the philosophy of history for history itself. A history of civilization is not a piece of metaphysical argument, but a consecutive account of the social progress either of an age or of a nation. This irreconcilable conflict of purpose, while it leaves to the parts of the work their value, destroys its worth as a whole.
Mr. Buckle might probably inquire whether we would eliminate wholly from history all philosophic aim, all teleologic purpose. He objects, andvery properly, to degrading history into mere annals, without any instructive purpose. We agree with him. We do not admire the style of history which feels neither passion nor sympathy, which narrates crimes without indignation, and which has no aim in its narration except to entertain a passing hour. But it is one thing deliberately to announce a thesis and bring detached passages of history to prove it, and another to write a history which, by its incidents, spirit, and characters shall convey impulse and instruction. The historian may dwell upon the events which illustrate his convictions, and may develop the argument during the progress of his moving panorama; but the history itself, as it moves, should impress the lesson. The history of Mr. Motley, for example, illustrates and impresses the evils of bigotry, superstition, and persecution on the life of nations, quite as powerfully as does that of Mr. Buckle; but Mr. Motley never suspends his narrative in order to prove to us logically that persecution is an evil.
Mr. Buckle, in his style of writing, belongs to a modern class of authors whom we may call the bullying school. It is true that he is far less extravagant than some of them, and indeed is not deeply tinged with their peculiar manner. The first great master of this class of writers is Thomas Carlyle; but their peculiarity has been carried to its greatest extent by Ruskin. Its characteristic feature is treating with supreme contempt, asthough they were hopeless imbeciles, all who venture to question thedictaof the writer. This superb arrogance makes these writers rather popular with the English, who, as a nation, like equally well to bully and to be bullied.
Buckle professes to have at last found the only true key to history, and to have discovered some of its important laws, especially those which regard the progress of civilization.
I.His View of Freedom.—Mr. Buckle's fundamental position is, that the actions of men are governed by fixed laws, and that, when these laws are discovered, history will become a science, like geometry, geology, or astronomy. The chief obstacle hitherto to its becoming a science has been the belief that the actions of men were determined, not by fixed laws, but by free will (which he considers equivalent to chance), or by supernatural interference or providence (which he regards as equivalent to fate). "We shall thus be led," he says (Vol. I. p. 6, Am. ed.), "to one vast question, which, indeed, lies at the root of the whole subject, and is simply this: Are the actions of men, and therefore of societies, governed by fixed laws, or are they the result either of chance or of supernatural interference?" Identifying freedom with chance, Mr. Buckle denies that there is such a thing, and maintains that every human action is determined by some antecedent, inward or outward, and that not one is determined by the freechoice of the man himself. His principal argument against free will is the law of averages, which we will therefore proceed to consider in its bearing on this point.
Statistics, carefully collected during many years and within different countries, show a regularity of return in certain vices and crimes, which indicates the presence of law. Thus, about the same number of murders are committed every year in certain countries and large cities, and even the instruments by which they are committed are employed in the same proportion. Suicide also follows some regular law. "In a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own life." In London, about two hundred and forty persons kill themselves every year,—in years of panic and disaster a few more, in prosperous years not quite so many. Other actions of men are determined in the same way,—not by personal volition, but by some controlling circumstance. "It is now known that the number of marriages in England bears a fixed and definite relation to the price of corn." "Aberrations of memory are marked by this general character of necessary and invariable order." The same average number of persons forget every year to direct the letters dropped into the post-offices of London and Paris. Facts of this kind "force us to the conclusion," says Buckle, "that the offenses of men are the result, not so much of the vices of theindividual offender, as of the state of society into which he is thrown."
The argument then is: If man's moral actions are under law, they are not free, for freedom is the absence of law. The argument of Mr. Buckle is conclusive, provided freedom does necessarily imply the absence of law. But such, we think, is not the fact.
The actions of man do not proceed solely from the impact of external circumstances; for then he would be no better than a ball struck with a bat. Nor do they proceed solely from the impulses of his animal nature; for then he would be only a superior kind of machine, moved by springs and wheels. But in addition to external and internal impulse there is also in man the power of personal effort, activity, will,—to which we give the name of Free Choice, or Freedom. This modifies and determines a part of his actions,—while a second part come from the influence of circumstance, and a third from organic instincts and habitual tendencies.
Now, it is quite certain that no man has freedom of will enough to causehis wholenexus of activity to proceed from it. For if a man could causeallhis actions to proceed by a mere choice or effort, he could turn himself at will into another man. In other words, there could be no such thing as permanent moral character. No one could be described; for while we were describing him, he mightchoose to be different, and so would become somebody else. It is evident, therefore, that some part of every man's life must lie outside of the domain of freedom.
In what, then, does the essence of freedom consist? If it be not the freedom to do whatever we choose, what is it? Plainly, if we analyze our own experience, we shall find that it is simply what its scholastic name implies, freedom of choice, orliber arbitrio. It is not, in the last analysis, freedom to act, but it is freedom to choose.
But freedom to choose what? Can we choose anything? Certainly not. Our freedom of choice is limited by our knowledge. We cannot choose that which we do not know. We must choose something within the range of our experience. And our freedom of choice consists in the alternative of making this choice or omitting to make it,—exerting ourselves or not exerting ourselves. Consciousness testifies universally to this extent of freedom. We know by our consciousness that we can exert ourselves or not exert ourselves at any moment,—exert ourselves to act or not exert ourselves to act, to speak or not to speak. This power of making or not making an effort is freedom in its simplest and lowest form.
In this lowest form, it is apparent that human freedom is inadequate to give any permanent character to human actions. They will be directed by the laws of organization and circumstance. Freedomin this sense may be compared to the power which a man has of rowing a boat in the midst of a fog. He may exert himself to row, he may row at any moment forward or backward, to the right or to the left. He has this freedom,—but it does not enable him to go in any special direction. Not being able to direct his boat to any fixed aim, it is certain that it will be drifted by the currents or blown by the winds. Freedom in this form is only willfulness, because devoid of an inward law.
But let the will direct itself by a fixed law, and it at once becomes true freedom, and begins to impress itself upon actions, modifying the results of organization and circumstance. Not even in this case can it destroy those results; it only modifies them. It enters as a third factor with those other two to produce the product. The total character of a man's actions will be represented by a formula, thus: John's Organization×John's Circumstances×John's Freedom = John's Character.
Apply this to the state of society where the law of averages has been discovered. In such a society there are always to be found three classes of persons. In the first class, freedom is either dormant or is mere willfulness. The law of mind is subject therefore in these to the law of the members. The will is an enslaved will, and its influence on action is a nullity, not needing to be taken into the account. From this class come the largest proportion of the crimes and vices, regular in numberbecause resulting from constant conditions of society. Of these persons we can predict with certainty that, under certain strong temptations to evil, they will inevitably yield.
But in another class of persons the will has learned to direct itself by a moral law toward a fixed aim. The man in the boat is now steering by a compass, and ceases to be the sport of current and gale. The will reacts upon organization, and directs circumstance. The man has learned how to master his own nature, and how to arrange external conditions. We can predict with certainty that under no possible influences will this class yield to some forms of evil.
There is also in each community a third class, who are struggling, but not emancipated. They are partly free, but not wholly so. From this class come the slight variations of the average, now a little better, now a little worse.
Applying this view of the freedom of the will to history, we see that the problem is far more complicated than Mr. Buckle admits. Man's freedom, with him, is an element not to be taken into consideration, because it does not exist. But the truth is, that human freedom is not only a factor, but a variable factor, the value of which changes with every variety of human condition. In the savage condition it obeys organization and circumstances, and has little effect on social condition. But as civilization advances, the power of freedom to reacton organization and circumstance increases, varying however again, according to the force and inspiration of the ideas by which it is guided. And of all these ideas, precisely those which Mr. Buckle underrates, namely, moral and religious ideas, are those which most completely emancipate the will from circumstances, and vitalize it with an all-conquering force.
To see this, take two extreme cases,—that of an African Hottentot, and that of Joan of Arc. Free will in the African is powerless; he remains the helpless child of his situation. But the Maid of Arc, though utterly destitute of Mr. Buckle's "Intellectual Truths" (being unable to read or write, and having received no instruction save religious ideas), and wanting in the "Skepticism" which he thinks so essential to all historic progress, yet develops a power of will which reacts upon circumstances so as to turn into another channel the current of French history. All bonds of situation and circumstance are swept asunder by the power of a will set free by mighty religious convictions. The element of freedom, therefore, is one not to be neglected by an historian, except to his own loss.
The law of averages applies only to undeveloped men, or to the undeveloped sides of human nature, where the element of freedom has not come in play. When the human race shall have made such progress that it shall contain a city inhabited by a million persons all equal to the Apostle Pauland the Apostle John in spiritual development, it will not be found that a certain regular number kill their wives every year, or that from two hundred and thirteen to two hundred and forty annually commit suicide. Nor will this escape from the averages be owing to an increased acquaintance with physical laws so much as to a higher moral development. We shall return to this point, however, when we examine more fully Buckle's doctrine in regard to the small influence of religion on civilization.
II.Mr. Buckle's View of Organization.—Mr. Buckle sets aside entirely the whole great fact of organization, upon which the science of ethnology is based. Perhaps the narrowness of his mind shows more conspicuously in this than elsewhere. He attributes no influence to race in civilization. While so many eminent writers at the present day say, with Mr. Knox, that "Race is everything," Mr. Buckle quietly rejoins that Race is nothing. "Original distinctions of race," he says, "are altogether hypothetical." "We have no decisive ground for saying that the moral and intellectual faculties in man are likely to be greater in an infant born in the most civilized part of Europe, than in one born in the wildest region of a barbarous country." (Vol. I. p. 127, Am. ed.) "We often hear of hereditary talents, hereditary vices, and hereditary virtues; but whoever will critically examine the evidence will find that we have noproof of their existence." He doubts the existence of hereditary insanity, or a hereditary tendency to suicide, or even to disease. (Vol. I. p. 128, note.) He does not believe in any progress of natural capacity in man, but only of opportunity, "that is, an improvement in the circumstances under which that capacity after birth comes into play." "Here then is the gist of the whole matter. The progress is one, not of internal power, but of external advantage." He goes on to say, in so many words, that the only difference between a barbarian child and a civilized child is in the pressure of surrounding circumstances. In support of these opinions he quotes Locke and Turgot.
It is difficult to understand how an intelligent and well-informed man, an immense reader and active thinker, can have lived in the midst of the nineteenth century and retain these views. For students at every extreme of thought have equally recognized the force of organization, the constancy of race, the permanent varieties existing in the human family, the steady ruling of the laws of descent. If there is any one part of the science of anthropology in which the nineteenth century has reversed the judgment of the eighteenth,—and that equally among men of science, poets, materialists, idealists, anatomists, philologists,—it is just here. To find so intelligent a man reproducing the last century in the midst of the present is a little extraordinary.
Perhaps there could not be found four great thinkers more different in their tendencies of thought and range of study than Goethe, Spurzheim, Dr. Prichard, and Max Müller; yet these four, each by his own method of observation, have shown with conclusive force the law of variety and of permanence in organization. Goethe asserts that every individual man carries from his birth to his grave an unalterable speciality of being,—that he is, down to the smallest fibre of his character, one and the same man; and that the whole mighty power of circumstance, modifying everything, cannot abolish anything,—that organization and circumstance hold on together with an equally permanent influence in every human life. Gall and Spurzheim teach that every fibre of the brain has its original quality and force, and that such qualities and forces are transmitted by obscure but certain laws of descent. Prichard, with immense learning, describes race after race, giving the types of each human family in its physiology. And, finally, the great science of comparative philology, worked out by such thinkers and students as Bopp, Latham, Humboldt, Bunsen, Max Müller, and a host of others, has proved the permanence of human varieties by ample glossological evidence. Thus the modern science of ethnology has arisen, on the basis of physiology, philology, and ethology, and is perhaps the chief discovery of the age. Yet Mr. Buckle quietly ignores the whole of it,and continues, with Locke, to regard every human mind as a piece of white paper, to be written on by external events,—a piece of soft putty, to be moulded by circumstances.
The facts on which the science of ethnology rests are so numerous and so striking, that the only difficulty in selecting an illustration is from the quantity and richness of material. But we may take two instances,—that of the Teutons and Kelts, to show the permanence of differences under the same circumstances, and that of the Jews, the Arabs, and the Gypsies, to show the continuity of identity under different circumstances. For if it can be made evident that different races of men preserve different characters, though living for long periods under similar circumstances, and that the same race preserves the same character, though living for long periods under different circumstances, the proof is conclusive that character isnotderived from circumstances only. We shall not indeed go to the extreme of such ethnologists as Knox, Nott, or Gliddon, and say that "Race is everything, and circumstances nothing," but we shall see that Mr. Buckle is mistaken in saying that "Circumstances are everything, and race nothing."
The differences of character between the German and Keltic varieties of the human race are marked, but not extreme. They both belong to the same great Indo-European or Aryan family.They both originated in Asia, and the German emigration seems to have followed immediately after that of the Kelts. Yet when described by Cæsar, Tacitus, and Strabo, they differed from each other exactly as they differ now. They have lived for some two thousand years in the same climate, under similar political and social institutions, and yet they have preserved their original diversity.
According to the description of Cæsar30andTacitus31the German tribes differed essentially from the Gauls or Kelts in the following particulars. The Germans loved freedom, and were all free. The Kelts did not care for freedom. The meanest German was free. But all the inferior people among the Kelts were virtually slaves. The Germans had no priests, and did not care for sacrifices. The Kelts had a powerful priesthood and imposing religious rites. The Germans were remarkable for their blue eyes, light hair, and large limbs. The Kelts were dark-complexioned. The Gauls were more quick, but less persevering, than the Germans. Ready to attack, they were soon discouraged. Tacitus, describing the Germans, says: "They are a pure, unmixed, and independent race; there is a family likeness through the nation, the same form and features, stern blue eyes, ruddy hair; a strong sense of honor; reverence for women; religious, but withouta ritual; superstitiously believing in supernatural signs and portents, but not in a priesthood; not living in cities, but in scattered homes; respecting marriage; the children brought up in the dirt, among the cattle; hospitable, frank, and generous; fond of drinking beer, and eating preparations of milk."
The German and Keltic races, thus distinguished in the days of Cæsar, are equally distinct to-day. Catholicism, the religion of a priesthood, a ritual, and authority, prevails among the Kelts; Protestantism among the Germans. Ireland, being mainly Keltic, is Catholic, though a part of a Protestant nation. France, being mainly Keltic, is also Catholic, in spite of all its illumination, its science, and its knowledge of "intellectual laws." But as France contains a large infusion of German (Frankish) blood, it is the most Protestant of Catholic nations; while Scotland, containing the largest infusion of Keltic blood, is the most priest-ridden of Protestant nations. This last fact, which Mr. Buckle asserts, and spends half a volume in trying to account for, is explained at once by ethnology. Wherever the Germans go to-day, they remain the same people they were in the days of Tacitus; they carry the same blue eyes and light hair, the same love of freedom and hatred of slavery, the same tendencies to individualism in thought and life, the same tendency to superstitious belief in supernatural events, even whenwithout belief in any religion or church; and even the same love for beer, and "lac concretum," now called "schmeercase" in our Western settlements. The Kelt, also, everywhere continues the same. He loves equality more than freedom. He is a democrat, but not an abolitionist. Very social, clannish, with more wit than logic, very sensitive to praise, brave, but not determined, needing a leader, he carries the spirit of the Catholic Church into Protestantism, and the spirit of despotism into free institutions. And that physical, no less than mental qualities, continue under all climates and institutions is illustrated by the blue eyes and light hair which the traveller meets among the Genoese and Florentines, reminding him of their Lombard ancestors; while their superior tendencies to freedom in church and state suggest the same origin.
Nineteen hundred years have passed since Julius Cæsar pointed out these diversities of character then existing between the Germans and Kelts. Since then they have passed from barbarism to civilization. Instead of living in forests, as hunters and herdsmen, they have built cities, engaged in commerce, manufactures, and agriculture. They have been converted to Christianity, have conquered the Roman empire, engaged in crusades, fought in a hundred different wars, developed literatures, arts, and sciences, changed and changed again their forms of government, have been organizedby Feudalism, by Despotism, by Democracy, have gone through the Protestant reformation, have emigrated to all countries and climates; and yet, at the end of this long period, the German everywhere remains a German, and the Kelt a Kelt. The descriptions of Tacitus and Cæsar still describe them accurately. And yet Mr. Buckle undertakes to write a history of civilization without taking the element of race into account.
Perhaps, however, the power of this element of race is illustrated still more strikingly in the case of the wandering and dispersed families, who, having ceased to be a nation, continue in their dispersions to manifest the permanent type of their original and ineffaceable organization. Wherever the Jew goes, he remains a Jew. In all climates, under all governments, speaking all languages, his physical and mental features continue the same. This amazing fact has been held by many theologians to be a standing miracle of Divine Providence. But Providence works by law, and through second causes, and uses in this instance the laws of a specially stubborn organization and the force of a tenacious and persistent blood to accomplish its ends. The same kind of blood in the kindred Semitic family of Arabs produces a like result, though to a less striking degree. The Bedouins wander for thousands of miles away from their peninsula, but always continue Arabsin appearance and character. The light, sinewy body and brilliant dark eye, the abstemious habit and roaming tendency, mark the Arab in Hindostan or Barbary. It is a thousand years since these nomad tribes left their native home, but they continue the same people on the Persian Gulf or amid the deserts of Sahara.
The case of the Gypsies, however, may be still more striking, because these seem, in their wanderings over the earth, to have gradually divested themselves of every other common attribute except that of race. Unlike the Jews and Arabs, they not only adopt the language, but also the religion, of the country where they happen to be. Yet they always remain unfused and unassimilated.
The Gypsies first appeared in Europe in 1417, in Moldavia, and thence spread into Transylvania andHungary.32They afterward passed into all the countries of Europe, where their number, at the present time, is supposed to reach 700,000 or 800,000. Everywhere they adopt the common form of worship, but are without any real faith. Partially civilized in some countries, they always retain their own language beside that of the people among whom they live. This language, being evidently derived from the Sanskrit, settles the question of their origin. It is common to all theirbranches through the world; as are also the sweet voice of their maidens, and their habits of horse-dealing, fortune-telling, and petty larceny. Without the bond of religion, history, government, literature, or mutual knowledge and intercourse, they still remain one and the same people in all their dispersions. What gives this unity and permanence, if not race? Yet race, to Mr. Buckle, means nothing.
III.Mr. Buckle's Theory concerning Skepticism.—One of the laws of history which Mr. Buckle considers himself to have established, if not discovered, is that a spirit of skepticism precedes necessarily the progress of knowledge, and therefore of civilization. By skepticism he means a doubt of the truth of received opinions. He asserts that "a spirit of doubt" is the necessary antecedent to "the love of inquiry." (Vol. I. p. 242, Am. ed.) "Doubt must intervene before investigation can begin. Here, then, we have the act of doubting as the originator, or at all events the necessary antecedent, of all progress."
If this were so, progress would be impossible. For the great groundwork of knowledge for each generation must be laid in the minds of children; and children learn, not by doubting, but by believing. Children are actuated at the same time by an insatiable curiosity and an unquestioning faith. They ask the reason of everything, and they accept every reason which is given them. Ifthey stopped to question and to doubt, they would learn very little. But by not doubting at all, while they are made to believe some errors, they acquire an immense amount of information. Kind Mother Nature understands the process of learning and the principle of progress much better than Mr. Buckle, and fortunately supplies every new generation of children with an ardent desire for knowledge, and a disposition to believe everything they hear.
Perhaps, however, Mr. Buckle refers to men rather than children. He may not insist on children's stopping to question everything they hear before they believe. But in men perhaps this spirit is essential to progress. What great skeptics, then, have been also great discoverers? Which was the greatest discoverer, Leibnitz or Bayle, Sir Isaac Newton or Voltaire? A faith amounting nearly to credulity is almost essential to discovery,—a faith which foresees what it cannot prove, which follows suggestions and hints, and so traces the faintest impressions left by the flying footsteps of truth. The attitude of the intellect in all discovery is not that of doubt, but of faith. The discoverer always appears to critical and skeptical men as a visionary.
"To skepticism," says Mr. Buckle, "we owe the spirit of inquiry, which, during the last two centuries, has gradually encroached on every possible subject, and reformed every department of practicaland speculative knowledge." But this is plainly what logicians call a ὕστερον πρότερον {hysteron proteron}, or what common people call "putting the cart before the horse." It is not skepticism which produces the spirit of inquiry, but the spirit of inquiry which produces skepticism. It was not a doubt concerning the Mosaic cosmogony which led to the study of geology; the study of geology led to the doubt of the cosmogony. Skepticism concerning the authority of the Church did not lead to the discovery of the Copernican system; the discovery of the Copernican system led to doubts concerning the authority of the Church which denied it. People do not begin by doubting, but by seeking. The love of knowledge leads them to inquire, and inquiry shows to them new truths. The new truths, being found to be opposed to received opinions, cause a doubt concerning those opinions to arise in the mind. Skepticism, therefore, may easily follow, but does not precede inquiry.
Skepticism, being a negative principle, is necessarily unproductive and barren. To have no strong belief, no fixed opinion, no vital conviction for or against anything,—this is surely not a state of intellect favorable to any great creation or discovery. Goethe, who was certainly no bigot, says, in a volume of his posthumous works, that skepticism is only an inverted superstition, and that this skepticism is one of the chief evils of the present age. "It is worse," he adds, "than superstition, forsuperstition is the inheritance of energetic, heroic, progressive natures; skepticism belongs to weak, contracted, shrinking men, who venture not out of themselves." Lord Bacon says ("Advancement of Learning," Book II.) that doubts have their advantages in learning, of which he mentions two, but says that "both these commodities do scarcely countervail an inconvenience which will intrude itself, if it be not debarred; which is, that when a doubt is once received, men labor rather how to keep it a doubt than how to solve it." It will be seen, therefore, that Lord Bacon gives to skepticism scarcely more encouragement than is given it by Goethe.
Mr. Buckle says (Vol. I. p. 250) that "Skepticism, which in physics must always be the beginning of science, in religion must always be the beginning of toleration." We have seen that in physics skepticism is rather the end of science than its beginning, and the same is true of toleration. Skepticism does not necessarily produce toleration. The Roman augurs, who laughed in each other's faces, were quite ready to assist at the spectacle of Christians thrown to the lions. Skeptics, not having any inward conviction as a support, rest on established opinions, and are angry at seeing them disturbed. A strong belief is sufficient for itself, but a half-belief wishes to put down all doubts by force. This is well expressed by Thomas Burnet (Epistola 2, De Arch. Phil.): "Non potui non inillam semper propendere opinionem, Neminem irasci in veritate defendenda, qui eandem plene possidet, viditque in claro lumine. Evidens enim, et indubitata ratio, sibi sufficit et acquiescit: aliisque a scopo oberrantibus, non tam succenset, quam miseretur. Sed cum argumentorum adversantium aculeos sentimus, et quodammodo periclitari causam nostram, tum demum æstuamus, et effervescimus."
The least firm believers have often been the most violent persecutors. Nero persecuted the Christians; Marcus Antoninus persecuted them; but neither Nero nor Antoninus had any religious reason for this persecution. Antoninus, the best head of his time, was a sufficient skeptic to suit Mr. Buckle, as regards all points of the established religion, but his skepticism did not prevent him from being a persecutor. Unbelieving Popes, like Alexander VI. and Leo X., have persecuted. True toleration is not born of unbelief, as Mr. Buckle supposes, but of a deeper faith. Religious liberty has not been given to the world by skeptics, but by such men as Milton, Baxter, Jeremy Taylor, and Roger Williams.
So far from general skepticism being the antecedent condition of intellectual progress and discovery, it is a sign of approaching intellectual stagnation and decay. A great religious movement usually precedes and prepares the way for a great mental development. Thus the religious activityborn of Protestantism showed its results in England in the age of Elizabeth, and in a general outbreak of intellectual activity over all Europe. On the other hand, the skepticism of the eighteenth century was accompanied by comparative stagnation of thought throughout Christendom.
IV.Mr. Buckle's View of the small Influence of Religion on Civilization.—Mr. Buckle thinks it is erroneous to suppose that religion is one of the prime movers of human affairs. (Vol. I. p. 183.) Religion, according to him, has little to do with human progress. In this opinion, he differs from nearly all other great historians and philosophical thinkers. In modern times, Hegel, Niebuhr, Guizot, Arnold, and Macaulay, among others, have discussed the part taken by religious ideas in the development of man, laying the greatest stress on this element. But Mr. Buckle denies that religion is one of the prime movers in human affairs. The Crusades have been thought to have exercised some influence on European civilization. But religion was certainly the prime mover of the Crusades. Mohammedanism exercised some influence on the development of European life. But Mohammedanism was an embodiment of religious ideas. The Protestant Reformation shook every institution, every nation, every part of social life, in Christendom, and Europe rocked to its foundations under the influence of this great movement. But religion was the prime mover of it all. The EnglishRevolution turned on religious ideas. The rise of the Dutch Republic was determined by them. In one form they colonized South America and Mexico; in another form, they planted New England. Such great constructive minds as those of Alfred and Charlemagne have been benevolently inspired by rational religion; such dark, destructive natures as those of Philip II. of Spain, Catharine de Medicis of France, and Mary Tudor of England have been malevolently inspired by fanatical religion.