A photograph of a man sitting in a chair, with his knees covered with a blanket.INVALID IN CHAIR (SEE NOTE).
INVALID IN CHAIR (SEE NOTE).
The first building we entered faced a narrow street. The hallway was as dark as the air was foul or the walls filthy. Not a ray or shimmer of light fell through transoms or skylight. The stairs were narrow and worn. By the aid of matches we were able to grope our way along, and also toobserve more than was pleasant to behold. It was apparent that the hallways or stairs were seldom surprised by water, while pure, fresh air was evidently as much a stranger as fresh paint. After ascending several flights, we entered a room of undreamed-of wretchedness. On the floor lay a sick man.2He was rather fine-looking, with an intelligent face, bright eyes, and countenance indicative of force of character. No sign of dissipation, but an expression of sadness, or rather a look of dumb resignation peered from his expressive eyes. For more than two years he has been paralyzed in his lower limbs, and also affected with dropsy. The spectacle of a strong man, with the organs of locomotion dead, is always pathetic; but when the victim of such misfortune is in the depths of abject poverty, his case assumes a tragic hue. There for two years he had lain on a wretched pallet of rags, seeing day by day and hour by hour his faithful wife tirelessly sewing, and knowing full well that health, life, and hope were hourly slipping from her. This poor woman supports the invalid husband, her two children, and herself, by making pants at twelve cents a pair. No rest, no surcease, a perpetual grind from early dawn often till far into the night; and what is more appalling, outraged nature has rebelled; the long months of semi-starvation and lack of sleep have brought on rheumatism, which has settled in the joints of her fingers, so that every stitch means a throb of pain. The afternoon we called, she was completing an enormous pair ofcustom-madepants of very fine blue cloth, for one of the largest clothing houses in Boston. The suit would probably bring sixty or sixty-five dollars, yet her employer graciously informed his poor white slave that as the garment was so large, he would give her anextra cent. Thirteen cents for fine custom-made pants, manufactured for a wealthy firm, which repeatedly asserts that its clothing is not made in tenement houses! Thus with one of the most painful diseases enthroned in that part of the body which must moveincessantly from dawn till midnight, with two small dependent children and a husband who is utterly powerless to help her, this poor woman struggles bravely and uncomplainingly, confronted ever by a nameless dread of impending misfortune. Eviction, sickness, starvation,—such are the ever-present spectres, while every year marks the steady encroachment of disease, and the lowering of the register of vitality. Moreover, from the window of her soul falls the light of no star athwart the pathway of life.
A photograph of two little girls with sewing in their laps.CONSTANCE AND MAGGIE (SEE NOTE).
CONSTANCE AND MAGGIE (SEE NOTE).
The next place we visited was in the attic of a tenement building even more wretched than the one just described. The general aspects of these houses, however, are all much the same, the chief difference being in degrees of filth and squalor present. Here in an attic lives a poor widow with three children, a little boy and two little girls, Constance and Maggie.3They live by making pants at twelve cents a pair. Since the youngest child was two and a half years old she has been daily engaged in overcasting the long seams of the garments made by her mother. When we first called she had just passed her fourth birthday, and now overcasts from three to four pairs of pants every day. There seated on a little stool she sat, her fingers moving as rapidly and in as unerring manner as an old experienced needlewoman. These three children are fine looking, as are most of the little Portuguese I visited. Their large heads and brilliant eyes seem to indicate capacity to enjoy in an unusual degree the matchless delight springing from intellectual and spiritual development. Yet the wretched walls of their little apartment practically mark the limit of their world; the needle their inseparable companion; their moral and mental natures hopelessly dwarfed; a world of wonderful possibilities denied them by an inexorable fate over which they have no control and for which they are in no way responsible. We often hear it said that these children of the slums are perfectly happy; that not knowing what they miss life is as enjoyable to them as the young in more favorablequarters. I am satisfied, however, that this is true only in a limited sense. The little children I have just described are already practically machines; day by day they engage in the same work with much the monotony of an automatic instrument propelled by a blind force. When given oranges and cakes, a momentary smile illumined their countenances, a liquid brightness shot from their eyes, only to be replaced by the solemn, almost stolid, expression which has become habitual even on faces so young. This conclusion was still more impressively emphasized by the following touching remark of a child of twelve years in another apartment, who was with her mother busily sewing. “I am forty-three years old to-day,” remarked the mother, and said Mr. English, “I shall be forty-two next week.” “Oh, dear,” broke in the child, “I should think people would growSO TIREDof living soMANY YEARS.” Was utterance ever more pathetic? She spoke in tones of mingled sadness and weariness, revealing in one breath all the pent-up bitterness of a young life condemned to a slavery intolerable to any refined or sensitive nature. Is it strange that people here take to drink? To me it is far more surprising that so many are sober. I am convinced that, in the slums, far more drunkenness is caused by abject poverty and inability to obtain work, than want is produced by drink. Here the physical system, half starved and often chilled, calls for stimulants. Here the horrors of nightmare, which we sometimes suffer during our sleep, are present during every waking hour. An oppressive fear weighs forever on the mind. Drink offers a temporary relief and satisfies the craving of the system, besides the environment invites dissipation and human nature at best is frail. I marvel that there is not more drunkenness exhibited in the poverty spots of our cities.
DESCRIPTIONCELLARWAY LEADING TO UNDER-GROUND APARTMENTS (SEE NOTE).
CELLARWAY LEADING TO UNDER-GROUND APARTMENTS (SEE NOTE).
A bearded man lies in a small bed.SICK MAN IN UNDER-GROUND APARTMENT (SEE NOTE).
SICK MAN IN UNDER-GROUND APARTMENT (SEE NOTE).
A woman and two young girls sew, while a toddler looks at the camera.PORTUGUESE WIDOW AND THREE CHILDREN (SEE NOTE).
PORTUGUESE WIDOW AND THREE CHILDREN (SEE NOTE).
A woman and a boy are seated, and a girl stands.WIDOW AND TWO CHILDREN IN UNDER-GROUND TENEMENT (SEE NOTE).
WIDOW AND TWO CHILDREN IN UNDER-GROUND TENEMENT (SEE NOTE).
Rickety wood and clotheslines hung with ragged clothes are the focus of this picture.EXTERIOR OF A NORTH END TENEMENT HOUSE (SEE NOTE).
EXTERIOR OF A NORTH END TENEMENT HOUSE (SEE NOTE).
Among the places we visited were a number of cellars or burrows. We descended several steps into dark, narrow passage-ways,4leading to cold, damp rooms, in many ofwhich no direct ray of sunshine ever creeps. We entered a room filled with a bed, cooking stove, rack of dirty clothes and numerous chairs, of which the most one could say was that their backs were still sound and which probably had been donated by persons who could no longer use them. On the bed lay a man who has been ill for three months with rheumatism. This family consists of father, mother, and a large daughter, all of whom are compelled to occupy one bed. They eat, cook, live, and sleep in this wretched cellar and pay over fifty dollars a year rent. This is a typical illustration of life in this underground world.
A crowded room with three children, two beds and a stove.UNDER-GROUND TENEMENT WITH TWO BEDS (SEE NOTE).
UNDER-GROUND TENEMENT WITH TWO BEDS (SEE NOTE).
In another similar cellar or burrow5we found a mother and seven boys and girls, some of them quite large, all sleeping in two medium-sized beds in one room; this room is also their kitchen. The other room is a storehouse for kindling wood the children gather and sell, a little store and living room combined. Their rent is two dollars a week. The cellar was damp and cold; the air stifling. Nothing can be imagined more favorable to contagion both physical and moral than such dens as these. Ethical exaltation or spiritual growth is impossible with such environment. It is not strange that the slums breed criminals, which require vast sums yearly to punish after evil has been accomplished; but to me it is an ever-increasing source of wonder that society should be so short-sighted andneglectful of the condition of its exiles, when an outlay of a much smaller sum would ensure a prevention of a large proportion of the crime that emenates from the slums; while at the same time it would mean a new world of life, happiness, and measureless possibilities for the thousands who now exist in hopeless gloom.
A man sits at a table, with his head on his hand.OUT OF WORK (SEE NOTE).
OUT OF WORK (SEE NOTE).
In a small room fronting an interior court we found a man6whose face bore the stamp of that “hope long deferred which maketh the heart sick.” He is, I am informed, a strictly temperate, honest, and industrious workman. Up to the time of his wife’s illness and death, which occurred last summer, the family lived in a reasonably comfortable manner, as the husband found no difficulty in securing work on the sea. When the wife died, however, circumstances changed. She left six little children, one almost an infant. The father could not go to sea, leaving his little flock without a protector, to fall the victims of starvation, and since then he has worked whenever he could get employment loading vessels, or at anything he could find. For the past six weeks he has been practically without work, and the numerous family of little ones have suffered for life’s necessities. His rent is two dollars and a quarter a week.
A woman and four small children.PORTUGUESE WIDOW IN ATTIC (SEE NOTE).
PORTUGUESE WIDOW IN ATTIC (SEE NOTE).
In the attic in another tenement we found a widow7weeping and working by the side of a little cradle where lay a sick child, whose large luminous eyes shone with almost phosphorescent brilliancy from great cavernous sockets, as they wandered from one to another, with a wistful, soul-querying gaze. Its forehead was large and prominent, so much so that looking at the upper part of the head one would little imagine how terrible the emaciation of the body, whichwas little more than skin and bones, speaking more eloquently than words of the ravages of slow starvation and wasting disease. The immediate cause of the poor woman’s tears was explained to us in broken English, substantially as follows: She had just returned from the dispensary where she had been unsuccessful in her effort to have a physician visit her child, owing to her inability to pay the quarter of a dollar demanded for the visit. After describing as best she could the condition of the invalid, the doctor had given her two bottles of medicine and a prescription blank on which he had written directions for her to get a truss that would cost her two dollars and a half at the drug store. She had explained to the physician that owing to the illness of her child she had fallen a week and a half in arrears in rent; that the agent for the tenement had notified her that if one week’s rent was not paid on Saturday she would be evicted, which meant death to her child, so she could not buy the truss. To which the doctor replied, “You must get the truss and put it on before giving anything from either bottle, or the medicine will kill your child.” “If I give the medicine,” she repeated showing us the bottles, “before I put the truss on, he says it will kill my child,” and the tears ran swiftly down her sad but intelligent face. The child was so emaciated that the support would inevitably have produced terrible sores in a short time. I am satisfied that had the physician seen its condition, he would not have had a heart to order it.
I thought as I studied the anxious and sorrowful countenance of that mother, how hard, indeed, is the lot of the very poor. They have to buy coal by the basketful and pay almost double price, likewise food and all life’s necessities. They are compelled to live in frightful disease-fostering quarters, and pay exorbitant rents for the accommodations they receive. When sick they are not always free from imposition, even when they receive aid in the name of charity, and sometimes theology under the cloak of religion oppresses them. This last thought had been suggested by seeing in our rounds some half-starved women dropping pennies into the hands of Sisters of Charity, who were even here in the midst of terrible want, exacting from the starving money for a church whose coffers groan with wealth. O religion, ineffably radiant and exalting in thy pure influence, how thou art often debased by thy professed followers! How much injustice is metedout to the very poor, and how many crimes are still committed under thy cloak and in thy holy name! Even this poor widow had bitterly suffered through priests who belong to a great communion, claiming to follow Him who cried, “Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” as will be seen by the following, related to me by Rev. Walter Swaffield, who was personally cognizant of the facts. The husband of this widow was out of work for a time; being too ill to engage in steady work, he found it impossible to pay the required ten cents for seats in the church to which he belonged, and was consequently excluded from his sitting. Shortly after he fell sick, his wife sought the priest, imploring him to administer the sacrament, and later extreme unction, which he positively refused, leaving the poor man to die without the consolation of the Church he had from infancy been taught to love and revere.
It is not strange that many in this world of misery become embittered against society; that they sometimes learn to hate all who live in comfort, and who represent the established order of things, and from the rank of the patient, uncomplaining struggler descend to a lower zone, where the moral nature is eclipsed by degradation and crime, and life takes on a deeper shade of horror. This class of people exist on the brink of a precipice. Socially, they may be likened to the physical condition of Victor Hugo’s Claude Frollo after Quasimodo had hurled him from the tower of Notre Dame. You remember the sickening sensation produced by that wonderful piece of descriptive work, depicting the false priest hanging to the eaves, vainly striving to ascend, feeling the leaden gutter to which he was holding slowly giving away. His hands send momentary messages to the brain, warning it that endurance is almost exhausted. Below he sees the sharp formidable spires of Saint-Jean-de-Ronde, and immediately under him, two hundred feet from where he hangs, are the hard pavement, where men appear like pigmies. Above stands the avenging hunchback ready to hurl him back if he succeed in climbing over the eaves. So these poor people have ever below them starvation, eviction, and sickness. Above stands Quasimodo in the form of a three-headed monster: a soulless landlord, the slave master who pays only starvation wages, and disease, the natural complement of the wretched squalor permitted bythe one, and the slow starvation necessarily incident to the prices paid by the other. Their lot is even more terrible when it is remembered that their fall carries with it the fate of their loved ones. In addition to the multitude who are condemned to suffer through uninvited poverty, with no hopeful outlook before them, there is another class who are constantly on the brink of real distress, and who are liable at any time, to suffer bitterly because they are proud-spirited and will almost starve to death before they ask for aid. Space prevents me from citing more than one illustration of this character. In an apartment house we found an American woman with a babe two weeks old and a little girl. The place was scrupulously clean, something very rare in this zone of life. The woman, of course, was weak from illness and, as yet, unable to take in any work to speak of. Her husband has been out of employment for a few weeks, but had just shipped on board a sailing vessel for a cruise of several months. The woman did not intimate that they were in great need, as she hoped to soon be enabled to make some money, and the portion of her husband’s wages she was allowed to draw, paid the rent. A week ago, however, the little girl came to the Bethel Mission asking for a loaf of bread. “We have had nothing to eat since Monday morning,” she said, “and the little baby cries all the time because mamma can give it no milk.” It was Wednesday evening when the child visited the Mission. An investigation substantiated the truth of the child’s words. The mother, too proud to beg, struggled with fate, hoping and praying to be able to succeed without asking for aid, but seeing her babe starving to death, she yielded. This case finds many counterparts where a little aid bridges over a period of frightful want, after which the unfortunate are able, in a measure, to take care of themselves.
I find it impossible in this paper to touch upon other cases I desired to describe. The above illustrations however, typical of the life and environment of hundreds of families, are sufficient to emphasize a condition which exists in our midst and which is yearly growing, both in extent and in intensity of bitterness; a condition that is little understood by those who are not actually brought in contact with the circumstances as they exist, a condition at once revolting and appalling to every sense of humanity and justice. We cannotafford to remain ignorant of the real status of life in our midst, any more than we can afford to sacrifice truth to optimism. It has become a habit with some to make light of these grim and terrible facts, to minify the suffering experienced, or to try and impute the terrible condition to drink. This may be pleasant but it will never alter conditions or aid the cause of reform. It is our duty to honestly face the deplorable conditions, and courageously set to work to ameliorate the suffering, and bring about radical reformatory measures calculated to invest life with a rich, new significance for this multitude so long exiles from joy, gladness, and comfort.
We now come to the practical question, What is to be done? But before viewing the problem in its larger and more far-reaching aspects, I wish to say a word in regard to the direct measures for immediate relief which it is fashionable among many reformers to dismiss as unworthy of consideration. It is very necessary in a discussion of this character to view the problem in all its bearings, and adjust the mental vision so as to recognize the utility of the various plans advanced by sincere reformers. I have frequently heard it urged that these palliative measures tend to retard the great radical reformative movements, which are now taking hold of the public mind. This view, however comfortable to those who prefer theorizing and agitation to putting their shoulder to the wheel in a practical way, is, nevertheless, erroneous. There is no way in which people can be so thoroughly aroused to the urgent necessity of radical economic changes as by bringing them into such intimate relations with the submerged millions that they hear the throbbing of misery’s heart. The lethargy of the moral instincts of the people is unquestionably due to lack of knowledge more than anything else. The people do not begin to realize the true condition of life in the ever-widening field of abject want. When they know and are sufficiently interested to personally investigate the problem and aid the suffering, they will appreciate as never before the absolute necessity for radical economic changes, which contemplate a greater meed of justice and happiness than any measures yet devised. But aside from this we must not forget the fact that we have a duty to perform to the living no less than to the generations yet unborn. The commonwealth of to-day as well as that of to-morrow demands our aid. Millions are in the quicksands:yearly, monthly, daily, hourly they are sinking deeper and deeper. We can save them while the bridges are being built. To withhold the planks upon which life and happiness depend is no less criminal than to refuse to face the question in its broader aspects and labor for fundamental economic changes. A great work of real, practical, and enduring value, however, is being wrought each year by those in charge of local missions work in the slums and by individuals who mingle with and study the actual condition of the very poor. The extent of good accomplished by these few who are giving their lives to uplifting society’s exiles is little understood, because it is quiet and unostentatious; yet through the instrumentality of the silent workers, thousands of persons are annually kept from starvation and crime, while for many of them new, broad, and hopeful horizons are constantly coming in view.8
Let us now examine a broader aspect of this problem. So long as the wretched, filthy dens of dirt, vermin, and disease stand as the only shelter for the children of the scum, so long will moral and physical contagion flourish and sendforth death-dealing germs; so long will crime and degradation increase, demanding more policemen, more numerous judiciary, and larger prisons. No great permanent or far-reaching reformation can be brought about until the habitations of the people are radically improved. The recognition of this fact has already led to a practical palliative measure for relief that must challenge the admiration of all thoughtful persons interested in the welfare of society’s exiles. It is a step in the direction of justice. It is not merely a work of charity; it is, I think, the most feasible immediate measure that can be employed which will change the whole aspect of life for tens of thousands, making existence mean something, and giving a wonderful significance to the now meaningless word home. I refer to the erection of model tenement apartments in our overcrowded sections, such, for example, as the Victoria Square dwelling of Liverpool. Here, on the former site of miserable tenement houses, sheltering more than a thousand people, stands to-day a palatial structure built around a hollow square, the major part of which is utilized as a large shrub-encircled playground for the children. The halls and stairways of the building are broad, light, and airy; the ventilation and sanitary arrangements perfect. The apartments are divided into one, two, and three rooms each. No room is smaller than 13 × 8 feet 6 inches; most of them are 12 × 13 feet 4 inches. All the ceilings are 9 feet high. A superintendent looks after the building. The tenants are expected to be orderly, and to keep their apartments clean. The roomy character of halls and chambers may be inferred from the fact that there are only two hundred and seventy-five apartments in the entire building. The returns on the total expenditure of the building, which was $338,800.00, it is estimated will be at least 4½ per cent, while the rents are as follows: $1.44 per week for the three-room tenement, $1.08 per week for those containing two large rooms, and 54 cents for the one-room quarters. In Boston, the rents for the dreadful one-room cellar are $1.00 a week; for the two-room tenements above the cellars, the rent, so far as I heard, ranged from $1.50 to $2.50; three rooms were, of course, much higher. The rooms also are far smaller here than those in the beautiful, healthful, and inviting Victoria Square apartments. Yet it will be observed that the Shylock landlords receivemore than doublethe rental paid in this building for dens which would be a disgrace to barbarism. A similar experiment, in many respects even more remarkable than that recently inaugurated by the Liverpool co-operation, is exhibited in the Peabody dwellings in London. These apartments have been in successful operation for so many years, while the results attending them have been so marked and salutary, that no discussion of this subject would be complete that failed to give some of the most important facts relating to them. I know of no single act of philanthropy that towers so nobly above the sordid greed of the struggling multitude of millionaires, as does this splendid work of George Peabody, by which to-day twenty thousand people, who but for him would be in the depths of the slums, are fronting a bright future, and with souls full of hope are struggling into a higher civilization. It will be remembered that Mr. Peabody donated at intervals extending over a period of eleven years, or from 1862 to 1873, £500,000 or $2,500,000 to this project of relieving the poor. He specified that his purpose was to ameliorate the condition of the poor and needy of London, and promote their comfort and happiness, making only the following conditions:—
“Firstand foremost amongst them is the limitation of its uses, absolutely and, exclusively, to such purposes as may be calculated directly to ameliorate the condition and augment the comforts of the poor, who, either by birth or established residence, form a recognized portion of the population of London.“Secondly, it is my intention that now, and for all time, there shall be a rigid exclusion from the management of this fund, of any influences calculated to impart to it a character either sectarian as regards religion, or exclusive in relation to party politics.“Thirdly, it is my wish that the sole qualification for a participation in the benefits of the fund shall be an ascertained and continued condition of life, such as brings the individual within the description (in the ordinary sense of the word) of the poor of London: combined with moral character, and good conduct as a member of society.”
“Firstand foremost amongst them is the limitation of its uses, absolutely and, exclusively, to such purposes as may be calculated directly to ameliorate the condition and augment the comforts of the poor, who, either by birth or established residence, form a recognized portion of the population of London.
“Secondly, it is my intention that now, and for all time, there shall be a rigid exclusion from the management of this fund, of any influences calculated to impart to it a character either sectarian as regards religion, or exclusive in relation to party politics.
“Thirdly, it is my wish that the sole qualification for a participation in the benefits of the fund shall be an ascertained and continued condition of life, such as brings the individual within the description (in the ordinary sense of the word) of the poor of London: combined with moral character, and good conduct as a member of society.”
A drawing of an apartment block.THE VICTORIA SQUARE APARTMENT HOUSE, LIVERPOOL, ENG.
THE VICTORIA SQUARE APARTMENT HOUSE, LIVERPOOL, ENG.
Realizing that little could be hoped for from individuals or their offspring, who were condemned to a life in vile dens, where the squalor and wretchedness was only equalled by the poisonous, disease-breeding atmosphere and the general filth which characterized the tenement districts, the trusteesMr. Peabody selected to carry forward his work, engaged in the erection of a large building accommodating over two hundred, at a cost of $136,500. This apartment house, which is substantially uniform with the seventeen additional buildings since constructed from the Peabody fund, is five stories high, built around a hollow square, thus giving plenty of fresh air and sunshine to the rear as well as the front of the entire building. The square affords a large playground for the children where they are in no danger of being run over by vehicles, and where they are under the immediate eye of many of the parents. The building is divided into tenements of one, two, and three room apartments, according to the requirements of the occupant. There are also nine stores on the ground floor, which bring a rental of something over $1,500 a year for each of the buildings. By careful, honest, and conscientious business management, the original sum of $2,500,000 has been almost doubled, while comfortable, healthful homes have been procured for an army of over 20,000 persons. Some of the apartments contain four rooms, many three, some two, others one. The average rent is about $1.15 for an apartment. The average price for three-room apartments in the wretched tenements of London, is from $1.45 a week. In the Peabody dwellings, the death rate is .96 per one thousand below the average in London. Thus it will be seen that while large, healthful, airy, and cheerful homes have been provided for over 20,000 at a lower figure than the wretched disease-fostering and crime-breeding tenements of soulless Shylocks, the Peabody fund has, since 1862, grown to nearly $5,000,000, or almost twice the sum given for the work by the great philanthropist. No words can adequately describe the magnitude of this splendid work, any more than we can measure the good it has accomplished, the crime prevented, or the lives that through it have grown to ornament and bless society. In the Liverpool experiment, the work has been prosecuted by the municipal government. In the Peabody dwellings, it has, of course, been the work of an individual, carried on by a board of high-minded, honorable, and philanthropic gentlemen. To my mind, it seems far more practicable for philanthropic, monied men to prosecute this work as a business investment, specifying in their wills that rents shall not rise above a figure necessary to insure a fair interest on the money,rather than leave it for city governments, as in the latter case it would be in great danger of becoming an additional stronghold for unscrupulous city officials to use for political purposes. I know of no field where men with millions can so bless the race as by following Mr. Peabody’s example in our great cities. If, instead of willing every year princely sums to old, rich, and conservative educational institutions, which already possess far more money than they require,—wealthy persons would bequeath sums for the erection of buildings after the manner of the Victoria Square or the Peabody Dwellings, a wonderful transformation would soon appear in our cities. Crime would diminish, life would rise to a higher level, and from the hearts and brains of tens of thousands, a great and terrible load would be lifted. Yet noble and praiseworthy as is this work, we must not lose sight of the fact, that at best it is only a palliative measure: a grand, noble, beneficent work which challenges our admiration, and should receive our cordial support; still it is only a palliative.
There is a broader aspect still, a nobler work to be accomplished. As long as speculation continues in that great gift of God to man,land, the problem will be unsettled. So long as the landlords find that the more wretched, filthy, rickety, and loathsome a building is, the lower will be the taxes, he will continue to make some of the ever-increasing army of bread winners dwell in his foul, disease-impregnated dens.
The present economic system is being rapidly outgrown. Man’s increasing intelligence, sense of justice, and the humanitarian spirit of the age, demand radical changes, which will come immeasurably nearer securing equal opportunities for all persons than the past dreamed possible. No sudden or rash measure calculated to convulse business and work great suffering should be entertained, but our future action should rest on a broad, settled policy founded upon justice, tempered by moderation, keeping in view the great work of banishing uninvited poverty, and elevating to a higher level the great struggling millions without for a moment sacrificing individualism. Indeed, a truer democracy in which a higher interpretation of justice, and a broader conception of individual freedom, and a more sacred regard for liberty, should be the watchword of the future.
BY PROF. JAS. T. BIXBY, PH. D.
In the life and letters of Charles Darwin there is a memorandum, copied from his pocket note-book of 1837, to this effect:—“In July, opened first notebook on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck with the character of the South American fossils and the species on Galapagos Archipelago.”
These facts, he says, were the origin of all his epoch-making views as to the development of life and the work of natural selection in evolving species.
His suspicions that species were not immutable and made at one cast, directly by the fiat of the Creator, seemed to him, at first, he says, almost like murder.
To the greater part of the church, when in 1859, after twenty years of work in accumulating the proofs of his theory, he at last gave it to the world, it seemed quite as bad as murder.
It is very interesting now to look back upon the history and career of the Darwinian theory in the last thirty years; to recall, first the fierce outcry and denunciation it elicited, then the gradual accumulation of corroboratory evidence from all quarters in its favor; the accession of one scientific authority after another to the new views; the softening, little by little, of ecclesiastical opposition; its gradual acceptance by the broad-minded alike in theological and scientific circles; then, in these recent years, the exaltation of the new theory into a scientific and philosophic creed, wherein matter, force, and evolution constitute the new trinity, which, unless the modern man piously believes, he becomes anathematized and excommunicated by all the priests of the new dogmatism.
In the field of science, undoubtedly, evolution has won the day. Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slow conservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to the cast-off shell of oyster or clam,still resist it. The great body of the Christian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America, one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations has recently formally tried and condemned one of its clergy for heresy, for the publication of a book in which the principles of Evolution are frankly adopted and applied to Christianity. For a man to call himself a Christian Evolutionist is (we have been told by high Orthodox authority) a contradiction in terms.
I think it is safe to say to-day that Evolution has come to stay. It is too late to turn it out of the mansions of modern thought. And it is, therefore, a vital question, “Can belief in God, and the soul, and divine revelation abide under the same roof with evolution in peace? Or must Christianity vacate the realm of modern thought and leave it to the chilling frosts of materialism and scepticism?”
Now, if I have been able to understand the issue and its grounds, there is no such alternative, no such incompatibility between Evolution and Christianity.
There is, I know, a form of Evolution and a form of Christianity, which are mutually contradictory.
There is a form of Evolution which is narrowly materialistic. It dogmatically asserts that there is nothing in existence but matter and physical forces, and the iron laws according to which they develop. Life, according to this school, is only a product of the happy combination of the atoms; feeling and thought are but the iridescence of the brain tissues; conscience but a transmuted form of ancestral fears and expediences. Soul, revelation, providence, nothing but illusions of the childish fancy of humanity’s infancy. Opposed to it, fighting with all the intensity of those who fight for their very life, stands a school of Christians who maintain that unless the special creation of species by divine fiat and the frequent intervention of God and His angels in the world be admitted, religion has received its death wound. According to this school, unless the world was created in six days, and Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed, and Hezekiah turned the solar shadow back on the dial, and Jesus was born without human father, and unless some new miracle will interfere with the regular course of law, of rain and dew, of sickness and health, of cause and effect, whenever a believer lifts up his voice in prayer, why then, the very foundations of religion are destroyed.
Now, of course, between a Christianity and an Evolutionism of this sort, there is an irreconcilable conflict. But it is because neither of them is a fair, rational, or true form of thought.
When the principle of Evolution is properly comprehended and expounded; when Christianity is interpreted in the light that history and philosophy require,—the two will be found to have no difficulty in joining hands.
Though a purely naturalistic Evolutionism may ignore God; and a purely supernatural religion may leave no room for Evolution, a natural religion and a rational Evolutionism may yet harmoniously unite in a higher and more fruitful marriage.
Let us only recognizeEvolution by the divine spirit, as the process of God’s working in the world, and we have then a theory which has a place and a function, at once for all that the newest science has to teach and the most venerable faith needs to retain.
In the first place, Evolution is not itself a cause. It is no force in itself. It has no originating power. It is simply a method and law of the occurrence of things. Evolution shows that all things proceed, little by little, without breach of continuity; that the higher ever proceeds from the lower; the more complex ever unfolds from the more simple. For every species or form, it points out some ancestor or natural antecedent, from which by gradual modification, it has been derived. And in natural selection, the influence of the environment, sexual selection, use and disuse, sterility, and the variability of the organism, Science shows us some of the secondary factors or conditions of this development. But none of these are supposed by it to be first causes or originating powers. What these are, science itself does not claim the right as yet to declare.
Now, it is true that this unbroken course of development, this omnipresent reign of law, is inconsistent with the theological theories of supernatural intervention that have so often claimed a monopoly of faith. But independent of all scientific reasons, on religious and philosophical grounds themselves, this dogmatic view is no longer to be accepted. For if God be the God of all-seeing wisdom and foresight that reverence conceives him to be, his work should be too perfect from the outset to demand such changes of plan andorder of working. The great miracle of miracles, as Isaac Taylor used to say, is that Providence needs no miracles to carry out its all-perfect plans.
But if, I hear it asked, the huge machine of the universe thus grinds on and has ever ground on, without interruption; if every event is closely bound to its physical antecedent, life to the cell, mind to brain, man to his animal ancestry and bodily conditions,—what other result will there be than an inevitable surrender to materialism? When Laplace was asked by Napoleon, on presenting to him his famous essay on the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the stellar universe, “Why do I see here no mention of the Deity?” the French astronomer proudly replied: “Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.”
Is not that the natural lesson of Evolutionism, to say that God is a hypothesis, no longer needed by science and which progressive thought, therefore, better dismiss?
I do not think so. Old time materialism dismissed the idea of God because it dismissed the idea of a beginning. The forces and phenomena of the world were supposed eternal; and therefore a Creator was unnecessary. But the conception of Evolution is radically different. It is a movement that demands a motor force behind it. It is a movement, moreover, that according to the testimony of modern science cannot have been eternal. The modern theory of heat and the dissipation of energy requires that our solar system and the nebula from which it sprang should have had a beginning in some finite period of time. The evolutionary process cannot have been going on forever; for the amount of heat and the number of degrees of temperature and the rate of cooling, are all finite, calculable quantities, and therefore the process cannot have been going on for more than a certain finite number of years, more or less millions, say. Moreover, if the original fire-mist was perfectly homogeneous, and not impelled into motion by any external force, it would never have begun to rotate and evolve into planets and worlds. If perfectly homogeneous, it would have remained, always balanced and always immobile. To start it on its course of rotation and evolution, there must have been either some external impelling power, or else some original differentiation of forces or conditions; for which, again, some other cause than itself must be supposed. For the well-knownlaw of inertia forbids that any material system that is in absolute equilibrium should spontaneously start itself into motion. As John Stuart Mill has admitted, “the laws of nature can give no account of their own origin.”
In the second place, notice that the materialistic interpretation of Evolution fails to account for that which is most characteristic in the process, the steady progress it reveals. Were Evolution an aimless, fruitless motion, rising and falling alternately, or moving round and round in an endless circle, the reference of these motions to the blind forces of matter might have, perhaps, a certain plausibility. But the movements of the evolution process are of quite a different character. They are not chaotic; no barren, useless circlings back to the same point, again and again; but they are progressive; and if often they seem to return to their point of departure, we see, on close examination, that the return is always on a higher plane. The motion is a spiral one, ever advancing to loftier and loftier ranges. Now this progressive motion is something that no accidental play of the atoms will account for. For chance builds no such rational structures. Chance writes no such intelligent dramas, with orderly beginning, crescendo, and climax. Or if some day, chance builds a structure with some show of order in it, to-morrow it pulls it down. It does not move steadily forward with permanent constructiveness.
The further Science penetrates into the secrets of the universe the more regular seems the march of thought presented there; the more harmonious the various parts; the more rational the grand system that is discovered. “How the one force of the universe should have pursued the pathway of Evolution through the lapse of millions of ages, leaving traces so legible by intelligence to-day, unless from beginning to end the whole process had been dominated by intelligence,” this is something, as Francis Abbot well says, that passes the limits of conjecture. The all-luminous intelligibility of the universe is the all-sufficient proof of the intelligence of the cause that produced it. In the annals of science there is nothing more curious than the prophetic power which those savans have gained who have grasped this secret of nature—the rationality of the universe. It was by this confidence in finding in the hitherto unexplored domains of nature what reason demanded, thatGoethe, from the analogies of the mammalian skeleton, discovered the intermaxillary bone in man; and Sir William Hamilton, from the mathematical consequences of the undulation of light, led the way to the discovery of conical refraction. A similar story is told of Prof. Agassiz and Prof. Pierce, the one the great zoölogist, the other the great mathematician, of Cambridge. Agassiz, having studied the formation of radiate animals, and having found them all referable to three different plans of structure, asked Prof. Pierce, without informing him of his discovery, how to execute all the variations possible, conformed to the fundamental idea of a radiated structure around a central axis. Prof. Pierce, although quite ignorant of natural history, at once devised the very three plans discovered by Agassiz, as the only fundamental plans which could be framed in accordance with the given elements. How significantly do such correspondences speak of the working of mind in nature, moulding it in conformity with ideas of reason. Thus to see the laws of thought exhibiting themselves as also the laws of being seems to me a fact sufficient of itself to prove the presence of an over-ruling mind in nature.
Is there any way of escaping this obvious conclusion? The only method that has been suggested has been to refer these harmonies of nature back to the original regularity of the atoms. As the drops of frozen moisture on the window pane build up the symmetrical frost-forms without design or reason, by virtue of the original similarity of the component parts, so do the similar atoms, without any more reason or plan, build up the harmonious forms of nature.
But this answer brings us face to face with a third still more significant problem, a still greater obstacle to materialism. Why are the atoms of nature thus regular, thus similar, one to another? Here are millions on millions of atoms of gold, each like its fellow atom. Millions and millions of atoms of oxygen, each with the same velocity of movement, same weight and chemical properties. All the millions on millions on millions of atoms on the globe are not of infinitely varied shape, weight, size, quality; but there are only some seventy different kinds, and all the millions of one kind, just as like one another as bullets out of the same mould, so that each new atom of oxygen that comes to a burningflame does the same work and acts in precisely the same way as its fellows. Did you ever think of that? If you have ever realized what it means, you must recognize this uniformity of the atoms, billions and billions of them as like one another as if run out of the same mould—as the most astonishing thing in nature.
Now, among the atoms, there can have been no birth, no death, no struggle for existence, no natural selection to account for this. What other explanation, then, in reason is there, than to say, as those great men of science, Sir John Herschel and Clerk Maxwell, who have, in our day, most deeply pondered this curious fact, have said, that this division of all the infinity of atoms in nature into a very limited number of groups, all the billions of members in each group substantially alike in their mechanical and chemical properties, “gives to each of the atoms the essential characters at once of a manufactured article and a subordinate agent.”
Evolution cannot, then, be justly charged with materialism. On the contrary, it especially demands a divine creative force as the starter of its processes and the endower of the atoms with their peculiar properties. The foundation of that scientific system which the greatest of modern expositors of Evolution has built up about that principle (Herbert Spencer’s synthetic philosophy) is the persistence of an infinite, eternal, and indestructible force, of which all things that we see are the manifestations.
To suppose, as many of the camp-followers of the evolution philosophy do, that the processes of successive change and gradual modification, which have been so clearly traced out in nature, relieve us from the need or right of asking for any anterior and higher cause of these processes; or that because the higher and finer always unfolds from the lower and coarser, therefore there was really nothing else in existence, either at the beginning or at present, than these crude elements which alone disclose themselves at first; and that these gross, sensuous facts are the only source and explanation of all that has followed them,—this is a most superficial and inadequate view. For this explanation, as we have already noticed, furnishes no fountain-head of power to maintain the constant upward-mounting of the waters in the world’s conduits. It furnishes no intelligent directions of these streams into ever wise and ordered channels. To explain the higher lifethat comes out of these low beginnings, we must suppose the existence of spiritual powers, unseen at first, and disclosing themselves only in the fuller, later results, the moral and spiritual phenomena that are the crowning flower and fruit of the long process. When a thing has grown from a lower to a higher form, its real rank in nature is not shown by what it began in, but by what it has become. Though chemistry has grown out of alchemy, and astronomy out of astrology, this does not empty them of present truth or impair at all their authority and trustworthiness to-day. Though man’s mind has grown out of the sensations of brutish ancestors, that does not take away the fact that he has now risen to a height from which he overlooks all these mists and sees the light which never was on sea or land. The real beginning of a statue is not in the rough outline in which it first appears, but in the creative idea of the perfect work which regulates its whole progress. The real nature of a tree is not to be discovered in the first swellings of the acorn, or the first out-pushing of its rootlets, but rather are acorn and rootlet themselves parts of that generic idea, thatevolutive potentiality, which is only to be understood when manifested in its completer form in the full-grown monarch of the forest. So to discern the real character and motor-power of the world’s evolution, we must look, not to its beginnings, but to its end, and see in the latest stages, and its highest moral and spiritual forms and forces, not disguises of its earlier stages, but ampler manifestations of that Divine power and purpose which is the ever-active agent, working through all the varied levels of creation.
The evolution theory is, also, it must be acknowledged, hostile to that phase of theology which conceives of God as a being outside of nature; which regarded the universe as a dead lump, a mechanical fabric where the Creator once worked, at the immensely remote dawn of creation; and to which again, for a few short moments, this transcendental Power stooped from His celestial throne, when the successive species of living beings were called into being in brief exertions of supernatural energy. But this mechanical view of God who, as Goethe said, “only from without should drive and twirl the universe about,” what a poor conception of God, after all, was that; not undeserving the ridicule of the great German.
Certainly, the idea of God which Wordsworth has given us, as a Power not indefinitely remote, but ever present and infinitely near,