FOOTNOTES:

“I ask Thee, O Varuna, because I wish to know my fault:“I come to Thee, to question Thee who knowest all things. All the sages, with one voice, said to me, Varuna is angry with thee.“What great crime have I committed, O Varuna, that thou shouldst want to kill thy friend, thy bard. Tell me, O Lord, O infallible one, and I will then lay my homage at thy feet.“Free me from the bonds of my crime, do not sever the thread of the prayer that I am weaving, do not deliver me over to the deaths that, at thy dictate, O Asura, strike him who has committed a crime: send me not into the gloomy regions far from the light.“Let me pay the penalty of my faults; but let me not suffer, O King, for the crime of others; there are so many days that have not dawned yet! Let them dawn for us also, O Varuna!”

“I ask Thee, O Varuna, because I wish to know my fault:

“I come to Thee, to question Thee who knowest all things. All the sages, with one voice, said to me, Varuna is angry with thee.

“What great crime have I committed, O Varuna, that thou shouldst want to kill thy friend, thy bard. Tell me, O Lord, O infallible one, and I will then lay my homage at thy feet.

“Free me from the bonds of my crime, do not sever the thread of the prayer that I am weaving, do not deliver me over to the deaths that, at thy dictate, O Asura, strike him who has committed a crime: send me not into the gloomy regions far from the light.

“Let me pay the penalty of my faults; but let me not suffer, O King, for the crime of others; there are so many days that have not dawned yet! Let them dawn for us also, O Varuna!”

Such is the supreme God of the Vedic religion, an organizing God, almighty, omniscient, and moral. The following is a Vedic hymn which sums up with singular force the essential attributes of the God:—

“He who from on high rules this world sees every thing as if it were before him. That which two men, seated side by side are plotting, is heard by king Varuna, himself the third.“This earth belongs to the king Varuna, and this sky, these two sublime worlds with their remote limits; the two seas[45]are the belly of Varuna, and he rests also even in this small pool of water.“He who should leap over the sky and beyond it, would not escape the king Varuna: he has his spies, the spies of the heavens, who go through the world; he has his thousand eyes which look on the earth.“The king Varuna sees everything, all that which is between the two worlds and beyond them: he reckons the winking of the eye of all creatures:“The world is in his hand like the dice in the hand of the gamester.“Let thy sevenfold bands, O Varuna, let thy bands of wrath which are thrice linked together, let them enfold the man with a lying tongue, let them leave free the man with a truthful tongue!”

“He who from on high rules this world sees every thing as if it were before him. That which two men, seated side by side are plotting, is heard by king Varuna, himself the third.

“This earth belongs to the king Varuna, and this sky, these two sublime worlds with their remote limits; the two seas[45]are the belly of Varuna, and he rests also even in this small pool of water.

“He who should leap over the sky and beyond it, would not escape the king Varuna: he has his spies, the spies of the heavens, who go through the world; he has his thousand eyes which look on the earth.

“The king Varuna sees everything, all that which is between the two worlds and beyond them: he reckons the winking of the eye of all creatures:

“The world is in his hand like the dice in the hand of the gamester.

“Let thy sevenfold bands, O Varuna, let thy bands of wrath which are thrice linked together, let them enfold the man with a lying tongue, let them leave free the man with a truthful tongue!”

Ahura Mazda.[46]—Ancient Persia opposes to Zeus, to Jupiter, to Varuna, her Ormazd or Ahura Mazda.[47]“It is through me,” he said to his prophet, Zoroaster, “that the firmament, with its distant boundaries, hewn from the sparkling ruby, subsists without pillars to rest upon; it is through me that the earth, through me that the sun, the moon, and the stars take their radiant course through the atmosphere; it was I who formed the seeds in such a manner that, when sown in the earth, they should grow, spring up, and appear on the surface; it was I who traced their veins in every species of plants, who in all beings put the fire of life which does not consume them; it is I who in the maternal womb produce the new-born child, who form the limbs, the skin, the nails, the blood, the feet, the ears; it was I who gave the water feet to run; it was I who made the clouds, which carry the water to the world,” &c. This development, taken from a recent book of the Ghebers, the Bundahish, is to be found entire, in the very first words of their oldest and holiest book, the Avesta: “I proclaim and worship Ahura Mazda, theCreator.” As far as history can be traced, he was already what he is now. Near the ruins of the ancient Ecbatana, the traveller may read, on the red granite of the mountain of Alvand, these words, which were engraved by the hand of Darius, the king of kings, nearly five centuries before the birth of Christ:—

“A powerful God is Aurâmazda!’Twas he who made this earth here below!’Twas he who made that heaven above!’Twas he who made man!”

This God, who made the world, rules it. He is the sovereign of the universe, theAhura,[48]“the Lord.” “He is a powerful god,” exclaims Xerxes; “he is the greatest of all the gods.” It is to his favour that Darius, inscribing upon the rock of Behistun the narrative of his nineteen victories, ascribes both his elevation and his triumphs. It is to his supreme care that he confides Persia: “This country of Persia, which Aurâmazda has given me, this beautiful country, beautiful in horses, beautiful in men, by the grace of Aurâmazda, and throughme, king Darayavus, has nothing to fear from any enemy. May Aurâmazda and the gods of the nation bring me their help! May Aurâmazda protect this country from hostile armies, from barrenness and evil! May this country never be invaded by the stranger, nor by hostile armies, nor by barrenness, nor by evil! This is the favour which I implore from Aurâmazda and the gods of the nation!”

This world which he has organized is a work of intelligence; by his wisdom it began, and by his wisdom it will end. He is the mind which knows all things, and it is to him that the sage appeals in order to penetrate the mysteries of the world.

“Reveal to me the truth, O Ahura! What was the beginning of the good creation?“Who is the father, who, at the beginning of time, begat Order?“Who has traced for the sun and the stars the paths that they must follow?“Who makes the moon increase and decrease?“O Ahura! I would learn those mysteries and many more!“Who has fixed the earth and the immovable stars to establish them firmly, so that they might not fall? Who has fixed the waters and the trees?“Who has directed the rapid course of the wind and of the clouds? What skilful artist has made the light and the darkness?“What skilful workman has made sleep and wakefulness? Through whom have we dawn, noon, and night? From whom do they learn the law which is traced out for them? Who endeared the son to his father so that he should train him? Those are the things that I wish to ask Thee, O Mazda, O beneficent Spirit, O Creator of all things!”

“Reveal to me the truth, O Ahura! What was the beginning of the good creation?

“Who is the father, who, at the beginning of time, begat Order?

“Who has traced for the sun and the stars the paths that they must follow?

“Who makes the moon increase and decrease?

“O Ahura! I would learn those mysteries and many more!

“Who has fixed the earth and the immovable stars to establish them firmly, so that they might not fall? Who has fixed the waters and the trees?

“Who has directed the rapid course of the wind and of the clouds? What skilful artist has made the light and the darkness?

“What skilful workman has made sleep and wakefulness? Through whom have we dawn, noon, and night? From whom do they learn the law which is traced out for them? Who endeared the son to his father so that he should train him? Those are the things that I wish to ask Thee, O Mazda, O beneficent Spirit, O Creator of all things!”

In his omniscience are embraced all human actions. He watches over all things, and is far-seeing, and never sleeping. He is the infallible one; “it is impossible to deceive him, the Ahura, who knows all things.” He sees man, and judges and chastises him, if he has not followed his law, for from him comes the law of man, as well as the law of the world; from him comes the science supreme among all other sciences, that of duty, the knowledge of those things we ought to think, say, and do, and of those things we ought neither to think, nor say, nor do. To the man who has prayed well, thought, spoken, and acted well, he opens his resplendent paradise; he opens hell to him who has not prayed and who has thought, spoken, and done evil.

Thus the Aryans of Greece, of Italy, of India, and of Persia agree in giving the highest place in their Pantheon to a supreme God who rules the world and who has founded order, a God sovereign, omniscient, and moral. Has this identical conception been formed in each of these cases by four independent creations, or is it a common inheritance from the Indo-European religion, and did the Aryan ancestors of the Greeks, of the Latins, of the Hindoos, and of the Persians already know a supreme God, an organizing, a sovereign, an omniscient, a moral God?

Although the latter hypothesis is more simple and more probable than the former, it cannot, however, be taken at once as certain;because an abstract and logical conception of this kind may very well have developed itself at the same time among several nations, in an identical and independent manner. To whomsoever looks upon it at any time and in any place, the world can reveal the existence of a Supreme maker: Socrates is not the disciple of the psalmist; yet the heavens reveal to him, as to the Hebrew poet, the glory of the Lord. But if it be found that the abstract conception is closely connected with a naturalistic and material conception, and that the latter is identical in the four religions, as it is known, on the other hand, that these four religions have a common past, the hypothesis that this abstract conception is a heritage of this past, and not a creation of the present, may rise to a certainty.

Now, these Gods who organize the world, rule it and watch over it; this Zeus, this Jupiter, this Varuna, this Ahura Mazda are not the personifications of a simple abstract conception; they emerge from a former naturalism, from which they are not yet quite detached; they commenced by being gods of the heavens.

Zeus and Jupiter have never ceased to be gods of the heavens, and to be conscious of it. When the world was shared among the gods, “Zeus received the boundless sky in the ether and the clouds for his share.” It is as the God of heaven that sometimes he shines luminous, calm, and pure, enthroned in the ethereal splendour, and that sometimes he becomes gloomy and gathers clouds (νεφεληγερέτης), causing the rain to fall from heaven (ὄμβριος,ὑέτιος), hurling upon the earth the eddy of fierce winds, drawing forth the hurricane from the summit of the ether, brandishing the lightning and the thunderbolt (κεραύνιος,ἀστραπαῖος). This is why the thunderbolt is his weapon, his attribute, “the thunderbolt with its never-tiring foot,” which he hurls in the heights; why he rolls on a resounding chariot, brandishing in his hand the fiery trident, or dashing it on the wings of the eagle, or on Pegasus, the aërial steed of the lightning. This is why he is the husband of Dêmêter, “the mother Earth,” whom he impregnates with his torrents of rain; this is why he sent forth, from his brow according to some, from his belly according to others, from the clouds according to the Cretan legend, Athênê, the resplendent goddess with the penetrating glance, who came forth, shaking golden weapons, with a cry which made heaven and earth resound, as she is the incarnation of the stormy light which breaks forth from the brow of heaven, from the belly of heaven, from the bosom of the cloud, filling space with its splendour and with the crash of its stormy birth. Lastly, the very name of Zeus (genitiveDios, formerlyDivos) is, in conformity with the laws of Greek phonetics, the literal representative of the Sanscrit Dyaus, heaven (genitiveDivas), and the union ofΖεὺς πατήρwithΔημήτηρis the exact counterpart of the Vedic union ofDyaus pitarwithPrithivî mâtar, of the Heaven-Father with Earth-Mother. The wordΖεύςis an ancient synonym ofΟὐρανός, which became obsolete as a common noun; still, in a certain number ofexpressions, it retains something of its former meaning. Thus it is, when the Earth prays Zeus to let rain fall upon her; when the Athenian in praying exclaims: “O dear Zeus, rain thou on the field of the Athenians and on the plains”—“Zeus has rained the whole night,” says Homer:ὕε Ζεὺς πάννυχος. In all these expressions Zeus may be literally translated as a common noun,sky.

Jupiter, identical with Zeus in his functions, is identical with him in his material attributes.

The word Jûpiter, or better Jup-piter, is for Jus-piter, composed ofpaterand ofJus, the Latin contraction of the SanscritDyaus, of the GreekΖεύς: Juppiter is then the exact equivalent ofΖεὺς πατήρ, and the word has even preserved more strongly than Zeus the sense of its early meaning;sub Jovesignifies “under the heavens;” the hunter awaits the marsian boar, heedless of the cold or snow,sub Jove frigido, “under the cold Jupiter, under the cold sky.” Dyaus is also in Latin, as it is in Sanscrit, the name of the brilliant sky: “Behold,” exclaims old Ennius, “above thy head this luminous space which all invoke under the name of Jupiter:”

“Aspice hoc sublime candens quem invocant omnes Jovem.”

Varuna, like his European brethren, has been, and is yet, a material god, and a material god of the same kind, a god of heaven. This is why the sun is his eye, why the sun, “the beautiful bird which flies in the firmament,” is “his golden-winged messenger;”[49]why the celestial rivers flow in the hollow of his mouth, as in the hollow of a reed; why everywhere visible, by turns full of light and of darkness, by turns he infolds himself in the night, and irradiates the dawns, and by turns clothes himself in the white garments and in the black ones. Like Zeus, and from the same cause, he gathers together the clouds, he turns the sack that contains the rains, and lets it loose upside down on the two worlds; he inundates the heaven and the earth, he clothes the mountains with a watery garb, and his blood-red eyes unceasingly furrow the watery dwelling with their twinkling flashes. As Zeus is the father of Athênê, he is the father of Atharvan, “the Fire-God,” of Bhrigu, “the Thunderer”—that is to say, of Agni, of the lightning. Agni himself is brought forth “from his belly in the waters,” like a male Athênê. Finally, like Zeus, like Jupiter, he bears in his very name the expression of what he is; and the Sanscrit Varuna is the exact phonetic representative ofΟὐρανός, sky.

In fine, the sovereign god of Persia, notwithstanding the character of profound abstraction which he has acquired and which is reflected in his name Ahura Mazda, “the omniscient Lord,” can himself be recognized as a god of the heavens. The ancient formulæ of the litanies still show that he is luminous and corporeal; they invoke the creator Ahura Mazda, resplendent, very great, very beautiful, corporeally beautiful;white, luminous, seen from afar; they invoke the entire body of Ahura Mazda, the body of Ahura which is the greatest of bodies; they say that the sun is his eye, and that the sky is the garment embroidered with stars with which he arrays himself; lastly, the most abstract of the Aryan gods has preserved a trait which shows him more closely tied than the others to the material world from which they have freed themselves; he is called “the most solid of the gods,” because “he has for clothing the very solid stone of the sky.” Like Varuna, like Zeus, the lightning is in his hands, “the molten brass which he causes to flow down on the two worlds;” like them he is the father of the god of lightning, Atar. Lastly, the most ancient historical evidence confirms the inductions of mythology, as at the very time when the Achæmenian kings proclaim the sovereignty of Aurâmazda, Herodotus wrote: “The Persians offer up sacrifices to Zeus,[50]going up on the highest summit of the mountains, as they callZeus the entire orb of the sky.”

Thus the supreme gods of the four great religions of Greece, of Italy, of India, and of Persia, are at the same time, or have begun by being gods of the skies. By the side of these four, Svarogu, the god of the ancient pagan Slavs, should no doubt equally be placed. Like Zeus, like Jupiter, like Varuna, like Ahura Mazda, he is the master of the universe, the gods are his children, and it is from him that they have received their functions; like them he is the god of the heavens, he is the thunderer, and like them he is the father of the Fire, Svarojitchi, “the son of heaven.”[51]

How did the god of the heavens become the organizing god, the supreme God, the moral God? How was the abstract conception grafted on the naturalistic conception? What is the connection between his material attribute and his abstract function? The Vedas give the solution of this problem.

As far as the eye can reach, it can never reach beyond the sky; whatever is, is under the immense vault; all that which is born and dies, is born and dies within its bounds. Now, whatever takes place in it, takes place according to an immutable law. The dawn has never failed to appear at her appointed place in the morning, never forgotten where she is to appear again, nor the moment at which she is to reanimate the world. Darkness and light know their appointed hour, and always at the desired moment “the black One has given way to the white.” Linked together by the same chain in the endless path open before them, they follow their way onwards, the two immortals, directed by a God, absorbing each other’s tints. The two fertile sisters do not clash with one another; they never stop, dissimilar in form, but alike in spirit. Thus run the days with their suns, the nights withtheir stars, season following season. The sky has always in regular course ushered in by turn the day and the night. The moon has always lit up at the fixed hour. The stars have always known where they should go during the day. The rivers have always flowed into the one ocean without making it full.

This universal order is either the motion of the heavens, or it is the action of the God of heaven, according as we think of the body or the soul, and view in the heavens the thing or the God. Thus, in the Rig-Veda, to say “everything isinVaruna”—that is, “in the heavens”—and to say “everything isthroughVaruna”—that is, “through the heaven-God”—are one and the same thing; and in these formulæ of the Veda, so clear in their uncertainty, theism is ever found side by side with unconscious pantheism, of which it is only an expression. “The three heavens and the three earths rest in Varuna,” says a poet, and immediately afterwards, giving personality to his God: “It is the skilful king Varuna who makes this golden disc shine in heaven.” The wind which whistles in the atmosphere is his breath, and all that exists from one world to the other was created by him. “From the king Varuna come this earth below, and yonder heaven, too, these two worlds with remote limits; the two seas are the belly of Varuna, and he rests also even in the small pool of water.”

This pantheistic theism, which makes no clear distinction between the God of heaven and the universe over which he rules, or which is comprised in him, penetrates Jupiter as well as Varuna. The Latin poets offer the equivalent of the vacillating formulæ of Vedism. “The mortals,” says Lucretius, explaining the origin of the idea of God, “the mortals saw the regular motions of the heavens and the various seasons of the year succeed each other in a fixed order, without being able to discover the causes. They had, therefore, no other alternative than to attribute all to the gods, who made everything go according to their will, and it was in the sky that they placed the seat and domain of the gods, because it is there that may be seen revolve the night and the noon, the day and the gloomy planets of the night; the nocturnal lights wandering in the sky, and the flying flames, the clouds, the sun, the rain, the snow, the winds, the thunderbolts, the hail, the sudden convulsions, and the great threatening rumblings.”[53]

This view of the heavens as the universal centre of the movementsof Nature might just as well have led to pantheism as to theism. The line of the poet: “Juppiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris”—“Jupiter is everything that thou seest, everywhere that thou movest”—does not refer only to the Jupiter of the metaphysicians of the Porch; it also expresses one of the aspects of the Jupiter of primitive mythology. It was not by a deviation from his earlier nature that Zeus was confounded with Pan; he was Pan by birth; and if the epopee and the drama show us only a personal Zeus, it is because by their very nature they could and should see him only under this aspect, and had nothing to obtain from the impersonal Zeus, although in this form he was as old as in the other. And the Orphic theologian is not quite unfaithful to the earlier tradition of religion, when he sings of the universal Zeus:—

“Zeus was the first, Zeus is the last, Zeus the thunderer;Zeus is the head, Zeus is the middle; it is by Zeus that all things are made;Zeus is the male, Zeus is the immortal female;Zeus is the base of both the earth and the starry sky;Zeus is the breath of the winds, Zeus is the jet of the unconquerable flame;Zeus is the root of the sea, Zeus is the sun and the moon....The whole of this universe is stretched out within the great body of Zeus.”

In the same manner, although Persia has in general preserved the personality of her Supreme god, yet she suffers him, especially in the sects, to become confounded with the Infinity of matter through which he first revealed himself to the mind of his worshippers. After having invoked the heavens as the body of Ahura Mazda, the most beautiful of bodies, she placed above Ahura himself, and before him, the luminous space, where he manifests himself, what the theologians called “the Infinite light,” and then by a new and higher abstraction declaredSpace[54]to have been at the beginning of the world. Between this wholly metaphysical principle and the naturalistic principle of the primitive religion, there is only the distance of two abstractions: Space is only the bare form of the luminous Infinite, and the luminous Infinite, again, is an abstraction from the Infinite and luminous sky, which was identical with Ahura.

Thus, accordingly as the heavens were considered as the seat or as the cause of things, the god of the heavens became the matter of the world or the demiurge of the world. From the period of Aryan unity, he was without doubt the one and the other in turn; but it is probable that the theistic conception was more clearly defined than the other, as it is so in the derived mythologies; it has besides deeper roots in the human heart and human nature, which in every movement and in every phenomenon sees a Living Cause, a Personality.

This god of the heavens, having organized the world, is all wisdom; he is the skilled artisan who has regulated the motion of the worlds. His wisdom is infinite, for of all those mysteries which man tries invain to fathom he has the key, he is the author. But it is not only as the Creator of the world that he is omniscient: he knows all things, because, being all light, he sees all things. In the naturalistic psychology of the Aryans, to see and to know, light and knowledge, eye and thought, are synonymous terms. With the Hindoos, Varuna is omniscient because he is the Infinite light; because the sun is his eye; because from the height of his palace with its pillars of red brass, his white looks command the world; because under the golden mantle that covers him, his thousands, his myriads of spies, active and untiring agents, sunbeams during the day, stars during the night, search out for him all that which exists from one world to the other, with eyes that never sleep, never blink. And in the same way, if Zeus is the all-seeing, theπανόπτης, it is because his eye is the sun, this universal witness, the infallible spy of both gods and men (Θεῶν σκοπὸν ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν). The light knows the truth, it is all truth; truth is the great virtue which the god of heaven claims; and lying is the great crime which he punishes. In Homer, the Greek taking an oath, raises his eyes towards the expanse of heaven and calls Zeus and the sun to witness; in Persia, the god of heaven resembles in body the light, and in soul the truth: Aryan morality came down from heaven in a ray of light.

Thus, the Indo-European religion knew a supreme God, and this God was the God of the heavens. He has organized the world and rules it, because, as he is the heaven, all is in him, and all passes within him, according to his law; he is omniscient and moral, because, being luminous, he sees all things and all hearts.

This God was named by the various names of the sky—Dyaus, Varana, Svar, which, according to the requirements of the thought, described either the object or the person, the heavens or the God. Later on, each language made a choice, and fixed the proper name of the God on one of these words; by which its ancient value as a common noun was lost or rendered doubtful: thus, in GreekDyausbecame the name of the heaven-god (Zeus) and Varana (Οὐρανός) was the name of the heavens, as a thing; in SanscritDyausorSvarwas the material heavens; the heaven-god was Varana (later changed into Varuna); the Slavs fixed on the word Svar, by means of a derivative, Svarogu, the idea of the celestial god; the Romans made the same choice as the Greeks with theirJup-piter, and set aside the other names of the heavens; lastly, Persia described the god by one of his abstract epithets, the Lord, Ahura, and obliterated the external traces of his former naturalistic character.

This god, who reigned at the time of the breaking up of the religion of Aryan unity, was carried away, with the various religions which sprang up from it, to the various regions where chance brought the Aryan migrations. Of the five religions over which he ruled, threeremained faithful to him to the last, and only forsook him at the moment when they themselves perished;—they are those of the Greeks, of the Romans, and of the Slavs, with whom Zeus, Juppiter, and Svarogu preserved the titles and attributes of the Supreme god of the Aryans, as long as the national religion lasted. They succumbed to Christ; “Heaven-father” gave way to the “Father who is in Heaven.”

India, on the contrary, very soon forgot that god for whose origin and formation, however, she accounts much better than any other Aryan religion does; and it was not a foreign god who dethroned him—a god from without—but a native god, a god of his own family, Indra, the hero of the tempest.

In fact, the supreme god of the Aryans was not a god of unity; the Asura, the Lord, was not the Lord in the same sense as Adonai. There were by the side of him, within himself, a number of gods, acting of their own accord, and often of independent origin. The wind, the rain, the thunder; the fire under its three forms—the sun in the heavens, the lightning in the cloud, the terrestrial fire on the altar; the prayer under its two forms—the human prayer, which ascends from the altar to heaven, and the heavenly prayer, which resounds in the din of the storm, on the lips of a divine priest, and descends from the heights with the torrents of libations poured from the cup of heaven, all the forces of nature, both concrete and abstract, appealing at once to the eye and to the imagination of man, were instantly deified. If the god of the heavens, greater in time and space, always present and everywhere present, easily rose to the supreme rank, carried there by his double Infinity, yet others, with a less continuous, but more dramatic action, revealing themselves by sudden, unexpected events, maintained their ancient independence, and religious development might lead to their usurping the power of the king of the heavens. Already during the middle of the Vedic period, Indra, the noisy god of the storm, ascends the summit of the Pantheon, and eclipses his majestic rival by the din of his resounding splendour.

He is the favourite hero of the Vedic Rishis; they do not tire of telling how he strikes with his bolt the serpent of the cloud, which enfolds the light and the waters; how he shatters the cavern of Cambara, how he delivers the captive Auroras and cows, who will shed torrents of light and milk on the earth. It is he who makes the sun come out again; it is he who makes the world, annihilated during the night, reappear; it is he who recreates it, he who creates it. In a whole series of hymns he ascends to the side of Varuna, and shares the empire with him; at last he mounts above him, and becomes the Universal King:—

“He, who, as soon as he was born, a god of thought, has surpassed the gods by the power of his intellect, he whose trembling made the two worlds quake by the power of his strength—O man, it is Indra!“He, who has firmly established the tottering earth and arrested the quivering mountains; he who has fixed the extent of the wide-stretching atmosphere, and who has propped up the sky,—O man, it is Indra!“He, who, after slaying the serpent, unpenned the seven rivers; who brought forth the cows from their hiding-place in the cavern; he, who, by the clashing of the two stones, has engendered Agni,—O man, it is Indra!“He, who made all these great things; he, who struck down the demon race, driving it to concealment; he, who, like a fortunate gamester who wins at play, carries off the wealth of the impious,—O man, it is Indra!“He, who gives life to both rich and poor, and to the priest his singer who implores him; the god with beautiful lips; the protecting god who brings the stones together to press out the soma,—O man, it is Indra!“He, who has in his hands the herds of horses and cows, the cities and the chariots of war; he, who has created the Sun and the dawn; he, who rules the waters,—O man, it is Indra!“He, who is invoked by the two contending armies, by the enemies facing each other, either triumphant or beaten; he, whom, when they meet in the struggle on the same chariot, during the onslaught, they invoke against each other,—O man, it is Indra!“He, who discovered Çambara in the mountains where he had been hidden forty years; he, who killed the serpent in his full strength, who struck him dead on the body of Dânu,[55]—O man, it is Indra!“Heaven and earth bow down before him; when he shakes, the mountains tremble; the drinker of soma, look at him! bearing the bolt in his arm, the bolt in his hand,—O man, it is Indra!”

“He, who has firmly established the tottering earth and arrested the quivering mountains; he who has fixed the extent of the wide-stretching atmosphere, and who has propped up the sky,—O man, it is Indra!

“He, who, after slaying the serpent, unpenned the seven rivers; who brought forth the cows from their hiding-place in the cavern; he, who, by the clashing of the two stones, has engendered Agni,—O man, it is Indra!

“He, who made all these great things; he, who struck down the demon race, driving it to concealment; he, who, like a fortunate gamester who wins at play, carries off the wealth of the impious,—O man, it is Indra!

“He, who gives life to both rich and poor, and to the priest his singer who implores him; the god with beautiful lips; the protecting god who brings the stones together to press out the soma,—O man, it is Indra!

“He, who has in his hands the herds of horses and cows, the cities and the chariots of war; he, who has created the Sun and the dawn; he, who rules the waters,—O man, it is Indra!

“He, who is invoked by the two contending armies, by the enemies facing each other, either triumphant or beaten; he, whom, when they meet in the struggle on the same chariot, during the onslaught, they invoke against each other,—O man, it is Indra!

“He, who discovered Çambara in the mountains where he had been hidden forty years; he, who killed the serpent in his full strength, who struck him dead on the body of Dânu,[55]—O man, it is Indra!

“Heaven and earth bow down before him; when he shakes, the mountains tremble; the drinker of soma, look at him! bearing the bolt in his arm, the bolt in his hand,—O man, it is Indra!”

But the usurper does not enjoy his triumph long; in the heat of his victory he is already stung to the heart, mortally wounded by a new and mystic power which is growing at his side, the power of prayer, of sacrifice, of worship, ofBrahma, whose reign begins to dawn towards the end of the Vedic period, and which is still in existence.

What Indra did in India during an historical period, Perkun and Odin did in a pre-historical period, the one among the Lithuanians, the other among the Germans. Perkun and Odin are the Indras of these two nations, and have each dethroned the god of the heavens. Perkun was the god of the thunder with the Lithuanian pagans, and one can recognize in him a twin brother of the HindooParjanya, one of the forms of the god of the storm in Vedic mythology. This king of the Lithuanian Pantheon is a king of recent date; what proves it is that the Slavs, so closely related to the Lithuanians in their beliefs, as well as in their language, and who also knew the god Perkun, have still as their Supreme god the Supreme god of the ancient Aryan religion, the god of the heavens, Svarogu.

The same revolution took place in Germany, but in a more remote period. The god of the heavens has vanished; he is replaced by the god of the stormy atmosphere, Odin, or Wuotan, the Vâta of India, the warrior god who is heard in the din of the tempest, leading his dishevelled bands of warriors, or letting loose on a celestial quarry the howling packs of the wild chase.

Thus did the Greeks, the Romans, and the Slavs allow their god to bevanquished by a foreign god; the Germans, the Lithuanians, and the Hindoos themselves forsook him for an inferior creation. Only in one single nation he finds worshippers faithful to the last. They are not numerous, but they have not allowed their belief to be encroached upon either by time or by man. We mean the few thousands of Ghebers or Parsis, who, during the great political and religious shipwreck of Persia, fleeing before the victorious sword of the Prophet, kept from Islam the treasure of their old belief, and who to this day, in the year 1879 of the Christian era, in the fire temples in Bombay, offer up sacrifices to the very same god who was sung by the unknown ancestors of the Aryan race at a time which eludes the grasp of history.

James Darmesteter.

FOOTNOTES:[38]Cf. Max Müller: “Lectures on the Science of Language,” and “Lectures on the Science of Religion;” Michel Bréal, “Mélanges de Mythologie et de Linguistique.”[39]Maury, “Histoire des Religions de la Grèce;” Preller, “Griechische Mythologie.”[40]See Muir, “Sanscrit Texts,” v. 58; Max Müller, “Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion,” p. 284.[41]“This Lord.”[42]The cloud often compared to a tree branching out in the sky.[43]The fire (Ignis) which is born in the waters of heaven in the form of lightning.[44]A sacred plant whose sap is offered to the gods. It is pressed between two stones to extract the sacred liquor.[45]The sea of the earth and the sea of the clouds.[46]See J. Darmesteter, “Ormazd et Ahriman,” §§ 18-59.[47]Ormazd is the modern name, contracted from the ancient Ahura Mazda.[48]Which is the same word as the Sanskrit Asura.[49]The sun is also the bird of Zeus (Æschylus, the Suppliants).[50]That is to say “to their Supreme God.”[51]G. Klek, “Einleitung in die Slavische Literatur-Geschichte.”[52]“Ormazd et Ahriman,” §§ 62, sq.[53]Praeterea, coeli rationes ordine certoEt varia annorum cernebant tempora vorti;Nec poterant quibus id fieret cognoscere causis.Ergo perfugium sibi habebant omnia DiveisTradere, et ollorum nutu facere omnia flecti.In cœloque Deum sedes et templa locarunt,Per cœlum volvi quia nox et luna videtur,Luna, dies, et nox et noctis signa severa,Noctivagaeque faces cœli, flammaeque volantes,Nubila, sol, imbres, nix, ventei, fulmina, grando,Et rapidei fremitus, et murmura magna minarum.—v. 1187.[54]In other systems, having regard to the eternity of the God and no longer to his immensity, boundless Time became the first principle (Zarvan Akarana).[55]His mother.

[38]Cf. Max Müller: “Lectures on the Science of Language,” and “Lectures on the Science of Religion;” Michel Bréal, “Mélanges de Mythologie et de Linguistique.”

[39]Maury, “Histoire des Religions de la Grèce;” Preller, “Griechische Mythologie.”

[40]See Muir, “Sanscrit Texts,” v. 58; Max Müller, “Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion,” p. 284.

[41]“This Lord.”

[42]The cloud often compared to a tree branching out in the sky.

[43]The fire (Ignis) which is born in the waters of heaven in the form of lightning.

[44]A sacred plant whose sap is offered to the gods. It is pressed between two stones to extract the sacred liquor.

[45]The sea of the earth and the sea of the clouds.

[46]See J. Darmesteter, “Ormazd et Ahriman,” §§ 18-59.

[47]Ormazd is the modern name, contracted from the ancient Ahura Mazda.

[48]Which is the same word as the Sanskrit Asura.

[49]The sun is also the bird of Zeus (Æschylus, the Suppliants).

[50]That is to say “to their Supreme God.”

[51]G. Klek, “Einleitung in die Slavische Literatur-Geschichte.”

[52]“Ormazd et Ahriman,” §§ 62, sq.

[53]Praeterea, coeli rationes ordine certoEt varia annorum cernebant tempora vorti;Nec poterant quibus id fieret cognoscere causis.Ergo perfugium sibi habebant omnia DiveisTradere, et ollorum nutu facere omnia flecti.In cœloque Deum sedes et templa locarunt,Per cœlum volvi quia nox et luna videtur,Luna, dies, et nox et noctis signa severa,Noctivagaeque faces cœli, flammaeque volantes,Nubila, sol, imbres, nix, ventei, fulmina, grando,Et rapidei fremitus, et murmura magna minarum.—v. 1187.

[53]

Praeterea, coeli rationes ordine certoEt varia annorum cernebant tempora vorti;Nec poterant quibus id fieret cognoscere causis.Ergo perfugium sibi habebant omnia DiveisTradere, et ollorum nutu facere omnia flecti.In cœloque Deum sedes et templa locarunt,Per cœlum volvi quia nox et luna videtur,Luna, dies, et nox et noctis signa severa,Noctivagaeque faces cœli, flammaeque volantes,Nubila, sol, imbres, nix, ventei, fulmina, grando,Et rapidei fremitus, et murmura magna minarum.—v. 1187.

[54]In other systems, having regard to the eternity of the God and no longer to his immensity, boundless Time became the first principle (Zarvan Akarana).

[55]His mother.

The elaborate schemes which have been propounded in attempts to solve the much-vexed riddle how best and most effectually to ameliorate the condition of the working-classes—such as Owenism, Fourierism, and such like—have had their inception in the minds of philanthropists outside and above our circle. They have been conceived for the most part with a genuine feeling of the immense importance of this, the most burning and momentous question of modern days, and illumined in many cases with deep philosophic insight; yet, as it is almost impossible for any but a born proletarian to understand the needs, the wants and the daily lives of the proletarian, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the absence of this special knowledge may have contributed somewhat to the unworkableness of the various systems proposed. Beyond this, however, it strikes me that most of them contained a fatal flaw, inherent in their constitutions. They were too ambitious, aimed at too much, and were altogether of so revolutionary and subversive a character as to alarm the great majority of those whose goodwill must be obtained before it can be possible to reduce any theory to experiment on a sufficiently extended scale to enable an unprejudiced observer to pronounce decisively on the result accomplished.

Were it not that the accident of my having been thrown by birth and association amongst the very poorest of the poor (“but indifferent honest”) community of a large city may enable me to supplement to some extent the ideas enunciated by benevolent theorists belonging to the upper strata of society, I should not have the temerity to seek to pass out of the region of the “eternal silences.” Moreover, I do not announce a new and perfect evangel to be ushered in by loud flourish of trumpets. I aim at nothing more ambitious than to be allowed tooffer a few hints as to the direction which I conceive future gospels of humanity must take in order to be of practical utility.

Having thus endeavoured to justify myself for rushing in where sometimes “angels fear to tread,” I have no intention of apologizing for the crudeness of my ideas, or my lack of grace in literary composition. Taking into consideration the small amount of elementary education drilled into me at a charity school for a brief period of my very juvenile days, and the continued absence of any duly qualified instructor since, “all that goes without saying.”

One more egotistical, or egoistical, remark, and I proceed. I am in no sense aspecialist. I am neither a Good Templar nor a Convivial Toper; neither a disciple of Nihilism, nor any other school of advanced thought (so called), nor a bigoted sectarian. I am a private in neither the ranks of bovine Toryism nor of rabid Radicalism; but I write simply as one of that common ruck of ordinary practical working men, which in reality forms the great staple of our plebiscite, although certain very noisy and turbulent minorities may possibly have led to a contrary inference.

In the erection of my little structure, I, like all other architects, require a good foundation as the basis of operations; and in the present case the foundation required is simply a desire on the part of those bipeds who stand erect on pedestals for an increased knowledge of their fellows who crawl and kneel and lie in a thousand and one contorted postures on the miry clay. Enlarged knowledge will bring enlarged sympathy for each other on the part of high and low alike. As matters now stand, those above us never really see us in undress. When they come across us we are either too slavishly sycophantic or too ruggedly independent,—both being masks donned for the occasion,—and not in any sense our natural selves; and I have a dim kind of suspicion that on the few occasions when gentlemen voluntarily come forward and try to make us believe that they are taking us into their confidence—on the hustings, say, for instance—some disguise of the same kind may be adopted, and that the features we then see are not altogether the real ones. If I am right in this assumption, how is it possible for either class to have anything like a competent knowledge of the other? Indeed, I do not think I should be far wrong in saying that the manners and customs of the Fijian Islanders and other aborigines of distant lands are better known generally to the upper ten thousand than those of the lower native millions; and, of course, the converse holds equally good. Domestic servants, perhaps, may be said to form exceptions to this latter rule, seeing that they often have peeps into the innermost arcana; but as they are for the most part—the male portion of them at all events—more utterly inexplicable beings than their masters, the general fund of information is not much increased through that channel. Flunkeydom is much more insufferable and incomprehensible to the general run of us than swelldom itself.

Granted, however, the desire for a better acquaintance with their humbler brethren on the part of our aristocracy and plutocracy (for this, like all other good things, mustdescendfrom above), it will be found that, as a mutual understanding of each other’s peculiarities is increased, the rich man (in this paper, as in an Act of Parliament, words denoting persons of the masculine gender shall be construed as including persons of the feminine gender also) will bestow a little less careful thought and attention on—shall I say partridges?—and more on his fellow-man; and the bitter class-prejudice which undoubtedly exists among the needy against the prosperous and well-fed will gradually die out. Then, and then only, will a new and brighter era dawn on “poor humanity;” and, I may say, that I hold optimist views with reference to this consummation. I think I observe a growing acknowledgment of the claims of humble folk in the literature of the day; and as literature is universally regarded as an outcome of the prevalent tone of feeling, I look upon this as a good omen.

Having worked myself into this happy frame of mind, I am emboldened to request that consideration may be given to a few examples of the ideas which, “in the stillness of the night,” and otherwise, have intruded themselves upon me—ideas embryonic and unformed, I doubt not, but genuine as far as they go. From the multitude of these shadowy phantoms which have now for a long time past oppressed me, I select those which strike me as having special reference to the improvement of our poor populations in four of the salient matters of life—viz., in health, pocket, mind, and amusements; and these I will deal withseriatim.

This, amongst all sublunary blessings, is undoubtedly the one of paramount importance, and, seeing how things now stand with us, it is imperative that it should bethequestion to receive earliest attention.

I think it is the Rev. Harry Jones who, in one of his warm-hearted essays, liken as rotten, worn-out, filthy habitation to a lump of putrid carrion, exhaling poison all around, and which should be as remorselessly cut out from amongst the dwellings of human beings as a fly-blown spot is cut out from a carcass. This simile, perhaps, is not a very savoury one, but it possesses a much greater merit, that of beingabsolutely true—slightly vulgar, but astonishingly correct. I could illustrate its verity by many pertinent instances which have come within my own experience, but I feel that this is not the place to do so. What then is the remedy? Obviously to re-enact the present “Artizans’ Dwellings Improvement Act” as acompulsorystatute, and not as an optional one. Let the squalid, crazy, tumble-down rookeries which exist in every town in the kingdom be ruthlessly demolished, care, of course, being taken that suitable dwellings are cotemporaneously built on better sanitary principles for those whom it will be necessary to evict in order to carry out such improvements. And I would suggest,as a branch of the pervading idea which forms the centre and core of my suggestions (of which more anon), that the Municipal Corporations of our cities and towns should be themselves in their official capacity the landlords of such new and improved dwellings, and should employ their own tradesmen to build them. And, furthermore, that in the erection of whatever new cottages may be found necessary for the purpose indicated, the latter-day style of running them up all alike, as uniform as so many squares of glass in a sash, should be abandoned, and a little variety of style, if only in trifling particulars, introduced. Human nature, even the human nature of the uneducated poor, rebels against this painful monotony, and grows intensely weary of over-much regularity, which, if a virtue at all, is one of so starched and rigid a character, that it takes a considerable amount of resolution, and a far higher degree of culture than we can lay claim to, to enable us to fall in love with it. To our uninstructed eyes, diversity of form is much more pleasing than undeviating rectangularity.

Again, the most painstaking care must be taken that these substituted domiciles be properly and thoroughly drained. Unhappily, although this is a truism and a self-evident proposition, it is, through carelessness or indifference, frequently neglected—a fact too sadly attested by the ravages of fever from time to time in our outlying districts, where, twenty years ago, the bricklayer and hodman had not arrived upon the scene. To obviate this it is absolutely necessary that the most skilled science should be employed, and the most searching local legislation strictly enforced, to secure the carrying out of approved sewerage and drainage systems.

Furthermore, I would suggest that no horse or cattle slaughterer, tallow-melter, manure-merchant, tanner, or other person plying any of the trades known as noisome or offensive, should be allowed to continue such trades without a special licence, and that by the terms of such licence they should be prohibited, under heavy penalties, from carrying on their businesses outside the limits of a certain area to be expressly set aside for that purpose, at such a distance from the centre of every town as may be judged desirable by the sanitary authorities. Within this area pig-styes and fowl-houses should be erected, and no swine, ducks, or geese be permitted to be kept outside its boundary. An inspector should be appointed specially for this quarter of the town, who should direct all his energies to seeing that the best principles of ventilation, smoke-consumption, drainage, use of disinfectants, &c. &c., are adopted throughout his domain; and all ill-conditioned recusants against the decrees of the local senate should be mulcted in heavy damages. On the part of the senate itself there must be no apathy, no supineness, no dilettanteism, but a stern, vigorous determination stringently and impartially to enforce prompt obedience to its edicts.

No doubt this would be somewhat of a hardship upon certain individuals, on the score of inconvenience and increased cost of production;but I doubt not they would take care to indemnify themselves. Even were it otherwise, however, the aggregate gain in so important a matter as the public health must swamp all minor considerations. Private interests must inevitably be sacrificed in the advancement of the general weal. All the Mrs. Partingtons that ever existed, with all their mops (whether such mops are called monopolies, vested rights, or what not), must perforce recede before the rising tide of the ocean of civilization.

Having well drained our streets and habitations, and consecrated aquartierfor the purposes last mentioned, the next step must be to increase the number of our iron hospitals; and, disregarding sentimentality, immediately to isolate and put in quarantine all persons suffering from infectious diseases. Firmly grasp this nettle the moment it crops up, and without a shadow of doubt you will reduce to a minimum the high rate of mortality at present existing in our overcrowded cities through a total neglect of proper precaution. All textile fabrics, bedding, books, &c., which have come in contact with the patient, to be consumed by fire. Even Vandalism is excusable, nay, commendable, in certain circumstances.

Finally, on this branch of the subject, I submit for the consideration of municipalities the following recommendations:—

1. Preserve or procure open spaces, sufficient to form recreation grounds for your communities—say an acre for every thousand inhabitants. Regard this to be quite as imperative a necessity as the acquisition of further land to add to the cemeteries in which you inter the bodies of those who have “gone over to the majority.” Let the quick share your care and attention on equal terms with the dead in the matter of requisite space and accommodation.

2. Cause your common lodging-houses and your still worse haunts to be under the most vigilant supervision; and thatconstantly, and not fitfully and spasmodically. The more severe and restrictive your regulations are with reference to these matters the better it will be for all decent, quiet citizens.

3. Provide every householder within your jurisdiction with afilter, to insure to him and his the opportunity of enjoying water free from organic and other impurities.

4. Furnish him also with two boxes, varying in size according to the dimensions of his domicile: one to form a receptacle for dust, cinders, old rags, broken bottles, and what is generically known as “dry dirt;” and the other for decayed vegetables, the entrails of fish, and that kind of refuse that we rather uneuphoniously call “muck.” Such boxes to be taken away once a week and empty ones left in their stead. As a corollary to this, forbid him, under penalties, to continue his present practice of pitching derelicts into the street, as the readiest means of being quit of them; and make him responsible for the cleanliness of his doorsteps and the pavement in front of his dwelling.

5. Send round carts of chloride of lime, at short intervals during warm or “muggy” weather, and direct a bucketful to be delivered to every housewife, to remove stenches from sinks, water-closets, &c.

6. Erect a furnace in some convenient locality, to serve the same purpose as that known as the “Queen’s tobacco-pipe” at the London Docks does or did—i.e., to reduce to ashes all infected or condemned articles.

The foregoing list of recommendations might be extended indefinitely; but perhaps the above will be sufficient to begin with.

There are, no doubt, two objections at least which may be raised against the adoption of any scheme founded on these hints: first, one on the score of increased expenditure; secondly, one condemning increased centralization. With regard to the former, my answer is that health, especially the health of the aggregate mass of the body politic, cannot possibly be bought too dear; and that nothing really is so costly to any community as pestilence and death. As to the latter, I have no other defence to urge than my firm conviction that, much as it is railed against, centralization is as nearly an unmixed good as it is possible for anything in this sublunary (and marvellously complex) sphere to be. Everybody knows how inadequate the very best isolated efforts are to exterminate any widespread evil; and even organizations which are independent of, and do not radiate from or gravitate to, a common centre, frequently cross each other’s paths, and to some extent defeat each other’s purposes; occasioning a great waste of wholesome energy, which, well directed, might achieve marvellous results. As cosmos is greater than chaos—as a well-spliced rope is stronger than its separate strands—so is centralization and cohesion greater and stronger than individualism and segregation.

Many a vigorous arm has applied the axe to that dense and matted jungle, the indigence of the lower orders; but little more has been accomplished than the blunting of the hatchet and the exhaustion of the pioneer who wielded it.

This being the case, it would be the height of folly for me, with my far feebler frame and my puny weapon, to attempt to do more than to peer cautiously around the deep shades, and try to find out, as a dwellerwithinthose murky woods, if here a little path and there a little opening, into which a gleam of sunlight penetrates at times, be not discoverable, half hidden, perchance, by clumps of brushwood, which it will cost but little trouble to clear away. I shall therefore restrict myself to indicating such of these openings as I see, or fancy I see, from whence operations might, according to my notion, be directed towards the demolition of portions at all events of this swart and gloomy forest.

One of the largest of these clearings is undoubtedly, I think,Co-operation, of which there are two kinds—viz., combinations between masters and men in the shape of limited partnerships, a per-centage onprofits, &c.; and combinations amongst the wage-earners themselves for certain specified purposes.

With regard to the first named, I am rather inclined to doubt the probability of its ever becoming an important factor in the sum of human progress, on account of the unlikelihood of its being generally adopted either in the near or distant future, and I am still more sceptical as to its efficacy as a panacea, even if it were universally reduced to practice, especially in these days of commercial disasters.

Coming, then, to the other mode of co-operation—associations of manual workers—this also divides itself into two branches, having two distinct objects—namely, the receipt of higher wages for labour performed, and the obtaining greater value in commodities in the disbursement of such wages. Both these are, no doubt, laudable aspirations; and, although at the first glance they may appear incompatible with, if not altogether antagonistic to, each other,—inasmuch as increased remuneration to the producer means an increase in the price of the thing produced,—yet it will be seen, on mature reflection, that as a very large proportion of operatives are employed in the manufacture of articles of luxury, of which they are not consumers or purchasers, so much of the increase in the price of such articles as finds its way into the pockets of the artificer in the shape of added wages is a net gain to that portion of the labouring classes, and will inevitably exude from such portion to the benefit of the whole, in the same manner as what may be called in contradistinction their normal earnings.

I should like to say one word about combinations of workmen in this place, which may be distasteful to unqualified panegyrists of the system: such combinations should invariably be in accordance with our recognized code of morals, and they must be in obedience to the ordinary laws of Nature; and it is to be feared that these desiderata to perfection in co-operation have at times been lost sight of in the past. I am compelled to blush for my order when I find them seizing the opportunity of their employers being under a heavy time-contract for the execution of important public or other works to organize a strike: this is clearly an infraction of all the ethics of morality. Neither can I appreciate their sense of the fitness of things when I hear them laying it down as a sound axiom that wages should be equalized, so that the stupid, idle, or inferior workman should be on a par with the skilled and industrious one. This is a blunder against one of the most immutable of Nature’s laws—that of variety and infinite gradation; the suggestion implies a yearning after the utterly unattainable, which it is astonishing men of otherwise sound judgment should seriously entertain for one moment. As a comrade of mine pithily observed, not long since, when we were discussing the possibility of devising a scheme by which all men should receive the same amount of remuneration for their labour, and, when received, be enabled to make it go equally far—“You might as well try to make men all o’ one height.”

Remove these excrescences from our combinations, and when it is found we can be practical as well as earnest, co-operation will have acquired a new vigour, and will be able to accomplish greater results. The main citadel will be none the less impregnable because our forces are not scattered abroad in various directions, in the vain endeavour to strengthen totally indefensible frontiers.

But, after all, it is from the other branch of co-operation—theco-operative store system—that the greatest advantages may be expected to accrue. This is growing into favour yearly, still growing (despite recent diatribes in the newspapers), and is extending its ramifications into quite primitive districts. The knowledge that this is an undoubted fact should afford gratification to the well-wishers of the poor.

Yet this gratification is subject to some modification when it is seen that this, not the least important birth of the nineteenth century, though growing and bearing within itself the germs of almost infinite possibilities, is at present of too tiny dimensions to grapple with that colossal ogre—the wasteful expenditure of the impecunious. It is Hercules indeed, but Hercules still in swaddling clothes before the strangling of the serpent. The amount of dealings at these stores by the class to whom they are calculated to prove the greatest boon, when compared with dealings by this same class withveryretail shopkeepers and at other places where the practice of paying “through the nose” (pardon the vulgarity) so extensively prevails, will be found to be almost infinitesimal. The question therefore arises, may it not be possible to replace these pine torches by Edisonian lights, so as to eliminate from wider tracts the thick darkness enwrapping the minds of the sons and daughters of toil as to what constitutes their true interests? It appears to me that there is one way of rendering this feasible, which I deferentially submit for consideration. It may be quite impracticable; and, if practicable, may contain such flaws as to be futile. If so, on defects being pointed out which I am not able, unassisted, to discover, I can only say I am open to conviction. I have no desire to be charged with an ineradicable attachment to that peculiar feat of horsemanship known as “riding a hobby to death.” My plan is simply this: first, let every town of say over 10,000 inhabitants possess an internal government complete in itself, with plenary administrative powers; let groups of villages, in such numbers as may be determined on (the present Poor-Law Union Divisions might be taken as a basis), form cordons round themselves in like manner, and with the like objects; let every care be taken to select the very best men of every social grade to form the local senate, and let the members of which it is composed be paid for their services out of the public (local) funds, be subject to re-election at short intervals, and be required to give good accounts of their stewardship. Further, let it be clearly understood that the only condition on which a man could hope to be enrolled in this representative band, or, being enrolled,expect to be allowed to continue his official existence, would be his distinct and unquestioning recognition ofpersonalresponsibility, as far as is humanly possible, for, and his unwavering resolution to secure, the well-being ofallhis constituents, physically, pecuniarily, mentally, and morally.

These preliminaries being supposed to be satisfactorily settled, such incorporation or assembly of chosen ones might (always supposing my views happened to find favour in their sight) open as many co-operative stores—so many for each trade—as would be sufficient to supply the needs of the entire community, selecting competent men from each trade to manage the different departments, and paying them by an agreed salary in the same manner as rate collectors and relieving officers are paid. A certain specified per-centage to be added to the prime cost of the various articles to defray the estimated expenses of management, advertising, rent (if necessary, though it would be better if the local legislators were also the landlords), wear and tear, depreciation in stock, and miscellaneous expenses for the year; and sales to be made to the consumerfor cash only. The urban or rural chancellor of the exchequer would, in his annual budget, soon learn to adjust the amount of his tax (for so the per-centage may be considered), over and above the original cost price, according to the probable exigencies of the ensuing year, by the light afforded by the transactions of the preceding one.

Seeing how many millions of pounds are annually disbursed for the barest sustenance and most absolute necessaries of life by the poor of the three kingdoms, from most of whom exorbitant rates of profit are wrung,—for the fact need not be expatiated on here that the more indigent the purchaser, and the more his penury drives him to live from hand-to-mouth, the less value he receives for his money, to say nothing of the further irruptions made into his income by the only partially-slain “truck system,” or by the payment of interest to the accommodating successors of the Lombards, whose golden balls proclaim them to serve the honourable office of jackal-purveyors to the lions of the gin-palaces,—seeing this, I say, shall I be stigmatized as a dreamer, a half-crazy Utopian, if I anticipate magnificent results to follow from fair trial of a scheme designed to stem the frightful torrent of improvidence at present obtaining amongst the working classes, and to enable them to occupy the new position of being participators in the benefits of a sound commercial undertaking?

Here, however, as elsewhere, there are tares amongst the wheat—if, indeed, it be wheat. An awkward inquiry obtrudes itself unbidden. What is to become of the thousands of deserving folks, too old for the most part to begin lifede novo, who have earned a tolerably honest livelihood as small shopkeepers, and who would probably find themselves, under the system just recommended, “improved off the face of the earth?” Partially the difficulty might be met by the employment of the most active or most experienced of them in the borough stores. A little more might be accomplished in this direction also by giving someof them appointments to the numerous new offices it will be found necessary to create if our municipal authorities ever do wake up and bestir themselves, and aspire to becoming something more suitable to the spirit of the age than mere assemblies for palaver. But when all this is done, there will still be the residuum, and that residuum composed almost exclusively of the feeble, the aged, the halt, the lame, and the blind, who will be more or less thrown upon their own resources. For these, the only gleam of light I can discern is the fact that a remnant of their old customers will not find out all at once the error of their ways, and will go on in their accustomed grooves for some time after the centralized co-operative store shall have becomeun fait accompli, and so their decline into pauperism will be slow and gradual. Heaven only knows how some of these small shopkeepers contrive to exist even now by vending pennyworths and halfpennyworths of this, that, and the other; it can only be by imposing extravagant profits on the article vended. One cannot help thinking that their case can hardly very well be worse than it is, in any event. But be this as it may, care for their particular interests must not be permitted to dominate over due consideration for those of the vast aggregate mass forming the rest of ourclientèle, innumerable as “leaves in Vallambrosa,”—and, like other and greater folks, superfluous retailers must submit to be sacrificed for the benefit of the common weal.

It is impossible to deal even in the most cursory manner with this “pocket” question without just glancing at the important bearing which the question of temperance must exercise upon it. To place a further spending power in the hands of an incurably intemperate populace would obviously mean only to increase and intensify the vice of intemperance. While deprecating any intention of making this paper the vehicle for a furious tirade against drunkenness, I feel bound to say in passing that, little as I love total abstinence, I regard it as a much lesser evil than the unrestrained indulgence of dipsomania; and if any man feels that he is so much a slave to his degraded appetite that he cannot keep up a nodding acquaintance with John Barleycorn without wallowing under his influence in the mud of inebriety, I respect that man for signing the pledge. My optimist instincts, however, buoy me up again on this subject also, for I sincerely believe that, high authority for the assertion though there be, mankind arenotmostly fools; and that when they have begun to realize the fact that they have a choice as to the kind of investment they may obtain for their money, the great majority of them will be looking out for some more substantial advantage than the questionable luxury of seeking temporary oblivion from carking cares and the grisly spectre of hopeless indigence. It may, I think, be relied on with certainty that an improvement in the pecuniary circumstances of the poor would beget increased self-respect, and self-respect would proclaim drunkennessunfashionable, and that now vigorous and lusty giant would ere long find himself as decrepit andinfirm as Bunyan’s Giant Pope. Those of us who have read of the bacchanalian orgies of the great no further back than the days of the Regency of George IV., and contrast it with the sobriety which is said to prevail amongst them in our days, cannot be accused of being groundlessly sanguine if we augur the percolation downwards of this stream of moderation under happier auspices, and that, too, in no remote future.

A third means of lightening the strain upon ourouvriersis to multiply the facilities for emigration. I would even go so far as to say that I think anInternationalEmigration and Immigration League between all the civilized nations of the world, for the purpose of drafting overplus populations into thinly inhabited districts, would be rather a good thing than otherwise, the inconveniences attending differences of language, manners, and so forth, being quite surmountable; whereas the difficulties attendant upon the possession of more hands to labour than there is work to perform, and consequently more hungry stomachs than there is food to fill, is altogether insurmountable. With regard to the affliction ofmal du pays, from which undoubtedly many of the expatriated would suffer at intervals, that would be found to be a much more tolerable burden to bear, combined with a sufficiency of victuals and clothing, than the pangs of starvation or semi-starvation even on one’s “native heather.”

But as it is no part of my programme to move too fast, or too far at once, I do not insist upon any international arrangement of the kind I have hinted at during, say, the present decade. I do, however, earnestly entreat all whom it may concern to try their best to place the matter of Emigration on a proper footing. I unhesitatingly maintain that whilst Great Britain possesses untold thousands of acres of virgin soil, and practically unlimited untried possibilities, in her numerous colonies, this our “sea-girt isle” ought not to suffer from a plethora of willing workers. The existing facilities held out to our overcrowded populations to induce them to venture upon “fresh fields and pastures new” might be multiplied a hundred-fold.

Surely it ought to be part of the fundamental policy of a State—especially of a State whose real governing body is elected by household suffrage—to take the most active measures for insuring the weal of all its citizens: the humblest as well as the highest. Does not this, indeed, form the very quintessential attribute of good government? Has it not been rightly said that a State represents the totality of all the individuals composing it? I assume these are sound political axioms; and if I am right in this assumption, may I not suggest, as the most certain way of attaining the desired end, that our Representative Government should formally acknowledge our claims upon them by appointing a Minister for “the Condition of the People,” with a seat in the Cabinet? The next step would be easy, for when once the whole surroundings were fairly brought within the range of vision, the vital importance of Emigration asa principal means of amelioration would be recognized; and it would be discovered that an able Secretary for Emigration would prove an invaluable auxiliary in the effective working of the department.

It would be necessary, I apprehend, to select for this latter office a man eminent as well for good temper as for a capacious intellect, as the multiplicity of the functions he would have to perform would render such office by no means a sinecure; and the involved and complex matters he would have to deal with might, at times, go far in the direction of ruffling the serenest imperturbability.

The eye of fancy depicts him in the active performance of his multifarious duties, surrounded by numerous painstaking subordinates, some of whom bear to him huge tomes, containing a full alphabetical list (compiled from the census returns and other sources) of the populations, industries, and assessments of the United Kingdom, divided into areas of certain dimensions, showing the age, sex, occupation, and earnings or incomings of every person; the number of houses (with their rentals or estimated yearly value), workshops, or other business establishments of every kind, specifying how many hands are employed in each and the amount of wages paid; and also showing the number of persons in receipt of out-door relief, and approximate number of vagrants in each district. Other attentive satellites open before him the various domesday books, containing reports by competent surveyors as to the quantity, and the latent riches or irredeemable poverty, of uncultivated lands throughout those vast dominions of ours on which the sun never sets; with copious notes by skilled mercantile men and geographers, pointing out the places where commodious ports might be formed, railways constructed, or manufactories erected. Our much-worried Secretary, whose heart is in his work, compares notes, and directs some of his chief clerks to prepare digests of, for instance, the information contained in pp. 420 to 446 of the 17th volume of the first set of books, and pp. 97 to 104 of the 32nd volume of the second set, ready for his consideration on the day but one following. He then takes up similar digests, which have previously been prepared in like manner, and sees clearly that one hundred artisan families of various specified trades, full particulars of which are before him, may, with advantage to all parties, be transplanted, passage free, from the blind alleys of Flintchester to the new settlement of Hornihand in Australasia, with the authorities of which place the usual arrangement will be made to assist them on theirdébut, and lend them a helping hand until they get fairly settled down. Day after day this kind of thing goes on throughout the year, except for some two months during the late summer and autumn vacation, when the hard-worked Secretary and his staff are enjoying a well-earned holiday.

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