—; The Open Court. A Fortnightly Journal, Devoted to the Work of Establishing Ethics and Religion Upon a Scientific Basis.

Three Dollars per Year. Vol. I. No. 18. CHICAGO, OCTOBER 1887. ! 13, Single Copies, 15 cts.

THE STRONGHOLD OF THE CHURCH. whether the party of attack is destined to be as persist-

BY COL. T. W. HIGGINSON. ent and flexible as the party of defence?

When we ask what is the secret of the present Those who can look back over that half century strength of the Church, I think we must find it in this whose progress has been, according to G. J. Holyoake, that the Church has to a great extent abandoned the equivalent to a peaceful revolution, have had the oppor- attitude of grimness and moroseness, and has substituted tunity to learn some lessons. One of these is that a in its place the doctrine of human happiness. Formerly revolution, however great, is apt to come out in a differ- people went to church and held to religion, for the most ent shape from that predicted by the revolutionists. part, not because they enjoyed it, but because they thought Changes occur, but not just the changes anticipated. it their duty ; if they did not enjoy it, this proved it all the Emerson declared, forty years ago, that what hold the more to be their duty. It is a great transformation. faith had the people or going." popular upon was "gone Young people in growing up now find a pleasure in the

He asked why we should drag the dead weight of the religion that is presented to them; things unattractive are Sunday school over the globe—and lived to see his own by general consent laid aside; revivalists rely on love, daughter holding a Sunday school for little Arab chil- rather than on fear. No matter how utterly inconsist- dren on the Nile. Reformers predicted the decay of ent all this may be with creeds and traditions, it is done. church buildings and the cessation of the clergy ; but I Church-parlors are annexed to " the sacred edifice," and suppose that there never was a decennial period when there is provision for stewed oysters and ice-cream so many or so costly churches were erected in America the children are provided with " flower concerts " in as within the last ten years, culminating in a proposed summer and with "Christmas trees" in winter; the

Protestant cathedral at New York, which is to cost ten whole flavor of the institution is altered; it is concilia- millions. There has undoubtedly been a diminution in tory and not denunciatory, and meets people half way. the relative number of clergymen proceeding from our But when the Church is once willing to do this, older colleges, but there are enough still to fill the pul- and to trust to honey rather than vinegar for the catch- pits, whencesoever they come; and those who visit ing of its flies, it has certain immense advantages as com- Trinity Church in Boston or St. George's Church in New pared with the current forms of opposition. Two things

York cannot doubt that eloquent preachers yet have it has to offer of especial value to the average human power to draw audiences. The number of people who heart—the belief in immortality and the belief in the habitually absent themselves from church may be very personal providence or guidance of the Deity. I am large; and the average congregation may be somewhat not speaking now of the truth of these doctrines, but of smaller than formerly; but there are surely no external their attractiveness. It is generally admitted among those indications of approaching decay. who disbelieve in personal immortality, for instance,

The spirit of Emerson's predictions has vindicated that the belief in it, if separated from all questions of itself, not in any outward wrecking of the Church, but future penalties, makes men happier. It is rare to find in its inward remoulding. The reason why so many a parent, by a child's deathbed, who actually prefers to well-meant attacks upon it fall unheeded is because think of that child as annihilated; and so on with the reformers persist in attacking the Church of fifty years other affectionate relations of life. Now, the assurance ago, which does not now exist, instead of recognizing of immortality is the very thing which the Church under- the changed condition of the new one. They treat the takes to give; no other organization attempts, officially, modern edifice, past which a hundred young men ride as it were, to give it, except that movement known as unmolested on bicycles every Sunday, as if it were the Spiritualism, and this in turn offers so much which seems old one with a constable at each door. Doctrines and improbable or incredible that the "scientific" mind habits are altered, but it proves the strength of the commonly finds it even harder to embrace Spiritualism organization when it thus changes front, as Major than Christianity. It has always seemed to me that Anderson was stronger by abandoning Fort Moultrie atheism could make out as good a case, in respect to and falling back on Fort Sumter. The question is morals and philanthropy, as the Christian faith but it ; —

47§ THE OPEN COURT.

but can hardly expect to win the universe through certainly does not secure so much happiness, so far as we " its love of happiness by a good deal that now passes for the faith in immortality is needful to happiness. It science. There is certainly something very curious may be " can never be quite so comforting to the about a religious doctrine which tries to win the young bereaved heart as "It is;" and the Church, which gives heart by singing "There is a Fountain Filled with this positive assurance—no matter whether it be done but is it any improvement to try to win it by with or without reason— will always have a certain hold Blood;" entitled " Martyrdom of Man"? Which is on those who find in happiness " our being's end and books The pursuit, that of truth or of happiness, I will aim." the higher not undertake to say; nor is there to my own mind any So in regard to personal guidance by a superintend- antagonism between them! Having always ing power. To many the feeling of a special providence necessary and even been a theist and a believer in immortality, I am not outlasts all traces of other theological tradition ; said: speaking for my own case; nor is my own personal Emerson held to it on the spiritual side when he sympathy with the Church, or conscious need of it, any " There is no bar or wall in the soul where God, the " lie greater than before. But when asked whether religion cause, and man, the effect, begins," and added : We science or science without religion makes men open on one side to all the depths of infinite being." In without happier in the trials and bereavements of life, I fear that the sense of practical guardianship one would think that it is necessary, to this point, to concede to religion a this confidence must soon yield to the actual experiences up slight advantage. This advantage, slight though it be, of life. I never heard a more thrilling piece of oratory

is of the ; and I for one am wait- than when Charles Bradlaugh, in his own London the stronghold Church

the . profoundest interest, to see how human lecture- room, described to a great audience the position ing, with evolution adapts itself to the situation. That all will of a shipwrecked mother, praying God to save her child and holding the baby higher and higher in her arms come right in the end is my strongest conviction. the relentless waves submerged both at last. But until A MISCONCEPTION OF IDEALISM. the faith in an inward guide outlasts that in outward prov- BY W. M. SALTER. idences, and adapts itself to pantheism as well as theism, though not to atheism, and scarcely even to agnosticism; In speaking of a misconception of idealism it would that I a misconception and it moreover equalizes all conditions and sends peace be franker, perhaps, to say mean through the whole being. of what I understand to be idealism. There are doubt- less other uses of the word than mine; and others who " I would not care how low my fortunes were to to be extravagant and uncritical in their Might but my hopes still be, what now they are, seem me Of help divine, nor care how poor I be, thinking may have the same right to be called idealists

If thoughts, yet present, might abide with me: that I have. Every one must use words as he himself For they have left assurance of such aid w understands them and it is only incumbent upon him to That I am of no dangers now afraid." be self-consistent in doing so. I need not explain that it

All the world over, in every form of faith, we find is philosophical rather than ethical idealism that I have sweet and beautiful souls who have this kind of happi- in mind. All systems of ethics, no matter how other- ness. Goethe himself, in his " Confessions of a Fair wise contradictory they may be, are ideal — for they all Saint," has drawn such a type. Whatever fine types the try to indicate to man what he should, do, rather than

anti-religious attitude can produce, it can never yield what he does. But philosophical idealism may be held precisely this. and may be rejected by those who have, perhaps, equal The stronghold of the Church therefore lies in this, right to be called philosophers.

that — whatever may have been the case formerly — it By idealism I mean the doctrine that the material now gives, or is supposed to give, more happiness than world about us is reducible to sensations. This world

is found among its opponents. This, and not any mere has then an existence not in itself, but in our minds

superstition, is what has got to be overcome or super- " our minds " being a general expression for sentient

seded if men would do away with the Church, or with subjects of any sort, whether animal or human. The

what it represents, religion. It is not enough to show that course of reasoning is a simple one. It has been stated

the intellect of the world or its morals or its mutual by Huxley in his essays on Descartes and on Berkeley.

benevolence will be as effectual without religion as with Helmholtz is an equally notable defender of idealism in

it; the mass of men, by our own showing, seek happi- Germany. Herbert Spencer has given it a masterly

ness, and we have got to convince them that they will be exposition in his Psychology. If I may be pardoned

happier without it. Can we fairly say that we have yet self-mention in such illustrious company, I may say that

met the Church on this ground? To some extent we I have sought to give an entirely popular and untech- may have; the effect of the transcendentalism of Emer- nical statement of the idealist doctrine in the Journal son, and certainly of Parker, was to make men happy; of Speculative Philosophy, for July and October, 1SS4. — ;

THE OPEN COURT. 479

The question is, what do we mean by saying an apple is we should experience could we live on, or what others sweet or sour, an orange is fragrant, a rose is yellow or possibly will experience.- red, and so on? What is sweetness, or fragrance, or Such, very brief!}' and imperfectly stated, is what 1 color? If one stops to think for a moment and has no understand by idealism. It is opposed to materialism, it prepossessions to serve, but simply interrogates his own is opposed to what is ordinarily called realism. Real- consciousness, he is very apt to answer that sweetness is ism holds that material objects are real things outside of a taste, a feeling, a sensation or experience which he has us and existing entirely independently of our sensibility or may have. And he may say the like of fragrance it is simply the instinctive, uncritical way we all have of that a delicious smell is an experience or feeling, rather thinking. The idealist starts from it, but by a little than anything separable from himself. It is not diffi- closer scrutiny discovers, as he thinks, that the apple tree and the earth cult to realize the same of sound; it is a sensation of ours, and the orange and the rose and the of sensations, which something without us causes, but which is itself and the stars are simply so many groups an impression upon us. One may even come to feel the and that the real outside things are not these, but some- Idealism is same to be true of color. And it is plainly true, if one thing else which gives them to our minds. stops but for a moment to seriously reflect, of weight. not inconsistent with a deeper realism; but, if I am not Let any one ask himself what he means by calling a mistaken, absolutely implies it. body heavy—and he can only say that heaviness is some- And now for the misconception of the idealistic thing he distinctly feels; so that if he lifts a bod}' with position. It is that according to idealism the material a strong sensation of that sort he calls it heavy, and if world is the creation of our minds, and so an illusion. with little or none, he calls it light. If I and everybody This is the most common notion, perhaps, of the mean- else could lift a forty-pound stone as easily as I lift a ing of idealism. It must be admitted that the average feather, it would scarcely mean anything to say that it man has some reason for so thinking, for not only do weighed forty pounds. That is, all these qualities of learned critics of the doctrine so represent it, but idealists matter (and these are about all there are, unless hard- themselves have so reasoned and written. A valued ness and softness, resistance, solidity, are reckoned dis- contributor to the old Index, Mr. L. G.Janes, once said tinct qualities—and in any case, they are no less reduci- there that it was "the favorite postulate of the idealist ble than the rest to sensations*) are really experiences that matter, the external universe, is an illusion, a sub- of ours. Of course, we do not produce them; they are jective creation of the mind." The able and conscien- produced in us, they come to us from without; but still tious explorer of primitive Christian history, Judge they are (whatever their causes may be) our own impres- Waite, of Chicago, in addressing the Philosophical sions, and were we not alive nor other beings like our- Societv some years ago, considered " no skepticism so selves, they could not be said, in strictures, to exist. A complete and overwhelming as that of the idealist," and pain without somebody to feel it would be, as every- the universe of the idealist seemed to him "a most body would say, an absurdity; idealism adds that odors stupendous delusion." Professor Fisher, of Vale, a that nobody smells and tastes that nobody experiences most discriminating and candid writer, identified some and colors that nobody perceives and sounds that nobody time ago in the Princeton Review, idealism with the hears and weights and resistances that nobody feels are doctrine that sense-perception is due exclusively to the unmeaning, though the sources whence these sensations mind's own nature and "is elicited by no external come to us may well exist outside of us, and indeed must, object." Even our Coryphaeus in philosophy, Dr. if our causal instinct has any validity. These different Montgomery, speaks (in a late number of The Open- sensations grouped, arranged in time and space, make up Court) of the "teaching of idealistic thinkers, who the objects and intelligible order of the world. Our sensa- deny altogether the existence of anything but mind and tions, strictlv speaking, are limited to the present moment, its various modes." Turning to those who are them- but by virtue of memory and imagination and thought, selves idealists, we find Mr. W. I. Gill, as acute a we can picture to ourselves the past and probable future writer as The Index ever possessed, saying that the of the world as well, and distant objects as well as those phenomena of the external world are not only modes in the immediate horizon. The past means what we of the mind, but "evolved from the mind;" that the should have experienced, had we been living, or what ego is "their grand central source and cause" as well as perhaps others have experienced; the future means what subject. Lange seems to give countenance to the same notion when he says: "Das Auge mit dem wir zu sehen * It may have to be admitted (I do not say it does) that form and shape " glauben ist selbst nur ein Product unserer Vorstellung and extension are not sensations: yet if so, it is probable that the form of an apple, for example, means the limits of certain sensations in space, just as the (the eye by which we suppose that we see is itself only duration of any material object may mean the limits of certain sensations in of our thought). Wundt calls our " ganze time. Prof. William James holds in recent articles ("The Perception of a product Space," and "The Perception of Time," in the Mind, 1SS7, and the Journal of AutTassung der Aussenwelt " an " Erzeugniss unseres Speculative Philosophy, October, 1SS6, respectively) that space and time are though he allows that in some themselves elements of sensations. eigenen Bewusstseins," ;

480 THE OPEN COURT. sense things exist independently of us, and so suggests The world is not illusory, not a creation of our own. that one may make misleading statements which cover It is our world and has no meaning apart from us or no real misconception. Emerson, after Fichte and the from beings like us, yet it is given us; and though the other intellectual giants of Germany in the early part of sources or givers are beyond our eyes, they are, and this century, speaks of material things as "visions they alone truly are. We pass and the world passes; merely, wonderful allegories, significant pictures of the they abide There is a sober, critical, I might almost laws of the mind." It should he confessed, however, say, scientific idealism, as well as an imaginative and as Mr. Edwin D. Mead has pointed out with reference extravagant one. to Fichte, that the external world, according to this philosopher, is not posited merely by the individual ARE WE PRODUCTS OF MIND? man, but by the world-spirit through him, so that in one BY EDMUND MONTGOMERY, M.D. sense its cause is outside of him; and this holds true of Part 111. Hegel and of Emerson, and something like this may be U hv mind cannot control body. the thought of Mr. Gill. I wish Professor Cope had read the series of papers

Now all this may be idealism ; it is, perhaps, not in which I endeavor to explain the relation of mental

inconsistent with idealism ; but it is not necessary to ideal- realization to objective reality. It is doubtful, however, ism, and it is inconsistent with idealism as I understand whether this would have shaken his faith in materialistic it. Because the grass and the trees and the sky are or tridimentional realism, and thus helped to give him a mental experiences, it does not follow that I give them more favorable opinion of the "problem of cognition," to myself. Not only have I no consciousness of doing which, according to his present conviction, leads to so, but I seem to be distinctly conscious that I do not "mere verbal quibbling." produce them, but rather meet with them ; they happen Nevertheless, it is quite incontestable, that—as re- to me, they are given to me, and because I do not know vealed by the "problem of cognition"—the relativity of what or who the giver is, makes no difference as to this knowledge, disclosing the mental constitution of all our primary consciousness. It is this consciousness, I am perceptions and conceptions, has to be taken as a persuaded, that is at the root of the firm conviction of truth infinitely more certain, than any materialistic most people that the material world exists outside them ontology conceived regardless of this same "prob- it does so exist, in the sense that its cause or causes do, lem of cognition." A scientist, who enters into' specu- and that our coming and going, our seeing and not see- lations about the relation of mind to organization and to ing, our even living or not living, has nothing to do nature in general, cannot venture to ignore this funda- with these causes, but only with their effects upon our- mental philosophical insight, and yet expect his theories selves. There is no sound without some one to hear it; to come out all right. It is quite impossible to construct but if one does not hear it, the cause of the sound may a correct view of nature, and especially of the relation exist all the same. There is no weight without some of mind to non-mental reality, without having realized one to feel it; but that which predetermines the possi- this most immediate of all truths; viz. that the world is bility of such a sensation is not affected at all by the fact revealed to us in the medium of our own individual, con- that we not have it. If there is no mirror there is no sciousness, which can consist of nothing but mental reflection; but the mirror is not the cause of the re- modes. flection —or, at least, the whole cause. The inference This once understood, it becomes evident that non- is all but irresistible that there is something outside us, mental reality is inferred and not immediately given; which produces the sensations within us. It is true that and that the immediately given facts, from which object- thought and the categories of thought may do much, ive reality is thus inferentially constructed, are those and much more than we ordinarily think, in giving compulsory perceptions:, which arise in us through sense- shape to the various objects of the material world, in stimulation. We experience, as immediately given in making them objects as distinct from scattered sensa- this way, perceptions only. These we interpret accord- tions and in tracing the so-called laws of matter. Never- ing to their relation to previous experience, which theless there is something thought cannot do; it cannot experience is likewise of mental consistency. It is, con- give us a sensation or the rudiments of one; it cannot sequently, not so self-evident as Professor Cope imag- produce the faintest smell or the feeblest sound ; these ines, that mind is a property of matter. It is, on the have to come, they cannot be created —though we may contrary, certain that what we realize as matter—namely indeed learn the laws of their coming and so have them, all sensibly perceived qualities of a supposed objective to a certain degree, at pleasure. Sensations are an irref- substratum —are our own mental states, presented in ragable proof that there is something else besides our- our own individual space-perception. Our individual selves in the world, call it, picture it, think it what we realization of matter consists thus altogether of con- will. scious states. And how can we then correctly attribute "

THE OPEN COURT. l8i as property of such mentally constituted matter, the "observed phenomena as foundation materials." He very mental stuff of which it consists? How can our says: "In our modern observations of natural phenom- mind or consciousness be a property of some of its own ena we have not only the mutual aid rendered by one mental or conscious percepts? Surely, a thing, or exis- sense to another, but the corroborative evidence of tent of whatever kind, cannot possibly be a property of numerous and intelligent co-workers." some part of itself. This probing of natural phenomena by aid of the

If Professor Cope had come, in conformity with senses is indeed the true method of investigation where most thinkers, to lose his primitive faith in the existence we have to deal with perceptible or so-called -physical outside his consciousness of that very same material and phenomena. But when mental phenomena are thought tridimentional world, which he evidently only knows as to interfere in the perceptible or physical nexus, how are phenomenon within his consciousness, he would have we to ascertain this alleged fact of interaction by the found it a rather perplexing task to recognize rightly method of sensible observation ? It is quite evident that the veritable nature of objective reality and its relation mental phenomena cannot themselves be observed in the to mind. same manner as physical phenomena.

The ever recurring philosophical question here is Here we have unquestionably arrived at the point whether, as the entire given content of consciousness is where the method of objective observation completely undoubtedly of mental consistency, reality itself may forsakes us. We are compelled to call in the aid of not be altogether a creation of mind; or, in other words, introspection, and the aid also of a theory of cognition, whether thought may not be identical with being? If which attempts to harmonize the two different positions; this is denied, then it has to be positively shown why that of objective observation and that of mere inner we have a right to assume that "being" or "reality or subjective awareness. subsists in all verity in the form of non-mental existents Professor Cope, beholding the designed volitional beyond our own percepts. movements of animal organisms, feels convinced that

To gain firm ground amid these idealistic quicksands' they are not mechanically effected ; that they are cen- where " the feet sink at every step," it is of the utmost trally originated by quite another mode of efficiency. consequence clearly to recollect that we have real expe- I entirely agree with him. I am no less convinced of rience of mind only in connection with living organisms, the hyper-mechanical nature of these movements and of and that the higher the organism, the higher also its mind. their central origin. But through what kind of efficiency Sundry attempts scientifically and philosophically to ex- do they derive their specific character? Professor Cope plain these empirically given facts have led me to the con- says through consciousness. I say through centrally clusion that mind is in verity a forceless outcome of vital established organization. And in favor of this latter organization; and not, vice versa, organization a product view it must be admitted, and is indeed unhesitatingly of mental power. Perceptions, memories, thoughts, admitted by Professor Cope, that such movements, volitions, as mental phenomena, I hold to be outcomes seemingly impelled by consciousness, can be and often of vital organization. And I do not hold that vital are in reality and at present the outcome of consciousless organization is, vice versa, a construction effected by the organization; while, on the other hand, we have no evi- mental or conscious quality of such phenomena as per- dence of any kind positively to show that consciousness ceptions, memories, thoughts and volitions. Far from is anywhere in nature a power capable of moving mat- believing that it is " absurd " to think that what we know ter. Indeed, a close and critical examination of the as consciousness is, and has always been, confined to the given state of things renders it obvious that conscious- narrow limits of vital organization, it seems to me on ness itself can never become such a moving power; for the contrary a most unwarranted and entirely unverified it turns out to be itself in its very existence and in all assumption to maintain that consciousness exists any- its manifold modifications strictly dependent on specific where unconnected with vital organization. For, it is constitution and on specific activities of the manifesting quite certain, that in actual nature we find consciousness substance. in all its modifications wholly and strictly dependent on Still, I fully concede that it intuitively appears to us, specific organization, and occurring in direct experience as if our voluntary actions were performed, not only its con- nowhere without it. My biological knowledge, both in concomitance with consciousness, but under physiological and pathological, has rendered it indeed trol. And this is so for a similar reason to that which utterly impossible for me to imagine any kind of con- makes it intuitively appear to us as if the world within sciousness detached from vital organization. our own individual preception were in all verity the Professor Cope believes that we can arrive at true real objective world. We know, namely, our body, conclusions concerning reality simply by following the like all other things, only as it is revealed to us in our method of objective science, which trusts fully the testi- individual consciousness, not as it exists independently mony of our senses, confining itself altogether to sensibly of this conscious realization. In performing voluntary 4 S2 THE OPEN COURT. movements we ideally realize the central process as The above considerations render clear, that nothing what we call ideational forecast and volitional flat; and in introspective consciousness can possibly be the verit- thereupon sensibly perceive the peripheral outcome as able cause of those perceptual movements which movement of our body. We are at once inwardly con- become conscious to us through sense- stimulation scious of the so-called volitional part of voluntary move- effected by the external existent known as our body. ment, while we experience its motor part only after- It is, indeed, the activity of a certain definitely percep- ward through the roundabout way of sensory percep- tible organ of this same body which gives rise to the tion. These two facts are both facts within our con- introspectively realized ideas and feelings, initiating sciousness; though the first of them is introspectively also the complex and specific stimulation, whose periph- realized, while the other is or can be realized objectively eral outcome is perceived as purposive movement. by means of the senses. We have an immediate inner To the dreaming subject the vivid and complex con- experience of the central activity, but a mediate sense- scious states, which make up the eventful phantasma- stimulated experience of the peripheral activity. goria he is witnessing, seem to be altogether self-sus- Now, as we are not in the least conscious of the tained, emanating from no organic matrix. But no organic process, which in reality connects the brain- scientific philosopher doubts at present that the deter- function with the distant muscular function, such mining condition of this phantasmal display consists objectively perceptible muscular function naturally really in a most definite functional brain-activity. Such appears as a strange and yet actual outcome of what is dependence of the inner conscious experience upon an introspectively realized as ideal conception and volun- organic process is as certain a scientific fact as any other tary impulse. We are aware that the central process well-ascertained dependence in nature. And are not the and its peripheral outcome are certainly in some way intelligent gestures and vocal sounds, accompanying the connected with each other. And though we realize the inner vision of the dreamer, likewise an outcome of the central process only through introspection as an ideal same organic brain-activity, which is disclosing itself as experience, while the peripheral outcome is, on the intensely significant also to his ideal sight? Can any contrary, realized through the senses as perceptual one seriously believe that it is, for instance, a mentally movement, we feel strongly impelled to take for granted constituted enemy, whom the deluded sleeper is seeing that this extrinsically awakened perception of ours is so distinctly approaching in his inner field of vision, or indeed the direct effect of the intrinsic ideas and feel- the ideal forecast of the ingenious way he is determin- ings. It seems to us as if our mentally experienced ing to encounter him, or, indeed, anything else con- volition were indeed the actual cause of the movement sciously present in his dream, which is setting his motor perceived as a sequent of it. It is, however, obviously brain-molecules designedly vibrating, so that their prop- absurd to believe that an inner idea or feeling of ours agated activity will give rise to those expressive move- can be the efficient cause of a perception awakened ments of his features and arms, and to the still more in us through our senses by external stimulation, emana- expressive movements of his vocal cords, which appear ting from the non-mental existent known as our body. to the beholder and listener "saturated with intelli- VVhen we see an arm moving, though this percep- gence"? Surely all phenomena here present, whether tion is undoubtedly a conscious state of ours, we are introspectively realized as ideal perceptions, thoughts and nevertheless convinced that there is a real organic volitions, or objectively apprehended as purposive existent —a real arm—subsisting outside our consciousness movements and intelligent speech, are alike due to the and performing the veritable act, which we perceive as play of centrally organized powers. movement. This firm conviction, that a veritable extra- It is, then, obviously no self-subsisting idea or feeling conscious or physical existent is compelling its presenta- which gives rise to what we perceive as purposive move- tion in consciousness, attaches to all our sense-stimulated ments, but a genuine organic process taking place in percepts. It is not so with our intrinsically arising ideas what is most distinctly perceptible as the brain of the and feelings, with our emotions, thoughts and volitions. subject, who erroneously believes his ideas and feelings We do not refer them in the same way to the compelling to be self-subsisting, and on the strength of this illusion presence of some extra-conscious existent. They seem, takes them for the veritable cause of these purposive on the contrary, to our introspective view, to be entirely movements of his. self-subsisting, to be floating self-made in a medium of Every definite conscious volition rests on a definite their own. That this is altogether an illusion, that they conscious forecast of the act to be performed, in its rela- are likewise the outcome of the activity of a definite, tion to the specific medium in which it is to be performed, extra-conscious existent, can be positively and most dis- and to the peculiar end which is thereby to be attained. tinctly realized by an observer, who is in a position All this ideal play is admitted to be strictly dependent actually to perceive the organ of whose activity they on previously organized experience. Therefore, the are the outcome. consciousness, imagined to set going such a definite THE OPEN COURT. 4*3 concatenation of organic efficiencies, can be figured only beautifully than any one else, but has been the only as an outside agent playing upon their springs of action, great writer who has let it end as it should. as a performer plays upon a musical instrument, or a His " Prometheus Unbound " opens by showing the telegraph operator upon his machine. champion of mankind, bound to the icy precipice, and So antiquated a way of imagining the relation of waiting calmly, as day breaks, for the destined hour consciousness to intelligent vital function is, however, which shall free earth from the almighty Tyrant, who not Professor Cope's way. He believes some unspecial- gives her sons nothing better than fear, self-contempt ized, hyper-organic will-power to create for the execu- and barren hope, as a reward for prayer and praise, and tion of designed aims new specific energies, which force toil and hecatombs of broken hearts. So certain is the unformed material within the central organ to assume deliverance that hatred of heaven's cruel King has those special modes of motion, which propagated to the changed to pity; and Prometheus takes back the curse peripheral organs, issue as purposive movements. In which he pronounced long ago. He refuses to betray this case the definite conscious forecast, with a full the mighty secret with all the pride, but none of the knowledge of the organic instrument to be used, of the passion, portrayed by .Eschylus; and he is not punished medium in which it is to be used, and of the aim to be with the lightning and the vulture, as in the Greek accomplished, would have to belong to the performing drama, but with revelations of the misery inflicted on unspecialized will-power, which would then evidently men by those who have tried to liberate them. The be an omniscient, transcendent power using us organic furies show Jesus dying on the cross, with the result individuals as mere passive tools for its own aims. that his name has become a curse, and those most like him are hated and persecuted by his slaves. France,

too, is seen, hurled by her desire to establish truth, PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. freedom and brotherly love, into a chaos of fratricidal BY F. M. HOLLAND. bloodshed, ending in renewed slavery to tyrants. yEschylus told in "Prometheus Bound," that great Prometheus triumphs over the mocking furies, by the drama which has been translated admirably by Plumptre firmness with which he declares that he pities every one and Mrs. Browning, how cruelly the ideal philanthro- who does not sorrow with him over this misery, which pist, who gave fire to mortals and taught them all other proves nothing except that the reign of superstition and useful knowledge, was tortured for refusing to help tyranny has become too wicked to endure. These Jupiter avert the doom which threatened to end his hopes are confirmed by the songs of friendly spirits, guiltv reign. How righteous would have been the who predict more successful revolutions, and show what destruction of the Olympian tyranny, is shown by the good has been already done by philosophy and poetry. presentation on the stage of poor Io, one of the many That same morning a sea nymph who loves Prome- victims of deified lust. This was not the first time that theus is guided by melodious voices down to the cave of the great conflict between morality and religion made Demogorgon. This mysterious power, whose name itself heard in literature. The Hebrew prophets had reminds us of that of Demiurge, given to the Creator already denounced the priests. yEschylus does not by the most liberal of the early Christians, appears as a appear to have done much more than state the problem. shapeless darkness. From within issues a voice declar-

He probably wrote three plays on this subject to be ing that all good things are made by God. To repeated acted successively the same day, according to custom; questions who made madness, crime, self-contempt, fear but this is the only one that has come down to us; and of hell and other evils, Demogorgon answers: "He the series appears to have ended in a reconciliation. reigns." The nymph asks who, then, is to be called

Thus runs the legend of Prometheus, as universally God; but the reply is: received in ancient Greece; and no other solution would I spoke but as ye speak, then have been tolerated. The hero who defies almighty For Jove is the supreme of living things. * * * A voice wrath so grandly in this drama could scarcely have sunk Is wanting; the deep truth is imageless; to selling himself and all mankind as basely as he is For what would it avail to bid thee gaze made to do by the Lucian. Still there mocking must On the revolving world? What to bid speak have been some sort of compromise, according to even Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change? To these ^Eschylus. The legend has also been treated of by All things are subject but Eternal Love. Hesiod, Goethe, Longfellow and Robert Browning. After these words, reminding us of Shelley's belief

Various myths about the theft of fire from the gods, by in "a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe," some primitive friend of man, for instance the dog or though not in " a creative Deity," Demogorgon the spider, have been found among the Algonquins, announces that the destined hour has come. The roof

Australians, Bushmen, Finns, New Zealanders and other of the cave is rent asunder, and the chariots of the savages. Shelley has not only told the story more Hours are seen passing over. One, darker than all the ;

4§4 THE OPEN COURT. rest, tarries to take up the terrible shadow and carry it them enforce the laws we have, care only for enacting a to heaven. There sits Jupiter, waiting for the mighty law which we shall never really have except as a dead offspring who is to help him trample out the last sparks letter; from labor reformers who see the workmen not of doubt and insurrection among men. But Demogor- only help support the worst monopolies which the dark gon is so terrible that Jupiter can only cry: "Awful ages have bequeathed us, but start a new one which shape! what art thou?" The answer is: threatens beggary to ail those of their own class not self-bound slaves to the caprices of despotic upstarts; and, Eternity! Demand no direr name. Descend, and follow me down the abyss. worst of all, from champions of free thought who find

I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's child; the dungeons that have been broken open still full of Mightier than thee; and we must dwell together prisoners who prefer to stay there, and the fetters that Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not. have been rent in twain busily refashioned into new The tyranny of heaven none may retain, chains. all need the faith of Prometheus in the Or re-assume, or hold, succeeding thee. We freedom which must surely come. Jupiter and Demogorgon sink together out of sight; the reign of personal gods is ended; Prometheus is MONISTIC MENTAL SCIENCE. unbound; and men are free forever. Speaker after THE EVOLUTION OF THE NERVES AND BRAIN. speaker then tells, sometimes in the most musical of BY S. V. CLEVENGER, 1U.D. songs, how there will be no more wars; how all thrones The brain and nervous system are generally regarded are kingless on earth as well as in heaven; how men as the centers of mind and sensation. The view is cor- and women have ceased to fear, or hate, or scorn, or rect enough in one way and wholly erroneous in another, deceive any one, and how man has become king over for there are more animals without than with brains, or himself, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, even nervous systems, to whom mind and sensation can- Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, not properly be denied. Whose nature is its own divine control, The protoplasmic amceba, that reduces the problems Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea. of physiology to their simplest forms, is irritable. Especially beautiful is the chorus of spirits who sing: Mechanical irritation, such as the prick of a pin, will

We come from the mind stimulate it to accelerated motion. Any living matter Of human kind, that thus explodes energy when stimulated is said to be Which was late so dusk, and obscure, and blind. " irritable." Irritability is the function most highly * * * * * * From those skyey towers developed in the nerves, especially the nerve centers,

Where Thought's crowned powers and it is through the motions induced we have the only Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours! objective evidence of sensation. If you prick a man and

Shelley's faith in republicanism and hatred of anarch- he writhes, you surmise he has felt it; if he does not ism are not so plainly manifested in "Prometheus move you do not know whether he felt the prick or not.

as in of Islam," "Hellas," Contractions are very common manifestations of irrita- Unbound" "The Revolt , "Ode to Liberty," and "The Masque of Anarchy;" bility, but so interchangeable are " vital " and physical but this may be ascribed to the same sense of poetic forces, sometimes the stimulus produces heat instead of fitness which here fortunately kept his peculiar views " vital " movements. about marriage out of sight. His devotion to the cause In the protoplasm, from which all the tissues pro- of political and intellectual freedom has been fully justi- ceed, reside the abilities of all those tissues. For fied by many glorious victories, not only in England, example, the nervous system is eminently irritable, the France and Italy, but in America, since the publication muscles are eminently contractile; other organs have of his greatest poem in 1S20. So much of the thor- developed special abilities, such as locomotory, prehen- oughly good and radical work then called for in "Pro- sile, gustatory, reproductory, respiratory. What was

metheus Unbound " remains still undone, that we ought possessed undifferentiated by the simple protoplasmic to ask ourselves if we are not too easily satisfied with cell has become separately the functions of particular

what has been accomplished by our predecessors, and groups of cells. How this came about is the problem of

too timid and slothful in carrying on the great war comparative physiology which the theory of evolution

against all tyranny and superstition. I, for one, cannot is solving. The body and mind are too indissolubly

rest silent, until I see Prometheus unbound as fully in connected to admit of any psychology being other than

Russia, Ireland and Germany as in America, and until I absurd if all physiological functions are not discussed

cease to hear, even in this most free of all countries, the but the necessity for condensing compels us to skim over

groans of the chained Titan still arising from suffragists some of the most interesting processes of development baffled by the apathy of the suppressed sex; from toilers with mere references. against intemperance, who find those who ought to help The one-celled developed into the many-celled THE OPEN COURT. 4S5 animal, the morula (Fig. 9) or mulberry form, because the systems is evident in ignoring the bearings of this cells, instead of escaping, were bound together by an most powerful sentiment, and its derivation, upon all life outer membrane. The morula ate and grew, as did the relations. amoeba, only when it burst by repletion it liberated one- The relativity of the terms excretion and secretion is celled animals that afterward became many-celled, simply noticeable when we study how the cell groups live that because the materials that composed the young were make up the body. One set of cells may be situated to split off, inherited, from the parent, and for purely receive the unelaborated food, part of which it absorbs mechanical reasons the life history of parent anil offspring and part passes through its cellular contents chang£d to would be the same. other conditions. This changed food becomes, per The gastrula stage (Fig. 10) comes next when the force, that upon which the next set of cells thrive best, manv-celled animal, the mulberry form, collapsed and and we may follow these changes from meat and vege- formed a bag with a layer of cells inside and another tables ingested to the secretion of milk and tears. outside. This stage is represented by a vast number of Thus we are compelled to shamefully slur over the animals, such as the sea-anemones and worms. grand stories biology has to tell in the endeavor to reach the nervous system quickly. But perpetual reference to the other organs must be made to apjjreciate, anything £W!3® like adequately, what the brain does. We have seen that certain cells develop extraordi- narily what primarily was the single-cell ability. From

Fig. o. Ki|T. 10. the amoeba performing with its one little protoplasmic

Elongate the gastrula animal, and vou have the dot all the life activities we have in the higher metazoa worm shape. Gradual improvements occurred in some intestinal cells that elaborate food and hold other activi- of these forms, as favorable circumstances were encoun- ties in abeyance, muscle cells that contract to stimuli, tered, and step bv step the rudimentary intestine devel- ovarian cells that centralize reproduction, lung cells that ops a stomach and other subsidiary organs, as the habits are mainly respiratory ."j" of the descendents change and adaptation is necessary. To a greater or less extent the original abilities are

Blood vessels appear, and their evolution can be easily preserved in every cell, no matter what function it traced to the twisting of an artery upon itself to form a serves. All cells must eat, secrete, reproduce—some heart, and further. Likewise the course of limb growth rapidly, others slowly. The work devolving upon them through blunt projections, fins, up to wing or arm and determines how much of and what particular character feet successively; the change of swimming bladder into shall predominate, as with men. lungs and the advancement of protoplasm into cartilage When the many-celled animal without a nervous sys- and some of the latter into bone, the passage also of tem receives an impression and responds to it bv moving, protoplasm cells into unstriped muscle cells, thence into the impulse is propagated from one cell to the next and the striped muscles. All this came about through acci- but sluggish motions are induced. Manifestly it would dent. The collapsed morula found it had a bag in be an advantage to have a telegraph system to cause which albuminous substances could be held and digested instantaneous and united action. better. The cells that lined this bag as naturally and Little amceba-like animals J happening to live where readily developed into special eating cells as politicians sand abounded picked up an overcoat of that material by become thieves —through opportunity, ability and desire. agglutination. The mollusc falling in with chalky and

Special reproductory cells developed from the internal other lime particles, which it separated from its food by sac. Every organ may be traced in its growth from the excretion, developed its shell because the secretion hap- egg (a single protoplasmic cell), and in its successive pened to adhere externally. The hermit crab finds a

modifications in series of animals succeeding one another covering already made, and occupies it by squatter from the amoeba to the man. right. It does not matter to any one of these how the

That the feeling of love was derived from hunger, advantage befell; it is taken as such and adjusted to.

and is identical with it in protozoa, can be explained here The fighting cock will use the steel gaffs as though they

only in a general way.* The folly of the metaphysical had grown from his legs, nor is the cell a particle more

*I condense from the article which first announced my theory, in Science me, when we consider similar fusions in alg.e and protozoa and the fact that

(S. Y.),June i, iSSi: fission produces offspring, no matter whether repletion comes from food or can- A paper on "Researches into the Life History of Monads," by Dallinger nibalism, the identity of the act thnt precedes fission and the hunger-appeasing

and Drysdale, was read before the Royal Microscopical .Society, December 3, act justifies the belief that hunger primitively developed the other desire as 1S73, wherein fissure of the monad was described as being preceded by the a differentiation. absorption of one form by another. One monad would fix on the sarcode t Observe that the lung is appended to the upper part of the alimentary of another, and with it coalesce. The large remaining monad would undergo canal as evidence of the association of eating and respiration, and that the fission and multiplication. I.eidy asserts that the amoeba is a cannibal, where- oviducts and cloaca are connected in birds and embryos of higher animals, indi- upon Michels {American "Journal of Microscopy, July, 1S77) infers that the cating the ingestive and excretory nature of multiplication. inonera and ameeba cannibalism is in furtherance of reproduction. It seems to $The rhizopod {astrodiscus arenaccus). — —

4 86 THE OPKN COURT.

particular. It' it find in its environment material that At first doubtless this was a disease, an excresence

has enough affinity for it to remain in its vicinity, and a that was annoying to the animal, but a re-adjustment life process is subserved by that fact, things chemical occurred on the basis of reconciliation and a new mode and mechanical in nature perpetuate the association by of life-working. The cells then were shocked by the natural selection. new tissue, but such forms as could not rid themselves

of it encapsulated it, covered it, just as a bullet in As the rhizopod could not have acquired his covering the body would be covered, in time, a sac. The inter- where there was no sand, the ancestral worm could not by cellular distribution of these nerve granules would now have picked up a nervous system in the absence of exert no effect upon the cells, but whenever, by occasional assimilable phosphates. These nerve compounds had a exposure of the granules to an influence that would molecular mode of action altogether different from any- cause the explosion, it was discovered that instead of thing experienced before by the animals. With evolu- having to wait for motions to be transferred from cell to tion of higher types the explosive substance was excreted cell before the entire organism could be affected by irregularly and later more definitely, as Cope has shown* motory causes this new tissue conveyed the needed was the case with the skeletons of early reptilia. Next stimulation promptly to a distant cell in a very simple an encapsulating membrane formed about these lines ot way. The law of least resistances determined the next phosphatic granules in obedience to the ordinary patho- step. The granules would, from being diffused, be logical process that an intermediary tissue will form arranged, by the motions of the low animal, in some about any foreign substance as a resultant of the mode kinds of lines, even though badly defined ones. The of operation of the two tissues. In due time an area of quick conveyance of impressions made the cell colony nerve granules finds itself being suppressed at one point more energetic, and wherever this energy happened to and arranged at another until the fully developed nerv- conserve life the species with the most definite nerve ous system appears. strands survived. The possibility of so important a structure as the Hunger woujd develop colonial motion in the direc- nervous having been acquired by accident, seems prepos- tion of hunger appeasing movements. The part which terous, but let us reason from other matters to it. You is most affected, the intestinal tract, becomes for the realize that accident kills many. If vou study the time being the center of stimuli production. matter closer you will be convinced it kills more. The law of association steps in to determine what Accidents determine such things as marriages and births cells shall be united. The general cell need of oxygen as well as deaths. Fortune or misfortune are accidental. establishes a muscular and nervous means for circula- By chance and accident is here meant what is generally tion, and other hunger appeasing processes make routes accepted to be their meanings. Strictly speaking when and means elsewhere. everything is the outcome of some preceding cause, there What is known as the neuroglia or gray matter of can be no such phenomenon as an accident, but in the the nervous system I regard as the product of cells that sense of opposed to design it is a convenient term. have developed molecular irritability above all other Bony excretions at first indefinitely arranged served functions; the fact that this gray matter is without but a feeble purpose, but afterward definitely arranged cell membranes counts for nothing—development neces- in lines relating the muscles contraction became more sitated this peculiarity. direct and useful. A highly sensitive neuroglia substance, A, would At first all tissues indifferently exuded the bone and transmit its irritations rapidly to a contiguous highly nerve granules, but eventually certain cells became the contractile muscle, B, thus: ones best suited to elaborate these materials and we have the osteal and the nerve cells as a result of this high A B grade evolution. Then when the sensitive neuroglia was concealed When nerve granules began to be linearly arrangedf and nerve granules conveyed the impressions inward the even then these rudimentary nerves served but hap- next arrangement appears— S, the "sensory nerves" hazard uses. Each pellet was an excreted compound of Better definition gives lines of phosphorus with organic hydro-carbonaceous materials nerves instead of the plexus which, however faintly it exploded, when disturbed, Then s |~ became a new experience in the environment to be reck- oned upon. Heat follows - and light increased its molecular m an illy arranged set of nerves between the muscles and " kick." Electricity, though less often met with, affected the gray matter, afterward becoming better arranged the substance more than anything else. as the " motor nerves." Fossil Batrachia, American Naturalist, 1SS3. This is really what occurs t Kleinenburg's Hydra and Hnbrecht's Pseudoxematon nervosum, a low in the embryological development of every animal that y

THE OPEN COURT. 4S7 has a nervous system at all, as well as in the "phy- interfered with; their motions do not seem to be prop- togeny," or evolutionary progress. erly adjusted to a reasonable end, as when the eel in We are now prepared to consider reflex nervous escaping wriggles toward instead of away from vou. action. Toin a lot of these segments thus: Plainly such low forms as by accident procured a better adjustment and moved in response to stimuli in a way to secure prey and escape enemies would not only sur-

vive but multiply by descent the higher forms so insti-

tuted, and these improved nervous systems would lift their successors gradually through the vertebrate series and the diagram represents the spinal cord and nerves to the highest life. of the connecting link between vertebrates and inverte- If there be a choice of two routes for the passage of brates.* the impulse in the gray matter the wavering between Up to this stage indifferent tissues have secreted the these two routes constitutes hesitation, which we shall nerve granules; thereafter the basis substance of sensa- see a little later on is the basis of doubt, thought, reason 1 tion, the neuroglia, A, develops these nerve elements, When by any superiority of advantage over the other a and under the microscope the homogeneity of the neu- route is selected the irritation disturbs a more direct roglia disappears, and ascending through intelligence tract of molecules in the cord gray, so as to invariably becomes more and more filled with fibrils of fine gran- respond to the given stimulus, and a certain set of ules of a nervous character. muscles are moved, then automatism is established, and Yet development goes on and the neuroglia gen- we have instinct, which is the end, the aim, the death of erates nerve cells, whose office it is to more rapidly and reason. These deductions will be fortified as we proceed. readily form these granules for the axis cylinders of the nerves. TH. RIBOT ON WILL. The number of impulses or irritations required to BY DR. P. CARUS. produce a continued contraction in the feebler developed Part 11. muscles is thirty per second; in the voluntary muscles, Impairment of the power of attention is a diminu- such as are concerned in moving the body or limbs, tion of the will-power in the strictest sense of the term. nineteen and one-half per second.* Fewer impulses Attention may be natural and spontaneous, or it may be passing over a nerve result in tremors or trembling. A voluntary. lowered vitality, such as drunkards exhibit, or when Spontaneous attention may be observed in the there is emotional diversion, interferes with the proper crouching animal watching for its prey; the child succession of impulses, and the muscles are tremulous. intently gazing at some spectacle; the poet contemplat- The inseparableness of psychic and physical life is ing an inward vision, or the mathematician brooding evident from lowest to highest, but may be well illus- over the solution of a problem. The true cause of it is trated by the headless lancelet and the lamprey eel an affective state which excites our interest. Eliminate with a feeble but better developed nervous system. The emotion, and all is gone. Voluntary attention, which is last cut essentially represents the spinal cord of the commonly credited with marvelous feats, is only an arti- lancelet, with ingoing sensory and outgoing motor ficial imitation of spontaneous attention. nerves. If an irritation passes in over one of the first- Instances of mediocre minds in whom spontaneous mentioned nerves and reaches the gray irritable matter attention is impaired are numerous. But it is more of the cord the irritability is communicated up and down interesting to study the case of a gifted man who lacks the gray and irradiated to the general muscular system the power of direction. Thus we shall see a perfect through the motor nerves. (Diffusion). Now, if a contrast between will and thought. Coleridge is an certain sensory nerve bundle became subjected more instance of this. than others to a peculiar impression the nearest motor Dr. Carpenter quotes a description of Coleridge in nerves would not only respond most energetically, but Chap. VII. of Carlyle's Life of fohn Sterling: " Cole- the gray molecules would perforce arrange themselves ridge's whole figure, good and amiable otherwise, might better to accommodate the passage of the impulse. be called flabby and irresolute, expressive of weakness Here we have our sensation and memory again, only under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his in this case with special tissues for their seat— the neu- limbs, with knees bent and stooping attitude. In walk- roglia. But the motions are just as liable not to serve as ing he rather shuffled than decisively stepped; and a to serve a useful purpose, and that is the fact we can lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of observe when a worm or even some low vertebrate is the garden walk would suit him best, but continually * Amphioxiis laiireolatus. shifted in corkscrew fashion and kept trying both. t Exner. * * * % Helmholz. His talk wasdistinguishedlike himself by irres- 4 8S THE OPEN COURT. olution; it disliked to be troubled with conditions and diminution of the directive power and ends with an definite fulfillments. * * * You put some question inability of any intellectual effort.

its to him, instead of answering it, he would accumulate Attention, by origin, is of the nature of reflex formidable apparatus for setting out toward answering action. Voluntary attention, the highest form of which is reflection, rests upon the involuntary, and derives from it. * * * There was probably never a man it all its force. Compared with the latter it is very pre- endowed with such remarkable gifts who accomplished carious. The mechanism of attention acts by the so little that was worthy of them, the great defect of his impulse of a fictitious emotion and an inhibition of all character being the want of will to turn his gifts to other impulses and movements. Education has to account. * * * At the very outset of his career, develop the power of these fictitious emotions and make when he had found a bookseller who promised him them stable by repetition. Helvetius says: "All intel- thirty guineas for poems which he recited to him, he lectual differences between one man and another spring went on week after week begging and borrowing for only from attention." his daily needs in the most humiliating manner until Hysteric caprice is not, as some physicians have he had drawn from his patron the whole of the prom- strongly contended, an exaltation; it indicates an ised purchase money without supplying him with a line absence of will. Capriciousness is at most velleity, the of that poetry which he had only to write down to free merest sham of volition. Dr. Huchard gives a descrip- himself from obligation." tion of hysterical persons: "One prominent trait of

The composition of the poetical fragment "Kubla their character is mobility. From day to day, from

1 Khan ' in his sleep, as told in his Biographia Litter- hour to hour, from minute to minute they pass with aria, is a typical example of automatic mental action. incredible rapidity from joy to sadness, from laughter to He fell asleep while reading the passage in Pitrclias's tears." * * * "They behave," says Ch. Richet,

Pilgrimage in which the "stately pleasure house" is "like children who oftentimes can be made to laugh mentioned, and on awaking he felt as if he had com- heartily, while their cheeks are still wet with the tears posed from two to three hundred lines, which he had they have shed! Their character changes like the views nothing to do but to write down, "the images rising up of a kaleidoscope." as things, with a parallel production of the correspond- The instability of hysteric persons is a fact; its cause ent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness is very probably to be found in functional disorders of effort." The whole of this singular fragment as it and the lack of a solid, stable basis. If the physiological stands, consisting of fifty-four lines, was written as fast conditions are out of order, if the motor apparatus is as his pen could trace the words; but having been inter- deranged; if the vaso-motor, secretory and other func- rupted by a person on business who stayed with him tions are disturbed —how can we expect a stable equilib- above an hour, he found to his surprise and mortification rium of the whole organism? It would be a mira- that " though he still retained some vague and dim recol- cle if a stable character could rest upon so wavering a lection of the general purport of the vision, yet with the base. exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and Impairment of the will can lead to its absolute images, all the rest had passed away like the images on extinction. The psychic activity is or seems to be com- the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, pletely suspended in deep sleep, in anaesthesia, in coma but, alas without the after-restoration of the latter." and similar states which indicate a return to vegetative

The impairment of voluntary attention occurs in two life. Ecstasy and somnambulism are the morbid cases forms. The one is produced artificially, the other is a of an extinction of will. They are instances where one special type of aboulia. The artificially produced form of mental activity remains while there is no possi- impairment of voluntary attention is characterized by- a bility of choice followed by act. superabundance of feelings and ideas in a given time, as Ecstasy, whether mystic or morbid or physiological obtains in the state of alcoholic intoxication. The or cataleptic, is fundamentally the same in all its forms. exuberance of cerebral activity is more noticeable in the Some ecstasists reach the ecstatic condition naturally in more intellectual intoxication produced by hasheesh or virtue of their physical constitution; others assist nature opium. The individual feels himself overwhelmed by by artificial processes, Tor instance by gazing fixedly at the irresistible tide of his ideas, and language is too slow something, a luminous subject, or the sky, or one's navel to express the rapidity of his thoughts. But at the same (after the manner of the monks of Mount Athos), or by time the power of directing the course of his ideas repeating continually the monosyllable OM (a name of becomes weaker and weaker and the lucid moments Brahma). The Buddhists call their ecstasy the earthly grow shorter and shorter. Nirvana, Christians the enjoyment of God. The other form of impairment of the voluntary St. Theresa thus describes her physical state during

attention is a disease which consists in a progressive her " raptures:" "Oftentimes my body would become THE OPEN COURT. 4S9 so light that it no longer possessed any weight— some- corrected and pruned his sentences. Facts ot this kind are times I no longer felt my feet touching the ground. so numerous that even making allowance for credulity

While the bodv is in rapture, it remains as though it and exaggeration, it is impossible to reject them all. were dead, and often is absolutely powerless to act. It And is not what the poets call inspiration an involun- retains whatever attitude it may have assumed at the tary and almost unconscious sort of brain work—at moment of the access; thus it continues standing or least it is not conscious save in its result. seated, the hands open or closed, — in a word it continues We find among hypnotised persons instances of in the state wherein the rapture found it. Though resistance. An order is not obeyed or a suggestion is commonly a person does not lose feeling, still it has not followed immediately. One of Richer's subjects happened to me to be entirely deprived of it. This has readily allowed himself to be metamorphosed into an occurred very rarely, and it has lasted only for a very short officer, a sailor, etc., but he refused with tears in his time. Most frequently feeling remains; but a person eyes, to be transformed into a priest. This could suffi- experiences an indefinable disturbance; and though it is ciently be explained from the whole atmosphere in impossible to perform any external act, one still can which the man had lived. hear a sort of confused sounds coming from a distance. It ma}' be remarked that it is difficult for the And even this kind of hearing ceases when the rap- observer to say what power of reacting persists in the ture is in the highest degree." person who resists, and the person himself is no better There can be no choice in ecstasy. Choice presup- judge. In the period of somnambulic drowsiness a cer- poses that complex whole ego which has disappeared. tain consciousness is retained; but even if an educated,

There is nothing that can choose, nothing that is chosen. intelligent man submits to the operation, it is difficult to As well might we suppose an election without either him to make sure that he is not simulating. electors or candidates. "A friend of mine," Richet relates, "who was hyp-

Ecstasy is the reduction of a mental state to a one- notised, but not quite put to sleep, observed closely this imaged idea, which engrosses the entire consciousness. phenomenon of impotence coincident with the illusion Consciousness exists only on the condition of a of the possession of his will. When I indicated to him perpetual change, it is essentially discontinuous. A a movement to perform, he always executed it, though homogeneous and continuous consciousness is an impos- before being magnetised he was quite determined to sibility. In ecstasy consciousness either disappears or resist. This he had the greatest difficulty in accounting comes back only at intervals.. There is absolute abolition for after awakening. 'Certainly,' he said, 'I could of will, the conscious personality being reduced to one resist, but I have not the will to do so.' Sometimes he single state which is neither chosen nor rejected, but is tempted to believe that he is simulating. ' When merely suffered. I am dozing,' he says, ' I simulate automatism though I

Somnambulism, hypnotism and analogous states are could, as it seems to me, act otherwise. I begin with not identical in all individuals and in every case. What- the firm resolution not to dissimulate, but in spite of ever be its cause, the hypnotised subject is an automaton myself, when sleep begins, it seems to me that I simu- " which acts according to the nature of his organization. At late.' a word from the operator, the hypnotised subject rises, This power of resistance, weak though it be, is the walks or sits down. His only will, as we say, is that of the last survival of individual reaction, and the illusion of operator. By giving to his members certain postures we this feeble power of inhibition must correspond with can awaken in him the emotion of pride, terror, anger, some equally precarious physiological state. devotion, etc. If we place him in the position for In the normal state volition is a choice followed by climbing, he moves his limbs as if he were going up a act. The necessary conditions of a choice may be ladder. If we put in his hands any instrument he has called will. They form a very complex mechanism of been wont to employ, he goes to work with it. The both impulsion and inhibition. If impulsion is absent, position given to the members awakens in the cerebral no tendency to act appears, as in aboulia; if inhibition is centers the corresponding psychical states with which absent or impulsion is too intense, it prevents the act of they have become associated by much repetition. The choice, as in hysteria and in instances of caprice; if inhibi- passage to action is the easier because there is nothing tion excludes all external impressions and annihilates im- that hinders it, neither a power of inhibition, nor any pulsion, will is, extinguished, as in ecstasy and somnambu- antagonistic state. The idea awakened by the operator lism. Accordingly will is a cause with respect to has sole dominion in the slumbering consciousness. volition, but in itself it is a sum of effects which result

Some cases of somnambulism are very doubtful. from and vary with its physiological constituents.

Burdach tells of "a very fine ode" which was com- Character is the psychological expression of a given posed in a state of somnambulism. The story has often organism, it is not an entity but the resultant of the been told of the abbe who in preparing a sermon innumerable infinitesimal states and tendencies of all the 49° THE OPEN COURT. anatomical elements that constitute a given organism. type of a life always in harmony with itself, because in

It is the ultimate stratum whereon rests the possibility them everything converges to a definite aim. of will and which makes the will strong or weak, inter- The "I will" shows that a state of consciousness

exists, but it does not constitute the situation ; it mittent, average or extraordinary. has in itself no efficacy in producing action, for the "I will" The will has for its basis a legacy registered in the is like the verdict of a jury by a consensus. It may be organism which has come down from generations innu- the result from a charge of the judge and very passion- merable. Upon this basis rests the conscious and indiv- ate pleadings of disagreeing parties. There are groups idual activity of the appetites, desires, feelings and of conscious, subconscious and unconscious states which passions. Their co-ordination is more complex and far altogether eventually find expression in an action or the less stable than the primordial automatic activity of the inhibition of an action. All this psycho-physiological organism. Higher still we have ideomotor activity; work of deliberation results in a state of consciousness, is volition. It may therefore be said that this perfect or the "I will" which pronounces the verdict. If will

a hierarchic co-ordination, i. e. perfect volition forms in the sane man is a co-ordination exceedingly complex that all shall co-ordination with subordination, so con- and instable, it is by reason of its very superiority easily verge toward a single point, which is the end to be broken up, being, as Maudsley says, " the highest obtained. The morbid cases are all reducible to absence force yet introduced by nature— the last consummate of hierarchic co-ordination; viz. to independent, irregu- efflorescence of all her wondrous works." lar, isolated, anarchic action. THE POSITIVE VIRTUES. Volition comes not from above but from below; it is a sublimation of the lower elements. Volition may be BY PROFESSOR THOMAS DAVIDSON. compared to the keystone of an arch. To that stone the Part II. arch owes its strength, even its existence; nevertheless, Monasticism, as I have said, is Christianity carried to this stone derives its power from the other stones that its ultimate consequences. It has lost its hold upon the support it and press it on all sides, as it in turn presses modern world, in large degree. And not only so, but them and gives them stability. the modern world has actually turned against it, no When the nervous system is disturbed by any dis- only rejecting and despising it, but proscribing it. In ease, tbe latest and highest structures are the first to fail. most of the countries of Europe, the monasteries have The more voluntary parts are always much more gravely been broken up and their property has been confiscated. paralyzed than the others. The course of dissolution is Whatever may be said by formal lawyers about the from the complex to the simple, from the voluntary to justice of this confiscation, it was the result of a right

the automatic, and the final term of evolution is the instinct and a true insight. Monasticism is not only not the initial term of dissolution. The functions last to be highest form of human life; it is not, strictly speaking,

acquired are the first to degenerate. In the individual, human life at all. automatic co-ordination precedes co-ordination springing But, though monasticism, the extreme form of Chris- from the appetites and passions; this latter precedes vol- tianity, has been overthrown, the spirit which made untary co-ordination, and the simpler forms of voluntary monasticism possible still prevails, and molds all our attention precede the more complex. notions of morality. Moral life, to most people even In the development of species, according to the evo- now, means an endeavor to reach the zero-point of vir- lution theory, the lower forms of activity existed alone tue, a state of simple innocence; as the New Testament

for ages; then with the increasing complexity of the puts it, " to become as little children." A man or a co-ordinations came will. Hence a return to the reign woman satisfies all our notions of virtue, who does not con-

of impulsion, with whatever brilliant qualities of mind it travene one-half of the Ten Commandments— the third,

may be accompanied, is in itself a regression. The will sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth; that is, who does not

varies in complexity and in degree; it attains extraordi- swear, murder, commit adultery, steal or lie; and we are

nary power only among a privileged few; but though it not over particular about any of these sins, except mur-

performs great feats, it has a very lowly origin. It has der, unless a man commits them in such an awkward

its rise in a biological property inherent in all living way as to become a public scandal. Hut, even granting

matter and known as irritability, that is to say, reaction that our notion of virtue presupposed strict adherence to against external forces. From irritability- the physio- the whole decalogue, the notion would still be a very

logical form of the law of inertia— spring sensibilty and imperfect one, a very low and false one. There is no

mobility, those two great bases of psychic life. positive virtue whatever in obeying the Ten Command- In the nature of great men some mighty irrepres- ments, or any number of commandments, telling us to

sible passion is fundamental. This passion controls all refrain from certain courses of action. There is simply

their thought and it is the man. Such men present the absence of vice. Virtue consists in doing good, not in 1

THE OPEN COURT. 49 refraining from evil. There is no generosity in paying He is received everywhere during his life, and honored one's debts, even if one should be left, in consequence, and lamented, as a virtuous man, after his death. On the without a penny. Generosity begins where a man gives other hand, let a man be public-spirited; let him be well what positively belongs to him —his money, or, better versed in the history of man; let him understand man's yet, his moral and intellectual sympathy and help. And needs; let him be an active member in all schemes for so with the other virtues. public well-being, whether they be economical, social,

The spiritual deadness of the piesent time, the fer- political or religious; but let him, at the same time, have tile source of nearly all the other evils which infest us, some fault of appetite or passion; say, let him but once is, in very large measure, due to the current doctrine, have committed some single act under the influence of based upon the myth of a fall, that man is a fallen and his lower, carnal nature, and all his public spirit, all his depraved creature, and that his sole aim is to return to efforts for the well-being of his kind, will be forgotten, his primitive state of innocence—in other words, the and his little peccadillo will be trumpeted over the world doctrine that virtue is simply the absence of vice. by prurient or sanctimonious scandal-mongers, who are

If there is anything that our present world needs, it so little themselves that they cannot even understand a is, to be freed from the doctrine of a fall and from all man of large positive virtue and public-mindedness. It its implications. The implications are more tenacious is so pleasant to be able to find a man who does not and more hurtful than the doctrine itself, and many peo- come up to our little, three-inch model of virtue, with ple who have escaped from the latter are still bound, whom we can favorably compare ourselves and plume hand and foot, in the former. Of these implications, ourselves on the result! But, in spite of all this, the the most baneful in its consequences, perhaps, is the tiny standard mav be, in the main, conventional. It notion that virtue is the absence of vice, and that, in order may be a standard that does not measure human virtue to be virtuous a man need not contribute any positive at all, but merely human dread of such standards and amount to the world's good. Of this, above all things, base human bowing down to conventional usage. we must rid ourselves, and learn that we must not only This, of course, is in every sense wrong, and leads forsake evil, but, further, learn to do good. to most undesirable and painful results. The man of Let us see for a moment what would be the results strong, generous character, with here and there a little of this riddance — of coming to the conviction that, in surface fl.iw in it, that the smallest nature can detect and order to be virtuous, a man must not only avoid vice, gloat over, is in all his undertakings harassed bv a crowd but contribute positively to the world's good—contribute of puny critics, who distort and misrepresent his motives knowingly and of set purpose. and his acts, until he is almost fain to leave the silly,

The first result will be, that we shall have less respect blind world to its own ways and their consequences. than we now have for mere respectability. Respecta- See what a pother was raised over poor Goethe's faults, bility is a word which admirably designates the moral over Burns's! How many sermons, condemning these condition that corresponds to the zero-point of virtue, as men as dangerous to humanity, have been preached and currently fixed. A respectable man is simply one who still are preached, from pulpits that have only words of has no debts recorded in the public moral ledger. He eulogium for the selfish capitalist, who has ruined and need not have any credits recorded either. Now, one enslaved hundreds of other men, in order that he may of the most powerful obstacles to high and manly mor- have the comfort, the power and the vulgar considera- ality is the honor accorded to this kind of man by the tion that come of wealth. What an unworthy fly-plague public generally. A man may be deficient in everything of carping and sanctimonious condemnation has risen that constitutes the true man and the true citizen; he from the moral swamps of the world on account of cer- may know nothing of the history of man, of his physical tain facts in the lives of great women, like George Sand or mental constitution; he may know nothing of art, and George Eliot. One would think the "Neither do I science, literature, religion, politics or political economy; condemn thee " had never been uttered. In the midst he mav know little of his country's history ; he may take of all this carping and condemnation, the great positive no share in any scheme for the public weal ; he may vote virtues of these men and women are forgotten. They with the party that promises to protect his business best have not the virtues professed by curates and church- or he mav not vole at all; he mav spend his whole life wardens, and therefore, they have no virtues at all! in collecting wealth for himself and his family, without And yet Goethe and Burns and George Sand and George ever asking whom such acquisition mav oppress, and Eliot were far more virtuous people than any curate or yet, so long as he does not lie or steal vulgarly, that is, church- warden that ever was. If we do not see and feel beyond the degree of lying and stealing allowed in the this, it is because we have a false idea of what constitutes code of industrial and commercial morality, he is virtue, and think that it consists in merely seeking the accounted a good and respectable man, and his success zero-point of goodness and being content with that. in obtaining wealth is counted to him for righteousness. Let me not be misunderstood here. I have not the ——! !

49- THE OPEN COURT. smallest intention of depreciating the specific virtues of the curate and the church-warden. They are virtues, great The Open Court. virtues, and the world would he on an evil path, if they were made light of in theory or disregarded in practice. ^v FORTNICHTLY JOURNAL.

Hut they are not all virtue; they are not even the great- Published every other Thursday at 169 to 175 La Salle Street (Nixor est of virtues. A man may lack them in their perfection, Building), corner Monroe Street, by and yet be a more virtuous man than he who has them THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY and them alone. The selfish, respectable Pharisee is a B. F. UNDERWOOD, SARA A. UNDERWOOD, far less virtuous man than the great-hearted, strong- Editor and Manager. Associate Editor. pulsed, loving toiler for humanity, who occasionally The leading object of The Open Court is to continue allows his exuberant love to flow into wrong channels. the work of The Index, that is, to establish religion on the Perhaps, of all the obstacles to human advancement and basis of Science and in connection therewith it will present the Monistic philosophy. The founder ct this journal believes this well-being, there is none so great as respectable Philis- will furnish to others what it has to him, a religion which tinism, self-r.ghteous, self-contented, unsympathetic, embraces all that is true and good in the religion that was taught in childhood to them and him. shell-bound. It was against Philistines that Jesus of Editorially, Monism and Agnosticism, so variously defined, Nazareth protested so vehemently, declaring that the will be treated not as antagonistic systems, but as positive and negative aspects of the one and only rational scientific philosophy, most sensual of men, the inhabitants of Sodom and which, the editors hold, includes elements of truth common to all religions, without either the Gomorrha, would stand higher at the bar of virtue and implying validity of theological assumption, or any limitations of possible knowledge, except such justice than they. It is against this class of people that as the conditions of human thought impose. advocating morals and rational the growl of modern socialism and communism is The Open Court, while religious thought on the firm basis of Science, will aim to substi- directed, and it is this class that will be swept away, if tute for unquestioning credulity intelligent inquiry, for blind faith rational religious views, for unreasoning bigotry a liberal spirit, ever socialism gains the upper hand. Respectability is tor sectarianism a broad and generous humanitarianism. With arrested moral evolution —evolution arrested at the zero- this end in view, this journal will submit all opinion to the crucial test of reason, encouraging the independent discussion by able point of virtue and often below it. And we shall soon thinkers of the great moral, religious, social and philosophical come to recognize this, and to treat mere respectability problems which are engaging the attention of thoughtful minds and upon the solution of which depend largely the highest inter- as it ought to be treated, as but the babyhood of virtue. ests of mankind (TO HE CONTINUED.) While Contributors are expected to express freely their own views, the Editors are responsible onlv for editorial matter. SONNET. Terms of subscription three dollars per year in advance, postpaid to any part of the United States, and three dollars and IiY COWAN LEA. fifty cents to foreign countries comprised in the postal union. All communications intended for and all business letters [written on returning from visiting somh homes OF THE l'OC OCTOBER 2, 1SS7.] relating to The Open Court should be addressed to B. F. Underwood, Treasurer, P. Drawer F, Chicago, 111., to whom ARTS. O. TO THE should be made payable checks, postal orders and express orders. Hail Music! Waft me now upon thy wings

Beyond these vapors of the murky night; THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1SS7. Bear me afar to regions fair and bright, Where with one grand accord the angels sing! MORAL AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.

Thou 'rt whispering of an ideal spring It may be safely said, that the more science we have,

Where Poesv and all the Arts delight the more morality also will we have. True, much immo- In honoring each; where the inspired sight rality is seen in communities that .are in possession of Sees beauty underlying everything. considerable knowledge, and we hear it said, that in Ye white-robed seraphs—Music, Poesv some savage tribes is found a morality which shames Descend amid earth's poverty and pain civilized nations. But such statements predicated upon Make sufferers forget their misery; superficial comparison of simple and complex communi- And evil-doers vow to sin no more; ties are of little value. If we would form an idea of the difference in the character of the savage and the Say unto each : " My brother, try again moral

I would unlock for thee thy prison door." civilized man, we must imagine the Digger Indians sud- denly organized into a community, with institutions and ON FINISHING "THE RUINS." agencies as numerous and relations as complex as those

VOLNEY. of the City of Chicago. Such a change, were it possi- In skies of truth thy star shall ever gleam ble, would at once involve not only great intellectual Thou Galahad whose quest was light; ne'er can development, but the education of the moral sense and A grateful world thyself auoht other deem such differentiation of moral conduct as would be neces- Than great as wise— untinged by sect or clan; sary to adjust the members of the community to the Nor bigotry defame thee— patriot, scholar, man! requirements of the new life. Such intellectual and # * moral changes cannot be effected without science, and THE OPEN COURT. 493 then only by slow changes extending through centuries. this knowledge that comes to help man in controlling

Morality depends upon scientific progress; and if a the forces of nature, left simply to the worship of an people who have made considerable advancement in unseen Being or to a dreamy, nebulous contemplation science is still more or less under the dominion of laws of the universe, man never could have advanced from and habits which belong to an unadvanced condition, it the conditions of savage life to those of the present day. shows only how largely the present may be in slavery With the increasing complexity of man's observations to the past, and illustrates that men may outgrow beliefs and experiences, upon which the enlargement of the and vet be under the influence of those beliefs. Many mind and the growth of the moral sentiment have imagine that they have emancipated themselves from depended, science has extended her empire, while the the thralldom of creeds, when they have all the dog- domain of theology lias become smaller, or has been con- matism, bigotry and bitterness which those creeds engen- tinually excluded from the province of verifiable knowl- dered in their ancestors, and which they themselves have edge. We insist then upon the importance of science, received partly by education ami partly by inheritance. 'not only in its application to what are called physical

It is science that has chief!}' promoted the practical facts, but in its application to the human mind, its morality we have to-day in the most enlightened com- expressions and products, including the religious senti- munities, because it is science that has taught us what is ment and the moral sentiment as well as religious sys- involved in all the old precepts, and enables us to realize tems and the moral code. them in life. The words "Be just" express the whole duty of man under all circumstances, in all climes; but PLEASURE AND PAIN. intellectual development, including scientific knowledge, Some references to happiness and unhappiness that has enabled man to learn what is just. The abolition of were made by Mr. John Burroughs and Mr. Xenos slavery and the growth of international law were made Clark in preceding numbers of The Open Court sug- possible by science, not by the repetition of precepts gest an issue that thoughtful people must face, as the known to the ancients as well as to ourselves. The fact well-disposed with cool intellects take the reins of the that much needs to be done to make men understand world's affairs from the well-disposed with heated emo- morality in the application of its principles to practice is tions. Mr. Clark makes a fair statement of the blank- illustrated by the unwillingness of the orthodox clergy holder's fate being a gnat in the prize-holder's estima- to consent to the taxation of church property, when tion, and the blank-holder's protest being very disagree- thev know that such taxation compels people who do able to the prize-holder. We must recognize the fact not believe in the churches to suppoit them. It is sec- that when one holds the prize he thinks differently from ular knowledge and scientific progress that will finally what he would if he held the blank. Herbert Spencer effect this change, and not simply repeating the words shows that sympathy arises as an altruistic feeling of Tesus and exhorting men to obey them. The broth- through conceiving ourselves in the place of the one erhood of man was taught, not only by Jesus, but by needing the sympathy, and Dr. Clevenger claims that poets and'sages in India and Greece; what the brother- " it is owing to this that ladies may crush bugs and flies hood of man really means in actual life was not under- without compunction, while the naturalist who studies stood until science brought men and nations into com- them and recognizes their pain and pleasure kinship with munication, and indeed, is not fully understood yet. ourselves, usually refrains from the unnecessary infliction The invention of the telegraph has done more to pro- of pain. The rich forthis reason, seldom feel forthe poor. mote the brotherhood of man than all the preaching to In fact, those who ride in carriages, have an involuntary which men have listened since that invention commenced contempt for those who go afoot. The knowledge its work of uniting men in the bonds of a common that this is a natural feeling should only operate toward

humanity. It is now enabling us to put in practice overcoming it. Unpleasant information of this kind what was before to a large extent mere theory, because usually invokes a storm of denial from the mob. They it is making men more cosmopolitan in their views and prefer to think themselves descendants of the angels and sympathies. And so the invention of printing, which refuse to analyze their own sentiments. The unwel- has spread knowledge broadcast, has been an important come truths should be faced and an honest endeavor factor in social advancement, which means also moral made to develop good traits that we do not possess." progress. Instead of indulging in mere unreasoning denunci- Science, by affording men good surroundings, teach- ations, or going to the pessimistic extreme of bewailing ing them how to live, making them acquainted with the uselessness of efforts to improve the condition of the their numerous relations, giving them good laws and unfortunate, or taking the middle course of lazv indif- correct ideas of nature and of duty, strengthens and ference to suffering, we should see what science can do develops the highest sentiments and the noblest traits in the premises.

of character. Left without these scientific aids, without There is a great amount of suffering all about us 494 THE OR EN COURT. which the hospital, the asylum and other systematic and may be considered in the light of an act of excretion unsystematic charity fail to reach, and from the dismal so far as the blood and the rest of the organism are point of observation, the sighs, groans and shrieks of concerned. There is no other fundamental differ- humanity seem condensed into tornadoes and thunder ence between the two processes than such as arises peals. But the beautiful world perennially blooms, its out of the diverse distinctions of the separated mat- fountains play, while music and festivities unceasingly ter." Foster's Physiology, p. 16, also says: "The dis- lead the prize-holders to forget the existence of miser)' tinction between excretion and secretion is unimpor- elsewhere. And it is natural for the fortunate and tant and frequently accidental." The skin secretes happy to avoid the suffering of others, notwithstanding and excretes perspiration. In the same sense milk and that the prize-holder of to-day who is fertile in excuses bile are secreted and excreted. Certainly this is a for his inability to do aught for his fellows, to-morrow subject with which Mr. Wakeman is not acquainted. may be the blank-holder with unlimited suggestions as to how he could be helped, and with surprise at the Of Dr. Edmund Montgomery, who during the' heartlessness of the rich; on the other hand, the past fortnight has been the guest of Mr. Edward shivering, half-starved wretch of yesterday, may when C. Hegeler at Ea Salle and of the editors of this jour- fortune overtakes him, turn away from the outstretched nal and other friends in Chicago, the Tribune of this hand with the plea "One cannot help everybody." city makes the following mention: the late arrivals in Chicago is Dr. Edmund Mont- Something is being done and wisely done for the Among gomery, a gentleman well known among thinkers by his scientific poor and unfortunate, but that something is a straw and philosophic writings. He is a Scotchman, born in Edinburg toward the construction of a Holland dyke. Sociology in 1835. He studied in German universities— Heidelberg, Berlin, as a study should be the recreation of the munificent. Bonn, Wurzbtirg, Prague and Vienna. Was acquainted with Through its cultivation reasons for things could be Schopenhauer in 1850, when he lived at Frankfort, and with plainly seen. From understanding the causes of pain Moleschott and Helmholtz, whose lectures he attended. From i860 to 1S63 he had a laboratory at St. Thomas' Hospital, Lon- and sorrow in the world, the remedies can best be don, and was there lecturer on physiology. A lecture by him administered. All that concerns men should be induc- before the Royal Society on " Cells in Animal Bodies " a'tracted tively studied. Knowledge of the conditions of exist- much attention among scientific men, and extravagant theories ence begets an interest and disposition to improve them. of life were erected on the strength of his conclusions. Lung Those who have the means as well as the ability may trouble compelled him to exchange climate, and for six years he practiced medicine at Madeira, Mentone and Rome. In 1871 feel the keenest delight in mastering the intricate prob- appeared at Munich his work often cpuoted in controversy, enti- lems which the miseries of life present. Such men as tled, Die Kanthche Erienntnisslchre Widerlegt von Standfunhte Saltaire boldly attack the difficulties and afford experi- dcr Emfin- (Kant's Theory of Knowledge Refuted from the ences that may be profitably regarded by others. The Empirical Standpoint). It is a powerful criticism of Kantism and calls " naturalism." Dr. Mont- discovery has been made in the Eastern States that a strong plea for what the author gomery combines the qualifications and tastes of the philosopher reformed tenement houses which afford greater comfort with those of the man of science. He has devoted years to the to the poor are paying investments, and this suggests microscopic examination of the lower forms of life, and his con- that direct advantages of a pecuniary nature may in the tributions to biology have been most valuable. For several years

future move to great humanitarian measures. In fact he has been a contributor to I he London periodical, Mind, the ablest philosophical journal in the world. His two papers read the world is finding out by practical experience that before the Concord School of Philosophy, although lie was not both directly and indirectly it pays to be decent, consid- personally present, attracted wide attention by their originality erate and humane. The highest expediency is the and depth. Some years ago Dr. Montgomery, on account of his highest wisdom. ill-health, came to this country and went South, where he bought a plantation in Texas, on which he has since lived. * # * The last issue of Freethinkers' Magazine reprints our editorial on the alcohol question " to preserve" All that is valuable or realizable in religion, belongs to the domain of science. Fundamentally con- ( this is what Mr. T. B. Wakeman, the associate edi- properly tor, says) "the valuable facts with which the article sidered, religion is an expression of man's relation to the concludes, and also a precious bit of fog — the amus- universe, and it is a part of the sum total of human expe- ing confusion of our esteemed metaphysical contem- rience. If it be objected that religion is an emotion and porary, The Open Court, over secrete and excrete'' is not observable, and cannot therefore be dealt with by An equally "metaphysical" writer named Carpenter the methods of science, the reply is, that it is the w ork

is responsible for that amusing confusion, for he of science to take cognizance of our thoughts and feel- their states (p. 357, Principles of -Human Physiology) 'that, ings, to compare and arrange them, to observe 'The literal meaning of secretion is separation; the objective effects and to bring them within the province ordinary processes of nutrition involves a separation of classified knowledge by reducing them to order and of components of the blood, and every such removal system. To speak of religion as beyond or outside the THE OPEN COURT. 495 scientific domain, is to speak of what is beyond the that gives greater satisfaction to those who have no power of the human mind to consider or conceive in sympathy with the masses, and who rejoice whenever relation to the life and character of men. Whether anything occurs to which they can point in seeming religion be regarded as doctrines formulated into creeds, confirmation of their theory that the working class must and organized into systems, or as an intuition or ten- be "kept under with a strong hand," than the very acts dency in our nature, the result of ancestral experiences of lawlessness which these poor sons of toil, in their extending back through the ages to the time man began simplicity, think will redress their grievances and right to experience emotion in contemplating nature, and his their wrongs. * * * relation thereto, it is the work of science to illumine the mind in regard to this subject. Nothing that exists is exempt from the law of inte- * * * gration and disintegration. Nations, like individuals, Germany settles the fro and con of patent medicine have their stages of adolescence, full development and manufacture by compelling the compounder to print a decay. Religious orders may be founded by sincere, list of the ingredients on his labels. Foreign goods of even though deluded minds, and eventually the weak the kind are analyzed by government chemists. A points in their systems find them out as the world moves widely advertised kidney cure was thus officially an- past them. Secret societies usually have some basis of nounced to contain nothing medicinal but a small quan- good in their composition, and men are banded in an tity of winter-green. It is to the interest of the great exclusive brotherhood ostensibly to accomplish some "public educator," the daily newspaper, not to antago- noble purpose, and doubtless in the aggregate good of nize this, in the main, nefarious business. Patent medi- some kind is done, but every human institution presents cine venders grow wealthy upon the credulity ot the opportunities for designing persons, which they are not ailing. The entire matter is not a simple one, but may slow to utilize. In churches or societies the hypocrite be resolved into a few considerations as follows: Manu- is loudest in his professions, the strictest to observe the facturers of proprietary medicines are not always igno- outward requirements. Too often is the announcement rant of the effects of remedies, but as a rule they are; unblushingly made that the object of joining a lodge was nor are they always dishonest, but dishonesty has great- a purely mercenary one:" It helps my business." If this scope in the vending of nostrums, and to say they do were claimed as incidental to the joining and that the not often take advantage of popular want of knowledge desire to find a field of usefulness was the main incentive, would be untrue. Usually the combination was origi- it would not be so bad. What must be consequent upon nated by some physician and found to be effective in organizations—whatever their pretensions — filling up certain cases, but it is not wise to rely upon untrained with men who want to make something out of one judgment as to the applicability of drugs to disease. another? It is not surprising that low grade politicians * * * should see their chances in such brotherhoods, to further We cordially welcome to these columns Col. T. their knaveries and to be guaranteed a certain amount of W. Higginson, one of America's best known scholars immunity from punishment for crimes committed. We and thinkers, from whose pen this number of The do not doubt that a strict interpretation of the constitu- Open Court contains a thoughtful and suggestive tion of nearly every secret society would enable the article on "The Stronghold of the Church." Even well-disposed to oppose rascalities, but with the prosper- those who are obliged to dissent from some of his ity of every institution comes a disposition to ignore, to conclusions, as we certainly are, will nevertheless misinterpret and pervert its recorded principles. The find his thought, even on these points of difference, wolves grow more powerful and the lambs are afraid to worthy of the most careful consideration. bleat. Nothing short of a recognition of the universal * # # brotherhood of man should satisfy any one. If you There can be no industrial prosperity, no popular fancy your means or opportunities are not sufficient to reform, no extension of freedom, no progress, without enable you to be positively helpful to the world at large, security of life and property, which is necessarily imper- a little reflection will convince you that you can help iled or weakened by every act of lawless violence that abundantly if vou conquer yourself and refrain from goes unpunished. Intelligent workingmen, looking doing positive harm to your neighbors. beyond the moment, instead of restricting their own liberties and opportunities by encouraging mob law Mr. Salter in his excellent article printed on and riotous demonstrations, will trust to education, agi- another page applies the word idealism to a philo- tation and the ballot for reforms which some in their sophical theory which is as thoroughly realistic as ignorance and short-sightedness imagine they can secure any theory can be. The antithesis of his idealism is by coming together, arming themselves with clubs, and not, as we are accustomed to use the word, realism, making raids upon private property. There is nothing but crude eighteenth century materialism. —

496 THE OPEN COURT.

THE OCCULT SCIENCES IN THE TEMPLES OF probably derived from these lost books, that the Egyp- ANCIENT EGYPT. tians possessed records of 373 solar eclipes and S32 BY GEORGIA LOUISE LEONARD. lunar; and he carries back these observations to the [A paper read at the " Fortnigntly Conversation," Washington, D. C, period of 48,863 years before Alexander. Bunsen* May 5th, 1SS7.]

t Conclusion.) remarks, "If they were actual observations they must The most conservative Egyptologists admit that this have extended over 10,000 years, for the ancients assur- ancient people possessed a very considerable knowledge edly observed and reckoned none but total or almost " of both mathematics and astronomy. Prof. Proctor total eclipses." In Egypt, if anywhere," says Dio- speaks of them as being " astronomers of great skilly* dorus,y " the most accurate observations of the positions and says, " they were manifestly skillful engineers and and movements of the stars have been made. Of each architects, and as surely as they were well acquainted of these thev have records extending over an incredible with the properties of matter, so surely must they have series of vears. They have also accurately observed the been acquainted with the mathematical relations upon courses and positions of the planets and can truly pre- which the simpler optical laws depend. Possibly they dict eclipses of the sun and moon." The truth of these knew laws more recondite, hut the simpler laws they statements it would be folly to doubt, when we are certainly knew."f In Appendix 'A' to this author's assured by HeroditusJ in the most positive terms, that work on The Great Pyramid, we are told, in relation "thev knew these things with accuracy, because they to the amount of mathematical and astronomical knowl- always computed and registered the years." edge in their possession, that in these particulars "mod- That portion of their calculations which was ern science has made no real advance upon the science regarded as the most secret, undoubtedly related to the known to the builder of the great pyramid."| In this evolution of our planet, both physically and spiritually connection the opinion of Prof. Henry Draper, is inter- such evolution proceeding in cycles, of greater or lesser " esting. Speaking of the great pyramid he says: So duration. They taught that the close of the "great accurately was that wonder of the world planned and vear" was attended by destructive cataclysms either of constructed, that at this day the variation of the compass fire or water — like that which in " one awful day and may actually be determined by the position of its sides. "§ night" submerged Atlantis beneath the waves, as told Upon the ceiling of the beautiful temple of Dende- to Solon by the Egyptian priests — and that a corres- rah there is a representation of the zodiac. It has been ponding change took place both in the physical and claimed that this is a work of the Ptolemaic period; but intellectual world. an inscription found at Denderah distinctly states that Astrologv was pursued hand in hand with the the building had been restored in accordance with a higher mathematics and astronomy. Professor Proctor plan discovered in the writings of the Khufu, or Cheops, seeks to prove in his work on the great pyramid that who belonged to the fourth dynasty. Certainly this evi- that monument wqp reared not alone as a tomb for dence is strongly presumptive of the antiquity of this Khufu, but for astronomical and astrological purposes celestial map. as well. Very likely this was so, but is it not possible In considering the amount of mathematical and that there were also other reasons? Why was it oriented astronomical knowledge possessed by the Egyptian with wonderful exactness? Why, of necessity, con- priests, we must remember that they kept their cyclic structed in the pyramidal form, with its apex pointing notations in the profoundest mystery, as their calculations toward heaven? What meant the long secret passages, applied equally to the spiritual as to the physical pro- and the seven impenetrable chambers, one succeeding gress of mankind. another? and what purpose did the great sarcophagus The " Sacred Books " of the Egyptians were ascribed serve which Professor Piazzi Smythe declares was used to Hermes Trismegistus, and ante-dated Menes. They for a corn-bin ? were 1,100 in number, we are told by Tamblicus, and Mystery surrounds us upon every side as we seek to problems of the past. forty-two were still extant in the time of Clement of solve these believed in implicitly by the Egyp- Alexandria. They contained an epitome of the secret Astrology was tians, and they considered unquestioned the influence of knowledge, and treated of many different subjects. The the planets upon the destines both of individuals and the majority of those books are now lost to us, and of them human race collectively. Mr. Tylor,g speaking of as- we know only what has been preserved in the works of trology, says that "its professors appear to have been later writers. Diogenes Laertius makes a statement, the earliest to use the magnetic compass to determine

* Proctor. The Great Pyramid, p. 127. * Bunsen. Egypt's Place, Vol. I. p. 14. flbid., p. 11S. Diodorus Sir, 2-113, % Ibid., p. 191. (Appendix "A," by Joseph Baxendell, F. K. A. S.) I * Book II., 145. § Draper. Intellectual Development, Vol. I. p. Si. Diog. Laer. Proem II. § Tyler. Anthropology, p. 341. THE OPEN COURT. 4y7 the aspects of the heavens," and admits that "the magi- own, and which we can only wonder at and imitate, not cian gave the navigator his guide in exploring the equal. world." Magic in its highest sense was a part of the daily life The Egyptians took careful note of all singular or of the Egyptian priests. unusual occurrences, whether related to the heavenly Plato, we know, studied with these priests. Leckv* bodies or to themselves, and observed omens connected tells us that " whenever his philosophy has been in the with everything they undertook. They even watched ascendent it has been accompanied by a tendency to the day when any one was born. magic." This magic was practiced by the priests in Perhaps in no branches of science was their knowl- divers ways, some of which we can only guess at. edge more conspicuously apparent than in those of They were seers, clairvoyants, diviners and dreamers of chemistry and alchemy. It has been vigorously denied dreams. They understood and manipulated the subtlest that they understood anything more than the rudiments properties of matter. No wonder they were not aston- of chemistry— and as for alchemy! the idea has been ished at the exhibitions of Moses, who had learned all treated with derision. A few instances will show their he knew in their own temples! superiority to modern achievements, and inference may In their religious works, veiled as they are in sym- be left to do the rest. In the perfect imitation of bolism, we discover a belief in an all-pervading, universal precious stones we have never even approached them. essence—call it the astral ether, or psychic force, or od, Many splendid imitations of emeralds, amethysts, and or biogen, or akas, or what you will—from which other gems of rich and varied hues, have been found in emanated all things, and which could be controlled and the tombs of Thebes; and their brilliancy and perfec- directed by those who were instructed and otherwise tion is such that the}- almost defy detection. Among properly qualified. They believed in ghosts, and that the immense emeralds mentioned by classic authors, was the living under certain well-known conditions could the colossal statue of Serapis, in the Labyrinth, nine communicate with the souls of the departed. cubits, or thirteen and a half feet in height, and com- Gtrald Massey,f in discussing Egyptian terms, says posed of one single stone. Sir Gardner Wilkinson and that "All that is secret, sacred, mystical, the innermost the learned Winkleman speak in enthusiastic terms of of all mystery, apparently including some relationship the beautiful specimens of stained glass —some of which to or communion with the dead, is expressed by the have the appearance of the most exquisite mosaics. Egyptian word 'Shet;'" and in speaking of second- Egypt was an immensely rich country, and it may sight or clairvoyance, he assures us distinctly that " the be a pertinent question to ask, Whence came this enor- ancients were quite familiar with this phenomenon." mous wealth? We know that mines were worked for No one who impartially examines the mass of evi- gold and silver, that tributes were exacted from sub- dence derived from Egyptian and classic sources, can jugated nations, and that a goodly sum was derived fail to be impressed with the belief that the Egyptian from the fisheries. But all these sources could not pro- priests were perfectly familiar with all classes of psychic duce a tithe of her yearly revenue. Enough was spent phenomena, characterized as modern, and that they were upon public decoration to bankrupt a state. Egypt also in possession of secrets pertaining to the so-called was yellow with gold! Besides the thousands of her exact sciences, as well as of the occult, of which we toys, jewels, statues and art objects of the solid metal, to-day have no knowledge or conception. We know of we learn that the sculptures on lofty walls, the orna- a surety that many of their arts are lost—perhaps beyond ments of a colossus, the doorways of temples, the caps recovery. When shall we equal them in metallurgy? of obelisks, parts of numerous large monuments, and When learn how to impart elasticity to a copper blade? even the roofs of palaces and the bodies of mummies or to make bronze chisels capable of hewing granite? were covered with gold leaf. Wilkinson* says, "We know of no means of tempering The statue of Minerva sent to Cyrene by Amasis copper, under any form or united with any alloys, for and the sphinx at the pyramids are instances. Were such a purpose;" and adds, "We must confess that the then the learned priests makers of gold? In the reign Egyptians appear to have possessed certain secrets for of the Emperor Diocletian, the Egyptians rebelled hardening or tempering bronze with which we are against Rome, and for nine years did not lack money to totally unacquainted." carry on the war. Struck by their riches, the Emperor After five millenniums the brilliancy of the colors instituted a strict search throughout the land for all used by the Egyptian artist remains undimmed. After writings on alchemy. These books he ordered to be seven millenniums we wonder at the durability of their burnt, hoping thus to destroy the secret of Egypt's paper, and the lasting qualities of their wafer-like cement. wealth.

It is useless to deny to these strange dwellers in the * Rationalism in Europe, Vol. I. p. 43. \ Massey. Beginnings, Vol. II. pp. 34, 35. old temples, a skill and a knowledge far beyond our % Wilkinson. Manners and Customs, Vol. II. p. 255. 49§ THE OPEN COURT.

We disinter the mummies which have rested undis- ( This doctrine of re-incarnation, often called transmi- turbed since the pyramids were built—and examine the gration or metempsychosis, has been generally grossly misunderstood writers have still perfect features, and the long hair, and the very by who attempted to explain teeth filled with gold ages ago by Egyptian dentists it). With this belief was connected the doctrine of the and we view with amazement the bandages 1,000 "cycle of necessity." Can our Egyptologists say what yards in length in which these forms are swathed—and this cycle was? or what it signified? and can they further then we are obliged to confess that modern surgery can tell what the winged scarabaei of Egypt symbolized? not equal the bandaging, and modern medical art, and which are found by the hundreds in the tombs of modern chemistry are masters of no means by which a Thebes! They cannot, I fear, tell us these things any human body may be preserved for 5,000 years. more than they can explain the septenary composition When we have undisputed evidence as to their of man, or his triune character; any more than they can achievements in these directions, is it the part of wisdom interpret the "unpronounceable" name, which Herodo- to deny that they may have possessed other arts and other tus dared not disclose! sciences, which we are unable to equal or approxi- Their code of ethics was singularly pure and exalted. believed not in mate ? They only the negative virtues, but the

It has been asserted that the Egyptian priests were positive also; and, "A moral life, a life of holiness and frauds and charlatans—deceivers of the people, wily beneficence, was conceived of as being a matter of tricksters, and the vicious worshippers of many Gods. solemn obligation to the Deity himself." The highest principles inculcated In the first place, none were admitted to the priesthood alone were ; and always in the heart save such as were especially fitted by their purity of life of the Egyptian priest were treasured the words of his and holiness of aspiration. The ordeals through which great example — the noble prince and moralist — Ptah- candidates were obliged to pass were very severe, their hotep; "Mind thee of the day when thou too shalt start lives sometimes being exposed to great danger. The for the land to which one goeth to return not thence; priests were humble and self-denying and remarkable good for thee will have been a good life; therefore be for simplicity and abstinence. Plutarch* speaks of them just and hate iniquity; for he who doeth what is right !" as " giving themselves up wholly to study and medita- shall triumph tion, hearing and teaching those truths which regard the Have modern scholars a surer guide to honor and divine nature." They took great care to preserve from uprightness, than the old Egyptian Magist? profanation their secret rites, and excluded all who were Have we any right to utter words of censure or con- considered unfit to participate in solemn ceremonies. demnation?

- " is Clement }- says they were confined to those who from Egvpt dead. Her priests have passed away, and their worth, learning and station were deemed worthy of buried with them in the recesses of impenetrable tombs, so oreat a privilege." Nor was there motive, either for lie her wisdom, her magic, and her glorv. Her greatest o-ain or reputation. All the great priests, scholars and of all foresaw her dread eclipse, and time has but veri- sages could be, if they so desired, supported by the State fied the dark prophetic words of the mighty Hermes: —ample accommodation being provided for them within "O, Egypt, Egypt, of thy religion there will be left the temple precincts, where in quiet, ease and retirement, remaining nothing but uncertain tales, which will be they could pursue their deep researches and subtle believed no more by posterity — words graven on stone experiments. and telling of thy piety!" They were worshipers of one only God, whose

very name was so sacred it was—according to Herodotus THOUGHT WITHOUT WORDS. various divinities but per- —unlawful to utter; and their The conclusion of correspondence between Mr. sonified some form of the divine attributes. Inter- Arthur Nicols, et al., and Professor Max Miiller on find Egyptian science blended and inter-dependent we " Thought Without Words," reprinted from Nature understand the one we cannot remain and religion. To after careful revision: religion ignorant of the other. To the Egyptian his Mil. LETTER FROM MR. ARTIIFR NICOLS. regarded his abode upon earth as was everything. He Watford, June 3, 1SS7. of eternal life. but a short journey upon the pathway The interesting discussion between Mr. Francis Galton and To the future which stretched before him he turned Prof. Max Miiller on this subject will doubtless raise many ques- with hope and longing. He did not believe that when tions in the minds of those who have paid some attention to the habits of animals. I have been asking myself whether, if Prof. his short life closed, physical existence was ended. Again Max Miiller is right in his conclusion—" Of course we all admit and again, his religion taught, he would return to earth, that without a name we cannot really know anj'thing " (an utter- to out in higher forms his spiritual salvation. work able name, I presume), and " one fact remains, animals have no language" —animals must not, therefore, be held by him incapable * Wilkinson. Manners and Crtstoms, Vol. III. p. 54. of knowing anything. This would bring us to the question f Ibid., Vol. III. p. 3S9. ——

THE OPEN COURT. 499 whether animals know in the same manner as men, or in some peer through the sedges. A sharp "quack " from the duck, and other manner which men do not understand. Now, I think—at her brood dive like stones, or plunge into the reeds. She, at least, least it is as strong a conviction as I am capable of entertaining knows what to say to them. that animals not only know, but deal with the materials of knowl- The already inordinate length of this letter precludes me from edge— facts — in a manner quite indistinguishable from the man- offering any instances of the communication at specific intelligence ner in which I mentally handle them myself. Thus, I place an by means of the vocal organs of animals. I think it probable that animal in circumstances which are quite unfamiliar to it, and from we far underrate the vocabulary of animals from deficient atten- which it is urgently pressed to escape. There are two, or per- tion —and, I speak for myself, stupidity. Possibly Prof. Max haps three, courses open to it; one being, to my mind, patently Muller has not yet examined " Sally," the black chimpanzee. If the most advantageous. It tries all of them, and selects that not, he would surely be much interested. She is by no means which I should have chosen myself, though it is much longer in garrulous, but in spite of her poor vocal capacity, if he should still coming to its conclusion. Here the animal has the same facts as consider that she " cannot really know anything" on that account, the man to deal with, and, after consideration and examination, I must have completely misinterpreted his letter to Mr. Galton. its judgment precisely corresponds with the man's. I cannot, then, Arthur Nicols. find it possible to deny that the mental operations are identical in xiv. letter from prof. max muller. kind; but that they are not so in degree can be demonstrated by The Molt, Salcombe, July 4, 1S87. my importing into the situation an element foreign to the expe- As I found that you had already admitted no less than thir- rience of the animal, when its failure is certain. It makes no dif- teen letters on 1113- recent work, Science of Thought, I hesitated ference whether the animal is under stress, or acting voluntarily. for some time whether I ought to ask 3-011 to admit another com- It may frequently be found to choose the method which most munication on a subject which can be of interest to a very limited recommends itself to the man's judgment. Every student of ani- number of the readers of Nature only. I have, indeed, from the mals is familiar with numbers of such cases. Indeed thev are very beginning of my philological labors, claimed for the science constantly being recorded in the columns of Nature, and abound of language a place among the physical sciences, and, in one in all accepted works on animal intelligence. I am quite prepared sense, I do the same for the science of thought. Nature that does to admit that where there are two or more courses open to it the not include human nature in all its various manifestations would animal will occasionally select that which presents the greatest seem to me like St. Peter's without its cupola. But this plea of difficulties and labor most assiduously to overcome them, some- mine has not as yet been generally admitted. The visible mate- times trying the remaining courses and returning to that which it rial frame of man, his sense-organs and their functions, his nerves first chose. Darwin gives a good example of the honey-bee and his brain, all this has been recognized as the rightful domain

(Origin of Species, p. 225, edition 1872). But no one will be sur- of physical science. But beyond this physical science was not to prised at imperfect judgment or vacillation of will in an animal, go. There was the old line of separation, a line drawn by when such are common among men. mediaeval students between man, on one side, and his works, on Prof. Max Muller lays down the very distinct proposition that the other; between the sense-organs and their perceptions; be-

"animals have no language." I suppose ntterable language is meant. tween the brain and its outcome, or, as it has sometimes been Is this so? That their sign-language is both extensive and exact called, its secretion —namely, thought. To attempt to obliterate (and even understood to some extent as between widely different that line between physical science, on one side, and moral science, species) most naturalists, I apprehend, will entertain no doubt. as it used to be called, on the other, was represented as mere con-

But has any species an utterable language? What is to be the fusion of thought. Still, here as elsewhere, a perception of test of this? First there is the whole gamut of vocal expressions higher unity does not necessarily imply an ignoring of useful dis- which even we understand— conveying the ideas offain, pleasure, tinctions. To me it has always seemed that man's nature can unger, -warning. What sportsman who has stalked extremely shy never be fully understood except as one and indivisible. His animals does not know the moment a bird or animal utters a cer- highest and most abstract thoughts appear to me inseparable tain note that he is discovered? If Prof. Max Muller will not from the lowest material impacts made upon his bodily frame- admit this to be language, I for one, must ask him what it is. And " if nothing was ever in the intellect except what was first It conveys to others a distinct idea, in general if not in special in the senses," barring, of course, the intellect itself, it follows terms, and seems to me quite equivalent to " Oh dear!" "This is that we shall never understand the working of the intellect, un- nice " (expressed, I believe, in some African language by the redu- less we first try to understand the senses, their organs, their func- plicated form num-num, the letter 11 having the same value as in tions, and in the end their products. For practical purposes, no the Spanish manana), " Leave of," " Look out," " Come here," doubt, we may, nay we ought, to separate the two. Thus, in my etc. Those who have heard animals calling to one another, par- own special subject, it is well to separate the treatment of pho- ticularly at night, and have carefully noted the modulations of netics and acoustics from higher linguistic researches. We may their voices (why should there be modulations unless they have a call phonetics and acoustics the ground floor, linguistics, the first definite value), will find it very hard to accept Prof. Max Miiller's story. But as every building is one—the ground floor purposeless conclusion that "animals have no language." Every female without the first story, the first story a mere castle in the air with- mammal endowed with any kind of voice has the power of saying out the ground floor—the science of man also is one, and would " Come here, my child," and it is an interesting fact beyond ques- according to my opinion, be imperfect unless it included psy- tion that the knowledge of this call is feebly or not at all inherited, chology in the widest meaning of that term, as well as physi- but must be thought, impressed upon the young individual by experience. ology ; unless it claimed the science of language and of Further, the young brought up by an alien foster-mother pay no no less than the science of the voice, the ear, the nerves, and attention to the " Come here, my child," of the alien species. The the brain, as its obedient vassals. It was, therefore, a real satis- clucking of the hen meets with no response from the ducklings faction to me that it should have been Nature where the questions she has reared, even when she paces frantically by the side of the raised in my Science of Thought excited the first interest, provok- pond imploring them not to commit suicide. But let us creep up ing strong opposition, and eliciting distinct approval, and I vent- under the banks of a sedgy pool at about this time of year. There ure to crave your permission on that ground, if on no other, for swims a wild duck surrounded by her brood, dashing here and replying once more to the various arguments which some of your there at the rising Phryganidic. Now let the frightful face of man most eminent contributors have brought forward against the 5°° THE OPEN COURT.

fundamental tenet of m_v work, the inseparableness of language of thought takes with regard to the fundamental principle of all and reason. philosophy, the identity of language and thought, or even on a Many of my critics write as if they had never heard before of merely subsidiary question, such as the geneaological descent of the identity of language and reason. They call such a theory a man from any known or unknown kind of animal. But I must paradox, unconscious, it would seem, of the fact that to the great wait till the Duke controverts either the linguistic facts, or the majority of mankind all philosophy is a paradox, and unaware philosophical lessons which I have read in them, before I can likewise, that the same opinion has been held by some of the meet fact by fact, and argument by argument. I only note, as a greatest philosophers of antiquity, of the middle ages, and of very significant admission, one sentence of his letter, in which the modern times. I have not invented that paradox. All I have Duke says: "Language seems to me to be necessary to the prog- done or attempted to do is that, while other philosophers have ress of thought, but not at all necessary to the mere act of think- derived their arguments in support of it from mere theory, I have ing." This sentence may possibly concede all that I have been taken mine from facts, namely the facts supplied by the science of contending for, as we shall see by and by. language. I class as letters that have been answered the very instructive Some of critics my again seem to have sniffed something communications from Mr. F. Galton, to which I replied in Nature heterodox in this identity of language and reason, forgetting that of June 2 (p. 101), as well as several notes contributed by corres- philosophy was never meant to be either orthodox or heterodox pondents who evidently had read my book either very rapidly, or in the theological sense of those words, and unaware likewise, as not at all. it would seem, that this opinion has been held and defended by- Thus, Hyde Clarke tells us that the mutes at Constantinople, some of the most orthodox and some of the most heterodox of and the deaf-mutes in general, communicate by signs, and not by modern writers. I shall mention two names only, Cardinal New- words—the very fact on which I had laid great stress in several man and M. Taine. Cardinal Newman in his Grammar of Assent parts of my book. In the sign-language of the American Indians, S), where (p. he tries to define ratiocination or reasoning, begins in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt, and in Chinese and other by carefully separating from ratiocination, as I have done, all that languages which were originally written ideographically, we have is purely sensuous or emotional, the promptings of experience, irrefragable evidence that other signs, besides vocal signs or common sense, genius, and all the rest, restricting "thought" to vocables, can be used for embodying thought. This, as I tried to what can be or has been expressed in words. He then proceeds: show, confirms, and does not invalidate, my theory that we cannot "Let then our symbols be words; let all thought be arrested and think without words, if only it is remembered that words are the embodied in words. Let language have a monopoly of thought; most usual and the most perfect, but by no means the only and thought go for only so much as it can show itself to be worth possible signs. in language. Let every prompting of the intellect be ignored, Another correspondent, "S. F. M. Q.", asks how I account every momentum of argument be disowned which is unprovided for the early processes of thought in a deaf mute. If he had with an equivalent wording, as its ticket for sharing in the com- looked at page 63 of my book, he would have found my answer. mon search after truth. Let the authority of actions, common Following Professor Huxley, I hold that deaf-mutes would be sense, experience, genius, go for nothing. Ratiocination thus capable of few higher intellectual manifestations than an orang or restricted and into put grooves, is what I have called Inference, chimpanzee, if they were confined to the society of dumb associates. and the science which is its regulating principle, is Logic." But, though holding this opinion, I do not venture to say that M. Taine pronounces quite as explicitly in favor of the theory deaf-mutes, if left to themselves, may not act rationally, as little that reasoning, if properly restricted and defined, takes place by as I should take upon myself to assert that animals may not act means of words only, and cannot take place in any other way. rationally. I prefer indeed, as I have often said, to remain a per- In his work, Dc VIntelligence (1S70), after distinguishing between fect agnostic with regard to the inner life of animals, and, for that, proper and common names, he shows that a common name is at of deaf-mutes also. But I should not contradict anybody who the same time general and abstract (Vol. I. p. 25), and that these imagines that he has discovered traces of the highest intellectual general and abstract names are really what we mean by general and moral activity in deaf-mutes or animals. I read with the and abstract " ideas. Partout ce que nous appelons une ide'e ge'ne- deepest interest the letter which Mr. Arthur Nicols addressed to rale nee d'ensemble, n'est qu'un nom; non pas le simple son qui you. I accept all he says about the sagacity of animals, and if I vibre dans l'air et e'branle notre oreille, 011 l'assemblage de lettres differ from him at all, I do so because I have even greater faith in qui noircisseut le papier et frappent nos yeux, non pas meme ces animals than he has. I do not think, for instance, that animals, lettres apercues mentalement, ou "ce son mentalement prononce\ as he says, are much longer in arriving at a conclusion than we mais ce son ou ces lettres doue\ lorsque nous les apercevons ou are. Their conclusions, so far as I have been able to watch them, imaginons, d'une proprtete' double, la proprtete' dMveiller en nous seem to me far more rapid than our own, and almost instanta- les images des individus qui appartiennent a une certaine classe neous. Nor should I quarrel with Mr. Nicols if he likes to call de ces individus seulement, et la proprifftd de renai'tre toutes les the vocal expressions of pain, pleasure, anger, or warning, uttered lois qu'un individu de cette meme classe et seulement quand un by animals, language. It is a perfectly legitimate metaphor to individu de cette meme classe se presente a notre memoire ou a call every kind of communication language. We may speak of notre experience." the language of the eyes, and ev%i of the eloquence of silence. " Ce ne sout pas les objets epais ni les objets ideaux que nous But Mr. Nicols would probably be equally ready to admit that pensons, — mais les caracteres abstraitsqui sout leurs generateurs; there is a difference between shouting "Oh!" and saying " I am ce ne sout pas les caracteres abstraits que nous pensons, mais les surprised." An animal may say " Oh!" but it cannot say "I am noms " communs qui leur correspondent! surprised;" and it seems to me necessary, for the purpose of accu- I may divide the letters published hitherto in Nature into rate reasoning, to be able to distinguish in our terminology three classes, unanswerable, answered and to be answered. between these two kinds of communication. On this point, too, I

I class as unanswerable such letters as that of the Duke of have so fully dwelt in my book that I ought not to encumber Argyll. His Grace simply expresses his opinion, without assign- your pages by mere extracts. ing any reasons. I do not deny that to myself personally, and to I now come to the letters of Mr. Ebbels and Mr. Mellard many of your readers, it is of great importance to know what Reade. They both seem to imagine that, because I deny the position a man of the Duke's wide experience and independence possibility of conceptual thought without language, I deny the THE OPEN COURT. 5 QI

possibility of every kind of thought without words. This objec- the use of language. Here Mr. Murphy comes very near to the tion, too, they will find so fully answered in my book, that I need remark made bv the Duke of Argyll, that language seems neces-

not add anything here. I warned my readers again and again sary to the progress of thought, but not at all necessary to the

against the promiscuous use of the word " thought." I pointed out mere act of thinking, whatever that may mean. But Mr. Mur-

(p. 29) how, according to Descartes, any kind of inward activity, phy, while accepting mv two positions—that thought is impossi- whether sensation, pain, pleasure, dreaming, or willing, may be ble without words, and that all words were in their origin called thought; but I stated on the very first page that, like Hobbes, abstract—blames me for not having explained more fully on what I use thinking in the restricted sense of adding and subtracting. the power of abstraction really depends. So much has lately

We do many things, perhaps our best things, without addition or been written on abstraction, that I did not think it necessary to

subtraction. We have, as I pointed out on page 20, sensations and do more than indicate to which side I inclined. I quoted the percepts, as well as concepts and names. For ordinary purposes opinions of Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Berkeley and Mill, and as for

we should be perfectly correct in saying that we can " think in myself I stated in one short sentence that I should ascribe the

pictures." This, however, is more accurately called imagination, power of abstraction, not so much to an effort of our will, or to

because we are then dealing with images, presentations ( Vorstel- our intellectual strength, but rather to our intellectual weakness.

lungeii), or, as I prefer to call them, percepts and not yet with In forming abstractions our weakness seems to me our strength. concepts and names. Whether in man and particularly in the Even in our first sensations it is impossible for us to take in the

present stage of his intellectual life, imagination is possible with- whole of every impression, and in our first perceptions we cannot out a slight admixture of conceptual thought and language, is a but drop a great deal of what is contained in our sensations. In moot point; that it is possible in animals, more particularly in this sense we learn to abstract, whether we like it or not; and

Sally, the black chimpanzee at the Zoological Gardens, I should though afterwards abstraction may proceed from an effort of the be reluctant either to deny or to affirm. All I stand up for is that, will, I still hold, as I said on page 4, that though attention can be if we use such words as thought, we ought to define them. Defi- said to be at the root of all our knowledge, the power of abstrac- nition is the only panacea for all our philosophical misery, and I tion may in the beginning not be very far removed from the weak- am utterly unable to enter into Mr. Ebbels's state of mind when ness of distraction. If I had wished to write a practical text-book " he says : This is a mere question of definition, not of actual fact." of the science of thought, I ought no doubt to have given more When Mr. Ebbels adds that we cannot conceive the sudden prominence to this view of the origin of abstraction, but as often appearance of the faculty of abstraction together with its ready- in my book, so here too, I thought safienti sat.

made signs or words, except by a miracle, he betrays at once that I now come to Mr. Romanes, to whom I feel truly grateful he has not read my last book, the very object of which is to show for the intrepid spirit with which he has waded through my book. that we require no miracle at all, but that all which seemed mirac- One has no right in these days to expect many such readers, but

ulous in language is perfectly natural and intelligible. And if he one feels all the more grateful if one does find them. Mr. adds that he has not been able to discover in my earlier works any Romanes was at home in the whole subject, and with him what I account of the first beginnings of language, he has evidently over- endeavored to prove by linguistic evidence—namely, that concepts

looked the fact that in my lectures on the science of language I are altogether impossible without names—formed part of the very distinctly declined to commit myself to any theory on the origin A B C of his psychological creed. He is indeed almost too san- of language, while the whole of my last book is devoted to the guine when he says that concerning this truth no difference of solution of that problem. My solution may be right or wrong, opinion is likely to arise. The columns of Nature and the opin- but ij certainly does not appeal to any miraculous interference for ions quoted in my book tell a different tale. But for all that I am the explanation of language and thought. as strongly convinced as he can be that no one who has once There now remain two letters only that have really to be understood the true nature of words and concepts can -possibly answered, because they touch on some very important points, hold a different opinion from that which he holds as well as I. points which it is manifest I ought to have placed in a clearer It seems, therefore, all the more strange to me that Mr. light in my book. One is by Mr. Murphy, the other by Mr. Romanes should have suspected me of holding the opinion that Romanes. Both have evidently read my book and" read it care- we cannot think without pronouncing or silently rehearsing our fully; and if they have not quite clearly seen the drift of my thought-words. It is difficult to guard against misapprehensions argument, I am afraid the fault is mine and not theirs. I am which one can hardly realize. Without appealing, as he does, to quite aware that my Science of Thought is not an easy book to sudden aphasia, how could I hold pronounciation necessary for read and to understand. I warned my readers in the preface that thought when I am perfectly silent while I an writing and while they must not expect a popular bpok, nor a work systematically I am reading? How could I believe in the necessity of a silent built up and complete in all its parts. My book was written, as I rehearsing of words when one such word as "therefore" may said, for myself and for a few friends who knew beforehand the imply hundreds of words or pages, the rehearsing of which would points which I wished to establish, and who would not expect me, require hours and days? Surely, as our memory enables us to for the mere sake of completeness, to repeat what was familiar to see without eyes and to hear without ears, the same persistence of to them and could easily be found elsewhere. I felt certain that I force allows us to speak without uttering words. Only, as we should be understood by them, if I only indicated what I meant; cannot remember or imagine without having first seen or heard

nor did it ever enter into my mind to attempt to teach them, or to something to remember, neither can we inwardly speak without

convince them against their will. I wrote as if in harmony with having first named something that we can remember. There is my readers, and moving on with them on a road which we had an algebra of language far more wonderful than the algebra of

long recognized as the only safe one, and which I hoped that mathematics. Mr. Romanes calls that algebra "ideation," a dan-

others also would follow, if they could once be made to see whence gerous word, unless we first define its meaning and lay bare its

it started and whither it tended. substance. I call the same process addition and subtraction

Mr. Murphy is one of those who agree with me that language of half-vanished words, or, to use Hegel's terminology, aufgeho-

is necessary to thought, and that, though it may be possible to bene Worte; and I still hold, as I said in my book, that it would think without words when the subjects of thought are visible be difficult to invent a better expression for thinking than that of things and their combinations, as in inventing machinery, the the lowest barbarians, "speaking in the stomach." Thinking is intellectual power that invents machinery has been matured by nothing but speaking minus words. We do not begin with thinking :

5°i THE OPEN COURT.

or ideation, and then proceed to speaking, but we begin with state of opinion (for instance about religion) and in amount of naming, and then by a constant process of addition and subtrac- home life. Most children have much more to do with the tion, of widening and abbreviating, we arrive at what I call mother than the father, as well as much more in common. The thought. Everybody admits that we cannot count—that is to women who are not mothers usually have something to do with say, add and subtract—unless we have first framed our numerals. children as aunts, sisters, or teachers. The fact that the female

Why should people hesitate to admit that we cannot possibly bird and the young are alike in plumage is not without a parallel

think, unless we have first formed our words ? Did the in our race; and neither is the fact that it is the female who stays Duke of Argyll mean this when he said that language seemed by the nest. When we consider how much children gain by a to him necessary for the frogress of thought, but not at all for government good enough to make the schools what they should

the mere act of thinking ? How words are framed, the science be, and how much they lose by a government bad enough to let of language has taught us; how they are reduced to mere shad- civil war, famine, or pestilence break out, we must admit that ows, to signs of signs, apparently to mere nothings, the science their interests need as full a representation as possible. And this of thought will have to explain far more fully than I have been cannot be given unless women vote. F. M. Holland. able to do. Mr. Romanes remarks that it is a pity that I should attempt to defend such a position as that chess cannot be played RELIGION AND ITS CORRELATIONS. unless the player " deals all the time with thought- words and word- To the Editors thoughts." I pity myself indeed that my language should be liable Religion, wisdom, science and knowledge are things that to such misapprehension. I thought that to move a "castle" should harmonize with each other; but to make one a basis for the according to the character and the rules originally assigned to it other as when we speak of a scientific basis for religion, does not was to deal with a word-thought or thought word. What is appear to be a correct use of terms. Religion as I understand it "castle" in chess, if not a word-thought or thought- word? I did (after a half century investigation of the constitution of man ) is not use the verb " to deal " in the sense of pronouncing, or rehears- a fundamental element of human nature — a reverent love, which ing, or defining, but of handling or moving according to under- relates to all that is good and great — but not to the great alone, stood rules. That this dealing might become a mere habit I pointed as many misconceive it. The stern spirit of the warrior recognizes out myself, and tried to illustrate by the even more wonderful plav- and adores power alone, and recognizes in the infinite mystery ingot music. But however automatic and almost unconscious such of the universe only power and arbitrary will. This is the con- habits may become, we have only to make a wrong move with the ception embodied in churches which arose in barbaric ages. A "castle "and at once our antagonist will appeal to the original more perfect manhood recognizes happiness, benevolence and meaning of that thought-word and remind us that we can move beauty as well as power. Hence to the normal man and woman it in one direction only, but not in another. In the same manner, there is an ample sphere and gratification for their reverence, love when Mr. Romanes takes me to task because I said that " no one and admiration, in the world of nature and humanity, as they are truly thinks who does not speak, and that no one truly speaks who continually around us, whether we look or not, beyond the appar- does not think," he had only to lay the accent on truly, and he ent to the ultimate occult power. would have understood what I meant—namely, that in the true He who does not so look is commonly called an atheist, yet sense of these words, as defined by myself, no one thinks who the fact that he is more interested in the visible realities of which does not directly or indirectly speak, and that no one can be said he can have some understanding than in the invisible causes to speak who does not at the same time think. We cannot be too which he thinks no one can understand, does not render him any charitable in the interpretation of language, and I often feel that I less a religious man if his emotional faculties are fully and nor- must claim that charity more than most writers in English. Still, mally developed. Indeed many of them who have been called I am always glad if such opponents as Mr. Romanes or Mr. F. atheists were more truly religious than their bigoted opponents,

Galton give me an opportunity of explaining more fully what I who, without true religion (without either reverence or love), mean. We shall thus, I believe, arrive at the conviction that men tyrannize fiercely over their fellows, and blindly believed in an who honestly care for truth, and for the progress of truth, must infinite tyrant whose very existence true religion makes us unwill- in the end arrive at the same conclusions, though they mav ing to admit.- Who can doubt that Voltaire and Hume had a express them each in his own dialect. That is the true meaning fuller and purer religious nature than the majority of the church- ot the old dialectic process, to reason out things bv words more men of their time? and more adequate to their purpose. In that sense it is true also With this view, to which I think the disciples of Comte that no truth is entirely new, and that all we can aim at in philos- should not object, and which would harmonize with the sentiments ophy is to find new and better expressions for old truths. The of Mill, religion is an element of character highly congenial with poet, as Mrs. A. Grenfell has pointed out in her letter to Nature and promotive of the study of nature and attainment of all truth' (June 23, p. 173), often perceives and imagines what others have but absolutely rebellious against the harsh spirit which has been not yet conceived or named. In that sense I gladly call myself organized in the so-called Christian church, which has inherited the interpreter of Wordsworth's prophecy, that " the word is not its spirit from Constantine and Athanasius. the dress of thought, but its very incarnation." Now comes the question upon which modern thinkers divide. F. Max Mullek. Does this loving and reverent study of the universe — of man and all that surrounds him — lead to the recognition of a grand, invisi- CORRESPONDENCE. ble and almost inconceivable power behind or within its phe- nomena? Does not the fact that force is invisible and almost

as to its basis or origin, that all moving powers AN ARGUMENT inconceivable and FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE. of every kind, as well as all intelligence or organizing guidance, is

To the Editors: invisible, intangible and inaccessible to all our faculties except The movement is based on the fact that women are not suffi- reason, lead toward the opinion that the grand aggregate of power ciently represented by men. If they were, there would be no and guiding capacity should be recognized as possessing the attri- agitation. And men are even less unfit for representing children butes which appear in universal nature — an incalculable amount than for representing women. The child and the man differ of energy, of stability, and of benevolent organizing wisdom? If much more than the child and the woman, in character, in average the quality of producing good is called benevolence or love in : —

the: open court. 5°3

man, why mav not the same expression (since we have no other) That doctrine -will rule the world, when it is seen and felt in its be applied to the infinite source of happiness, of joy and beauty, tivine simplicity. though we are unable to comprehend it? Mr. Gunning says, " Resist evil by whatever means will prove However, the reader may decide that question in reference ftective." But the world's doctrine, an eye for an eye, a tooth for the Great Unknown, I must claim that in a strictly inductive a tooth, says Tolstoi, has never proved itself effective. It has spirit we are advancing steadily, if not rapidly, as I think, toward only aggravated the evil. Now leave the doctrine of the world a better understanding or conception of the Great Unknown, and apply earnestly the doctrine of Jesus. This certainly seems guided or rather impelled by the religious spirit (which is not the to be a reasonable demand. The whip which lacerates the body spirit of the church) which leads us to recognize all the rare and has thus far had but indifferent success in the expulsion of evil. marvelous facts of the universe as exponents of its mysteries. Satan cannot cast out Satan. Jesus said to the sinning woman In that reverent and loving spirit we recognize in ourselves go, and sin no more. This would be a very lax way of dealing and our fellows an intelligence, love and will which though inac- with social evil say those who still adhere to the Mosaic code. cessible to physical science are really powers that act upon and Nothing short of stoning her to death will prove effectual. For- with matter, and being thus, forces in the highest sense of the giveness, kindness, tender sympathy for the fallen are only a word force, as well as self conscious powers, they cannot ration- premium on vicious conduct. ally be supposed to pass into nonentity with the decomposition ot Very well, we now have presented face to face Mr. Gunning's the body, any more than caloric can be supposed to pass into remedy for evil and that of Tolstoi's. If we must choose either, I annihilation when the steam which it sustained is condensed into certainly greatly prefer the latter remedy. It seems more rational, water. This argument from analogy and from the persistence of more human, more divine, more efficient, more satisfactory every force, may not be imperatively conclusive, but becomes conclusive way. For myself I have tried to live out the doctrine of Jesus for when the scientist who traces the lost caloric of steam, succeeds more than fourscore years, and do not feel that I have suffered for as well in tracing the lost intelligence and will which survive the it in body, or mind or estate. I do not think the world at large would body, which have been recognized by millions and which the most suffer by carrying out the precepts of Jesus in their full scope and rigidly accurate and careful experiments of scientists in the last spirit. That the Church has not carried them out proves only its thirty years have demonstrated to be as perfect in their disem- weakness and its conformity to the doctrine of the world. I bodied state as they ever were in their embodied form and rejoice that there are even a few in the world who have not bowed location. down to Baal, but have stood bravely for the truth as exemplified

To the prejudice which resists the acceptance of such testi- in the life and teachings of the wise man of Nazareth. j. s. b. mony I would say it is not compatible with a just respect for our fellow beings. The honorable scientist should ever be encour- BOOK REVIEWS. aged to persist in the fearless pursuit of truth b3' the candid and courteous reception of his verified statements, and the refusal to Ueber religiose und wissenschaftliche Weltan- receive them and to test them is not the spirit of free inquiry but schauung. Ein historisch-kritischer Versuch von Prof. Dr. the spirit of intolerant bigotry which has so long dominated alike L. Biichner. Verfasser von " Kraft und Stoff," u. s. w. in the church, in the learned professions, and in government. Leipzig: Verlag von Theodor Thomas, 1S87. I hold that the absolute demonstration of the continued life of man as a spiritual being carries us very far on the way to This handsomely printed pamphlet of 75 pages is a greatly recognize spiritual power of a transcendently greater nature and enlarged edition of the address given by the famous author of capacity, to the conception of which advancing science will surely Force and Matter, before the Freidenker-Bund, or association of lead us. German freethinkers, at Apolda, Saxony, May 31, 1SS5, on the as Returning to the question of religion, which a sentiment conflict between religious and scientific views. As now published, embraces all that is great, wise and good, does it not necessarily the essay begins by defining religion as faith in spiritual beings, embrace the spiritual world of disembodied humanity, and the and in supernatural powers which rule as they please over nature power which is above all—but can it be confined to the invisible.' and men. With a religion which seeks to realize all its ideals in I trow not. Our love, hope and poetic fervor reach out first to this earthly life, and in the relations of man to man, Prof. Biich- that which is seen, and from the seen advance to the unseen; but ner has no controversy. Starting thus with the common and the religion that reaches only to the seen is none the less a genu- time-honored definition of religion, he goes on to tell how it origi- ine religion and is far more a true religion, than the vindictive and nated in ignorance of the causes of natural phenomena, dreams credulous impulses which recognize in fear the imaginary tyrant for instance. The earliest scientific discoveries were favorably of the universe. Joseph Rodes Buchanan. received; and there was but little persecution of new views before the appearance of Christianity, with such excessively spiritual and TOLSTOI. unwordly aims, as well as with such blind reliance on revelation, To the Editors as made the conflict between religion and science inevitable. The The article by W. D. Gunning, in the issue of The Open various phases of this struggle are related with great descriptive

Court of September 1st, is a valuable contribution to your paper, power down to the close of the thirteenth century. Nothing is It will deepen and extend the already lively interest awakened in said, however, of the next hundred and fifty years, during which the religious world by the late publication of My Religion, by the papacy was attacked successively by Philip of France, Dante, Count Tolstoi. It will also serve to sharpen the public appetite Louis of Bavaria, Ockham, Rienzi, Tauler, Wycliffe and Huss. for the promised two volumes now in preparation by the same The omission is especially to be regretted, because this is also the author, namely, A Criticism on Dogmatic Theology and a IVew period of the revival of learning, as well as of the new birth o( Translation of the Four Gospels. Hosts of those who have read literature, art and commerce. These secularizing influences are My Religion cannot but regret that Tolstoi should be hindered, too important to be disregarded ; and the latter part of the historical even for a moment, from accomplishing his work, by dabbling in survey is not only much less minute than the earlier portion but the unimportant business of cobbling shoes and working in the less accurate, for instance in putting Tindal, Shaftesbury and Mira- field. He has more pressing work upon his hand — that of unfold- baud in the seventeenth century instead of the eighteenth. These ing and making clear to prince and peasant the doctrine of Jesus. defects are pointed out in hope that they will be corrected in 5°4 THE OPEN COURT,

'ater editions, as well as in the English translation, which will be The prevailing philosophy among Americans is an extreme eagerly expected. optimism, "in consequence whereof pain and misery must be Dr. Biichner's real ability as an historian is manifest, as he considered as the result of error and ill-will, both due, as at shows how the excesses of the French Revolution have tempted present the phrase goes, 'to the degradation and shackling of the wealthy, powerful and cultivated people to abandon the cause of science of political economy.' [Progress and Poverty^ The free thought, which is now in consequence obliged to look for its philosophy for the people which Mr. Cherouny proposes is "pure most zealous champions to the working classes. What has been and undefiled pessimism." Pessimism teaches "that there are lost through the failure of the thinkers and scholars of the nine- limits to the human will and its light, the intellect," and " the teenth century to take up religion as boldly as those of the application of the doctrines of pessimism to matters of govern- eighteenth, has been more than made good, he says, by the ment * * * were the foundation of the policy of those fathers mighty activity and brilliant discoveries of science. She has of the Revolution who are known in history by the name of the brought to light a number of facts which are utterly irreconcilable Federalists." with the vital and fundamental principles of theology. No con- Thus Mr. Cherouny attempts a combination of Schopen- cession or compromise can do away with this irrepressible con- hauer's philosophy with Hamilton's statesmanship. He trusts to flict between religion and science, nature and revelation, church find in the restriction of the individual will, the ethical basis for a and progress, faith and knowledge. The gap between these two strong government. views is rapidly becoming too wide for people long to continue to In political economy the editor of the Philosophy for the Peo- hold with both sides at once. Those who do this are already ple compares the Unions of to-day with the mediaeval guilds. beginning to find it unprofitable; and it will soon be impossible. Both are very much alike in origin and development — even the And philosophy is as badly off as religion. No one with a boycott existed, under another name. " Socialism," Mr. Cherouny sound mind believes in the Abracadabra and proposition-jingle of says, " with its destructive optimism and exaggerated pessimism, the metaphysical wizards and conjurers. Since it has been proved cannot enlighten the future. Its well-meaning propagators — the scientifically, that man is a product of nature, closely connected Powderlys, McGlynns, Georges — are conjuring up spirits they

cannot control." As a remedy is proposed : " with all other organisms and governed in every respect by uni- The United States must change their policy, not their form of government." versal physical laws, so that whatever he knows is a result of Instead of viewing national economy from the standpoint of a natural processes, all attempts to go back to Kant have become business man and applying to the whole the measure of an indi- useless; and the mysterious "Thing-in-itself " under whose pro- vidual, the science must in the future look upon industrial life from the national point of view; whence all appear as tecting wings refuge has been sought for all the metaphysico- one body with interests entirely different from and often adverse to those of paraphernalia has found out to be only a cloak theological been individual business men." for ignorance or indecision in philosophy. If there were a Two sketches are attached to the first number, " Unhappi-

" Thing-in-itself" it could never become a subject for thought; as ness" and "Happiness;" the former to a great extent is a free translation of a famous passage from Schopenhauer, the latter is men have no relations with it, and only visionaries and ghost-seers imbued with the spirit of Schopenhauer's philosophy. profess to have seen any indications of its influence. Far from agreeing in every respect with Mr. Cherouny's People ask us what we can give to atone for taking away theories, we nevertheless expect that his publication will do much all that has made life supportable. Let us answer with an good. The unbounded optimism and individualism of Americans needs a corrective, and although I should not like to see ancient Roman, saving: u Diis extinctis^ deoque successit hutnan- our youthful nation drift into pessimism, the study of and acquaint- itasf" ''As belief in departs, faith in arrives!" Man God man ance with pessimistic thinkers would prove of great advantage. has been lost in a wilderness of religious illusions and theological controversies; but he will be restored to himself by scientific and The Art Amateur for October is especially rich in its pic- liberal views. Into the place of the wretched slave of supra- torial illustrations. A print in oils of an old wind-mill is very self-reliant that he mundane powers steps the man who knows strong and effective. The wood-cut of a group of armed horse- owes all his material and mental riches to nature and to himself, men, from Edouard Detaille, is vigorous and spirited, and several and that he is able to raise himself far higher than he has yet cattle pieces, by Emile Van Mauke, are very well rendered. An interesting criticism on this painter leads us to examine these attained. Paradise is not behind but before us, and is not to be prints more carefully. Victor Dargon Gladiolis strike us as too divine grace help but struggles to reached by and by human crowded, and Edith Scannell's neatly drawn figures are just what escape from all the countless relics of barbarism, and especially they have always been. The designs are good, especially the from what have been and always will be the worst enemies of "pomegranates," by Sarah Wynfield Higgin, and the design for a wood panel, by C. Jenckes. There is much informa- man—superstition, ignorance and dread of the supernatural. This M- tion in regard to " tricks of the trade." A curious case has effort after happiness and truth for ourselves and others is the occurred in New York of the arrest of a fellow selling trashy pic- foundation of the Freethinkers' religion. For we, too, have a tures by gas-light. The prosecuting attorney justified the police- religion, an ideal conception to which we can devote our powers; man on the ground of an old State law forbidding picture auctions after dark. The Mayor declares that the law, since it is a law, a faith not in the supernatural but in what is higher and better, in must be enforced, as it is the fashion in that city to hold picture something above the present state of man and nature—not an sales by night. This decision has caused some excitement among aim forever unattainable, but one within our ultimate reach. picture dealers. Some interesting extracts are given from Madame Here again we come into full opposition to the religious view that Cave's Drawing from Memory. This book attracted some atten- tion thirty or more years ago. The main point of it is that a God orders all things as they ought to be, so that every inde- pupil should make a tracing of a picture, and then from memory pendent effort of ours to make any improvement can be only a draw the important points so accurately that they will stand the sinful violation of the rights of the Omnipotent. F. M. H. test of being matched with the tracing. So great an authority as Delacroix gave it his commendation, thinking it a good method to secure accuracy in lengths and for shortenings. As the popu- Philosophy for the People. Quarterly. New York : The lar direction in drawing has of late turned so far from thorough- Cherouny Printing and Publishing Co., 1887. ness and correctness, it is well to call attention to this book, Mr. Henry Cherouny, the editor and, at least in the first num- although its methods may seem too mechanical. "Montezuma" ber, sole contributor of this quarterly, undertakes to contend cannot be happy without another ill-natured fling at Miss Gard- ner, which we presume will not hurt her, and Greta writes her "against popular prejudices as well as against those speculists gossiping letter from Boston. The technical instructions in who never touch truth it, but to distort nor any sound principle painting and photography are valuable, and must help the solitary but to drive it to extremes." amateur very much.