"What kind of God would He be who only pushes the universe from without?Who lets the All of Things run round and round on his finger?It becomes him far better to move the universe from within,To take Nature up into Himself, to let Himself down into Nature,So that whatever lives, and moves, and has its being in HimNever loses His power, never misses His spirit."
"What kind of God would He be who only pushes the universe from without?Who lets the All of Things run round and round on his finger?It becomes him far better to move the universe from within,To take Nature up into Himself, to let Himself down into Nature,So that whatever lives, and moves, and has its being in HimNever loses His power, never misses His spirit."
Such a conception of God, as a perpetual Creator, is essential to the intellectual rest of the human mind, and it is painful to see the irresolution of Professor Tyndall in regard to it. "Clear and confident as Jove" in the domain which is his own, where his masterly powers of observation, discrimination, and judgment leave him without a peer, he seems shorn of his strength on entering thisfield of metaphysics. He has warned theology not to trespass on the grounds of science; or, if she enters them, to submit to science as her superior. Theology has been in the habit of treating science in the same supercilious way; telling her that she was an intruder if she ventured to discuss questions of psychology or religion. This is equally unwise on either part. Theologians should be glad when men of science become seriously interested in these great questions of the Whence and the Whither. The address of Professor Tyndall is excellent in its intention as well as in its candid and manly treatment of the subject. Its indecision and indistinctness are probably due to his having accepted too implicitly the guidance of Spencer, thus assuming that religious truth is unknowable, that creation is impossible, and that only phenomena can become objects of knowledge. "Insoluble mystery" is therefore his final answer to the questions he has himself raised.
Goethe is wiser when he follows the Apostle Paul, and regards the Deity as "the fullness which filleth all in all." There is no unity to thought, and no hope for scientific progress, more than for moral culture, unless we see intelligence at the centre, intelligence on the circumference of being. To place an impenetrable darkness instead of an unclouded light on the throne of the universe, is to throw a shadow over the Creation.
We say that there is no unity in thought withoutthis conviction. The only real unity we know in the world is our own. All we see around us, including our own body, is divisible, subject to alteration and change. Only the ego, or soul, is conscious of a perfect unity in a perpetual identity. Unless we can attribute to the source of all being a similar personal unity, there can be no coherence to science, but it must forever remain fragmentary and divided. This is what we mean by asserting the personality of Deity. This idea reaches what Lord Bacon calls "the vertical point of natural philosophy" or "the summary law of Nature," and constitutes, as he declares, "the union of all things in a perpetual and uniform law."
And unless we can recognize in the ultimate fountain of being an intelligent purpose, the meaning of the universe departs. Without intelligence in the cause there is none in the effect. Then the world has no meaning, life no aim. The universe comes out of darkness, and is plunging into darkness again.
Take away from the domain of knowledge the idea of a creating and presiding intelligence, and there remains no motive for science itself. Professor Tyndall is sagacious enough to see and candid enough to admit that "without moral force to whip it into action the achievements of the intellect would be poor indeed," and that "science itself not unfrequently derives motive power from ultra-scientific sources." Faith in God, as an intelligentcreator and ruler of the world, has awakened enthusiasm for scientific investigation among both the Aryan and the Semitic races.
The purest and highest form of monotheism is that of Christianity; and in Christendom has science made its largest progress. Not by martyrs for science, but by martyrs for religion, has the human mind been emancipated. Mr. Tyndall says of scientific freedom, "We fought and won our battle even in the middle ages." But the heroes of intellectual liberty have been the heroes of faith. Hundreds of thousands have died for a religious creed; but how many have died for a scientific theory? Luther went to Worms, and maintained his opinions there in defiance of the anathemas of the church and the ban of the empire, but Galileo denied his most cherished convictions on his knees. Galileo was as noble a character as Luther; but science does not create the texture of soul which makes so many martyrs in all the religious sects of Christendom. Let the doctrine of cosmical force supplant our faith in the Almighty, and in a few hundred years science would probably fade out of the world from pure inanition. The world would probably not care enough foranythingto care for science. The light of eternity must fall on this our human and earthly life, to arouse the soul to a living and permanent interest even in things seen and temporal.
Professor Tyndall says: "Whether the views ofLucretius, Darwin, and Spencer are right or wrong, we claim the freedom to discuss them. The ground which they cover is scientific ground."
It is not only a right, but a duty to examine these theories, since they are held seriously and urged earnestly by able men. But we must doubt whether they ought to claim the authority of science. They are proposed by scientific men, and they refer to scientific subjects. But these theories, in their present development, belong to metaphysics rather than to science. Science consists, first, of observation of facts; secondly, of laws inferred from those facts; and thirdly, of a verification of those laws by new observation and experiment. That which cannot be verified is no part of science; astronomy is a science, since every eclipse and occultation verifies its laws; geology is a science, since every new observation of the strata and their contents accords with the established part of the system; chemistry is a science for the same reason. But Darwin's theory of the transformation of species by natural selection is as yet unverified. "There is no evidence of a direct descent of earlier from later species in the geological succession of animals." So says Agassiz, and on this point his testimony can hardly be impeached. Professor W. Thompson, another good geological authority, says: "In successive geological formations, although new species are constantly appearing, and there is abundant evidence ofprogressive change, no single case has yet been observed of one species passing through a series of inappreciable modifications into another." Neither has any such change taken place within historic times, for the animals and plants found in the tombs of Egypt are "identical, in all respects," says M. Quatrefages, "with those now existing." He adds the opinion, after a very careful and candid examination of the hypothesis of Darwin, that "the theory and the facts do not agree." Not being verified, then, this theory is not yet science, but an unverified mental hypothesis, that is, metaphysics.
It is important that this should be distinctly said, for when men eminent in science propound new theories, these theories themselves are apt to be regarded as science, and those who oppose them are accused of being opposed to science. This is the tendency which Professor Tyndall has so justly described in this very address: "When the human mind has achieved greatness and given evidence of power in any domain, there is a tendency to credit it with similar power in any other domain." Because Tyndall is great in experimental science, many are apt to accept his cosmological conclusions. Because he is a great observer in natural history, his metaphysical theories are supposed to be supported by observation, and to rest on experience. Professor Tyndall's own address terminates, not in science, but nescience. It treats of a realmof atoms and molecules whose existence science has never demonstrated, and attributes to them potencies which science has never verified. It is a system, not made necessary by the stringent constraint of facts, but avowedly constructed in order to avoid the belief in an intelligent Creator, and a universe marked by the presence of design. His theory, he admits, no less than that of Darwin, was not constructed in the pure interests of truth for its own sake. There was another purpose in both,—to get rid of a theology of final causes, of a theology which conceives of God as a human artificer. He wished to exclude religion from the field of cosmogony, and forbid it to intrude on the region of knowledge. Theologians have often been reproached for studying "with a purpose," but it seems that this is a frailty belonging not to theologians only, but to all human beings who care a good deal for what they believe.
Professor Tyndall accepts religious faith as an important element of human nature, but considers it as confined to the sentiments, and as not based in knowledge. He doubtless comes to this conclusion from following too implicitly the traditions of modern English psychology. These assume that knowledge comes only from without, through the senses, and never from within, through intuition. This prepossession, singularly English and insular, is thus stated by John Stuart Mill in his article on Coleridge. "Sensation, and the mind's consciousnessof its own acts, are not only the exclusive sources, but the sole materials of our knowledge. There is no knowledgea priori; no truths cognizable by the mind's inward light, and grounded on intuitive evidence." These views have been developed in England by the two Mills, Herbert Spencer, Bain, and others, who have made great efforts to show how sensations may be transformed into thoughts; how association of ideas may have developed instincts; how hereditary impressions, repeated for a million years, may at last have taken on the aspect of necessary truths. In short, they have laid out great labor and ingenuity in proving that a sensation may, very gradually, be transformed into a thought.
But all this labor is probably a waste of time and of intellectual power. The attempt at turning sensation into thought only results in turning thought into sensation. It is an error that we only know what we perceive through the senses, or transform by the action of the mind. It is not true that we only know that of which we can form a sensible image. We know the existence of the soul as certainly as that of the body. We know the infinite and the eternal as well as we know the finite and temporal. We know substance, cause, immortal beauty, absolute truth, as surely as the flitting phenomena which pass within the sphere of sensational experience. These convictions belong, not to the sphere of sentiment and emotion,but to that of knowledge. It is because they show us realities and not imaginations, that they nerve the soul to such vast efforts in the sphere of morals, literature, and religion.
The arguments against the independent existence of the soul which Tyndall puts into the mouth of his Lucretian disciple are not difficult to answer. "You can form no picture of the soul," he says. No; and neither can we form a mental picture of love or hate, of right and wrong, or even of bodily pain and pleasure. "If localized in the body, the soul must have form." Must a pain, localized in the finger, have form? "When a leg is amputated, in which part does the soul reside?" We answer, that the soul resides in the body, with reduced power. Its instrument is less perfect than before—like a telescope which has lost a lens. "If consciousness is an essential attribute of the soul, where is the soul when consciousness ceases by the depression of the brain?" Is there any difficulty, we reply, in supposing that the soul may pass sometimes into a state of torpor, when its instrument is injured? A soul may sleep, and so be unconscious, without being dead. "The diseased brain may produce immorality: can the reason control it? If not, what is the use of the reason?" To this we answer that the soul may lose its power with a diseased body; but when furnished with another and better body, it will regain it. "If you regard the body only asan instrument, you will neglect to take care of it." Does the astronomer neglect to take care of his telescope?
These answers to the Lucretian may be far from complete; but they are at least as good as the objections. The soul, no doubt, depends on the body, and cannot do its work well when the body is out of order; but does that prove it to be theresultof the body? If so, the same argument would prove the carpenter to be the result of his box of tools, and the organist to be the result of his organ. The organist draws sweet music from his instrument. But as his organ grows old, or is injured by the weather, or the pipes crack, and the pedals get out of order, the music becomes more and more imperfect. At last the instrument is wholly ruined, and the music wholly ceases. Is, then, the organist dead, or was he only the result of the organ? "Without phosphorus, no thought," say the materialists. True. So, "without the organ, no music." Just as in addition to the musical instrument we need a performer, so in addition to the brain we need a soul.
There are two worlds of knowledge,—the outward world, which is perceived through the senses, and which belongs to physical science, and the inward world, perceived by the nobler reason, and from which a celestial light streams in, irradiating the mind through all its powers. Religion and science are not opposed, though different; theirspheres are different, though not to be divided. Each is supreme in its own region, but each needs the help of the other in order to do its own work well. Professor Tyndall claims freedom of discussion and inquiry for himself and his scientific brethren, and says he will oppose to the death any limitation of this liberty. He need not be anxious on this point. Religious faith has already fought this battle, and won for science as well as for itself perfect liberty of thought. The Protestant churches may say, "With a great sum obtained we this freedom." By the lives of its confessors and the blood of its martyrs has it secured for all men to-day equal rights of thought and speech. What neither Copernicus, Kepler, nor Galileo could do was accomplished by the courage of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and Oliver Cromwell.
And now the freedom they obtained by such sacrifices we inherit and enjoy: "We are free-born." We may be thankful that in most countries to-day no repression nor dictation prevents any man from expressing his inmost thought. We are glad that the most rabid unbelief and extreme denial can be spoken calmly in the open day. This is one great discovery of modern times, that errors lose half their influence when openly uttered. We owe this discovery to the Reformation. The reformers made possible a toleration much larger than their own; unwittingly, whileseeking freedom for their own thoughts, they won the same freedom for others, who went farther than they. They builded better than they knew.
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Professor Tyndall's address is tranquil yet earnest, modest, and manly. But its best result is, that it shows us the impotence of the method of sensation to explain the mystery of the universe. It has shown us clearly the limitations of "the understanding judging by sense"—shown that it sees our world clearly, but is blind to the other. It can tell every blade of grass, and name every mineral; but it stands helpless and hopeless before the problem of being. Science and religion may each say with the apostle, "We know in part and prophesy in part." Together and united, they may one day see and know the whole.
In the paper which opens this discussion on "Law and Design in Nature," Professor Newcomb announces in a single sentence a proposition, the truth or falsehood of which, he tells us, is "the sole question presented for discussion in the present series of papers."
But, as soon as we examine this proposition, we find that it contains not one sole question, but three. The three are independent of each other, and do not necessarily stand or fall together. They arethese:—
1. "The whole course of Nature, considered as a succession of phenomena, is conditioned solely by antecedent causes."
2. In the action of these causes, "no regard to consequences is traceable."
3. And no regard to consequences is "necessary to foresee the phenomena."
Of these three propositions I admit the truth of the first; deny the truth of the second; and, for want of space, and because of its relative unimportance, leave the third unexamined.
The first proposition is so evidently true, and so universally admitted, that it was hardly worth positing for discussion. It is merely affirming that every natural phenomenon implies a cause. The word "antecedent" is ambiguous, but, if it intends logical and not chronological antecedence, it is unobjectionable. So understood, we are merely asked if we can accept the law of universal causation; which I suppose we shall all readily do, since this law is the basis of theology no less than of science. Without it, we could not prove the existence of the first cause. Professor Newcomb has divided us into two conflicting schools, one of theology and the other of science. Taking my place in the school of theology, I think I may safely assert for my brethren that on this point there is no conflict, but that we all admit the truth of the law of universal causation. It will be noticed that Professor Newcomb has carefully worded his statement, so as not to confine us to physical causes, nor even to exclude supernatural causes from without, working into the nexus of natural laws. He does not say "antecedent physical causes," nor does he say "causes which have existed from the beginning."
Admitting thus the truth of the first proposition, I must resolutely deny that of the second; since, by accepting it, I should surrender the very cause I wish to defend, namely, that we can perceive design in Nature. Final causes are those which "regard consequences." The principle of finalityis defined by M. Janet (in his recent exhaustive work, "Les Causes finales") as "the present determined by the future." One example of the way in which we can trace in Nature "a regard to consequences" is so excellently stated by this eminent philosopher that we will introduce it here: "Consider what is implied in the egg of a bird. In the mystery and night of incubation there comes, by the combination of an incredible number of causes, a living machine within the egg. It is absolutely separated from the external world, but every part is related to some future use. The outward physical world which the creature is to inhabit is wholly divided by impenetrable veils from this internal laboratory; but a preëstablished harmony exists between them. Without, there is light; within, an optical machine adapted to it. Without, there is sound; within, an acoustic apparatus. Without, are vegetables and animals; within, organs for their reception and assimilation. Without, is air; within, lungs with which to breathe it. Without, is oxygen; within, blood to be oxygenized. Without, is earth; within, feet are being made to walk on it. Without, is the atmosphere; within, are wings with which to fly through it. Now imagine a blind and idiotic workman, alone in a cellar, who simply by moving his limbs to and fro should be found to have forged a key capable of opening the most complex lock. If we exclude design, this is what Nature is supposed to be doing."
That design exists in Nature, and that earthly phenomena actually depend on final causes as well as on efficient causes, appears from the industry of man. Man is certainly a part of Nature, and those who accept evolution must regard him as the highest development resulting from natural processes. Now, all over the earth, from morning till evening, men are acting for ends. "Regard to consequences is traceable" in all their conduct. They are moved by hope and expectation. They devise plans, and act for a purpose. From the savage hammering his flint arrowheads, up to a Shakespeare composing "Hamlet," a Columbus seeking a new way to Asia, or a Paul converting Europe to a Syrian religion, human industry is a constant proof that a large part of the course of Nature on this earth is the result of design. And, as man develops into higher stages, this principle of design rises also from the simple to the complex, taking ever larger forms. A ship, for instance, shows throughout the adaptation of means to ends, by which complex adaptations produce a unity of result.
And that there is no conflict between the action of physical causes and final causes is demonstrated by the works of man, since they all result from the harmonious action of both. In studying human works we ask two questions,—"How?" and "Why?" We ask, "What is it for?" and "How is it done?" The two lines of inquiry run parallel,and without conflict. So, in studying the works of Nature, to seek for design does not obstruct the investigation of causes, and may often aid it. Thus Harvey is said to have been led to the discovery of the circulation of the blood by seeking for the use of the valves of the veins and heart.
The human mind is so constituted that, whenever it sees an event, it is obliged to infer a cause. So, whenever it sees adaptation, it infers design. It is not necessary to know the end proposed, or who were the agents. Adaptation itself, implying the use of means, leads us irresistibly to infer intention. We do not know who built Stonehenge, or some of the pyramids, or what they were built for; but no one doubts that they were the result of design. This inference is strengthened if we see combination toward an end, and preparation made beforehand for a result which comes afterward. From preparation, combination, and adaptation, we are led to believe in the presence of human design even where we did not before know of the presence of human beings. A few rudely shaped stones, found in a stratum belonging to the Quaternary period, in which man had before not been believed to exist, changed that opinion. Those chipped flints showed adaptation; from adaptation design was inferred; and design implied the presence of man.
Now, we find in Nature, especially in the organizationand instincts of animals, myriads of similar instances of preparation, combination, and adaptation. Two explanations only of this occurred to antiquity,—design and chance. Socrates, Plato, and others, were led by such facts to infer the creation of the world by an intelligent author—"ille opifex rerum." Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, ascribed it to the fortuitous concourse of atoms. But modern science has expelled chance from the universe, and substituted law. Laplace, observing forty-three instances in the solar system of planets and their satellites revolving on their axes or moving in their orbits, from west to east, declared that this could not be a mere coincidence. Chance, therefore, being set aside, the question takes another form: "Did the cosmos that we see come by design or by law?"
But does this really change the question? Granting, for example, the truth of the theory of the development of all forms of life, under the operation of law, from a primal cell, we must then ask, "Did theselawscome by chance or by design?" It is not possible to evade that issue. If the universe resulted from non-intelligent forces, those forces themselves must have existed as the result of chance or of intelligence. If you put out the eyes, you leave blindness; if you strike intelligence out of the creative mystery, you leave blind forces, the result of accident. Whatever is not from intelligence is from accident. To substitutelaw for chance is merely removing the difficulty a little further back; it does not solve it.
To eliminate interventions from the universe is not to remove design. The most profound theists have denied such interruptions of the course of Nature. Leibnitz is an illustrious example of this. Janet declares him to have been the true author of the theory of evolution, by his "Law of Continuity," of "Insensible Perceptions," and of "Infinitely Small Increments." Yet he also fully believed in final causes. Descartes, who objected to some teleological statements, believed that the Creator imposed laws on chaos by which the world emerged into a cosmos. We know that existing animals are evolved by a continuous process from eggs, and existing vegetables by a like process from seeds. No one ever supposed that there was less of design on this account in their creation. So, if all existing things came at first by a like process from a single germ, it would not argue less, but far more, of design in the universe.
The theory of "natural selection" does not enable us to dispense with final causes. This theory requires the existence of forces working according to the law of heredity and the law of variation, together with a suitable environment. But whence came this arrangement, by which a law of heredity was combined with a law of variation, and both made to act in a suitable environment? Here we find again the three marks of adesigning intelligence: preparation, combination, adaptation. That intelligence which combines and adapts means to ends is merely remanded to the initial step of the process, instead of being allowed to act continuously along the whole line of evolution. Even though you can explain by the action of mechanical forces the whole development of the solar system and its contents from a nebula, you have only accumulated all the action of a creative intelligence in the nebula itself. Because I can explain the mechanical process by which a watch keeps time, I have not excluded the necessity of a watchmaker. Because, walking through my neighbor's grounds, I come upon a water-ram pumping up water by a purely mechanical process, I do not argue that this mechanism makes the assumption of an inventor superfluous. In human industry we perceive a power capable of using the blind forces of Nature for an intelligent end; which prepares beforehand for the intended result; which combines various conditions suited to produce it, and so creates order, system, use. But we observe in Nature exactly similar examples of order, method, and system, resulting from a vast number of combinations, correlations, and adaptations of natural forces. Man himself is such a result. He is an animal capable of activity, happiness, progress. But innumerable causes are combined and harmonized in his physical frame, each necessary to this end. As the human intelligence is the onlypower we know capable of accomplishing such results, analogy leads us to assume that a similar intelligence presides over the like combinations of means to ends in Nature. If any one questions the value of this argument from analogy, let him remember how entirely we rely upon it in all the business of life. Weknowonly the motives which govern our own actions; but we infer by analogy that others act from similar motives. Knowing that we ourselves combine means designed to effect ends, when we see others adapting means to ends, we assume that they act also with design. Hence we have a right to extend the argument further and higher.
The result of what I have said is this: The phenomena of the universe cannot be satisfactorily explained except by the study both of efficient causes and of final causes. Routine scientists, confining themselves to the one, and routine theologians, confining themselves to the other, may suppose them to be in conflict. But men of larger insight, like Leibnitz, Newton, Descartes, and Bacon, easily see the harmony between them. Like Hegel they say: "Nature is no less artful than powerful; it attains its end while it allows all things to act according to their constitution;" or they declare with Bacon that "the highest link of Nature's chain is fastened to the foot of Jupiter's chair." But the belief in final causes does not imply belief in supernatural intervention, norof any disturbance in the continuity of natural processes. It means that Nature is pervaded by an intelligent presence; that mind is above and around matter; that mechanical laws are themselves a manifestation of some providing wisdom, and that when we say Nature we also sayGod.23
In Thomas Carlyle's earlier days, when he followed a better inspiration than his present,—when his writings were steeped, not in cynicism, but in the pure human love of his fellow beings,—in the days when he did not worship Force, but Truth and Goodness,—in those days, it was the fashion of critics to pass the most sweeping censures on his writings as "affected," "unintelligible," "extravagant." But he worked his way on, in spite of that superficial criticism,—he won for himself an audience; he gained renown; he became authentic.Now, the same class of critics admire and praise whatever he writes. For the rule with most critics is that of the bully in school and college,—to tyrannize over the new boys, to abuse the strangers, but to treat with respect whoever has bravely fought his way into a recognized position. Carlyle has fought his way into the position of a great literary chief,—so now he may be ever so careless, ever so willful, and he will be spoken of in high terms by all monthlies and quarterlies. When he deserved admiration, he was treatedwith cool contempt; now that he deserves the sharpest criticism, not only for his false moral position, but for his gross literary sins, the critics treat him with deference and respect.
But let us say beforehand that we can never write of Thomas Carlyle with bitterness. We have received too much good from him in past days. He is our "Lost Leader," but we have loved and honored him as few men were ever loved and honored. It is therefore with tenderness, and not any cold, indifferent criticism, that we find fault with him now. We shall always be grateful to the real Carlyle, the old Carlyle of "Sartor Resartus," of the "French Revolution," of the "Life of Schiller," of "Heroes and Hero-Worship," and of that long and noble series of articles in the Edinburgh, Foreign Review, Westminster, and Frazer, each of which illuminated some theme, and threw the glory of genius over whatever his mind touched or his pencil drew.
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Carlyle's "Frederick theGreat"25seems to us a badly written book. Let us consider the volume containing the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters. Nothing in these chapters is brought out clearly. When we have finished the book, the mind is filled with a confusion of vague images.We know that Mr. Carlyle is not bound to "provide us with brains" as well as with a history, but neither was he so bound in other days. Yet no such confusion was left after reading the "French Revolution." How brilliantly distinct was every leading event, every influential person, every pathetic or poetic episode, in that charmed narrative! Who can forget Carlyle's account of the "Menads," the King's "Flight to Varennes," the Constitutions that "would not march," the "September Massacres," "Charlotte Corday,"—every chief tragic movement, every grotesque episode, moving forward, distinct and clear, to the final issue, "a whiff of grapeshot"? Is there anything like that in this confused "Frederick"?
Compare, for example, the chapters on Voltaire in the present volume with the article on Voltaire published in 1829.
The sixteenth book is devoted to the ten years of peace which followed the second Silesian war. These were from 1746 to 1756. The book contains fifteen chapters. Carlyle begins, in chapter i., by lamenting that there is very little to be known or said about these ten years. "Nothing visible in them of main significance but a crash of authors' quarrels, and the crowning visit of Voltaire." Yet one would think that matter enough might be found in describing the immense activity of Friedrich, of which Macaulay says, "His exertions were such as were hardly to be expectedfrom a human body or a human mind." During these years Frederick brought a seventh part of his people into the army, and organized and drilled it under his own personal inspection, till it became the finest in Europe. He compiled a code of laws, in which he, among the first, abolished torture. He made constant journeys through his dominions, examining the condition of manufactures, arts, commerce, and agriculture. He introduced the strictest economy into the expenditures of the state. He indulged himself, indeed, in various architectural extravagances at Berlin and Potsdam,—but otherwise saved every florin for his army. He wrote "Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg," and an epic poem on the "Art of War." But our author disdains to give us an account of these things. They are not picturesque, they can be told in only general terms, and Carlyle will tell us only what an eyewitness could see or a listener hear. Accordingly, instead of giving us an account of these great labors of his hero, he inserts (chapter ii.) "a peep at Voltaire and his divine Emilie," "a visit to Frederick by Marshal Saxe;" (chapter iii.) a long account of Candidate Linsenbarth's visit to the king; "Sir Jonas Hanway stalks across the scene;" the lawsuit of Voltaire about the Jew Hirsch; "a demon news-writer gives an idea of Friedrich;" the quarrel of Voltaire and Maupertuis; "Friedrich is visible in Holland to the naked eye for some minutes."
This is very unsatisfactory. Reports of eyewitnesses are, no doubt, picturesque and valuable; but so only on condition of being properly arranged, and tending, in their use, toward some positive result. Then the tone of banter, of irony, almost of persiflage, is discouraging. If the whole story of Friedrich is so unintelligible, uninteresting, or incommunicable, why take the trouble to write it? Thepoco-curanteair with which he narrates, as though it were of no great consequence whether he told his story or not, contrasts wonderfully with his early earnestness. Carlyle writes this history like a man thoroughlyblasé. Impossible for him to take any interest in it himself,—how, then, does he expect to interest us? Has he not himself told us, in his former writings, that the man who proposes to teach others anything must be good enough to believe it first himself?
Here is the problem we have to solve. How came this change from the Carlyle of the Past to the Carlyle of the Present,—from Carlyle the universal believer to Carlyle the universal skeptic,—from him to whom the world was full of wonder and beauty, to him who can see in it nothing but Force on the one side and Shams on the other? What changed that tender, loving, brave soul into this hard cynic? And how was it, as Faith and Love faded out of him, that the life passed from his thought, the glory from his pen, and the page, once alive with flashing ideas, turned intothis confused heap of rubbish, in which silver spoons, old shoes, gold sovereigns, and copper pennies are pitched out promiscuously, for the patient reader to sift and pick over as he can? In reading the Carlyle of thirty years ago, we were like California miners,—come upon a richplacer, never before opened, where we could all become rich in a day. Now the reader of Carlyle is achiffonier, raking in a heap of street dust for whatever precious matters may turn up.
To investigate this question is our purpose now,—and in doing so we will consider, in succession, these two Carlyles.
I. It was about the year 1830 that readers of books in this vicinity became aware of a new power coming up in the literary republic. Opinions concerning him varied widely. To some he seemed a Jack Cade, leader of rebels, foe to good taste and all sound opinions. Especially did his admiration for Goethe and for German literature seem to many preposterous and extravagant. It was said of these, that "the force of folly could no further go,"—that they "constituted a burlesque too extravagant to be amusing." The tone of Carlyle was said to be of "unbounded assumption;" his language to be "obscure and barbarous;" his ideas composed of "extravagant paradoxes, familiar truths or familiar falsehoods;" "wildest extravagance and merest silliness."
But to others, and especially to the youngermen, this new writer came, opening up unknown worlds of beauty and wonder. A strange influence, unlike any other, attracted us to his writing. Before we knew his name, we knewhim. We could recognize an article by our new author as soon as we opened the pages of the Foreign Review, Edinburgh, or Westminster, and read a few paragraphs. But it was not the style, though marked by a singular freedom and originality—not the tone of kindly humor, the good-natured irony, the happy illustrations brought from afar,—not the amount of literary knowledge, the familiarity with German, French, Italian, Spanish literature,—not any or all of these which so bewitched us. We knew a young man who used to walk from a neighboring town to Boston every week, in order to read over again two articles by Carlyle in two numbers of the Foreign Review lying on a table in the reading-room of the Athenæum. This was his food, in the strength of which he could go a week, till hunger drove him back to get another meal at the same table. We knew other young men and young women who taught themselves German in order to read for themselves the authors made so luminous by this writer. Those were counted fortunate who possessed the works of our author, as yet unpublished in America,—his "Life of Schiller," his "German Romance," his Review articles. What, then, was the charm,—whence the fascination?
To explain this we must describe a little the state of literature and opinion in this vicinity at the time when Carlyle's writings first made their appearance.
Unitarianism and Orthodoxy had fought their battle, and were resting on their arms. Each had intrenched itself in certain positions, each had won to its side most of those who legitimately belonged to it. Controversy had done all it could, and had come to an end. Among the Unitarians, the so-called "practical preaching" was in vogue; that is, ethical and moral essays, pointing out the goodness of being good, and the excellence of what was called "moral virtue." There was, no doubt, a body of original thinkers and writers,—better thinkers and writers, it may be, than we have now,—who were preparing the way for another advance. Channing had already unfolded his doctrine of man, of which the central idea is, that human nature is not to be moulded by religion, but to be developed by it. Walker, Greenwood, Ware, and their brave associates, were conducting this journal with unsurpassed ability. But something more was needed. The general character of preaching was not of a vitalizing sort. It was much like what Carlyle says of preaching in England at the same period: "The most enthusiastic Evangelicals do not preach a Gospel, but keep describing how it should and might be preached; to awaken the sacred fire of faith is not their endeavor;but at most, to describe how faith shows and acts, and scientifically to distinguish true faith from false." It is "not the Love of God which is taught, but the love of the Love of God."
According to this, God was outside of the world, at a distance from his children, and obliged to communicate with them in this indirect way, by breaking through the walls of natural law with an occasional miracle. There was no door by which he could enter into the sheepfold to his sheep. Miracles were represented, even by Dr. Channing, as abnormal, as "violations of the laws of nature;" something, therefore, unnatural and monstrous, and not to be believed except on the best evidence. God could not be supposed to break through the walls of this house of nature, except in order to speak to his children on some great occasions. That he had done it, in the case of Christianity, could be proved by the eleven volumes of Dr. Lardner, which showed the Four Gospels to have been written by the companions of Christ, and not otherwise.
The whole of this theory rested, it will be observed, on a sensuous system of mental philosophy. "All knowledge comes through the senses," was its foundation. Revelation, like every other form of knowledge, must come through the senses. A miracle, which appeals to the sight, touch, hearing, is the only possible proof of a divine act. For, in the last analysis, all our theology rests on ourphilosophy. Theology, being belief, must proceed according to those laws of belief, whatever they are, which we accept and hold. The man who thinks that all knowledge comes through the senses must receive his theological knowledge also that way, and no other. This was the general opinion thirty or forty years ago; hence this theory of Christianity, which supposes that God is obliged to break his own laws in order to communicate it.
But the result of this belief was harmful. It tended to make our religion formal, our worship a mere ceremony; it made real communication with God impossible; it turned prayer into a self-magnetizing operation; it left us virtually "without God and hope in the world." Thanks to Him who never leaves himself without a witness in the human heart, this theory was often nullified in practice by the irrepressible instincts which it denied, by the spiritual intuitions which it ridiculed. Even Professor Norton, its chief champion, had a heart steeped in the sweetest piety. Denying, intellectually, all intuitions of God, Duty, and Immortality, his beautiful and tender hymns show the highest spiritual insight. Still it cannot be denied that this theory tended to dry up the fountains of religious faith in the human heart, and to leave us in a merely mechanical and unspiritualized world.
Now the first voice which came to break thisenchantment was, to many, the voice of Thomas Carlyle. It needed for this end, it always needs, a man who could come face to face with Truth. Every great idol-breaker, every man who has delivered the world from the yoke of Forms, has been one who was able to see the substance of things, who was gifted with the insight of realities. Forms of worship, forms of belief, at first the channels of life, through which the Living Spirit flowed into human hearts, at last became petrified, incrusted, choked. A few drops of the vital current still ooze slowly through them, and our parched lips, sucking these few drops, cling all the more closely to the form as it becomes less and less a vehicle of life. The poorest word, old and trite, is precious when there is no open vision. We do well continually to resort to the half-dead form, "till the day dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts."
But at last there comes a man capable of dispensing with the form,—a man endowed with a high degree of the intuitive faculty,—a born seer, a prophet, seeing the great realities of the universe with open vision. The work of such a man is to break up the old formulas and introduce new light and life. This work was done for the Orthodox thirty years ago by the writings of Coleridge; for the Unitarians in this vicinity, by the writings of Thomas Carlyle.
This was the secret of the enthusiasm felt forCarlyle, in those days, by so many of the younger men and women. He taught us to look at realities instead of names, at substance instead of surface,—to see God in the world, in nature, in life, in providence, in man,—to see divine truth and beauty and wonder everywhere around. He taught that the only organ necessary by which to see the divine in all things was sincerity, or inward truth. And so he enabled us to escape from the form into the spirit, he helped us to rise to that plane of freedom from which we could see the divine in the human, the infinite in the finite, God in man, heaven on earth, immortality beginning here, eternity pervading time. This made for us a new heaven and a new earth, a new religion and a new life. Faith was once more possible, a faith not bought by the renunciation of mature reason or the beauty and glory of the present hour.
But all this was taught us by our new prophet, not by the intellect merely, but by the spirit in which he spoke. He did not seem to be giving us a new creed, so much as inspiring us with a new life. That which came from his experience went into ours. Therefore it might have been difficult, in those days, for any of his disciples to state what it was that they had learned from him. They had not learned his doctrine,—they had absorbed it. Hence, very naturally, came the imitations of Carlyle, which so disgusted the members of the old school. Hence the absurd Carlylish writing,the feeble imitations by honest, but weak disciples of the great master. It was a pity, but not unnatural, and it soon passed by.
As Carlyle thus did his work, not so much by direct teaching as by an influence hidden in all that he said, it did not much matter on what subject he wrote,—the influence was there still. But his articles on Goethe were the most attractive, because he asserted that in this patriarch of German literature he had found one who saw in all things their real essence, one whose majestic and trained intelligence could interpret to us in all parts of nature and life the inmost quality, theterza essenza, as the Italian Platonists called it, which made each itself. Goethe was announced as the prophet of Realism. He, it should seem, had perfectly escaped from words into things. He saw the world, not through dogmas, traditions, formulas, but as it was in itself. To him